Yasaman Stewart, Senior Director of Marketing at Brix Holdings, joins Give an Ovation to share how consistent execution, genuine energy, and authentic guest connections fuel brand success. With a background rooted in both operations and marketing, Yasaman explains why true hospitality requires aligning every touchpoint—from marketing campaigns to team member enthusiasm.

Consistency is the Key to Brand Success (1:36)

“Brands that stay consistent are the ones that win.” – Yasaman Stewart

Yasaman discusses how consistency in both messaging and execution separates thriving brands from struggling ones, drawing from her years of hands-on experience in restaurant operations and marketing.

Marketing Only Works If Teams Believe It (2:57)

“They have to be excited. Otherwise, why would the guest be?” – Yasaman Stewart

Beyond posters and table tents, Yasaman emphasizes the importance of creating team excitement around promotions. Real energy from the team is what turns marketing efforts into memorable guest experiences.

Genuine Connections Matter Most (4:39)

“Guests just want to be heard and acknowledged.” – Yasaman Stewart

In today’s fast-paced digital world, Yasaman highlights why genuine face-to-face interactions and fast, meaningful responses are more important than ever in guest experience.

Tailoring the Experience Without Losing Consistency (7:15)

“You tweak the delivery, not the message.” – Yasaman Stewart

Drawing on her experience as a bartender and operator, Yasaman explains how great team members adjust their service style to meet guests where they are—without compromising brand consistency.

Motivating Franchisees Through Recognition and Rewards (8:17)

“When teams see sales go up, the excitement grows too.” – Yasaman Stewart

Yasaman shares how her ranking and rewards program helped franchisees improve guest feedback scores, drive team excitement, and boost local marketing efforts—all while building pride and loyalty.

Who Deserves an Ovation? (12:24)

Yasaman gives a shoutout to Raising Cane’s for their focus on operational simplicity, energetic branding, and smart partnerships that amplify both guest experience and team engagement.

Learn More

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasamanstewart/

Transcription

Zack Oates

Welcome to Give an Ovation the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast. I’m your host, Zach Oates and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover real strategies and actionable tactics you can use to create a five star guest experience. This podcast is powered by ovation, the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. It gives you the insights you need without the annoying guest questions.

00:00:24:19 – 00:00:55:00

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation f.com. Today I’m excited because we have someone who and I’m excited every week we do this, but especially today because Yasmin Stewart is not only a amazing industry veteran and great human, but she’s also just so smart and she gets marketing. And I’m excited to have you all to talk about the guest experience. She is the senior director of marketing at Bricks Holdings, where she is at the helm of marketing for Friendly’s, and now she’s working with Clean Juice as well.

00:00:55:00 – 00:01:02:23

Zack Oates

It’s pretty fun, Yasmin, that you can with bricks. You don’t have to just focus on one brand. There’s a family of brands there.

00:01:03:00 – 00:01:14:00

Yasaman Stewart

And it’s never a dull moment. And every brand has its own personality. It’s like literally working with another office mate. It’s its own personality, and you have to shift that personality. So it’s never a dull moment.

00:01:14:02 – 00:01:36:20

Zack Oates

That is awesome. Now. Okay, so you’ve had quite the career though in hospitality, bricks is not your first foray into food. And as you’re looking at the brands that you’ve worked at, what would you say are some of the mistakes that you’ve seen some of these brands make that you’re like, oh man, I just wish that brands would do XYZ better before I got there.

00:01:36:24 – 00:01:37:18

Zack Oates

00:01:37:20 – 00:02:00:07

Yasaman Stewart

Consistency. I think consistency is 100%, and the only reason I say that is because the brand that I brands, I did work for that had consistency, had a much more successful rate than those that didn’t have that consistency, those that didn’t step over the opportunity, step over the dollars to pick up dimes. Those were the ones who had the success.

00:02:00:07 – 00:02:22:08

Yasaman Stewart

And I was with Outback Steakhouse for 16 plus years. I was in operations, and so I saw the operational side of everything and then went into marketing because I was annoyed with marketing and I wanted to get into marketing to understand why does it annoy me now? How can I change this, bringing me to marketing? And I put that operational.

00:02:22:08 – 00:02:33:16

Yasaman Stewart

And so it has to be consistency both in messaging and execution. And I wish every brand had that. But you can’t in such a fast paced world. Sometimes you have to adjust.

00:02:33:18 – 00:02:57:20

Zack Oates

And I love that you’re focused on a marketer that comes from operations because you understand the importance of nailing it with the messaging to the experience, to the post experience. For example, I’m looking at the poster behind you of the Jonas Brothers, and you could have all the marketing pizzazz in the world and you could do all the market stuff.

00:02:57:20 – 00:03:13:03

Zack Oates

But if the window clings, don’t get up. If the table toppers don’t get put on, if the sundae isn’t made correctly, then all of that marketing effort goes to waste that you’re doing it from a national scale.

00:03:13:05 – 00:03:37:17

Yasaman Stewart

And there’s one more piece on top of that. Those are logistics. Those are all the things that could be done. Done. The excitement in the passion that you give the team also is what’s incredibly important. They could put that poster up, but they gotta be excited. They get me singing The Jonas Brothers. If you don’t have that excitement of the team member of that fountain server or whoever, you don’t have that excitement that is going to resonate to the gas.

00:03:37:18 – 00:03:56:04

Yasaman Stewart

Why would the guests be excited if your servers are excited? Yeah. So I can put a button on them all day long and they’ll be like, okay, this is my button. Hi, welcome to friendlies. Get a Jonas Brothers in it. But when that girl is just going, oh my God, did you see that Joe’s three headed monster. And they get excited and they’re like, oh my God, I’ll get excited too.

00:03:56:07 – 00:04:03:09

Yasaman Stewart

It’s contagious. And I just think that if you don’t have that energy, you’re the team member. What’s the point of executing any of it?

00:04:03:09 – 00:04:10:18

Zack Oates

And by the way, I love that contagious can now be a good word again. We are five years past,

00:04:10:20 – 00:04:12:15

Yasaman Stewart

Say that could say could.

00:04:12:15 – 00:04:21:06

Zack Oates

Yeah, yeah, that word was pretty much persona non grata for the last five years I love that. Yeah. It’s contagious. Happy. Right. There you go I love you.

00:04:21:06 – 00:04:24:16

Yasaman Stewart

Just be happy I love that contagious happy. Yes.

00:04:24:21 – 00:04:39:14

Zack Oates

Awesome. And obviously I love when talking to operators who understand marketing because they get that no matter what it is, it’s about the guest experience. And so what do you think is some of the most important aspects of guest experience nowadays?

00:04:39:16 – 00:04:56:18

Yasaman Stewart

Genuine connection? I had mentioned that on one of the panels we had talked to. It’s a genuine connection that when they’re getting a response, when they’re being heard, that’s all I really want to do is be heard. We’re in the world of social media and email heavy with the guest experience. They can go on and they can be touched on social media.

00:04:56:18 – 00:05:22:20

Yasaman Stewart

You yeah, you do this. But then when you see him face to face, you’re like, you wrote that if you have that courage, you have that keyboard courage. It’s that experience and that consistency, but that genuine connection to be like, okay, I’m listening Yasmin’s listening. Can I solve it? Probably not, but they’re a little bit more. As long as they’re being heard and acknowledged, then it’s okay if you can’t get the results and the solution immediately.

00:05:22:20 – 00:05:39:05

Yasaman Stewart

They understand that you’re human. I think that’s incredibly important. Plus being heard, I am the worst person when I email somebody or I even call somebody, if you don’t call or text me back, that kills me, I’ll respond. Just so response is great, and that’s important.

00:05:39:07 – 00:06:02:08

Zack Oates

I love that because that connection, it just helps people understand that they’re cared about. I define hospitality as proving to the guest, you care. Yeah, right. And if you prove to the guests that you care, what happens is connection means they care about you because they know that you care about them. And I think about that even in our lives.

00:06:02:10 – 00:06:21:06

Zack Oates

I have my 18 month old at my office door right now banging on my glass office looking at me. I’m thinking about him, and I’m like, how does he know that I care about him and where he’s at is going to be different. How he wants to be cared for is going to be different than my seven year old.

00:06:21:06 – 00:06:42:13

Zack Oates

It’s going to be different than my wife is going to be different than my parents. And I think the same thing with guests is that we need to meet the guests where they’re at and communicate that we care about them in the way that they want to. And there may be someone who’s Gen Z who wants a text message, there may be someone who’s older, who wants that manager to come up and genuinely ask them how everything was.

00:06:42:15 – 00:06:59:03

Zack Oates

But we got to make sure that we meet the guests where we’re at, so that they know that we as a brand care about them. And for those who say we can’t scale, that, you will never be able to build a brand bigger than a couple locations. If you don’t believe that.

00:06:59:05 – 00:07:15:09

Yasaman Stewart

It’s something that you even said about the different, like with your two kiddos, I take you always take it past experience of when did I actually learn to do that? And it’s you. Literally 16 years of bartending. It was 16 years of being behind the bar and being like, okay, this guy wants to talk to you like this.

00:07:15:09 – 00:07:37:13

Yasaman Stewart

This person wants we talked. This couple wants to be like this, and you have to tweak your personality and your delivery to each person. And that in its own is consistent experience. Because just because you have to tweak your voice in the way you present and you go forward doesn’t necessarily mean that you are changing the consistency of what you’re delivering.

00:07:37:13 – 00:07:39:17

Yasaman Stewart

It’s just the way you’re delivering it.

00:07:39:19 – 00:07:54:23

Zack Oates

Yes, I think that’s such a good thing because I, I think about my wife, she was a server for a long time at a steakhouse, and she’s like, some people would come in there and it was just like a husband and wife. And you could tell they didn’t really talk a lot to each other, and they kind of wanted to be entertained by the server.

00:07:55:02 – 00:08:12:00

Zack Oates

There are other people on business meetings that they just like, just bring me my food. There’s other people who were just like, so in love that they just in their own little world. And you do you have to tailor the experience for them and make sure again, you’re meeting them where they’re at. Now. I know that that’s a good strategy in thinking about it.

00:08:12:00 – 00:08:17:05

Zack Oates

What about some tactics? What are some things that you’ve used to improve the guest experience in your brands?

00:08:17:07 – 00:08:33:02

Yasaman Stewart

So being in a franchise system that’s a very different that’s the next thing. That is when when you’re in the system and your locations are owned by people that have an investment in it, at dollar investment, it’s very different. So you have to motivate them. And so one of the things that we implemented that I feel like it really worked.

00:08:33:02 – 00:09:01:01

Yasaman Stewart

At first I was like, maybe not. But when we noticed there was a reward behind it, we do like a ranking reward. And what it is is that it’s an evaluation per quarter that we do with our locations, where they get basically scored on their ovation. Number one, how their response times, how they even the response rates based off of that measurement, their Google measurement, they are are they abiding by the pop or are they doing that.

00:09:01:01 – 00:09:23:03

Yasaman Stewart

It’s just the delivery and then rewarding them in their team at the end of that quarter with dollars to help them either a celebrate or put back into their business that we help them with for the local store marketing or whatnot, maybe billboards, maybe a vet set up something that they normally don’t think about, but it’s almost a gift to say congrats.

00:09:23:03 – 00:09:48:22

Yasaman Stewart

And when we did that, you saw the scores go up. You even may have seen it on the ovation site. It just they start going up because they know that there is a reward in from that reward. They’re seeing their sales and their dollars are coming back. And so they’re like, well, if that’s our reward too. So not only are you doing that ranking rewards program and then at the end of the year they become the best Friendly’s, the best in class friendly.

00:09:48:22 – 00:10:09:13

Yasaman Stewart

So Cats and Delaware became the best in class Friendly’s. And they got T-shirts that said Best Friendly’s in the United States. And so they got to have that noise. Oh, that’s cool. In the restaurant, customers see that, and it goes back again to the fact that, the customers are seeing that and they’re excited because the team just got excited.

00:10:09:15 – 00:10:12:14

Yasaman Stewart

It’s a rippling effect. And that tactic helped a lot.

00:10:12:14 – 00:10:19:20

Zack Oates

So rewards like, what are we talking about? Is it like a free ice cream sundae? Is it like a free, all expense paid trip to Ireland?

00:10:19:20 – 00:10:39:15

Yasaman Stewart

No, it’s marketing dollars. Back to them to do what they need to do to execute more programs. So it’s not just here’s an ice cream or a T-shirt, it’s a the recognition that they’re the best Friendly’s. But it’s also a return of their dollars that we can say, let’s help you further your business even more with that in.

00:10:39:15 – 00:10:43:14

Yasaman Stewart

So it’s almost like a kickback, a rebate, a rebate. Oh I’m.

00:10:43:14 – 00:10:49:20

Zack Oates

Laughing. Got it. Do you help them to spend that money or like do you actually just like give them that money.

00:10:49:23 – 00:10:54:09

Yasaman Stewart

Give it to them and go. We have a fantastic local store marketing manager.

00:10:54:10 – 00:11:00:11

Zack Oates

So you invest more into their local store marketing and give them the support to do that. If they win these rewards.

00:11:00:11 – 00:11:02:17

Yasaman Stewart

Above and beyond what we do and we all right.

00:11:02:17 – 00:11:03:05

Zack Oates

That’s cool.

00:11:03:05 – 00:11:09:00

Yasaman Stewart

That’s our honor. And we give them best in class. We give them more of a hyperfocus with it as well.

00:11:09:02 – 00:11:22:05

Zack Oates

That’s really cool. I love that because it’s a virtuous cycle of not only do they have the good feeling of like, we won something, we got this award, but they also are going to drive more sales. I love that idea. That’s it.

00:11:22:08 – 00:11:33:05

Yasaman Stewart

They see it. And it’s not just like, oh, we’re going to win it. This is great. We got the T shirt. They see the sales coming. They see all their hard work and it becomes a consists of you’re making habits I love.

00:11:33:05 – 00:11:35:14

Zack Oates

And you do that on a quarterly basis.

00:11:35:16 – 00:11:50:20

Yasaman Stewart

We do that on a period. Yeah. Quarterly basis is what we do. We don’t do it every quarter. We do it basically to two major quarters in the middle, but we still track them on a quarterly basis. So just because you’re not getting that rebate reward, Lord, you’re being recognized no matter what in that quarter.

00:11:50:22 – 00:12:10:24

Zack Oates

And a lot of times, just as a guest who has a bad experience doesn’t always need to get a full refund and a $20 gift card. Sometimes they just want to feel heard. So to with our team, sometimes they just want to be recognized. And if you could recognize a team and give them that juice to feel like, hey, yeah, that was really cool.

00:12:11:01 – 00:12:15:15

Zack Oates

It works. And by the way, didn’t mean to make the pun about clean juice there, but oh.

00:12:15:15 – 00:12:18:07

Yasaman Stewart

I don’t I mean, don’t worry about it.

00:12:18:09 – 00:12:24:16

Zack Oates

So yes, man, who is someone in the industry that we should be following, who’s someone who deserves innovation?

00:12:24:18 – 00:12:46:00

Yasaman Stewart

Okay, I think I mean, if you’re not following them already, then you’re silly. I think Raising Cane’s is kicking butt and taking names. I think they are. I mean, if you’re not already following them, you’re nuts. And that’s only because they only have a couple products. They’re really good at doing their product. And he’s even set it to, as I said, be really good at that.

00:12:46:05 – 00:13:09:19

Yasaman Stewart

But then it’s the partnerships. You can’t go on Barstool, you can’t go on Post Malone and not see these partnerships come into light. And then also their excitement with their team members in celebrating those team members and the customers that come with that. I think that what they’re doing is fantastic at what they’re besides us. We’re also following up.

00:13:09:19 – 00:13:10:11

Yasaman Stewart

We’re doing a lot.

00:13:10:11 – 00:13:30:18

Zack Oates

Oh, of course, yes, I totally agree. I think that they do a good product at well, actually they do like three good products. Right. And that’s really all they need is three good products. And some friendliness. And I think that’s awesome. Last question. Who you ask me is I can’t leave without just asking you how has ovation been helpful for you?

00:13:30:20 – 00:13:51:14

Yasaman Stewart

Are you kidding me? It’s listening to the voice of the customer. It’s understanding. I come from an environment where it was very, very research and development and customer insights and research and guest intercept everything we live in now, world post-Covid that it’s that fast, fast, fast, fast. How do we collect that information, real time information and guest experience and data.

00:13:51:14 – 00:14:12:07

Yasaman Stewart

And I feel like ovation has gotten to the point where I can read through and hear what they’re saying. What are they saying? What are their feedbacks? It is my own quick way of getting that insight that I need to be able to do more or update what I need to do, and that is 100% where ovation comes in for that.

00:14:12:08 – 00:14:29:06

Yasaman Stewart

You’re my mini little research firm. Is what you really are. And just like I said, see where we can even help operations execute better. Did this even work? How did we do demographically? Just all of that? It is an analytical tool that I absolutely love with ovation.

00:14:29:08 – 00:14:41:20

Zack Oates

Awesome. Well, I sure do appreciate that and appreciate all that you do for the industry and supporting in the ideas that you bring to the table. Where can people go to find and follow you? And bricks?

00:14:41:22 – 00:15:01:23

Yasaman Stewart

Yeah, you can follow us. We’re on all platforms. I personally am on all platforms as well. Yasmin, Leyla. But then as well as friendlies and bricks we do have of our brand, we have our own Instagram and Facebook pages for families, ice cream, clean juice. So all of our handles are there as well, so you can follow us everywhere where we would like to be very social and out there.

00:15:02:00 – 00:15:17:18

Zack Oates

And you do a great job with that too. You could definitely follow Yasmin on Yasmin Stewart on LinkedIn and Yasmin for this being the cleanest and friendliest podcast ever. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us. Giving ovation.

00:15:17:22 – 00:15:20:23

Yasaman Stewart

We couldn’t do it without you guys. Thank you so much that.

00:15:21:00 – 00:15:43:13

Zack Oates

Thanks for joining us today. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by ovation, a two question, SMS based, actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovation up.com.