On this week’s episode of Give An Ovation we are flipping the mic around and welcoming on Ovation’s very own, CEO and Founder, Zack Oates. Having started as a soda jerk at Friendly’s and then transitioning into tech startups, Zack brings his expertise within the restaurant industry, hospitality, and tech to the table as we flip the script. With over 200+ podcast episodes under his belt, tune in to find out how Zack has uncovered the driving factors of successful restaurants.

Here are a few highlights from this episode:

Over the course of Give An Ovation’s 200+ episodes, what is the most important thing you’ve learned?

“What I have learned from all of these amazing guests coming on is a word that is often used but rarely understood: loyalty. When you talk about loyalty, you typically talk about recency, frequency, spend; all metrics of a healthy customer base . . .

We’re not serving customers, we’re not even serving guests, we are serving humans.”

What does loyalty look like?

“I call it the ladder of loyalty and there’s three rungs to it, convenience, consistency, and connection . . .

The base is convenience. Your food and service needs to exceed the threshold of convenience. If it is difficult to get to your location and order from you, you better have amazing food, service, experience. Those are the things that push you beyond the threshold of convenience . . .

The next rung is consistency. The thing you need to nail down is giving a person value for their money every time. Are you open when you say you are? Do you have the food you’re going to have? . . .

The highest rung, the reason you keep going back is connection. The guest cares about you because they know you care about them. There is something emotional about the transaction . . . all of our podcast guests say you have got to care about the guest and build that connection. I see time and time again that the restaurants that make it have built the ladder of loyalty. The ones who don’t either get stuck at the bottom or don’t even know about it.”