Welcome to restaurant influencers presented by entrepreneur. My name is Shawn Walsh, founder
of Cali barbecue media in life in the restaurant business and in the new creator,
economy, we learn through lessons and stories. I can't tell you how excited I am for this
interview. Thank you to toast for sponsoring this show for believing in this show, for
giving us the stage the opportunity. We are at the National Restaurant Association Show in
Chicago. There are 55,000 restaurant professionals that are gonna be here for four
days, 12 football fields of vendors, over 2200 brands that are participating from all
over the globe. And I get to interview Sam Os who I have been a huge fan of.
He is been running Nation's restaurant news editorial director. Is that correct? And editor
in chief and editor in chief. We'll, we'll get the nuances, but we created this show as a
storytelling podcast to help all of those restaurant professionals that are all over the
globe that might not be able to make it to this show and for the ones that are at the show
but are too busy. So high level Sam I need to ask you where in the world is your favorite
stadium stage or venue? Oh, man, stadium stage or venue? I'll go really niche on
this one. Ok, because my favorite is a coffee shop in Athens, Ohio. My hometown, my buddy
Chris owns a coffee shop there and I play shows there with my eighties cover band. Get
out of here. What's the name of the coffee shop? Donkey Coffee. Don. How many, what, what
does the venue sit? Uh there, there's like 80 people in the back room and there's this great
little teeny stage where we squeeze our cover band on there. Beautiful play all the time. I
love it. So Donkey Coffee, we're gonna go there, we're gonna rent it out. We're gonna
talk to Informa, we're gonna talk to toast entrepreneur and we're gonna select 80
professionals that are playing the game within the game. People that truly believe in this
industry, truly believe in restaurants, truly believe in storytelling, hospitality and
technology. And I'm gonna give you the opportunity to give a TED X talk. Ok. So I
wanna know from the highest level Sam, tell us who is Informa, what are you guys
doing here at the show? Why do you make the investment to come here and do this kind of
work? Sure. Well, Informa is a $4 billion global company trades on the London Stock
Exchange. It's um the largest events management company in the world. And um you
know, we're very proud to have them as a our parent company because as the largest events
management company in the world, you know, they really uh have incredible expertise in
running events like this one. So the national restaurant show is in our portfolio, this is
our show. Um And so we're thrilled that as part of that, we get to have this incredible
access via this booth to meet with all the uh the folks here. But yeah, Informa has events.
It also has media. So under within Informa, we have our informa food service vertical. And so
we have six publications in the Informa food service vertical. And we also have shows like
restaurant um restaurant leadership conference , the National Restaurant Show create and
several others. That's amazing how many you said six publications. That's right. Can you
name those six publications? Can Nations, restaurant news, restaurant hospitality,
restaurant, business, food service director, CS P and supermarket news. And how many team
members do we have across that entire portfolio editors? 30. Ok. And what, what kind
of give us an idea of the type of content that we're publishing? So it's um you know, it's of
course, these are all trade publications. So this is business content uh for the retail
professional in the case of CS P that C stores and in uh supermarket news' case, of course,
grocery stores uh and then restaurant, business Nations, restaurant news, restaurant
hospitality or for the food service owner operator, food service director is for the non
commercial food service operator. Um So content that we're trying to provide is for the
food business owner, leader, manager executive . Here's content that can help you do your
business better. We want to inform them, we want to educate them and engage them. That's
what we're always talking about because, you know, we build communities, we teach our
communities via, you know, informing them of what's going on in the news in our events.
We're helping them to rich them with knowledge and, and thought leadership. Our expectation is,
you know, we want the industry to be better. So by, by passing on, you know, the news and
information that we do and hosting events where they can learn, we expect the restaurant
and retail industries to, to be better because at the end of the day, like that's what we're
all out here to do, right? We want them all to be better, to perform better. Uh be more
responsible. Of course, we have um some values that we also want to, you know, we're always
all about diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability. You know, we're really focused
on making sure that this is a responsible industry, but that is of course performing very
well. What did you go to school to study? I went to journalism school at university. What
do they teach in journalism school? Well, I said uh multiple times, I don't think I learned
anything in journalist in school but uh go to school kids. Um because of course, what it did
do is unlock doors for me. So, uh I went to school to be a journalist because I was going
to be the next Rolling Stone columnist. I wanted to be a music journalist. I'm a musician.
Uh, as I mentioned, I'm in a cover band. I'm a drummer. Um And so I, I loved writing about
music. So I have four years of school and I was destined to do that and uh graduated at the
cusp of right before the great recession and realized, oh, journalism jobs are going away.
So I pivoted to business journalism and fell into a couple great opportunities. Ended up as
the associate editor at QSR magazine, spent 12 years there and uh was the editorial director
there when I left and then came over to inform a nation's restaurant news. What did you learn?
Getting that first position? Everything? I mean, I was so immature. I was such a punk,
you know, iii I was 22 when I started at QSR. It's hard to believe I was a baby. This is my
13th restaurant show and I see pictures of myself at the old shows and I'm like, what did
I know? I didn't know anything. Um But look, I had, I had a boss, uh owner of the company
really believed in me and he invested in me. And so I learned work ethic. I learned, you
know, um, how to be responsible to, uh, an account to my coworkers and my bosses. I
learned, you know, that was part of it. But then look, I learned the restaurant industry. I
mean, this is a little embarrassing to say, but I've never worked in a restaurant. The jobs
I worked as a teenager in college were just not restaurants for whatever reason. And so I,
I really got, uh, you know, a hard knock kind of education and what this restaurant industry
is all about. So now I've been covering the industry for 15 years. I, you know, this is,
this is my industry. Like I, I don't feel like I'm a journalist. I feel like I'm a
restaurateur. I just happen to be in the media part of it a little bit like you Sean. Well, I
love the fact you said 15 years. And I think one of the facts that I always bring up, we
opened our restaurant in 2008. But on 2007, June 29th, 2007 is one of the first iphone came
out and I talk about that to give context to anybody that's listening to this, to understand
that we're in a different world, you know, the world that we live in and what you studied in
school and what I studied in school and as a restaurant owner, what I thought was going to
happen if I built a great business. I thought that Legacy media was going to come and report
on how great my restaurant was. Well, nobody came, you know, nobody came. And I realized
that that thing that's in my pocket, that iphone that's in my pocket is an incredible
tool that allows me to communicate with the world, communicate directly with customers. Can
you talk about the evolution of 13 years ago when you started the show to now we're
literally in new media row, old media row legacy. I mean, this is communications, but
it's modern communications. I can't tell you how much I appreciate informa giving us a media
pass, allowing us the access that we've been able to have to come and cover this event
because we have so many incredible partners like toast and restaurant 365 Innovation and
Mary, the list goes on and on. But we know that they're putting so much time and effort
and investment here to help our industry, help move it forward. Bring me back to 13 years ago.
What were you doing? Did you have a pen and paper or you weren't podcasting? No, no, I've
been podcasting for maybe 67 years. Um But definitely not then, yeah, back then. I mean,
yes, I was walking around with a notepad and taking notes and I might have had an old school
recorder, you know, not my phone that I was, I now take notes on, right? Um And what's
incredible is that like a setup like this with cameras and microphones, of course, we have our
own right here too. And, you know, we've been doing that for the last three years and it's an
incredible opportunity to tell story in the way people are wanting to be, you know, receive
stories. I mean, you know, this better than anybody storytelling today. I mean, I think
it's something like 60% of gen Z learns through video. And, and so we received that
information and said, OK, if we don't adapt to that, then today's Gen Z is, tomorrow's CEO
ceo is our core reader. And if we're not adapting to their, you know, what their wants
and needs are, we're gonna be irrelevant 5, 1020 years from now. Um And so that's why we
bring cameras here now, that's why like you're doing, you know, we wanna record video
interviews, we wanna get this really dynamic content for the podcast for videos because the
access to people here is incredible. So, yeah, I mean, to your point, like when I was at my
first show here, it was very old school. Yeah, I think, I think there was a Twitter wall. That
was the fancy thing that you remember those like everybody's tweeting and whatever and it
comes down here and we, yeah, it's, it's amazing how far we've come because like now
like that's not gonna do it, you know, it's, it's today it is with what we have in our
pockets, our cell phones, like we're consuming all of our content that way. And if you're not
crafting the, the story according to what's going via the phone, you're losing them. Right?
Again, we just don't want to be irrelevant. So , so that's the huge difference in just those 13
years. Can you tell us a little bit about what's your personal approach to social content?
My personal approach is interesting because it's like I my personal Instagram, for example,
I actually have locked, I post pictures of my kids. And so, you know, if anyone wants, if
anybody wants to follow me, you can I accept everybody but it's like, you know, and, and I,
I have a tiktok that I just pretty much creep on people. I just follow um A a and so for me
linkedin is really is where I find most of my traction, which is I'm posting daily on
linkedin because what kind of content on linkedin increasingly, I'm trying to do more
video, right? Because we've all seen that linkedin video is, is the biggest, I think it's
the fastest growing um you know, multimedia out there right now, linkedin has said that's
what people want more of. So I'm trying to figure out what that looks like for me and what
kind of video, what value I provide in video on linkedin. You know, of course, I'm linked to
stories, I have sort of a personal mission that every day I wanna share a story for my
team. Um You know, II I don't write as much anymore. Now I'm more in management. I like
writing. I'm a really slow writer and so I don't miss deadline for that reason. I have an
amazing team. They're all better than me. So I just let them do it. I'm, I'm happy to do all
the other things that I do. Um But, you know, and, and I wanna share my team stuff, right?
Because it's important for me to, to highlight them. But, but increasingly as, you know,
linkedin isn't just like, here's my content that actually isn't what people want they want.
Here's my perspective, right? And so that's what I'm trying to do more of on linkedin. Um
Now I, I need to get more into Instagram and tiktok on a professional level because again,
that's where the future restaurant leaders of America are glued right now to tiktok and
Instagram. And so, yeah, and youtube. And so if I'm not there, then they're not gonna get to
know me as a brand and it feels a little dirty to say that. But as you know, like, again, like
this is what the future of media is all about. Can you talk about the relationship with
National Restaurant Association? Yeah, sure. So National Restaurant Association, um you know,
of course, this used to be their show, they owned it and they're still obviously heavily
involved Um but, you know, Informa owns the National Restaurant Show now and, and the
National Restaurant Association again, is kind of everywhere as part of that. Um But, you know,
the association is a, is a great organization for us to tap into, for, you know, of course,
their thought leadership, their advocacy. Um So whenever we can, we try to collaborate with
them. But I mean, just right before we hit record Michelle Cosmo, the CEO of the National
Restaurant Association was here um chatting with Jonathan Mays, my colleague. So, you know,
uh keeping those lines of communication open with them is, is important because they are, I
mean, the largest, you know, advocacy group for this industry, give us some insight. We're
here 2024 National Restaurant Association show . What are the coolest things that you have seen?
We're recording this on day two. So what, what are the coolest things that you've seen? What
are you hoping to see? What is your takeaway so far? Midway point? Well, I did get to carry
an Olympic torch. So, I mean, I think that was pretty cool, right? Where was that at? At the
Coca Cola? The Coca Cola is there, do we have video? Is that gonna be out there is video? So
if you want to splice it in right now running with the Olympic Torch video, I got to meet
Laurie Hernandez, the gymnast was over there. So that's why I did that. Um I haven't actually
gotten a much of a chance to walk around. I'm hearing Boba is everywhere. Apparently, Boba.
Um Everybody's talking about labor and food costs. Of course, I feel like at nauseam, I
mean, last year we were all talking about these things. Everybody's talking about just
the sense of like, wow. Q one was brutal. We saw that Q one was brutal, but I see a lot of
optimism here. I mean, this show is packed busier than I've ever seen, which tells me
people if people are here, they're optimistic, they're looking to invest. So, um, so that's my
general sense of things, but I need to get out . I want to see some of the tech, especially
because obviously A I is everywhere right now. Let's talk about A I, because it's obviously a
hot button topic. You read right about it. You see it as opposed to a talking point. Is there
anything sticky that you've seen? Sticky for A I, um, I don't, well, I think a, I, I
don't, you know, you know, how trends happen? Yeah, we were talking about what are the things
that actually like? So here's what is not here as much this year is robots. And I know it's a
little different but just to make sure there were a lot of robots here, there were a lot of,
and so, and, and to illustrate my point is that, you know, last year, I think the robots
the consumer facing robots. The flashy look, here's a robot. I think everybody realized
that's not where this, exactly. I think everybody realizes consumer facing robots are a
novelty. So, automation to me seems to be going more back a house. It's in some, you know,
it's, it's, it's like invisible tech. Right? And so I think a lot of what you're going to
see here is a, I, you know, running the driver . I mean, and that's consumer facing because you
can have a I as a drive through order taker. Um but you know, automating, you know, your,
your um purchasing, you know, like that's something that you're going to see A I doing.
So it's not as sexy as robots, but automation is everywhere. Now in the back office back of
house really helping to make operations more efficient, which is great because you need
efficiency. Now more than ever as food costs, labor costs and everything occupancy costs are
up. So I want to go back to social because some things that never change our
things like this big sign, the National Restaurant Association, sign a selfie sign
wall, something that is big and bold. Every single person that walks past it, including us.
We do our digital hospitality community. We've been doing meet ups there every single day, but
it's, it's human behavior to want to like give something and every single person that comes,
they're posting that online. And I think there's an energy about this event. There's
more businesses and vendors and partners that are understanding, maybe I should talk
about like I, we talk to restaurant owners all the time and they never post content about the
business of their restaurant. It's always B to C content. And what we teach is that the B to B
you improving your business is not a bad thing . Actually, your, your restaurant community, the
people that come to visit your restaurant will appreciate the fact that you're investing in
technology and you're investing in education, that you're bringing your teams to things like
this. Can you share a little bit about that? It's a great point. And um yes, because I
actually, I had this conversation recently with my friend Kate Finley who's runs a
marketing agency. We were talking about influencers and, you know, she made this great
point that, you know, yes, when we think about influencers, we think about influencers sitting
in their car eating your product and giving a review, right? Which of course, there's a lot
of that, but she made this point that influencers can also share the values of your
organization. And that's the same as the the leader of the organization, right? Like social
media content is what people want on social media today, tiktok and Instagram is
authenticity. They want realness, they want you. What are you thinking about? You know, and
it doesn't have to be, here's this flashy studio design food plate that I'm gonna show
right? It can be here. I am at the restaurant show to your point investing in my business.
And so I appreciated that point because, you know, maybe you get on your, you know, your,
your brand's Instagram and you say, hey, look, here's what we're struggling with right now or
you know, here's, here's what our commitment is to our team or talk about your values, open
the doors a little bit and show because I think people do really root for you at a human
level. And social media is remarkably powerful in giving us the ability to see at that
human level because it's all of us just raw, you know what I mean? So, so I think that's a
really great point because you're right. It just doesn't all have to be B to C contents on
social media. It really can be a peek under the hood. This is how this restaurant operates
because I think people appreciate that, that realness. So I would love, this is one of the,
we, we believe in smartphone storytelling. We believe that every single person, every
business owner can have their own media. We don't need to go and create youtube or tiktok
or Instagram. Those tools are free. We also believe that everyone has a personal tech stack
that no one talks about. So I'm gonna ask you about your personal tech stack. So are you an
iphone or Android user iphone? Which version Oh, I think I'm on, I think I have an iphone 12,
iphone 12, but I'm due. So I, I told my wife, honey, get ready for it. We're getting new
phones soon once I find some time in my life. Ok. Uh, which, how many emails do you get a day?
Man. It's ramped up so much lately. Um, uh, if I leave for a week on vacation, I will come
back to probably 700 emails. 700 emails. How many of how many emails do you enjoy reading
every day? Enjoy. Enjoy. I look for the Sean Walsh, you know, by
that one. Yeah. You know. Yeah, that's the great thing about, you know, not great thing,
but it's like dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, stop if I recognize the name, if I know
the person, you know, that's when I enjoy reading it. If I'm getting, if I'm hearing from
people, friends of the industry, um you, of course, I'll stop on all my colleagues emails.
Uh but actually enjoy maybe one or two a day. Makes me very happy. Describe your notification
management, everything off, everything off on my phone off because it might be ad d I don't
know what it is but notifications. I, I can be easily distracted if I, where are you? I do,
no, I do get text notifications because I can't miss that stuff and I get calls but no
all apps otherwise, all notifications are different on my computer. Certainly on my
computer. I have teams and email notifications on because it's just, you know, orchestrating
everything going on on the computer. Do you prefer photos or videos? Photos? How many
photos are on your phone? If I looked at my phone right now, I would guess. 25,000, 25. How
many videos? I would guess 1000. Are you taking more videos? I'm taking more videos
because I have Children. I have a two month old now. So thank you. There's lots
more of the Yeah. Yeah, I've got three but he's the little one in the house one. which,
which map app do you use? Google Maps, Google Maps, which review site do you
use? Uh None, none. You don't, you don't read reviews for any purchases. No,
no. Uh Amazon, I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon and I look at reviews on Amazon. Um I don't, I
don't go to Yelp. Uh don't trust it. Sorry if Yelps watching. Um uh you know, if I
go something and it pops up the Google rating, maybe I'd take that into account but I know how
that stuff works, you know, and has any of your music on any platform, any of my music? Uh
OK. There we go. Not my OK. So it's just so funny. This always comes up. This is my all
time icebreaker. Some of your followers might even know this because I talk about it a lot I
had a punk rock band in college that was banana themed, wore banana costumes and we sang
songs about bananas and it's called Banana. Banana Key. And if you go to youtube, can we
get Banana Key to play for the Savannah Bananas 100%? So, I was in college that
Anarchy is gonna play. We could do that. What do you mean if we can, we will do that, make
that, make that happen? This was 20 years ago and I was in this band and it was the best
thing I ever did. Uh, but the guys that I was in the band with, we've all been talking, we
want to reunite, we had a couple of practices a couple of months ago because we're convinced,
going back to our conversation, it was go viral. I'm convinced we were a band. What
better stadium than at the banana? Savannah Bananas. Totally. I'm with Anarchy. I'm with
you. We're going to make it happen. You're watching this Banana. There's a music video on
youtube with the Savannah Bananas. There's a music video on youtube. You go watch it. Ok. Uh
Do you listen to Spotify or music? Fair enough . Um Slack. Are you guys on Slack
on Slack. Yeah, you're on teams and teams. So, Slack is for my team. Teams is for corporate
stuff. And how many apps do you have on your phone? Probably about 100. How many do you use
on a daily basis five which are those five email gmail outlook
ESPN uh Instagram. Um What else do I go to? And
the athletic uh linkedin? Yeah, fair enough. So sports news, emails and Instagram and what
are the shows, podcasts that you produce or host? So I have my own podcast take away with
Sam Os. Um So that's where I interview restaurant um decision makers and that's
everybody from an independent up to a big chain executive that's weekly comes out on
Thursdays. Take away with Sam Os. You can find that everywhere. Um We also Nation's Restaurant
News has a podcast called Extra Serving. And that's more me and my team talking about the
industry that comes out every Friday. Um But then we also, now that we're part of with our
six publications under the in form of food service vertical. Um You hear it here first, uh
We're, we're about to roll out a joint podcast network with all of our shared podcast, which
is about 10 of them. Um And so a deeper dive with Jonathan Mays will be under there. Um RB
Daily from our friends at restaurant business. We're gonna um reroll that out as restaurant
daily, a joint effort between restaurant business and NRN. Um So those are some of the
talk you can go check out. Now, I'm really excited about that. So, is there gonna be a
podcast row like Super Bowl like new media row ? That's where our heads are I think you guys
are, you see where we're filming? This is gonna be just like you see in the Super Bowl,
new media Row podcasts from all over the world , new media influencers B to B content creators
from all over the world. You, that's why we do the show and you were gonna look back and be
like we were sitting there once upon a time just now. Look at it. Uh What's the best place
for people to connect with you linkedin? Uh Find me on linkedin. Happy to always love
following new folks on linkedin. You can follow me on Instagram and I will accept you,
but you just got to look at pictures of my kids. So that's pretty much it. Yeah. And if
you guys want to connect with me, it's at Sean P, Wal Chef Shawnpwalchef. Once again,
thank you to toast. Please check out family style. We're filming season two currently here
in Chicago. So we've got an incredible season two that's on Toast's youtube page. Uh Thank
you so much Sam for the hospitality. Thank you for allowing us to do all this content all over
the place. I'm gonna go try to get on the roof . So I don't know if they're gonna let me on the
roof. If it doesn't happen this year, it will happen next year. I promise you, we're gonna go
do roof content. Um We absolutely appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for listening to
restaurant influencers. If you want to get in touch with me, I am weirdly available at Sean P.
Walch of Shawnpwalchef, Cali Barbecue Media has
other shows. You can check out digital hospitality. We've been doing that show since
2017. We also just launched a show, season two family style on youtube with toast.
And if you are a restaurant brand or a hospital brand and you're looking to launch
your own show, Cali Barbecue Media can help you. Recently. We just launched Room for
Seconds with Greg Majewski. It is an incredible insight into leadership into
hospitality, into enterprise, restaurants and franchise, franchisee relationships. Take a
look at room for seconds and if you're ready to start a show, reach out to us be the show
dot media, we can't wait to work with you.