The Bar Business Podcast: Smart Hospitality & Marketing Secrets For Bar & Pub Owners
Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, where we help bar owners increase profits, attract loyal guests, and simplify operations without burnout so you can finally enjoy life outside the bar. Our host, Chris Schneider, draws on his over twenty years of experience in the industry to bring you valuable insights and practical advice every week. From creating a winning menu and designing a stylish bar, to effective marketing strategies and HR best practices, we've got you covered. Join us on the journey to bar business success and take the first step towards a brighter future for your establishment.
The Bar Business Podcast: Smart Hospitality & Marketing Secrets For Bar & Pub Owners
The Digital Playground: Shawn Walchef on Modern Bar Marketing
Shawn Walchef from Cali BBQ Media shares his journey with us, from taking over a humble breakfast concept in 2008 and turning it into a family-friendly bar to becoming a digital marketing thought leader in the hospitality industry. Shawn unveils the secrets to overcoming public speaking fears and effectively utilizing free digital platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to tell compelling stories that resonate with customers. His insights into the importance of continuous improvement in digital marketing and the power of storytelling will leave you inspired and ready to take your bar business to the next level.
Shawn delves into the concept of digital playgrounds, likening social media platforms to playground equipment and addressing the initial awkwardness that many face when creating content. With personal anecdotes of building a media company from scratch, Shawn demonstrates how dedication and persistence can lead to successful outcomes, even with limited resources. You'll discover why consistent content creation is crucial and how quality content can emerge from a blend of quantity, speed, and consistency. This episode is a masterclass in leveraging digital communication for business success while maintaining authenticity and a strong hospitality mindset.
Shawn discusses the human element of online communication and the integration of technology into bar operations. Learn about tools like Marqii and Ovation for managing reviews and feedback, and the benefits of adopting advanced systems like Toast. By sharing personal stories and the evolution of his business, Shawn emphasizes the significance of authenticity in storytelling. Whether you're a bar owner, consultant, or industry supporter, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you thrive in the digital age.
Contact Shawn:
Cali BBQ Media Instagram
Shawn's LinkedIn
Cali BBQ Media Website
Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, where we help bar owners increase profits, attract loyal guests, and simplify operations without burnout so you can finally enjoy life outside the bar. Our podcast is packed with valuable insights, expert advice, and inspiring stories from successful bar owners and industry professionals.
Thank you to our show sponsor, SpotOn. SpotOn's modern, cloud-based POS system allows bars to increase team productivity and provides the reporting you need to make smart financial decisions.
**We are a SpotOn affiliate and earn commissions from the link above.
Thank you to our benchmarking data partner Starfish. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software using AI to help you make data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.
Learn More:
The Bar Business Podcast Website
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Chris' Book 'How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business'
Bar Business Nation Facebook Group
You're listening to the Bar Business Podcast where every week, your host, chris Schneider, brings you information, strategies and news on the bar industry, giving you the competitive edge you need to start working on your bar rather than in your bar.
Chris Schneider:Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the Bar Business Podcast, your ultimate resource for bar owners. I'm your host, chris Schneider, and joining me today is Sean Walsh of Kelly Barbecue Media. So if you're in the business and you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to assume you listen to other podcasts and go on the Internet, so you're probably familiar with Sean. He is kind of a pervasive face that we see online everywhere and a voice in our industry and specifically on the digital marketing, internet communications and the tech stack side of things. He has been producing and hosting multiple podcasts. I think you're up to what like three that you host.
Shawn Walchef:You do four or five that you produce, yeah, four internal shows a week and then we have client shows, so we're up to six weekly shows that we do.
Chris Schneider:That is an amazing amount of work.
Shawn Walchef:Yes, just in and of itself.
Chris Schneider:For those of you that have never done a podcast, this is not the easiest thing in the world to do, so he does that. He also helps brands tell stories, whether that's small brands or some of the largest tech companies in the restaurant and bar space. And so, sean, first of all, thank you so much for being here. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
Shawn Walchef:Well, I'm grateful to be here and anybody that's listening or watching. I hope that you get some value. I've learned a lot about the bar business. We've failed miserably restaurant owners, bar owners but the perseverance. I think it takes a special type of crazy to get into this hospitality business. But if you have hospitality in your DNA and you're running a bar, you're running a restaurant, then hopefully you can get some value out of the stories that we share today.
Chris Schneider:Well, I'm sure they will. And just to start, I want to go all the way back to In your Roots, because I think a lot of folks have seen you in the last three, four years, as you've been online more and been producing more content and making these podcasts, but at the end of the day, you started essentially as a bar owner correct with kelly barbecue yeah, so way back in the day, um, we took over in 2008 a breakfast concept With Kelly Barbecue liquor license, beer, wine, hard spirits, cocktails, added a family environment and built a sports bar family-friendly sports bar and added a dinner service.
Shawn Walchef:that we would have a great business. 2008, terrible time to open up any business. We picked a very difficult location and we picked a very hard business, so kind of all the odds were stacked against us, but we were betting on the fact that people wanted to go out and enjoy drinks. People wanted to go out and enjoy great food. People wanted to be in a neighborhood environment and watch the greatest sports on earth. And here we are, 16 years later, getting ready to open up our third location. Um, here we are, 16 years later, getting ready to open up our third location.
Shawn Walchef:We spend um a lot of time focused on how do we take care of the guests that come into our restaurant, but a lot of our our focus has also shifted. You know we do media. We have a media business. We built a media business on top of a bar business and I'll be the first one to tell anybody that's listening to the show that you can do it too. Um, we have all the tools. We have everything that we need. We don't need to go and create youtube, we don't need to create spotify, we don't need to make instagram tiktok. All of these things are all free to you as a business owner and bar owner, and if you start learning how to tell yours, do you know what? The number one fear? Human fear?
Chris Schneider:isn't it public speaking?
Shawn Walchef:It is yes, so people would rather be in a coffin than give a eulogy at a funeral. And what people don't talk about and what I'm starting to talk a lot more about, is the reason, because I'm fortunate to go speak at different trade shows National Restaurant Association show. I've been to Toronto, california restaurant show and they asked me to speak and I talked to restaurant owners, bar owners all the time single units, multi-unit, big, huge companies, big brands. And we talk about storytelling and we get down to why isn't the founder telling more stories? Why isn't the person that you, the person that's listening, the person that's driving, why aren't you telling stories? And there's every excuse in the book. I don't have the time, I don't understand YouTube. I don't understand TikTok, I don't understand Instagram reels. I don't have time to do it, it's not my thing.
Shawn Walchef:It all comes down to fear, and I had that same fear. So if you're listening to this, it's easy to go and look at my Instagram page and go, sean, you have 5,000 pieces of content just on your Instagram alone. Forget about Cali Barbecue Media and Cali Barbecue and your family account, your Walt Shuff Wolf account. I'm running all of these accounts. I have all these shows, but I too was scared, I was terrified. I was terrified to go on the local news, but I also wanted to go on the local news because I knew it would help my business news. But I also wanted to go on the local news because I knew it would help my business. So, getting on the local news, the only way that that happened was because I started learning that I have to get over my fear of public speaking, my fear of how do I sound, my fear of how do I look on camera, how do I look on video. Getting over that fear, doing it, starting and getting a little bit better every single day. The internet's not going anywhere. It's not, it's not.
Chris Schneider:It's here to stay. Let me ask you this, because I think it is easy to look at people that produce content all the time and go. Okay, these folks have no fear. Yes, but I know at least personally, I still am terrified every time I hit post. Yes, Like I'm not even going to lie and it's. I think people get bogged down in the fear and then they don't realize that you just have to do it and it's always scary.
Shawn Walchef:Every single thing that we do that's worthwhile is going to be scary in the beginning. It's going to be uncomfortable. Are you willing to be uncomfortable? Are you willing to do the work that the other bar owner is unwilling to do? Because wherever you are, there's another bar owner. In town, there's multiple bars. You might even be friends with most of the bar owners in your city, in your village, in your neighborhood, wherever they are.
Shawn Walchef:But the question is, we all don't understand. Even the best people on earth, the Gary Vaynerchuks of the world, still are learning, still are testing, still are trying new things, because the internet is moving at such great speed. That's why everything that we do, we break it down to just storytelling. It's what do you do in real life? How do you do that with the tools that we have right now? Right now, what do you have in your hands? How are you listening to this content? You have a smartphone. You have everything you need. There's no excuse except getting over your fear. So, getting over your fear and going.
Shawn Walchef:Okay, sean, I'm going to post one video today to talk about why I opened up this bar. Why did you open up the bar? What compelled you to get a liquor license? What compelled you to pick the name of the bar? What compelled you to pick the town? Why did you pick that location? Tell me about the first customers that came in.
Shawn Walchef:Do you have a food that you serve? Why do you pick that food? Do you have special cocktails? Do you have certain beers that you pour? Why did you pick those breweries to pour that beer? Do you have wines that you pick? Like all of these things, we make all of these decisions, micro decisions as entrepreneurs and business owners. Micro decisions, hundreds, if not thousands, every single day, every single week, every single year, but we don't explain the why to anybody. And that's all social media is. Social media is explaining the why. Why did I pick it? Why is why do I have this wine list? Why do I have these 24 beers on tap? Why are these tvs laid out the way that they are? People are like, well, no one cares. Actually, that's what people care about. That's exactly what they.
Chris Schneider:When looking at it from that perspective, it's so simple, right? Because you've taken what is essentially, in a few sentences, this giant monster of producing content online and just been like no, just tell people why you do what you do. That is such a simplistic answer compared to most people's views that are just all over the map and just crazy and so. But I fear I feel like fear comes back in right Fear is the reason why most people can't see it that simply.
Chris Schneider:So when you're approaching content, is there a way that you get your mind in that space to focus on the simple why and the simple telling the story and to get rid of all that background noise that prevents people from doing yeah?
Shawn Walchef:I mean it's funny. I created a villain for me. It makes it a much easier. And my villain's Kevin Costner. And the reason Kevin Costner is my villain is because anyone that's listening to this or watching this most likely you know the movie field of dreams and field of dreams. Unfortunately, the main quote from that movie has made its way into business and entrepreneurship folklore If you build it, they will come.
Shawn Walchef:You know Kevin Costner's voice. If you build it, they will come. Like, you can pick a shitty location, sean, you can pick a shitty time to open up a bar and a restaurant, but if you build it and it's great, people will come. I'm here to tell you no one is coming. No one's coming Anytime. You have an idea of, wow, look at my top bartender making that cocktail. They do such a phenomenal job.
Shawn Walchef:I knew nothing, pick. You know, I knew nothing about the bar business until I hired my business partner and general manager, eric Eric Olson. I hired him in the parking lot. I'm like you're going to build a bar program. He's like okay, you're going to give me the keys. I'm going to. I'm going to be able to build it out how I want. I'm going to put the wells where I want to build what build them. I'm going to put the wells where I want to build them, build the menu the way that I want. I'm like absolutely. I want you to take ownership in this. I want you to figure out how to run this bar.
Shawn Walchef:One of the first things he taught me was we have to have great ice. We're talking about liquor, don't you mean? What spirits do we need to have? How many taps do we need to have? No, we need to have great ice. What are you talking about? He's like a great ice makes a great cocktail. That's the story that needs to be told. I'm saying it to myself right now on this video that I need to go talk to Eric about ice.
Shawn Walchef:I'm trying to get an ice company to work, to do content, because ice is so important to the bar business. Nobody talks about ice. No one's telling stories about ice. Do you know how much amazing ice companies there are Hoshizakis that are out there one's telling stories about us. Do you know how much amazing ice companies there are Hoshizakis that are out there that are like, well, why aren't they making content about ice? And I'm sure there's people that are listening to this going like, well, I love my ice machine, or I hate it, or I wish I could get better ice, and it's as niche as that. It's as niche as like no one's coming to talk about the ice.
Shawn Walchef:But you also don't need permission. You know the idea of being your own media company, being your own storyteller. You don't need to go and ask your local news station or a producer hey, what do you think about us making a video about ice? You just make the video about ice. Maybe nobody sees it, maybe one person sees it, maybe 100 people, maybe 1,000. Who cares? Next time, make a better video about ice them. Who cares? Next time, make a better video about ice. I guarantee you, if I make an ice video, I guarantee you somebody will comment on it. I'm going to make a post about ice just because of this recording, because it's inspiring me to think about ice.
Chris Schneider:We will look for that post about ice and along with that, because we're talking about these small things that you can use to make stories. One of the things that is interesting to me in your viewpoint of social media is a lot of people get stuck in the the kind of just what social media is and aren't looking at it from a more global perspective. Right, they're saying, oh it's, it's a post on Facebook, it's a real on Instagram, it's these little pieces, and not looking at it as communication. Yes, and I know that is one of the things that you are very passionate on is that it's not facebook, it is communication yeah, I mean.
Shawn Walchef:The problem that I see with social media quote unquote media is that we're humans and we have subjective feelings about things. That's just data. It literally is what it is. And the problem, when I say a logo, when I say Facebook, when I say meta, when I say X or Twitter or TikTok or YouTube or social media or YouTube or social media, you think and whoever's listening to this thinks I like Facebook, I hate Facebook. My uncle's on Facebook, my wife loves Facebook. I hate Instagram. My kids are on Instagram.
Shawn Walchef:There's so many stories that we tell ourselves about why these digital playgrounds matter or don't matter. I say remove the logo and just focus on the story. It's audio, it's video, it's words and images. That's how you matter. I say remove the logo and just focus on the story. It's audio, it's video, it's words and images. That's how you communicate modern communication audio, video, words and images across the internet. Everything else is a stage. We're lucky to have a digital playground where I can connect with you. I've never met you in real life. Chris is the first like we. Thanks to LinkedIn, you and I are now on a show. I'm on your show. We've become friends, Like if I'm ever in the city that you're in. If you're ever in San Diego, I hope that you come see me. How did that happen? We didn't make LinkedIn. We were just willing to both be on the same playground and not only be on the playground, because it's one thing to go to the playground, but it's another thing to use the equipment, you know, Because it's one thing to go to the playground but it's another thing to use the equipment.
Shawn Walchef:Anyone that has little kids when I brought my little boy to the playground, my little girl to the playground, they were just learning how to walk. They didn't know how to do anything. They would just try to climb the ladder, to go down the slide, Terrified, Scared. That's how all of us as humans and adults are with these platforms Terrified and scared To hit, publish on YouTube, to publish a podcast, to publish a blog, to write something on LinkedIn, to share something personal on Facebook. But then you go and you do it and you're like, oh, I went down the slide. And then what does the kid do? Again, they get back up and then they go down the slide again and then you go to the other piece of equipment, the merry-go-round, and then you go to the monkey bars, all of these things. It's just digital playgrounds.
Shawn Walchef:If you learn how to communicate, if you try it out, if you're willing to look stupid and sound stupid every day, you get a little bit better and you sound less stupid. And then not only that, but I will guarantee you, the fear that comes is because someone's going to make fun of you when you make your first post. Somebody is going to make fun of you because of their own insecurities. Who do you think you are? You think you're some influencer, now that you have a podcast? Now you're posting on LinkedIn or you're posting on Facebook, your business podcast? Yeah, I am. Why? Because there's other people on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, that own bars that are looking to make their bar better. That's why I'm doing the work today. It's that simple.
Chris Schneider:What I think, too, that sometimes it takes a while of making content to come to this realization, but sometimes people saying bad things about you is actually good for you. It's great. Controversy definitely adds to views, for sure. Now, going back to something one other fear that just popped in my head because you brought this up earlier, when you're talking about a phone, you can record everything from a phone.
Shawn Walchef:Yeah.
Chris Schneider:And I think a lot of people listening to this they look at, say what you do and it's pretty clear from some of the content you're putting out there. You're using production teams, You're doing detailed editing, you have a lot going on. That is, for most independent bars, let's be honest a little bit beyond their resources and then they get scared. They go oh my God, Sean made this great video. I can't make anything like that, but how much does the quality matter as opposed to actually just getting your message out?
Shawn Walchef:I will give your audience anybody that's listening the secret to the test. This is the secret to content creation. This is a formula that we've learned, that we teach, and the answer is quantity plus speed, plus consistency equals quality, and the problem is that we all want quality first and quality never comes first. You've got to put up a quantity of reps. You've got to do a thousand videos, not one video. We want one video. We see something we like and we want that for our business and we think that will change everything. That will change nothing. Your commitment to making a thousand videos and 10,000 videos. That's the only thing that's going to move the needle. Not only move the needle, but maybe change the trajectory of your entire business.
Shawn Walchef:We've literally built a media company on top of our restaurant and bar business Only because I was willing to look stupid and sound stupid I mean I've started telling the story more but our Cali Barbecue Media. It started when we launched our first show Behind the Smoke in 2017. 2017, I allocated resources from the restaurant to hire a producer to figure out mics, to figure out. We didn't even do cameras for the first 50 episodes. It was audio only until episode 50, then we added cameras.
Shawn Walchef:But for five years I was investing my money, my time, my effort, restaurant money to build out this media company, because I knew that other people on earth were like me and that were looking for great conversations with people that they didn't have access to, that they wanted to learn from, that they could be driving in their car, listening on headphones, walking, doing work, doing inventory, and that they could learn and get better from Five years. If I was in a corporation and it was my job as a chief marketing officer or head of digital, I would have to go and present my budget and be like hey, sean, where's the ROI of this crazy podcast idea? I would have gotten laughed out of the room after year one, year two, oh for sure. Year three Are you kidding me? You're still doing that podcast, sean, are you nuts? It took me to year five till we launched our second show restaurant influencers that I got a brand toast to believe in us. They had seen the body of work. Quantity, speed, consistency equals quality so the first part.
Chris Schneider:there is quantity, and I think a lot of folks get worried, probably probably unnecessarily and I do this as well about saying, okay, should I post five times a day, can I? Can I do that and not annoy people?
Shawn Walchef:Yes, and number one, you're not that important? Nobody's that important Gary V post 30 times a day and I see one of them. I follow all of his accounts. I see maybe one of them and maybe I'll go days without seeing it.
Chris Schneider:Well, and that's something and tell me if I'm wrong here, because you know this better than I do, but that's something that has changed over time as these algorithms have changed. Where, a decade ago, if you followed somebody, you would see most of their posts, yep, now it's what?
Shawn Walchef:10% or something like that of the people that follow. You might see some 5% maybe.
Chris Schneider:Yeah, yeah. So quantity is not a concern at all.
Shawn Walchef:No, put out as much as you want, anywhere you want, absolutely. I mean, that is the answer. That's the only way you learn about what's good and what's not good and the reason why you know. Back to. You said that I have a lot of videos. I have a video team that travels with me. National Restaurant Association show. At a team of six, we were all out there filming content for 14 different brands. I mean we had a full production team, but I also did my own media and that's what we teach. We teach smartphone storytelling, because there's no excuse. Everything that you need is right here. When I went to.
Shawn Walchef:Every summer I go to Bulgaria, my wife is from Bulgaria, we go and visit her family, we go to the village, and about three years ago we went to Bulgaria and I had an opportunity to interview one of the mayors of a major city in Bulgaria. I didn't have my podcast team with me. You know how I recorded that interview. So who? With my iPhone on a coffee table. I took my iPhone, I put it on a coffee table and I interviewed the mayor of a major city in Bulgaria and now it's a pillar piece of content that he's used in his campaigns for reelection. We have everything we need.
Chris Schneider:What this all comes down to, then, is that what prevents most bars from having crazy amounts of content and having more success online and communicating better with their customers online is they're just blocking themselves from doing it.
Shawn Walchef:It's it, I it, it's it. I mean, that's that's it. You that are, you that are listening. There will be 90% of you that will agree with what we're talking about, but only 5% of that 90% will actually do something about it. And when you do something about it, you post one video today. The chances that you post the next day are much less, and the day after that even less.
Chris Schneider:For sure. And the other thing too is and you alluded to this where you had a show for five years and then you got a second show and things started to take off. The content game, at least in my experience, is not a short game, it is a long game and everyone looks at people and they go oh my God, this guy's an internet success. Overnight internet success.
Shawn Walchef:Nobody does.
Chris Schneider:No, there was five years of work before they became an overnight success, correct, and so putting in that time is just important and people need to do it. Now I want to pivot to other internet communications really quickly. Sure, because I know you have some opinions when it comes to review sites and a lot of people in this industry hate them I think unnecessarily, because you kind of have to love them in some regards. But one of the things that I thought was striking, as I was looking at your background and listening to some interviews and stuff you have done preparing for the show, is that you said that when you first opened your bar for like the first I think it was 10 years you personally responded to like 1600 Yelp reviews all by yourself. So most people don't do that. Why did you take the time to respond to 1600 Yelp reviews?
Shawn Walchef:Digital hospitality is the name of our show. It is our thesis, it is the deep work that we do, and we believe that every business needs to be digital first, especially brick and mortar businesses. But we also believe that every business is in the hospitality business. So if you're a bar owner, you're in the hospitality business. Our job is to take care of people to help them at their greatest life triumphs, help them when they're at their lowest moments in life. Our job is to be therapists. Our job is to create a welcoming atmosphere so people feel comfortable to take them away from whatever problems they have.
Shawn Walchef:We are so good in real life at taking care of humans, but we are not good at taking care of people that are on the internet, that maybe don't have an avatar, that maybe don't have the right name. And once myself once I decided that, instead of having a subjective feeling about Yelp because Yelp was either great or it wasn't great Like we either get a five-star review or someone hated our restaurant it felt like someone kicked me in the nuts. It was like the worst experience ever. I was like I need to remove my subjective feeling and I just need to respond. I need to respond and talk to this person online.
Shawn Walchef:The same way, if someone asked to speak to a manager in my restaurant, I would go and speak to the table. The same way, when someone walks into the door, I would smile and greet them and welcome them. The same way I would say thank you when someone leaves. If I do that with speed, if I do that with consistency, if I do the quantity, if I do that over time, eventually people will know, whatever platform. If they're on Facebook, if they're on Google messaging us through Google, if they send us an email from our website, they're going to get an immediate response, like literally within two hours, because that's in my DNA and I've taught it to my team and because of that it sets us apart from everybody else, because it's like holy shit, like I can't believe you responded. Most people don't get a response.
Chris Schneider:Now, if you're responding to all these people within two hours, I'm sure when you were just running a bar, I'd say just running a bar a little bit tongue in cheek, because that in and of itself, with one restaurant right, is a huge amount of work.
Shawn Walchef:Sure.
Chris Schneider:Now you have way more stuff going on and I imagine a lot of folks that work for you are in multiple places at the same time. How do you have the time to respond to everything online?
Shawn Walchef:Well, now we use more tools, so we've built out our digital hospitality tech stack to help us with best in class products. One of the tools we use is Marquee M-A-R-Q-I-I, and that is an aggregator platform that allows us to respond, have one dashboard, so from one dashboard we can respond to Facebook, we can respond to Yelp, we can respond to Google. That also allows us to update menus, hours of operation, anything pertinent to the business, for across 80 different platforms. So, whether it's Apple Maps, google Maps, waze I mean there's so many different places that people can find your business that if the information's inaccurate like the bar is open or the bar is closed, like we need that to get pushed out to all of those different platforms. Marquee helps us do that.
Shawn Walchef:And the other tool that we use is Ovation. Ovation is a two-response guest feedback loop that allows us to get more positive reviews, so we incentivize people to actually write a review. I mean, most of the time, people bar owners don't ask for someone to write a review. Ovation helps us do that, which the team at Ovation is probably one of our favorite digital hospitality tech tools, but that allows me which I don't do it anymore Steven Srdurski, my catering manager. He is now our digital hospitality specialist from a communication standpoint. But back to the overall narrative of this episode is that we're just talking about communication, audio, video, words and images, and those review sites are words, words, and how do you respond to those words? Matters if you respond publicly.
Chris Schneider:It matters because someone wants to see that an owner cares, and if an owner cares, um, you know, that's a good thing I think sometimes we to your earlier point get emotional about yelp, right, because a bad review does feel like getting kicked in the balls.
Chris Schneider:I've been there plenty of times before because those bad Yelp reviews just sting. But the thing that I see that separates your approach from other people is that you're not seeing it as some anonymous Right? It's not the internet attacking you. It's not some random person. It's a customer. It's a human. It's someone you actually care about. It's a human.
Shawn Walchef:Yeah, I think that's the big unlock is understanding that there's a human behind every keyboard and, like you, can take everything for a grain of salt. Obviously, you know the fake reviews when you see them, because they're describing things in your business or they came at a time of day, like all of those things. I understand that, but we still give them the benefit of the doubt publicly, in the public town square, because we want people to see that we care. We do care. We care about the crazy bar people, we care about the regular bar people, we care about our favorite bar people, but ultimately we care about anyone that walks in our doors or anyone that takes the time to engage us online.
Chris Schneider:And that's just really powerful. It's a powerful way to look at it that can really, I think, help people change their mindset a little bit on what they're doing and the actual impact of the internet and engaging in communication. Yeah, now we talked a little bit about marquee innovation. I want to turn back to tech stack a little bit, because I I think with the bar industry, it's a industry that, in a lot of ways, even with some of the younger people in the industry um, we're all kind of set in old ways, right, a lot of us came up where the I mean bars were the last part of hospitality to even accept PLS systems.
Shawn Walchef:Yeah.
Chris Schneider:You know, I mean, I bought a bar in 2011 that had bought a PLS system in 2010. And they did it just because they were going to sell it. Wow, they operated for years on just a cash register. Yep, and so we have this resistance to tech kind of built into the industry. But tech is where things are going. Tech is how you can get efficiencies and make your business better. So, with Marquis Ovation, what other tech should bar owners be looking at to work into their programs?
Shawn Walchef:I mean, the number one thing we always talk about is Toast. There is a reason why we are deeply embedded with Toast. They have 113,000 restaurant bars on their platform. They're adding more wherever you're listening. If you've ever thought about Toast, I'm happy to have a conversation personally about your bar and the benefits that Toast can have. But you got to have a primary technology partner and Toast is ours.
Shawn Walchef:We made a switch from Aloha. We were on a legacy point of sale system for 12 years before we switched over to toast and when we switched I told them you know, we're a media company and we're going to tell the story the good, the bad, the ugly about this onboarding process. We're going to unbox this equipment. We're going to show everybody what they get and how they get it and how we set it up and how easy it is or how difficult it is. We're going to go live on the platform. You know which is a big deal switching over to a point of sale system and we made videos about all of that and they responded like they responded. I am now on the customer advisory board at toast. I'm getting ready. At the end of July I'm going to be going out to Boston again. I've done videos. I have three shows that we do with Toast. It's just been an incredible partnership.
Shawn Walchef:And if you don't have somebody that's responsible for commerce of your bar, so we're obsessed with four Cs content, commerce, communication and community. Content, commerce, communication and community All of those four things is what it means to be in business in 2024 and beyond. All of those things. They all converge on this device. If you don't have a partner that can help you with all of those things, it's going to be really hard to do business. You got to make it as easy as possible for the consumer. Amazon has set the bar for everybody. I mean, there's probably an Amazon driver on my street now and there's probably one on yours. And whoever's listening to this show or watching, I guarantee you someone's dropping off a package right next door, if not at your house. And how did they do that? They did that because they were obsessed. They were obsessed with making it easy, oh for sure.
Shawn Walchef:And if we make it easy on our bar guests to come and frequent us and to get loyalty points and to get rewarded and to get updates about any events that you have going on community stuff, things that you're doing. You're going to grow your business. It's that simple.
Chris Schneider:One of the things that I see people sometimes get another fear that they have, or something that holds them up, is implementation. Yep, because you have a lot of again, you have a lot of folks in this industry that are not used to tech and are not necessarily the most tech savvy people in the world. Right? Let's be honest, computer programming and making a great cocktail do not necessarily go hand in hand, correct? So when you talk about implementing a big tech stack and building it around a POS system that's cloud-based, that you can integrate with, and all that for those folks that are scared or timid of tech, how can they be more comfortable with it?
Shawn Walchef:So the easiest way for me to explain my views on tech were back when we were running our restaurant and bar. We started showing fight night. So we would pay licensing fees for boxing fights and for UFC fights and I knew that we were one of the only five bars in all of San Diego County 3.3 million people in San Diego County that were willing to pay that. It was either five bars, maybe up to 15 bars. It started getting more and more popular. But I also knew that the internet was very powerful and if I didn't show up in the search results of where can I watch the UFC fight in San Diego, that investment that I made to pay for the licensing fee would be lost. So I needed to fix my website so that I could optimize where's the best place to watch fight night in San Diego. I had a third-party developer. That third-party developer took a week to make updates. When they made the updates, sometimes I wanted to make a change. It just didn't work. So I went to a good friend of mine that owns a company a major company in the hospitality hotel space for technology and I asked him. He was doing websites way before he built this company and he goes, sean, if tech isn't easy for a person with no tech background to use, it won't last. It's got to be intuitive. It has to be easy for the end user, otherwise it just won't last. I'm going to teach you WordPress. I'm going to teach you how to update your website. I'll host it for you, but I'm going to give you everything that you need, and that gift that he gave me allowed me to not have any fear when I go on TikTok for the first time, when I start posting on Instagram Reels for the first time, when I start going on updating my Google Maps or working with any of the companies that we work with. If the tech's not good and it's not easy for me to use with no tech background, it's just not going to last.
Shawn Walchef:And every single person has a smartphone that's listening to this. We are that fortunate to have a smartphone and to be connected to a global audience. When you first got your smartphone, you had no idea how to use it. How do you call people? How do you make a text message? How do you make it not ring? How do you integrate it with your watch? I still don't know how to use my phone. I don't even know what the number is. But for iPhone users, the percentage of things that they use on their iPhone that are available for them to use. I just started using Notes recently. There's a journal feature. There's so many things that you can do with an iPhone, but unless you're willing to learn, unless you're willing to get your hands dirty, you have no idea how powerful this thing is. That's in your pocket. It's the same thing with technology at your bar. It's the same thing with technology.
Shawn Walchef:But one of the biggest principles that I shared my grandfather taught me, which was stay curious, get involved, ask for help. Curious people will find this show. Curious people will find this content. Curious people will go to a trade show. Curious people will read a book. Curious people will try to level up.
Shawn Walchef:But you have to get involved. You actually have to do something with that curiosity. You can't just passively listen and go okay, sean, great, you built a media company, but I'm not going to do anything. No, be part of the 5% that actually make a video today about your bar and post it on whatever platform you're comfortable with. If you're comfortable with Facebook, post it there. If you're comfortable on Instagram, post it there. Learn how to make a reel, but finally ask for help.
Shawn Walchef:You have a son, you have a daughter, you have a niece, a nephew, a cousin, a wife, a coworker, a community member, somebody that's sitting at your bar right now that runs social for someone. Ask them for help. Say, hey, I want to be better at social media. Do you know anyone who can help me? It's the hardest thing to do is asking for help. It really is.
Shawn Walchef:You know how many people know how to do social media? A lot, a lot of people don't know. But in your community you have a bar. You have customers that love you. They want you to succeed because they love their favorite bar. Ask them, hey, do you know anyone that can help me? Oh, my niece just got back from school. She's studying digital marketing at University of North Carolina. Whatever the she's studying digital marketing at, you know, university of North Carolina, whatever the story is Okay, great. Well, does she have some free time to do a summer internship to help us set up Instagram and TikTok and teach us teach me and the team how to do videos? Sure, now she has work experience that she can go going on to her career. Like there's so many ways that we can do it, and the easiest way is to just say I don't know and I need help.
Chris Schneider:That's powerful and it's true. And I think part of what gets to restaurant owners, bar owners, people in hospitality, especially the independent. We're so used to having to be self-reliant, we're so used to doing it all ourselves that sometimes it's hard to step back and say you know what? I actually need some help here. It's part of almost the DNA that gets into you from working in this industry.
Shawn Walchef:It is and part of it, too, is we're always being sold to. We're always being sold to. There's always somebody sending us an email coming into our bar asking to talk to the owner. It's a fear that if we ask for help, all of a sudden we're going to have 20 people selling us. There are people that just want you to win, but they are not in your head. They have no idea what your problem is. If you verbalize what you're trying to accomplish, a rising tide lifts all ships. Talk to other business owners, talk to other bar owners. Talk to other people that you respect and admire in your community, that do a good job on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or whatever you want to do, whatever you admire and whatever you think you're comfortable with.
Shawn Walchef:Audio video, words, images. That's it. It's that easy. But it's just video. Video is what the internet wants, and video is available in 4K from your phone. It's crazy. Right now, anybody that's listening to this could literally go to their bar. They could take out TikTok film a 90-second video of a cocktail being made, and that could get millions of views, millions of views of awareness. Does that mean a million people are going to come to your bar? No, but if you do it again and you get another million views and then all of a sudden, now you get the local media, that goes what is this bar doing to get all these views on TikTok? Now people watch the local news. They're going to come to your bar Like there's so many ways to hack this thing. But there is no hack. It's actually doing the work.
Chris Schneider:There's no simple tricks here. There's nothing hidden. It's all there. It's all, especially the way you put it. It's all relatively obvious, but you have to do it With that, though. We are getting towards the end of our time, so let me ask you this question Is there anything that we have not touched on that you think is important for the listeners to know or be aware of?
Shawn Walchef:Sure Well, I will share my orange tree story. This is something that I've started to talk a lot more about when it comes to social media, and I believe that every business has an orange tree story, and an orange tree story is something that means so much to you the founder, you the owner, you the operator but you take it for granted and you don't think anyone else will care. And that orange tree story is something that you need to share, because if you don't share it, that's what people really want to hear. So our restaurant my grandfather from Bulgaria. He started our restaurant back when I was a boy, so I was actually. Here's a picture of me. Anybody that's watching on video. It's a picture of me washing dishes when I was 13 years old at this restaurant. And right around that same time, my grandfather. He loves fruit trees and he wanted to plant a fruit tree at our restaurant. So him and my uncle from Bulgaria, they decided to plant an orange tree. They planted an orange tree next to a water fountain that they built. They love water features, so they built a Bulgarian water fountain and that was in the back of the property.
Shawn Walchef:Fast forward to 2008, a couple of changes of ownership. We sold it as a family. I took back over that same restaurant in 2008 with one of my best friends, um. We added the bar, we added the liquor license and we had the orange tree at the front of the restaurant. So my grandfather he passed away the same year that we opened up our bar and we opened up our restaurant, but he got to see us taking it back Three years later on. On Monday Night Football we were hosting a Chargers versus Raiders watch party at our bar, packed 300 people, wall to wall standing room. Only Two idiots Charger fan, raider fan started getting into a fight, went from the bar to the dining room, to the front patio, to the back patio. They fought and they crashed my grandfather's fountain to a million pieces. I was devastated. My girlfriend at the time, who's also Bulgarian, said Sean, we need to rebuild the fountain next to the orange tree. So let's rebuild another fountain. We rebuilt the fountain.
Shawn Walchef:Fast forward to the pandemic, we made a big shift in how we were doing business and we decided we're going to build a master smokehouse. So we're going to take out the back patio, add some smokers. That way we can get more barbecue to the airport locations, which we were hoping up to open stadium locations. Now we're opening up on the Navy base, but we needed more smokers in the back. Well, we started meeting with Howard Solomon, gene Goykachea, stephen Swursky, keith Wadhams these are all people on my internal team.
Shawn Walchef:The problem that we had was if we put these smokers in where the catering truck is going to back in to pick up the food to bring to these locations on a daily basis. The problem is the orange tree's in the way. We have to remove the orange tree. We had multiple meetings. All the different designs, all the different architects. We got to remove the orange tree. So we had multiple meetings, all the different designs, all the different architects. We got to remove this orange tree. My wife she goes. You will not fucking remove that orange tree. Every single meeting, she goes. You will not remove that orange tree. And now, if you come to our restaurant, right in the front of the smokehouse is that orange tree Unassuming, no one would know about it.
Shawn Walchef:But those are the stories that we need to share on social media. Those are the stories that we need to make videos about. Why? Because that's a testament to my roots, that's a testament to bulgaria, that's a testament to perseverance, that's a testament to all of the things that we go through in life, all of this hard work that we do in this business. We all have an orange tree. It's's something like that, there's something in the name, there's something in the location, there's something in the furniture that you pick, the door that you have. There is something there that is deeper, that we take for granted, that we don't think we need to share. I argue that not only do we need to share, but we need to get better at sharing, and the more that we share it and the more that I tell the orange tree story, the more that I can hopefully inspire other bar owners, business owners, restaurant owners to share their orange trees.
Chris Schneider:That's a very powerful message right there, and I love how it's simplistically in an orange tree, but there's so many layers, and hopefully that does serve as an inspiration for people to tell similar stories and to show off more of who they are rather than just what they do. With that, though, because we do have to head out here in a second, what is the best way for folks to get in contact with you?
Shawn Walchef:Very easy. Instagram is probably the easiest place that I post the most. I post Instagram stories every day, but it's at Sean P Walchef, S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F. I'm also very active on LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, all the platforms. You can email me, Sean at CaliBBQmedia. That's our website, CaliBBQmedia, but we're always happy we also do a LinkedIn Live. So if you're a bar owner and you want to join our LinkedIn Live community every single Wednesday, every single Friday, on LinkedIn um, it's audio only, but it's 10 AM Pacific time, 1 PM Eastern time, 6 PM. If you're in London, um, anywhere you are in the globe, but come up on stage. You can meet our community. Um, we. It's essentially like being a part of a live podcast, so you can come up on stage. Chris, I'd love to have you join us sometime, tell your story. We've got a lot of podcasters in the audience, a lot of salespeople, marketing people, content creators, restaurant owners, bar owners, so we would love to have you and anybody that's listening to the show.
Chris Schneider:Awesome, I will definitely take you up on that at some point, and just so that everybody who's listening. Now, as always, we have all of Sean's contact in the show notes, so it's easy for you to refer there. Just scroll down.
Shawn Walchef:I am weirdly available. I'm weirdly available, so don't be afraid to get involved and ask for help.
Chris Schneider:Awesome. So, sean, I have to say thank you again for being here. This has been a fantastic conversation and I think that you've really helped reframe kind of social media and online communications in a way that I have not heard anyone reframe it that way before. That makes it into a much more positive message than the stressful thing that many of us look at it as.
Shawn Walchef:It's not stressful. Yeah, we remove the logo. It's all. People want to hear your truth. You wouldn't be in business if you aren't really good at what you do. And there's more people, there's bigger stages online that want to learn about who you are and what you do, and the only way to do that is to publish stories about cool and thank you again.
Chris Schneider:I just uh, I really appreciate your time and being here. So, with that, guys, that's going to wrap us up for today. If you enjoyed the show, make sure you like, subscribe, leave a review, as always. If you're not a member, join our Bar Business Nation Facebook group, where we're putting together a bunch of bar owners and some consultants and other people that support the industry to be able to have a community where bar owners can interact with each other and we can can ask questions of each other that maybe you don't have someone to ask because they don't have the right relevance. So make sure you're joining that group if you're not a member there. And with that everyone, I hope you have a great day and we will talk again later.
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