Vertical Kitchens, Digital Dining at ClusterTruck | Charles Wright, VP of Ops | 014

This episode was originally published as part of the Restaurant Growth Podcast. It has been rebranded as part of The Pre-Shift Podcast as of January 2023. The information presented may no longer be up-to-date and may differ from the viewpoints and insights currently shared on The Pre-Shift Podcast.

ClusterTruck is not your average restaurant. They have no front of house staff, no dining rooms, and a menu with 80+ items, delivered within 10 minutes of being boxed up. How do they do it? With a combination of cutting-edge software, savvy menu engineering, and a commitment to great hospitality. We chat with Charles Wright, ClusterTruck’s VP of Operations, about staffing a delivery-only restaurant, the logistics of huge menus, and more on this episode of the Restaurant Growth Podcast.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:48 Charles Wright's Background in Hospitality

01:43 What is ClusterTruck?

02:45 ClusterTruck's Unique Business Model

05:38 Staffing and Operations at ClusterTruck

10:18 Training and Managing Drivers

13:35 Challenges and Solutions in Scheduling

16:50 Leveraging Data for Marketing and Menu Engineering

18:32 Future Plans and Franchising Opportunities

26:17 Conclusion and Contact Information

About Charles Wright
Charles has spent a majority of their professional career working in the restaurant industry in operations. His time was split between Panera Bread, YUM! Brands, and most recently Chipotle. In 2020, Charles made the leap and began working for startup companies in Indianapolis, and he currently serve as the Vice President Of Operations at ClusterTruck.

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7shifts is a scheduling, payroll, and employee retention app designed to help restaurants thrive. With an easy-to-use app and industry-specific solutions, 7shifts saves time, reduces errors, and helps keep costs in check for more than 50,000 restaurants.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:34 What is ClustetTruck?
• 5:35 Building a digital-first restaurant
• 10:17 Turning your dirvers into your front of house
• 13:29 Scheduling staff when there's no front of house
• 16:49 Delivery pain points
• 19:25 Large menu logistics
• 21:34 How ClusterTruck leverages customer data
• 24:08 Advice for restaurateurs and business owners

Transcript

Episode 2 - Charles Wright 
 

Dominick Costantino:  
 

[00:00:00] Intro 
 

Dominick Costantino: hey everybody, what's going on. Welcome back to the restaurant growth podcast by seven shifts. I'm your host DJ. And on today's episode, we have our friend Charles Wright. Who's the VP of operations over at cluster truck part restaurant part software company. Cluster truck is a really cool business that Charles and his team have built out in Indianapolis.  

Dominick Costantino: And it's what they call themselves a vertically integrated kitchen. What does that mean, Charles? And I got to chatting about exactly what it means, what it's like to staff a business without a front of house and advice for restaurants who are looking to increase their digital presence. Presence and engineer their business model around it. It's a great conversation with a lot of awesome takeaways and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  

Dominick Costantino: Hey Charles, how are you today?  

Charles Wright: I'm doing great. How are you? DJ?  

Dominick Costantino: I'm well I'm well, thanks for coming on the show today.  

Charles Wright: Thank you for having me. 

Dominick Costantino: So today on the show, we have Charles Wright, he's the VP of operations for a restaurant called cluster truck. 

Dominick Costantino: Uh, and before we get into it, Charles, I'll just kind of ask you, what's your background and how did you get into hospitality?  

Charles Wright: Yeah. Well, I have like a lot of hospitality professionals been in the industry, my entire career, and I had no ambitions of being in this industry. I actually initially went to college to be an architect. But during that time that I was in college, I got a job working for Panera bread. Uh, that job at Panera bread lasted eight years. 

Charles Wright: I worked my way up into management. I left Panera bread to spend some time with Yum! Brands on the Taco Bell side. And after that, went over to Chipotle where I spent seven years most recently in field support. So my, my entire career has featured restaurants, but it's been a path that I did not anticipate and was not. 

[00:01:34] What is ClustetTruck? 
 

Dominick Costantino: That's quite the trifecta Panera, Taco Bell and Chipotle you have quite the experience with, quick service restaurants. And, um, I think that probably informs what you're doing at ClusterTruck so besides an amazing name for a restaurant concept, what is ClusterTruck?  

Charles Wright: Yeah. What is ClusterTruck well, you mentioned the name and that's a question we get so many times everyone wants to know, how can we come up with this name? Why ClusterTruck right and everyone thinks it's a pun an innuendo and of course we, you know, we play on that, but that's not actually what it was. 

Charles Wright: Um, ClusterTruck came to exist because of our CEO, Chris Baggott has a background in technology and tech and CRM specifically. He was a part of a startup here in Indy called ExactTarget that was acquired by Salesforce so his initial premise was could he market a business to food trucks? You know, that didn't work out, you decided to pivot, do something totally different. 

Charles Wright: And so what he landed on was was this model that we own, right. But we have food, truck, quality food, and we have a lot of virtual trucks on our menu, which led to us having a menu of 80 to 90 different items, all food truck quality food. And when the food trucks get together in a group, they call themselves a ClusterTruck 

Charles Wright: how we came upon the name itself. But yeah, ClusterTruck a vertically integrated delivery only kitchen. We're based here in Indianapolis, I guess I should say delivery only with a caveat. We do have a couple locations that offer pickup right now, and we are exploring that as an option for the future as well. 

Dominick Costantino: Awesome. So kind of taking the concept of like a food truck park, but bringing it into one place where you can order from, you know, I can get pizza and my partner can get sushi and you know, our other friends can get, burgers or nachos or something like that. Um, so all of that into one. 

Dominick Costantino: You don't actually have any trucks, right? It's not like it's just kind of the concept. There's no, there's no physical locations. Like it's a vertically integrated kitchen. It's kind of sounds to me like a ghost kitchen, but I know that there is a distinction. 

Charles Wright: Yeah, well, first I'll address the first thing you mentioned, and I think it's funny to go all the way back to before I worked at ClusterTruck and I was a customer myself. I imagined this as like a gigantic building that had a lot of food trucks in it. Right. That's how I imagined it my mind and of course that's not what it is. Because we make all these different items on the same make line, right. Which is a huge part of this model, right? We don't have these trucks. It's not segmented. It's not a ghost kitchen. They're all a part of the same production line. And the linchpin here is our software. 

Charles Wright: Our software is what allows us to make all those menu items on the same. Line and do it proficiently, you know, ClusterTruck is a full stack. We have designed all of the software that makes this work cause the whole way through, from the website to the app, designed by us food made by us couriers contracted by us customer experience and resolution handled by. 

Charles Wright: This is a ClusterTruck experience. Start to finish. We compare this to an experience you would have with Amazon, right? A product you ordered from Amazon delivered by Amazon, customer service by Amazon and even delivered in your neighborhood with a gray van, last mile, right? This is a ClusterTruck experience. 

Charles Wright: We own start to finish all the way through. Including the design of all of the software that we use in our kitchens that fires off the different items to the different stations it's telling the cooks, the modifiers and all the details that they need to make all the items. You know, think of it as we designed our own POS and our own KDS. 

Charles Wright: We've even now designed our own software that we use for inventory and food transfers internally inside the kitchens. As a matter of fact, doing this podcast with you is interesting because 7shifts is the only piece of software we use in our kitchens on a consistent basis that isn't designed by ClusterTruck. 

Dominick Costantino: We are honored to have that position within the ClusterTruck ecosystem.  

Charles Wright: Yeah, we, we love our relationship with plus with 7shifts. It's, it's worked out really well for us because of the open API. We're able to send our sales data from our proprietary app into seven shifts. You know, does sales forecasting worked pretty seamless. 

[00:05:35] Building a digital-first restaurant 
 

Dominick Costantino: That's awesome. And we're happy we're able to, to help out in that way. We talk a lot about scheduling and staffing here. But before we get into that, something I'm curious about, a couple episodes ago on the podcast, we had Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant 

Dominick Costantino: And one thing that Meredith had said, uh, on the show really spoke, to where the industry's going and she would say, You know, digital is not something that you can just append onto your restaurants. Oh no. Well now we have third party delivery. Um, you know, and you can expect to succeed that way. 

Dominick Costantino: You really have to start to rethink your business model around serving, a digital customer. And how have you guys done that at ClusterTruck and how do you think that that separates you from, you know, maybe I'm just ordering from another restaurant or ordering from a ghost kitchen. What makes you guys stand out?  

Charles Wright: Yeah, absolutely. One of our taglines at ClusterTruck is engineered for delivery and she's absolutely right. You know, this is from the very beginning and experience that we always imagined would be a digital experience. We do have pickup in some locations, but we always qualify that with we're primarily delivery. 

Charles Wright: That's our core business model, for sure. Everything from the design of our software to the way our kitchens, to the driver flow. You know, that's all managed by the app. That demand is managed by our software, even down to our packaging, DJ. I mean, we've put a lot of intention into the packaging. We use the disposable containers we use, how do they fit in the bag? 

Charles Wright: How can we Tetris stack them always so that things don't ever move so that there's no factors that impact how the food is going to arrive at your house, right? So we can consistently deliver hot quality, fresh food at your home things haven't shifted in the bag and they're not spilling, you know, even taking your side of ranch, putting it in an extra bag, stapling it shut and putting it in your bag, just so that. 

Charles Wright: If your sauce happens to come open, right? Your whole order isn't open. So there isn't ruined. There's a lot of intentionality that goes into, the process the whole way through, from the design of the software to the kitchen flow, the driver flow, um, and even our customer experience flow. We have a lot of interactions with our customers. 

Charles Wright: It's about 400 per day at a minimum interactions we're having with customers, you know, in our typical response time is less than five minutes. So if you're having any kind of an issue with your ClusterTruck order you're getting a response from one of our customer experience specialists in five minutes. 

Charles Wright: And for us, because we control the whole process. We can send a courier out with a new order to your home, 15 to 20 minutes later. Right. And it's not, it's not a struggle. It's not hard. It's not uncomfortable. It's not awkward. Um, you don't have to call the restaurant and negotiate with them on how you're going to get new food. 

Charles Wright: Right. And you can still eat a refund. Isn't the only option. And it won't take another hour to get you your food.  

Dominick Costantino: And that's amazing. I get owning that whole process means you're not relying, you know, sometimes you'll call you know, someone's using a third-party delivery and the, oh, we don't know who you are. You know, I have no idea. The guy just comes and picks up the food, but you guys are really taking that and flipping it on its head and, and owning that whole process. 

Dominick Costantino: Um, you know, making that delivery, actually an extension of the restaurant, which, um, you know, I think helps separate you guys from, from using other apps or other, other restaurants. Um, So my other question here, kind of getting a little bit into staffing. So, you know, you have no servers, you have no food runners, bussers, no one to take care of, no front of house at all. 

Dominick Costantino: Um, so what is the kind of team makeup for you guys?  

Charles Wright: Yeah. So our, our kitchen compliment is a compliment of managers. You know, we have our salary managers, we have our hourly managers. We have our cooks that are working on the. We have our prep cooks who are doing the bulk prep in the kitchen, you know, and then we have our expediters, our expediters are the extension of the kitchen. 

Charles Wright: They're the ones that communicate with the drivers, for what it's worth. The drivers are what we consider to be our front of house. Right. They are the extension of our kitchens. They're the face of ClusterTruck they are the people that see the customers, which for us is interesting because they are contracted, but we have come up with a model that pretty well for us, that's what the makeup of our kitchen looks like though. A combination of cooks and prep, cooks and expediters. Plus our manager. 

Dominick Costantino: So cooks prep, cooks expediters management, and then your front of house are the drivers. So the drivers are not technically part of the full-time staff and they've contracted out.  

Charles Wright: That's correct. Yep. Our drivers are all 10 99 contracted at ClusterTruck you know, we've explored different models of going a different way right now that works for us. Um, you know, we don't have to manage them. The software is managing the drivers 100%. One of the things we haven't mentioned, uh, I guess after this point, but aside from just the customer app and the customer website, The driver app is also in the iOS and Google play store. 

Charles Wright: Right? So we have a separate app. It's managing the driver workflow as well. It's telling them how many orders are in the kitchen. It's telling them what the demand is, how many people were needing and the software can actually pink people in, in real time. So that doesn't take any of us doing that. It's managing that all the time. 

[00:10:17] Turning your dirvers into your front of house 
 

Dominick Costantino: Very cool. Um, what is kind of the training process like? So you bringing a new driver on and, you know, having that extension of front of house, of course, you're not just gonna like, let them pick up food and not really talk to them or have them have any idea who you are. Um, what does that, do you have a training process or what is that like for, for bringing on new drivers?  

Charles Wright: Yeah, absolutely. The drivers are an extension of our customer experience teams. So logistics falls under customer experience at ClusterTruck our director of customer experience and our logistics manager, they own that process. But yes, we certainly have, uh, we have like the background process and the drivers go through, which is like, you know, the admin side of that. 

Charles Wright: But then they also go through a tailored training process that we have at ClusterTruck just introduce them to what the brand is and then help them understand what we're hoping to achieve here. It's generally, it's a good gig for drivers. And from the very beginning, this was part of the, the idea was create, take this, this job. 

Charles Wright: That's one of the worst ones in the gig economy and make it something that's a livable wage and it's reasonable, you know, for us. The driver experience at ClusterTruck is very different. You know, our drivers are getting four to five orders per hour. Um, our competitors are offering them one to two orders per hour our services, all curbside. 

Charles Wright: So our drivers never have to leave their vehicles, um, that has enabled us to offer this position to allow. Single parents who have their child in the backseat, or maybe people who are veterans, maybe even people who are disabled and can't walk like this has allowed us to offer this opportunity to a wide range of people that our competitors just can't compete with because we offer curbside and our drivers never have to leave your vehicle. 

Dominick Costantino: Yeah. That's I mean, I can imagine how many hours, that adds probably up to in a week just thinking, you guys are in Indy, I'm here in New York, just thinking about like, having to find parking to go in and pick the order up if there's no drivers that window. Um, I mean, that, that probably eats into just not only your productivity, but like eventually just what you're taking home at the end of the day, because you're spending So much time getting in and out of your car. 

Charles Wright: Yeah. And for us, everything is based on timing. Right? So, um, once the driver leaves the kitchen, once they get to the customer's location, we have a maximum of seven minutes. Right. And after seven minutes, your food is headed back to the kitchen. If you haven't met your driver, if we have to, if we have to get a new food, we'll certainly do that. 

Charles Wright: We always, we always fire new food. Out new food, but everything for us is based on timing. And we have to know what a worst case scenario is for that driver. You back to the kitchen all the time, because we don't start cooking food for orders until they've been assigned to a driver. Right? So we have to know where the drivers are all the time. 

Charles Wright: And again, once we've established where the drivers are, we can assign orders to them and start cooking food accordingly. You know, and the kitchen is the kitchen knows. I say the kitchen knows, right. It sounds like the overlord. Right. But the software knows. We have determined cook times for all of the items on our menu. 

Charles Wright: Right? So it's saying this item is seven minutes. It's going before the item with five minutes. It's one before the item. That's three minutes with all those items coming together at the same time. So the expo can take the bag, hand it to a driver with our ultimate goal of getting you food that is arriving at your house within six to seven minutes of it coming off the production. 

Dominick Costantino: Right. So the fries are still crispy.  

Charles Wright: The fries are still crispy  

Dominick Costantino: That's the dream,  

Charles Wright: It is the dream, yup.. 

[00:13:31] Scheduling staff when there's no front of house 
 

Dominick Costantino: [Laughs] Especially when it comes to delivery. I guess it'll continue on the staffing beat. What is it kind of like scheduling? Would you say it's easier to schedule, for a concept like yours versus a regular, uh, you know, quicker, full service restaurant because. You know, you don't have servers waiting on people and the drivers are probably, are they scheduled or do they kind of log in when they want to work? And it like more like the gig economy style.  

Charles Wright: Yeah. Sure. So I think, you know, the first thing that I always mentioned to people when I get asked this question is, and this is true in my mind too, because I've dealt with a front of the house, the majority of my career. Right. And so your first thought is like, I unload this front of the house and it solves all of my problems. 

Charles Wright: Right. Just in case, right? It does not solve all the problems. It solves a lot of the problems, but not all of them. We still face a lot of the same challenges that other companies have faced. And of course, some of those were amplified by the pandemic and what was happening with the economy. 

Charles Wright: Is scheduling easier. I would say moderately easier. Yes. Because we're really just scheduling cooks. Right. It's cooked and where you're aligned cook or a prep cook. Your job is still the same. It's make food. Right. We've actually, we have success in finding expediters that have been people who've worked in the kitchen under our new model because they know exactly what the food is supposed to look like. 

Charles Wright: Right. And they're the final checkpoint before the order goes out the door. You know, and making sure everything's correct. And that you're going to be satisfied with the order when it arrives at your house. So yes, I'd say it's moderately easier because everyone's a cook and not having servers means we are in the kitchens. 

Charles Wright: We are focused on teamwork, having a good time, making great food for satisfying customers, you know, but we're really able to drill down and focus on quality because we don't have a lot of other distractions. Drivers aren't scheduled. Um, drivers are managed 100% by the app. So as a part of their driver app, they're logging in in the morning, they're saying I'm available to work today. 

Charles Wright: Once they go available, um, they pop onto our dashboard, right? And the system pings them in as we need drivers, but it's a first come first serve process. There's geo fences around our kids. And so it knows when drivers are in the lot and put out there first and, um, you know, to the point where the driver arrangement works out well for us, because, you know, as a part of the 10 99 contract, we're not supposed to quote unquote manage them. 

Charles Wright: And we don't the software at ClusterTruck manages our driver team.  

Dominick Costantino: Right. So they do technically still work for themselves. Um, just like with that guidance from the app. So there, their job is probably a little bit more pleasant and a little bit easier.  

Charles Wright: They're getting more. Too. That's something everyone loves.  

Dominick Costantino: Absolutely. Yeah. Um, versus kind of waiting for something to pop up on, you know, another third party app or something like that. And they can still just correct me for one and they can still, if they want to, you know, drive for cluster truck, but also pick up a couple, um, orders or another third-party, uh, app. 

Dominick Costantino: Um, they can do that as well.  

Charles Wright: That's correct? Yes. Yeah. We don't have any restrictions. Um, I don't suppose we even could have any restrictions if we wanted to about where a contractor can work. Right. Um, we of course asked that when they're on shift, working for us at cluster truck, they're only working at ClusterTruck that's how our driver flow works. 

Charles Wright: Right. They have to work. And for us, that's how we're managing the loop that they're taking an order coming back to the kitchen and taking it over. Um, but yes, they, some of them do work for other third-party delivery services. Yeah. Uber. GrubHub DoorDash 

[00:16:51] Delivery pain points 
 

Dominick Costantino: Talking about staffing, not every restaurant can develop their own software to manage, like you guys have done, which, which is incredibly impressive. But what advice would you give to, you know, maybe a multiunit operator or a couple locations who is doing delivery, they're really succeeding with it, but. Take it to the next level. Where's kind of like the, the main major pain point that you think you've been able to solve what can they do to improve their delivery experience for their customers?  

Charles Wright: Yeah. You know, I said this before, and I'll say it again. Uh, just know that, you know, unloading your front of house won't solve everything. I'd continue to reiterate it. That, you know, we, we face a lot of the same challenges, traditional operators face, no doubt. Not. Continue to beat the dead horse. 

Charles Wright: Right. But it's our software. I mean, that's really, what's enabled us to do this. It's the linchpin that's allowed us, you know, I get the question from my peers in the industry all the time, you know, how are you able to do a menu with 90 items? Right. In a, in a delivery radius of six minutes and make all of that work. 

Charles Wright: Right. And the linchpin is the software. Like without the software, we, we wouldn't be able to do this. Right. It's managing all the orders. It's telling us what to make. It's telling us what order to make the items in. You know, and. We're constantly looking at innovations into the future and like, what could the POS the software possibly do in the future? 

Charles Wright: Right. I mean, today at this point, like we're, we're pushing the button on the oven. Right. And, and our COO and all of us were like, could the computer press the button? Right. That's like the next thing, right. Our CEO loves to talk about flipping and flipping the burgers. Right. And, and in our model, What we've uncovered is we don't flip burgers anymore. 

Charles Wright: Right? How do we cook a good burger, sear it on both sides and not flip it right. And not have to have a flat top that we flipped it on. And that's what we believe we've uncovered. So we're making burgers and not flipping them. we've been kind of on this journey at ClusterTruck now for nearly seven years and we've used our kitchens as our laboratories where we're testing the software. We're learning as much as we can about how to grow this business. Better define this model. And we're moving into a phase at cluster truck where we would actually like to partner with some like-minded individuals to potentially franchise the cluster truck model. 

Charles Wright: If there are people out there interested in taking on ownership, so that that's the model we're heading toward now. And we're, we're excited about partnering with people who want to take this on and who want to help us grow this. 

Dominick Costantino: And this is the first time you've been talking about franchises.  

Charles Wright: Yeah, this is, this is a very new thing for us. We are, we're really just getting off the ground, but we believe we, we've spent six years figuring this out almost seven now, you know, and we have a lot of learnings under our belt that we can transfer to another individual or company and help them be successful, you know? 

Charles Wright: And we're, we're ready to start speaking to people about that. 

[00:19:26] Large menu logistics 
 

Dominick Costantino: One thing I do want to touch on as well as the size of the menu. Right. And you mentioned like, you know, the software helps of course, but, I guess from a menu engineering standpoint, how are you able to offer so many items, like from a prep standpoint 

Dominick Costantino: um, but you know, you're doing things across cuisines pizza, sushi, nachos burgers, um, you know, which are very different preparations. From a food cost standpoint as well? I think a lot of people were probably wondering if that the food cost must be through the roof if they're offering that many items, how are you able to keep that down and how are you able to do that efficiently?  

Charles Wright: Yeah, these are interesting. These are all questions that come up all the time, right? Because restaurant people, I mean, this is the huge unlock there. Like if we, and, and I would also say if it was easy, everyone would do it. Right. So I'll start, I'll start by saying it's not easy. But if you were to look at our menu and look at the offerings that we have, we take advantage of cross utilizing ingredients. 

Charles Wright: So there might be items on our menu, in our kitchens that, you know, we're only selling 25 of that entree a week. Right. But as long as we're able to utilize all of the ingredients and that Andre is somewhere else on the menu, right. That becomes. Uh, less of a problem, right? Thinking about other concepts I've worked in before, using Chipotle as an example where we had very few ingredients and we prep a lot of those things, right. 

Charles Wright: Um, at ClusterTruck, we prep a little bit of a lot of things. It, it it's certainly challenging. Um, but we have figured it out and it really comes down to knowing your p-mix, how much you're selling, you know, and once again, we have this internal software that's telling us how many burgers you sell a day, it's managing all of that, you know? 

Charles Wright: And we're, we're getting to the point now where we're drilling down into modifiers so we can see exactly how many quarts of ranch we're using every week in these kitchens. And. Like most restaurants, uh, we try to pretend like they're not that predictive one at the end of the day, they kind of bought right. 

Charles Wright: We have a lot of trends and, and of course we have access to more data than anyone. We know what your favorite things are. We know how often you order, we know what you like to eat and what you like to eat on what day and where, you know, how long it takes to get to your house. We know all of those things, right? 

Charles Wright: So it enables us to prep only what we need and, and still achieve those margins. . 

[00:21:36] How ClusterTruck leverages customer data 
 

Dominick Costantino: That kind of brought up another question for me as well. Owning your own data. That's such a big part of doing delivery directly and not using a third party, so whether you're doing it through your proprietary software, Um, or if you're a restaurant who's using, you know, like a ChowNow or, a bento box or a toast to kind of do your own direct delivery, you're getting that data. 

Dominick Costantino: So how are you then leveraging that, in your marketing efforts? So. 

Dominick Costantino: you're saying like, Hey, you ordered a burger last Friday. How about doing it again this Friday? Um, are you that granular with it or are you getting there?  

Charles Wright: We are not that granular yet, but we will get there. Right? What we, you know, we have a lot of, customer campaigns I would say, or what we leverage most. Right. So if so, if it's been a number of weeks since you've ordered from ClusterTruck, right? There's like, there's automated engagement coming to you saying, Hey, it's been a minute since you've ordered, we'd love to have you back. 

Charles Wright: And it's amazing how many people will reply to those campaigns and tell us the reasons they haven't. Um, and what to get generate more data that way, or, or it just reengages people, people reactivate after that. And they order again, that campaign, specifically the win-back campaign kind of is on like a six week cycle. 

Charles Wright: So we're engaging customers that way. Um, a lot of automated email campaigns mostly right now. Um, I think those things are certainly out there in the future. Most of those, um, Marketing efforts that come outside of that will be generated by my team. Right? And we're recognizing trends across the kitchen. 

Charles Wright: We're saying, Hey, this item isn't selling well before we decide to make a decision and remove it from the menu. Can we have marketing? Can we get some posts on social? Can we get some email campaigns sent out to see if we can generate some sales before we make a decision? Right.  

Charles Wright: We try to be mindful of what is on our menu and what changes we make, because we know that there are, items out there that cause people to order, right. 

Charles Wright: If you can get this, it now means I will order for my family. So we're very mindful of that and what's on the menu and, when we look at those items and might we change the menu it's is this item something that's popping up on these certain people's orders? Every time that's, what's causing them to. 

Charles Wright: You know, we would hate to take someone's favorite item off the menu that now means their family no longer orders,  

Dominick Costantino: so being really careful and just really going, digging with the data to decide how you edit the menu or change it, not going kind of based on like, oh, this isn't selling, you should take it off. Um, but like you said, there may be someone who exclusively orders because, oh, I can get this, this and my kid loves "x" dish.  

Dominick Costantino: My last question really is just, if someone's looking to open, maybe expand their business, their concept, not front of house model, like you mentioned, you know, limiting the front of house, isn't going to solve all your problems, but, what's the most important thing to get, right? 

[00:24:10] Advice for restaurateurs and business owners 
 

Charles Wright: What makes our business, what it is is it's not that much different than any other business writing. And we talk about. This, this business and kind of two parts. There's this software as a service side of ClusterTruck, right? Where we're a software tech company. And we're also today, a restaurant company today. 

Charles Wright: Our kitchens are the customer of that software and of that service, right? Our kitchens experience the benefit of that. Again, I kind of circling back. I would say, you have to know who your customers are. You have to know what your customers want. You have to know what's important to them, you know? 

Charles Wright: And so when I say those things, like that's nothing worth shattering, right? I mean, what makes our business successful is no different than what makes any other business successful. We need satisfied customers that have positive experiences eating with clusters. You know, um, and, and kind of, you know, bringing it full circle, that data for us is just what makes that possible. 

Charles Wright: You know, and I could say for myself, um, having a really unique opportunity to join ClusterTruck, um, when I did, um, you know, I was very happy doing what I was doing when I, when I first encountered the cluster truck team. But, you know, I said to myself, I may not have the chance to do something this unique with my career. 

Charles Wright: Ever again, you know, and so I really, I was really led to explore it. And here I've found myself in this environment where I really have enjoyed the data analytics and getting into the nitty gritty. And it's allowed me to explore all this experience I have in the industry to a tech company now, and learn a whole different side of the business that. 

Charles Wright: I didn't have that much exposure to before. Right. Um, so I guess all that to say, I I've, you know, for the majority of my career been in a normal quote unquote restaurant person, just like anybody else, you know, but now I'm doing something totally different. That's really allowed me to grow myself and learn a lot of new skills, um, that, that are really exciting for me. 

Charles Wright: Um, but know who your customers are, know what they want, you know, define your goals. For us at cluster truck. It's certainly about knowing who we are and knowing who we're not, you know, and, and what, what are we out to achieve? Um, you know, and right now it's, we're, we're going to get you great delivery food to your house, fresh, hot, and as fast as possible. 

Charles Wright: You know, that's what we're all about 

Dominick Costantino: And that's kind of what drives every decision. And I guess at the end, that's kind of the core pillar of what you guys are doing. 

Charles Wright: at the. 
 

Dominick Costantino: Yeah. I mean, Charles, I think that's all the. time we have for today, but, um, you know, where can people find ClusterTruck, if they're looking to order.  

Charles Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So ClusterTruck.com is where our, our, our menu lives. We have an app on iOS and then the play stores. So you can always download our apps if you're interested in information. Franchising opportunity that we're now exploring. We have an email address set up it's franchise@clustercheck.com. 

Charles Wright: Feel free to reach out to us there. We can get you more information, but we're very much accustomed to interacting with customers and people that reach out. So that's very normal to us. So we look forward to hearing from people. 

Dominick Costantino: Awesome. And how many locations are you across? Uh, across the Indianapolis area.  

Charles Wright: Uh, well, we are in eight total right now. portion of those in Indianapolis, we have a kitchen in Ohio and we also have a kitchen in Kansas city, Missouri. 

Dominick Costantino: Awesome. Charles, thank you so much for coming on today. I wish I could order tonight 

Charles Wright: Thank you, sir.  

Thanks again for checking out the restaurant growth podcast. We're glad to have you as a listener for more great content from seven shifts. Check out our website and blog seven shifts.com/blog. You can also hit us on all of the social media platforms at seven shifts. Next.