Shane Murphy (00:01.388)

Welcome back everybody today. We are joined by Allen Beck He's been a longtime friend of mine and he's the director of off -premise and catering for Costa Vida Which has about a hundred locations throughout the brand throughout the entire country and today I've really been excited for this topic We're gonna be talking about the catering and off -premise side of marketing

So Allen, thank you for joining us today and being willing to share your story and your experiences with everyone here.

Allen Beck (00:31.865)

Yeah, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here. Pleasure to be with an old friend and chat with you guys today just about catering and what it's done for us and what it can do for you. Super excited to be here.

Shane Murphy (00:44.744)

Awesome. I love that. Maybe before we dive into the meat of it, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got into the restaurant industry and maybe some of the background on Costa Vida at the same time?

Allen Beck (00:56.293)

Yeah, absolutely. So on previous podcasts, I always talk about how I was in the sales world and how I was I was tired of stopping and starting my career over and over again every year. So I got into the restaurant industry actually when Shane and I worked at a company called Prosper Healthcare Lending. And we came into work one day and we were laid off and the company shut down the vertical that Shane and I were in.

And so that's kind of like how I got started is I started looking for a new job after we had been laid off and was, went through and I was going to be a BDR and another company. looked at companies like weave and, and plural site and lendio, and I had all these interviews there and I was like, you know, this is an opportunity for me to, to be like, I like doing that, but it's not where my passion's at.

And so I reached out to the CEO at Costa Vida, Sean Collins. He's a good friend of mine, known him for 20 years now. And I was just like, hey, what do you have available? And they had an opportunity at the Costa Vida in Spanish Fork, Utah. And interviewed there and saw him like, you know what, this is a pay cut.

but an opportunity. And so I joined the crew and have been here for the last coming up on nine years and in a couple months. So glad to be here.

Shane Murphy (02:26.85)

about that and when did you start getting into like the catering side of the house?

Allen Beck (02:33.923)

Yeah, so after starting off in Spanish Fork, I was quickly promoted from assistant manager to general manager and then kind of worked my way up the chain from there. So about two years into that, the senior director of operations, Josh Brinkerhoff, to me and said, hey, we have this opportunity. We're opening up a new store in the City Creek Mall. It's going to open up a big avenue of catering for us. And we really don't have anybody to lead the charge.

you're kicking butt and taking names, but as a general manager for Spanish Fork, but we really want to have the opportunity. We want to kind of see what this could do for us. And so I was like, look, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out. I ran good catering as a general manager, but again, it was only like two or 3 % of my business. So wasn't like a major focus for me. And so it went up to...

the City Creek location when we opened that up and really kind of just started figuring it all out, kind of just trial by fire and meeting with different organizations up there and kind of figuring this out. And well, it quickly figured out that I kind of had a niche for this part of the business. And so really started to grow it and it went from City Creek that gave me the opportunity in Gateway as well.

And just really kind of grew the business and then I kind of had opportunities more and more as we grew more more opportunity grow Josh gave me more opportunity and in 2019 I went over to the catering official department. That's when we officially started the catering department here at Costa Vida under senior director at that point. His name was Caleb Rutter and

Since 2019, we've grown this part of the business and it's gone from just the catering department to the off -premise department to being in charge of 2 3 % of sales to grown this to we're going to end the off -premise department is going to end up this year at 68 % of sales for the entire brand. it's just kind of started off as a small opportunity to just blossom into this huge part of the business. And obviously COVID kind of helped with that.

Shane Murphy (04:39.372)

Wow.

Allen Beck (04:51.236)

when businesses had to shut down. So we had to get really creative with that part of it and now it's huge for us.

Shane Murphy (04:57.88)

Yeah, it's an interesting thing because I think a lot of operators, they look at the unit economics behind catering and they're like, man, I want to do a lot of catering. But they struggle to make that transition of this is two to three percent of my sales to actually becoming a significant part of the overall business. And that is a unique transformation to have like this type of scale to be 68 percent.

really invested a ton in making that happen. You've gone through a lot of the hurdles, the pains of experiencing that, managing getting creative through a pandemic, is, you know, that really turned catering upside down. And so you've really accomplished some amazing things. Before we dive into some of those strategies that you've seen and tried and implemented, maybe can you touch on why

Allen Beck (05:41.071)

It really did.

Shane Murphy (05:54.196)

investing in that catering arm is such a profitable opportunity to scale up and why is that valuable to restaurant owners?

Allen Beck (06:08.911)

Well, I think you hit it right on the head there. Like, if you do catering the right way and you build the right offerings and you negotiate the right agreements for your paper products and kind of look at the whole operations of it, catering can be a massive profitable opportunity for your business. Now, if you don't do that the right way and you don't have the right

involvement from your operations teams and you don't present things in the right way, then it can, I'm gonna be very honest, it can also have the big, the exact opposite effect where it can be very non -profitable for you and, sorry, pause really quick Shane.

Allen Beck (06:59.975)

Sorry, someone just knocking on my window. apologize. I'd to cut that. But I was saying it can, okay, we'll go back into it. It can also have a huge opportunity. Like it can also be the adverse effect. It can be very negative for you. So you have to look at it from just as you're building your business for your regular brick and mortar building, you want to look at your food costs. You want to look at your paper costs. You want to look at your labor aspect. You have to do that exact same approach to

Shane Murphy (07:02.412)

You're good. No worries.

Allen Beck (07:30.255)

your catering business. If you're not looking at it the same way, just because you offer something in store in your brick and mortar doesn't necessarily mean that that's gonna translate and that's what you should be offering in your catering business. Does it scale appropriately? really, before you even get into the whole strategy and insights and how do we market this, you wanna build that aspect of it? Does this scale the right way and are we as

is this can be as profitable as it is in store, right? You really have to look at it that way. And then if you look at it that way, then again, then it's a huge opportunity because it scales out something that might be a 30 % margin in store, could be a 40 % margin because of the scalability. You just have to look at it, you really have to look at it that way. And if you take that approach, then it can be an extreme benefit for you.

Shane Murphy (08:24.642)

Yeah, so there's like the infrastructure side of hey, we need to decide first of all, what is what are the things that are right for catering that we can actually scale up and really leverage the the scale side of it where you're using less labor. At the end of the day, you're you're able to deliver things on just much higher margins that you mentioned.

you have to do it the right way and negotiate the right way with customers as well. A lot of operators take the same approach and they think of the margins of their business. They're like, I have to treat my customers the same in the catering side as the brick and mortar. But it is a different function of building out the scaled out type of negotiation. Maybe can you speak to that a little bit?

and how you've approached that with different businesses and making sure that it's set up the right way and you maintain that profitability at scale.

Allen Beck (09:32.549)

Yeah, so absolutely. So one thing that we've really looked at is we wanted to maintain our margins. If you don't maintain your margins, your profitability, you'll cease to exist. So we looked at it that way. But then as we went through it, what we found, a prime example is as we go through our menu builds in store, it may call for three ounces of this product, two ounces of that product, five ounces of this, et cetera.

Shane Murphy (09:44.885)

Yes.

Allen Beck (10:01.915)

when you blow that up to a catering, right? So now I'm gonna, let's keep it on the low side of 20 people. That doesn't necessarily translate those portions, don't exactly translate across the board on a 20 person catering. So we're gonna take ranch as an example, our creamy tomatillo ranch on a regular salad you get four ounces of product. Well, if I blow that up and give you four ounces per person on a 20 person catering,

and serve it to you that way, you're going to have pounds of ranch. Well, what we've found is through going through and looking at that is that when we did that initially, people had copious amounts of extra ranch at those caterings. And so we were losing a profitability. were, they, know, people were frustrated. They don't have large fridges or whatever it be to store this ranch. So they're like, I have this huge bowl of ranch left over from my, from my catering.

Shane Murphy (10:43.905)

Yes.

Allen Beck (10:58.501)

So they're just tossing it and the customer feels like they got ripped off. I got charged for this much ranch that I don't need. And then on the restaurant side, I gave away ranch that they didn't use. So there's an opportunity to really look at it that way. So as you evaluate that, you want to make sure that you're evaluating not only your paper cost and making sure like, does this pan work the same way as this pan? Can I save money over here?

Does it have the same functionality? It's the same as on your food cost side of things. Just because you build it in your brick and mortar one way doesn't mean that when you blow that up on a catering, again, you're scaling it out, right? And so you wanna make sure that you're looking at it and say, are you providing not only the guest with the best experience possible, but are we providing the store the best experience possible? Because there's nothing more frustrating than the store that goes through and makes.

40 pounds of guacamole, that's labor intensive, lots of ingredients. Honestly, it's a pain in the butt to make. And then to give that weight to catering and then say, you know what, we gave away three pounds of guac that they just ended up tossing in the trash because we gave them too much. So it's both aspects. Does the customer feel that they were taken care of and does the store feel like they're taken care of operationally? So you really have to look at it as a holistic point of view and making sure, you know, does everybody feel like they're getting the value?

out of it that you're the perceived value that you're trying to accomplish.

Shane Murphy (12:32.332)

Yeah, and these are really, they seem like small things, like making sure that the right amounts of things are getting translated at scale. But that does change the profitability margins by wild percentages. And that's one of the most crucial things to really investigate. When people look at, I think you hit it right on the head, before you look at marketing,

catering side of the business, make sure that it's built and structured in such a way that it is profitable and in many cases you're going to learn and you're have to iterate and change things as you go and just have a pulse on what is being left behind, where is the friction point, and adjust your strategy infrastructure -wise along the way.

Allen Beck (13:31.451)

Absolutely, absolutely. And don't be afraid to make the necessary changes. We've been doing catering for 15 years.

You know how hard it was to have people understand, well, we just went through a 12 month process of changing our packaging and how we present and go through it. Franchisees and guests all around were like, what's going on here? But now that we've done it and they understand what we've done and they understand the why behind it, both operationally and the franchisees and the operator side, but then the presentation of the product now from the consumer side, people are stoked on it. But just because you've always done it one way,

doesn't mean that that's how you always have to do it. Don't be afraid to make those changes. Some changes you can make very quickly. You know what? We're giving out way too much product on this. We need to dial that back. That's a change that needs to be made quickly. But also at the same time, make sure you understand why you're making that change. If you feel like you're giving out too much product, make sure you gather the guest feedback and you just don't make an operational change because you're maintaining your margins and you're gonna piss off the guest.

Shane Murphy (14:39.65)

Such good advice, Alan. That's awesome. Now, you've helped to build this catering function practically from the ground up. If we turn the stage here to some of the tactics that you did, talk to us about some of your favorite marketing strategies of how you have gotten in front of the right people, who you decided to target.

And I'm sure this has shifted through the years. I'd love to kind of hear the exploration from beginning to end.

Allen Beck (15:17.697)

Absolutely. mean, I look back like nine years ago and then we had the concept of any catering is a good catering. Right? Any business is good business. That philosophy has changed over it. Not to say we want to turn business down, but we know that there's areas that we strive in and we really hit our stride and we really kick butted. And then there's other areas that's like, you know what? We can do it, but it's not coasted at its finest.

And we've gone through that. I would say I remember going through and I remember the very first wedding that I landed.

and going through the whole, making sure that we understand what does the bride and the groom want? What do they want to accomplish? And, and how do we, how do we fit into their, their wonderful day? And I remember like, we did it, we executed highly and, we did, we, we fit on every week. We hit every, checked every box. Everything went through super nice. They were super satisfied with it, but the amount of work that went into it, I was like, thing I'm on salary cause we would make no money on this.

Because the hours that I put in and having to go to different restaurant supply companies and making sure I find the right color scheme and the right tongs for this and the right tablecloth for that and all that. We got it done, but then we found like maybe that's not an area that we want to play in or if we're going to play in that area that we want to manage expectations to going into and meeting with office managers. I remember the very first time I met with an office manager.

I was like, man, this is the, why didn't I find this sooner? Because most office jobs, they're feeding many of their people on a regular basis already. They have a budget set aside for it. They have a cadence in which they do it. And then it makes it so easy that you understand like, look, you're already doing this. I don't have to sell you on it. The only thing I have to sell you on is I need to get into your rotation and understanding that rotation, whether that's.

Allen Beck (17:23.553)

once a month, bimonthly, once a week, whatever it may be. And once you could break into that and what that did for the business, all the way down into now, we're in the Delta Center. We're selling burritos and salads at a BYU football game or at the University of Utah or wherever it may be. We've expanded into it. The question you have to ask yourself is, what verticals do you want to play in? And where does your food fit best? You got to remember.

there like weddings and events, sometimes those are intimate settings and people are dressed in high end suits or tuxedos or dresses or bosses or whatever it may be. The last thing you want to do is know that your food's messy and then sell at those events and then be surprised that when someone spills on themselves that they're upset about it versus, you know, does your food better for like a concession stand? Sell where your food is best at.

and really land and expand in those verticals and see what it does for your business.

Shane Murphy (18:27.692)

Yeah, I love that. Talk to us about how you approached getting in with the office managers, because the dream of catering is to not just have it be a one -time catering. And I think sometimes many operators, search for the one -time opportunities, but they lose sight that the best way to do it is what you described. How do I get into a rotation where on a regular basis

once a month, once every other month, even if it's every three months, I am just recurringly coming back and I've, land them once and I turn them into a repeat catering customer. How did you go about establishing those relationships and getting in front of those people?

Allen Beck (19:14.095)

It all started with the dining room. The dining room is your best area of marketing because those people already love your food. You don't have to sell them on anything. They're already there eating your food. I know that if I can get my food into people's mouths, that they're going to come back. So what I did was I was up in City Creek and I obviously had a little bit, I was lucky enough to have a little bit of captive audience. So I started seeing these people come down.

for lunch every day and they'd sit in the same spots and they'd order the same thing over and over again. And so for me, that was the area of opportunity. I sat in the dining room and I started building rapport and relationships with these people in my dining room. And I said, hey, what do you do? I'm a stock trader up at Merrill Lynch or I do this and all that. Excellent. You know what, I'm gonna be honest. You've been in my store three times a week for the last.

Allen Beck (20:12.805)

four weeks eating lunch. What if I brought it to you? Well, I'd love you. Do you guys do lunches there? Yeah, we do lunch every Friday. Excellent. I want to bring you lunch. I need to get in that rotation. Who do I need to talk to? you need to talk to Glenda. She's our office manager and she handles all that. Excellent. You know what? Next time you come in, I'm going to buy your lunch. Could you, if I'm to buy your lunch, could you make an intro to me, for me, to Glenda?

and just say hey Glenda, this is Alan with Cosa Vida, they do catering and I'll do the rest. All I need is an intro and I'll do the rest. But let me do this, I'm gonna buy you lunch if you make that intro for me and see where it goes. And then that's your in, that's your opportunity. Everybody knows, Shane you've done it, because you've been in the accounting, you've been in the sales world, several people probably listening to this have been in it. The hardest part is getting your foot in the door. And if you can get a warm lead versus a cold lead,

and what that does for your business, night and day. But it starts in your dining room. Those people are already coming to you. It doesn't matter if you're at City Creek with a captive audience. It works with the same thing if I go to the Spanish Fort Costa Vida. There's people that are coming there for lunch every day that work somewhere. And they can, if you build a relationship with them first, they can intro you to the decision makers into getting into those regular cadence orders.

Shane Murphy (21:37.24)

many times do you think you've had that conversation with somebody over last few years?

Allen Beck (21:44.405)

I can't even quantify it. People ask, how do you do it? like, it's not a secret. It's not, there are no golden bullet. If you're not out there talking to the people in your dining room or you're out trying to drum up business and you're just trying to grow organically, like man, if every business grew organically and you didn't have to do any marketing behind it, everybody would be in restaurants. Everybody would be doing it, but you have to get out there and you have to beat the streets and you have to.

to drum up the business in the right ways. Now you can be smart about it, but yeah, you can't even quantify the times of these conversations.

Shane Murphy (22:23.414)

Yeah, and the fun thing about that is that is a very trainable skill to pass on to so many to the managers, the shift leads, look for the people, go out and greet them, ask them where they work, you know, comment that, hey, do you ask ask them if they are if they do regular lunches at the office? And is there a way that we could bring bring you lunch?

I'll buy you your next lunch if you make this intro, who is it that we need to talk to? Like that is a very repeatable process that can be easily trained. And then you just have to document, right? You have to have a system to document who it was, who's the contact. And that's where the relationship really grabs hold. And that doesn't turn into one catering order, that turns into several over the course of a month.

that you don't have to keep hunting over and over again, but you just keep greeting them every time they're there. Now, have you done much where you've sent people out into the businesses and like pounded the pavement? Walk us through that process and what you guys have done there.

Allen Beck (23:39.877)

For us inside Costa Vida, there is no more valuable opportunity than having those sales reps going out and doing that. And it's the same idea. tell that, you know, we have the, they're out in in the communities and drumming up business, but it's, it's, it's not just going into the offices and, and, and talking to the office managers that, know, again, that's a cold lead. That's a hard thing to break into, but then you have to look at your business.

and your operations and say, what do we play well in? We know that we play well in certain verticals and we really attack those verticals. And one of those verticals is schools. And so not only the athletic department and feeding them for the end of your banquets or whatever it may be, but then also parent teacher night. Like look, those teachers got to be there to meet with all of those. Unfortunately, majority of them upset parents. Why are you failing my kid?

Why do you say my kid talks too much? Or why do you my kid's antisocial? Whatever. So you're talking to most parents who are probably not very, one, and the parents don't want to be there. They have a life. They just spent eight hours at the office or doing their job. And now I got to go talk to a teacher about what's going on with my kid. They're not happy to be there, right? And so let us provide a dinner for you there. So that makes it makes a little bit of light in their day. So you can really find these areas.

That you play well in and then you know you go walk into the school of Mr. Mrs. Principal I know it's not your problem or the front desk lady that we all talked to that's sitting there typing away and Answering the phone look you're busy. Who do I talk to you to bring you Costa Vida? I love Costa Vida or I love Whatever product it is you're selling excellent I want to bring it to you who do I need to talk to to do that and they will be the ones that tell you who you need to talk to you and make your life easier rather than trying to do

mean, definition of insanity. Go and talk to the same person over and over again expecting a different result. Maybe it's time to talk to somebody else.

Shane Murphy (25:43.294)

And that can be a very intimidating thing to do, right? There's an amount of rejection that you have to come to accept and be comfortable with.

What have you found are like one or two tips to overcome that natural fear of that rejection?

Allen Beck (26:07.429)

So never go empty handed. It's as simple as that. If you have a product in your store that you know is just gangbusters, that you know that this is my competitive advantage, take it with you. If it's a dessert, an appetizer, an entree, whatever it may be, take it with you. I know that when I walk into a doctor's office or when I have a sales rep walk into a doctor's office empty handed, the likelihood of getting

into their rotation or a school or whatever, whatever vertical we're playing in is much less likely to when I walk in with some of my fresh chips and queso. Guess what? They love me. I am their favorite person and they will get, it'll open up so many doors for you that you'll be amazed that you've got, you could go into an office empty handed five times and get rejected five times and you walk in there with your gangbusters product.

And you'll be like, crap, why didn't I do this day one? It'll be amazing to see what, to what it walks in. I know if I walk in with chips and queso, or a Trace Lages for that gatekeeper, man, I'm in. Absolutely. I'll get in all the time.

Shane Murphy (27:22.584)

And as a customer, Costa Vida's chips and queso, like the chip is not the same as your classic chip. Like I can go on and on about your chips and queso because our family abuses your chips and queso. I it's me and my wife. We each get a chips and queso. And then we have like a 10 year old and a seven year old and then a newborn. And sometimes we're getting each of them.

Allen Beck (27:30.841)

Yeah.

Allen Beck (27:38.725)

I love it.

Shane Murphy (27:50.988)

their own chips and queso as well. And we finish ours and we're eating the kids because the chip is like, it like falls in your mouth, but it's crunchy and it's salty and the queso is divine. So you have me at chips and queso, but that I have experienced this as a business owner. I get so many people dropping off a menu and those menus don't do anything for us.

Allen Beck (27:57.076)

Yeah, so good.

Shane Murphy (28:20.664)

It has been like a 0 % success rate when they drop off just a menu and, hey, we're in town, want to let you know that we're here. But there have been people who have either like, they've come back a couple of times. like they've brought, hey, here's a like discount promotion that you can hand out to a bunch of your employees if they're doing a good job. Sometimes it was literally like you said, a appetizer or

What's their golden thing? And that stands out. And it's like, I actually feel like I owe you something. And we have a rotation. We do lunch every other week for our team of 30 to 50 people. And so it's very easy for me to reciprocate because it's not extra money. I was spending the money anyway. It's just, I'm adding something new into the mix.

Thank you for doing that. We'd love to give you a shot. But every time it's just a menu, I haven't actually acted on that because we get so many of them. And so it builds a different relationship. gives value at the same time. And I can exchange value for value all day long.

Allen Beck (29:39.291)

Yep, mean, personal example, I'm out here, I'm talking about catering, right? Go on doing this. This just happened to us a few weeks ago. We move into our new office. The catering director for the local Jimmy John's shows up with 20 subs and says, hey, we just want to welcome you to the neighborhood. Here you guys go. Glad that you're here. Love your guys' product.

Love to be able to do business with you guys. Two days later, we have an all hands meeting of a hundred people, like our town hall meeting here at CUSTA. Guess what we ordered? Jimmy John's. Right? It's amazing, right? Were they on our radar before? Had they just dropped off a menu? Would we have ordered from them? You know, you can, you can do the if then statements all day long. Probably not. Probably. I don't know, but I'll tell you what did work. They came, they dropped off sub. I got free lunch that day and

I ordered from him two days later. It's amazing with the door that it opens. Have they dropped off a menu? I don't know if that would have happened. And so it's amazing to your point, not to say you want to make them feel like they owe you something, but it's amazing that the doors that are open. It's the same thing that on the cold calls back in the day, right? I had to give them something. If I needed to talk to an office manager, the dental office,

I would be like, look, I need to make a sales pitch to you. And I understand your life's busy and I'm probably the only time you probably have time for me is probably on your lunch break. So let me buy you lunch so that you can listen to my 15 minute sales pitch. Would that be okay? And they're like, yeah, I'll do that all day long. I get a free lunch out of it and listen to some sales pitch. Yeah, I'll do that. Right. Versus like, Hey, this is Alan Beck with someone's up blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, click. It was very easy to do that versus how I'm going to buy you lunch. Would you

Can you carve out 10 minutes of your day for me now? Absolutely, I can.

Shane Murphy (31:34.828)

And you can think about the unit economics behind the marketing, right? If you're going and bringing a chips and queso, I have to assume that's a low food cost item, right? But it's a high value that you know people love. And so you can give out a lot of chips and queso. And what's the average catering order size at? Yeah.

Allen Beck (31:47.204)

Yeah.

Allen Beck (31:59.067)

Well, our minimum is 20. So you got to look at it. My chips in Queso, I'm selling in store for $4 .49. Versus I'm selling my minimum order is 20, which is going to be upwards of $300. So a $4 .49 item sells, not profit, just $4 .49 item just got me a $300 order. I'll make those margins all day long.

Shane Murphy (32:25.56)

And when you look at the food cost behind it, it's not a $4 .49 food cost. We're talking like, know, sub a dollar probably at the end of the day. And that is how you have to think about this. This is a high, high ROI investment that you can make. And the biggest portion of the investment is a little bit of work.

Allen Beck (32:30.191)

Yeah, it's even less than that.

Shane Murphy (32:51.818)

a little bit of investment in the uncomfortable, a little bit of investment in the conversation and the relationship, but it can yield amazing results. And you guys have seen that you've built such an amazing thing, Costa Vida. That's why I was so excited to have you on today. You have built an amazing catering machine. We didn't even get to talk about the other side of like off -premise in general. We'll have to save that for another day and really dive deep into that.

This was filled with gold, Alan. Thank you for sharing these strategies. Like getting down to the tactical side. This is amazing. Thank you for coming and sharing. How can people connect with you and learn more about the brand?

Allen Beck (33:36.857)

Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Love to connect with you. Just, you know, shoot me a message there. You can go on to CosaVida .com and look at our forever information there, how to contact us there. I'd love to talk with anybody. Love to consult with anybody. Love to help anybody out and help you through to kind of maybe hurdle over some of those growing pains that I've had to go through. If I could help in any way, I'd love to. Please reach out.

Shane knows how to get in touch with me as well. Please reach out if you have questions, comments, concerns, whatever. Let's chat. Love to talk.

Shane Murphy (34:14.134)

Amazing. Thanks again, Alan. And we really appreciate this. Hope you have an awesome rest of your day.

Allen Beck (34:18.777)

Appreciate it. Appreciate it. you for having me on.