Discovering Hospitality DNA with Dave Nitzel

Join us in this captivating episode as we host Dave Nitzel of Dave and Dave, Hospitality and Barmetrix. Dave shares his journey from working with giants like UPS and Office Depot to acquiring Barmetrix franchises and co-authoring the books The Bar Shift and Hospitality DNA.

Dave opens up about his challenges and the rewarding moments he experienced while creating "Hospitality DNA." We explore the Helix model that encapsulates the fundamental traits of successful hospitality professionals—Humble Nature, Explorer's Pursuit, Lifetime of Experience, Indomitable Spirit, and Xtraordinary Culture.

We'll also discuss the role of well-defined partnerships, the value of mentorship relationships, and we'll dive into the revolutionary framework of the Inception Archetype. We wrap up with a conversation about what bar inventory actually entails. Complete with practical inventory management tips, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone in the hospitality field.

Contact Dave:
Dave Nitzel on LinkedIn
www.DaveandDave.co
www.barmetrix.com

Buy Dave's Books:
The Bar Shift
Hospitality DNA

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Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

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: 0:19

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 today I am joined by an absolutely awesome guest, dave Nitzel of Dave and Dave, hospitality and Bar Metrics. Dave and his business partner, dave which can get confusing, but they're both Dave and they're both really good guys are some really smart minds in the business. They're some of the top minds around and they are co authors of two books the Bar Shift and Hospitality DNA. Bar Shift if you don't have it is a phenomenal book that goes really quickly, nice short chapters, but hits on very key concepts that impact the industry. Hospitality DNA is a little bit more of a deep dive into what separates those people that have excellent in their business and award winners from the pack and gets into that. That's what we're going to focus a lot of today on. Dave, give you a chance to go ahead and introduce yourself. Let us know a little bit about your background and how you got here.

Dave Nitzel: 1:21

Yeah, thanks, thanks for having me on your show. I enjoy it. I've seen some of the previous interviews and I think they've all been great, so I feel a responsibility here. So, yeah, so my background's not all that interesting, I think, for most bar industry audiences. I try to keep it brief because basically I was a corporate cog in big business America.

Dave Nitzel: 1:41

I worked at places like EPS and Office Depot and advanced auto parts and increasing roles of responsibility through my career and I was very fortunate to get a lot of. I had both ends of the spectrum in terms of leadership experiences. I've had some great bosses that I learned a lot from, and then I had some really awful ones that I learned an awful lot from. It's an interesting question to ask which did you learn more from, the good ones or the bad ones? And I'm not sure what the right answer to that is, but suffice it to say I found myself, my role and my entire team was eliminated from a position at one of those organizations and I had a choice to make about what I was going to do with my future and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I felt like I wanted to give it a go on my own. The problem is I don't have that cool creative gene that a lot of bar and restaurant people have. I don't have my own super unique ideas. My gift is taking other people's ideas and making them better to the extent that I have a gift.

Dave Nitzel: 2:46

And so I jumped into a company called Barmetrics as a franchisee. I bought four franchise markets from them. I love the company. I've been there over 10 years now and it's inspired a bunch of work and I've learned about our industry through doing that inventory work.

Dave Nitzel: 3:02

And then about halfway through about five years in sort of my big business background started kicking in and I started thinking less about the intricacies of executing inventory audits and started thinking more about business as a whole and smashing my past into my current, so to speak, for lack of better terms and that's where the books came from. So we've got the barometric stuff and we've got the books that we do and a lot of speaking tours, and now we're launching a consulting bit off of all of that. So reasonably busy, a lot of fun. I'm a bit of a kid in the candy store when it comes to the industry because I haven't been in it that long and it's evolving for me. So a lot of stuff is new and interesting and we're getting to do some really cool stuff with some really awesome people. So that's the short clip of my journey clip of my journey.

Chris Schneider: 4:06

Well cool, and I think one thing that's interesting to me about your background is that it started in corporate and I was in hospitality. I ended up going and working for a large company for a while, then came back to the consulting and podcasting side of hospitality, and I think that there is sometimes it's overlooked how much hospitality can learn from the way big corporations run, but there's also the other way that big corporations could learn from how hospitality runs as well. That combined experience I'm sure gives you a little bit of a different insight and a little bit of a different way of looking at things and potentially some tools that other people are not used to using.

Dave Nitzel: 4:40

That's exactly right. I think what I don't have a lot of advantages in the industry with my lack of experience in it. The advantage I have, or that which makes me unique, is the fact that I haven't. I don't have that. So I do have a bit of a different perspective on things. But what I have to be smart about and Domzalski is really like he's my guiding light when it comes to the industry stuff. He makes sure that I don't stray too far afield and he's like hey, yeah, no, dave, no, like that's not right. And you know, I've been doing it 10 years so I'm not a total babe in the woods, but still I have to be mindful of what the right applications are and I'm mindful of it. So if I can get the applications right, as you mentioned, and get the right blend, I think there's an offer there for people that can be really useful. Sure.

Chris Schneider: 5:28

So let's talk a bit about Hospitality DNA, because it's one of it's probably one of the most interesting books on the bar business that's ever been written, if I'm really honest no-transcript.

Dave Nitzel: 6:15

We didn't know what the product was going to ultimately be. We started off having really great conversations with people that we were fortunate to work with at some point in our journey and then would ask them like a lot of people, like you may do with podcasting, you know we would ask who should we speak with and we would get recommendations and we did our research. The impetus of that book was really around Jim Collins' Good to Great. For those that know the book, I love that as a business book probably my favorite to great. For those that know the book, I love that as a business book probably my favorite. But you can't write that book in the hospitality space because we're not publicly traded companies. We don't have that sort of data. So we needed a data point.

Dave Nitzel: 6:58

If there's any controversy to the book, it would be that we went after industry award winners, and I've learned since reading the book. I went into it thinking, oh, this is pretty universally believed, that these industry award winners are on top of their game, and that's certainly true. But there's criticisms about I'm hearing mounting criticisms about the validity of winning awards and people make some really good arguments about that sort of thing, and I think that's accurate too. So Dave and I had the conversation about the folks in the book. We're like, look, I don't think you can punch a hole in the folks that are in the book. I mean, they're not only amazing, award-winning operators, but they're amazing human beings. And the fact that they were willing to participate we didn't pay anyone to do any of this and the fact that they participated in it, were really cared about the industry and were willing to share like their secret sauce and tell you look, this is what I did. That really made things work. And what's even more special about them is if you ask them and this happened in every interview if you ask them, hey, what makes you great?

Dave Nitzel: 8:04

You had to be sneaky about your questions because they won't just come out and tell you why they're great and what makes them awesome. It goes into the shucks routine, and you know it's not me. So you'd have to sort of figure out creative ways to get them to talk about what it was that really did differentiate them, and some of these interviews took hours to do to get, because you had to get them to talk about what it was that really did differentiate them, and some of these these interviews took hours to do to get, cause you had to get somewhere with it in the end, but you didn't know where you were going. Right, so you're, you're trying to end up at a place, but you have no map to get there. So it was really fascinating doing the interviews and then not to drone on too much.

Dave Nitzel: 8:45

But then after the interview, dave and I would jump on a call and they were recorded, like this would be, and we would say, hey, what was it? And we may not agree. We may say no, no, look, it was this, it was that. So Dave and I would get into countless debates about what all the answers were and what was the most meaningful content, and sometimes people would have sort of duplicate content. But then there was something secondary or tertiary with someone You're like no, let's use this there, because we've got that covered here. And it was just this incredible process of trying to extract business lessons from really awesome conversations from people we should be listening to, and so that's a little bit about how the thing came to be.

Chris Schneider: 9:30

Sure, and I think something that is worth mentioning here too is that I mean, I know this, I've written a book. You guys have obviously written books. Books are not about making money. Right, you do this because you love it, you do this because you care about the industry, and it's to put that time and passion into something that you know in and of itself, is not going to get a return necessarily. Yeah, just says a lot about the journey you guys went on with this book and the time and the effort that it took to put everything together.

Dave Nitzel: 10:02

Thank you again for that. And, in the end, what Dave and I said, because you really, with all that said, you're really nervous about putting a book out there because it's really open to criticism. You can say some ridiculous things on a podcast or in an interview or even on a stage, but when you write it down it faces a different level of scrutiny. And to put yourself out there like that without getting this big financial bouquet at the end of it yeah, a little bit of that. At the same time, what he and I would say is look, as long as we're proud of it in the end, as long as it's something that we're like.

Dave Nitzel: 10:40

You know what I'm so glad I did that my mom might be the only person who buys it, but as long as I'm proud of it and she likes it, I'm good to go. So you're right. But at the same time, you do get some nice accolades for it and you do like I get to do this with you. You and I wouldn't be doing this if not for the book. Someone may say, hey, you need to talk to Nitzel. He's okay. Why talk to that guy? So the book affords you a little bit of notoriety, if you will, and that does open some doors. We have some coaching opportunities that I don't think we would otherwise have. So the payoff can be asymmetrical, but you are 100% right. You don't write a book for the payoff. But you are 100% right. You don't write a book for the payoff. But if you do want to write a book, there's never been a better time, it's never been more available to people to go out there and be able to put their thoughts to paper and get it published.

Chris Schneider: 11:42

And that's really neat too. It is, and so one of the things that struck me about the book it was there are amazing stories in there that cover all sorts of people in the industry all around the world. But what almost impressed me more, what I found even more interesting, was the lessons you were able to take from those and then how you distill that down to your helix model. So the book is Hospitality DNA, helix obviously the shape of DNA, and then you use that as an acronym to say here are the five traits that most of these folks have, three or four of them, or all of them, and all of them excel in at least a few of them. Right, yeah, and so what was? Because that's a lot of interviews to go through, that's a lot of data to go through, to distill down to there. What was that process like? Hard?

Dave Nitzel: 12:32

in a word, difficult because we didn't know we were going to land with the helix. We we honestly, I don't even know. That's a great question and thank you for, like you said that, probably better than I could. What was that process like? Difficult? So thank you for, like you said that probably better than I could. What was that process like? Difficult? So what you had to do was do the interview and extract out the DNA. What's the marrow of what makes this person great? So that's job one.

Dave Nitzel: 12:58

And look, the thing that made me the most or Dave and I the most nervous was doing the stories justice, because we're not writers. That was terrifying. If you ask me what the hardest thing that was the hardest thing for me was getting the stories right. And we actually the words are our own. We wrote the book, but we did make use of editors and people. You know like, hey, give this thing a buff. Would you make sure the commas are in the right spot? You know all these sorts of things.

Dave Nitzel: 13:28

Telling someone else's story bears a weight of responsibility that I really hadn't considered until I had to do it and we were a little too far in to say let's not do this. So the weight of the stories. That was hard. Distilling the business lessons for me is fun. That's a little bit of my gift. Once I get to what I think let's call it, the superpower is of that person crafting that out into a business message that works for most readers not everyone. The translations and the way the book is created is very unique and it might not be for everyone, but it was the only way I could think of organizing it in a way. I mean, you got to do what you do, so the difficulty was doing the stories justice. As far as the distillation process, that was fun to me. I really enjoyed that bit, but that strikes a little bit into, I guess, my talent. You know it'd be like if you put a bunch of ingredients in front of a chef.

Dave Nitzel: 14:33

It's like make something of this and next thing you know you're eating something. You're like man, this is awesome, how can you do this? And they're like look, I just get it. Like, that works for me. The business lesson stuff sort of works for me and I enjoy it. And Dom Salsty's good at it too, and that's also the benefit of having a really good writing partner is there are topics where Dave excels and I would have been a little lost trying to write some of the chapters Dave wrote, and vice versa. So we make a good pair. That's why we pair up on it, because we have different skill sets and we're fortunate in that respect. So that's that. As far as the Helix, we just kind of got lucky, Like that was just filtering, filtering, filtering, filtering until we got to all the answers and then getting smart about an acronym. So that's what that looked like.

Chris Schneider: 15:24

So with Helix, the five points, just real quick for everybody listening, are humble nature, explorer's pursuit, lifetime of experience, indomitable spirit and extraordinary culture. So with those five points, and if it's cool with you, maybe we'll just go through them real quick one by one and just kind of explain what those mean to you. Yep, so we'll just start from the top, I guess, with humble nature, yeah, so I think I touched on it earlier.

Dave Nitzel: 15:53

The success isn't my fault, so I mean that jumps off the page. We didn't have people that were eager to tell us how great they were, which I love that.

Dave Nitzel: 16:10

Now that isn't to tell us how great they were, which I love. That Now that isn't to say and we have to be careful with humble nature. This isn't about look, a lot of these folks can be peacocks. They are proud, they are very happy to put themselves out there, to put their venues out there. They're happy to win awards, but they're not pompous about it. But the humble nature part is recognizing what they don't know. They're very quick to tell you not only what they do know, but they realize they don't know everything. A lot of them are learners and they're also very quick to give away credit to the team members that help get them there. That also would lend itself to elements of the importance of training and team development, because you just can't scale without some of these things.

Dave Nitzel: 16:46

So Humble Nature was a really, really good find for us, and it was again going through the process of what are the reoccurring themes that we're hearing throughout. So you had the individual stories and those individual business lessons, and then we rolled all those lessons up into hey, what are the five commonalities that everyone not everyone more often than not share? What's the predominant traits that come out? And humble nature was certainly one of them, and I would say it's a unique interpretation of humble. It's not oh shucks, kick rocks, never look up, don't look anyone in the eye. That's not that. It's the kind of humble that says I'm aware of what I don't know. I accept help from others and daggone it. I couldn't have gotten any of this done without the help of a whole lot of people in my life and on my team, and that's the humble nature part.

Chris Schneider: 17:47

Yeah, and to me that kind of it spoke to me in a way because I used to own a bar. I was obviously I'm not an award winner I owned a neighborhood bar in indianapolis that was kind of a dive but did well and it's, I think, a lot of times hospitality folks we get judged on the show we put on for our guests because that's at the end of the day, we're selling an experience. It's a show and sometimes people shows, show an ego, but that's not how they are in the back office, that's not how they are with the staff. Yeah, and so I really liked that you guys included that because I think it for folks not in the industry shows a little bit of a different side of what's going on behind the scenes behind the show, where the guests can't see.

Dave Nitzel: 18:23

Yeah, very much yeah, and look, that's something that is very lovable about the industry. So yeah, it's a great find.

Chris Schneider: 18:31

And so the next one on there was Explorer's Pursuit, which I found interesting. Yeah, because you wouldn't necessarily associate owning a bar with traveling.

Dave Nitzel: 18:42

Yeah, but they do, man. So this was the biggest point of contention on the discovery side for me and Dave. Here's how this seemed to go. You can't read these stories and not notice the travel element to it. It's not like vacationing, this is life travel for a lot of people. And none of this is to say, by the way, none of this is to say that if you don't do these things, you can't be successful. That's not the idea at all.

Dave Nitzel: 19:37

Again, a certain humility comes with that where a certain appreciation for other people, other cultures, the difficulty of that journey. But what they would do is they would take their personal experiences and they would manifest, spend summers in South America, and then she would come back to New York and open up a place like Leyenda, which is a very on-the-nose example. I'm going to bring South America to New York City. But there were others that were colored differently. We have people that traveled from India to China and all the journey along the way and how that really forms your outlook on life when you're serving other people is quite amazing. You have a different appreciation, I think, for folks, so it lends itself to great hospitality. I think travel is hospitality in its purest form in a lot of ways. I think travel is hospitality in its purest form in a lot of ways. So it was just something that you couldn't begin to overlook it. There was no way, like it screamed off the page.

Dave Nitzel: 20:35

We weren't looking for it and we were trying really hard, like we didn't come in saying, look, we're looking for this. That's again not what happened. Whatever came to us is what we wrote about. So we weren't predisposed with an idea of what the right answers were at all, and I just love the way travel imprinted on these folks and how it would, like I said it would, take root in their venues and how they think about hospitality. It creates a degree of empathy, I think, as well, which is good for hospitality. So Explorer's Pursuit was a really great find.

Chris Schneider: 21:09

I think I agree, and that really ties in well with the next one, which is Lifetime Experience, because some of those lifetime experiences are coming from that travel that then lead to people creating great bars are coming from that travel that then lead to people creating great bars.

Dave Nitzel: 21:26

Yeah, you have folks in there who were, again, lifetime experience folks. Most of the folks we interviewed found the industry before they were 20 years old Not all of them, but most. And again, a data point you just couldn't overlook. It's a little bit of a boring one. Perhaps you might go okay, yeah, 10,000 hours, and then all these sorts of books have been written about.

Dave Nitzel: 21:42

Well, a lot of the stuff that we're writing about here has also somewhat been discovered in other places, like a humble nature is also part of good to great. So Jim Collins did talk about level five, leadership and humility being a key component of these successful organizations. So to some degree it's validation and also comes as no surprise that leadership traits work in big business or the same ones that work in a bar and restaurant. Say, 10,000 hours, lifetime experience those traits are the same traits work whether you're a baseball player or a restaurateur. We're looking for that experience and we just can't replace it.

Dave Nitzel: 22:22

Again, if you tie that back to Explorer's Pursuit, you have someone who is a teenager, fell in love with the industry, working summers somewhere in, say, portugal, who then decides to go get a job in a hotel in Scotland who then makes the jump to own a place in Denmark, and I'm kind of in awe. I mean it might be a little bit of me being a dull American, but I'm a bit. I had to learn a second language. I had to learn a third language.

Dave Nitzel: 22:50

When people are telling you that they had to learn a third language. You have Kate Catalin Benet who had to. She learned English through reading cocktail menus and cocktail books. I, you know, I'm just blown away by these stories, you know, and I'm like how can I not share this? So there are those stories where you're like that's got to get in the book, like we have to find a way to maneuver her learning English through reading cocktail menus and cocktail books. That's got to make it. So we have really, really awesome people featured in the book. So lifetime experience. If you're looking to reach these award-winning levels, it takes some time. The moral story is it's a journey and it isn't going to happen right away. So if you're young in the business and struggling, hang in there. It takes a minute.

Chris Schneider: 23:46

For sure. And that actually leads well into indomitable spirit, because to have that lifetime experience to hang in there, you have to have that indomitable spirit.

Dave Nitzel: 23:56

That's exactly right. And bad stuff's going to happen and it doesn't matter what industry or what business you're in. I've had less than awesome things happen through the course of my career. Most of us have. We all have our challenges.

Dave Nitzel: 24:09

What's different and we could have went with something like grit or determination, that would have been okay, but it wouldn't have been right. Why we went with Indomitable Spirit other than it was convenient that it started with an I was that these folks faced down challenges with a smile. They weren't jaded or angry about it and when they spoke about the things that they struggled with, there wasn't necessarily a chip on their shoulder. They just faced it down and were determined to keep moving forward with a smile. And to me there's a lot of real hospitality DNA in that Whatever was going on in their lives didn't spill over to their guests or as much with the employees as much certainly not guest-facing and they made it through and I just have a ton of respect for that. It's impressive, it really is impressive, and some of the stories, some of the tougher stories in the book are devastating.

Chris Schneider: 25:16

You guys did a very nice job at telling some very difficult stories.

Dave Nitzel: 25:21

Yeah, that wasn't. There was a few of those I lost a lot of sleep over. Probably a couple of them that you're thinking of was like how do I yeah, I mean how do you? You know that's the how do I do this justice, like I'm not qualified to write this story. You know I can get the business lessons out and those sorts of things, but yeah, that was. That was nervy for sure.

Chris Schneider: 25:43

I can imagine it was yeah, but from a reader perspective it came across really well. Oh, thanks man, it really did. And so the final part of the helix model is extraordinary culture. Yeah, which I don't think I mean. I think we could probably talk for two hours on just that there's so much there.

Dave Nitzel: 26:04

Yeah, maybe too much. It's probably the biggest idea, maybe the most like nebulous concept in the helix is extraordinary culture. We're doing a lot of I'm doing. We've gotten hired to do a lot of culture coaching as a result of this book, and we could. We've gotten hired to do a lot of culture coaching as a result of this book. We could I got to be careful here because we could talk for a while.

Dave Nitzel: 26:23

So culture is the most important thing that happens in anyone's business, and culture gets a little bit of a bad rap because people think that it's the word salad is culture and HR departments and other people in organizations come up with whatever the hip cliche terms of the time are and they decide to call that their culture, when in fact culture is simply how people think and behave in the business. That's what culture is. So if you're trying to get people to think and behave in a certain way, you're building culture. In our industry it's not very well defined. In most bars and restaurants we may have the behaviors, we might be doing it, but it's not super well defined and it transcends training.

Dave Nitzel: 27:08

So it's not about taking someone to a table and giving them a menu and saying thank you, and your server will be right with you. That's just steps of service and process stuff. When you get people in your business and that's what these folks were doing such a good job of is they were teaching people how to think whilst in their business, and that has a great multiplying effect. The more people you have in your business that know what the answers to the quiz are, that frees you up as an owner or operator to go do other things. They're probably more the types of things you should be working on as an owner. But if people don't know what the answers to the questions are or don't know what the right behaviors are, then you're going to create a whole lot of work for yourself that you shouldn't be doing. Most of these folks if you know any of them or if you look any of them up, they're multiplying, I mean they're scaling.

Announcer: 27:59

They're growing like weeds.

Dave Nitzel: 27:59

That's not because they, if you know any of them or if you look any of them up, they're multiplying. I mean, they're scaling, they're growing like weeds. That's not because they make a great drink, or it's not because they make a great plate of food. It's because they're running a great business and they've taken the time to build a really strong culture. So we've all heard the phrase what is it? Culture eats strategy for breakfast. That's correct, but we love to talk about strategy and a lot of people are loathe to talk about culture because it's got a bit of a bad rap for a lot of the right reasons, not unlike being a culture consultant. It's got a lot of bad raps and for a lot of the right reasons. So culture- is a big topic.

Chris Schneider: 28:38

One thing that's interesting to me when you think to the corporate side of things versus the hospitality side of things. Corporations are very good at saying a culture, but not great at following it. Hospitality we're really good at building culture but horrendous at documenting it.

Dave Nitzel: 28:55

Yeah, that's really well said. That's very well said. A few of the places I worked had, in theory, beautiful cultures. If you read the culture statement and the mission statements you'd be like, oh my God, I want to work here. What a wonderful place. And then you got inside and found out that it was just an HR project. We don't actually believe in any of this stuff. We just knew we had to do it because we needed to get it on the website and all this other stuff. That's a thousand percent true. Very on the mark. I think that's very well said.

Chris Schneider: 29:25

So you touch on a couple other things in the book that I really want to dig into here real quick because I think they're hugely important. Two of them are in two of the final chapters of the book, which are partnerships and mentorships, which you guys really dive in deep on what it takes to have a good mentorship, what it takes to have a good partnership and why, frankly, a lot of people's advice of, if you're going to be in the bar business you don't really want partners is probably just BS.

Dave Nitzel: 29:57

We didn't come up with the idea, so I remember this is what we were told. So very few. The interpretations are certainly ours, but the ideas aren't. So we took our lead from others. The partnership stuff, that's true.

Dave Nitzel: 30:10

And if you think of a great partnership like a special forces unit, which is a little bit of what we coach out in the book and everyone has their different skill sets that's part one. You don't necessarily need say you don't need two or three bankers on the team, right, you need all these disparate types of skill sets. That's part one. Part two is everyone has to be really clear on what their role and responsibility is in the partnership. And then part three is you need to be morally and ethically aligned. You have to have a shared vision.

Dave Nitzel: 30:47

So even if you have these different, differentiated skill sets but you're pulling in different directions and you have a bunch of different opinions and you're causing a ton of drama, this is already a high drama industry in my opinion. There's a lot I mean day to day so it can get a little crazy. If you have drama in your leadership ranks, that drama is going to filter down all the way through the organization in a poisonous way and it's not good. And so that's where you'll get. That's where you will hear people say partnership's bad, partnership's bad when you have bad partners and it's not well-defined. So you want to really take your time and you want to get people who think special forces, they're willing to die for each other, which is too extreme. We're not doing that, but look from a business perspective, in the business context. That's what we're doing.

Dave Nitzel: 31:35

I'm in this with you all the way. We believe in the same thing. I'm good with numbers, you're good with training, you're good with menu building and you're good with management. Stay in your lane, crush your lane, but we're all going the same direction. It's very common sense stuff. It's also very it's a very demanding industry to go it on your own. If you can do it, great. And if you can build a team around, that, great. Very, very challenging to do.

Announcer: 32:08

For sure.

Chris Schneider: 32:09

For sure. And the other piece there towards the end was the mentorships. Oh yeah, and I thought there was some Dave story about how he got you to be his mentor. I thought he's pretty funny to put in there at the end, but just the value of having someone that you can bounce things off of, that is an objective third party.

Dave Nitzel: 32:33

Correct and not a paid engagement. So most of the time when you hear people speak about mentors, they'll still talk about their former boss, typically, or someone in an organization that they were somehow in the chain of command with. In this case, what we're saying is it's not that person, it's someone that you are disconnected enough from, where they don't have any obligation to your HR department or the things that they say to you. It's wide open and you can give open and honest feedback as well. That's why we like it to be a non-paid engagement. A paid engagement would be a professional coach and someone that you worked for would be your boss, and Dave gives some pretty great examples in the book. But you can't go into your boss and sort of open up about everything that you screwed up at work and then they feel a certain obligate. It just doesn't work the same right. You feel just different responsibilities. I don't want to tarnish my reputation. There's things you don't want your boss to know, whatever it might be.

Announcer: 33:34

With a mentor, you can let it all rip, you let it all hang out.

Dave Nitzel: 33:37

Here's what I've got going on, really struggling with this. Hey, I'm struggling with my boss. Now how do I coach up Like how do I can't go have that boss, I can't have that conversation with my boss? So I mean you can, but you get the idea. So we love the idea of people having mentors in their lives. We like the idea of them being temporary as well. So you're gathering a bit of a collection of mentors maybe 12 months. Absorb everything. You can Be very respectful of the relationship because they're giving of themselves in a free and open way. Don't ask too much, Be on time, listen. If you're going to have a mentor based relationship and you don't take any of the advice, you're just insulting the mentor and uh, and so move on, it's a very, it's a different, unique perspective on mentorship.

Chris Schneider: 34:30

And uh, it's it's very useful for sure and then one other thing in the book that really stood out to me was this idea of the inception archetype. And let's dig in there a little bit.

Dave Nitzel: 34:43

Super, super popular topic, if I had had more time. We had with our editor. So we hired the editing company. It's a book publisher but we just wanted the editing component. So we sort of a la carte. And so we had a 60,000 word editing agreement. We were on word 75,000 and they were saying, hey, you're kind of abusing the relationship here. And we said you are correct. And so we had to produce a book.

Dave Nitzel: 35:07

So the Inception Archetype has become a coaching workshop for us. A lot of fun. It's about branding and marketing and inspired by Dave Kaplan from Death Co, who is kind enough to be in the book. I mean, we've got some real stars in the book and Dave is an extraordinary talent. I don't know if you know Dave, but man, if you don't, you should. And that goes out to anyone. In his books the Cocktail Codex I think it's right behind me and the Death Co, amongst other things. He's just a wildly talented guy and the way he thought about the, the guest experience, was just different than what we had heard anyone else talk about.

Dave Nitzel: 35:45

So that exp, that inspired a way of thinking around how we deliver on the guest experience. When it begins that's the inception part. When does the guest experience begins begin. And then and then we did. I worked with some people in pharmaceutical executives to talk about archetyping, about getting how do you get to your ideal guest and how do you market specifically to a demographic that makes perfect sense for your business. So we merged this idea of the ideal guest and the ideal guest experience and pulled that together into, hopefully, a cohesive thought and that's been really popular. I got to talk about that at BCB in Berlin. I've flown to Europe to talk about something.

Dave Nitzel: 36:33

The book was worthy, that was kind of worth writing the book Just that was fun. Shout out to Angus Winchester for the invite. That was great, had a lot of fun with it. So most people and I'll give you just a little insight about what Dave thought about the guest experience, because I imagine that's what people might be wondering first think about going to the venue, not at the front door, not in the parking lot, not at the host stand, and I think that's how most of us are trained to think about the guest experience.

Dave Nitzel: 37:05

If you want to know how someone who's won best cocktail bar in North America and one of the best operators in the world thinks about it, he thinks about it different when you first conceive of going to the venue, building up the anticipation, giving someone something to look forward to, and, with all that anticipation and all that buildup, when they do arrive, you still exceed expectations and that's an extraordinary objective that he doesn't back away from and I was blown away by that In terms of the concepts that were in the book. There's a lot of great concepts in the book, but I love the inception archetype bit because it was just so forward thinking and so smart, obvious and manageable by by anyone who wants to do the work. Uh, I love it. So, if that answers it, do you have any questions about that or?

Chris Schneider: 37:59

No, I mean, I think that pretty much covers it. I just think it's important and I have talked about this some on prior episodes in a little bit different way, as a cohesive concept that starts from when someone thinks about visiting you and looks you up on Google and websites and all that. But it's definitely a little bit. It's different than how the industry views things generally and it's hugely important, especially nowadays when you know it's not 1980 anymore, where your friend said, hey, go to this bar, and so you go. You're doing research most of the time before you go somewhere. All that free interaction is huge to the overall experience that free interaction is huge to the overall experience.

Dave Nitzel: 38:41

Yeah, and if you can get to them before they even do the research. So if you can figure out who your core demographic is and your ideal audience and you hit them on Monday when they're sitting there at work miserable thinking about Monday suck, and you hit them digitally with hey, do you think Monday suck? Yes, I do so. Do we Come see us on Friday? On Monday, I'm making up my mind because now I'm already thinking about it. I'm already looking forward to that. So the people who are posting on Facebook Friday afternoon to get people to come in Friday night have long ago lost the fight. Right, they lost on Monday. And, man, when you can start getting your mind around that stuff, you can win, but you have to get your mind around it and then you can't disappoint.

Chris Schneider: 39:26

So it's a high. It's a high bar, very high bar, yeah, but it's it's definitely worth the effort to get there and you guys communicate it really well. Thanks, man. Um, now taking all that stuff out of the book, obviously you work in coaching and consulting, so and I'm sure you mentioned inception, archetype is something that you're now coaching out on Tell and I'm sure you mentioned Inception, archetype is something that you're now coaching out on Tell us a little bit about your coaching and consulting and just kind of what you do there, Thank you.

Dave Nitzel: 39:48

So it's morphing, Happy to announce right. So you have a. This is a breaking news we have. I'm partnering, obviously, with Dave Domzowski, but also Ray Walsh, who's the CEO at BarMetrics, and we're going to be launching a new coaching program and there's a lot of great coaches out there lots and lots of great coaches out there who really know their stuff, and a lot of what's out there is geared towards owners and different concepts. We're going to launch something that's really more bar shift based our first book and it's really going to be geared towards the bar manager and just basic operating management best practices, something that a bar owner might say geez, I'm very happy to spend $50 a week, $200 a month, If my managers could just sit in an hour a week with Dave and Dave or a representative of Dave and Dave and just get some good old fashioned management leadership coaching week in and week out, and the conversations would be a little bit like this about this week we're going to talk about how to do a great shift meeting, We'll talk about how to do marketing, who's doing the marketing in the business, and let's see if we're getting that right.

Dave Nitzel: 41:04

Are we? Are we taking pictures of cocktails? Are we taking pictures of experiences and what is the right answer for a people-based business and, even more simple than that, right Like um. So we're really excited. We're going to be launching that very soon. We're going to keep the price point very low, very approachable price point, because I think the industry deserves and requires it, especially right now.

Dave Nitzel: 41:29

We want to help people. So, look, my opportunity to become a billionaire passed long ago. So we'll charge enough money to keep the lights on and do that in a very happy way and let's see if we can keep helping people. So we're going to do that in a group coaching type format. So that's part one, but we're currently engaged with. We also work with some big companies that I can't mention, big global brands that we coach on things like culture and leadership and that sort of thing, and we're thrilled to be doing that work and we're just when I say it's when it's me, Dave and Ray I mean that's it, that's the team, so we can do as much work as time will allow the three of us to do. Plus, we do have some other things going on with the bar, metrics and the inventory. So we have to be smart about our time. But if we're smart about it, we can manage our time wisely and be highly impactful. That's awesome. That's what we want to be doing.

Chris Schneider: 42:25

And so, really quickly, just because this sounds really cool, this thing for managers, yeah, you're essentially. Not only are you going to educate managers, but what struck me as you were talking about it, you're forcing the owners to delegate.

Dave Nitzel: 42:41

Yeah, a little bit.

Chris Schneider: 42:42

You're forcing the owners to work on their business and you're forcing them to delegate a little bit and being able to be that vessel that makes the delegation not as scary yeah.

Dave Nitzel: 42:54

Look, I've got the half an hour an hour in my day that I'm going to carve out and dedicate without any noise going on in the venue, without any other agendas going on and basically a very safe space for people to ask whatever dumb questions that they want to ask Not that there's any dumb questions and join and hopefully coach them up a little bit in a way that says, hey, that's so worth the money. I'm not looking to charge premium pricing, I don't subscribe to all the, but we can do whatever we want to do. That's the glory of having your own small business. So if we want to charge at a super approachable price point and deliver a premium product, by golly we can do it and I'm very happy to do that.

Dave Nitzel: 43:35

There's a lot of people that would tell us we're stupid for that. I don't care about their opinions, so that's uh. So that's the deal. So, um, if you're interested in that, uh, keep an eye out. We're not. We won't be hard to find. It'll be out there on social media and we'll do some. We'll do some fun stuff around that too.

Chris Schneider: 43:49

Well, and when you get it all up and going, uh, let me know, cause we can, we can definitely talk about that, cause that's, I think, a really I've not heard of a program like that before and I'm really intrigued. Yeah, that's where we're going to do it.

Dave Nitzel: 44:02

We think there's an opportunity there.

Chris Schneider: 44:05

For sure and just real quickly, because we would be remiss not to hit someone on bar metrics and inventory real quick, mm-hmm.

Dave Nitzel: 44:12

Sorry, no, no, no my fault, go ahead.

Chris Schneider: 44:14

I was just going to tee up and just say so, and if, because I don't, we're kind of running out of time, I don't want to spend too long on this, but is there any single takeaway from inventory management in bars that you think would be good to share with the audience?

Dave Nitzel: 44:49

in this industry and this gets much more into my background, my professional background. I guess I've been dealing with inventory in some form or fashion for 35 years. It's that for bars and restaurants I think they have the idea that I count stuff, I order stuff, I divide my sales into my orders and I come up with a cost of goods, and that's inventory and that's not inventory. That's just counting stuff and ordering stuff and doing some division. If you're not doing a reconciliation process on the back end of your counting, then you're not doing inventory, you're just counting. Making a determination on is whether this counting output equals a cost of goods number that you deem satisfactory. That's simply not inventory. Inventory has to include reconciliation. So what does that mean?

Dave Nitzel: 45:44

I was in a sales meeting a couple of weeks ago and I sat down. Before I even hit the seat, the guy said look, I don't need you. I really don't have any interest in this. I just thought I'd take the sales meeting. I said well, okay, look, the good news is I'm the business owner and I don't need your business. So we can just have a candid conversation, we can just talk like two owners. Right, like I'm not being a jerk. Look, if you're going to hit me with that. My seat as is look, let's, let's do it, we'll, we'll. Instead of having a sales call, we'll have a coaching call.

Dave Nitzel: 46:15

And he, he went on to tell me you know, I don't know what my weekly sales are. I said you know what are your most popular products? That's probably this, probably that. How much do you sell? I don't know how much do you lose. So you know what you order, but you don't know what you sold. What's the difference? No idea, I said okay, well, you're telling me that you're happy with the cost of goods number, but the business is struggling to make money. But you're putting it all on the kitchen, yet you're leaving at least five points on the table on the bar side and you're telling me you don't care about that. I mean, it's both arrogant and stupid. And I'm not saying that everyone. You couldn't all run off and use bar metrics if you wanted to. We're not in that. I think we're in 20 cities. We're not that big, and my franchises are in North Carolina and Atlanta. If you're in those markets, give me a call. But I'm not selling you anything. What I'm telling you is inventory requires a degree of reconciliation. I sold six bottles of vodka, I need eight. What happened to the two? And in order to do that, you've got to pull down all your cocktail information so you know what portions went out to all these different products.

Dave Nitzel: 47:23

It's quite involved. You have to double check your work. Did we miscount it, or did we mispour it? Or are we giving it away? There's a lot of questions to be asked and for the most part, bars and restaurants are leaving a considerable amount of money on the table. For some people, that's okay.

Dave Nitzel: 47:40

Also, some people say look, I don't mind giving away some stuff and to that I say great, there's no problem, just make sure that whatever that amount is, it's well-defined and that it's tracked. There shouldn't be unknown loss in the business. There should only be known loss in the business and you set aside an amount of money that you're comfortable with being known loss. I have everything from. We give away nothing to. We're comfortable giving away 7%, 8%.

Dave Nitzel: 48:09

It depends on the profitability. A lot of times it's a profitability issue. It depends on where people are in the world. But if I was going to give one overarching big idea, it would be that if you're just counting to get to a cost of goods number without really understanding what the product mix output should be to. So, hey, I'm good with 25%, but what if you should be at 20 and you're selling a lot of liquor which is, by proportion, driving that number down? You just need to know what that information is.

Dave Nitzel: 48:37

In this day and age, people are leaving two, three, $5,000 a week in revenue, of revenue, on the table each week, and that's hard, and then can't pay the bills but then don't want to reconcile. Inventory is shocking to me. So yeah, I can pedestal this one a little bit, like yeah, this is dangerous conversation, we're out of time. Dave, shut up, I got it. But look, consult. Whatever system you're using, I don't care. Find the money in the reconciliation and get all the money that you deserve in the business.

Dave Nitzel: 49:06

And it's not that people are. You have not heard me say, hey, people are stealing from you. That's not necessarily true. Most of the time we have very well-intentioned people working for us who just don't know. And if you don't have a dashboard, you know you could, you might be a great driver. But if you're doing 55 and a 45 and you don't know it's a 45 and you don't know you're going 55, you don't know what you don't know and you're breaking the speed limit, but you might not be intending to and that's what a good inventory system should do for you is tell you all that information so you can go make whatever decisions for your business that you want to make. So that's the quick answer.

Chris Schneider: 49:45

Well, and one thing, uh, because I I am a financial numbers guy, okay, at the end of the day, and so one thing in there that that I don't think can be emphasized enough across the industry your p mix matters, right, we we talk about. Well, prime cost should be 55. Well, your liquor cost should be 22. Those numbers are great for you and I having a conversation on a podcast saying here's some industry norms. They mean nothing to the individual operator unless you understand what the hell you actually sold.

Dave Nitzel: 50:17

Correct, absolutely correct, yep and what your customer base is and what your service offering is. There's a lot that goes into it. You don't have to go too deep. But man, I want everyone to know that answer. I want people to know hey, I have 6% variance. 80% of it is on a particular popular vodka. That's what my regulars drink.

Dave Nitzel: 50:39

We're going to ring that in as comps. I've got that baked into my budget. I know I'm going to comp away X that still yields me a profit of Y, and as long as we hit those numbers with a full understanding of what that is, I'm okay. You don't need me, you absolutely don't need me or anything else. Whatever you're doing is perfectly fine. But if you're just doing the math, like that gentleman was, and you're coming up with 25% was his number, and he was telling me how great that was, and I was like I don't have anyone that bad, like I don't know, you must be making a ton of money here if you're comfortable with that and good for you. And then he goes on to tell me that he's pissed at the kitchen because you're not making any money and I just I don't know what conversation we're having anymore right now. You know, yeah, I don't. I never aspire to be a smart alec, but man, goodness gracious, that was tough.

Chris Schneider: 51:27

So I believe it because we are getting a little close to the end here. Just a final question for you. Is there anything that we didn't talk about or anything that you think people listening to this podcast need to know that we have not hit on yet today?

Dave Nitzel: 51:42

Well, that's a good question, I don't know. You were very thorough, very complimentary. I appreciate it. No, it was really good. If you buy the books, I hope you enjoy them. Give us a, give us a nice review on Amazon. That's helpful so you can find. I'll make a pitch. You can find the books on Amazon and we have audio books, paperback and hard the hard coverage really nice and we had a professional do the uh the audio book, which was also very nice.

Dave Nitzel: 52:05

If you're interested in inventory services, of course you can just go to barmetricscom, and we're always looking for franchisees too. So if you're looking for a way to generate recurring revenue, maybe that's it. In terms of coaches and consultants, it's a tough gig and I've mentioned that it gets a bad name and that's because it's tough to generate recurring revenue. So then people take whatever comes their way, regardless of their expertise, which is another conversation about coaching and consulting, where you really need to stay in your lane, but people often can't and that creates negative outcomes. What's nice about something like Barmetrics is that it gives you a re. It gives you recurring revenue of a really valuable service that people authentically need and that pays for itself. So it's a great service. So you can. That's what allows me to write books. So Barmetrics is the engine that may. No Barmetrics, no books. No Barmetrics, no coaching Like I'm not coaching reliant, and the beauty of that is I can say no to gigs I'm not qualified to coach on.

Dave Nitzel: 53:11

I get asked all the time to do cocktail menus because people think bar metrics and I'm like absolutely not, that would be a disaster for your business. But I know like a hundred here's 20 great names of people who will blow your mind. But I am not that guy. So I really love being able to say no to work that I shouldn't be doing. And that would be my message to if you're a legitimate coach or consultant, you take pride in your work. Then know what to say no to and don't take people's money for things that you aren't truly expert on For sure.

Chris Schneider: 53:48

And you mentioned the books are on Amazon. We'll go ahead and link those in the show notes for anybody listening. What other ways can people get in contact with you?

Dave Nitzel: 53:57

We're not hard to find and we have a really tricky website. So it's daveanddaveco, like we just left the M off. So, daveanddaveco, you can find us there on the website. Some of our concepts are on there. There's a couple of quizzes on there that we took the time to write. If you want to see if you have hospitality DNA, you can take the quiz and find out, which is fun, but otherwise it's just. You can go to Barmetrics for inventory, daveanddaveco for coaching and Amazon for the books, and that's it. I mean, that's as much as I can do, and if you want to connect on LinkedIn, we can do that too. I post on LinkedIn a little bit, so I spend most of my social media energy there.

Chris Schneider: 54:32

So we'll link the books, the websites and LinkedIn in the show notes so if you're listening, you can go there and pick those up. Dave, I have to say this has been a phenomenal conversation. Thanks, man. You are a very interesting person to talk to. Your insights are very cool and, coming off of writing these books and just the stories that you're telling, I just can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast and spending some time with us.

Dave Nitzel: 55:00

Well, I love that you invited me, so it's been a joy to be here, and all your research and compliments are welcome.

Chris Schneider: 55:08

Yeah, it helps to butter people up a little bit, never hurts. But no, everything I said I I stand by a hundred percent right, it's, you guys are doing great work. The books are great, and if you're listening to the podcast and you have not read them, read them by my book too, but by Dave's books too.

Announcer: 55:24

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