QSR Uncut — Is Restaurant Training Broken?

1Huddle Founder & CEO, Sam Caucci on QSR Uncut w. Danny Klein

Is restaurant training broken?

1Huddle CEO and Founder Sam Caucci joined QSR editor Danny Klein to discuss that and more on QSR Uncut, a podcast dedicated to documenting and exploring the current state and future of the fast-food restaurant industry. 

They cover everything– from gamification to what’s really causing the labor shortage, and what restaurants and chains can do to address retention. 

What follows is a transcript of that conversation, edited for length and clarity!

DANNY KLEIN: Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of QSR Uncut. I’m your host, Danny Klein, the editorial director here at QSR Magazine. This week, you know, as we often do here, we are going off the operator path into the world of technology and labor.

I will briefly explain how I came to first be introduced to 1Huddle, which kind of gives away the fact that, Founder and CEO Sam Caucci. But, you know, I was talking to an operator one time, we were doing kind of like a round table meeting, and he just said that one huddle was badass, um, which I’ve never heard about a vendor. Um, not to say there aren’t badass vendors out there, but that’s a pretty good explanation of, you know, what’s going on and also why I wanted to learn more.

So, Sam, thank you for joining! You know, we really appreciate the time. If you wanna maybe just introduce yourself, how the camp company came to be. I know the story, you know, really to have roots that did not begin in the restaurant industry and has kind of found its way to be an application there. So if you wanna take us through the beginning, you’ll go from there.

SAM CAUCCI: Let’s do it! Thanks for having me, Danny. You know, 1Huddle really started, like any good startup, because I just kind of got  pissed off one day  and decided that I wanted to change. I wanted to change something, I don’t wanna say as far as change the world, but I had worked in a variety of environments, always in a coaching and training and development setting. You know, hiring sales reps, hiring service reps, hiring hospitality folks, and I felt like training and development was a real pain point.

It’s really a challenge to get somebody from zero to 60 as fast as possible, especially in environments with a restaurant or a hospitality brand, where getting people to contribution and service is important.

So the idea was,how do you make something like training and development, not just something more fun and engaging, something you want to do – badass, you might say – but also something that’s effective. Something that as you do it, you get better at your job. And I just felt like the way that we teach workers is rooted in an academic era.

It feels like you’re back in middle school, when they give you a manual and they hope you read it. They build videos and they hope you’ll watch it. And, you know, we wanted to build a platform that, as you use it, you get better– and where you get better connected to your people, too.

And like you said, you want to do it when you wake up in the morning. 

DK: Yeah, right. The training videos…  it reminds me a lot of the videos you used to watch in middle school where they tried to teach you some sort of life lesson and then you walked away forgetting exactly what you saw.

And that’s a pretty scary thing in a restaurant that you have employees who didn’t pay attention at all to what you were trying to teach ’em. You know, there’s a lot of friction there. 

SC: Yeah! You know, again, it has nothing to do with the content. It has nothing to do with the material you’re trying to communicate.

But, I imagine the fact that, you know, we’re living in a world where, where people are on their phone more than they’re on a desktop, they’re on the go… They’re trying to perform their tasks, their job, and manage life and before they clock in and after they clock out. 

It just isn’t realistic to expect a worker to elbow up to that IBM ThinkPad you have locked in the back room and click their way through something just to say that they’re trained and. I think there’s a better way, and that’s what we’re doing.

We have over 120 companies now using our platform. From major restaurant brands like Doghouse and Front Burner Society and Tao Group, all the way to the US Air Force and Madison Square Garden. So super wide and, you know, I think it’s, it’s, it’s an exciting time to hear people talking a lot more about their people.

That’s kind of what the most exciting part of the moment is for us. 

DK: Okay, so before I get into asking actually how the platform works I’d like to talk about that idea that what you just mentioned there. I’ve seen some videos you post online about it, about the fact that we are talking a little bit more about what employees actually want from the companies they work for now.

You know, it seems like a lot of times it’s an overcomplicated explanation from some of the companies who are trying to understand it, but from your perspective, what is the disconnect? Why is turnover so high in the restaurant industry in particular? 

Last year we were talking close to 200% turnover, which is a little bit related to omicron and a lot of these other things, but still, you know, it’s a relatively alarming number to see as you’re trying to actually grow a brand. 

SC: Yeah, you know, Gallop, among the 10 million studies they come out with every two weeks, included one where they asked workers that were quitting why. You know, why? And then they do this whole exploration around why a worker is choosing a different path or voluntarily quitting and leaving.

And as part of that interview process, one of the things that comes up is this question around, “do you feel your manager cares about you personally?” 

Only 24% of workers said that they believe their manager cared about them personally.

It’s the lowest number ever on record in three decades that they’ve been doing this survey. And I think it’s part of an alarming trend. 

Listen, workers have always struggled with being engaged. That’s not new. Covid made it worse. But I think we’re living in a moment where people that go to work every day expect more out of work than just the work.

And it’s putting a strain on not necessarily leadership, but the frontline manager who comes to work every day and kind of has to rally the troops at work. And that strain, I think, is starting to  have a very real impact. I think that part of this is a structural problem.

You know, organizations put managers and management roles without coaching and development training to teach people how to be a great coach. How do you train and coach people the right way? And without that mentorship, I think you’re saying frontline workers viewpoint, what’s the dis.

If the frontline doesn’t feel like they matter. I said this to you when we met a bunch of weeks ago, you know, but when we were coming up, so to speak, a manager could tell us why after the fact. They could say, “Hey, Sam, go do this.” And then later could explain to me why.

That model just doesn’t work anymore. You know, workers want to know the why first. They want to understand how it connects to the mission and everything else around the organization. And I think that’s where the disconnect is. I think you have too many people saying, “I want you here to do this,” and they don’t tell them why, and that’s just not working anymore.

DK: Yeah. You know, I was actually talking to someone about that recently where it used to be kind of all, all you were really worried about was making your boss happy. It’s like you were, you know, working to please whoever your superior was at all costs, and, now? That’s not at all what’s happening, you know?

And even as managers, I’ve realized that I’ve got to understand that because I can’t just expect someone to wanna sort of, you know, make me proud of what they’re doing or to feel like, you know, they’re trying to look good so that I give ’em a good reference or whatever it might be. Like, that doesn’t really seem to be the motivation that it was for me.

When I first started and I was basically, you know, we had, we kind of talked about Madison Square Garden. It was my first job. They paid me $25 a week, you know, but I worked crazy hours cuz I was just worried about what the one guy was thinking about me. You know, nowadays if I did that, I don’t think it would work out that way. 

If I went back in time and I started tomorrow, you know, I don’t think he’d have that kind of power that he does now, or he did then. 

SC: Yeah. I think that role has become more complex. It’s no longer just, “Put in the work.” And I mean, I remember my first job, I was an unpaid intern, worked 50 hours a week, and I said, “I just wanna gain experience.”

That is not common anymore. And I think we, you know, it’s just different. So, I try to think about the best restaurant brands, the best hospitality brands, venues, Madison Square Garden, you know, how to create an environment where they’re gonna win

The next phase of the future of work, they’re gonna have to be really good at building environments that people want to participate in. And participation doesn’t just mean coming to work, doing your job, going home. It means contributing to the brand. It means challenging best practices.

We see it with training and development teams in restaurants. That HR person at corporate thinks it happens one way, but they haven’t worked the line in decades. The person on the front line has a different view of what things are. It comes down to communication on the frontline, tapping into a workforce that touches your customer every day.

And again, I think it’s clear as day– and you probably see it with so many restaurants and brands you talk to– the ones that are on the frontline and connected in that way, they just get different results. 

DK: Right. You know, and I’ll say this kind of fitting into, you know, what you all do, you know, one thing that I hear very often that’s effective is, going back to the Garden  again, you know, I remember for me it was like, “this job sucks, but I’m working for Madison Square Garden, so that’s cool.” 

You know? Now a lot of what I hear isn’t so much like “I’m working for this restaurant, that’s cool.” 

It’s more about who they work with. I was talking to Portillos about this a few weeks ago, but now they’re very interested in almost, you know, this idea that people come to work and they have a best friend, or there’s this sort of sense of community or culture or whatever it might be that people enjoy coming to work– not just because of the, they’re going to work for Portillos, but because of the other people who work there.

And Portillo understanding that in their hiring process, sort of the type of person that they’re looking for.

With one huddle, I mean, what are you all doing in terms of the connection? I mean, walk us through a little bit of what the platform does. Obviously you’re not gonna give away trade secrets, but just in terms of, you know, what you’re doing to kind of change this game a little bit. 

SC: Sure, yeah! 1Huddle is a game platform. We turn training, development, and coaching content into mobile games. So think of it as Duolingo, Trivia Crack, QuizUp –whatever your favorite kind of trivia style game is – only it’s training for your job. 

So a new bartender would learn the cocktail menu, would go through ServSafe training, would prepare to understand the culture by competing with their colleagues in a series of two to three minute quick burst games. The platform is highly competitive. 

You know, we always say you win or you learn on 1Huddle. In many ways, it challenges the idea that learning is passive. It’s very active on the platform. So you learn through failure, you learn to struggle, you learn through competing against other people and other roles across your organization and you know, that’s kind of the core of the platform.

And on your point of connection, this is really interesting cuz a game, a game for us is like a module, you know, so for folks out there that have modules and chapters and courses. A game is really like a module or a chapter in a book. The number one game series, in 2022 to date across all of our hospitality and restaurant brands, is on community and on each other. 

So if you worked at Tao Group, you could play games on their menu, you could play games on your steps of service. But the number one game on their platform is the game that when you play, you learn about each other.

The game will have a headshot and ask “who is Danny” and “who’s the bartender” and “who’s the general manager,” and “where did you go to college” or “where is he from”?

Those are far and away some of the games we get the best feedback on, the most engagement in, and I think that reinforces your point that people coming to work right now care about the person they sit next to. If they’re connected, they care more. If they care more, they put more in– and then they start playing all the other games. 

As leadership, we want them to be great at steps of service. We want them to be great at understanding tasting notes. We want them to be great at all of their compliance and safety content, but we’re not force feeding it to them.

On our platform, you’re engaging with content in a voluntary fashion, which generally gets the most out of people. 

DK: You know, I have a philosophical view on why this is a thing. I think that the way that the social networks have cultivated communication now, you know, really sort of leads us into a world of belonging. You know, or VIP sort of status and whatever we wan to belong to.

And I think this is very true of media and how I try to look at it sometimes is that, I think people in what they read, what they write, what they educate themselves are often thinking about is who else is reading, writing, and educating themselves with this? And am I one of those types of people? And oftentimes, like I had read this in a book about the Economist – which was not an exciting book by the way– but the idea was that a lot of people read the Economist not, you know, necessarily because it interested them, but they read it because they wanted to be like somebody else reading the Economist. 

So what I think has happens a lot in life in restaurants and companies is that if you get there,  and the people around you are miserable or you know somebody who complains about everybody working there, then you probably are trying to get out.

But if you get in there and it’s a group full of people that you wanna associate with and with you platform, I think they’re going looking for that. 

You know, do I wanna get to know this person? Is this person like me? Or do I align with this kind of group of, you know, people and then I wanna be a part of it going forward.

That was a long version of what I’m thinking, but you know, I always use like, you know, example of,  you know, like people who think the world is flat now, you can just go and join a Facebook group, get on an email list, and you could just suddenly be in a world of world is flat. 

People, you know, you don’t really need someone telling you you’re an idiot now

And it’s kind of a change in the way that information exists in this world. A lot of it is about the club or the tribe, so to speak. 

SC: We need more people telling you when you’re an idiot! We need that. I agree with that. But it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing for us! Let’s say, you know, you’re a restaurant brand and we have a new menu that drops tonight and I need to get everybody to know that before service. 

Well, what’s the old way?  

You print out a one pager and hand it out, you know, you do your standup and say it to everybody while they’re texting on their phones, standing in a circle. 

So with us, you can create a game, you can push it out to people and they can engage with it before service. And what you see is two things. You see one, that people play to beat each other, and they learn in the process. But I’m logging in cause I gotta be Danny. I can’t, Danny can’t beat me again.

You know? And the second thing is, I log in and as I do it, I’m gonna try and fail at some stuff. I’m gonna struggle a little bit. And it’s through the hard stuff, the tough feedback, the critical stuff that you get better. 

I think sometimes, you know, we make things too easy on our people. I think sometimes that, you know, as a leader, like the best manager is a leader, the best leader is a coach and coaches, you know, coaching is the, you know, coaching is teaching. And teaching is the ability to inspire learning and coaches challenge their people every day, not because they told them to do it cause they said so, but because they know that in doing it they’ll be in a better position to get where they want to go too. 

And, I think that is – I keep going back to this concept of community and connection and where’s disconnect – it’s all about people. And it’s that mindset. 

I believe optimistically that is shifting. We need more folks subscribing to that point of view instead of just buying a robot that’ll flip the burgers for us. 

DK: Yeah, I agree!Not that I don’t enjoy the stories about the robots flipping the burgers, too though. So, when did restaurants come into the picture? Because I know that wasn’t the initial, you know, situation for you. The application makes all the sense in the world, but when did that first become a thing? 

SC: Yeah, great question! You know, you mentioned Madison Square Garden. They were customer number three for us. Our 10 or so customers were all sports brands, big venues, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Capitals, LA Rams, and they were bringing 1Huddle on to train their sales force because these organizations spent a lot of money on training and development to get their sellers in a position to win.

And, about a year passed, and I remember being at the Verizon Center in DC and coming out of the arena after a game. And I was surprised, you know, we’re a mobile tool and as an app we can reach every worker. That’s part of our mission: how do you make sure every worker has a chance to compete?

But I was surprised that at that time, the only people that used 1Huddle were the 30 young people that worked in ticket sale. And the five or six that worked in guest services, and there’s 1,800 people that go to the Verizon Center every day for work. From security to ushers, to concessions, to game day staff.

And it was that sort of revelation because we started to realize that there’s opportunities for the frontline worker if you give them the same tools and the same systems and the same access. Why can’t the gatekeeper be your next con person in concessions? Why can’t the person in concessions be your next bartender?

Why can’t the bartender be your next or manager? Next manager could be your next ticket salesperson… There’s so much talent within a venue, and it felt like all of the learning management systems and all these tools– they set up blockers. And what technology should do is create more opportunities.

So that was where we started to realize, oh wow, we can be a product to help every worker. 

Our first hospitality brand was Lowe’s Hotels. From there, we got into restaurants. Dog Haus was one of our first customers out of Pasadena, California. From Dog Haus, we sort of expanded out from there.

Today about a third of our clients are restaurants and you know, another third are retail. And again, a big part of why we do what we do every day is because, you know, one in two workers are a $400 parking ticket away from poverty. They are frontline, they are low wage. 

We think that if you tap into them the right way, you’ll be a stronger, better, more connected workforce for it.

DK: What have you been hearing from restaurants in terms of what they’re asking you to help with and how’re things evolving? I mean, I know just personally what I hear a lot of, and going back to the turnover, to training… It’s so important to get people quickly up to date if you’re turning over that many frontline workers, you know, and you’re trying not to have terrible service and you’re charging people 10% more on their menu than you were this time of year ago, to actually be able to quickly train people is, is become very vital and on the right, you know, things that they’re looking for versus, you know, just automating them out of the restaurant.

What are some of the challenges now, from the trenches, that you’re hearing about? How do we get, how do we get a new hire from, you know, day one to contribution as fast as possible?

How do we cut that time? 

SC: So onboarding is, I would argue, is sort of level for a lot of the brands we’re talking to, level two has to do with things like LTOs and the quick in time communication stuff. 

And again, this stuff is still biased to the restaurant, by the way. The first two things are all about the restaurant, not about the employee, and that’s okay for the moment, but you know, that’s fine for now. 

Onboarding is all about getting you to know who we are, what we do. LTOs are all about how you wrap your head around talking points and tasting notes and how to communicate effectively.

I would almost consider those two levels like beginner, intermediate, advanced. The best brands right now are taking it to this kind of third level, and they’re rolling out culture, content, mission, vision. Core values, the standards they live by. You know, one of our brands is Sixty Vines. They have games on mental health content. They have games on books.

So we have on 1Huddle, we have a partnership with Audible, and as a result we have over 2,500 books as games. So what do they do? They roll out games on top, business books and top biographies. And, during Pride month, they roll out games on Pride. There, it’s about more than work, you know?

So I think those are the three big ones. I think every restaurant brand is thinking. I gotta, I gotta upgrade my infrastructure on onboarding first. Then they’re taking into account how we drive more revenue. But the best organizations are all about, like, we’re in the people business. How do we develop our people? It has to, has to do with more than just what you do at work. 

DK: Yeah. The Front Burner folks are interesting. I remember talking to Whiskey Cakes, another one of their concepts once, and they had this whole thing where they would give you a plant, and you had to have the plant live for like X amount of time if they were gonna hire you or not.

And I just was thinking like, why? I don’t, you know, I don’t understand. I mean I kind of get it, it seems almost crazy, but you know, they were just looking for personalities… You know,where they hire the human being, not the resume.

It’s interesting to see that evolve from the inside as you have. I imagine that’s only gonna continue and, for you all, I mean, what’s the next step? I mean, where do you go from here? It sounds like there’s a lot of personalization opportunities for operators, you know, a lot of working with them to, you know, use this technology the best way they can.

But I mean, where do you head next? 

SC: Hopefully more clients, right? That’s the game near term. You know, we’re continuing to grow as a tech company going into 2023. I’ve never been more optimistic about the space we’re in, given how many organizations are talking more about people.

I think the thing for us is kind of twofold. You know, we’ve gifted nearly $2 million in 1Huddle platforms and subscriptions to organizations that fight for vulnerable corners of our workforce. That’s men and women returning from prison. That’s homeless youth. That’s the young people that are victims of, you know, horrible tragedies like sex trafficking.

We’ve gifted our platforms because our workforce is only as strong as any worker in it. And, for us, we’re continuing to develop our technology to create more opportunities for workers that might be on the edges, for example. That’s why when we develop our app, it was really important that it’s not just on iPhone, it’s on Android, and it’s not just on Android, but that it’s available to every model.

Android doesn’t matter. The version doesn’t, you know, frontline workers may not have the iPhone 13 or 14. And, like any good game, Danny, you’ve got to let the best person win and create opportunities. 

So that’s a big path for us. You know, I’m talking optimistically and positively about the environments that wake up every day and care about every worker.

There’s also some that don’t. And it’s our mission to continue to advocate to restaurant owners, business owners, across every vertical that, until you allow every worker the chance to compete,you really aren’t tapping into the full capability of your people. And when you do that, I mean, crazy stuff can happen.

DK: I’ve got a question for you on the labor front. Well, now when I’m hiring, remote work is just a part of the media. I mean, that’s just how this is, and we just hired our first remote employee. We’ve always, prior to this, been a company that makes you come to the office, you know? And I still like the office.

I’m still in here. I still see my co-host Ben down the hall, but I mean, how do you keep that connection going? I mean, it’s like, sometimes I’ll find myself, I’m just kind of checking in, you know, to make sure they remember I exist, you know, and things like that. I mean, how do you see that world? It doesn’t really apply to restaurants of course, unless you’re at the corporate level, but what are your thoughts on that level?

SC: Yeah, I mean, when I dated my now wife, she went to law school and I was in New Jersey. She was in DC and that was a tough three years not being around each other. But, you know, we had to figure it out. It was important enough to us, obviously to make it work. I use this example a lot, you know, in the tech space, and I’m sure many suppliers out there have workforces that are all over.

You know, you have to build the system and put the work in to make sure that the relationship and the culture you’re creating continues to be growing in the right direction. I don’t think remote work is for every organization. I think sometimes companies get a bad wrap on this right now.

As a leader of an organization, I ask myself, how I can bring my best self to work for my people every day. It’s a hybrid environment. We have people in-office every day. We have some people that are out, people that are remote, there’s expectations and it’s clear on what we both have to do to make the relationship work.

I talked to a lot of early tech companies that struggle with this, and I think it comes down to having difficult conversations, not fearing conflict, and being transparent. You know, a Slack channel or a Microsoft Teams channel ain’t gonna fix it.

You know, the morning Zoom call ain’t gonna fix it. Those tools are part of it, but you gotta be cool with what the deal is. And if you’re not, it’s oftentimes it’s gonna create more pain and chaos and confusion. But I do think that some people are comfortable working remote, and I think some organizations are not comfortable with that.

And I think both have the right to choose the path they wanna choose! I mean, it’s interesting. It does seem like, yeah, as you mentioned, like some companies get hit for not being open to it, you know, it’s like, well, this is what works. I don’t know what to tell you. 

So if I had an idea and I had to get everybody on a Zoom call for it, I’d probably forget the idea by the time I could do it. 

DK: So what’s your background, Sam? Before 1Huddle? What was, what was happening in your life? 

SC: I worked in the sports industry. I worked in the sports performance space, ran multiple facilities that trained pro-athletes in the off-season. So think NFL draft prep or major league baseball, spring training prep.

I was a part of organizations who trained hundreds of athletes for the NFL combine and their respective seasons, and had the privilege to work as a strength coach and around other coaches that every day they came to work, they were thinking, you know, how do we make this athlete jump two inches higher?

How do we make ’em a 10th of a second faster? How do we  get them down to weight? It was a very performance driven environment. 

I ran sales teams in multiple stops along the way, tool, in that, in that space. It’s why to this day a lot of people look at what we’re doing that know me and say, oh, you just stole everything from the strength conditioning world and put it in a workforce training!

At the end of the day, we’re just a bunch of coaches here, trying to make athletes run faster and perform better. 

But yeah, had a lot of fun, working in the, working in the world of high performance. 

DK: Yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t, I don’t think I know anyone who’s ever done that. As a failed former sports writer myself, I was never around NFL athletes in the combine, so it’s kind of cool. Obviously the name, I think, makes a lot of sense. 

When, when you look at your background, are you and are you from the New Jersey area or — 

SC: I grew up in Miami. The weather’s a little better, better, you know, better down there. But, I grew up in Miami and you know, now our office is in Newark. Newark, New Jersey, and proud to be based in Newark. 

One of our earliest investors were some big organizations, here in Newark. And, you know, when I started up 1Huddle, I…. Well, we’re a tech company. We have to go to San Francisco. And we moved to San Francisco and we, you know, did the whole startup Silicon Valley thing and got early investors and got this thing kind of moving.

And then I came to New York and said, okay, there’s a lot of energy, you know, we’re selling to enterprises. So I said, New York’s probably better for us and moved to New York. Cuz again, I thought the next thing is, what do you know you gotta get a WeWork on?  in the city and you know, you’re, you’re kind of following the leader.

And we got lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. And had the CEO of Audible, Don Katz said to me, what do you think about moving to Newark? And I didn’t know anything about Newark. And he said, well, what do you think about free office space? I said, I’ll see you tomorrow,

And, yeah, and we moved the company from New York to Newark and, you know, we’ve been here. 

DK: Cool! All right, Sam. Well, I appreciate all the time and insight today, but before I let you go, I just wanted to leave the floor open for you to tell people where they can connect with you, where they could learn more.

Of course, they could listen to this podcast, but if they wanna follow up with you and reach in and learn more about 1Huddle and maybe how it could even help their restaurant, where could they find you? 

SC: Sure, thanks Danny! Yeah. If anybody wants to learn more or see a little bit more under the hood on how 1Huddle can help your restaurant brand to onboard, develop, and  fire-up workers, you can go to www.1Huddle.co 

DK: So, you have no M at the end there? 

SC: No, it’s a tech thing. 

DK: Contrarian!

SC: It’s all about speed! 

DK: Although I bet if you typed in .com you’d probably find it, right?

SC: It’d be one of those things. 

DK: Maybe I’ll go and buy that so I could sell it to you afterwards. 

SC: You know, someone tried to do that to us once actually– It was terrible! 

DK: All right. Well, Sam, thank you so much. Really appreciate the talk. We’ll look forward to hearing what you guys are up to and following the company’s trajectory, you know, but as always for everybody out there listening, we appreciate it!

About 1Huddle

1Huddle is a coaching and development platform that uses quick-burst mobile games to more quickly and effectively educate, elevate, and energize your workforce — from frontline to full-time.

With a mobile-first approach to preparing the modern worker, a mobile library of 3,000+ quick-burst employee skill games, an on-demand game marketplace that covers 16 unique workforce skill areas, and the option for personalized content, 1Huddle is changing the way organizations think about their training – from a one-time boring onboarding experience to a continuous motivational tool. 

Key clients include Loews Hotels, Novartis, Madison Square Garden, PIMCO, TAO Group, and the United States Air Force. To learn more about 1Huddle and its platform, please visit 1huddle.co.