Restaurateur Shawn Walchef is the Founder of Cali BBQ, an award-winning comfort barbecue restaurant with three locations in California. Shawn also leads the Digital Hospitality podcast where he discusses hospitality trends and innovative business strategies with fellow entrepreneurs and restaurateurs.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- Shawn Walchef shares the unique lore behind his barbecue media company
- Incorporating web and digital strategies in the hospitality industry
- Shawn discusses the benefits of businesses becoming their own media companies
- The power of social media brand engagement
In this episode…
In this episode of the SpotOn Series, Chad Franzen is joined by Shawn Walchef, Founder of Cali BBQ. They discuss the importance of understanding digital and technological trends and implementing them for business growth, brand engagement strategies on social media, and competitive advantages for restaurant owners. Shawn goes on to share what benefits businesses can take advantage of by taking control of their media presence.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show, powered by Rise25 Media. We featured top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world
Chad Franzen 0:20
Chad Franzen here co-host for the show where we feature top restaurant tours, investors and business leaders. This is part of our SpotOn Series. SpotOn has the best-in-class payment platform for retail. And they have a flagship solution called SpotOn Restaurant where they combined marketing software and payments all in one. They’ve served everyone from larger chains like Dairy Queen and Subway to small mom-and-pop restaurants. To learn more, go to spot on.com This episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help b2b businesses to get ROI clients referrals and strategic partnerships through done for you podcast. If you have a b2b business and want to build great relationships with clients, referral partners and thought leaders in your space. There’s no better way to do it than through podcasts and content marketing. To learn more, go to rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com Shawn Walchef is owner of the award-winning Cali comfort barbecue in the San Diego area. It’s the founder of Cali barbecue, media and host of digital passport hospitality, a podcast and video series that explores the ways that successful businesses and entrepreneurs have merged traditional business methods with innovative digital strategies that harness the power of the internet. Shawn is also a marketing coach and a new dad. Shawn, thanks so much for joining me. How are you?
Shawn Walchef 1:29
Doing great. Thanks for having me on the show, Chuck.
Chad Franzen 1:31
Yeah, great. Great to have you. Hey, congrats on being a new dad. How’s that going?
Shawn Walchef 1:36
I’m learning every single day. And then once I figure it out, I learn again. Isn’t that how it works?
Chad Franzen 1:42
Absolutely. what’s your what’s your child’s name?
Shawn Walchef 1:44
My son’s name is Killeen. He’s five and my daughter’s name is Mila. And she’s three. Okay,
Chad Franzen 1:50
what’s the best thing about being a dad?
Shawn Walchef 1:52
Best thing about being a dad is? It’s a great question. That’s it’s the greatest job in the world. Everything that anyone tells you about having children. It exceeds that beyond any expectation. Seeing your son’s eyes. I just got to spend a month in Bulgaria with my wife, my son, my daughter, my wife is Bulgarian. So we spent a month over there in her village in Bulgaria and you know, just going to do the things that they do in the village pick a tomato or pick a cucumber and to watch the son, my son, you know, his joy of, of actually enjoying this tomato that came right off of the vine or, you know, to watch him watch fireworks. These are all just the simple pleasures in life of being a dad.
Chad Franzen 2:34
Yeah, absolutely. That’s it sounds great. Hey, before we get into your Cali BBQ Media, I like your hat. Tell me a little bit about your restaurant, Cali BBQ and what a customer might expect from Cali BBQ.
Shawn Walchef 2:46
So we are a barbecue media company. And I know that doesn’t make sense and never makes sense when I share it on stage or share it on a podcast. But I always explain it because we’ve been in business for 15 years, we have a single unit barbecue brand that has now three barbecue restaurants soon to be five barbecue restaurants in the San Diego area. We have two ghost kitchens, we’re going to open up to stadium locations. And essentially, what we’ve learned doing barbecue in San Diego was to rely on the internet. We opened in a very difficult location in San Diego in 2008. The first iPhone came out in 2007. And really we’ve leveraged everything we’ve learned from Google to Yelp, to Facebook to Instagram to now TikTok to LinkedIn to YouTube to now we’re podcasting. But we teach business owners how to do what we did, which is to tell your own story. We waited so long to build a great business where people would come in, eat our barbecue, and then all of a sudden we’d have legacy media come in and tell our story, whether it was the news, whether it was a newspaper, whether it was the radio, and nobody came. So we ended up just learning how to tell our own story and use that smartphone in our pocket to publish content online. And now we teach other business owners how to do it. But yeah, we’re Cali BBQ dot media in San Diego.
Chad Franzen 4:00
So how did you so you opened you open the restaurant in 2008? Were you a media company right when you started or were you just
Shawn Walchef 4:06
No, no, we were just we’re a breakfast restaurant. Actually, we weren’t even a barbecue restaurant. So we were a breakfast restaurant. We added a sports bar we added a dinner service and really we’ve transformed our business over the last 15 years to what we are building now which is the Amazon of barbecue we can no longer discriminate as restaurant owners how to get people food, you know, I spent 15 years building a brand building a marketing company, a media company to get people to know what we were doing and are part of San Diego and there’s 3.3 million people in San Diego. You know, we were fortunate that people would drive 45 minutes and wait in line on our on an NFL Sunday to get a brisket Benedict. But now we can’t think like that. We have to use technology leverage delivery UberEATS DoorDash GrubHub to get people barbecue on their terms. So that’s why we’re opening up more distribution locations. That’s why we’re removing seating from our restaurant, so that we can actually put more meat on the smokers and serve more people more barbecue.
Chad Franzen 5:03
Was that kind of like an aha moment that made you discover that technology and the internet was so important?
Shawn Walchef 5:09
Well, yeah, I mean, it was it was out of pure necessity. We were failing, you know, failing as a business to pay our bills and figure out how to get people to come in and, and support us. And once we realize that Facebook was a thing back in 2008, and 2009, set up a Facebook page started responding to Yelp reviews, started caring about Google caring about our website, all of those things led to where we are now, which is, we have full belief that every single business, you know, our thesis with our digital hospitality businesses, every business needs to be digital first. You know, the problem with brick and mortar businesses is that we think of our website as secondary. Our website needs to be the most important thing we have, not only our website, but the content that we put on the online every single day on TikTok on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, all of those things matter, because that’s your brand story. That’s your heartbeat. That’s your digital heartbeat. When when somebody comes to find out well, who’s Barb Cali BBQ, or who’s Shawn Walchef, and they go to the internet, internet’s going to tell them, they’re going to tell them exactly what you need to know.
Chad Franzen 6:10
So you know, you were struggling and you introduced technology. What was kind of life like at that time for you? And then what were some of some of the first steps that you guys did to turn things around?
Shawn Walchef 6:23
I mean, to be honest, so I so I tell the story about the host stand. So every restaurant owner knows what the there’s a sign that you can buy at restaurant depot or online that says, Please wait to be seated. Or please seat yourself. Do you know why we have that sign in restaurant? No, I don’t actually. So the that’s a hospitality hack. We use that sign so that we don’t have to pay labor to have a hostess on duty in between lunch service and, and dinner service, or breakfast and lunch. Essentially the slow times it says please seat yourself. So when you put this sign, please see yourself and you’re not paying for the labor to be there. Well, we were struggling and me and my business partner, Eric at the time, we said, why don’t we invest in hospitality and always pay to have a hostess at the front of the restaurant. Always have someone to pay someone there to welcome people when they came in, always have someone there to answer the phone. Always have someone there to say thank you when people left. And it transformed our business so much in a way that we took those same principles in real life and we applied them online. What if every time somebody interacts with us on Facebook that we respond to them? What if every time somebody writes a Yelp review, we respond to them? Not in two days? Not in one day, but within an hour? What if we treated that person like a human, that same way that we treat humans that come into our four walls? In real life? What if we treated that user the same way online? Those are the principles that we call digital hospitality. And that’s the competitive advantage that any restaurant owner has, in this new world that we live in is that if you care for people, like we do, it’s in our DNA to care for people care for people online. And that will set you apart from every everyone else in your village. Everyone else in your community, every other business in your cities, you will you will stand out.
Chad Franzen 8:12
What are some aspects that go into caring for people online?
Shawn Walchef 8:15
Listening, responding. I mean, the most important thing about hospitality is making a memorable moment. That’s the beauty of the internet is so many people are ignoring people. Most people think of it as a vacuum, they post and ghost. They post a review, and they don’t expect anyone to answer 90% of restaurant owners 90% of business owners don’t respond to reviews, basic reviews. I mean, as business owners, we used to beg people to write a comment, leave a comment card, tell us give us feedback. So we can improve. Yet now every single day on TripAdvisor on Google, on Facebook, on Yelp, on all of these different platforms, people are leaving feedback. And that’s just going to avoid, you can completely differentiate yourself if you actually take the time to turn notifications on, prioritize it within your organization and respond to these things.
Chad Franzen 9:11
So your restaurant serves people completely kind of online? How did that transition happen from kind of a brick and mortar to, you know, virtual kitchens and online?
Shawn Walchef 9:21
Well, I mean, you have to have technology partners. So you have to have the best of the best in order to succeed. And I mean, I was fortunate to go and speak at the National Restaurant Association, trade show in Chicago, go and talk about our tech stack and really go through the things that we’ve added in the last 15 years to allow us to be an ecommerce company. You know, we’re not at the point where we’re shipping nationally yet, but we will. We will partner with gold belly We will partner with Uber Eats and we’ll figure out a way to get Bart more barbecue to more people. But when you get down to the basics of it, you know, one of those aha moments was our website. You know, having a website where I had my one of my best men is my best friend his father did our website when we first started. He set up our website. And when I needed to change, I would email him. And it would take a couple days for him to make a change. And then if something was wrong, I needed to email him again. And when I was trying to promote a boxing match, you know, for Floyd Mayweather fight fighting Manny Pacquiao in the restaurant, we need to be at the top of search results in San Diego when someone says, Where can I watch the Mayweather fight in San Diego, we need to show up if that’s information is not on our website. We’re not going to be optimized in order to get people there. So that was kind of the first aha moment that I needed to control my own website, I needed to be able to be on a platform like WordPress that I could actually learn how to do myself and make the updates that I needed to make in real time.
Chad Franzen 10:49
So your website is CaliBBQ.media. Explain the media aspect a little a little more if he could.
Shawn Walchef 10:56
Sure. Every business needs to be their own media business. I mean, we are in the storytelling business more than we’re in the barbecue business. It’s so important in this day and age to learn how to use short form video, because that’s what the internet wants. That’s why tic tock is so popular. That’s why Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app. It’s a video app called Instagram reels. That’s why YouTube shorts has changed their entire platform to make it the way that it is. You have to be where people are. If you go to the most downloaded apps in the App Store, whether you have an Android phone or an iPhone, take a look and see. That’s where people’s attentions are. If you’re if your restaurant isn’t on those platforms, there’s a problem. And some people will say oh well, my clientele, they don’t care. They’re not on TikTok. Well, their kids are on TikTok. And the kids are gonna say I don’t want to go to that restaurant, because I restaurants not cool. But it doesn’t matter what kind of cuisine you have. If you have the ability to do something amazing in real life, all you have to do is take that phone, you don’t need an immediate team to come and film it. The internet doesn’t want to commercial, be the show, not a commercial, document what you do in real life, and show that to the internet. The problem is business owners we want the sexy commercial, we want the person the highly produced the best photo of our food the best photo of the interior the exterior, that’s just not what the internet wants. We’re in it we’re this is about speed and quantity. The answer to the internet is quantity plus speed plus consistency equals quality. The problem with every business owner and restaurant owners in particular, is that we want quality first, quality doesn’t happen right away. You can’t have quality guidelines on creative not on the internet. You’ve got to share the story of the things that are happening within your restaurant every single day. And the more that you do it, the more business you have.
Chad Franzen 12:52
So give me an example of like a short-term. I’m sorry, like a short video that you’re particularly proud of or is as a good example of what you’re talking
Shawn Walchef 13:00
I’ll give you a perfect example on on Father’s Day. My family, my kids, my wife they they went to Bulgaria two weeks early. So dad was by himself at the restaurant on Father’s Day and I got in at 4am I met with our pitmaster Bernice and Steven our catering manager and I went live on TikTok. I said I’m gonna go live on TikTok and I’m gonna show off how Bernice cooks 175 racks of St. Louis pork ribs on our for smokers how she puts 200 chickens have chickens on to the smoker has She reversed series tried to pass she brings the pork butts that had been cooking overnight, the brisket sort of been cooking overnight, and I’m just going to interact with people on TikTok lines on TikTok live I made a point that I’m going to go until my phone dies or until my arm falls off. So I did it for four hours before my phone died. And then I went to our ghost kitchen charge my phone went for another half hour came back. So in total I did about five hours. Five and a half hours on TikTok live. Do you know how many people tuned into that? I have I have about 9000 followers on Tiktok. How many people do you think how many people do you think? Watch that live?
Chad Franzen 14:11
35,000.
Shawn Walchef 14:12
More. How many? One more guess again? 50 100? Over 100,000. Wow. Over 100,000 I literally could not go on local television and get that many engaged viewers to watch what we were doing in our restaurant where I was interacting with people from not only all over the globe, but most of them were in the United States. Most of them were asking how can you ship this to me? I said we’re working on gold belly. We’re working on UberEATS some people were like I’m coming to San Diego next month I’m going to stop by and see your restaurant. Other people are like I’m going to tell my sister to go to your restaurant. Literally from that five hour broadcast. I had 1000 more followers on Tiktok
Chad Franzen 14:57
when he first followers or Wow, incredible. When you first started in the restaurant, I’m sorry, when you first opened up your own restaurant, would you have imagined that, you know, years later that this would be kind of your focus?
Shawn Walchef 15:10
I mean, absolutely not, you know, the biggest curse became the biggest blessing because because we struggled so much in such a difficult location, we had to do what other restaurants didn’t do. They didn’t care about all these different things because they tell you Location, location, location. So if we had a great location, I wouldn’t have spent as much time learning about our website, learning about Facebook, learning about photos, learning about video, learning about Yelp, figuring out all these different things that we know now. And leveraging all of that with technology partners, to be able to do the things that we do. I mean, we literally have a show with entrepreneur.com. We have our podcast called restaurant influencers is on restaurant.com. And we’re broadcasting to millions of people every month, millions of people are listening to our content, because we’re willing to do what other people aren’t willing to do.
Chad Franzen 16:04
That’s that podcast about?
Shawn Walchef 16:05
It’s called restaurant influencers. So it’s literally how to turn your, your restaurant into a into a media company. But we talk to some of the greatest people that have content online. So people like Sam, the cooking guy, that have 3 million YouTube subscribers, I interview him, he’s one of my mentors, but he has four restaurants talking about how the content that he makes for YouTube, how he leverages that to get more sales for his restaurant.
Chad Franzen 16:29
And then you’re also a host of a podcast called Digital Hospitality.
Shawn Walchef 16:33
That is our in house podcast, the one that we’ve been doing for the last five years. That one is broader. So it’s not just restaurant content. We talk about small business, we talk about personal development, we talk about technology. It’s basically my curiosity. So everything that I wanted to learn in business school that I never got taught, I just find the experts and then ask them all the questions.
Chad Franzen 16:57
In what ways has that podcast been valuable for you?
Shawn Walchef 17:00
I can’t recommend what what you guys do at Rise25 is one of the coolest things. The more that I found out about your company, it’s something that I’ve been telling business owners for the last 25 years 25 For the last five years is that everyone needs to have a podcast. It’s not just having a website. But having a product podcast allows you to focus on pillar content. It truly makes you a media company. No longer is because in order in order to be great at marketing, you have to know how to brand yourself and talk about yourself and promote yourself. Once you start podcasting, you’re no longer doing it about you, you’re doing it about your subject matter and your guest, you become the journalist you become the curiosity, the person that allows them to show off who they are and what they do. And you build a community by doing that.
Chad Franzen 17:50
And you’re also a marketing coach. I am How does it work? What do you do with regard to that?
Shawn Walchef 17:56
So I coach business owners and restaurant owners basically on all the stuff that we just talked about now. So how to improve how to use short form video how to hire a social media agency what to look for when you’re hiring. If you’re hiring somebody in house the questions to ask the things that they should be posting. I do social media audits. Talk about technology in the restaurant all all all marketing and media.
Chad Franzen 18:21
Did COVID affects your restaurants at all.
Shawn Walchef 18:25
COVID only accelerated our belief in the internet
Chad Franzen 18:30
it’s what it what is it that?
Shawn Walchef 18:32
So everyone talks about pivoting? Like Oh are we pivoted COVID COVID only, only foundationally made us truly believed that we needed to build the Amazon of barbecue that we need to leverage we need to reduce 90% of our menu we got rid of steaks we got rid of salads, we got rid of breakfast on the weekends, and we focused on becoming the in and out of barbecue on the west coast. So literally just focusing on the five core meats that we have the five sides are desert, how do we get that into more places like stadium so we’re about to this Saturday are going to open up our first two stands that Snapdragon Stadium, which is where the senator state has Tech’s play 35,000 feet fans, and now we’re looking at breweries, we’re looking at other alternative non traditional locations to get more barbecued and more people every single day.
Chad Franzen 19:22
Yeah, I was just going to ask you what are some of your goals for the future? Do you have anything going on besides that?
Shawn Walchef 19:27
Besides that? No. The goal is always to get as get the best guests as possible build, you know help as many restaurant owners we’re so fortunate that even with the digital hospitality podcast, we have such a great community of people that support each other digitally and online. Sometimes it can be a lonely place when you’re starting your TikTok channel or you’re starting to go on clubhouse which is an audio app. We do rooms every Wednesday and Friday at 10am meeting with business owners, sales professionals, marketing professionals just to keep things it’s top of mind, you know. So if YouTube starts focusing on shorts, you know, we’ll bring on a guest somebody that’s doing really good on YouTube shorts and ask them a bunch of questions so that we can take those take that information. And since we’re already making videos for Instagram reels, how do we publish that on YouTube shorts? And how do we really capitalize on on this new this new world that we live in? Do you think all restaurants should go in this direction? Absolutely. 1,000%, not only restaurant. So the beautiful thing about what’s happening is the restaurants have the competitive advantage. Because we have hospitality in our DNA. Everyone else doesn’t understand hospitality, the way that we do. Every other business, they think of customer service. And for a restaurant owner, customer service is bullshit. That’s treating someone like a human saying hello, St. Like, these are the lowest standards of hospitality. Hospitality is going above and beyond. And we do that so well, in real life. We just need to do that online. And once we do that online, we can teach other businesses how to do what we do.
Chad Franzen 21:04
I have one more question for you. But first, how can people find out more about everything that you have going on? online?
Shawn Walchef 21:10
You can go to at Shawn P. Walchef. @shawnpwalchef, that’s LinkedIn. Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, you name it, we’re there. You can go to CaliBBQ.media and you can easily find me on there. Or you can just email me shawn@caliBBQ.media, always happy to connect with anybody that listens to this show?
Chad Franzen 21:34
Well, you know, now that I’ve spoken to you this question doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what we talked about. But when you when you if you were to be a customer at Cali BBQ, what would be kind of your go to item.
Shawn Walchef 21:44
That’s easy. We created the item to remove confusion from the menu. So when you go to most barbecue restaurants, you want to try everything, and they typically will withhold the most expensive cuts of meat so they’ll won’t put a brisket on a combo or they won’t put the ribs on a combo on their family platter. We created a tailgater which is all of our slow-smoked meats all of our sides, jalapeno cheddar, cornbread, muffins. And that way no matter no matter what every everybody gets to try everything.
Chad Franzen 22:12
Nice, very good. Hey, Shawn, it’s been great to talk to you. I really appreciate your thoughts, your time and your insight. Thank you so much
Shawn Walchef 22:17
Appreciate you, Chad. Thanks, man. We please reach out. Thanks.
Chad Franzen 22:22
Thank you.
Outro 22:23
Thanks for listening to the Top Business Leaders Show, powered by Rise25. Visit rise25.com to check out more episodes of the show and to learn more about how you can start your own podcast