A chat with Daragh & Myles

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Daragh Kan & Myles Munro leased their first pub in 2007 and have since built a portfolio with some of Melbourne's best bars and restaurants like Fancy Hanks, the 'Welcome to's', Murmur Piano Bar & Natural history - just to name a few. Our Co-Founder Adrian, had a chat with them about working with Mr Yum and their new table ordering business model. Listen as these hospo legends reveal all their tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your Mr Yum menu.

• A tap away from ordering your next beer.
• Mr Yum menu, well received and generally intuitive.
• Loved by not only customers, but also by staff.
• A gold mine of handy information advantageous to make data driven decisions and strategies.

Adrian: Hey guys, I'm here with Daragh and Myles from 100 Burgers Group and Fancy Hank's Group. Two of the founders of that. Pretty iconic Melbourne food and bev group. Bunch of different venues in there, like the Welcome to's, we're in Welcome to Thornbury here, at the moment. Fancy Hank's there, obviously as well. What else we got? Belles Hot Chicken.

Myles: Welcome to Brunswick.

Daragh: Mr. Burger.

Daragh: Hightail.

Myles: Murmur. Brunswick Mess Hall.

Daragh: Natural History.

Myles: Yeah.

Daragh: We got a few.

Adrian: Big spread and a diverse spread of venues as well. 

Daragh: Yeah.

Adrian: Which is really cool. How did 100 Burgers start? Are there a 100 burgers involved, in 100 burgers? These are the key questions, I think. 

Myles: There was, but, yeah no, Daragh and I, we had the opportunity to rent, to lease, a pub in the city. which is The Mercat. 

Daragh: Well, we needed food in the venue, and we didn't wanna spend any money in the kitchen, so we came back from a trip from America, and decided, why don't we do a food truck? Obviously that turned into Mr. Burger. But originally, it was going to be called 100 Burgers, and the idea was, we would sell a 100 burgers, and that was it. 

Adrian: And then they're gone for the day.

Daragh: And then gone for the day.

Myles: Not a good business model.

Daragh: Not a good business model. (laughing)

Adrian: Yeah, and then you did the maths, and you're like, "Oh shit." And so obviously recently, you’ve been working with Mr Yum, starting to roll out things, pick-up, delivery, that sort of space. But then into the table ordering part. Talk about that table ordering, and then what percentage engagement you've been able to get of the revenue going through it. And the different types of venues as well, across the two groups.

Daragh: Yeah, so I would think the first venue that we kicked off was Fancy Hank's.

Adrian: Yes. 

Daragh: Really well received there, we're sitting at about-

Myles: 93% last week.

Daragh: 93% last week, which...

Adrian: 93% of total revenue?

Myles: Correct, yeah.

Daragh: So, it's almost as high as you can get really, when that other percentage is people that didn't bring their phone, or don't have a credit card, or things like that. So for us, I think it's pretty amazing to get that high. I thought, at the start, maybe we'd hit 60 or 70%.

Adrian: You'd think there'd be some push back.

Daragh: Yeah, exactly!

Adrian: Initially, particularly for that venue. 

Daragh: Yeah.

Myles: It's still early days for that kind of technology, but it's been super well received.

Daragh: Super well received, yeah.

Adrian: Have you noticed any different spending habits, like compared to traditional service? Like people spending differently on food or drinks?

Myles: Yeah, people shop with their stomachs. The visual menu's been great. People seeing photos of the food they can order. It's been really good. I mean, people are just ordering more. The ability just, you know, I'm thirsty, I've finished my beer, I want another beer. You don't need to wait for a service person to come and, yeah, take your order. You just, boom, away you go. So and then-

Daragh: Yes. 

Myles: Beer appears on the table. It’s yeah, It's pretty...yeah.

Daragh: Yeah, the visual menu is definitely a good thing. You know some of the dishes that we sell, especially at Hank's, they're Southern dishes that people wouldn't necessarily be that familiar with.

Myles: Yeah, what's an example of some of the-

Daragh: Ah, like Hush Puppies.

Myles: Hush Puppies, yeah.

Daragh: People, they didn't know what that was. 

Myles: It's not a dog.

Daragh: It's not a dog.

(laughing)

Daragh: But some people think it's a dessert or something, and they don't get what it is. So now we can show the video, sorry, the photos of the food.

Adrian: What it looks like, yeah. 

Daragh: And, they'll give it a go, whereas, if you explain something to someone, that they don't know what it is, you can see they like, "Uh, maybe we'll try it "another time."  And then the other big one is, those second and third drinks. People are getting those a lot easier now. They don't have to worry about waiting for a staff member that might be busy delivering food, or taking food orders. They can just put their order in.

Myles: Yeah, I think we were somewhat apprehensive at the start, going, at the end of the day, having a service person, there's always going to be a waiter there to take your order. You're always going to get more drink sales. But, on a busy night, they might have 10 or 20 tables to look after. So, we've actually found that we're actually getting a better drinks spend, in a lot of cases.

Adrian: Yeah.

Myles: Yeah. Because it's right there. They can order a drink when they're ready, there's no waiting involved.

Daragh: Well that's the other thing, you can go a bit rogue as well, rather than waiting for the rest of the table. You can just order a pint, if you're a little bit ahead of everybody else.

(laughing)

Adrian: Yeah, I can relate to that, yeah.

Daragh: It's pretty handy, yeah.

Adrian: The sequence of service, you guys have talked to us a fair bit about before, and obviously rolling out table ordering in all of these different types of venues. What does that approach look like in the service style and how you introduce the guests and the product and how does that differ from a venue like a Fancy Hank's to a Welcome to Thornbury or Welcome to Brunswick?

Daragh: We introduce people, we sit them down at the table. We go, "Hey guys, we're using Mr Yum.  You just need to access it from your mobile phone, with your camera. We'll come back in a minute, and we'll see how you're going." We go away, give it five minutes, come back with some cutlery, or water, or whatever it might be, and go, "How'd you go, guys?" And we'd find, a lot of the time, people would be like, "We're fine."

Adrian: Done.

Myles: The order's in.

Daragh: We're all good. Yeah, the order's in, we're all good. We originally had lots of flyers, and posters, and handouts, ready to give to the customers, in case they sort of freaked out, and we barely had to use them. We have a printed menu at Hank's-

Myles: Haven't really used it. Yeah.

Daragh: It's barely gone out. 

Adrian: Are you trying to adopt that same approach across the different venues, and standardise it? Is it similar, or is there more a higher level of service in the restaurant type venues, versus the more pub-style venues? Or is it largely the same sort of introduction. 

Myles: You've got a food truck compared with a almost fine dining restaurant, compared to the big thousand-person pub. They require different sort of, different approaches, but technology's been really usable and easy to adopt, so we haven't found that it's needed too much prompting.

Daragh: Like we said it’s evolving so quickly and people are really picking it up so fast, that I think, I look at where we’ll be in a couple of months. I think we'll almost be able to get rid of all of that, and people will just see the Mr Yum sticker, and they'll-

Adrian: And they'll know what to do.

Daragh: It's a brand recognition, and they'll go, "Great." I know I understand it the same way you would see a Master Card or a Visa Card, you kind of get it. 

Adrian: Yes, It's always the goal of any platform, how can this be intuitive enough that you go, it's familiar enough, that you just get it and you use it. Always work to do on that but…

Myles: Yeah, we've found that-

Adrian: That’s the goal right? Yeah.

Myles: Generally, it's been… intuitive.

Daragh: I think the approach, that we always take is, be ready for someone to have no idea about it, and be ready for someone to be a complete expert in it. And if they fall, no matter how they fall on that spectrum, we can deal with it.

Adrian: Yes.

Daragh:  And we've found that most people are very comfortable with it.

Adrian: Is there a particular… is there a hook around how they try and position it to the customer?

Daragh: There’s so many actually, hooks, that sometimes you kinda struggle to say them all. Cause we go, “It’s great that you can see photos of the food, you can order online, you can pay online, you can see the menu-

Myles: Dietary, you can, dietary filters. 

Daragh: You got your dietary filters. You can do all of this with no touch. You can split bills by ordering separately. So sometimes it's a little bit of a, where do you start? 

Adrian: Yes. 

Daragh: So I think that's why we kinda sit them down, get them having a look at the system, and then we can come back and go, "What questions do you have? "Do you have any requirements that you have?" And then we can go, "Oh great, so you're vegetarian? "Here's what we can do, you can do this." 

Adrian: So that's the customer's side, and then on the staff side. So A, telling them that, "Hey, we're doing this, we're transforming the model." Through to training, and teaching them how to present it. What did that process look like for you guys? And kind of, the good parts and the bad parts. What's hard about that, and what did you find that worked well to get that staff engagement in training?

Daragh: Yeah I mean, one of the examples I was talking to Myles about before, is I remember when I was a bartender, and the worst thing that could happen is that you forget an order.

Adrian: Yes. 

Daragh: And you go... ****. So one of the big selling points for the staff has been, the stuff that you love doing, which is talking to your customers, greeting them, "How are we going? Are you having a good night?", delivering that service? That's the stuff that you enjoy. The stuff that you don't enjoy is the note taking, or putting orders through, going back to the till, plugging it in. So we can take that away from them, and they can concentrate on giving really great service to the customers.

Myles: You spend so much of your time. It's just, at the end of the day, it's a wasted time, really.

Adrian: Yes.

Myles: So we're sort of channelling that time into genuine hospitality, where you can have a chat, a meaningful chat with the customers, rather than, yeah, spending that time taking orders.

Adrian: Like I guess a different thing as well, about digital menus versus a traditional paper menu. So, the data piece as well, around behaviour. And we were actually hanging out recently, looking at some of the data on clicks, and percentages, and all that sort of stuff. How do you think the decision making process around menu design, etc, will change with this data over time?

Daragh: It's just, the biggest thing I've noticed, is just getting things on sale. So I think back to what we did before, when we had a printed menu. They would send us the new menu items. Say we're doing a special, then we would have to send it to the designer, then the designer would do it, then we'd have to send it to the printer, and then we pick it up from the printer. And that, sometimes it might be a week, a week and a half process.

Myles: Realise there's a typo in it, or something like that.

Daragh: Exactly.

Myles: You're like, "Aw!"

(laughing)

Daragh: Now we just put it to Mr Yum, and it's on sale in five minutes. Well, I mean I was sitting at the bar the other day, and a lady said, "I wanna get a Martini, "but it's not on the menu." And I said, "Give me two seconds." I typed it up, it was on there. Five minutes later, she was ordering Martinis. And then specials obviously, as well. Previously, we printed out on a separate card, and sometimes they get lost or whatever. Now it can be front of mind, we can add it's own section or category onto the menu.

Adrian: Right at the top, yeah.

Daragh: Right at the top. People will see it, we've got the photography there. It's amazing.

Myles: We've always known there's a science to designing a menu. We know that you put things higher on the menu, they'll sell more. You bold things on the menu, they'll sell more. And there's certain other things you can do to boost your sales in certain areas, but yeah, Mr Yum is just so much faster. I mean if a product's not selling, you can either promote it, but if it still doesn't sell, it's good you can actually take it off. There’s no point in having the stock sitting in the fridge and going off on you.

Adrian: Yes.

Myles: You just take it off the menu. So I think, all that data that you can actually pull out of Mr Yum is really powerful. And making sure you've got your good margin items. Like higher up, or placed strategically on the menu. Mr Yum is great for that sort of stuff. Pushing your items that you want to, yeah, push on any given day. So, yeah. 

Adrian: Guys, thank you. You've rolled this thing really fast, and to lots of different types of venues, really quickly. So thanks for sharing all your insights around-

Daragh: Our pleasure.

Adrian: How you did it.

Myles: Pleasure.

Adrian: Yeah. Really appreciate it. 

Daragh: No problem.

Adrian: Thanks.