Wahoo's Founder on AI, Failure, and 38 Years of Grind | Coffeez Ep. 307

0:00One, two, three.

0:13Hi, how are you? Very good. Good. I'm Meredith. Welcome to Coffees with Joe Shalaby. So you're getting my coffee. I'm your coffee girl. I like a little almond latte. Ice. Ice? Yes, perfect. This is the best place. You get coffee. We also get chocolate. Oh my god. And then gets the chocolate. Cheers. Cheers. Here, have one too. So Wing, I have a question. Yes. How many times have people asked you, why did you open a taco place instead of a Wing place? You know, that's a great question. It's just that I like tacos way more than I like wings. I agree. Well, good to have you. Awesome. I'll show you to Joe.

0:48Alright.

0:54My brother, what's up? Welcome back. I love it, I love it. I got my coffee right here. All right. All right. All right. Perfect. Boom. Cheers, my friend. It's been a couple of years since we've had you on the show. Has anything changed with your morning routine since I asked you last? Surfing more, swimming more, because I'm getting ready for a big event this year. What are you swimming for? Well, I got to get in shape. You're already in shape. I'm in pretty good shape, but you got to be in swimming shape is different, right? Surfing, yes, but there is an annual event that happens every September.

1:28it's the ben carlson oh paddle from catalina to newport it's a 30 mile so just think of that yeah on your surfboard on a paddleboard so my thing is i'll be the oldest guy to paddle the event this year wow so for paddle out you're doing the paddle yeah so 30 miles so it's about seven hours give or take so it's a marathon on the water that's incredible when is that it'll be september 19th that'd be a cool event to do so if you're in shape come on in you can join me and we're tagging we got to practice still yeah how often do you practice i swim about four to five days a week right now and so i'm i'm there i'm in pretty good shape right now swim shape and paddleboard shape are different it's not as long as your shoulders are juiced up and ready and greased up you can do it yeah but yeah you got to get on your paddle but more important you got to keep those shoulders moving.

2:22Yeah, exactly. You know, Wing, it's been such a pleasure. Last time we got to connect, we've been obviously at some events together. We got to do the California Love Drop, which was a huge blessing. I'd like to participate in, of course, in an event like that again, California Love Drop. And something I really admire about you is your heart is just a heart of gold. Your heart is always in the right place. You always want to serve. You always want to do God's work and just be a light to people. And you have been a light and it shows in what you've done and what you've built and uh the wahoo's organization yeah no it's been great like i said you know i'm fortunate enough to have done well and my job is to go out and spread the love and share with the guys that don't have quite as good as we do that's right yeah now uh what's new with uh with wahoo's have you expanded more stores i'm seeing more in like uh airports yeah so actually the airport's been a little delayed was supposed to been open by may of this year so we're about four months behind so it's now a little construction delay will be ready to open in october so we're super excited to be at the orange county airport nice been seeing that sign for a while and in the meantime austin texas has done really well we came back about a year and a half ago in lakeway which is what we call it the newport beach of you know austin texas and now we're going ready to go into downtown so uh it should be just as we speak it should be getting ready to open right now you know wayne wing um at your age you're still just in ultra grind mode you're you know something young 50 something young yes and uh you just have this perpetual drive to always just get better and and and continue to dominate in your field in a ultra competitive business what is it that really drives that motivation for you you know is when people come to you, even when I'm in a competitor's restaurant, somebody will come up and say, my God, I love Waffles.

4:17And I'm like, we're at a pizza place. So let's maybe enjoy the pizza while we're here. But I mean, it's nice, right? So the people that, you know, basically can tell me stories about them eating, their kids, their grandparents, so both generations. So it's a multi-generation thing for me. So the fact that I've been at it for 38 years and people still, relatively speaking never come up to me and says man you suck you know so that day i'm hoping never happens right so that's what keeps me motivated because i want to make sure i'm on top of everything everybody's following the recipes and putting out the best product we can now i brought you here because there's something that's really nostalgic to me i'm going to tell you the story when i was 14 years old my first job ever was selling ice cream at thrifties and uh you know At 14, you were allowed to work actually at 14 years old.

5:09Yeah, at 14, you can't. Back in my day, you can't do that anymore. It's a bunch of laws. 16 now. Whatever. But one of the things I like to do a lot when I was scooping ice cream, I would hook up everybody. Everybody would get an extra free scoop. Yeah. So that ended up getting me fired. But it was a cool learning lesson. It was a cool learning lesson. and that nostalgia of Thrifty's ice cream and the joy that it brought to me and always getting free ice cream and giving people free ice cream and the joy I brought to people. But now Thrifty's, as you know, it's gone. And I heard through the grapevine that my boy might be buying it.

5:47Well, so here's what happened. So I got a call. I mean, first I saw that somebody bought it, right? And I heard rumors that Monster Energy Drink bought it, right? So I'm friends with Hilton and Rodney to basically the majority owners of the company. And we've been friends for a long time. So we were chit-chatting and they're kind of going, yeah, but we're not going to talk about it anymore. I'm like, okay, whatever, right? So I kept asking the guys at Monster, he goes, when are we going to get ice cream? Because I saw a freezer in their warehouse, Thrifty's ice cream freezer, but there was nothing in it.

6:16So a month or two go by. And so after about three or four months, I'm like, I forgot about it. Then I get a phone call from Hilton. It goes, hey, my son-in-law, Donnie, is running the company. I'm like, okay, so the rumor is true. You guys bought it out of bankruptcy, blah, blah, blah. But the stores, the actually pharmacies basically are still shut down. But the ice cream factory never stopped making ice cream. So it's the same place since the 70s in El Monte. And he goes, Wayne, we need to basically do what we used to do together with Monster. Because I am the original retailer for Monster in the world.

6:50We did all the events with them, and we still do quite a bit. They says, can we do that with ice cream? I'm like, oh, my God, it'd be totally fun. so we did an event with vans uh video premiere for steve caballero last fall and people are coming in to get their burritos and tacos and at the end of the line there's thrifties ice cream and people are like oh my god and everybody has a story not quite as good as yours giving away but everything starts with it i remember buying it for a nickel a scoop or 10 cents or 25 cents whatever the price was but everybody has that nostalgic memory yeah it was always an affordable treat.

7:26It's an affordable treat. That's the key. And you kept it affordable. Yes. So for me, it's like, well, can we start doing events? So we started taking it to our events and, you know, because after you eat something spicy, there's nothing like eating something icy, you know, sweet and, you know, whatever. And it was amazing. So we've done multiple events as we're speaking right now, we're getting ready to bring them to the summer X games, you know, again, in Sacramento next week where people are going to be, you know, again, eating our tacos and then maybe have some ice cream afterwards. And again, it's just one of those combinations, right?

8:01That you need something sweet after you eat something spicy, right? And it is amazing. And here's the things that I learned because I always thought, and I don't know if when you were working, there's probably about maybe a dozen flavors. Yeah. How many flavors do you think there are? I don't know. Now with Baskin Robbins, you know, 31 flavors. I'm sure there's 100 of flavors. There's 90 flavors, which I've never seen any of them until we did an event, the Strawberry Festival, a couple of weeks ago. And I thought, okay, there's going to bring, I said, just bring strawberry ice cream because it's the Strawberry Festival at Garden Grove.

8:36And there's five flavors. I'm like, what are you talking about? Well, there's strawberry cheesecake. There's strawberry banana. And I'm like, there's strawberry chocolate chip. And I'm like, what is all this? he goes well because we have a lot more that you don't know because it's sold to restaurants so you never see it unless you see the you know the mint chocolate chip the chocolate whatever there's basically the core like dozen flavors and then there's all these other ones that you never see and here i am oh my god so now getting the opportunity to go and tour the plant which we got to go sometime because if you work there i'm telling you the nostalgia associated with thrifties i mean i'm all in i i'm actually wondering if they're taking extra investors i mean what's the story with thrifties you know like i'd be a big advocate and a big partner you know well let me ask those guys because as far as i know they bought it you know straight up there's no financing involved they bought it for cash but the coolest thing is when you're eating ice cream straight out of the assembly line it's more like custard and ice cream because it hasn't frozen yet and it's like somewhere between custard and soft serve and it is delicious you know now everything's like gelato and it's like nine bucks a little tiny scoop and i'm like gosh you know as thrifties were pennies you know and they were they brought the same joy yes you know and actually it was more joy because i would have to walk up a hill and down a hill to get to the thrifties you know and it was like laborious to get that ice cream you know now they're getting driven to get their gelato like come on no struggle and like you said a family of four you know relatively speaking it's almost the same price as one person at a gelato place four people can have ice cream at thrifties a family of four back in my day would be two bucks exactly one little tiny scoop of gelato seven so actually it's a family of 16 that can have and it's really good ice cream it's great ice cream yeah but the one that got me off because we were talking about your favorite flavors right and we'll get to your favorite but i didn't realize that when you go to an asian restaurant in california and you get a scoop of green tea ice cream at the end it's thrifties i had no idea they made that they're like the niagara waters ice cream pretty much they make all the stuff and nobody knows so when you're getting a pie a la mode 90 of the time that vanilla will be from them yeah well that's good to know and now we know everything's thrifties ice cream yeah So what is happening with thrifties?

11:00What is your involvement? We're going to try to help them expand into the stadiums and to the events and more important, bring them into our store. So right now we're in the middle of, you know, finding space. It looks like two of our locations, we're going to test it out because we're going to see, because labor is a big issue for everybody in the restaurant industry. So if we can have that little ding by the ice cream counter, so nobody has to be there full time. But as soon as you hear that ding, that means somebody wants a scoop, just like a thrifties. Yeah. So if we're going to use that model, I think it'll work.

11:31Now, last time we spoke, we mentioned labor on our podcast and how expensive labor has gotten for you, especially post-COVID. Yep. Now, with obviously AI emerging, have you implemented AI strategies to really bring down your labor costs? We haven't yet. We've been talking about it to where we would humanize the experience by using like a tablet or a kiosk or something like that. You still haven't implemented those? We haven't because we haven't found the right software to use it. We know it exists. But again, it's not exactly inexpensive to do this. Yeah. But the idea that, you know, quote unquote, like if somebody came to your business and instead of talking to a machine, you would pop up in an AI slash, you know, augmented reality format.

12:19and you would welcome, hey, good to see you again. Can I help you with whatever, right? So that's the idea. So we know that technology exists. Oh, that's out right now? I haven't seen that. I just see kiosks and you can just like - It exists. But again, it's the expense. So if somebody would spend a little bit more, imagine you swiping your credit card down and my 3D image augmented reality pops out of the screen. Oh, that's going to be pretty cool. Joe, great to see you again. But it's the old adage, which is not that old, but you can call it an old adage because it'll be new now. It's new now, but it'll be old shortly.

12:55AI is costing more than human labor right now. Yes. I mean, that's a reality that we're facing. It's crazy how expensive, and people don't know. And all these guys at the end of the month when they get their bills, they're like, oh, my God. Yeah, I could have hired 20 people for this. Exactly. And I spent 80 grand to replace one person. Because they don't realize that every time you ask a question, the clock's ticking. Yeah. And the thing is, you're making an investment into AI. How much of a strategic investment is Wahoo is putting into AI right now in their current ecosystem? In the current ecosystem, we're using it more for PR because we can create videos, which we already did.

13:33And again, testing it out through my friend Josh, we were able to use two versions of it. One, me and you in real person, and then one creating through AI. And it turns out that, you know, the AI version, people think it's funnier. It's cute because people love cartoons, right? So when you have something that's more user-friendly, people like to share because they think it's cute. Well, there's an AI version of Wing, a cartoon, right? People love it. So we tested it out with a couple of events recently. And the traffic that we generated through the promotion was way more than we anticipated. So in a typical, I call it direct mail piece at 1 % or 2%, we ended up getting close to 10%, which is, again, relatively speaking.

14:21So that's the only aspect you're using it right now. Right now, because it's, again, relatively inexpensive to do it, right? Because it's the same to create a video than it is to create an AI video. Yeah. So again, not a lot of money yet, but the results seem to be better. Now, do you think it'll drive down the cost of like food or labor or the real hard expenses, rents? I mean, anything where it'll really help where the significant bottom line numbers or is this helping with marketing? I think right now marketing is the first thing that we're testing. The next thing would be like say in store instead of having to say three or four cashiers.

14:58If you can get one of them down. And as long as the AI proposition replacing that one person is cost effective, right? So that's where we're at in that moment right now is deciding where is that, you know, break even, right? And everybody's trying it. And when you hear my friends that have other operations, right, other fast food concepts saying that whenever they get somebody that's over 60, you know, in their store and they look like a deer in a headlight going, uh, because they don't know how to order. and there's nobody human to help them. So unless a young person behind them will say, excuse me, let me show you how to run through the menu.

15:36So sometimes the technology is ahead of the population, right? So we just got, again, find that sweet spot where everything meets. Well, I think where the solution is having that augmented AI human to really help them walk through or just take their order. Yeah, just take their order for now. But again, so the idea that you can have 100 % one or the other doesn't work. A combination is where we're going to end up at. But finding the sweet spot of the number of employees to the number of kiosks is where, because remember, those kiosks aren't cheap and they have a tendency to go down. And they have a tendency to break down.

16:12So who's your tech guy on staff to fix that? Yeah, so that's a hint. Who's going to be a six-figure earner? There you go, yeah. So there's always that. A quarter million dollars for your tech guy to fix the kiosk that breaks. Exactly. So there you go. who told me this was a good idea joe you said ai was going to mitigate my cause exactly but even in your industry right at the end of the day we're we're actually using it for for for marketing primarily yeah it would be the the biggest variable yeah uh and then um our investors are using it for like underwriting um we're using it for some of our systems yeah you know we're having various chat bots for customer service yep it's the customer service element but you don't need a hotline for wahoo's no no no not yet yeah because the answers you know questions are relatively hey i got my chicken instead of beef whatever yeah unless yeah yeah actually you do need that for taking phone orders yeah we do and again that's one of the the things that people still like to either order online which they don't need to talk to anybody but they kind of like getting to know the person at the store the managers and the cashiers because it's believe it or not a lot of our regulars feel more comfortable knowing that the person at the other end knows exactly the way they like their food to be done so ai can't really do that yet yeah but once you're kind of in the system it'll remember so that's a good part about ai and there's empathetic ai where they will be able to develop like a emotional uh relevance and understanding of that one person and then they'll be able to be like hey john how are your kids i heard they had a baseball game the other day yeah you know but again it's it's all coming right and it's a matter of fact again but you you want it to be more personal yeah than just a robot you also have humanoid robots kind of coming into market and any any it's getting better yeah those guys are those guys could be a good resource yeah so again cost at the end of the day like oh my god how much money to program that thing that's right that's right now what do you really find the most joy in right now is it building a wahoo's is it coming up with a new concept a new business is it you know california love drop your philanthropy philanthropy projects what is the most joy for you out of all those things you know it's a combination you know it's always fun right now like doing wedding rehearsals how exciting is it for me to be in that league where you know in the old days it would be at a hotel it'd be a full you know five-star catering company and somebody that grew up eating our food goes hey i would love it if you guys did that for me and and i'm like okay you want tacos for your rehearsal or this so like again because it is a monumental like a date you know like significant you know uh happening in your life it's this is not just a graduation party it's a major milestone so for us to be a part of that experience that excites me i mean the other day we did a baby shower right and again we're welcoming somebody to the new world and for us to be a part of that is like, you know, and again, Such a blessing.

19:25These are those moments where I'm like, we're doing baby showers. We're doing weddings. So these things excite me from the food perspective, right? And the fact that next week we have to go to the Summer X Games and we'll be doing food for all the athletes. So again, they could have anything they want at that level. And I happen to be the number one choice to be the food for the athletes. So that excites me. You've always been the number one choice for the X Games. So, yeah, I mean, it's always been fun. Yeah, you've always been. That would be cool if you were the number one choice for FIFA. Hey, but right now I'm literally negotiating about possibly doing something at the U.S.

20:02Open of tennis. That'd be cool. You know what I mean? So these excite me because, again, the brands are like, why not bring something from California all the way to New York? You know, nothing is cooler than, you know, surf culture. Yeah. Right? Surf, beach culture in Southern California. And you have really embodied that surf beach vibe. Yep. And even down to what you're wearing right now. I mean, like, literally, you're just this California. Like, you rock that style. And, you know, when you think surf beach culture, you think Wahoos. You think wing. Yes. You know, you got stickers made of your imagery.

20:39You know, it's pretty crazy. No, it is really fun. And to branch out to, like, we're doing a pickleball tournament this weekend. New sports. Huge. Not very dangerous. Exactly. And again, but it's the whole active lifestyle and people are fashionable and everything and partnering up with old and new brands like K-Swiss, Built Clothing, all these new brands and old brands that are like, hey, why not be a part of the whole experience? So again, you keep hearing experiential marketing and all that. That's what people want. Well, I just want to be a part of that vibe and what's happening. And the same thing, Warped Tours came back last year.

21:18and so in july we have the war tour in long beach to be doing those events again that we used to do 30 years ago i mean how fun is that and again i don't know half of the punk bands that are playing there but the fact that they want us to be there is exciting but they all know you they know us yes they all know you so like right now it's you know if you were to go back if you were 25 years old it's 2026 now knowing what you know about the restaurant business what business would you start right now you know what i do do now is things with your hands okay right i.e if you're in newport beach and you can work on a mercedes a porsche that's pre-computer chip you name your price because guess what you can't just plug in that computer into your car and it goes what is that noise you either know what that noise is or you don't well a 3d printer could kind of do no Oh, yeah.

22:15So if you have an old car that doesn't have a computer chip in it, you have to know what that noise is. And only the guys that work on those cars. So to me, that guy is priceless because most people in Newport have an old Porsche or Mercedes or Bugatti, anything that's old that doesn't have a chip. A computer can't tell you what's wrong with it. You got to know it. And once you have those guys, that is kind of like your surgeon. you don't want to lose them you don't want to let anybody else work on your car because that's the only guy you can trust to fix your car because they know and i the reason i know that is if you have a harley you better have your harley mechanic on speed dial if you have an old bike because i used to have one of those and i had my guy on speed dial because anytime something went wrong my guy could come over and two seconds that he knew exactly what was wrong with it because you have to look at it you can't just you hear it and you know what's wrong but you can't just attach it to something goes oh yeah the cylinder or this you have to know it so mechanics are priceless right now because you know that means their prices are going up oh they're going through the sky they said i some of the some of the guys i've read interviews and i've seen interviews where they're like yeah plumbers are going to cost more oh my god yeah they're going to cost a fortune soon plumbers electrician yeah the trade that we used to make fun of the blue collars right well guess what if you want your tree cut down you just can't call the internet goes hey somebody physically has to come and cut it down somebody has to lay the cement somebody's got to put your pool in your tennis court so i my buddy of mine that builds all the tennis courts he makes a fortune because people goes i'm the best guy and if you want a basketball a pickleball a tennis in your backyard you're gonna have to call me and you're gonna have to pay whatever i charge you pretty much so that's so i would say the trade you can't order on the internet ai is not going to build it for you you you need a physical person there what happens when the humanoid robots take that job i'd be interesting to see if again they can anticipate because there are certain things that they can't they're going to learn but at a certain point again they could be like we we see the threat of that happening like plumbers electricians ac guys all those guys but you know i know that uh the humanoids are trying to figure that out too everybody is but at the end of the day if you can teach the robot to do it you're still going to have a job yeah because the robot can only learn from somebody that's already done it okay right they they don't know what they don't know until you teach it right so trade the trades are right now going to be a hot commodity until humanoids take that over yeah but again which is coming after ai yes uh and then what else oh the car thing too that's true cars you know so anything that we can build food is not that far behind right because you can teach uh you know robot how to cook but at the end of the day who comes up with the recipe and in the whole thing humans still have to anticipate right but again if you can tell a robot what to do it can do it but it takes commands it doesn't have creativity and this is where we still have an advantage the creative part yeah it's crazy because you started in this industry way before ai or robots like you were like before the jetsons were even talking about it yeah but i've seen it i mean i i went to an event where they had um uh like a walk and it looked like a cement mixer but like smaller right but just think of a thing there's a swirl food so you threw the ingredients in and you threw the sauces in and literally a toss the food around.

25:58The problem with that is if you don't throw the ingredients in the right order, right? So it does take a human to understand, and this is the recipe, right? Because you got to throw the protein before the vegetables. So there is a sequence into how the items get in and how the sauces get in. So one little screw up and the food doesn't taste that good, right? now let me ask you um what is like one opportunity that everyone should be in right now i think right now it's so much easier to launch a product on social media right you got an idea it doesn't take a lot of money to test out your idea right so whatever that may be whether it's a physical item a service whatever it is throw it out on the internet but i'm watching shows with little kids doing all kinds of amazing things, whether it's in a farm scenario, whether they're cooking something or they're showing how to build a toy.

26:58Remember all these things. So kids are able to make a lot of money at a relatively young age by just being able to share their ideas, right? So I think the internet opens a lot of doors for a lot of different people. So you don't have to have a college degree. You don't have to have a storefront. So a lot of less overhead to launch a new business. And if it gets some traction, then you could choose to go to a brick and mortar, or you can just use to expand our online presence. So I see a lot of people doing things online that I don't think would ever work in the old brick and mortar world, right?

27:35So whatever that may be. So I see a lot of new companies and how fast they're taking off, because you don't have to go across the country and across the world to look for retailers to sell your idea. You can just do it yourself right so whether it's a service or a product doing it online is way way faster and a lot less risky and expensive i mean the amount you can scale from your the comfort of your own home with no inventory now it would like drop shipping you don't have to buy anything he's just like i'll just use this guy i'll drop ship and just use my address and yeah you know creatively market it's crazy the world of industries and the amount of money that's being generated as a result now.

28:14That's what's causing, I think, a big uproot in inflation just because money is so easy to make now. Oh, it is. Yeah. So there's a lot of great ideas out there. So you can spend a couple of days instead of two to three years to find out it didn't work. Right. So it's much faster to success, much quicker to failure as well. Now we've seen like costs really kind of go up as a result. We've seen inflation. Last time you and I talked, we were in a different economic environment. Way different. Yeah. So how much has inflation hit your menu? It is because the issue for us is people that are on a fixed income, right?

28:49I'm pretty sure that from two years ago to today, if you just did your normal cost of living, right? Let's just use a good number, 10%, right? Which is probably way higher than most, right? So if you were making$30 ,000, whatever, you could assume you're making, what,$36 ,000 today, okay? But the problem with that is gas prices recently went up 50%. So all of a sudden, you still have to get to work. So where do I cut? So the obvious is things that I don't really need. Like I'll just starve myself. I don't need Wahoos. Or I can brown bag it, right? So these are the things. So everybody in my category saw a little 10 % to 20 % decrease in traffic because the fact that people still need to get to work.

29:37but you're going to opt out to brown bag it instead of going out to eat for lunch. Or you might wait an extra two to four weeks to get your hair cut. You might wait two to three more weeks to get your nails done. So everything that you would count on a monthly or six weeks, whatever, everything got pushed out. Well, Supercuts rolled out a monthly membership. I mean, I'm on a monthly membership for my car wash. I'm on a monthly membership for Supercuts. Exactly. So the people that figured out the subscription models, right, where they can still make money, they can count on that. Because you don't feel guilty because you already paid for it.

30:12Yeah, exactly. It's already fixed into my budget. Yeah, it's already in. I'm not like I need a budget, but I still live like I'm on a budget. But the idea is that people that say, well, this is not in my budget anymore. So what is that? Is it a haircut? Think of all the things. Because I can tell you, the women, on the clock, they're still going to get their Botox. They're still going to get the things that they want and they feel they need. Right. But so there's the need and the want. So do I need it or do I want it? Right. So that's where do people on fixed income? Meredith, what do you have to cut off your budget?

30:44First of all, I would like to say I went to trade school for cosmetology. And one thing we learned is women will always pay for their beauty. Like he said, like they always get their hair done. They always get their nails done. Like AI is never taking that job. Very good. And then did inflation hit your lifestyle at all? I get tipped more because my checks are higher. that's good it works for me but i also don't eat at the restaurants i work at so yeah and you could they probably give you free food but you're like i ain't eating this stuff no i always take the free food it's like i don't have to go grocery shopping because i work in restaurants you know good move good move yeah so there's certain things like i said certain trades got affected some didn't right so it all depends on where you are in the spectrum of service now do you think that AI is going to be used as a tool in restaurant, as a restaurateur, or do you think it's going to be an opportunity in the business, or do you think it's going to be more of a threat to the business?

31:41It depends on how you see it, right? Because everything that changes is always like a threat, because am I going to lose my job? Is it going to replace somebody, right? But you got to welcome changes. And how do you embrace it by seeing how it can help your business? So at the end of the day, I don't have the exact answer, because a lot of people are threatened, especially the hourly employees, right? But they got to remember that there is still the need for the human interaction. That's what it's called hospitality. AI can't do that for you. It can, you can teach it to say hello to your customers, but there's a difference between saying hello and that smile on a really, you know, like welcoming somebody back.

32:21So I'm pretty sure none of us humans are going to become friends with an AI person, but we're always going to be friends with our favorite hair salon, our favorite bartender, our favorite waiter, our favorite host, because that smiley, that face, that interaction, the human connection is what we want when we go out. So we go out to places, jokingly, where everybody knows our name, right? It's true. We want to feel welcome. We want to basically go to a friend's house. So you end up frequenting restaurants, businesses that people know you, and they know what you like, they know what you don't like but more important they treat you like a friend i have two things to mention on that like gen z or gen alpha are these new generations who are not so assimilated to that vibe right like we me and you want to go to our friends yes yes me and you want to go feel like we're welcome at home but gen alpha just wants to go to a place and play video games with their friends on roblox virtually yes so they have a virtual or a parasocial yeah relationship with mr beast they don't know mr beast but they're like they know him through content right so like the parasocial element and the virtual uh realities that these kids live in you say that and it's true but is it true for the next generation and how are you like how do we combat that in the restaurant world it's like they just they're gonna order wahoo's through uber eats there's no parasocial relation there's no relationship there they don't know you they don't need a smile from you they just i agree with you they're so they they hate talking to people yeah they hate interacting with humans they're much more comfortable yelling and friendly whatever interacting with uh their phone or a computer whatever that may be right kiosk and you're 100 right but at the end of the day right they're gonna end up having to go to work in a real scenario so once they kind of get out of their ears of just hiding behind the curtain, right?

34:24They're going to realize that they're going to work for humans. As far as I know, your boss is still going to be a human being. Unless they get a job in like a virtual metaverse. Yeah. So in that case, right? They're going to go, why do we need you? Right? Because we're in the metaverse. Everything's going to be machines. So at a certain point, you're going to have to learn those soft skill sets. And that's the one thing this generation doesn't have. they don't know how to deal with conflict because as soon as somebody yells at them they're like oh my god i gotta get out of here you know because they don't know what to do because computers phones they don't talk back to you they don't yell at you yeah right humans do yeah so as soon as they figured out that the majority of people that control this world still is older than them they better learn those soft skills the interaction with humans and that's when they're going to be like oh my god i should have been doing that a long time ago instead of hiding behind my phone so i have a question as a father with we got a kid the same age older kids and you still have young ones like me um how are you teaching those soft skills to your kids who are actively on roadblocks talking to their friends yelling to someone who's never going to yell back it's like i said it's very hard because they don't understand you know because they're like why do i why do i have to listen to this person why do i because in our days it was expected that your coach would literally undress you chew you up and down yeah you do that today with 10 year old oh my god that coach is never gonna he'll be in prison exactly you can't you know whatever you're you know whatever doing to your our kid but my generation goes that's how we talk to the kids you gotta toughen them up i got a football coach for my six-year-old i found him by the grace of god like and he just yeah he treats it's like old school football coach like makes them run lines he calls them they run ladders they you know he yells at them i'm like think where's this he's like a saint exactly this is what the kids need first coach i ever had and when i found him like you know i literally it was politics to keep my kid on the team like oh you know he had a division of my company like he's not going to cut my kid exactly like i gotta keep my kid under that rule yes right because it's uh it's even the coaches are soft now yeah they're super soft because again there's always one parent there that maybe didn't play sports that didn't realize that that's what happens in the practice field yeah it's toughen them up and i i literally across the board you you even touch a kid and oh my god that's grounds to get fired i'm like you gotta be kidding me yeah you know we used to get you know literally picked up by your neck and go do you you understand what we're trying to win here right yeah and we're like okay coach we got it Now it's a pansy generation.

37:10Yes, yes, yes. So they need a little toughened up, you know, a little reality, right? Because nobody's there trying to hurt you. They're just trying to make sure you understand that we're here to win a game, not just have fun, you know? I do suffer with this a lot. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.