Restaurant Online Outrage: A Crisis Playbook — JD Miller

Jeremy Julian: Today's episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies Incorporated. They are the leading automation for cooking oil system out there in the market. If you're not familiar with them, they've been on the show a few times to share some of the unique and cool things they continue to do with oil management. I recently had their newly appointed CEO on the show, and they built an end-to-end closed loop automated oil management system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects. And recycles your cooking oil. It sounds like they do a ton, but it really is a cool system that I think everybody should be considering looking at. They clean up one of the dirtiest and dangerous jobs in your kitchen. So if you haven't heard of them, I would encourage you to check them out. rti-inc.com, or you can call them at 888-779-5314. They've helped over. 50,000 customers of the United States with their cooking oil. So clearly they are doing something right. And now back to the episode. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I like to say each and every time, I know you guys have got lots of choices out on the internet. So thank you for hanging out with us this week. Today is a fun story, and I'm excited to introduce you guys to JD. We just met online like in the last week, but I'm really, really intrigued about his story. And it's kind of fun. we're not going to get more than two minutes into this before we use the word AI, but it's really not in a negative way because I know a lot of people have some negative conversations. negative connotations about kind of what AI is. But JD, why don't you give us a little bit of a background and then we can kind of dig into the topic because it's going to be fun one. I think you got a lot of educational pieces for our audience that I want to dig into. And after I took time to research you, I was like, dude, this guy's got to be on the show because more and more people need to know about what what you've been teaching out there.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Thanks. so I've spent the last 25 years working in tech companies, generally as chief marketing officer, chief sales officer. it's been a variety of different kinds of tech, but in the restaurant space, I spent a number of years working with a company that did smart scheduling for hospitality and retail organizations. that work actually had me on an Obama White House task force where we looked at how do retail workers get scheduled. I'm sure your folks in California have heard about the retail workers' bill of rights and And you know, the San Francisco labor codes there. and then, you know, here in Chicago, I do cooking at two places. the first is that I'm the chair of the board of a homeless services organization. We serve about 150 hot meals, and so I maintain my food sanitation license and and restaurant license in Chicago. And then also, I think the story that you and I connected on is I'm the head chef of the Chicago Bell Garden, which is a fancy name for my little rooftop deck. just off to the side of me, but one that had you know viral internet fame.

Jeremy Julian: I'm gonna take a quick break to talk about one of our sponsors. How many calls did your restaurant miss going into dinner last night? One of our sponsors, Yelp, built something exactly to solve that problem. You know the Yelp for reviews. Host is their new AI phone answering service for restaurants. And the idea is simple your phone should help make you money, not cost you money. The host solution answers every single call, even after hours. No customers have to go to voicemail. No customers have to sit on hold indefinitely. You don't lose the revenue. It also helps you book tables as well as take orders and send them straight to the kitchen. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it supports over 17 languages. It integrates with multiple point of sale solutions, open table, and Yelp's own guest manager. One restaurant saved over 80 hours a week in labor, and another booked 500 tables in a three-month window using this solution. Go to business.yelp.com forward slash RTG to learn more. And now? Back to the opposite. Yeah. Well, I guess why don't you tell that story? Cause it is a kind of a funny one, JD, of like where it came about. And again, I it intrigued me and it made me just think back. And I know we'll we'll we'll dig into some of the other stories that we've heard and seen around the space. but why don't you tell the the story? Where did that your bell garden come from and like tell tell me a little bit more about it?

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Sure. So when I first moved to Chicago, I bought a condo that had a little tiny wooden balcony. It was about 110 square feet. And it overlooked power lines and trash cans in an alley. But I had a little baby Q grill out there, and I could squeeze about four chairs in around the table. And I hung some bells from the roof because I had them from different jobs. And I used to entertain friends with small plates because, you know, I was growing little tiny, tiny pots of herbs and vegetables. And things like that. And so, you know, a few years ago when the vegan meat trend started to come, I saw a package of vegan burgers at my grocery store. I took it home, I grilled one up. But because I always make burgers that are slathered in like grilled onions and cheese and bacon, I put that on this vegan meat patty. And as a joke, I shared with my friends on Instagram, you know, the Chicago Bell Garden is now proudly serving, you know, this particular vendor's version of vegan meat. And I didn't think anything of it because I don't have a huge online following. It got like three comments and four likes. but two days later, my phone rang, and it was a competitor's a competitive vegan meat producer who said, you know, have I reached the Chicago Bell Garden? And can I convince you to start serving our burger on your menu instead? And I thought it was just a little funny like thing that happened on the internet. And you know, I explained like, it's just, you know, it's this little tiny garden and my baby cue grill. but But then the you know, the next month my doorstep started to fill up with all of these unsolicited samples of restaurant products. And so there was a case of vegan cookies, there was five pounds of kimchi, and then 120 pounds of steak rum came from a spice vendor in London. And I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen five pounds of kimchi, but I am still working my way through these like industrial-sized containers. and so it got What happened here? And professionally, I work with sales and marketing teams to talk about online marketing and how do you get things going viral? And I wrote a book about AI and the in the sales process. and it really got me thinking about like what is the thing that got messed up in the algorithm that made all of these vendors think I was a real restaurant. But also, more importantly, to your listeners, you know, it sent me down this path where we see all of these things where the mechanics that run the algorithm get people thinking all sorts sorts of things about your restaurant, sometimes good, sometimes bad. And we really need

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: to have a better way to, you know, be ready to deal with online outrage and and online thoughts when people start talking about our brand online. And so that's really what I'm looking forward to talking to you about today.

Jeremy Julian: Yeah, no, and and I think it's an interesting topic because I think, you know, we we live in this attention attention economy. I I keep hearing that word attention economy because it's hard to get people's attention nowadays. The marketing that you did 20 plus years ago when you started is probably very different than the marketing that has to get done today. So I guess I'd love to have you dissect a little bit of that from more of a I guess just dissect how does something get viral? How does it get into the logarithm to I guess lay a framework for those people that are like, I don't know, man. I just posted something which kind of is a little bit of your story. I I just posted it, but I know that you've taken the time to kind of dig into where did it come from? How did it get to the place that it got to? Because it ultimately wasn't necessarily what your intention was, but you had unintention unintended consequences that turned into some interesting learnings that I got I again, you speak about and you've written about. And I'd love to have our listeners understand that because there is good and there is bad. And then we can dig into kind of how to do it properly and then where to be. cautious as as you and I talked about pre show.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Sure. So, you know, I graduated college in the 90s with a PhD in social networks. and back then, you know, the internet was brand new. I I launched into a dot-com career with it. and so I spent a lot of time really thinking about how do groups of people share information in the offline world and then in the online world. And really I've been s you know doing that research now for twenty-five years almost. And, you know, in the offline world. Information gets passed around through gatekeepers who really have to put their credibility at the forefront. You know, when I give you a recommendation to a great restaurant or, you know, a great person you should hire, you trust that because we have a history of engagement and you say, JD always has good things, and and so you know, that's how information gets passed along. And as soon as I deliver you bad information, I start losing some of that credibility. And pretty soon, you know, I say, you should go hire my neighbor's kid, he's great. And you're like, yeah, every time JD recommends people, it's terrible. And so you discount it and you cut that off right away. Well when we go online, it's actually not a person who's sending those messages to you. Yes, there's a person's name on it, but it's actually the algorithm that runs Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or TikTok or whatever else that's deciding what shows up in your feed. And the algorithm doesn't really have any reputation at stake. It's just figuring out what is the content that is going to make you pause and think. Because at the end of the day, all of those sites are trying to sell you ads on the side of whatever you're reading. And so they're really optimized that they look at every message and they don't ask, is there true? truth in this, they just ask, when I put this on the page, does it make you slow the scroll? Because if you do, there's more ads on the side for a little bit longer.

Jeremy Julian: Uh-huh.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: And so it's optimizing for this like speed and veros speed and velocity, while people are thinking about truth and veracity. And so that's how these things start getting going. And so, you know, some great examples. We think back in about a year ago in 25, Cracker Barrel launched this brand new logo, this new streamlined logo. And all of a sudden, you know, all of the bots on Twitter are talking about, well, we didn't know they were bots at the time. All of a sudden, Twitter just lit up with all of these discussions about this woke new logo and what happened to dear old Uncle Herschel, and we've got to have a boycott. And you know, in two days, news is talking about it, their stock price dropped 14%, and all of a sudden Cracker Barrel says, We're gonna reverse course and we're gonna go back to the old logo. Now, the social media researchers discovered that actually about 50% of those boycott calls came from bots. and it was just completely fabricated and made up. I can buy a bot to do that for a couple hundred dollars. but the algorithm that disseminated it didn't really care about that. It just said when we put this really inflammatory thing about cracker pearl out there, it makes everyone stop and read our ads. And so it's it's fundamentally a different kind of you know mechanism that's happening there.

Jeremy Julian: Well, and I think all too often, I know I know we'll talk more about it as time goes on, but there's how do you know if it's a bot? How do you know if it's real? We we know that the kind of I guess social construct that we have as humans is you need to be able to trust me so we can stay alive so we're not gonna get eaten by a lion. Like we've all evolved evolved

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah, that's right.

Jeremy Julian: to being in that place. So we you know, we we we know that I've gotta trust the guy to my right and the guy to trust the guy to my left. Cause if he's on night watch and we're sleeping out in the prairie, like we can't get killed by the lions. And so we've We've gotten to that place where we start to trust and have those conversations. That doesn't always happen online. And so you get a lot of these things that might not necessarily even have a human behind them. Talking about bots, I guess for those that might not even believe that these bots exist, I guess just give me a little bit of a how can you go buy them for a couple hundred dollars? Is it this dark web? I know the answer, but there's a lot of listeners out there that are like, I I have listeners that are like, Really? Facebook is listening to me to give me ads. I'm like, come on, really? Do you really think they

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah.

Jeremy Julian: that that they're giving this to you for free? And I've had people say this to me, or they'll, They'll like, they see my shopping ha, you know, habits on on Amazon and they they they send me more of that stuff. I'm like, Yes, these things happen every day. But I guess why don't you just boil it down? What are what is a bot? Define a bot? How do you get a bot? Where does that come from? You know, kind of what do they even do and how can you how can you turn them on if if you, you know, so that you can even understand where they might come from? Cause there's a lot of listeners out there that are probably like, dude, I don't know about this GD guy. He's talking about these robots that that don't exist out there. And

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Ha ha

Jeremy Julian: and I just I make burgers and I make vegan burgers out of my patio. Leave me alone.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah. Well so, you know, probably ten years ago, someone online realized that, you know, the vanity metrics of like how many people clicked like on your on your video or on your post was something really important. And so the tech people went off and sort of monetized a business on this. And, you know, I personally have, you know, a couple of different email addresses. I've got one I used for professional life. I've got some I use for personal life. I have a couple of email addresses I've set up just to, you know, sign up for one-time purchases that, you know, I don't want to be on those mailing lists. I never want to see that anymore. And a bunch tech folks realized like, we can have a whole farm of Tons and tons of email addresses that we all control. And I can go create a million Instagram accounts for it or a million Facebook accounts for it. And have these, you know, that we call them sock puppet accounts. But all of these little like fake accounts that can go log into these sites and do things. And then there's a little bit of code, and now AI has made this much better, that, you know, Jeremy, if you write something and you say I want a hundred people to like it on Facebook, I can go unleash a hundred of my little sock puppet accounts and say, go. Go give it a thumbs up or

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: go comment on it and say that was a great video. And so there's been this whole little niche industry, and you know, you can kind of search for like buy YouTube likes or buy Facebook likes, and you can find different providers that will do this for very, very cheap. So, you know, I can get a thousand people to view my YouTube video for like nine dollars, but there are enough people that are looking for these kind of metrics. Now We can have an argument about is it important or not. Certainly, none of those people who liked your video are ever gonna walk into your restaurant. They're never gonna, you know, recommend it to anyone else. And so it's kind of a lot of meaninglessness there. But part of the reason that people will buy it is they like that vanity metric that says I

Jeremy Julian: Uh-huh.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: posted something and 10,000 people liked it. And increasingly, the algorithm that you know is trying to decide when I serve my next ad to you, what's the content that's getting the most eyeballs on it? It sometimes weighs in, here's a post that has 10,000 views, and it got 10,000 views in the first 20 minutes. That's getting some more traction and velocity behind it than something else. And so a lot of that is kind of behind the algorithms that make things like the cracker barrel, you know, boycott gain momentum, even if there aren't a lot of people who have that, you know, deep, deep-seated feeling about the logo.

Jeremy Julian: Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. Cause again, I think you're gonna get the people out there going, All right. So how does this apply to restaurants? So, GD, let's talk a little bit more about kind of why did you want to come on and talk to the restaurant audience about this? You and I, you know, again traded emails back and forth about another story. Cracker Barrel is probably the most widely recognized, and the amount of text messages, emails, phone calls I got during that cracker barrel two or three days was pretty insane to your point. I heard about it. I actually know some people at Cracker Barley, know former Cracker Barrel employees and Talking with them about it. It's like, yes, this kind of whole thing went crazy. To your point, come to find out only half or maybe even less of what was actually being said about it online was from real people. And it's hard to, hard to separate that. Give me another story where this, I guess, hurt a brand and why you thought it was important for people to understand the power. Because there is positive out there, but there's a lot of opportunity for some, for some negative pushback on it if you don't understand it.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah. Well, and so I wanted to talk about this because recently we just saw another big kind of online restaurant outrage with a small brunch spot in Atlanta, like 30 tables, and it's toast on Linux. and they're they're a black-owned business, and they had someone in the restaurant you know, came and had brunch and said, This is great, and grabbed the co-owner, Tamara Young, and asked, you know, could we post a picture? Can we take a picture together? I loved your brunch, and can we post it online? And they did. And that's of course what you would expect any restaurant owner or hospitality person to do with one of their one of their guests. It's like, let's go do that. Well. She didn't know this was a gubernatorial candidate candidate in Georgia who has a lot of controversy behind him and maybe doesn't have the same the same politics or opinions that the restaurant owner does or her other clients. but all of a sudden the same sorts of algorithms that decide what gets put in your feed and pushed all the cracker barrel stuff out started to push this photo out. So, you know, Governor Canada takes a picture with his black-owned business. A couple of people say, hey isn't this at odds with your mission as a restaurant? And then all of a sudden the bot starts to see, or the the algorithms that run the website starts to see like this is a real moment that's causing people to slow the scroll. Now in this case, it was, you know, discussions from real people, probably not a lot of people, but enough people that had something to say that got enough more people to like slow down the scroll, take a look at the picture, do a little bit of research, and the algorithms go wild. And so now all of a sudden Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everything says, anyone who writes about this, we're gonna blast this farther and farther and farther because it's an opportunity for us to sell more ads. And so, you know, I really wanted to talk with you about you know, what can your listeners do? Because Most of them are not running Cracker Barrel. Most

Jeremy Julian: Yeah.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: of them probably are running, you know, 30 top locations and can get caught up in this sort of like online outrage or wave of you know stuff happening that has real implications for their business when they haven't thought about it. And so, you know, I've had a career in you know, sales and marketing and want to talk a little bit about like what can we do with crisis communication to get ready to, you know, get our own restaurants ready to one be protected against it. And two, respond if if we suddenly are put in that in that place in the future.

Jeremy Julian: Well, and and I want to talk first about kind of posting in general. JD, we've had lots of people come on and go, You've got to be out there. You gotta be out there because your your front door is no longer your website. Your front door is your social sites. So to this lady that, you know, posted about this gubernatorial candidate, you would want that, right? You would want to be able to be with your guests, be with your team members doing these interviews. But to your point, there's to opportunity. So for those that are finally at a place where, like, hey, I'm gonna start posting. What are some things that they should be thinking about before they start posting? Just to kind of because again, we live in our own world. We live in our own worldview. We're they had she had no idea. You know, this owner had no idea that this was somebody that was going to be controversial and was going to cause this kind of uproar and hurt or help the business. And again, it can go both ways. But

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Sure.

Jeremy Julian: as people are at that place, where do you have them start to look? Because many of our listeners are like, dude, I don't even have enough time to order chicken for tomorrow's dinner.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Ha ha ha.

Jeremy Julian: nonetheless go post on social media because they are running a 30 top restaurant or they've got three or four restaurants and they're struggling to get, you know, out there online, but also know that it's necessary to be part of that. so I guess how do you get some discernment in their in their brains that says, hey, this is something safe that we know we need to be able to do kind of on an ongoing basis if you're at that place. They've listened to a previous guest that's like, hey, you got to be out there on social. You got to be out there talking to your guests. You got to be out there living in the Yelp reviews or the Google reviews, because that's another place that we've seen virality where, you know, they post a scaling review and then they come back and there's this big argument. And I've seen that as well. So I guess I'd love for you to talk through a little bit of that. you know, for those that are kind of on the fence and like, hey, I'm starting figure it out. But before we jump into when it starts to go sideways, what do you do then?

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Sure. well I do think that every business, you know, should have some sort of online, you know online presence. You don't have to be on all of them, but you know, a lot of restaurants, very visual. You know, Instagram is a place that we might want to see lots of pictures of, you know, beautiful meals and, you know, moments of hospitality and loveliness. And I think about that as an extension of the store or as an extension of your living room. And so in the same way when I come into your 30-top place and I see you as the owner and you greet me in a nice way and we have nice banter, those are the kinds of conversations that we should be having. Having online. They don't need to be huge, but they should be genuine and authentic. And so I think there are a lot of easy ways that you can kind of dip your toe in water with. you know, some photos of your meals or maybe a little video of how did you make this, you know, dish, or, you know, conversations with your servers or your s or your staff or or your your guests and things like that. And I think part of the reason it's important is not that you're gonna have some post that's gonna go viral and 900 people are gonna come book you know brunch tomorrow. But it is sort of building up this online presence that when something pops up that's a little bit, you know, off the mark, it's not the only Message online about you. You know, it's like the you know, the solution to poison is kind of dilution and lots of water. I think I learned that in my my sanitation classes. that, you know, if if I have one misstep in a sea of, you know, I post it every day for two years, 600 posts, we're in a better place already. But then how do we do it? Like, you know, we wanna say the same things we would say to someone in our restaurant. We wanna say them authentically. you wanna make it someone's job. and then you can also use technology to kind of assist you down that path. So if I wanna post every day, I don't actually have to walk into the restaurant with my phone every day and take a picture. Personally, you know, I I have a whole lot of things, you know, queued up. There are lot of inexpensive technology tools, social media management tools, that I can sit down for half an hour, I can write, you know, ten posts about ten pictures, and then just hand them to a tool and say, now just kind of drip these stories out for the next two weeks and I don't have to think about it again. And then if you've got, you know, millennials or, you know, any of those folks in your restaurant, make sure you trust their voice, you know, make sure that you trust what they're gonna say. but they love to do it, so you You know, you can give it to someone to do as, you know, sidework one day instead of rolling the silverware and, you know, take some pictures and and get some things queued up. It's a great way to get started.

Jeremy Julian: Yeah, no, and I I love the idea. I I've got a friend, I don't know if you've come across Sean Walsh, but he's a friend in the restaurant industry and he's talked about you being the story. It's not about I mean, it is about your food, but it really is about the story behind the food. And you gotta talk about those things. You gotta talk about where did the dish come from and what are those types of things, because that typically is safe. You know, when I say typically is safe, you know, as long as logarithm doesn't do what it's supposed you know, what it does from time to time, where it's

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: That's right.

Jeremy Julian: every once in a while you'll get the, you know. I don't know, PETA standing at your front door because you're you're you've got something on your menu that they're not real happy about. And those things can happen, but in general, they're typically pretty safe that says what would you talk to your guest about? What would you talk to your staff member about? Be authentic, but you don't also necessarily need to let somebody behind the curtain to everything that's going on in the restaurant because sometimes that's that's a that's something

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: No, that's right.

Jeremy Julian: that you probably wouldn't let somebody go into, you know, into the basement at your home. You're gonna let them go into the living room where you've cleaned it up and and made sure that it's in good working order, right?

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Right. But you're gonna find your audience there. You know, I was actually I was just listening to a a Chicago restaurateur talking about their menu is all about you know, they have this thing about food waste, and they're like, We have made a whole menu out of The low cost cuts that can be served really, really well. So our Frito Misto, it's only prawn heads, it's not the rest of it. It's only the skate cheeks, it's not the right, you know, all of this kind of stuff. Now, is there a huge audience for that? I don't know. But the the people in Chicago who really care about that kind of sustainability are definitely gonna resonate with all of that. And that's gonna be their online community that's really gonna participate. You know, they're gonna come into the restaurant and have those conversations and join. those males online they're going to be drawn to that content and they'll become their own kind of echo chamber chamber that's reinforcing what the restaurant is all about in the first place. So they become kind of symbiotic for each other.

Jeremy Julian: Love that. Now let's flip over to the, I guess, the negative side of it, JD. You're going to potentially have the circumstance where something's going to come up. I guess I know you've got a little bit of a blueprint on what do people need to do once they start to see things going south? You know, I I we at the technology restaurant technology guys and and on my day job, we talk about if you're gonna have a credit card breach, we have a playbook that says, go do this. Go do these 10 things because you know, you know, you've done it before, you know how to make sure that you mitigate the risk. So I'd love for you to talk through if you get into those circumstances, what are the risks? And I mean, what not even what are the risks? What would the playbook be had you been running marketing for this this brunch spot in Medlan or had you been running marketing for Cracker Bell, what would you have done in kind of, you know, I guess order or just in in an order of importance to let our listeners know how to address it if in fact you get stuck in these circumstances?

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah, great question. And you know, I'm gonna put out a a a downloadable toolkit for too. So I'll send the link, it'll take you to my website, JD Miller PhD, and we'll have a downloadable toolkit as well. But actually, just like getting ready for a credit card breach, the best thing you can do is actually have a plan for it beforehand. So hopefully if you're listening today and you're not, you know, if you're in the middle of some firestorm now and you Googled and you found this podcast, I mean keep listening, we'll have some ideas, but hopefully we're we're you know talking about it. little bit earlier. And the first is to really understand like who are the players in your restaurant that are going to be consultant when that moment comes. Because I think a lot of times you get in the heat of the moment of a crisis and it's like, well, now what do I do? And you're running this way and you're running this way and all of that. Like, let's figure out who is our crisis management team before we have one.

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: so it's probably the owner, the GM, you know, you've maybe you know someone in your network who's some kind of marketing PR media person that should be consulted, but figure out kind of who that board of advisors is that you're gonna convene to deal with the crisis. And then you know, make sure you've got their phone numbers, their contact information, and you have them ready to go. If you're not in the middle of a crisis right now, some other great pre-work is to start a list of your advocates. Who are the regulars who come to your restaurant who are going to say great things about you all the time? Who are your staff members that have been with you for a long time, have great stories? You know, who are your friends in the neighborhood that you know like you and are always going to be willing to have something good to say? And start keeping a list of those, you know, five or ten folks with their email addresses and phone numbers too, so that if the moment comes, You know you've got a whole set of people that you can turn to. Now, once we've done that pre-work, you know, you've just had a big crisis, someone said something terrible about you online, what are you gonna do right in this moment? The first thing we want to do is press pause. Nothing is so urgent that you need to send off an email response or you know a competing tweet in the next 30 seconds. And actually, when we think about those algorithms that are looking for engagement and looking for the things that make people people react. Is if you're gonna jump into the fray right away with that negative comment, you're feeding the fire. So put in a cooling off period. At least two hours, ideally 24 hours if you can help it, to just like a lot of it is just gonna go away. And then for the things that aren't, use that cooling off period to convene that board of advisors and say, here's the thing, and let's talk about how do we want to respond. And you know, let's plan our response. it's great if you can have a single point of contact, you know,

Jeremy Julian: Yes.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: the one person who's gonna own, you know, the media engagement, if the news is calling, if the reporters are at your front door, you know, who is the person who's gonna step in front of the cameras so that it's not just any old random person. And same thing for the online response. And then you want to start, you know, bringing your good stuff to the table. And so when you respond, you know, talk to the advisor about what the message is. It's great if you can respond in a way that's not online and make your primary response be somewhere else. So is there a trusted, you know, local news anchor that you would talk to about it? Is there an email that you would send to your own, you know, the real life customers card in your store all the time? Because they're the people. People whose voices you opinions you really care about, not the masses online, but the people who are really in that store. You know, so what are you gonna put on your email list? You know, what are you gonna send to the news? you know, is there a mailer you're gonna do? And then, you know, online you can start referring to all of those kinds of things. And then, you know, as you're sending those messages out, go tap on that trusted, you know, group of people who have good things to say. So you can tell the reporter, it's not only me, you want to talk to some customers? Here's three. customers go get them a phone call. Here's a little video that I recorded, you know, that I can drop on my, you know, Facebook page now, put my email of, you know, the diner who was here last week who loved to mail or said we were inclusive or whatever the thing was. And then, you know, hold on because these things do ultimately pass.

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm. Well, and one of the other things that I guess I would encourage our listeners, and we just did this just recently at our own businesses part of our employee handbook is here are the only people that are allowed to speak to the media. So when you're onboarding

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: That's right.

Jeremy Julian: people, it's like, hey, JD, you're not allowed to talk to the media. And the media includes the TikToker, the the YouTube star that came in about where we source our beef or just whatever it is that's going on, because then again, you're controlling the message, and the more you can control that message and be available to understand it, the easier it is to do, you know, I guess to control what goes out there. Is that is that something you would also encourage? I guess we just did it recently and I I would love for our listeners to think about that as well.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Absolutely. Because I think a lot of times we see these these things go viral when it's someone who is not the official spokesperson. You know, maybe it is the temporary server that you just hired yesterday who frankly is wrong about where you source your beef or doesn't know, you know, the larger picture. And so yeah, if you can train people that, you know, whenever these questions come, you know, refer them to the GM, refer them to the owner, refer them to whoever it is, and and have that single voice. And then finally, you know, I'm always reminded that restaurants, you know, we call it the hospitality industry because

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: we're actually, I don't think, at the end of the day, it's about selling burgers or fries or whatever. It actually is about selling

Jeremy Julian: Creating an experience.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: hospitality and experience. Exactly

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: right. And so You know, the same way if you showed up at my front doorstep, you know, how would you want to be treated? How would you want to be engaged with? You know, these media firestorms are more opportunities to show our true selves, to show our true hospitality, create those one-to-one human relationships, and then those are the things that are ultimately going to carry the day and you know get you in a better place.

Jeremy Julian: I I appreciate you sharing that because I think it's really, really critical. Let me twist it just a little bit because there's more and more people. I it got into my feed recently of kind of these TikTokers that are calling restaurants and trying to force their way in, get them to pay them for you know, for these reviews.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah.

Jeremy Julian: And and and again, this is a risk that we have. It kind of goes down the same line. Oftentimes these people that are out there have a bigger brand, have a bigger following than many other restaurants that are out there. Part of why you said it early on, you gotta make sure you're creating content that's good and positive and nurturing for them so that the only thing you have out there is not, let me argue with you about what you didn't see or didn't happen. But how do how would you recommend our listeners out there, the 30 top, address those people that are out there trying to get, you know, trying to to force their way in whether it's to get paid or not get paid, to be able to tweak the logarithm for what they would say is your benefit. you're gonna give me a free meal, you're gonna pay me all this money and I'm gonna drive all this business to you. I guess I would love for your insights because you live in this world because people all of our listeners that own restaurants are getting these phone calls day in and day out. And I don't know that I've seen a guide out there that says, here's how you deal with it.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah. Well, I think it begins with a conversation to really understand who they are as a person. And if we can drive the conversation past the metrics and get back to the human connection, that's a great place to start. Because remember that first conversation we had about bots. I could be a TikToker who has half a million followers. I can be a talk TikToker who has half a million thumbs-up likes. And I may have purchased them all from the bot farm. But really,

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: I don't have the influence that I'm claiming to. So if you're just looking at the follower count, you know, buyer beware. I think the second thing is, you know, if those 500,000 followers are authentic, great connections, it still may not translate to revenue for your restaurant if there's a fundamental mismatch with who

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: you are and who their audience is. And so, you know, if I'm that Chicago seafood place that's you know serving the prawn heads, if you're a TikToker who has 500,000 followers who don't care about that, even if I pay you whatever the money is to post or to come in and you know eat the risotto and say it was great, it's not gonna resonate authentically with your audience. And so it's not gonna it's not gonna translate over. and so I'm really a you know I think there's a a great play in the world for authentic advocacy. And you know, someone who genuinely likes your restaurant and genuinely has a following of people who resonate with you and your values and what you're all about. You know, maybe you do want to pay them or give them a comp to do it. but hopefully they're they're promoting something that they authentically like anyway, and and would appreciate if if the money wasn't on the table.

Jeremy Julian: Awesome. Well, I appreciate that because again, I I know that whether it's my own feed and things that I've been seeing, but also I talk with restaurant tours and they're like, well, how do I deal with this? And so I appreciate the insights. So JD, you've kind of given us, you know, how it comes about. Did you ever figure out how you ended up getting fifty pounds of kimchi dropped off at your door? What got turned

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Ha ha ha

Jeremy Julian: on within within your feed that that that caused you to go viral unexpectedly?

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah, well, so this is this is again where sort of that AI is coming into play. and it's part of my work as just a salesperson in general. You know, a lot of companies are trying to automate the sales process. And the hardest part about sales is prospecting and figuring out, you know, who should I be calling? And so there are a lot of tools now that say, you know, JD, instead of you having to call all of the restaurants in Chicago and figuring out what they're all about. we'll go scroll the internet and we'll scrape it and we'll we'll create a directory of, you know, what are all the new restaurants of that that have been opened in the last you know month and we'll package it up for you. And that seems to have been what happened with this, you know, vegan cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger that I that I created was,

Jeremy Julian: Yeah, ch vegan bacon cheeseburger.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: you know, at the right moment when their technology was listening, I posted something that said, you know, Chicago Bell Garden restaurant, now the new person proudly serving vegan burgers right in the moment when vegan was a big thing. And so it was a signal that a bot picked up and you know threw my name, address, and email, you know, into a database. And then I think what went wrong for the salespeople is the people who sold, you know, those plant-based burgers, the people who sold the kimchi and everything else didn't have a real salesperson, you know, sit down and look at my website. No, if you went to ChicagoBellgarden.com, which now we've built a whole kind of parody site out of it, you would see it's just me and four little chairs and a little, you know, baby cute girl. You would see this burger is full of bacon and cheese and on it. It was definitely not vegan. But instead, the salesperson kind of left their humanity at the door and just said, let's let the bots run. you found 10 new restaurants in Chicago. Great. Just go send the samples and off it goes. And you know, hopefully something's gonna happen for them. And kind of like a restaurant trying to buy a TikTok review that they don't know who the followers are. You know, that salesperson wasted whatever money to ship me 120 pounds of stake rum. you know, stacked up here. I'm never gonna place another order. I'm I am never gonna need to order

Jeremy Julian: Yeah, you're giving out Christmas gifts for years of your hundred twenty pounds of steak rob for people.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: any more stake rum. We've got it under control. so you know, it's it's really kind of coming back to, you know, AI is, you know, and I wrote a book about AI for sales too, but AI is great at automating some tasks, but we always have to keep kind of the human judgment that whether it's something we're reading, definitely when it's something we're making a business decision on, you know, we also have to put a real human in the loop and say, take a look, does it pass the smell test? You know, is this is this something that I would do in the real world? And if so, you know, then continue on.

Jeremy Julian: Yeah, and I think that that's just a reminder for all of those people because I these same restaurants that are getting these these other calls from these people are also getting marketing companies calling and saying, automate all your social. Be really careful. There is a lot to be learned from some of this AI, and you've got to make sure it resonates with your guests. It gotta make sure it resonates with you as a brand. It's gotta be authentic because if it's not, people are gonna see through the slop. I've got three teenagers living at home and a and a 10 year old, and all of them to a T look at something and can immediately recognize whether it's AI slop or not. And they turn it off the minute that they do. And so back to back to kind of your your commentary on how AI is going to continue to impact what it is that we do. You've just got to make sure that it's real and it's authentic because there's lots of fakes out there that are that are going to hurt. But I know a lot of our restaurant owners out there are getting these phone calls saying, I'll do all your social media posts. I'll do all of these videos and you just got to be careful that it's real, like you said earlier.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Yeah. Well, and I'll tell you another story. So here in Chicago, there's a there's a small business that does accounting. And, you know, he is clearly trying to find businesses that have like five employees and, you know, sell the accounting services to them. And so, you know, now that I've been talking a lot about this TED Talk in the Chicago Belle Garden restaurant, I'm getting like a little resurgence of, you know, being a very small business somewhere in Chicago. And all of a sudden I noticed every day on LinkedIn I had a post from this guy that was like kind of insulting and always ended with, and you've gotta get your accounting in order. As I started to look at, you know, all the other things he was posting out on LinkedIn. And there was like someone who announced, you know, after five years, I finally, you know, got it together and launched my yoga studio. And his post says, like, nothing says I'm a procrastinator, like waiting three years to get your thing off the ground. But now that you're there, you need some accounting services. And so finally I was like, I've got to just meet this guy. So I I picked up the phone. And I called him and I'm like, do you sell accounting services to small businesses? And was like, Yes, I do. And I was like, Great, I I'm gonna know, like, you've been engaging with me online. It it's clearly not you, right? And he's like, no, I bought this really cool, you know, technology and it's searching for people and it's writing posts for me, and I don't touch it at all. And I'm like, I'm glad it's getting you efficiency. But You need to put a human back in the loop. It should go find all the people. Go find the yoga studio. Go find the Chicago Bellgarden. It's really we don't have any accounting to be done, but you know, go find that little yoga studio. But every morning have it queue up for you. Here's the yoga studio, here's what I'm saying. And you be the one to press send because you know the bot will drift and it probably started with something that was really cool and funny, but over time it, you know, it adapted this personality that really isn't representing you. Very well. And so, same thing with all of these things. You know, outsource your social media to someone, but make sure you have a checkpoint in there to.

Jeremy Julian: Yeah. No, and I appreciate that insight because I think it's all too often. And then you'll get to people like, we're never gonna do any of that stuff, which is fine if that's what you decide to do. I think that there's some opportunities for some efficiencies there to make it better. JD, thank you for writing the book. Thank you for for the TED talk. Thank you for reaching out because I think it's I think it's it's one of those things that restaurants don't think about until it's too late. And so the fact that you're out there kind of proselytizing that says, Hey, we've got to be thinking about these things before they become a problem. One from awareness perspective, two giving people a playbook that says, here's what you do when this does happen. Is there anything that we missed in today's conversation that you would want our listeners to walk away with, other than go buy the book, go download the ebook, go go download, download the playbook,

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: Ha

Jeremy Julian: go go watch the TED Talk. But what else would you have people do that maybe we missed in today's dialogue?

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: You know, I would say don't be afraid and just keep trying. You know, it is hard to be a small business owner. but

Jeremy Julian: Mm-hmm.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: I also think that you know the restaurants and bars that your listeners are running are really important to the communities that we're in. And they are essential gathering places where groups of people come together and make human connections. So don't be afraid to you know step out there, get online, let your community be a little bit online too. because you know you'll learn your lessons, but it is important. but as long as you're kind of coming back to those authentic roots, you're gonna be in a great place. I'm gonna drop on my website, I'll drop a little toolkit about getting ready for PR. I have a little place with podcasts, you'll find those podcasts, and I'll have a toolkit there for you. And yeah, go listen to TED Talk. It's JD Miller's Reclaiming Our Humanity in the Age of the Algorithm.

Jeremy Julian: Yeah, no, it was it was very, very, very insightful. And I'm not saying that 'cause you're on when I listen, I was sitting at the same desk on Saturday morning. I'm like, I'm gonna listen to this thing. And I'm like, There's some things that after you say it, I'm like, Yes, he's so right and I just missed it, but I love how how you were able to discern that. So thank you for putting that together as well.

JD Miller | Author | TEDx: I appreciate it. And next time you're in Chicago, let's meet in person. There's a great restaurant right outside my window. it's the Chicago Bellegarden. They've got some really good vegan burgers.

Jeremy Julian: I love it. I love it. JD, thank you so much for your time to our listeners, guys, as I like to say. I know you guys got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out. If you have not already done so, please subscribe and make it a great day.