Ep 60: Partnership, Precision, and the Future of Off-Premise Dining with Phil Crawford
Welcome to a brand-new episode of Clicks 2 Bricks. Today we are joined by Phil Crawford, the Chief Technology Officer for CKE Restaurants. Our conversation centers around building a modern restaurant tech stack, touching on the need for integrations and what Phil looks for in great technology partners before diving into location data management and the importance of precise, long data in the era of ordering ahead and off-premise dining. Join us to hear his thoughts on leadership and relationship-building, owning your mistakes, and prioritizing partnership. You’ll also hear about his opinion on the role of roadmaps in a long sales cycle, before we touch on location data management, workflow, and systems. Phil believes in making mistakes in order to learn and shares wisdom from his own story today. Thanks for tuning in.
Key Points From This Episode:
A summary of today’s conversation with Phil Crawford, Chief Technology Officer for CKE Restaurants.
Life in ‘Nash Vegas’, and Phil’s love for Star Wars reflected in his office decor.
Phil’s experience of the Olo Beyond 4 Conference where he first met Rob.
His thoughts on when it is worth it to create your own online ordering instead of using Olo.
How Phil works with Chad Crawford, his chief brand officer, to build marketing tools.
Their primary goal to elevate the guest experience at CKE.
Why he advocates for returning all vendor calls: you never know what they are pitching!
The life-or-death importance of choosing to evolve.
Owning your mistakes and prioritizing partnership.
Exit clauses for lack of implementation and the importance of building them in.
Tech stack integrations and the importance of integrations and open architecture.
The role of roadmaps despite having such a long sales cycle.
Consolidation and simplifying the tech stack.
Location data management, workflow, and systems.
Why all data you capture must be intrinsically valuable and right.
Making mistakes in order to learn.
His goal to raise up leaders, and to be on a constant road to improvement.
His recommended guest: Joe Tenczar.
Tweetables:
“I think, sometimes the small guys may have the greatest thing in the world that you might learn from and vice versa.” — Phil Crawford [0:17:11]
“The number one thing is partnership, right? We're both going to stumble. Somebody is going to stumble. I'm going to make a mistake. You’re going to make a mistake. Owning the mistake. That's all I ask.” — Phil Crawford [0:20:22]
“That's the philosophy we have. It's really finding those companies that are the best of breed in what they do best.” — Phil Crawford [0:28:03]
“ Luckily, I have an amazing leadership team that I really bond with now. I am probably your atypical CTO. I probably don't fit the model. It's also, have fun, play hard, work hard.” — Phil Crawford [0:41:04]