“Back to Basics” with Rachael Nemeth
Back to Basics podcast cuts through the noise to focus on what matters in hospitality. Join Rachael Nemeth, CEO of Opus Training, as she talks with service industry leaders who are shaping today's workforce.
“Back to Basics” with Rachael Nemeth
EP8: Scaling the Brand, Not Just the Business
In this episode, we sit down with Anthony Fassio, Chief Retail and Operations Officer at Verve Coffee Roasters—a 14-unit third-wave coffee brand based in Santa Cruz, known for its relationships with growers, surf-town roots, and quality-first approach.
Anthony’s specialty is taking craft brands from cult-favorite to national name without losing their “soul”. From Shake Shack to Salt & Straw to now Verve, he’s led the operational growth of beloved brands by building the systems and team development strategies they need to scale.
He shares:
- How Verve is preparing for East Coast expansion
- Why “the checklist” isn’t always just a checklist
- How his early days growing up on a farm shaped his leadership style.
From launching task forces to rolling out training platforms, Anthony offers a practical, people-first approach to operations that’s built to last.
This conversation is a deep dive into what it takes to grow a values-driven business—from identifying sacred elements of a brand to making change stick across regions. Anthony opens up about building trust with founders, what most leaders get wrong during early scale, and why being “number two” is where he thrives most.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Anthony Fassio and Verve Coffee Roasters
02:31 Understanding Third Wave Coffee
06:45 Assessing Brand Culture and Team Dynamics
09:34 Balancing Tradition and Evolution in Brand Systems
12:32 The Importance of Task Forces in Brand Development
14:39 Indicators of Readiness for Brand Expansion
16:44 Early Wins in Communication Strategies
19:50 Learning from Misjudgments in Operations
23:08 The Shift in Training Leadership Roles
24:54 The Evolution of Content Creation
25:52 Finding Your Niche in the Food Industry
27:15 The Role of a Number Two
28:35 Building Trust in Teams
31:01 Identifying Builders vs. Optimizers
32:46 The Importance of Passion in Hiring
34:43 Curiosity as a Key Indicator
36:34 Training as a Priority for Growth
40:43 Lightning Round: Quickfire Questions
About Us
Opus is the hospitality training platform purpose-built for the frontline. Train 100% of your team in 101 languages on the job to quickly get them up the productivity curve. With full visibility across your workforce, you get the frontline business intelligence needed to drive your business.
Have an idea or experience you'd like to share? Keep the conversation going with us on LinkedIn!
Hi everyone, I'm Rachel Nemith, CEO of Opus Training. Welcome back to Back to Basics. And today I'm really, really stoked to talk with Anthony Fascio, Chief Retail and Operations Officer at Verve Coffee Roasters. What makes Anthony so unique is his specialty in taking these craft brands from, you know, a local favorite to a national phenomenon. He was at Sultanstraw, Shake Shack, now Verve. And he's really built the operational foundation that allows these beloved brands to scale without really losing what makes them special. So what also makes today special is that I actually m met Anthony Anthony, God, I should have counted the years, but like maybe not. Over again. Maybe we don't need to when we worked at Hot Bread Kitchen. And even then you could really see that spark of Anthony really being able to thoughtfully cross his passion for sustainable systems and his support for people and product quality. So today I'm really excited to dig in. Um, Anthony, welcome. I'm so excited to see you.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. It's so great to see you. Thanks for having me. And maybe we don't need to count the years. I mean, it's so fun to be able to like see your career and what you've done for our industry from starting at Hotbread Kitchen. And then I remember when I was at Shake Shack, you're doing some translation for Gremmercy Tavern. And that was just like at the time, like revolutionary to think, hey, our training materials might need to be in different languages because there's different people, right? And and now here we are. I just I love it.
Rachael Nemeth:Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think like that's the thread that always brings us back together is food and people. So maybe we can start with tell us a little bit more about you and quick intro of yourself. And then what is Verve Coffee Roasters?
SPEAKER_00:My career has been joining brands that are at the established state, but ready to really scale and prepare for kind of that next step. And a big element of that is building an infrastructure and a communication flow and um succession planning and team development. And a huge element that has been a crux has been the training. Up until Opus, like we're using, you know, Google Sheets, handwritten, or just like knowledge from from uh someone that's getting passed down from one to another. It's really hard to scale a brand that way. And some of the other, some of the other platforms are functional, but it just, you know, they weren't clicking in for our industry. Um, I joined Verve a couple months ago, and same thing, right? Like we've got uh about 300 employees, we've got 14 cafes in the US, we have six cafes in Japan, and plus our whole wholesale and kind of direct-to-consumer component of the business. And here we are trying to scale, and it's just really hard to get everybody on the same page. So super excited for this moment for Verve Coffee. I'm currently in our headquarters, which is in uh Santa Cruz, California, where it started. Our co-founders, Colby and Brian, started it uh 17 years ago just as a way of like, hey, you know, third wave coffee is coming, and they think they thought we could do it a little bit better and a little unique, and started to serve uh a little uh surf town in Santa Cruz with this small little roastery, and Ryan would roast and Colby would would run the run the cafe, and it just slowly awfully grew up until up until today. And it's a very well-established brand, and um it's really exciting to just be be a part of it at this stage.
Rachael Nemeth:Can you um explain what third wave coffee means for those of us who are not that savvy on coffee?
SPEAKER_00:I think okay, first wave's like folgers, right? If you think about the that were once upon a time, and then second wave is like Starbucks and you know, this notion of like, hey, you can come, we'll make a drink to order, uh, we'll pull the espresso, uh, we'll create a cafe space that's really just focused on coffee, and you can come in and kind of hang out. And then third wave coffee took that and said, hey, maybe there's some thoughtfulness in the way that we procure and buy green coffee. There's a way that we can build relationships with the producers and growers across the world. You know, most of the most of the coffee grows in South America and Africa and and uh parts of Asia. And so it's a complex supply chain and it's a complex sort of just world. And Verve from the very beginning has been buying their own green coffee. They've got relationships with producers going. In fact, our buyer right now is in Honduras, sort of going through some cuppings and seeing what's what's coming, coming on right now. And Colby, our co-founder, now CEO, he said that he was kind of educating me that there are some producers we've been working with for six, seven, eight years. And that's a major impact for for those farmers and growers just to have some stability and to also know where their coffee's going.
Rachael Nemeth:Well, and you have such a deep connection just to the story of Verve. I I want to get into some of the other brands that you've worked with, but I can just hear it in your voice. Like the story is so amazing. I'm curious, when you're coming into a brand, what is the first thing that you're assessing in order to understand like the lay of the land?
SPEAKER_00:And the first thing I do is just spend time with the team and visit everyone, meet everyone in person, understand who they are. Uh, and in the in those visits, you start to hear some feedback or some questions or the excitement. What really drives the team? Where's the passion coming from? And that's important for me to just get a foundation to understand everything. And so uh when I was first, when I first started with Verve, I went and visited all our US cafes and I literally looked in every single cabinet. And I was like, sound like you. I know, right? You know me and you get that. But I was like, what's in here? What's in this drawer? Why is this here? Oh, this is interesting. Like, oh, surprise. I didn't think that was gonna be in here. Um, and it's just a way to like fully understand. Uh, and so then I went through our training, like our onboarding barista training and spent time with our trainers to understand like, how are we educating and bringing people into the team? And that gives me a foundational knowledge to say, like, okay, now I can at least relate. I'm not an expert, right? But I can at least relate and have some understanding. And what happens also through that by spending time with the team, you really start to absorb the culture. And all the brands I've worked for have been phenomenal, phenomenal brands that are really industry leading in their categories. And the and the core of that has always been culture, a connection to the to the brand, a connection to the mission, and a connection to each other. And going through that kind of process of onboarding really sort of gets you indoctrinated with that culture, which is super important.
Rachael Nemeth:So then, you know, we're talking about Verve, but I also, you know, I know that Salt and Straw and Shake Shack, they have such they have these really amazing brands with really special cultures. So as you're thinking about building systems for growth, how do you make the decision between like what is sacred and what needs to evolve? Like what's the divide? Is it always just culture is here and everything else can change?
SPEAKER_00:No, no, because it's interesting, you know, there are some things that seem maybe superficial that have a big impact on culture. You know, like a particular checklist. Maybe you think like, oh, that's you know, whatever, it's a checklist. Like, let's change that. But there might be some ways of working or habits or or elements of a checklist that can touch the culture. And so it's really important to understand that. And, you know, I I spend a lot of time with the team, like I said, and I also spend a lot of time with the with the founders or co-founders to just understand their vision of what this company is and what it means. And then from there you can start to assess of like, okay, cool. The way that we count our cash at the cash register is straightforward, right? Like there's no, there's, we're not touching culture there. Like, let's do it, let's make sure we have controls in it. That's all good. But maybe the way we set up our merchandise wall is very different because that tells a story. That's an immediate thing that a guest sees when they walk into the space. And different brands have different ways of sort of expressing themselves through the merch wall.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
Rachael Nemeth:It's interesting that you're I have a question about prioritization in a minute, but but there's something here around like when you think about like what's sacred versus what needs to evolve, there's this error that I think some leaders make where just because they're new, there's like theater involved. So, like, okay, well, that needs to be digitized, that leaderboard up there, or that that checklist on the wall. And and I think you're bringing up something really important. Sometimes it's working the way that it is because it's so deeply tied in. And so, like, if you were to get rid of the you know, ring me piece of paper on the wall, people might throw a fit because it's a part of what they do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Absolutely absolutely. And you know, the the number one thing I always ask the team when I'm getting to know them and I'm spending time with them is tell me what to do. Like, you know, I'm here to help you. That's the reason why why my role exists. And so what do you need from me? Like, what do I what can I do? And they'll tell you, they'll definitely tell you and have and have opinions and thoughts. And that helps me initially understand, okay, these things, they're working. We don't need to touch them, right? Like maybe it worked in a different way for a different brand, but here it works this way. Here's the here's the areas that okay, let's solve these. And then I try to just bring them along and have them involved in either task force or just like feedback, ask people to pilot things is really important. Think one because I mean, there's two things, like superficially, it's change management, right? And if you don't manage the change, like chaos can happen.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But the more important thing, and what drives me is involving the team and doing pilots and having task force like gets us to the real answer, gets us to something that actually is gonna work and is gonna stick. And I found when you do that, things that get implemented are way more successful.
Rachael Nemeth:The idea of a task force, like, is that something that every brand has responded to in the same way? Like, is this something that Shake Shack had always done, but maybe Verb hasn't? To me, it's obvious because I'm in tech and we do this all the time, but in food, it's kind of a different way of thinking.
SPEAKER_00:I think there's always a positive, positive response. You know, I kind of learned the idea of uh task force or just like you know, cross-functional teams working on things from Shake Shack. They Shake Shack from the beginning was very good at saying, cool, let's do this. You know, we may know something from the HQ, but you know, we need our we need our line cooks in these conversations, right? We need our openers, we need our dishwashers, the shop managers, the regional managers. So I really learned the impact of that, and that definitely, you know, goes right to the ethos of Shake Shack and and Danny Meyer and Randy Garudi, who was the CEO at the time, of just like, you know, we're all in this together, right? So like let's go figure it out and let let's let's do it. Um, the other other brands I've worked for had not done it, and so they got created and got presented and they were very well received. I think it's important to make sure you're involving a representative from everywhere. So if it's multi-regional, having somebody from each region, if uh there are multiple roles, then making sure that there's someone that is representing everybody.
Rachael Nemeth:I I love that as sort of like the zero point one and and like starting to pilot and starting to test and and the idea of like bringing the frontline in, bringing managers in, and I'm sure there's a you're creating a sense of ownership. Assuming that that works, I'm curious from you. Like, I I really have been thinking about this concept with you around like you're the zero-to-one guy, like you're the one who like bravely takes it on. So, how do you what are like the three things that tell you that the foundation has been built and that a brand is ready to expand?
SPEAKER_00:So, first it's understanding what we need to do and then building out a timeline so that you can present this timeline to the cafes or to the front of house and back of house so they understand like here's this here's the breadth and the scope of what is about to happen. And then getting a temp check on that. Does this feel right? Does this feel like we can do these things in this amount of time? And can we space, is there enough space between sort of big milestone? So that that initial temp check is number one. The other one is I like task management. Like, you know, I I am I'm 50% Swiss and 50% Italian. And so the Swiss really kicks in and it's like, where's that task? Show me the list, right? And so mapping that out and then just like project managing it, right? So you've got the temp check from the team, and then the project management is the tempo of like, are we on track? Are we going? Are we moving moving forward? And then the other big thing is, you know, it's pretty fundamental, but trying to find a uh a big win pretty early in the process. Yeah, it just really helps. Yeah. It just it sets the it sets the tone, it feels really good when you're winning. And to kind of have that set up first, it gets people and myself like energized, like, okay, cool, like we can do this. Let's go, let's go forward.
Rachael Nemeth:So can you get a give an example either from from Verve or from a previous company of like what that early win was that kind of got the the wheels moving?
SPEAKER_00:I think a good example is like uh oftentimes I found that communicating efficiently through the kind of retail multi-unit concept is always kind of a crux. And there's oftentimes all departments will send communications to the field. And it's a way of you know, helping the field, I suppose, right? So HR says, like, hey, don't forget the handbook to sign this. Marketing sends something of like, here's this new poster, make sure you print it and put it up, and operations is doing their thing and so forth and so on. And that is it's really overwhelming. It's really overwhelming to be in the field, and at any second, you're gonna get some kind of notification that says, Can you do this? You know, operators are very responsive, right? We live in a world of like constant moving, going, and like things pop up all the time. And so the natural state of the cafe teams is like, oh, I got let me do this right now. Yeah, let me let me just jump on it right now. And it's super stressful. And so, one thing that has been really successful of saying, like, okay, we're gonna actually funnel all communications into one person on the on the on the operations team, and on a weekly basis, we're gonna publish the updates. So this way, then the the cafes know, okay, cool, on Mondays, I'm gonna get a list. It's gonna be sort of our focus. This is what we're gonna do this week, and I'm gonna just now I have it in one place, it doesn't get lost in communications, and I know it's coming on Monday. So the rest of the week, I just move forward and start working through working through that list. And it's amazing the shift that happens from just like mental presence and capacity of cafe managers or just the cafe team because now they're not like constantly checking, right? Checking their notifications. So that's like that's a good, like easy win. And it also starts to build the communication infrastructure to say, like, here's how we're gonna flow information um on a systematic way.
Rachael Nemeth:You know, it's such an easy, simple win. But when you've been in the weeds for 17 years, I'm sure that like you lose the immediate value of a quick change like that. So yeah, I get it. And and I still see large organizations that haven't done that yet from like a communication standpoint.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
Rachael Nemeth:So I want to kind of think about the opposite here. Not everything can have gone right when you're you're kind of getting things stood up. So, what's been your your biggest learning from a time when you got the basics wrong early on? Was it like a misjudgment on your part or a misassessment? Did a priority change? Like what made the the wheels stop on something?
SPEAKER_00:Definitely a misjudgment on my side. And the the biggest thing was not talking to everybody in the cafe, from like line cook to baristas, dishwashers, back in house, front of house. Early in my career, I really just was working with the regional managers or even the cafe managers and receiving the feedback, hearing what they want, and sort of taking that as like, okay, cool, let's go. Let's march forward. And then just a big old whiff of like, oh, hold on, the shift leads think something totally different, right? The back of house, like, no, no, no, no. They see that they see a whole different part of the business and they have different priorities. And actually, if we make those decisions, it has a really big impact on them. So, one example was we're we were working with receiving inventory, receiving orders and how to put it away. And it was kind of chaotic, and our inventory was like kind of messy. And so when we took inventory, it was not very accurate. It was hard to manage our pars, and so we would run out of things and it just or we'd over-order. And so we're like, okay, we're gonna implement this inventory management system, we're gonna organize the shelves in this way, we're gonna, you know, do all these things. Looked great, had a beautiful little diagram of like this goes here and that goes there. And you know, we were all feeling really good. Uh, and then the back of the house was like, what are you doing? Like, do you understand that on on uh Fridays for the big weekends, we get double the volume. And where am I supposed to put this? And it just was it was a simple thing, but it I totally get it. It was very stressful for them on Fridays as we're going into the the high high season of the week to like try to adhere to this and put stuff away. And so what ended up coming out of that was let's increase Mondays and Wednesdays order to keep a little bit more par. So it flattened out the orders because Mondays was like a big replenishment, Wednesday was like super light, and Friday was this enormous order, and it was just like this emotional like roller coaster that the team was going on. And so we flattened it out, and then it just became kind of systematic, right? Like generally, this is the size of the order I get, and I can manage it, and now I know how to manage it in this amount of time and where everything goes, and like cool.
Rachael Nemeth:So, is that what you think that other leaders get wrong who are kind of in your position? Is they're not spending time with the team on the ground, or is there something else that can cause it? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think so. And again, I learned this for early early in my career from Shake Shack of understanding that my role and everyone else on the support team, that that's not where the business is, right? The business is in the shacks, in the cafes, uh, or with our wholesale, wholesale customers. And that's where we need to be. That's where the information needs to come from. That's what we need to drive, and not some like, you know, initiatives that sound good and sound right, you know, in the in the support, in the support office.
Rachael Nemeth:You know, there's been this massive shift over the last 10 years where training leaders are increasingly reporting to COOs. Sometimes we're even seeing them report to CEOs, very different than the early aughts when everyone was reporting to HR. And I wonder if some of that is a product of exactly what you're describing, which is a lot of businesses are expanding, the way that food is the food business is growing. And so we are seeing a need to actually build foundations for scalability, which means that high-level operators are coming in and they're spending time training on the things that people are doing and they're seeing the errors and they're they're starting to like thread the needle between this is a training problem, which we didn't see in 2000. A lot of it was like, this is a compliance problem.
SPEAKER_00:Totally, totally. Yeah. I mean, I'm such an advocate that training needs to live within operations, right? Because that's what we're training. And yeah, there are there are compliance, sexual harassment or food, food handlers, others that come from the HR team and and should be, you know, managed from that, from uh from an employee compliance, for sure. But the that's a small percentage, yeah, important percentage, but it's a small percentage of what we're actually trying to train. And I have found that when training lives in operations way more effective than when it's in HR. Absolutely.
Rachael Nemeth:Is it because it's touching more use cases though? Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, for sure. I think it's sad, but also the content is coming from like the source, right?
Rachael Nemeth:It's not through like the can with the string.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I haven't thought about that. Exactly. It's not, it's not that. Yeah.
Rachael Nemeth:Yeah. The that actually makes a ton of sense. I actually think this is like a good transition into coming back to you, you know, at what point in your career did you realize that this phase of company was really your specialty? Was there a moment where you were like, oh, this is where I thrive? Because this was a lot of what you did at Hot Bread Kitchen, too. Like you've you've been doing this for a long time, helping businesses really build their basement. Um, but has that always been the case for you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I I would love to have this like amazing story when the light bulb went off and I was like, here I am. But I have had these moments, you know, I grew up on a farm. My older brother and I are fourth generation, and it was just, you know, it's really rooted in me uh uh in regards to food and farming and just the whole industry. And my first half of career was on that side in farming and in big manufacturing and logistics warehouse. And I've had moments when I think like, oh, maybe I'll step outside food and beverage, and it lasts probably 20 seconds. And I'm like, what it's in your, it's like in your it's in your blood, right? It is who you are. And so I've been very with with great conviction that the food and beverage industry is what I know and also what I love. I'm just I'm super passionate about it. I try to just, you know, do things that I think are valuable and making the world a little bit of a better place, and that I really enjoy. Um, to spend that. And then, you know, it's kind of organically happened where I've been in brands at this stage, but I did have a moment, you know, growing up as a farmer, kind of an entrepreneur. It was kind of always there of, oh, maybe one day you start your own business. And I had the moment when I really realized that's not me. Like I am, I am not the I'm not the like originator. Like I can't come up with a business idea, but I'm a really great number two. I'm really great at taking a vision and then realizing it, building it, making it come to life, scaling it. And that's been a lot of fun. And I'm really happy that I learned that because I could have cashed out my 401k and been very unsuccessful.
Rachael Nemeth:Well, I love that perspective too, because the stories you you hear are either the foundation founder stories or you hear the I just want I wanted to be a part of the team. And you don't hear the number two piece. And it's like it's not a co-founder, it's not a business partner, but it's this like essential person who and we have those people at Opus too. I can name three of them right now, who like took the leap early on and said, Oh, I like what you're doing, I trust this, I see your vision. We're not there yet, but like we'll get there. Yeah, so it takes a lot of trusts for you, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it takes, you know, founders tend to be amazing founders, visionaries. They're they're changing the industries, they're changing their categories, but they're not all founders are great, you know, sort of operators or just like business sort of like leaders or scalers. And I have had amazing founders that I've worked with where I've been able to learn the skill of let's kind of what do what do you say, like like meld our minds or like merge our minds together, right? So I can think like you, because that's helped me be successful of like, okay, here's the vision. I get it, I feel it. And now here's how we can make it come to life for our customers or for our team or the product. And that's always like kind of a fun thing to like kind of get into. I love the challenge and the creativity of it.
Rachael Nemeth:Well, yeah, and it's easy when you're a founder. I think speaking as one, like it's easy to get lost in the sauce. Where that's why you build a team that you trust that that it's not like my head's in the clouds all day, but I'm thinking about 30 years from now sometimes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
Rachael Nemeth:How are we gonna change the world? And you have to be like wound back down.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes, that's so true. And if you if you operate that way, then it's not good, right? Because like today, we don't have today to get to 30 years, right? And so it's it is a different mindset and it's really important. It's not a skill I have. I don't have the the skill of like, let me, you know, tell you what life's gonna look like in 30 years, right? I'll tell you how to get there, but like, you know, you need to tell me where we're going.
Rachael Nemeth:So I think with that in mind, when you're hiring for, you know, thinking about people development, et cetera, at this stage, you really need builders versus just optimizers, right? And so how do you identify people who really thrive at like building something new versus the one who excel at those systems once they're they're already mature? Like what's you what's the spark you're looking for?
SPEAKER_00:Uh just like passion. You know, like it in most of the industries I've worked in, like you can train somebody how to do it, right? Like how to make the ice cream or how to talk about it, or or you know, how to how to um pull espresso in a cafe. Like a lot of that is trainable, but passion just like passion wins, right? You know, I went to culinary school in Paris, and the chefs would always say, if you are mad, or if you're upset, or if your heart is broken, they're French, right? So they're if your heart is broken, then your food's not good. You have to show up with like love and care and like passion. And it's definitely true. I've seen it in my own food, I've seen it with others where it's like that wasn't good. It's not just food, it's the same in work, right? Like if people are passionate about it, then it just it brings it to a much better, much better space. And so I look for people that are passionate about the brand, about the product, about our customers and guests, and that always wins.
Rachael Nemeth:Which I understand. I it's kind of like creativity too, but like, and it's sort of like you know, Danny Meyer, it's like the EQ, all that. But like, how do you interview for that? Like, how do you spot it early? Or is it just luck at a certain stage?
SPEAKER_00:There's that, I mean, interview, yeah. I mean, there's an element of luck for sure, but um, I think just listening to your gut, the intuition, right? And so then the processes definitely need to ask you some technical questions, right? Like if I'm asking you to step into a role, like say cafe manager, have you ever led a team before? Do you know how to write a schedule? Did you understand? Have you ever worked with a POS system? Like those are some technical things that, you know, do need to get checked off. But the majority of my time with people is honestly, it's just chatting. It's chatting around the the core of the passion for the brand and the product. There, I don't, I don't as subscribe to the idea of hey, your coworkers should be people you want to hang out with. Yeah, like I've seen that, and it I don't think it works very well because then it just creates this environment of uh not just friendship, but it creates an environment of lack of accountability. And so I love it, and I want our team to be friends, and a lot of my friends or my coworkers or ex-coworkers, but I don't believe that you should hire based off of that. I think you should believe, and so that's why I'm really focusing on like finding that passion around the brand and the product. And that's just conversations, right? And coffee. It's like, do you like coffee? How do you drink your coffee? You know, what's your experience with it? And it just naturally will start to come out and you'll start to, you'll start to find some threads to core values and the mission of the brand to say, like, okay, that's connecting there. That's great, that looks good. Or that, like, you know, we're not really, I'm not really seeing a lot of the connections there. And so maybe it's not a right fit.
Rachael Nemeth:The idea of just like teasing out the conversation piece, it reminds me of something I was thinking about the other day. A friend were hiring some folks at Opus, and um, a friend of mine who runs another tech company was hiring for this this pretty big leadership role. And I said, How did you know that this was the right person? And he said, I named three locations in New York, and I think it was like the Met, the library, or something, you know, Mets or like Yankee Stadium or whatever. And he said, and I asked them to choose where they wanted to meet. And we spent time together. And I loved that idea at the time. This was years ago. And just the other day, I was thinking, like, wouldn't it be interesting? Like, you pick the place, and and I wanted to be a place that's meaningful to you. Yeah, and you know, so at like very It could be like I want to meet, I want to meet at a coffee shop that's not ours right now. And we can talk about, you know, love that idea. Yeah, and it sparks that kind of meaningful beyond just the tactical stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
Rachael Nemeth:There's something really interesting about how do you tease out the human component of someone when like it can kind of be a pretty rigid process.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for sure. I think like a a way that passion ends up getting uh sort of translated is through curiosity. Right. If somebody is curious about the product and the brand and the company and they're really like, tell me more, I want to learn, I want to understand, then that's that's a big signal to me of like, okay, you've got the right mindset. It's it's that it's that phase of the interview when you say, like, do you have any questions for me? And people are like, nope, pretty good. It's like usually, okay. I don't know.
Rachael Nemeth:So maybe sort of to to bring this all back around, and then we're gonna do the lightning round.
SPEAKER_00:Cool, okay, fine.
Rachael Nemeth:Um there's just this tie back to training. And I what I think what was really, you know, in Verve, you very quickly identified that training was something that needed to be fixed very quickly. So what are kind of the outside of how you find out that that's the problem to solve? You see, like there's paper, X, Y, Z, but as an operator and as a leader, how do you identify that training is the priority over all these other things that you know are going on?
SPEAKER_00:Needs to be happening, yeah, absolutely. I think you know, there there's there's a sort of like a logical state where if you have multiple regions, then 100% you gotta get on an LMS. Like it just no matter how tightly you control that Google document, it's not gonna get, it's not gonna be controlled. And so that's a big signal of like, oh, we've got multiple regions, we've got to get unified. And then if there's any element of we're gonna scale, and you need an LMS to be able to have that structure. Uh, when I when I came here, there's been a lot of conversations around LMS. And we have a VP of training who's phenomenal and has been with the brand for a long time, and it's been one of her long like dreams and wishes. And it uh so it was pretty easy for me to say, like, okay, this has got to be a high priority. And then we have multiple regions. And then I went through training and I'm like, okay, a lot of this is just like word of mouth. So let's, you know, let's work on that. So I think those are the big things that I look look at.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, the biggest sort of hurdle has always been the cost to an LMS, right? Because like we've done it, it's free. A Google Doc is free, easy peasy. But I'll tell you, like, once you get an LMS in place, the efficiencies you have with just consistency across team member to team member, across the company, and then the efficiency of the actual training. LMS does not, in my view, remove the in-person training. It doesn't remove certifying on the floor, hip-to-hip training, shadowing is all like very important. But there's a lot of initial knowledge that can be very quickly learned and learned in a better way than if I'm just telling you. Let me tell you the story of verb. Here's a 20-minute story, and you you you heard nothing, right? Like, so like those kind of things, those found out those sort of foundational pieces can get learned very quickly. And then the shadow shifts go much quicker. The knowledge, the knowledge retention is much greater. And so I have always been able to underwrite the LMS cost by showing here's how training alone is going to be reduced in terms of like number of hours, labor hours.
Rachael Nemeth:Yeah, which is so hard when you're not on an LMS, it's so hard to measure that because it is open of mouth and and and institutional. Well said. I and I obviously I'm biased, but like the blended learning experience I think is so important. I wanna to finish off today, Anthony, with our lightning round. You have to answer every question in less than two words. Okay and try it's only four questions, but try your best not to justify it. So you can't explain it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Okay.
Rachael Nemeth:Um, all right. Number one, what was your first job ever?
SPEAKER_00:Working on the farm, stubborn.
Rachael Nemeth:Uh second, what is a food trend that you're completely over?
SPEAKER_00:Smoked.
Rachael Nemeth:What?
SPEAKER_00:You know, like they'll bring you the plate and they open the thing and the smoke comes out.
Rachael Nemeth:That's a new one. Yeah. I've heard uh fried chicken lately. Lots of fried chicken. What's the last great book you read or podcast you listened to? Butter? Okay. This is good. This is why we do one word. And what are you going? What are you going back to basics on? In other words, like what are you trying to relearn or or understand at this stage in your life?
SPEAKER_00:Gardening.
Rachael Nemeth:Me too.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yeah. Show your tips. Show your tips. I had a garden like early on, and then like life happens, and I'm like, you know what? I just love it.
Rachael Nemeth:Nothing. Well, I'm in New York, so I don't have plants, but there's nothing I love better than repotting plants. I just like it in Zendas.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, totally. Absolutely. I love it.
