“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
EP14: The Real Work of Turning Smashburger’s CEO Vision Into Rapid Execution
"If you want people to move fast, you have to make it easy for them to do the right thing."
Kelly Saunders, SVP of Restaurant Experience at Smashburger, has spent 14 years transforming how one of America’s fastest-growing burger brands trains, communicates, and executes. In this episode, Kelly sits down with Rachael Nemeth (Opus Training CEO) to unpack how she migrated 200 locations to Opus in just 60 days, what it really takes to win franchisee buy-in, and how training became the engine behind Smashburger’s turnaround.
Kelly gets candid about building credibility through socialized decision-making, using pilots to build trust, and why the fastest rollouts start months before the kickoff. She also breaks down the “Summer of Smash” LTO—how pre-learning helped drive flawless LTO execution and why Opus enabled them to finally deploy a cascade training model.
Whether you lead five restaurants or five hundred, Kelly’s blend of empathy, structure, and data-driven leadership offers a real-time playbook for transforming field execution through learning.
Key Takeaways
→ Speed Through Socialization: The 200-store Opus launch succeeded because months of stakeholder buy-in came first.
→ Franchise Trust = Momentum: Pilots, transparency, and clear WIFM (“What’s In It for Me”) built confidence system-wide.
→ The Watering Hole Effect: Designing Opus as a one-stop source for learning, comms, and recognition increased engagement across operators.
→ Train Before You Teach: Pre-learning flipped the script on LTO rollouts, driving faster adoption and stronger execution.
→ Compliance ≠ Learning: Brand standards are the true measure of operational compliance—and the key to consistency.
Perfect For
Restaurant operators managing both corporate and franchise units, L&D leaders driving engagement at scale, training pros planning platform migrations, and executives navigating the balance between technology, culture, and execution.
About Kelly Saunders
Senior Vice President of Restaurant Experience at Smashburger. A 14-year veteran of the brand with roots at Quiznos and Applebee’s, Kelly is known for bridging learning, operations, and technology to deliver measurable field impact. She leads Smashburger’s Restaurant Experience Team—spanning L&D, internal communications, and operations services—on a mission to make training a true business lever.
Time Stamp Chapters
• 00:00 Intro + Kelly’s path to Restaurant Experience leadership
• 01:33 Restructuring training under operations — a new model
• 04:34 Decision-making that builds trust and speed
• 08:41 When an LMS goes stale (and how to spot it)
• 09:29 Translation as a game-changer for frontline teams
• 12:15 How Smashburger migrated 200 locations in 60 days
• 14:47 Pilots, proof points, and franchisee buy-in
• 18:31 Choosing what new features to roll out (and when)
• 21:40 Inside the Summer of Smash LTO — training at speed
• 24:34 Why pre-learning beat live training for execution
• 28:35 Mandating vs recommending training in a franchise model
• 31:41 Next up: Re-launching internal communications in Opus
• 35:15 How marketing + training stay in sync
• 36:29 Lessons from 200 stores: Why LMS is never a silver bullet
• 37:51 Lightning Round — first job, hometown, and human connection
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!
Welcome everyone to Back to Basics. I am sitting down here with uh Kelly Saunders. She's the SVP of restaurant experience at Smash Burger. Kelly brings decades of restaurant training experience from Quisnos University to Applebee's. Now she's leading Smash Burger's transformation. And what I'm really excited about is what makes this conversation especially timely is that Kelly understands the real paradox of modern turnarounds. She knows when to go slow on strategies so that you can move fast on execution. And I think that's a tough balance to strike. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna walk through two real examples from this past year at Smash. First, how she migrated 200 locations to Opus in 60 days. Yes, you heard that, right? Um, and second, how that foundation actually enabled Summer of Smash, the recent limited time offer LTO. So she's right in the thick of their turnaround. So everything we're gonna discuss today is is really happening in real time. Kelly, welcome to Back to Basics.
Kelly Saunders:Thanks, Rachel. It's just a pleasure to be here with you. Love conversations with you. So let's uh let's dig in.
Rachael Nemeth:Let's dig in. Kelly, to kick things off, SVP of restaurant experience. What a title. Can you just outline what that means?
Speaker:What are your areas of responsibility at Smashburger? Let me first say thank you for that amazing intro. That was humbling. Um but I have to say that the journey that I've had with Smash Burger over the last 14 years has not been alone. And everything that we're gonna talk about today, I have some amazing team members that have walked this journey with me. So uh I can't take all that credit because they they definitely were in the trenches and have been a big part of everything we're gonna talk about today. So shout out to you, team. Um I've been in this new role for six months, and how it came about is really um a leadership change at the beginning of the year for the organization, but then also stepping back and looking at you know, how do we help support our restaurants holistically? In the past, we had all of our learning sitting underneath the HR function. And so what we did is we took the field learning aspect of LD, moved that into what's called now the restaurant experience team. And in addition to that team, we have field learning, we have internal communications, operations platform, which is operationaling operationalizing everything start to end for the four walls of the restaurant, um, and then operations services, such as restaurant systems, how to order your shoes for crews, all of those, those, and those programs that you really need to make sure are turnkey for your operators, um, are now all sitting underneath my department. So it's been really fun bringing this together and creating some great synergies in how we can support our operators, both franchise and corporate.
Rachael Nemeth:And I think this is a really smart construction of a role too. We're seeing this a lot in the industry right now where training is really taking on the experience component of the operations. It makes a ton of sense. I don't know why we didn't do it 10, 20 years ago, but here we are. But I think, you know, and we'll get into it today that, you know, your oversight of comms, of training, of field teams, et cetera, I think is is driving a lot of that success, just being able to thread the needle between all of those initiatives. Before we dig in, one thing I really wanted to talk about with you specifically, and I want to focus on Kelly for a minute before we talk about Smash Burger, is who you are as a leader. And I think one of the more um revealing questions is really around making decisions and how you make decisions. Everyone is different. Uh, I know I personally tend to be very quiet in my decision making until I sort of reach a pivotal moment where I need to bring others in. So that can be a pretty long process, but I'd love to hear from you. I I want to understand just your decision-making process. What does that look like? Uh and I think before you'd mentioned that it's completely changed from the last from two years ago. So, what was it two years ago and what is it now?
Speaker:What I realize about myself in my decision making is that I had to start thinking about decisions, not just in a silo of it was because I was really in my early years of my career focused on I'm getting, I'm in this position. It's my responsibility to find the solution, bring the solution to the team, put a bow on it, and and it's gonna work, right? And so I spent too much time really with that approach. And so what I've learned over the last, I would say, two to three years, and a lot of this learning comes from working with some amazing leaders that I, you know, you take all the little nuggets that you see them doing, and you say, I like I like that, I'm gonna put that in this place. So, how I've evolved my decision-making process is focusing on three things. One, always start with the end in mind. Before you even try to start putting a decision framework together, have that, have that vision, create that idea of what is it you want this decision to do? How what is the output? How do you want to make a change with this decision? You got to get clear there first before you can start taking that action. And so I think, Rachel, that's where you and I are very similar in that I have to reflect. I have to think a lot about what is this decision that is in front of me that I need to work and act on, um, and what's the output. When I'm confident in that, that's when I move into really making sure that I've got a good needs assessment completed and understanding what is the business need. And that can then trickle down to what do the people need, what does each department need, what does the the cost impact need to look like. Defining all of those needs very clearly before moving on. And through that process, I understand what are my risks, what are the costs, and what are the potential pivots or landmines that you have to avoid in your decision-making process. When I go through all that discovery, which, like you said, could take time, but it's important reflective time because once I have all that discovery done, then I can then start socializing. That's where you're building trust with all of the stakeholders and all of the individuals that are invested in the decisions that you're making, is when you socialize and you talk to them about here's what I think we're gonna do, here's how it's going to affect you, how do you see that? And do you see it the way I see it? And what inputs do you have for me to take into consideration? And when you socialize your decisions before you act on them, you're gonna gain more credibility. So socializing is a big, big aspect of where I invest my time.
Rachael Nemeth:I love this because I agree. I feel like there's a big misrepresentation of decision making, especially in a role that that has so many fingers on things, that you are supposed to come with a solution. You know, that's the the TED talk. It's like present your solution. And the truth is that a lot of what you're saying is like you should come with some with conviction, but you're really coming with a half-baked solution in order to collaborate what the final outcome is. And I think that's why you you've been so successful in all of your roles, especially with Smash Burger. You had this big initiative. You migrated all 200 plus locations to Opus in 60 days. Uh, might be a world record. We don't know yet, but but that's incredibly fast. And I think it would be misleading to say that there wasn't some significant work that happened up front. You spent really years socializing and building proofs of concept before implementation. You had done this before. What did that look like when it came to OPIS? And how did you build confidence with all of your stakeholders so that when you did hit the day one mark, you knew that day 60, we would be live with everyone?
Speaker:Yeah. What we learned coming out of the pandemic is that our LMS, while we maintained it, um, had become stale from an engagement standpoint. It wasn't meeting the needs of making sure that we're able to get our managers and our franchise owners and operators really highly engaged and wanting to use it. It became a complicated. It took five clicks to get to anything we needed them to get to.
Rachael Nemeth:And so people are still measuring in clicks, which is gone.
Speaker:Totally, totally. Go ask two clicks and you just won't achieve anything. Yeah. So um what what my big aha coming out of the pandemic was uh it's time for a change. We we definitely need to upgrade our user interface. We need to it, we need to upgrade the experience. I was actually inspired, Rachel, by you at a conference that I attended in in the early 2024 mark, where you you had a presentation on how translation can be a game changer for frontline workers. And that presentation really started me to think. And when I started thinking about how translation is such an important element of getting information and meeting people where they're at in our restaurants, um, that coupled with the assessment that I made in our current LMS was we've got to find ways to make it easier on our operators to just get learning accomplished in the moment so they can go do the job and not create all these barriers of how many courses they have to complete and how long it's gonna take them to complete it. Because what what I also noticed coming out of the pandemic is we relied so heavily on our LMS, it gave us training labor bloat. Like we had so many courses where we had so much time spent or sit time that we were we weren't putting our workers where they needed to be, which is taking care of our gas.
Rachael Nemeth:What was really the breaking point? What was the moment where it couldn't have just been me watching me, you know, blabber on a conference?
Speaker:No, that wasn't no, that was an inspiration. It was an inspiration to start thinking me and get my wheels going. And I guess the breaking point, um, I would say two things. Breaking point was number one, I knew when the next contract was up. So I had my clock had started. Conversely, we were at that time really building out our three and five-year plans of how to grow the brand. And um, a big part of that growth plan was uh spending time with franchise growth and developing non-traditional um units and growing with our franchise uh groups. So for me, I knew that part of the decision-making process that we need to make a change in an LMS would need to be going after a platform that would enable franchise operators to take more ownership in utilizing that resource. And so that's what set my path in looking for a platform that could help us do that. And it's it's still a unique niche that Opus has found themselves in. And there's not a lot of players out there that do it.
Rachael Nemeth:So breaking point happens, you're like, we need something new. What were the the pieces you put in place that made that ultimate speed of implementation possible?
Speaker:To make it possible, um, I'm gonna go back to the decision-making pro of framework. Yeah, I had to do a lot of socializing. So I did my work, I did the needs and needs assessment, understand cost analysis, but the socializing piece was really important because Smashburger is operated by a global parent company. And so when you work in this type of an organization, it's not just within your own business unit where you're making decisions, but you have to get the global support as well. So, what I what I needed to do is really understand how to present the use case of why to make the change and what that change impact would have on us from a corporate standpoint, from a franchise operations standpoint, from an internal communication standpoint. But then also, is it a platform that my global partners could then also support? And because we receive learning courses and information from our global team as well. So it was it was having to have the right conversations with the right teams at the right time. So deciding which team to start with. I started with my global business technology and my global LD teams first. Right. If if they really understand stood on the use case and what we were trying to achieve, I and they were on board, then I moved on into my internal teams to work with marketing operations, HR, and then finally bring the final presentation to the leadership team.
Rachael Nemeth:And that was so successful, and I think it's so rare, frankly, that a training and operations leader of any level is actually taking their solution to uh technology first, which I think is fascinating. And I realize that Smash Burger has a different setup, right? You have a global team, you have a parent company, all of that. But still, that decision to say I'm gonna talk to the technology teams first, usually they come in last, right? Um, so uh that's really interesting, just kind of how you're sequencing things. Um now at this point, you have just to sort of wrap up why that implementation was so speedy, is you did the grunt work of socializing, but that also included franchisees. So let's just kind of get straightforward here. Like Opus was your third LMS. So I'm sure that franchisees must have felt a little burnt out and tired of new tech. So, how did you get them to switch platforms so quickly and so successfully?
Speaker:Yeah. Um, what we did with the Opus launch is we conducted a pilot, two pilots. So we involved two of our highly engaged franchise operators who were fantastic, um, as well as a couple of our corporate markets. And we did a 60-day pilot with OPIS to really understand how did that how did it show up in the franchise operations? And and they really helped shape how we communicated and how we rolled out to the rest of that franchise community. And because they're highly engaged operators, they're successful with their metrics, it really told a great story of this is how Opus can help us in a new way of learning at Smash Burger. And so we we really leveraged that. And I would say we over-communicated, which in the past, um, when I look back in other LMSs, we didn't do as good of a job. And so over-communicating, telling the franchisees it's coming 60 days out, teaching them how to use the platform individually with hands-on support from a franchise business co uh consultant and a field learning manager, we we put it out there and we stayed vigilant and focused and followed up consistently and they were prepared.
Rachael Nemeth:You know what the biggest question on my mind is? 60 days feels so short. So, like, how was it was that just coming up against contract, or were you saying, you know what? I actually think 60 days is where we can see enough. Uh, you know, because you're obviously not going to see everything in 60 days, but enough that we have some proof points to move forward.
Speaker:60 days is not a lot of time. It was enough time to give us, like you said, the confidence on the KPIs that we knew we wanted to measure against the LMS and the execution and the impact to the business. So why did we agree on 60 days for the pilot? It really did kind of all ladder up to the end of the contract of the existing LMS. What part of my vision, the end in mind, was that we wanted to be able to roll the OPUS out with confidence and do it slowly so that we don't overwhelm our audience with everything that they've got to know about how to use Opus in the first 60 days. Yeah. So the pilots really just built the confidence for us to then allow us to launch in March because our contract ended in June.
Rachael Nemeth:So we need a little bit of overlap.
Speaker:We needed more time. Yeah. Yep.
Rachael Nemeth:So let's fast forward. One of the things that I think Opus is is known for is we we build a lot and we build fast. We've done that intentionally. That's how we we architected the company so that we could bend and move with how the world and training evolves. You know, you can't have a static product. You have to have something that can sort of bend and move with the needs of your customers and the the needs of the industry. That said, at Smash Burger, you've adopted every OPIS feature as we have built them. Obviously, training, uh, interactive training, uh resources, so like a content management system, tasks, AI-powered search. What's your process for? And I think this is good for all of the training leaders out there. Like, how do you decide what to implement? These are all things that touch different parts of an organization, right? Tasks isn't necessarily a training component, but it it's linked to that. So what goes on in your mind when a new feature comes out? And how do you decide if that's something that you want to deploy?
Speaker:Yeah. Um well, I cannot say that it's only my mind noodling that. So I have an amazing LD manager, uh, Maddie Wazell. Yeah. And she is just, she's so in tune with what Operations is saying about what's working, what's not working. Um, and she uses the analytical dashboard of OPUS to really hear what the what the managers are are saying about the courses and how they're reacting to what's happening in the system. And so I really leverage her insight to help us decide can the system have handle one more thing right now, or do we need to pace this out? We're critically thinking about the demand of that user's time. And is it a distraction or is it a value add? And there's certain things that we knew when we launched Opus we had to have non-negotiable, it had to happen because we wanted to make sure when we got our users into Opus, it was truly the beginning of a watering hole. And I think about watering holes as you know, I'm a farmer rancher daughter, so you know, cows come to water. But a watering hole is a place where everybody knows that if I get into Opus, I can learn, I can communicate, I can connect, I can celebrate, I can get direction on how to run my shifts. And if I know that that watering hole has all of that rich information, my engagement and my want and desire to get in there is going to be a lot higher. And that helps us build that case for the franchise owners on why they want to use it with their teams, as well as how we hold our corporate teams accountable.
Rachael Nemeth:So I love that sort of placement on how you're thinking about new things. A lot of what I heard is okay, well, I my team's actually on the ground. They're the ones who are telling me what they need, but at the same time, they're balancing that with what are the operators telling me that I need. I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of businesses make is they roll it out because the corporate office thinks it's cool or useful, but but maybe it's not to those that are on the ground. It's just too much. I want to come back to that piece because there's something big that's coming, coming next for you, just initiative-wise. But I really want to talk about the the kind of training piece, right? Like that's really the the the biggest piece that you started with, the training component of Opus. Um, and obviously it's what we do extremely well. So you had a big LTO, the Summer of Smash. You made decisions about basically an entire menu rollout in less than three months with Summer of Smash. Again, questions about speed, but how did you use Opus in order to like enable that level of speed? I feel like a limited time offer, no matter what the industry is. Sometimes it's a hurry up and wait initiative. Sometimes you're you're partnering with other other departments, and then you just have to go really fast. Let's start there. How did you enable the speed at which you had to deploy the Summer of Smash LTO?
Speaker:We knew going into the planning for Summer of Smash, we we actually knew that we had plans for most of the menu items that showed up in that LTO window to actually move into our onto our core menu. So while it was it was marketed as a as an LTO, it really is all of the items that you see in Summer of Smash still stay on our menu, which is really exciting. And so when we started that planning, we knew that we needed to not just build skills, knowledge, and capability for a six-week window. We needed to be able to make sure that we could take all of these new items, which I think there was like nine different menu items. We had to be able to sustain that beyond the window of Summer of Smash. And so we we took an approach of number one, getting very close to supply chain marketing operations to understand how those final decisions come together. Because in 11th hour, you could miss a lot of important detail if you don't stay close to that. So staying close with your departments, tracking changes until you get final decision. Once you get into that mode, then we then we prepared what we call a cascade training model. Um and so how we approach it is we train our multi-unit leaders first. We train them by doing demonstrations showing the entire builds of all of them, all of the releasing your team, right?
Rachael Nemeth:This is like field teams out in the wild. Okay.
Speaker:Yeah. What we did differently for Summer of Smash than we did prior is we actually had all of the courses prepared before we did the live training sessions. So they did their pre-learning in Opus. They learned, they watched the videos, they understood all of the logistics. So then what happened is those virtual sessions turned into true QA, help me understand, let's do this one more time, it doesn't make sense, type of session, which really transferred that learning so much faster.
Rachael Nemeth:Yeah.
Speaker:So multi-unit leaders, yeah, we did too. Really good feedback from the multi-unit leaders there. And then once we did that level, then the GMs, the general managers, they do their pre-learning and they see that training as well. Once the GMs see their that training, then they do hands-on training in the restaurant during shifts with their teams, and their teams use OPUS to pre-learn before they start seeing the demonstrations.
Rachael Nemeth:Why do you think that most businesses do the reverse? You sort of do the in-person and then you do the follow-up online. Is it just you're just getting the information as it comes? And so you just gotta get out there and teach it. Is it just a product of like how cute how departments are communicating, or is it just like an old way of thinking around training?
Speaker:I think I don't think it's an old way of thinking about the training. I think it it is really a necessity. Like we were able to shift the script with this window for the first time. Previous to this window, we've always been in that boat. We've always had to post the courses after because we didn't have the information early enough. And so by getting more involved in the decision making and tracking along with that, and then having the confidence to get that content created. And what I love about the Opus platform is it's so forgiving. It's it's just you you can you can pop up a video really quick if you need to change it out. And so once you have the confidence that you are nimble in your design and you can make changes quickly, it's okay to spend three hours putting all the courses together knowing you're gonna have to fine-tune it two weeks later.
Rachael Nemeth:It's like trusting that the 80% that you get out there is is good enough, and then the rest of it you can iterate on, but you also have to have the confidence that you can get the 80% out quickly. I feel like so many people listening are are probably saying, like, well, duh, you know, like of course you teach it first. But in the reality, and I having been an operator myself, that's actually not the case. You think about that in theory that you should present first and then you should practice, and then you then you produce independently, but that's not the reality of what happens when you're in a heavily franchised business where you're you're kind of responding to the needs of so many different departments that oftentimes the easiest, although the most costly thing to do is deploy your field teams to just do the training. And so I love that you were able to kind of speed that up and say, no, we're gonna do the pre-learning first to make my teams actually more efficient too, and and turn them into you know coaches beyond just presenters. Did the enablement change? And maybe just for listeners, uh, you've got a good chunk of corporate and franchise stores. So you have a nice kind of comparison point. How do you approach enabling corporate stores versus franchise in that scenario in the summer of Smash LTO? Or is it the same? Same, same buy-in as well initially?
Speaker:Well, you know, I think I think with franchise, um, it takes a little bit more work. It takes more socialization, it takes more um personal contact from the franchise um business consultant and the field learning manager that works with the franchise groups. And the more trust and credibility that we continue to build with how this learning helps them with their business, um, and we're seeing that momentum month after month. Um but it does take more work than with corporate. Now, here's what I would say. I would say that that engagement that we're seeing in the increase is from operators that really are really making that business happen. And where we see low engagement on with franchisees are the ones that are like a hyper care situation where there's a lot more going on in that business than just learning or lack of learning.
Rachael Nemeth:So I think I agree with you on the, you know, we we need to train corporate and franchise, of course, but there is a bigger lift when it comes to franchise because frankly, you're supporting somebody who's running their own business. You know, it it it is somebody who has their own, um, they have the best interests of the brand in mind, but they're also running their own operation. So you're sort of encountering this other vector that you need to be respectful of. That brings me to my next question around summer of Smash. All right, so it's this big LTO, it's actually has a longer tail to it. We learned, I guess more broadly speaking, how do you decide? I feel like this is the million-dollar question. How do you decide what training to mandate for franchises versus just recommend or suggest? And are you the one making that decision?
Speaker:Um I'm making that decision along with partnership of the of our legal team, of our franchise support team. You know, we we collectively meet on this all the time. You know, where how we approach it is looking at what is what is the knowledge that is necessary to be able to execute all brand standards and create that Smash Burgers experience within the four walls. And that really is our litmus, I can't speak, litmus test, on what should be mandated and what should not be. But we also take an approach where we invest a lot of time and focus in what we call our dedicated managers for each unit. So every unit has one dedicated manager. That manager is where we spend most of our time coaching, teaching, training, how to do all of the business and SOP aspects. Uh, and then it is their responsibility then to trickle down. And how the operation uh the Opus platform has helped us with that is we're now giving them more flexibility within Opus to decide when they want to do that training with their teams.
Rachael Nemeth:I I love too that, and I think this is such an important piece. I think if there's anything to remember about the conversation we're having today, it's this concept that brand standards equals compliance. And I feel like when you hear that word compliance, you're like, oh, it's just all the legal stuff, it's all the regulation. Regulatory stuff. But that's not true in a franchise environment. It's actually more about adherence to the brand standards because that, of course, makes the franchisees successful in running their operation. So that customer A walks into two different stores and they're getting the same product and the same experience. But I think that's forgotten. Maybe it's just a product of training having fallen under HR for so many years. I'm not sure what it is. Also, compliance is just, I think, always associated with the legalities outside of like the kind of brand piece, right?
Speaker:Yeah, I think it is important when deciding how to package and position learning tracks for your franchisees because if you can, if you can show how this learning will help your cook or your GSE ramp up faster and how that cost translates, again, you have to always be very careful what it was promised, but helping them understand how they could leverage learning is part of the equation of what you got to be doing to get high engagement.
Rachael Nemeth:So we talked about how Smash Burger is really a super user of Opus, but a lot of that's because you've adopted so much. You you you pulled on task management the second we released it, you pulled on AI search, ask Opus the second we released it. But a lot of that was in response to what you knew that franchisees were asking for, what the business needed. I want to talk about the next big check mark you have and the next big initiative, which is you have a lot of departments underneath you. And you mentioned that communications is the next big rock that you're tackling. Why are you prioritizing it now?
Speaker:Okay. Um so uh managing field learning, uh internal communications, um, as well as operations, uh platform operations services. Um why why are we prioritizing communications next? We have the basics, the basic foundation of our OPIS system is pretty built out. We we're very we have all the frontline skill training complete. We are using task lists, which is our line checks. We're using that for daily uh interaction with uh with checking systems. We have not gone down the path of using a lot of the communication options with messaging. And we didn't do that on purpose with the rollout for what one big reason, and that is when we did the Opus rollout, we had an internal transition in who was managing internal communications. So, what I what I knew going into the to the opus rollout is we had to have a very clear with them, what's in it for me. We had to have a very clear why. Why do I go into this system? And because we were in a transitional place with internal comms, we didn't want to just have some comms out there and not a wow com experience. And so we held on that. And so now we're getting prepared to be able to come back and do a wow com launch in Opus to increase that engagement level of why I want to go to the watering hole. You know, here's one more reason why I want to be here.
Rachael Nemeth:I love that it's like you're you're dripping pieces of the experience out in order to make sure that people are using it and understand the value behind it rather than saying, I'm just gonna have you do everything all at once and choose what you like, which I think is often forgotten because I think as training leaders, we're often thinking about like what are the things that are gonna have the lowest friction, and communication is often it, theoretically, right? Okay, I just like type a message or I read a message. There's so much more behind it because you're partnering with other departments. In this case, with communications, I would imagine, you know, you own communications. Are you also partnering with other departments in this? Yeah, what other departments are you rolling, are you partnering with on this one?
Speaker:We're 30 days into hiring a new director of operations services. Uh, and so he's just now getting his feet on the ground. With his help, we are working with each one of the departments, marketing specifically, is a big one because part of internal comms is telling a great story and telling a great story that can be digested quickly. And I don't have to read two pages to be able to understand what you want me to know. You can tell me that story in a two-minute video from somebody who I could who I would could learn from. And so it's changing how we want to get the comms down to the most important level, which is my opinion, the front line.
Rachael Nemeth:You do such a great job of partnering with marketing. Why do you think other companies have such a disconnect between training and marketing? It feels so obvious when you talk about it, Kelly, but I feel like when I talk to marketing, they're like, oh yeah, we we definitely need training. They understand the value of training. But when you ask how often do you meet with the training team, it's like, well, every time we have an LTO, instead of this kind of ongoing conversation, what's missing? Why, why isn't this happening more often?
Speaker:I would say for us, it's a function of we're a very lean team.
Rachael Nemeth:Yeah.
Speaker:And so all of us have to roll up our sleeves and and and and come to it every single day together. Um, and we're supporting one another, right? So, because of that, that the lean dynamics, that lends to it. But also when you have a leader who is heavily experienced in operations and understands the influence that marketing has in operations as a whole, that leader then becomes vested in making sure that they help navigate marketing to you. Because the challenge is that sometimes marketing is always so busy, so busy. There's all many, so many things we got to work on, right? PR, external, internal. When you have an LT that is committed to helping navigate the right departments together at the right times, that's very helpful as well.
Rachael Nemeth:Kelly, as you think back, what are a couple of things that you wish you knew at 20 locations that you now know at 200 locations? Things things that would have just made life better and easier for you.
Speaker:I would say for me, it's the aha that implementing an LMS cannot be a silver bullet. It's not when you turn that light switch on, everything, all the metrics of the business improve within four weeks. It doesn't happen that way.
Rachael Nemeth:Yeah.
Speaker:And what I've learned after um not just scaling in in size, but also implementing three different LMSs is it's more about the infrastructure that you build to support that LMS that's gonna drive the true operational success metrics in your business. If you have the right training infrastructure, you have a team that's gonna not just say go do it, but they're following up coaching and teaching that, and it's a consistent momentum, you're gonna have much more success with your LMS. And the mistake I made early on was turn the light switch on and hope for the best. And uh yeah, that was that that that's one thing I wish I would have known.
Rachael Nemeth:Great words there. Uh, I know everyone's eager to learn a little bit more about you. So welcome to the lightning round where I ask four questions and you have to answer them as concisely as possible. What was your first job ever?
Speaker:14 deli worker hometown.
Rachael Nemeth:All right. Uh, what was your hometown?
Speaker:Newman Grove. Population 750.
unknown:Wow.
Rachael Nemeth:What food trend are you completely over?
Speaker:Smash burgers on every other restaurant menu.
Rachael Nemeth:Uh, I think you're allowed to say that. Um, what's the last book you read or podcast you listened to?
Speaker:Dare to lead, Brene Brown.
Rachael Nemeth:What's one thing that you're going back to basics on? One thing you're learning. Human connection. Are you learning that deliberately through through or through coaching or just trying to keep it front of mind?
Speaker:Trying to keep it front of mind so it shows up in the work. Um, on how, specifically as it relates to how do we get our managers to connect and really validate skills and coach skills in the moment. That seems to be the a challenge because there's so many priorities within operations that that seems to be the sacrifice right now. Yeah. And really want to figure out how to get that done.
Rachael Nemeth:Perfectly said. I just wanted to thank you so much for your time, your words. You're such an inspirational leader. You've done incredible work at Smashburger over the last many years, but and just partnering with you over the last year, year and a half has been incredible to see how much you've built. So thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. Thank you for sharing your time with us. And for everyone who's listening, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker:Thank you so much. You make me better. I appreciate you, Rachel. Thanks again, Kelly. Thank you.
