At this year’s National Restaurant Association Show, some of the industry’s leading executives stopped by FSR and QSR magazine’s booth to chat about the landscape—what they’re seeing, hearing, and what might be next. We asked everybody the same three questions: One on tariffs and consumer sentiment; their thoughts on value; and lastly, to separate myth from reality with restaurant technology. In the days and weeks to come, we’ll share their answers.
Next up is Mo’Bettahs president Rob Ertmann. And keep the conversations going at this year’s QSR Evolution Conference. Registration is now open.
Other interviews:
Freddy’s Coeli Arthur and Rick Petralia
Cheba Hut’s SVP of operations Brian Witte
Sunny Street president Mike Stasko
Your take on the state of the consumer and the craziness/confusion that is tariffs.
I think people are being more careful with their wallets. Consumers are looking for value and I don’t think that means price value, per se. They’re really looking for if I’m going to spend the money, it needs to be worth it, both in the experience, the quality of the food, and the quantity of the food. So, certainty for us at Mo’Bettahs, that’s what we try to lean into. If you leave our restaurant and you’re hungry, you’ve got a pretty big stomach. Or you didn’t like the food for whatever reason, and we’ve got to fix that and make it right. But that’s what I think consumers are looking for. This year in particular.
Tariffs—they did come on the radar. The story keeps changing every other day, it feels like. For us, in the packaging world, we had to go out and find some different vendors to insulate ourselves. A lot of the goods we use are domestic. So I would say it’s more about a macroeconomic climate where tariffs have everybody worried than direct costs. Our biggest impact to costs isn’t tariffs, it’s chicken. Everybody is buying chicken. There was avian flu. There were some tornadoes in the Midwest. It wiped out some farms. I’m much more keen on that than I am tariffs.
There were some tariffs we thought would come. Our teriyaki sauce is one of our main ingredients. The soy base comes out of China and Japan. And even for them, they were warning us, hey, we may have some price increases. But the latest delay—we have at least another 90 days before we have to think about it again. The good news is we’re getting time to shore up and make sure we’re ready if something comes. So far, though, not a big deal for us.
Elaborate more on the value piece for customers.
It’s all about great food at Mo’Betahs. We keep our menu simple so what we do make, we make really well. Our customers appreciate that. The teriyaki chicken, our rice, we have to make sure it’s not crunchy and it’s fluffy and a little bit sticky. Quality of food and, again, portion size. Over the last few years, with all the cost pressures—I mentioned chicken—two years ago chicken went through the roof. We’ve always maintained, even when we had to take a little bit of price, we’d rather do that than cut portion sizes or try “shrinkflation.” We avoid that. We say, hey, if you’re going to come in, you may have to pay a little bit more—we haven’t done any price this year, by the way—but if we’re going to take price and we have to, we’re not going to reduce the portion size. This way, customers know what they’re going to get and feel good about it. Our customers actually make one or two extra meals out of our plates.
I’ve been at brands where they go, OK, well, costs went up so high, we’re just going to make this small tweak to this recipe. The next year you make another small tweak and another small tweak and eventually your product is not the same. You have to be really careful.
Tech trends: what’s myth and what’s reality?
AI ordering, I think there’s a place for it. When you’re talking about fast food or specific environments where people are searching for quick meals and not highly personalized experiences—that probably works. I think about catering or a service experience, though. There, people still want to talk to a human being when they’re placing an order and really have employees customizing and crafting for them. There’s a lot of push for AI. We’ve tried phone ordering and it was so slow, and it just wasn’t human enough to make it work.
The flipside, AI, when it comes to scheduling and data analytics around customer feedback, I think that’s going to be a phenomenal gain in the industry. Ovation, which we use, offers feedback and the ability to parse through and say, your opportunity is burnt chicken at this location. Or your problem—not that this rocket science—is Friday night is where you’re giving the not as good service. Being able to triangulate on where you want to solve your opportunities, I think that’s going to be huge.
