Hospitality excellence: Going above and beyond

Justin Ulrich
My pleasure. I was going to see if you were going to say that.

Tim Sweetman
You will not catch me. You will not catch me. I’ve been saying it since I started with Chick-fil-A at age 16, and it is in my blood. We always say, look, if you are going to cut me, I’m going to bleed peanut oil.

Justin Ulrich
That’s awesome. Just let me know where you donate blood. If I ever need any, I don’t want to get it from them. So, as you know, Tim, with this show, we like to give real world insights from people who have been there and done that so that operators can learn from what other people’s learnings are. 

And what I love about your background is you not only have years of marketing experience in different facets of marketing, but you have had the opportunity to actually take what you know and apply it to your own business as an operator and a business that you own. Right? You want to do the things that make the most sense because you’re trying to grow your own baby. 

So I guess if you wouldn’t mind, tell me a little bit about, you said you started when you were 16 or you were working at Chick-fil-A when you were much younger, and then you kind of got into ownership. What does that journey look like?

Tim Sweetman
Yeah, my very first job was working for Chick-fil-A. It was one of those situations where my parents were what we call Chick-fil-A raving fans. So they basically ate at Chick-fil-A every single day and paid full price, and they were obsessed with Chick-fil-A. And so when the time came for me to have my very first job, I had no other options but to work at Chick-fil-A. 

And so for the first couple of months, I wasn’t really excited about that, because honestly, I think at the time, I was probably a little sick of eating at Chick-fil-A. But I quickly realized how much I enjoyed and loved working at Chick-fil-A. Being involved in hospitality is in some ways sort of a selfish endeavor, in that when you provide hospitality to others, it sort of elevates yourself. 

And I quickly realized that. I got so much joy out of serving other people. And I also quickly realized, wow, I can use some of the skills and abilities around communication and leadership and encouragement and coaching. So I did that for a couple of years. 

And then when it came to my, I think it was around 18, the owner operator there sat me down. I can distinctly remember him pulling me off the front counter and saying, hey, come over here. I know you’re headed off to college. Come sit down in the booth. And we sat down, and he began to encourage me to consider becoming a Chick-fil-A owner operator. 

And frankly, at that time, I’m 18 years old. I’m going, I really think my calling in life is to maybe go into journalism and have a real career, not flip chicken fillets for a living. I had no concept of really what he did. I knew I liked working at Chick-fil-A, but this was more of a thing to save up money in order to go to college and pursue something different. 

And so anyway, I ended up going to college and not pursuing that. And as you mentioned, I did a lot of marketing and content and brand management, those types of things. But that conversation stuck in my head until I was about 25 years old, and I got a little burned out in the marketing space, and I ended up calling the owner operator when I was 25 and said, “Hey, I have been keeping an Evernote file. This is kind of weird, but since I’ve been 18, I’ve been keeping an Evernote file of all the great learnings from Chick-fil-A.” 

I mean, literally, there was hundreds of notes of all these things I thought were really interesting. And my wife kept saying, hey, I think there’s something here. You really enjoy Chick-fil-A and you love learning from them. Couldn’t you take some of these notes that you have and apply it? 

And so that operator was so gracious and gave me a chance to be able to come back and work again with him at 25 and be in a role where I was able to help them go from two restaurants to three restaurants and serve in a role where I was doing leadership and training and development for that organization. And then in 2018, I was awarded the Chick-fil-A in Millsboro, Delaware, and we have been off to the races since then.

Justin Ulrich
That is so cool. I mean, how funny that you had the foresight at 18, not thinking that you’re going to run a Chick-fil-A in the future, potentially, but just to keep notes of the key learnings that you had. That’s not common amongst kids that age.

Tim Sweetman
No, I definitely was a little weird. And that was probably about the same time. And this is maybe just a lesson for lots of people, I think. I’ve just always tried to remain extremely curious and to constantly gather as much information as I can, just always have that posture of learning. 

Because it was literally the next year, I was encouraged by a graduate of Harvard Business School. I had a conversation with him, was sitting down and say, man, that sounds really interesting, what you’re doing. He just graduated. He was sharing a little bit about his experience at HBS, and I was in the middle of college, and I expressed, that’d be really cool to do something like that. 

He said, you know, most of the syllabus or syllabi are online. You can download those. And so between me searching online and then him giving me a couple copies of the syllabus, I just took those and downloaded them all and literally ordered every single book that was in every single syllabus from Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, and just started reading and learning and taking notes and gathering those. And I’m telling you, that set me up for success in leadership and in life.

Justin Ulrich
Wow. That is incredible. That is incredible. Most people don’t read, especially that age. They don’t read those books unless they have to. To have someone to have the drive and perspective to understand the value in doing that at that age, that’s awesome. Hats off to you. 

So I guess with all of the things that you’ve done right, you mentioned growing your former boss’s location into two to three locations, and you were finally awarded your own location, and you’ve achieved some great results with that location. What are the things that you found are most critical from a local marketing aspect?

Tim Sweetman
Yeah. Before we started recording, I think we were talking a little bit about how there’s this temptation to sort of do the pizzazz, to do the short term thing that gets people in the doors. It’s so easy to do a big giveaway, and I would just hold this up. In contrast, we did a huge giveaway a few years ago where you could buy a 30 count nugget and receive a 30 count nugget for free. 

So for the price of 30, you receive 60 Chick-fil-A nuggets. An unbelievable giveaway. And we were crushed. Sales were through the roof. People were there constantly. And we got done with that event. And I was sitting in a meeting reviewing that, and what we saw was, yes, it was a short term win, but my team was completely obliterated. 

There was a number of guests that were unhappy and frustrated, and our overall satisfaction across the board was just not good. It wasn’t the product. And so it was a big learning experience for me. 

And what I found, especially in a local setting, is what’s most important is the fundamentals, like what is it that you offer? We’re not about buy one, get one, and those types of things. At Chick-fil-A, what we provide is hospitality. And anything that we do has to center around that. We have to provide that care. 

And table stakes is going to be the service, providing good food and a clean environment, those types of things, fresh food and all those elements. But it’s how we make people feel that brings them back and brings them back more often. And so I have changed my perspective around marketing to think about how, I think some of the best marketing is when our customers are coming back more often. 

And the reason that they’re coming back more often is because we’ve created incredible stories that they are sharing in the community about the experiences that they had at our restaurant. It’s not about the ad that they saw or the Facebook post or anything like that. Instead, it’s going to be the conversation or the story they’re going to share about how Miss Linda, our hostess in the dining room, put together a incredible card and wrote them a specific note and put together a package of materials for them. 

We had a family that was traveling to the children’s hospital. It’s like moments like that, or we had some guests that are really big fans of baseball and they collect those little miniature bats, and how we heard about that and we ordered a couple of miniature bats. And the next time they were in the restaurant, we presented that to them as a little extra gift while they were sitting eating their Chick-fil-A. 

I mean, they will share those stories forever. And that is the most incredible marketing asset we could ever have is stories.

Justin Ulrich
100%. If you think of the brands that you’re most loyal to throughout your entire life, it’s typically the loyalty stems from a story of a way that you engage with a certain brand or you got a certain gift and you did a certain thing, or whatever it might be. But that story is what cements that brand in your mind. Right, and creates that just raving fan out of somebody.

Tim Sweetman
Yeah. And it’s the personal stories, I think, as well. I think any brand you’re serving other people, regardless whether you’re a real estate agent or a salesperson, et cetera, you’re interacting with people, and that’s an incredible opportunity that you have. And I think when you start seeing people as people and as human beings, and you start serving them and you try to help them and not manipulate them. There’s amazing things that can happen. 

We at our Christmas party. We invited, this past year, all of our, it was basically our top ten customers, like, the people we knew the most, we invited them to our team Christmas party. And so we had all our team members there. And then all these customers that we see almost every single day, they also came to our Christmas party, which was really wild, and I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. 

At the very end of the Christmas party, one of those guests, she came up to me, her and her kids come through the drive through every morning on their way to work. And she and her husband and the kids came up, she began to just cry. I mean, just tears coming down her face. And she said, “Tim, I started coming to this restaurant, and I’ve come every single day pretty much for the last year.” 

And she said, “In the middle of last summer, I lost my grandfather, and then my brother died suddenly,” and a number of other people in her life had passed away suddenly. And she said, I went and just started spiraling into incredible depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide. And she said, there was a morning I came through the drive through, and none of your team knew any of that stuff was happening. They had no clue that was occurring. 

But for whatever reason, the team felt on that day that they needed to write a physical note on her bag. Hey, Miss T. We love you. Thanks so much for being an incredible guest and handed that bag to her. And she said she was in the darkest moments of her life. And through a simple act of kindness, a little act of kindness, the team was able to literally, in her words, she’s like, they saved my life. 

They completely changed and saved my life because they decided that they were going to serve her. There is no more powerful marketing than that because she’s sharing that with me. She’s sharing that with everybody in her life. We are her restaurant, we are her people, and she will be a loyal customer forever. She comes constantly, and so it’s amazing. 

You give and you don’t necessarily expect to receive it back, but those are the most powerful moments, I think, when I consider how to build a brand, how to think about what we do and why we do it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that is an incredible story, man. Jeez Louise. I was going to ask some successful things that you’ve done, and that, to me, is like, it’s an awesome story. In addition to the Christmas party, that, too, is a really cool idea. I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. But if you have these guests that you know are loyal, raving fans, why not invite them? That makes total sense.

Tim Sweetman
People want to be involved. You need brand ambassadors. And obviously your frontline people oftentimes are brand ambassadors, but you’re trying to convert, I think, your customers into brand ambassadors. So why wouldn’t you invite them into some of these special things? Why wouldn’t you give them the resources and tools? 

That same Christmas party, the customers are hearing me talk about what our vision is for our restaurant, what we’re trying to accomplish, what we’re trying to do, why we do what we do, celebrating all the successes, those types of things, those customers, we call them guests, they are going to, again, go out and be brand ambassadors and share that message with all kinds of people in the community over and over again. 

And I could just tell you dozens and dozens and dozens of stories like that and customers like that. And obviously, you got to be good at what you do. I mean, those are table stakes. And I think I would encourage people, a lot of people try to go to the extreme stuff and don’t invite people to your Christmas party if your product stinks. Make sure the product is really good on the front end. But, man, if you can get those basic things, I think there’s another completely new level, another level that you can get to.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it’s incredible. As a marketer, what we try to do is create a loyal fan base because then you have the ability to lack a better term, like leverage them and they will go out. They will be the voice of your brand. They will be ambassadors. They will create user generated content for free. They will try to push your brand as much as they possibly can because they want to see you succeed, especially if you have their best interests in mind. 

It’s absolutely free marketing. It catches on at the highest rate. That’s why things go viral. It sounds like you’re onto it so much, you might have to start doing an antivirus campaign, maybe partner with Norton.

Tim Sweetman
Yeah, absolutely. We got some opportunities, for sure.

Justin Ulrich
That’s funny. So for those of our listeners who are maybe struggling to engage with their guests or to drive local growth, what would you suggest that they could do today or sometime this week to try to turn that around?

Tim Sweetman
What I have been on a mission to recommend to people is to embrace this idea that Will Guidara. He’s got an incredible book called Unreasonable Hospitality. It’s this concept of unreasonable hospitality and the best way to describe it, again, he shares a story in his book. He is the owner and operator of Eleven Madison Park, very high end restaurant in New York City. 

And they embrace this idea of unreasonable hospitality. And the way he describes it is one time a group of business people, clearly from out of town, had come in. They were eating at the restaurant, and he was clearing their table and overheard them say, man, we ate everywhere in New York City, but we kind of jokingly, but we never got a New York City hot dog. This is crazy. 

And so he decided in a moment to run down the street, buy a hot dog, take it back into the kitchen, convince this Michelin-starred chef to cut it up and chop it up, and then took it out and served it to the guests that are out there and said, hey, so just to make sure that your culinary experience is not unfulfilled, here is a New York City hot dog. And he’s like, is the $2.50? And these people went crazy. He’s like, I’ve served caviar. I’ve served the most incredible food. So I think that obviously, that’s a crazy, big idea. 

But there are some really simple things that you can do. It’s being observant and understanding who your customers are and approaching them and making some really incredible magic. And so, for example, my restaurant is on the way to the beach. And so we have had lots of conversations around how can we create unreasonable hospitality, and it doesn’t have to be something huge. 

And so people on the way to the beach, they a lot of times forget stuff at home. They’re traveling, they’re kind of tired. And so we went and created these little gift bags that are just travel packs. Gum, mints, a couple little bits of Chick-fil-A swag, maybe a book by Truett Cathy, our founder. Those kinds of things. And if we overhear that somebody’s traveling and we can clearly tell they’re tired, my team knows, and we’re going to grab those and give it to them. 

It’s having mouthwash in the bathrooms. It’s going to be having diapers and wipes available, or we’re really busy during the summer, and we kind of Chick-fil-A turns into a rest stop. And so our bathrooms are completely overrun. I only had for the men’s room, a one stall and one urinal. And so we went out and we bought or rented these luxury bathroom trailers that were there every single weekend through the summer in order to serve our customers a little bit better. 

And so that’s what I encourage people to do, is sort of like to pause and stop and think, how can I maybe at scale, but create kind of like a one of one experience for every customer that’s coming into my place of work. 

Real estate agents. Can you do more than just giving somebody a bottle of wine? You’ve spent all this time listening to and being with your clients. You should know something really unique and personal about them. Couldn’t you give them something unique and personal? Maybe it’s a handwritten note. It could be something a little above and beyond. 

I mean, I think about all these car salesmen and guys who are doing auto sales. You’re spending all this time with people. Ask them a couple of interesting questions. You could really easily provide somebody with something really unique when they buy their car. Like, oh, they’re really into camping. Get them some small little camping gift or figure out what’s a common thing that people are talking about, and they don’t know that you have 50 of the same thing in the back. They feel like you just uniquely served me in an incredible way. 

So that’s what I encourage people to do. It’s like, start thinking about read Unreasonable Hospitality this week and start thinking of ideas that you can uniquely serve your customers and provide them kind of a one of one world class experience.

Justin Ulrich
Wow. I mean, that is incredible advice, and I’ve experienced firsthand. When we moved here to North Carolina, our loan officer that we went through got us a bottle of wine. Great. They didn’t realize that I don’t drink wine, so that gift didn’t really connect. 

Our realtor asked lots of questions through the process. We have four kiddos. He understood that my oldest daughter was in soccer, got a new soccer ball, got the younger one some slip and slide and some other outdoor activities to do in the new house. And it was like, man, this guy really listened. 

And as a result, I referred him to our friends that moved into town from Colorado as well. Right. They followed us out. About a year later, he got some more business. I didn’t refer the lender, though, not necessarily because of the wine piece, but because we didn’t connect. It was just a transaction.

Tim Sweetman
Yeah. Making it personal is one of the most incredible and most powerful marketing tools that is in the arsenal.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, no, very good advice. So who would you like to give a shout out for doing something really cool or unique or something that connects at a local marketing level?

Tim Sweetman
Yeah. There’s so many incredible people and things that are out there. I always love to see people that I would say give back. And so I’m actually going to shout out another owner operator, and I just want to share this story, if that’s all right, because I think what he did was really incredible, and it is kind of a marketing thing. 

This is the operator I worked for when I was both in high school and then later on. He came to us one Christmas and said, I want to do something incredible for our community. I really want to do something radically incredible. And I’m like, okay, let’s talk about it. 

And so what he ended up doing is, it’s kind of funny. At Chick-fil-A, we’re all about the cow. And so one of the things we do is the big giant cow mascot will dress up as Santa every year. We had an event one night. We call it Family night Tuesday night. And there’s probably 50 kids all came in and got their photos with Santa, which is that’s an amazing marketing event in and of itself. Right? 

It’s like, this is really cool. Get families in, have dinner. They’re all buying food. They’re getting their picture with Santa. And we told everybody that night, look, next Tuesday night, you can come back, and we will have printed up the photos of Santa Cow and the kids, and we’ll give it to you. It’s this incredible gift from us. Anyway, as the kids were sitting down with Santa, we had a team member that was doing the normal thing because Santa Cow is not allowed to talk. 

So he had a team member say, hey, kids, what do you want for Christmas this year? And so it was fun, and she was asking, what do you want for? I want legos. I want a barbie. I want whatever. Anyway, next week came around. All the families came in, and we actually decided. We sent them a message and said, hey, not only are we going to give you a free picture, like a frame picture with you and the Santa Cow, we’re also going to give you free dinner. 

So all 50 people came back. Like, free dinner at Chick-fil-A? Are you kidding me? This is insane. Just like building. Unbelievable. So they’re all sitting down, eating, and then halfway through dinner, the owner operator gets up, he has a microphone and says, hey, everybody, thank you so much for coming back and spending time with me. We just love giving back to the community. If you remember, last week, we had somebody asking for Santa cow, whatever kid wanted for Christmas. And he said, we got something really special. 

Santa cow walks in, and we have a huge wagon full of gifts. Every single gift that every child had asked for, they had gone out that week and bought, and we gave it to every single kid. And so every kid, anything they asked, I mean, it was from the biggest thing to the smallest thing, there was iPads, there was playstations. It cost thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life to be in that moment and to see all those people just completely blown away. 

And so I always love to share that story because I really feel like that is the kind of posture that the best marketers have, and other people have done versions of that in many different ways, but it was just unbelievable. And Mike’s the best when it comes to those types of things.

Justin Ulrich
Man, unbelievable. Yeah, I got. I got goosebumps. Not because you have a really nice microphone that’s giving high quality low tones, but if you think about all the kids that are in that scenario, none of them knew they were getting anything. They all just have their hopes and wishes of what they could potentially get. And probably half of them, if that, have the ability to actually, for the parents to give those things to the kids, and it’s just like, unbelievable thing.

Tim Sweetman
Those are the stories in the moment. I mean, almost immediately, some people were like, yeah, whatever, that was great. But there were so many people, so many parents that were so moved because their kids weren’t going to get anything that year. And they just showed up to a Chick-fil-A family night, and they’re like, we don’t even have enough food. We can only eat at Chick-fil-A once a month, maybe, and they’re going to give us free food, and then all of a sudden, we’re blessed even beyond that. 

They may not be able to come back to Chick-fil-A and eat all the time, but they’re going to be sharing about it over and over again. And so I think it’s incredible. And if people want something more practical, I’ll share one more, if that’s okay, which is I found out about this about a year ago myself, and I partner with about six other Chick-fil-A restaurants, and we were able to raise around $11,000-$12,000 this past year. 

And we partnered with an organization called RIP Medical Debt. And what RIP Medical Debt does is they are able to acquire medical debt from people that are four times below the poverty level. And so because that debt is not really worth a whole lot, and hospitals realize we’re probably not going to get any of this money back, they’ll sell it for a penny on the dollar. 

And so what we were able to do with $11,000 is we gave $11,000 to rip medical debt, and they were able to acquire the equivalent of about $1.6 million in medical debt in our community.

Justin Ulrich
Wow.

Tim Sweetman
And what they end up doing is they send those people a letter and say, yeah, hey, you owed $1,000. Your debt has been abolished. You don’t owe anything anymore. Thanks to your friends at Chick-fil-A and Del Marva, kind of our market name, everything’s been forgiven. It’s done, it’s gone. 

And so all these people who have this debt looming over them. Oftentimes, in the thousands of dollars, with a little bit of money, $10,000, $11,000, we’re able to affect the equivalent of $1.6 million of medical debt. And so I encourage a lot of people to say, look, you may not be able to go out and spend $10,000 or $5,000 to get free toys for a small group of people. Why don’t you partner with a bunch of other people and raise some money and partner with an organization like RIP Medical Debt, and you can forgive people in your community. 

So we were able to forgive literally all the available medical debt for those that are most at risk in our county, most eastern shore of Maryland, as well as in Baltimore, Maryland, and a bunch of other places, too. And so got to spread the word on that. People have got to get involved in those types of things. It’s incredible. And all those people are going to receive a letter, and it has our name of our organization in there as well. So great way to share your message. Share who you are also doing good in the community.

Justin Ulrich
That’s unbelievable. You are full of gold nuggets today. I’m so glad I had you on. I’ve never heard of that organization. Yeah, perfect. Well, one thing I did learn about you when I was digging into your background a little bit, and this is just a subtle thing, but I noticed you said you had five kiddos, and I totally get the culture of Chick-fil-A and wanting to take time off throughout the week to ensure that people have time to spend with their families and stuff. 

But I did notice in your footer your signature line that you are typically off the grid between four and 08:00 p.m. So you could spend time with your family is my assumption. And then I got to thinking, well, how do you do it? Because you do a podcast, you create content and stuff like that. And then I had this idea. What if you did your podcast with folks driving through?

Tim Sweetman
Yes.

Justin Ulrich
Think of the time savings.

Tim Sweetman
Why is that a better looking version of me? AI so good.

Justin Ulrich
Too funny. I was like, man, this is such a ridiculous idea. I’ve got to make it come to life. It took some finagling with a couple of different layers of images. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, perfect. Hopefully take the idea and run with it.

Tim Sweetman
It’s like comedians in cars drinking coffee, but better.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Too funny.

Tim Sweetman
I love it.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, man. Well, hey, Tim, how should folks, before I let you go, how should we tell them to follow you, follow your brand, follow your podcast?

Tim Sweetman
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, people know if you don’t, you need to go to Chick-fil-A, you know, obviously I don’t speak for the brand itself. Just speak for myself locally. And so if you are in Delaware or Eastern Shore, please come visit us. 

But, yeah, if you want to learn a little bit more about me, whether it’s the Tension Podcast or write on a lot of these topics, you can just go to timsweetman.com, that’s just my name, and check it out. Very, very simple. And unfortunately, still on all the social media channels, I don’t spend a whole lot of time on there, if at all possible. But I am there. But yeah, just go to timsweetman.com and would love to connect with you. Always happy to talk further.

Justin Ulrich
And connect on LinkedIn, too. I see you’re on there a little bit with a little bit of content there, too.

Tim Sweetman
Absolutely. Yes. Look me up on there. For sure.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. I would absolutely suggest subscribing to his podcast. He had a friend of mine in the industry, Paul Tran, on, and it was such a good episode. I don’t typically listen to the whole episodes of podcasts, but that one, I listened to the entire thing. And not just because I know Paul, but because the story, the way that you dig into backgrounds and try to get to the origin of why people are the way they are and who they are, it’s beyond just a business podcast. 

I think it’s really interesting topics that you have. So if you’re listening, subscribe Tension Podcast. Follow Tim. Stop at Chick-fil-A, take these golden nuggets and go buy some golden nuggets. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tim. It was so much fun having you in the lab.

Tim Sweetman
Truly my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Justin Ulrich
I got you again. I was just trying to.

Tim Sweetman
Yeah, you get to say as many times as possible.

Justin Ulrich
Thank you, Tim.

Tim Sweetman
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Appreciate you.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, you didn’t say my pleasure.

Tim Sweetman
Yeah, recorded it.

Justin Ulrich
I recorded it.

Tim Sweetman
You recorded. You got me at least once. It’s like when have free stuff.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. Well, thanks again, Tim.

Tim Sweetman
My pleasure.

Justin Ulrich
If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook @Evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize. 

And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.