In this episode, Mike discusses how White Castle is bringing robots, AI and tech into the kitchen to revolutionize the restaurant industry. He describes how the business makes quality food that meets or exceeds expectations, with greater efficiency.
On today’s episode, we talk with Mike Guinan, Vice President Operations Services at White Castle. White Castle is America's first fast-food hamburger chain, started in 1921. The family-owned business now owns and operates more than 350 restaurants.
Mike Guinan has worked in many roles since he started at White Castle more than 38 years ago. He began behind the counter learning the grill, and eventually made his way to Vice President Operations Services. In his current position, Mike oversees Destination locations, Real Estate, Construction, Engineering as well as leading the company in Robotic and Automations.
In this episode Mike discusses how White Castle is bringing robots, AI and tech into the kitchen to revolutionize the restaurant industry. He describes how the business makes quality food that meets or exceeds expectations, with greater efficiency.
Quotes
"We're very excited about [kitchen robotics]. I promise you, it's not gonna take anyone's job away. It's gonna enhance their job. And more importantly, it's going to enhance how the customer is able to interact with us and how we're able to deliver against what their expectation is." - Mike Guinan
Time Stamps
**(00:31) How Mike got started
**(02:27) How White Castle stands the test of time
**(08:23) White Castle’s iconic design
**(13:13) Leveraging robots and tech in the kitchen
**(21:50) Evolving the restaurant space
**(28:23) Adapting to technology
Links
[00:00:00] Welcome to elevating brick and mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. On today's episode, we talk with Mike Guinan, Vice President Operation services at White Castle. White Castle is America's first fast food hamburger chain started in 1921. The family owned business now owns and operates more than 350 restaurants.
[00:00:21] Mike has worked in many roles since he started at White Castle, more than 38 years ago. He started behind the counter learning to grill and eventually made his way to vice-president operation services.
[00:00:31] In this episode, Mike discusses how White Castle is bringing robots, AI, and tech into the kitchen to revolutionize the restaurant industry. But first a word from our sponsor.
[00:00:41] Want to rest easy knowing your brick and mortar locations are offering the best possible guest experience. Partner with service channel for peak facilities performance. Check out service channel.com today to learn more.
[00:00:53] Now here's your host, Industry and FM Technology Thought Leader and Chief Business development officer at service channel Sid Shetty and our guest, mike Guinan.
[00:01:04] Sid: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. I'm here today with Mike Guinan, vice President Operation Services at White Castle. Mike, welcome. Thank you for being here.
[00:01:15] Mike: Excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Sid.
[00:01:17] Sid: No thank you. Um, so Mike, let's talk about your journey at, at White Castle. You've been there for almost 40 years, that's pretty amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey? Um, and I believe you started at the counter and today you're the Vice President of Operations Services. Would love to hear more about it.
[00:01:35] Mike: Yeah. You know, I consider myself really fortunate. Uh, 16 years old, needed to get a job. Um, a lot of folks you'll meet with White Castle hear the same story. Never thought this would be a career. Got a job to earn enough money for college or whatever. In my case, it was to buy a car, and here I am 39 years later.
[00:01:55] And very fortunate that I work for a family owned and operated business. You know, currently on the fourth generation of running the business. And I consider myself really fortunate because within White Castle has always been promotional opportunities. So I started as a team member, as you mentioned, working behind the counter.
[00:02:14] And to this day, there's really nothing in the castle. We like to call 'em castles. There's nothing in the castle that I can't walk in and do. In fact, that's probably the best part of my day is when I get to leave what I, what I currently do and go in the castle and help them make the magic and creating our memorable, memorable moments for our customers. So I've held every position in the operations side of the business all the way up through my current one.
[00:02:37] Sid: I love it. So when you say white operations, what are you responsible for at White Castle today?
[00:02:43] Mike: I had 39 years with the company, so my first 35 was all on the operation side.
[00:02:49] And then the last four I transitioned into my current role, which is Vice President of Operations Services. And so what that entails is it is me overseeing a large portion of the restaurant division work plan. I oversee the destination locations, both Arizona and Florida, and I oversee our construction, engineering and real estate department within the home office.
[00:03:13] Sid: That's awesome. So let's talk about White Castle, right? I mean, talk about an amazing brand. It started in 1921 and I believe it was the first fast food outlet in, in North America, right? Um, uh, what has helped the brand stand the test of time?
[00:03:31] Mike: Yeah, great question. Yeah. Started 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. We are the first, uh, QSR quick serve restaurant brand out there. We started the category and very proud of the heritage along the way. We are very much a generational brand, and when you talk with our customers, our customers always have a story to tell about an experience they had with their grandparents or their, or their, or their parents after church or late night experience after the bars, or the Harold and Kumar movie. But everyone has a story to tell about their, their time with White Castle, their experience with our little two inch by two inch sliders as we'd like to call them.
[00:04:14] And so, while our customers are generational, our business is also generational. We're currently on the fourth generation of a family owned and operated business.
[00:04:24] And we also own three meat plants, two bakeries and three retail divisions, uh, plants that make the retail product. So very proud of the fact that everything is within the company and it's all run by the family.
[00:04:37] Sid: That's pretty amazing. I mean, talk about raving fans. I mean, I, I read in an article, um, in People Magazine in like this month, in May 20, 23, about a couple that even got married at a White Castle. Like, wow, that's, that's pretty phenomenal.
[00:04:54] Mike: Yeah, we are very fortunate to have such a loyal customer base. The couple you're speaking of, Jamie and Drew, they become part, they became part of our family back in Arizona three and a half years ago prior to us opening the castle.
[00:05:11] So they live in Scottsdale now. Jamie is from, um, grew up on White Castle and Drew lived in Columbus, Ohio. And before we even opened the castle, they, they came on the parking lot, introduced themselves and told us that they were gonna be the first customer. They camped out for almost a week prior to the castle opening. And so they actually, they cut the ribbon on October 23rd, almost four years ago. And here they tied, they tied the knots on May 5th of this year. But that's just one of many stories.
[00:05:40] Um, in the month of May, we just actually had our Cravers Hall of Fame and where we inducted 13 different, um, people into our Cravers Hall of Fame. And so we have hundreds of thousands of stories that get submitted. And from the, from those, we have a committee that narrows it down to 10 to 15 different stories and we abduct Craver's Hall of Fame.
[00:06:01] It's a very elite group of people and we're really excited about it. It's a fun, unique thing we can do with the brand and to hear the stories some of are so emotional and inspiring. It's awesome.
[00:06:12] Sid: When you've been at the business for so long, you know, 40 years, and you've seen, you know, as you said, this is a multi-generational brand and the same family has owned the business. You know, there's probably probably been an evolution of like how they do things, but there's gotta be one North Star in terms of like what makes White Castle, what it is today and what kind of sentiment you wanna invoke in your, in your customer. Can you share what that is like when you discuss this with the family or when you hear about all the leaders in the business, talk about White Castle. What is that? What is that secret that makes White Castle what it is?
[00:06:55] Mike: Creating those memorable moments that we believe connects our customers to our brand. I talked about the, we used to come here Sunday after church. We came here late night with friends. We came here appearance on special occasions. Uh, my parents met here. They went on dates here. We worked here creating those memorable moments and connecting to those stories. Is really what the brand is all about.
[00:07:22] And the, the, the vision of feeding the souls of Craver generations everywhere. That speaks to not only our customers, but also our team members. We take great pride in hearing our team members voice and including them into, um, everything we do. Our frontline general managers, they're the heart and soul of the business.
[00:07:44] And I'd love to share this fact in that within the Q S R category. A general manager that runs one restaurant has three to five years. Our, our average general manager has 18 to 20 years.
[00:07:57] Sid: Wow.
[00:07:57] Mike: One in 12 team members has 10 plus years with the company. So we have huge longevity, and with that longevity comes pride and dedication and just a huge commitment to the family. But along with that, you're made to feel like family.
[00:08:14] Sid: Yeah.
[00:08:15] Mike: Say growing up within the company, I always felt as if my voice was heard and my opinion mattered.
[00:08:22]
[00:08:22] Sid: And what has driven like the, the strategy to not necessarily franchise in a big way, like, you know, can you share a bit more about that? Because cuz if you, if you wanted to, you'd have franchisees like, you know, it would blow up. Like what's the, what's the mentality and the, and the strategy behind that.
[00:08:41] Mike: The family's very committed to staying, family owned and operated. Uh, there there's obviously, there there's benefits to both. And for us as a family owned business, we can make decisions rather quickly and execute against them. can be very successful. And so we can also fail fast if needed, and we can do that within a family owned business.
[00:09:04] Sid: That's great. So let's talk about the iconic White Castle, like design and location, right? The, the actual built environment, the space, right. It's white as a very unique design to it. Um, what's the history behind like. It looking and feeling like a castle and you're maintaining that look and feel, you know, all these years, um, it stayed consistent.
[00:09:27] Mike: Right. So when you think about the castle, you are right. It, it's white in color and it's a castle. So it's, so it's, it has that strength to it, and it's recognizable from a distance. Customers have always talked about the fact of don't change the look of the castle. So, of course our buildings used to be porcelain made of porcelain steel.
[00:09:49] Now they're made of brick. But outside of that, we've, we've kept the, the white, we've added a blue and orange strike to it, and we, we've kept the exterior looking the way it is, because that's what people grew up with and that's what they know. And so the, the castle look with the, you know, with the tower on it and, and the correlations that go across the, the exterior of the building, that's what customers look for.
[00:10:14] No matter how many different focus groups we do, and we talk about changing the design or the look, it always comes back to don't take away the strength of the tower, don't take away the crenelations and of course it has to be a white building. Um, and, and so we've tried to hold true to that as much as possible.
[00:10:32] Sid: I love that because, you know, in, in so many cases we see where businesses don't necessarily appreciate the impact of design, construction and facilities and, and preservation of the physical space and the impact it has on the customer experience that, you know is so true. that is so the opposite at White Castle, right? Because you not only recognize the importance of it, but it's a big part of your brand and your brand image out there, correct.
[00:11:06] Mike: Absolutely. Absolutely. We do a lot of consumer research serving our customers, um, listening to their voice, allow them to share their voice. structure is what brings a smile to their face when they, when they pull on the property, when they, you know, enter the parking lot.
[00:11:22] Sid: Yeah. And so you've been in this current role for four years, so that puts you right around like Covid, right? So that's an interesting time to change your role and how, how was that?
[00:11:34] Mike: It actually, yeah, I took the role right before, prior to covid, but yeah, quickly, um, after in my new position, COVID, um, the Covid environment took over, let's say.
[00:11:43] Sid: I'd love to hear from you around like, COVID changed the business like in for restaurants, right? Like a lot of restaurants, um, Did things differently to adapt really quickly. So everything from modifying their kitchens, um, to adding more drive-throughs, um, to, you know, maybe partnering with, you know, Uber Eats and DoorDash more if they hadn't before.
[00:12:09] Uh, Basically they expanded their reach, but they also changed the way they were interacting with their consumers. H how did that impact White Castle and, and what did you do, um, to get ahead of, you know, the challenges, you know, that Covid posed, but also like the challenges of today with like the labor shortages and the supply chain shortages.
[00:12:32] Can you share a little bit more about that?
[00:12:35] Mike: You know, going into Covid, of course it changed everybody's world, right? It overnight, it changed everybody's world and we're fortunate that we are a brand that has been known for drive through. So you know, prior to, prior to covid, let's say, we were 60% dry through 40% inside, and Covid struck and it pushed everybody through the drive through.
[00:12:55] Sid: Yeah.
[00:12:55] Mike: We were very fortunate that we were ahead of the curve as it relates to already being partnered up with delivery partners through Uber Eats, to DoorDash at Grubhubs. And so we already had that platform. And, and I credit that to really our internal I S I T department for really just being as innovative as they always are.
[00:13:18] And so that platform was seamless for us. The part that we had to figure out was how do we get the delivery drivers out of the drive-through line and maybe to come inside to shorten that line. And so for us, the problems that we had to solve were not as great as many of our competitors. Or a fast casual that was used to people coming in, sitting down.
[00:13:40] So for us, we were very fortunate that everything just transitioned to drive through in most castles. Not all, but transitioned to drive through. And our, and our challenge was how do we keep the cars moving and how do we get delivery out of drive through and, and handle that second group of customers perhaps differently than our regular drive through customer.
[00:14:03] Sid: And how have you leveraged technology and robotics to kind of stay ahead? I mean, you have flippy, I'd love to learn about how did that come about? What did you do? What is flippy right for our audience? Uh, can you share.
[00:14:18] Mike: Yes. You know, two things happened really prior to Covid. We had entered a partnership with Misa Robotics, which is flippy, and flippy is a robot at the fryer. And we also entered a relationship with MasterCard and SoundHound. And SoundHound is our current partner for our drive through ai. And so both of these projects had kicked off prior to Covid, right?
[00:14:40] Right before Covid. And of course they continued through Covid. We continued to focus on the technology that we knew we were going to need post Covid in for years to come. And so I'll start with Flippy. So flippy got his name from Misa Robotics for flipping a, a, a hamburger on a grill, not for White Castle, but for someone else.
[00:15:01] And then they ca they approached White Castle and they said, we'd love to partner with White Castle and put flippy at the fryer. And so, very quickly, um, it evolved from being this robot inside of a cart, to a robot on a rail. So above our, above our fryer area, the robot, basically the arm goes back and forth on a rail, and Flippy today manages, we have 11 different, uh, freezer or fryer products.
[00:15:32] He manages all of them. Two of them come out of a hopper, and then the other, other 10, we put in what we call auto bins and he takes it from there. So everything's done through computer vision and computer learning.
[00:15:43] Sid: Yeah.
[00:15:44] Mike: There's no more bells and whistles at the fryer. And all six baskets are managed by flippy versus a team member having to stand there and manage baskets.
[00:15:54] Sid: Yeah.
[00:15:55] Mike: And with any given month, flippy manages roughly 12 to 15,000 baskets for, for any given castle. And so he, he cooks the food, he delivers the food to us, we package it and we serve it. And so the, the next question typically is, Did we, did someone lose their job because of flippy? And the answer is absolutely not. So I mentioned earlier our, our vision or our mission is to create memorable moments.
[00:16:25] Sid: Yeah.
[00:16:26] Mike: And so if we can take a team member where this area used to take two team members to work, one managed the baskets, one managed packaging, if we can take that person that managed the baskets and put them in a more customer facing position.
[00:16:40] Anything that's gonna help us create those memorable moments. That's what flip's all about. And so flip's been a great addition to the White Castle team. Everybody that has flippy appreciates flippy. Flippy never calls off, knock on wood.
[00:16:56] Flippy very seldom has any challenges. So he's always working and he is 365 days a year and. 24 hours a day. So he is been a great addition.
[00:17:05] Sid: That's awesome. I love it. Um, so, you know, flippy, did Flippy start out as an experiment? I mean, it's in 11, 11 locations right now, but did it start out with the hypothesis that you could automate certain things that, you know, were hard tasks? Like, you know, someone standing in front of a griddle. All day. That's, that's a tough job. And you could, you could experiment like using leveraging robotics to automate that and put the individual, like you mentioned in front of the customer, you know, in a customer facing role to delight them, welcome them, and so on and so forth. Is that, how has that experiment gone and what is the, um, what is the future of flippy?
[00:17:44] Mike: you know, for us, flippy is all about the fryer and managing that fryer and the baskets. And when you look at all of our packaging, um, he does a heck of a job either dropping per order or bulk dropping, depending on what our needs are.
[00:17:58] But right now, flippy is in 11 castles. We, we intend to put flippy in roughly 15 more this fall. We have a, we had a, we have a strategy plan for next year as well. In which we're gonna put flippy and 20 or 30 plus castles at a minimum. So we're excited about where the relationship's going, and we continue to look at the, the ROI on the investment in making, in investing with Misa Robotics.
[00:18:20] They've been an outstanding partner. And so for us, when, when choosing a partner, we always choose partners that fit our culture
[00:18:28] Sid: yeah,
[00:18:29] Mike: right? And so continuous improvement is one of our core values, and that has held true with, with our relationship with Misa Robotics and Flippy.
[00:18:37] Sid: I love it. It's amazing.
[00:18:38] Mike: awesome.
[00:18:40] Sid: Can you share a bit more about the AI that you use in the drive-throughs?
[00:18:44] Mike: So our drive through Ai, we, we named her Julia. And so a quick story about Julia back in 1921, the idea of bringing ground beef home for consumption was not, it wasn't viewed as a favorable product. And so White Castle hired this, this lady named Julia to be the Harford hospitality. So she was out talking to schools and, and PTAs and things of that nature, connecting with the community and talking about the value of beef.
[00:19:14] So long story short, we named our drive through Ai, Julia, in memory of her, so she's our, she's our customer facing, um, person talking to each and every customer.
[00:19:26] Sid: Oh man. That's awesome.
[00:19:27] Mike: yeah, so Julia is, is just like Alexa or Siri, and you basically, you, you cross what we call the loop detector in your car, and you'll see Julia appear on the screen and you agree to the terms and conditions.
[00:19:40] You say, okay, I'm ready. And Julia just starts interacting with you, taking your order. And I'm happy to say Julia's completion rate now is 90%, and that's from start to finish. And her order accuracy hovers between 75 and 80% and continues to get stronger. And so that 75 to 80%, you may think of that as not being where it's not a hundred percent. To order a number one combo at White Castle, which is four cheeseburgers of fry and a drink, there are 72 different ways in which you could order that number one combo.
[00:20:16] So, so teaching Julia all the different ways a customer can order any of our menu items, it's been exciting. It's been frustrating at times. We're very excited where her order accuracy is and her completion rate, and we're rolling out probably 15 more Julias this year alone.
[00:20:33] Sid: It's something which I think we all know as the future, but as someone who's actually doing it, why did White Castle decide, Hey, we need to reinvent how we take orders, and we need to, you know, leverage ai, to, to do something. What is that something at the drive through? What are you, what are you looking to do?
[00:20:54] Mike: By the time this is over, you're gonna know our mission loud and clear, right? Create memorable moments. I've probably said it three or four times now. And so that drive through person, currently without Julie has five jobs. They've gotta take the order, they've gotta collect on the order, they've gotta make the drinks.
[00:21:12] They gotta hand the order out and they gotta see if you need condiments. And so if my head is out the window talking with you at the window and that drive through head circles off, either I'm putting you on hold at the window or I'm putting you on hold in the headset, or I'm trying to do bolt things.
[00:21:28] Working that drive through window is, um, is quite a challenge, and you have to really be very good at multitasking. So if we can take one of those jobs away, and the minute you cross that loop detector, instead of hearing silence or being put on hold, you're immediately greeted with, welcome to White Castle.
[00:21:47] My name is Julia. Say, okay, I'm ready, and I'll, she'll start taking your order immediately.
[00:21:53] And so it's just that attentiveness to you as a customer that allows me at the window to now have one last job and I can spend more time with you when you do get around to the winners saying, how are you today? And not, not, not make it feel as rushed.
[00:22:09] Sid: Mike, you, you're pretty active, like in in the industry scene, right? I mean, you and I met at MarTech um, last year, or I think it was earlier this year. Um, and you know, you talked to a lot of folks that are in the space. What are you seeing in terms of, the consumer expectation, you know, what, what are consumers expected like three years from now, three years prior, and what they're expecting now and what they might expect three years from now.
[00:22:39] How are restaurants looking at the space evolved? What do you think is working and where, where do you think we still as an industry, you know, need to adapt, you know, to do what? What's going on right now in the space?
[00:22:54] Mike: We need to be prepared to give the customer what they want, when they want it, and how they want it .
[00:23:01] Sid: Yeah.
[00:23:02] Mike: right? And so as we look forward, we're very much in tune with, today, I may be a drive-through customer tomorrow. I may want it delivered the next day. I may want to come in and sit down with my family or have a business meeting.
[00:23:16] And so, depending on what you want or how you wanna interact with the brand, We've gotta be able to deliver that to you no matter how, no matter what way you want it. Very timely with quality food and to meet or exceed your expectations.
[00:23:33] The, the restaurant category in general, outside of equipment and, and enhancements for team members, we've not brought a lot of technology. We've not brought robotics into the kitchen, and so for us to have flippy at the fryer, we're very excited to see where we can take flippy and to have Julie in the drive-through.
[00:23:53] We're very excited about that, and for us, it's really, it's the foundation and where do we go from there? I promise you, it's not gonna take anyone's job away. It's gonna enhance their job. And more importantly, it's going to enhance how the customer is able to interact with us and how we're able to deliver against what their expectation is.
[00:24:14] Sid: Yeah, I think that's spot on. You know, Mike, as, as locations evolve and the, the spaces that we create for our consumers evolve, it's gonna be like, you know, like you're doing today, there's robotics in the back of house, there's robotics in front of house, and with many restaurants with actual robots, busing tables, delivering your drinks, you know, the, the, the drive-throughs changing.
[00:24:37] You got ai, you know, involved. That also means there's a lot of more things that can break. Right. And a lot of folks in our audience, you know, are responsible for those things. I mean, how do you think that part of the industry is keeping up? You know, are we keeping up at the same pace in terms of the technology advancements that are creating this experience for the consumer?
[00:25:01] Mike: I, I, I mentioned earlier about choosing partners that fit with your culture, want to hear your voice and are gonna be there to, to accept that phone call when things aren't going well or when things are, and you just wanna say, Hey, guess what? Things are going really well. Thank you. Right. And so for us it's the, being dedicated to our customers, team members and partnerships, to take technology to the next level, to make our team members job as easy as possible, and the customer experience as best as possible. And along the way, you're gonna have your bumps and you're gonna have your hurdles, but you, it's how you come, it's how you work through those and come out on the other end. That's most important.
[00:25:50] Sid: Yeah.
[00:25:50] Mike: And so I would not change either of the relationships that we've spoke of today and have gone back and done anything different. We have great partnerships.
[00:26:00] Sid: Yeah. I think you're a hundred percent right. I think. Every facilities team or every team that's responsible for real estate and construction and design, like they're gonna have to rely on partners to really deliver the experiences that they're intending at the location, but also preserving those experiences.
[00:26:22] Right? Because the last thing you want is you, you pay attention to the design and construction and installing,the robotics or or AI technologies in those spaces, and then you walk away and then a year from now, you know, your consumer walks in and they have a subpar experience that probably takes away from those moments then, then kind of, it's not neutral. It someone, someone's gonna walk away thinking, yeah, that experiment is not working
[00:26:54] Mike: And so the one thing we've not spoke of yet is really the preventative maintenance, right? And so whether it's preventative maintenance or software updates, there's never a software update that we take from any of our partners, there's not a check and balance to make sure that the software update came through properly, it's working the way it should and everything, everything is as as it should be. And then preventative maintenance is huge. If you don't feel you need preventative maintenance, you're fooling yourself.
[00:27:24] Sid: Yeah.
[00:27:25] Mike: And that's just not on robotics, it's just not on drive through ai, we have preventative maintenance for our fryers, our griddles, our shake machine.
[00:27:32] We have preventative maintenance plan in place for basically all the equipment we have.
[00:27:37] And ST staying ahead of it. And again, great partnerships.
[00:27:42] Sid: Mike, when you look into the future, um, across all restaurants and indu, you know, in the industry, is there anything that strikes you as exciting that you are bullish about in terms of that, that's gonna stick?
[00:27:58] Mike: Yeah, I, I'm excited about technology in general, right? I, I personally, as a consumer, I love convenience, so I, I love utilizing my time as best I can. And so I was just at a conference and someone mentioned being able to be in your car. And I'll use Y Castle as an example, being three miles from White Castle and ordering. Ordering my White Castle from the car, and then White Castle would get the order and I pull up my food's ready. And again, it's just a different way in which I engage with the brand.
[00:28:29] Sid: Yeah.
[00:28:29] Mike: It's just an exciting, exciting time and I'm so grateful to be in the restaurant industry.
[00:28:35] Sid: Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's so many things being tried out, right? I mean, we hear about drones being used for delivery. We hear about autonomous robots, you know, last mile delivery for, for food. What are your thoughts on those? Like, those are gonna be interesting to see, right? I mean, are, are, are consumers and people ready for that?
[00:28:54] Mike: Drones is something we've never really talked about in house. I don't know if I'm ready for that. I gotta see that. I gotta see that a little bit before I can kind of comment on it, but, uh, it, it's, Hey, it's very interesting right?
[00:29:07] Sid: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think to your point, there's gonna be a lot of things that that'll be that, that are being experimented today that will work and will have longevity. Some might not work, but I think in general, um, the restaurant space is adopting technology, at a really fast pace.
[00:29:27] Mike: We're fortunate for adoption and trial within our castles. Number one, family owned and operated, but number two, you know, we're certified three years in a row is a great place to work. And we contribute that to a lot of it, to our, our, our team members, obviously right into longevity and the passion and the dedication for the brand. That being said, it, it allows us to try things but not be afraid to fail fast if we need to .
[00:29:58] Sid: Yeah,
[00:29:59] Mike: But then work towards that, always making whatever you have better and stronger and faster and more efficient. So there's a balance of both worlds. Putting yourself out there. Fail fast if you need to, but don't be afraid to try something. You know, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there to try technology, to try robotics. Uh, it it, it's coming fast and furious. It's here. And I would say personally, embrace it. Embrace it cuz it, it's
[00:30:32] not going away.
[00:30:33] Sid: Absolutely. All right. A fun question for you, Mike. Whenever I think White Castle, I think Harold and Kumar, like, you know, that was a fun movie. Um, how did that come about? Like how did White Castle get associated with the movie? Because it's a big part of the movie. I mean, it's in the name, right? What, tell us a little bit more about that whole thing.
[00:30:55] Mike: Yeah, that, that's a fun story. So that was our, um, when that movie took place, is our third generation present. CEO Bill Ingram and he got, he got the phone call or, or the alert that here's these, these guys that wanna make a movie, and here's the cont here's the context of the movie. Right. And the Harold and Kumar, they're in a destination to White Castle.
[00:31:17] And quite honestly, it was embraced because it, it was, it's what an honor to make your destination or your journey to why castle? And the movie was fun. It made people laugh, um, and White Castle was proud to be part of it, and more importantly, just to be able to embrace the movie in general. Another topic I like to talk about is Undercover Boss.
[00:31:45] White Castle was the second episode I believe of Undercover Boss. And again, we were approached about, you know, becoming a a, an episode of Undercover Boss and what they take, they can film. So you're like, wow, they're gonna, you know, whatever they tape, they can film. Again, we're very comfortable with our team members.
[00:32:05] Our team members have the best of intentions, assume positive intent with every experience. And we embraced being the second episode or third episode of Undercover Boss. And we customers still to this day talk about two things. Harold Kumar go to White Castle and Undercover Boss, so we were proud to be part of both of them.
[00:32:25] Sid: You know, the association and, and just kind of making the brand a household name like worldwide, you know, people in India, you know where I'm from, you know, who don't even necessarily know White Castle or did not know, but White Castle as a brand before, you know, now know that that.
[00:32:46] There's this iconic brand because of the movie. I mean, it just, it just really is an amazing way to, to put your brand out there and clearly it's worked. It's, it's a pretty phenomenal idea.
[00:33:00] Mike: Yeah, it, it was a great opportunity for both, for, for us, and I'm glad we, we, we jumped in and embraced both opportunities. Um, you made me think of something as you were talking about, you know, like people from India and that so often I can be in a castle, especially if they're, if it's near an airport. And there will always be a customer that will come in and say, we just landed in, the first place we had to go was White Castle and Right. And just to see the smile on their face and the excitement. And of course it comes with a story and that's, that just goes back to really how we started this with we're a generational brand.
[00:33:36] We look for every opportunity we can to put a smile on someone's face or bring back a memory from their childhood or their youth. And that's just who we are. And we, we, we really appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to, um, fulfill on that.
[00:33:51] Sid: I love it. So, Mike, let's end on this. What advice would you give to restaurant operators and professionals that own a specific function within the wor, within the restaurant world?
[00:34:03] Mike: Embrace technology. If you're nervous about technology or robotics, at least have conversations, get your questions answered. Really just lean forward, lean in, talk to the people out there.
[00:34:19] Maybe not stop, maybe not partner with the first one you come across, but find someone that fits within your culture. Whatever your brand's culture is, find someone that fits with that culture and then, and then go forward with it.
[00:34:34] Sid: I love it. Well, with that, um, I just wanna say a huge thank you, Mike. We really appreciate you being here and having this conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Um, for folks in our audience, can you share with them where they can find you?
[00:34:47] Mike: Absolutely they can find me on LinkedIn. Michael Guinan, vice President, um, operations Services, white Castle.
[00:34:53] Sid: Mike, thanks again. We really appreciate your time. And to everyone in our audience, thank you so much for joining us. [00:34:59] Well, that was Mike Guinan, vice President of Operation Services at White Castle, America's first fast food chain. This is a brand that's been around for a very long time, but they're not resting on their laurels. They're embracing technology and innovation with Flippy and Julia, with the goal being to keep their promise of creating memorable moments for their customers for generations to come.
[00:35:25] With that, I'm your host Sid Shetti and I'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.