694_Kevin Vasconi === Introduction --- Peter High: Welcome to Technovation. I'm your host Peter High. My guest today is Kevin Vasconi. Kevin's the Chief Information Officer of Wendy's, a quick serve restaurant company based in Columbus, Ohio with roughly 7,000 restaurants worldwide. Kevin joined Wendy's roughly two years ago, and since then, has helped the company define a new global restaurant design standard referred to as Global Next Gen. I look forward to hearing more about what that entails. We will also cover his collaboration with colleagues, franchisees, and customers to enhance the experience of each digitally among other topics. Kevin joined Wendy's from Domino's, where he was the Global Chief Information Officer for nearly nine years. These are two of four global CIO roles he's had in his career. Kevin, welcome to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today. Kevin Vasconi: Thanks, Peter. It's great to be here. Kevin's Purview as CIO --- Peter High: Yes. Well, Kevin, let's begin with your role. You are the Chief Information Officer of Wendy's, a role you have for about two years now. I wondered if you could take a quick moment and just provide a bit of context as to what the CIO role at Wendy's entails. What's within your purview, please? Kevin Vasconi: Yes, no, I'm glad. I know it's a little different at every company. It seems like *if it has a chip in it, I'm pretty much responsible for it*. Just about everything has a chip today, but I think all the *traditional CIO responsibilities around enterprise systems, office automation, productivity tools to our store-level systems*, we have quite a few stores as you can imagine, and the technology stack in the store is actually quite sophisticated. Also, all of our *e-commerce platforms*, which includes our *various ways to order* and then the *data machine* that drives everything behind it. It's a pretty broad job in terms of there's a lot going on, but I think at most modern companies, the CIO maybe 20 years ago or 25 years ago was back-office guy into now, *today, every company's a technology company*. We all have these really broad jobs. Quite honestly, I love it. I wouldn't have any other way. Tech Landscape When Kevin Joined Wendy's --- Peter High: It's a great description. I've echoed that sentiment in terms of the evolution of the role. Great to hear that yours is one that is that evolved role that has that broader set of responsibilities. I mentioned you joined roughly two years ago. Talk a bit if you would, Kevin, about the company you found and the tech landscape you found at that time. I'd be interested to understand what foundation was there that you've been building upon. Kevin Vasconi: Sure, yes. This was not the first job I had, but this one was *unique for me in a couple of ways*. One of them is I joined in the *middle of a pandemic*, right? I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Hopefully, we don't ever have another pandemic, but a lot of people like myself did join companies in the middle of pandemic. I think that in and of itself was a very unique experience, a very interesting experience from. I used to be much more *had-to-be-in-the-office-all-the-time guy to a guy who couldn't be in the office*, right? How do you make this work? For us technologists like you and I, the fact that *video conferencing went from a necessary evil to, "Hey, we got to make this stuff work every day."* In terms of what I found, I came because of the culture and the brand. I believe very, very strongly in *strong brands*. I love technology. That's all I've ever done. That's all I ever want to do. I will tell you, the *greatest technology in the world can't sell a bad product*. I'm also a product guy. I absolutely positively believe if you've got a really *strong product* and a *strong brand*, *technology is the force multiplier* on top of that. I looked at Wendy's. I joined as I said in the pandemic, who was experiencing this pretty *significant shift in consumer behavior* because of the pandemic as everybody did, right? It affected all of us in a different way. For the Wendy's Company, that shift was *closing dining rooms* and really trying to *leverage the digital assets* because that's how the consumer wanted to interact with us. For me, I think I joined at the perfect time to catch this wave of how the *consumer was changing*, really dig in and help the *Wendy's Company really embrace that change*, and then hopefully take it to the next level because I personally think these consumer behaviors-- and every time we go through this *sea-change event and some of them are positive and some of them are negative, I think the consumer behavior stays changed.* *It may not stay 100% changed, but it never comes all the way back to where we were*. I look at our consumer today as, to me, a pretty *radically different consumer* than we had three years ago. I think the companies that figure that out and embrace that and then take it to the next level are the companies that are going to really be successful. That's what I found is the company really *embracing the change in consumer behavior* and having this flourished our desire to go figure it out, which is a lot of fun. That's a lot of fun. How Digital Became A Source of Customer Experience Innovation --- Peter High: Yes, it certainly sounds like a lot of fun and a lot of room for innovation as a result of that as well. Kevin, as you were learning about the evolving needs and safety concerns and all sorts of things that became relevant during the pandemic, talk about how digital became a source of innovation, a source of different interaction with, as well as delivery to your customers among a variety of ways in which digital was playing a significant, impactful source of value for the organization or for its customers. What are some things that are top of mind there? Kevin Vasconi: Definitely *transformational without a doubt*. [chuckles] It goes back to how we started the conversation with *video conferencing going from something we only did when we had to. Now, we have to do it all the time*. Look, our consumers clearly spoke to us and said, " *We want a digital experience. We want to be able to interact with the company in a way that has less friction, that is seamless and quick, and intuitive*. Oh, by the way, I have one of these. It's a little blurry there. It's a cell phone, obviously. Everybody in my family has one of these, "So why don't you use that to talk to me? Because that would be a pretty common way to do it." I think we've really been able to take advantage of that. The one thing, if I can take a slight step back, Peter, is the other thing, I think, Wendy's has done during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic and I think going into the future is take a step back and say, "*It's not just about technology. It's not just about the digital experience. It's a holistic experience."* Because *if we get digital right and you go into our store and you have a bad experience picking up your digital order, or if we get digital right and the third-party delivery aggregator messes up your order or they mess it up because we messed it up, that's not a good experience*. If our food doesn't travel well, that's not a good experience for you, right? If we have delivery times that are an hour from when you order, which we don't, but if we did, that'd be terrible. We really took and are taking this *holistic view *that says, "Yes, we need a *first-rate digital experience*. We need a *first-rate delivery experience*. We need to make sure that the *technology delivers the value that the customer wants*." The food's still got to be good, the food's still got to be fresh, and it still got to be a value. One of the things we did had nothing to do with technology. One of the things that, for most of our competitors, doesn't travel really well for delivery because delivery is a big part of our business now, it didn't use to be a big part of our business pre-COVID, is *French fries*. When you get a French fry out of the fryer in the store, it's probably one of the best experiences you have. *A fresh french fry is a pretty good experience*. They don't travel really well. If you start to take on a significant part of your business to be delivery, you want to have that experience. *We actually changed the recipe on our French fry so that we could deliver consistently hot and a fry that stays hot longer and stays crispy and doesn't get soggy*. We spent a lot of time doing that. The reason I bring it up is while my team was working on the digital experience, we had our culinary team working on, "Well, how do we get a French fry that's going to deliver well?" You bring those two things together. *You bring together a very good digital experience, you bring together a delivery experience, and then you bring together an experience that keeps the food at the quality that people used to get when they went through the drive-through.* *Then, all of a sudden, you've got a very holistic approach to the consumer*. We have tried to do that. We tried to do that and make that permeate through all of our experiences even if it's a traditional, "Hey, I'm going to walk into a Wendy's and I'm going to walk up to the cash register. I'm going to pay cash and I'm going to get my food." We still want that to be the best experience and the best experience compared to any of our competitors. Wendy's Global Next Gen Restaurant Design Vision --- Peter High: That's a great overview. I'd love to ask you more about some of what you're doing that operates under the rubric of global next-gen. This is a recent announcement from Wendy's. You're already beginning to allude to some of the things that are under that umbrella, but talk a bit about your vision there and some of the exciting things that Wendy's consumers will begin to experience as a result of this vision. Kevin Vasconi: Yes, Peter, I think that's a great segue into-- We take this *holistic experience* to the next level in how we're going to *design our next store images*, right? That's what you're referring to. We call it *global future-forward design*. It's really *Store of the Future,* right? When you look at the Store of the Future project we had, it is about the *consumer experience*. It's about the *operator's experience in the store*. It's about the *technology* that supports that, right? It is a very holistic approach that said, "Hey, *as our consumer preferences begin to change, if you could do it all over again, how would you build a Wendy's that would really make the customer happy*? How would you build a Wendy's that would have the best customer experience?" There's a big element of technology to that. As I said, there's a lot of technology in our stores, but you can also do things like-- Because we want to continue to support our customers who want to order digitally and come and pick up their food, *there's a very clear design on how to do that,* how to make that work for the consumer. The same thing, quite honestly, as we continue to grow our delivery business and we use a lot of third-party delivery aggregators, right? We don't want them going through the drive-through, right? The drive-through is for a customer who's not getting food delivered. During the height of COVID, everybody was sending those drivers through the drive-through because there really was no other way to do it. This new store design has a very specific parking spot. It has a place for the delivery aggregators to go pick up their food. The food's clearly warm. It is such an *improvement in the experience*. Again, one of our *passions is speed*. If you think about it, every time we can shave a couple of seconds off of that experience that food is hotter and fresher by the time it gets to the consumer, it's just a better consumer experience, right? We feel really good about that. We feel really good about the design. Then if you look at the nuts and bolts of the technology underneath it, *it really is architected for the future*. You and I have had some offline conversations and I'm *tremendously passionate about *AI. I'm *tremendously passionate about machine learning and vision*. That's *compute-intensive*. Let's be honest, right? [chuckles] You're not doing it with your old desktop PC or your laptop, right? There's a lot of computational stuff that has to go on there. In our *partnership with Google*, we've really embraced not only the Google platform around *conversational AI envision an ML*, but also some of their *edge computing platforms, I *think they brand it under the name Anthos because we've got to get to the edge computing to do some of this compute that we want to, at least to do it in a timely fashion that delivers a good customer experience. Kevin's Perspective on Personalizing the Customer Experience --- Peter High: That's another great overview. I really appreciate that. It brings to mind, Kevin, the first time I knew of you before I got to know you. You were at Domino's, where you were for nearly nine years. I was a great admirer of the way in which you designed a digital experience that centered around the way the customer wished to interact with the company. Whereas for so long, it often seemed like the reverse. You, consumer, operate the way we, the company, wish to do things because it's easiest for us. Just some phenomenal stories in terms of the innovation that was driven by you and your team and your colleagues in other parts of that organization. I wonder as your insights around that have evolved, you talked a bit about your interactions with customers, the application of new ideas to the Wendy's consumer, and so forth, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about that philosophical point as somebody who, I think, was a pioneer in this way of thinking as to how to understand what works best for each individual and personalizing, as best as one can, the experience down to the individual level. Kevin Vasconi: Don't know if I was a pioneer, but I was along for the journey. As you know, Peter, it's a team effort across the board. I think you did hit on a basic philosophical tenet for me that I've used, I think, at virtually every technology job I've had. I think *you always have to put the consumer first*. The easy part for me is I'm a consumer too, right? The old phrase, "*I eat a lot of my own dog food*," I I eat a lot of pizza, I eat a lot of Wendy's, and *you know what a good consumer experience is*. The thing I think that you alluded to, which is the key to, really, a *consumer-forward or consumer-friendly strategy is, look, at the end of the day, the consumer wants choice*. *The* *consumer doesn't behave the same way every day at every time of the day*. You have to recognize that and I think you just *embrace it*, right? If you look at day parts if you want to talk about the food industry, we could talk about any industry you want, right? What you order for lunch is different than what you order for dinner and it's different from what you order for late night. If you're at your kid's soccer game, your orders going to be radically different than if you're working late at the office, right? If you think about that's how the consumer's life really is because that's your life and my life, then you start to think about, "Well, how do I design experiences that no matter what that consumer's doing, they have the best experience with my company?" It takes two dimensions to me. *One of the dimensions it takes to me is let them order any way the hell they want, right*? Seriously, to your point, why do we dictate to the consumer how they want to do business with us, *especially in a digital world*? It doesn't seem very customer-centric. It doesn't seem very customer-friendly to me. I'm a huge proponent of, "*Let the customers choose how they want to communicate to us*." Then I think if you just double-click on that or peel back just a little bit, then you have to look at the *UI or the UX, the consumer experience,* right? Just because you're letting them order on the device they want to order, it still has to be the right experience for them. I look at that in two really broad categories. One of them is *speed and convenience *and the other one is probably an *extrapolation on choice*, right? Look, they call it *quick-service restaurants* for a reason, right? [chuckles] Now, if you go into a QSR restaurant, you want your food quick, right? You want *good service and you want it quick*, right? You don't want an application that's got 72 steps in it and you've got to put in your loyalty number and triple-verify your credit card. *You want it to be a relatively quick experience as long as it's safe, right?* I think speed and convenience and the perception of *you're not wasting the consumer's time* as you're taking through the journey is also important. The other side of it is sometimes, especially if you're entertaining or you're ordering food for a group of people, *you want to have full access to the menu*. You want to have suggestions. You want to know, "Hey, could I save a little bit of money if I bundle this offer differently?" The interesting thing for me is it sounds like a 2x2 matrix, but it's not, right? Because depending on what part of the time of the day it is, depending on what your ordering device is, depending on what the occasion is, there's all this complexity that's built into that. I think the companies that acknowledge that and really try to build a strong consumer experience around that are always going to dominate. Of course, *data drives all of that*, right? The smarter you can be about *how to use data to make those experiences better*, in my opinion, the more successful we'll all be. Relationship with Franchisees --- Peter High: Yes, great points. You're right. Innovation is a team sport as you say. It requires a lot of different collaborations. I want to get into a different collaboration, the ones we've described, and that's with franchisees. Yours is a business where you've got levels or layers of constituents that you need to bear in mind and whose experiences you need to influence but also be influenced by. Talk a bit about that relationship with the franchisees and that influence that they have as you contemplate your roadmap for the future. Kevin Vasconi: Yes, if you haven't been in the franchise business, it's another dimension, right? Because, to your point, Peter, *they're a customer, right*? All the technology I build, at least *all the store technology I build, is for the franchisee immediately and then, obviously, for the consumer*. I actually enjoy it. The *franchisees are entrepreneurial*. They tend to be very *innovative*. They're very *focused on their business*. *As a technologist, that makes probably about the best partner you can get. *I have a *technology advisory council made up of franchisees*. I have one here at Wendy's. I had one at Domino's. I've always had them. They provide extremely useful insight in at least two dimensions if not more. One of them is, "Hey, *what business problem should I use technology to solve*?" Because as a technologist, I think I can probably go solve just about any problem. That's probably not true, but at least I think I can, right? Left on my own devices, I'll go solve problems because that's what I love to do, right? I think all of us technologists love to go solve problems, but the franchisees give us that direction to say, "Hey, this is a problem," or "This is an opportunity. How can you use technology?" Look, they're franchisees. They're not hardcore technologists. Most of them. Some of them are. How do you use technology to do that? The other thing is I *pilot a ton of technology in franchisees' stores* because their tolerance for things not working is very, very low, right? I think that is very *important in the innovation*, *product development cycle*. Look, I'm a very strong believer in a *stage-gate process*. We use a stage-gate process. We need to know as soon as possible whether what we're trying to do is going to bear fruit or not and whether we should take it to the next stage. *Putting it into production and a franchise store with real consumers coming in gives us almost instantaneous feedback*. Now, I'm not saying that you throw it away immediately, but you've got a great feedback loop, both from the franchisee who knows that business and the consumer who's coming in there. I think if you can *iterate very quickly*, which we are getting faster and faster on, I think is a core competency as well, you can develop extremely fast in that environment and really just knock weeks, if not months, off of a product development cycle. I love working with franchisees. Most days, it's great. Every once in a while, they're a little problematic, but that's okay. Peter High: [laughs] They might say the same about you, Kevin, right? Kevin Vasconi: I'm sure they do. [laughter] Wendy's Mobile App and Bringing Together Different Parts of the Business --- Peter High: Another partnership that I wanted to ask you about is the partnership, for example, between technology and restaurant ops and marketing as you think about the evolution of the mobile app and integrating product into it and so forth. You've alluded to some of the innovations and thought processes there. Can you talk a bit about the way in which the different parts and pieces within the corporate structure work together in order to breathe new life and innovation through the mobile app experience as well? Kevin Vasconi: Yes, probably one of the harder things to do. I think a lot of companies don't get it right because it is hard, right? Again, I just go back to *when it all works, it all looks seamless*. The experiences are all working and the marketing and branding is working and the operations are all working. I think below the surface, there's a lot of hard work going on there because *you have to bring three really disparate organizations*. They're all obviously aligned at the corporate goals, but sometimes there's *competing* *priorities*. Sometimes there's *differences of opinion* on how to do things and *bringing operations*, *marketing, and however you do your digital. Whether that's 100% on the technology or a mix together into a cross-functional team, to me, is absolutely positively essential to driving the consumer behavior and mobile and creating those great experiences*. This is another one of those areas where, as I mentioned with the franchisees, if you can get into this *fast iteration cycle*, your *productivity can skyrocket*. I think the same thing there. Once those three organizations start to work together and they really get into the *brainstorming iteration development phase*, all of a sudden, the *pace of innovation increases dramatically*. It literally becomes *one team*, *not three separate teams working together*. That's, to me, where the magic occurs. It's quite difficult just from talking to my peers at other companies to get that synergy. I don't know if there's a magic formula for it. I just know when you see it, you're like, "Wow, that's pretty cool." Tech Trends --- Peter High: That's really great. You've already mentioned a number of trends that you're passionate about. You mentioned artificial intelligence, machine learning, conversational AI. You talked about edge computing and your partnership with Google. I wonder if you could take a moment and maybe talk about one of those maybe and talk a little bit more deeply about the application of some of these important technology trends and what you see as the value that Wendy's is likely to derive out of those. Kevin Vasconi: Oh, I love to talk about technology. You'll probably have to cut me off, Peter. Peter High: [laughs] Kevin Vasconi: I follow a lot of technology trends. We both do. You have to in our business. I think the one that probably has remained, probably over the last couple of years, the most exciting for me is *conversational AI*. To me, it starts with this fundamental premise that, "*Why don't we talk to our computers?*" To me, it just seems so intuitive, right? None of us do or very few of us do. We use our thumbs. If you're a touch type, I guess you use more in your thumbs. I see so many people on phones and that speed they can get is amazing. I'm like, "Why don't you just talk to your phone?" I think when you think about, "Okay, what if all my interactions that I did with a computer, no matter what that computer is, whether it's your car, whether it's your mobile phone, whether it's your point-of-sale system or your backups, what if all of those communications I did every day, I'd actually just talk to the computer?" At Wendy's, when we think about voice AI, we do think about very *specific applications like voice AI in the drive-through*, which, quite honestly, is a breakthrough technology, will revolutionize the industry. We're one of the leaders in that area for sure. It's going to change that business, right? We actually look at that as a *platform* *because* *that same technology, I can use inside the restaurant for my operators. That same technology, I can use for my consumers who are on a mobile phone, *right? The fundamentals of that technology are the same. The application of it can be very, very different. We take, I think, a slightly different approach than some other people in that *we're building a platform out*, right? Some of the voice interfaces we've built, I'm not at liberty to talk about it today. Seriously, if it's got a chip in it, we're willing to go see if we can make voice work on it. Some of the stuff we've made it work on, we're surprised. In fact, I will share part of a story with you. I was showing some franchisees some voice technology just the other day and had a Hispanic gentleman in the crowd and he goes, "Does it speak Spanish?" I was like, "I don't have the faintest idea. Why don't you ask it?" [chuckles] Because the underlying dialogue flow from Google is multilingual, he asked it to do something in Spanish and it replied in Spanish and did it. I think, again, *we try to take holistic approaches* when we do a lot of this stuff, but that was a nice, little surprise. I think just *voice is the future of computing*. Clearly, there are some problems with some use cases. There's ambient noise in the background clearly. I don't want the guy sitting next to me on the plane having a voice conversation with his phone unless I got my earbuds in. There are probably some cases where-- but I just think if it's not your primary task, if you're doing something like working in a restaurant or working in a hospital or working in a factory, just talking to a computer should actually give us pretty significant productivity increases. We'll see. Keys to Kevin's Career Success --- Peter High: Very interesting. I appreciate that overview. Exciting times to come to say the least. I'll look forward to seeing the application of that at Wendy's stores before too long. I wanted to also ask you, Kevin. You've been for more than two decades as CTO or CIO. You've been a global chief information officer four times over at major organizations. I wonder, as you reflect on your career, are there any secrets to your success that you might highlight, especially maybe for somebody who's younger than you who might wish to follow in your footsteps in one way, shape, or form? What comes to mind? Kevin Vasconi: I think one of the things that comes to mind is that I *coach and mentor a lot of young people because I was coached and mentored quite a bit as I was developed in my career*. I think whatever level of success you get, *you owe it back to the community to contribute back*. I know you participate and like events. I don't know if that's the secret to my success, but I do think that, look, *technology's a people business*. There's a lot of ones and zeros there. At the end of the day, it's people business. I think for us technologists to just acknowledge that, "Look, at the end of the day, it's people that are doing all this," is a huge benefit. Maybe even a *competitive advantage* for some people who won't look it that way. I do think the other thing, and people much smarter than I have said this, is, "*Look, you have to have a passion for whatever you're doing*." I think people who are passionate, I don't know, whether you're an artist or an automobile mechanic or whatever, *you can see the passion come through in their work product.* I'm very *passionate about technology*. I'm very *passionate about what technology can do for the business*, so I think finding your passion-- *The beauty of technology is it's so broad now. It's everything from machine learning to networking, to compute, to development, to operations*. The field of technology is so much broader than when I started in this profession. I would just say, somewhere in there, find where your passion's at. If you get up too many days and you're not enjoying what you're doing, you probably should try to find something else to do because life's too short, right? Outro --- Peter High: Very well said. I appreciate those reflections. Well, Kevin Vasconi, thank you so much for joining me today on Technovation. Wonderful insights from across your career. Of course, the specifics of the great work you and your team are doing at Wendy's. So much for us to look forward to in terms of innovations that are right around the corner as well. Thank you so much for a great conversation. Kevin Vasconi: Thanks, Peter. It's a pleasure talking to you.