You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Friends of Branded:

Happy Saturday and I hope you had a great week.

Just before 1am PST on Tuesday night this week (okay, officially Wednesday morning), a guest of Branded’s Hospitality Rocks event, held in connection with the Restaurant Finance & Development Conference, was saying goodnight & thank you for the event we hosted (with our partners & friends from Toast, Adyen, Olo and Foodbuy). I joked that this night was a very different version of our traditional “Cocktails & Connections” as we had secured a band that played hard & loud for over 2 ½ hours straight. The music made it difficult for folks to speak with one another in what turned out to be more of 1980s themed concert (the best decade for music, in my opinion) than a networking event.

This guest paused for a moment and then shared that after two days that were loaded with meetings, sometimes not speaking and just hanging out, enjoying music and some drinks with friends was just what we needed.

As he exited and I turned to listen to the band launch into Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey (released in October 1981 as the second single from the group’s seventh studio album, Escape, thank you Wikipedia), I knew what my theme would be for this week’s Top of the Fold.

I’ve used the line often that the hospitality industry never lets perfection be the enemy of good enough. This isn’t b/c we don’t want or even aspire for perfection, but that it’s simply not possible or realistic to set the bar that high.

The Rolling Stones and specifically its lyrics “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” might be the most hospitality operator, ResTech Founder and investor-ready line ever written (and it’s not possible for me to mention the Rolling Stones without a quick shoutout to my Godson’s mother (and dear friend) KD, who is the single biggest Stones fan I know). 😊

In this context, the Rolling Stones feels less like a rock band and more like an unofficial board of advisors for the hospitality industry (and we don’t need to grant them a ¼ point of equity with a 24-month vesting schedule for their help). I can’t think of a few lines that hits our industry harder, more honestly, and accurately than this one: “You can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, you just might find… you get what you need.”

While I know as a member of this community, I only have a single vote, I’ll put forward that this should be the restaurant industry’s anthem. Think about it, if there’s one universal truth in our business, whether you’re operating a 10-unit restaurant group, building a ResTech company, or investing into the next great hospitality concept, perfection is not on the menu (pun completely intended), but resilience most certainly is!

Allan Konigsberg, better known to the world as Woody Allen, has a spin-off of the Yiddish proverb, “We plan, God Laughs” with his “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” The meaning is of course simple that despite our best efforts to plan, unforeseen events will inevitably occur that disrupts our intentions. The saying reflects the belief that life is unpredictable and that while it's human nature to plan, our plans are subject to a higher power or simply the chaotic nature of fate (or the demands of our guests).

To my restaurant operator friends, you wake up each day with a plan and the industry wakes up every day with a counterplan. The produce truck is running late? Your best server calls in sick? Your guest wants a reservation at a time you don’t have available? Your tech vendor pushed an update out at the worst imaginable moment?  No matter the issue or obstacle thrown at you, you will open your doors, you will welcome your guests, and you will deliver hospitality.

Your guests may not get the table, the menu item, or the experience they want, but great operators ensure they get something more important, they get what they need. They need to feel seen, taken care of, and valued.

That’s the distinction and why this Stones’ song is so perfect for our industry. The ability to distinguish between wants and needs is the hospitality industry’s super-power and it’s NOT just operators who have this power.

To my ResTech founder friends, you of course don’t get what you want either (sorry, not sorry). You want restaurants to be early adopters of technology? You want frictionless integrations? You want perfect pilots, perfect onboarding, and perfect data?

But hospitality doesn’t work this way (and spoiler alert, it never has worked this way). We know that restaurants move in starts and stops and that adoption happens in clumps as opposed to curves. Operators (wisely) choose tech partners based on trust and not of tech specs. The ResTech founders who win in our industry embrace one simple and important truth, solve for the need to have, not the want or nice to have. A core part of Branded’s ethos and a nonstop reminder to ResTech founders, you need to build your tech WITH operators, and not just FOR them.

And to my fellow investor friends, you’re part of this week’s theme too b/c guess what, you’re not getting what you want. Of course you want clean Cap Tables, predictable growth curves, clear unit economics, margin expansion, low churn, high adoption, and minimal operational drag. Put those things on your expanded holiday wish-list b/c you’re not going to get that, at least not in hospitality.

This isn’t to suggest that there aren’t extraordinary investment opportunities (b/c there are), but b/c the path to victory is rarely linear. We know that some of the very best restaurant brands and strongest ResTech companies started out, well, for lack of a better word, messy. The data wasn’t perfect, and the unit economics were still forming. The decks and the financial models were ambitious and even aspirational and maybe that conservative or worst--case scenario that was presented was in fact the best-case scenario.

But here’s the key, the team you backed was resilient, the traction was real, and the market needed what they were building. Smart investors know the difference between what they want from a deal and what they need for a potentially great investment. They need strong operators, alignment of interest with founders and a product with a true pull from the industry.

If you take away only one this from this week’s Top of the Fold it’s this, the magic of our industry happens where operators, ResTech founders and investors meet (and not that I was out past 1am on a school night). 😊

Disclaimer, a self-interest comment follows. Branded Hospitality works hard to live in the space that sits between the want and the need. We know operators want tech that makes their lives easier, but not tech that adds complexity. Founders want capital that supports their mission, but not capital that tells them how to run their business. Investors want upside, but not without alignment of interests. Everyone wants speed, but the industry moves at the pace of adoption and not aspiration.

Here’s what the industry wants above all else, partners who understand that hospitality is a relationship business and NOT a transactional one.

Our job (not just Branded’s job, our collective and shared job) is to bring all these worlds together. Our job is to align interests & incentives, to help & contribute to the acceleration of adoption and to contribute to the filtering of signal from noise.

How do we do this? Great question.

We build bridges, we put operators in the room with technologists, we put founders in the room with capital, and we invest in companies that understand the math and the magic! When these forces meet, everybody gets what they need.

Here’s what we know: (i) Restaurants don’t run on perfection; they run on resilience. (ii) Tech doesn’t succeed on features; it succeeds on fit. (iii) Capital doesn’t win on spreadsheets; it wins on alignment.

If you want predictable, frictionless, perfectly rational markets, you’re NOT going to find that in the hospitality industry, but if you want to build or invest in an industry fueled by passion, people, community, culture, and controlled chaos, welcome home my friends.

The Stones of course weren’t writing about the restaurant business, but they might as well have been. Our industry doesn’t guarantee perfection, not to guests, not to operators, not to tech founders, and not to investors. Despite the lack of any guarantees, here’s something you can absolutely bank on (like my overuse of writing side notes inside parentheses), if you show up, do the work, focus on the mission, and partner with the right people, ”you just might find…you get what you need.”

It takes a village.

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