3186: Restaura's Tech-Driven Revolution in Senior Living Communities

[00:00:04] What does the future of dining look like for a growing senior population? And how can technology transform the food service industry? Well, as baby boomers redefine retirement living, the demand for high quality, personalised dining experiences is surging and in turn creating both a challenge and an opportunity for the food service contracting industry at large.

[00:00:28] Well, my guest today is the CEO of a company called Restora and they're setting new standards in senior living by combining, yes, culinary excellence, but with cutting edge technology. So I wanted to learn more about what is the role of AI predictive analytics and data science in optimising a traditional food service operation?

[00:00:50] And how does that technology reduce waste, elevate resident satisfaction in ways that the industry has never seen before? So how does a company disrupt a $45.1 billion industry with tech-enabled concierge style dining? And what role will real-time data and personalisation play in shaping this next generation of senior living experiences?

[00:01:16] Well, in the for me, let's get my guest on to join us in this conversation right now. So a massive warm welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Great. Yeah. So my Neil, it's great to be here today. My name is Joe Cuticelli and I'm the CEO and co-founder for Restora Hospitality Group. And, you know, we'll get into a little bit about Restora, but, you know, I spent much of my career in the food and dining space. I'm a chef by trade, I suppose.

[00:01:46] I started cooking early in my younger days. One of my first jobs was at McDonald's and then I transitioned into traditional restaurants and then had the opportunity to go work for a large food service management company where I spent 23 years and really grew my career from an entry level position to the CEO of one of their business divisions. And so I'm really fortunate to have had an excellent career.

[00:02:13] I, again, spent most of it in the food and dining space, although I did pivot for several years into private equity. And a little bit of what I do today cohesively with Restora is on the private equity space. But, you know, I'm just privileged to have had this really great career with large institutions and then now just thrilled to be in the startup space. It's something really unique and exciting. I call it sort of my own 2.0. I love it.

[00:02:41] And before you came on the podcast today, I was doing a little research about you. One of the things I quickly learned is you're on this mission to disrupt the $45.1 billion food service contracting industry and doing that by combining elevated dining quality. But this is a tech podcast and it was the cutting edge technology that caught my attention. So can you tell me a bit more about your approach, how you're planning on redefining the experience, especially for senior living and active aging communities?

[00:03:10] Because this is a section of communities that are often neglected. Let me just start, Neil, by talking a little bit about outsourced dining just in general for a minute, because I don't think maybe some of your people, you know, your listeners aren't familiar as it's a tech podcast, but outsourced dining is just a large business, right? And often people are familiar with it because of university or corporations where they work or hospitals. And certainly it serves in senior living.

[00:03:38] Matter of fact, when I tell people in my previous career what I did when I said the company name, they say, oh, yeah, that I had that company at my college or university. So people are very familiar with outsourced dining in those kinds of environments. You know, the business practice is very similar to things like payroll or legal or housekeeping services. It's really I say it's in our world, it's a B2B 4C environment. I said I think what's new is that aging and retirement looks very, very different today.

[00:04:08] And the senior living industry really is evolving to meet the demands. And food and dining is often important because it's a factor of making choice to age in place or consider housing alternatives. But I really think from on the tech side, when we started to think about this, we said that there was so much that was done on paper. And, you know, there was not any predictive analytics.

[00:04:29] And even this whole concept of really understanding a person's satisfaction was was being measured, you know, on an annual basis. And there was so much opportunity to look at this in real time. Right. And so one of the things that we said from day one is, you know, we would have three pillars that this company would be founded on.

[00:04:49] And one of them was tech forward. And we felt that would be a huge competitive differentiation for us to really build a tech platform and around how we delivered those services. And this isn't about robotics. This is more about sentiment analysis and really understanding, you know, the consumer preferences and understanding how health and wellness could be managed through technology

[00:05:12] and driving those behaviors to live a longer, more vibrant life. And that was really at the center of one of the core foundations of why we built Restora. And the longevity economy does represent Americans 65 and older. But one of the things that caught me by surprise is it actually wields $7.6 trillion in spending power every year.

[00:05:38] So how are you addressing these growing demands for higher quality dining experiences with more personalized services within this influential demographic? Like I said, it's an area where technology, we don't hear that many stories around how technology impacts this area. Yeah, you can imagine when we're talking about these large residential communities and, you know,

[00:06:00] there are some extraordinary senior living communities out there where people are able to go live very independent and have access to sort of these lifestyle amenities. And but also, I think one of the promises of many senior living communities, especially the continuum care retirement communities, also known as life plan communities, is the promise of care. Right. And I think that's why people invest in these types of communities to have the ability to age in place with dignity.

[00:06:27] But but when they move in, often very independent, they want to be able to have access to really, really high quality food, high quality experiences. You know, there are communities that have, you know, golf simulators and multiple dining venues and and and and the really the expectation of the consumer, especially as the boomer ages into that type of, you know, environment and starts to think about, you know, where they want to live and how they want to live.

[00:06:57] And, you know, they want to live and they want to live and how they want to live.

[00:07:18] Real flexibility and allows them a real level of independence. So on a Tuesday night when they're deciding to go out for Taco Tuesday and five dollar margaritas, they can Uber versus drive. And and I'm always amazed when they tell me that they've called an Uber or they're able to buy products through things like, you know, Uber Eats or, you know, some of the other Grubhub or Dash. And, you know, the access to choice and variety today is so different than it was that the consumer demand has changed.

[00:07:48] And we're trying to address that in the way that we deliver our food model in communities that serve food again around technology, around understanding the consumer preference. And then how we would deliver really specific and meet their specific needs, you know, based on their choice and the variety that they demand and want.

[00:08:08] And if we take a look under the hood at some of the technology that you're using here, I was reading that Restora has integrated AI, predictive analytics and data science into your operations. So can you tell me a little about how these technologies are used to ultimately optimize operations, reduce food waste and even gather real time resident feedback to?

[00:08:29] Yeah, you can imagine, Neil, in these large congregate settings where there's hundreds of people that are living there and again, eating at multiple dining venues. But if you understood their preference through predictive analytics and over time, you know, people's habits are somewhat the same. Right. And so we're using tools and technology to drive sort of efficiency in our model to understand where people might eat,

[00:08:59] what they might be eating and also even recognize what their preferences are and then deliver suggestions to them in advance so that they can say, hey, listen, if you're coming down for dinner tonight based on the things that you love or based on what you've had in the past, here's some recommendations of things you might want to eat. Right. Connected to that is this whole idea of of how we're going to deliver sort of on health and wellness.

[00:09:24] Right. And, you know, there's so much power in disease prevention and disease management today connected to food. And we believe based on our technology and with some third party providers, we can help manage that, you know, through technology, through selective offerings that that residents and people who are living in these communities can choose to eat based on the things that they're trying to manage in their own personal life.

[00:09:53] And then, again, even using push notifications to drive, you know, those types of suggestions, which I think is very, very positive. Also, when you think about it from a cost analytics, we can use predictive analytics to sort of not have it, you know, be a lagging indicator, but a leading indicator of challenges. The egg situation today is a perfect example. And you can imagine the bird flu is causing chaos in the egg world. Right.

[00:10:20] But eggs are consumed a lot. And, you know, we are able to then look for alternatives and even recommend alternatives to eggs so that we can look at how to manage costs that are without compromising quality or the fundamentals of a diet. It's really exciting. And by the way, I can tell you, it is a competitive for us differentiator, because I don't know of another company focusing on technology the way that we're doing it today.

[00:10:47] Again, using AI predictive analytics and generative AI to drive our offer. And of course, right at the heart of everything we're talking about here, dining quality is pivotal for senior living communities, not only in attracting and retaining residents, but also, of course, a significant operating expense too. So how do your digital dashboards, sentiment analysis tools and technology, how does that help your clients maybe manage budgets and ultimately improve that resident satisfaction?

[00:11:17] You know, as I said earlier, traditionally, a lot of the communities that we would serve, that I've served in the past, measure resident satisfaction on an annual basis. And they do that through a traditional paper survey or an electronic survey. And you can imagine how inefficient that is, because you're getting a moment in time. And again, if you had a great meal on a Thursday and the survey came out on Friday, you're a hero. If you had a terrible meal on a Thursday and the survey came out on Friday,

[00:11:45] then you're terrible. You're not looking at it really holistically over a longer period of time. You know, our tool manages sentiment in real time, you know, using multiple different measures that we've built in, using data scientists and, you know, these are scientifically measured, right? So it's not just a hunch. We're actually getting information multiple different ways and weighing them based on the engagement

[00:12:14] that people are engaging with it. So, for instance, just going out and having a button that says how happy or not were you with the meal has a very low weighting scale because it's easy to do versus someone responding to a survey or responding to a phone call or filling out something and actually giving meaningful feedback. But also, when you can think about that, when you are serving things that they don't want and you're taking that feedback and you're actually adjusting the menus to their preferences

[00:12:42] and then, you know, making sure that the costs are aligned, this provides a very, very powerful tool. And then we feed that information back to clients so they're able to make real-time decisions based on their program from this real-time feedback that they're getting back that they currently don't have today. The other thing that's important is you can imagine when they're measuring, Neil, and people come in to buy into these communities and are thinking about moving themselves or their family, and they ask the question, how is your food?

[00:13:11] Now the communities are able to give them that information in real-time. This is how we measure our community satisfaction through the sentiment analysis. And we can show them, and they can show through their dashboard boards in real-time how that community is really faring. So when they say we're doing great, they can say this is our measurement scale. This is how often we're measuring it. This is actually in real-time. This is today's score. This is where we are today. This is how we want to measure ourselves. This is what our goal is, and we're achieving that goal or exceeding that goal,

[00:13:40] or we're below, and here's the reason why, and here are the things that we're working towards. And I think this is really powerful. I think it exists in the world today in a way that there's this rating system that we all have the ability to do, but I don't think it exists that way in the communities that we serve in the outsourced dining world the way that we built it. And something else that I found fascinating was that it is actually senior living communities that are increasingly seeking tech-enabled

[00:14:08] responsiveness and innovation, and these expectations are going to continue to increase. So I've got to ask that. How do you balance the integration of advanced technologies with that personal, compassionate care that the residents expect to? It's got to be quite a fine or delicate balancing act, I would imagine. Neil, there's a great book by Will Goddair called Unreasonable Hospitality, and one of the things that he talks about is providing that real experience service, right?

[00:14:38] And Will ran 11 Madison Park, which was rated the number one restaurant in the world multiple times. And I think personalized service today and tech allows us to know more information today. I always tell my team, when we approach a table and take the order, I want to celebrate the things that are important to those that we serve. I don't want to just know when their birthday is. I want to know when their dog's birthday is, right?

[00:15:05] And you can imagine that personalized service when you walk over to a table and you say, Mr. Jones, it's great to see you today. Oh, by the way, and happy birthday to your dog. Matter of fact, before you leave today, we're going to send something up to your dog as a treat. Is that okay? Because we want to make sure that we recognize the dog's birthday today, right? I always say that, I think it was Leona Helmsley said, or one of those great people in hospitality, there's no sweeter sound to a person and a person's own name.

[00:15:35] And I think it's important, right? When we know things about people and we can have this intimate relationship with them through technology and through this sort of learning process that we're going to allow technology to get to know the residents, their preferences, their choices, who they are, and what's important to them. And then the last thing I just will say to that is something that's really unique about Restora is that every employee in our company is an owner. And we have dedicated 35% of our company to employee ownership.

[00:16:03] It's the first time that any company in the food and dining outsource space, any competitor, any company has done this. It's new. We're part of Ownership Works, which is an organization that promotes ownership, and certainly in the private equity world. We think it's an important differentiator and allows our employees really to think about those interactions differently because now they're approaching that table as an owner. Now they're approaching the dish that they're serving or cooking as an owner.

[00:16:33] They're, you know, the work that they're doing behind the scenes as owners, not just employees. And we think that that's a huge competitive advantage linked with technology. We think it's a very, very powerful tool. And from the outside looking in, it really does feel that the intersection of nutrition, science, culinary artistry, and hospitality also seems central to Restora's philosophy. Would you agree with that? And how do you ensure that your dining solutions address both the health and emotional well-being of residents

[00:17:01] while leveraging your technology at the same time? I interviewed 50 chefs before we chose our chief culinary officer, right? And, you know, we did an exhaustive nationwide search to find the right person to help us align our, you know, sort of what we were thinking. And as I said to you, there was three unique things about our company that we felt were going to be differentiators in the marketplace, right?

[00:17:29] And so, but at the core of it, we said food needed to be the hero. And we needed to find the right culinary leader to drive that experience. Because at the end of the day, right, that's what people are looking for. What is the end deliverable in food? And we call that unapologetically, you know, delicious food. And one of the things about our chef, Matthew Thomas, he's focused on how to make food nutritionally better, right?

[00:17:55] And there's a lot of focus on that, as you know, in the press today, you know, not using dyes and certainly not processed food. That everything that we are doing is scratch cooking. Really understanding the fundamentals of where the food came from. So looking at procurement differently, knowing that that food was responsibly sourced. And when possible, that is it, could we do it additive free?

[00:18:19] Can we, you know, make sure that we're buying the best ingredients possible so that we're, you know, again, linking it to the deliverable of unapologetically delicious food. And I also will tell you that where technology plays a role here is, again, through a third-party partnership, we look at food as a healing mechanism. And as I shared earlier, we're looking at that, you know, really the disease prevention and the disease management side of it, that food can make a difference in terms of how we live and how long we live.

[00:18:48] And we know this today because there's so much information available to us in the marketplace relative to really looking at making the right choices today. One of the things that I think about, and there's a, and I don't want to use the name to disparage them, but there's a fast food provider who, you know, 15 years ago, their French fries had three ingredients. Today, those same French fries have 14 ingredients, right?

[00:19:13] And so we look at the ingredient makeup of everything that we're serving and saying, how do we serve the most nutritionally sound food? That's, but more important than that, it has to be nutritionally sound, but it again has to be unapologetically delicious.

[00:19:26] And so I will say that we've spent a lot of time and energy over the last 18 months building the menu set, the products that we're going to choose, the ingredient set, how we're going to deliver it, how we're going to tie it to making sure we have the most nutritionally sound and unapologetically delicious food, because that's what people deserve. And that's really the focus of sort of this new consumer today and what's important to them.

[00:19:52] And I'm curious, as the senior living sector continues to evolve, and more importantly, the residents' expectations of what they expect from technology solutions, what are the biggest challenges and maybe even opportunities in delivering dining services that meet the needs of that rapidly aging population? And how are you aiming to lead that transformation with technology? Anything you can share around that?

[00:20:17] Neil, what's the saying? Change will never be faster than it is today, but also never be slower or something like that, right? I mean, it's amazing to me because, you know, AI has been around a long time, but not in the way that it's being used by people today, right? And so in these platforms that, you know, and I think about we use some of the Microsoft products and even Copilot or ChatGPT or OpenAI or any of these sort of things, right?

[00:20:43] I mean, the speed of change and access to information in itself is a challenge, right? And also, you have multiple generations living together collectively today in a way that their expectations are different and unique, right? And so there's an emerging new population that's aging.

[00:21:02] The baby boomers are turning 80 and this is an important – and they're much more tech savvy and they're, you know, they – again, they're much more interested in choice and variety, but you're still serving a generation that says, I'm happy with the way things are, right? The other big challenge that we face in the industry is it has a reputation problem.

[00:21:23] We've done some studies and we've done a lot of research, some which, again, are – some posted on our website and some we've been very public about, which the industry, they understand the consumer says one of the choices and one of the biggest factors that impact their decision whether or not they're going to move into a senior living community is food, right?

[00:21:45] So almost 70% say it's one of the top three things, in many cases, one or two of why they would select living in a residential community. The challenge is when asked how confident you are that that community can deliver what you're looking for, only 17% had confidence that they could deliver it. That's a real industry reputation problem, right? And so those are the – one of the challenges we seek.

[00:22:12] And then the last thing I would say is the access to employees, employee turnover continues to be an issue. People aren't choosing the service industry the way that they were years ago, and that's where we think our ownership will be a difference because it will give people something really tangible to work towards, and they can feel very connected to us as an organization. So I think that that's part of a value problem. But, you know, certainly there are challenges, right?

[00:22:39] And I think we are trying to face those by the way that we're positioning our offer. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Talking about how you're leading this transformative movement in the food and dining management industry and ultimately leveraging technology and innovation to set these new standards for senior living and active aging communities. So much food for thought there. Apologies for the pun. But I'd like to have a bit of fun with you now.

[00:23:07] One of the questions I always ask my guests is a song to add to our Spotify playlist. So what song would you like to add and why? So I always say one of the best and greatest business lessons I've ever learned was from the song, The Gambler. And, you know, when I think about that song, there's so many life lessons, right? And the words are, you've got to know when to hold them. You've got to know when to fold them. You've got to know when to walk away.

[00:23:36] You've got to know when to run. You never count your money when you're sitting at the table. There will be time enough for counting when the dealing is done. And I really take that as incredible life lessons, Neil. I think it's a lesson in business. I think there's a lot there when you think about the fundamentals of what is being said. It's not about gambling.

[00:23:58] It's about the choices that we make, how we approach a negotiation, how we approach deals, whether those are tech deals or VC deals or even in the way that we negotiate on a daily basis is when to show your cards and when not to. And, you know, I share those words with my kids often as simple life lessons learned in a song. Well, let me tell you, Joe, I've made a life out of reading people's faces.

[00:24:25] But in all seriousness, I had to stop myself from bursting out into song there. What a great song that is. And I'll get that added straight to Spotify playlist. And for anybody listening, want to dig a little bit deeper in what you're doing at Restora, the technology you're using, how you might be able to help, or maybe just ask you a question. Where would you like to point everyone listening?

[00:24:48] You know, a great place to go is our website, which is Restora, which is R-E-S-T-A-U-R-A dot com. Certainly they can find us on LinkedIn. You know, they can look me up on LinkedIn also, or, you know, or reach out to us at info at Restora dot com. But we'd love to hear from people. Reach out, ask questions, get to know us, talk about some of the things that we're doing. And we're happy to share.

[00:25:15] Well, before you join me on the podcast today, I thought I had a rough idea of how this industry worked. But listening to you today, how you're harnessing AI, predictive analytics, and data science to gather this real-time feedback from residents to optimize operations, reduce food waste. Again, so much cool stuff you're doing here. And one of the reasons I record this podcast every day is to get people thinking differently about the impacts of technology in areas you don't expect.

[00:25:44] And I think this is a textbook example of that. So thank you for shining a light on this today, Joe. Thank you, Neil. It was great to be on the podcast, and I appreciate you having me. I think with an aging population wielding $7.6 trillion in spending power, this food service industry is facing somewhat of a fundamental shift. And Restora is ultimately proving that data-driven dining isn't just a luxury.

[00:26:09] It is the future, and it's giving senior living communities the tools they need to create exceptional personalized dining experiences while optimizing costs and reducing waste. So, as AI and predictive analytics continue to reshape hospitality, what will be the next frontier? Will hyper-personalization and real-time sentiment tracking, will all these things become the new gold standard?

[00:26:36] And how will technology further redefine the balance between culinary creativity and operational efficiency? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one. Please email me, techblogwriteroutlook.com, LinkedInX, just at Neil C. Hughes. Let me know what trends you are seeing in this space and what you thought of today's conversation. But right there, it's time for me to listen to Kenny Rogers, the gambler, as I add it to this Spotify playlist. And trust me, you don't want to hear me singing along to that.

[00:27:06] So, I will wish you farewell and speak with you all bright and early tomorrow. And remember, you never count your money As you're sitting at the table There'll be time enough for counting When the deal ends down You got to know when