Pizza Expo Podcast Episode 4 - Mike Bausch
[00:00:00.000] - Rev and Eric
Welcome back to another episode of "Who's at Pizza Expo". Mike Bausch. What do we do with our hands? Mike Bausch is here behind the camera. Jim Bausch is over here. Lee, manager of Cherry Street is, everybody's here hanging out. We got Dave here, everybody's here. So, including Mike Bausch, keynote speaker this morning, crushed it. Welcome. How are you?
[00:00:26.890] - Mike
(Makes lots of hand puppets)
[00:00:27.091] - Rev and Eric
My kid is always impressed by the bird.
[00:00:27.100] - Rev and Eric
I feel like all the pressure from yesterday and this morning is gone. And now he's like, he's just getting a little crazy. But that's good, man, I'm super proud of you this morning. You killed it. My man. Tulsa style. So how many expos have you been to now? Seven, eight?
[00:00:42.540] - Mike
No, more than that.
[00:00:43.300] - Rev and Eric
Yeah? What are you seeing differently? Anything new this year?
[00:00:45.990] - Mike
There's a lot of young and hungry upstarts. There's a lot of cool stuff. People that have created a tech company or people created a machine and they're looking to get it out there. The big boys and there's a lot of new people here, like, so many, "hey, Covid taught us this" and we're opening our thing. I'm going to do my thing for my life and droves of those people. I'm very happy, it's a very different Pizza Expo. That I got to be here. And you got a full house for the keynote, at what you would say is the "less attended" Pizza Expo. It's a full house.
[00:01:23.200] - Rev and Eric
Right.
[00:01:23.460] - Mike
So obviously something's going right.
[00:01:25.200] - Rev and Eric
Yeah. We've been talking to everybody, a lot of plant based stuff here. Do you see any need to put that on your menu, what's your thoughts on that because I know you're kind of a forward thinking guy?
[00:01:32.680] - Mike
I do. I do see that that's going to, it's, even people that are, the concept of going vegan used to be like, "hey listen, I'm not from Berkeley" and then you're like, "oh, wow I'm losing weight. And my heart disease kind of went away. Maybe I should do this but I still love pizza." And then you have cheese that doesn't suck. And like, Happy Little Plants...super doesn't suck. It's a good pepperoni when baked off. So you've got all these guys, like, maybe I could, maybe I should try this.
[00:02:03.120] - Rev and Eric
Yeah.
[00:02:03.490] - Mike
So we're doing it, we're adding it. More. And we're going to go from there.
[00:02:08.340] - Rev and Eric
Yeah, you know, one of the things he's real big on is third party delivery and how to take advantage of that. You take the customer after they've done the marketing. You do a pretty good job with DoorDash. Can you kind of talk about that? How you take advantage of them doing the marketing and you doing the business.
[00:02:23.670] - Mike
Yeah, I mean Doordash does the email, does the buy back. That's fine. We use DoorDash Drive to do our online ordering and then they are in our system. And there's a lot of, what has not occurred, yet, is the full loyalty suite that's really conductive. It connects the dots between toast and DoorDash and your email list. There's a few upstarts but toast is working on it but it's not as good as like the other guy who's not integrated properly in toast I would say it's on the cusp of someone winning.
[00:02:56.310] - Rev and Eric
Yeah, so you're taking the order through your toast and then DoorDash is delivering it? They're the last mile solution.
[00:03:05.510] - Mike
Yes.
[00:03:05.510] - Rev and Eric
That's the way to do it.
[00:03:07.400] - Mike
Yeah, it's like, it's not DoorDash's customer. We're just, it's like DoorDash for hire. Like, "hey, take this food." "Alright." That's how it is.
[00:03:13.980] - Rev and Eric
That is the way to do it.
[00:03:16.000] - Rev and Eric
Kind of like a Walmart food delivery, almost. You place the order on Walmart delivery but they're just bringing it to you.
[00:03:24.060] - Mike
Even Apple, Apple right now, if you buy, let's say, a cord on Apple. It'll say, would you like this delivered? So they take it out of the Apple Store and they use PostMates to deliver it.
[00:03:34.900] - Rev and Eric
Yeah.
[00:03:35.740] - Mike
And I'm fully in Apple's system, PostMates doesn't have my information. They're not emailing me. It's an Apple transaction.
[00:03:42.520] - Rev and Eric
They're providing a service.
[00:03:43.830] - Rev and Eric
A totally different subject but are you excited about Monday? Bachelor in Paradise starts?
[00:03:50.070] - Mike
I don't know if I'm back in Bachelor nation, yet.
[00:03:53.530] - Rev and Eric
Yeah. I didn't watch The Bachelor at the... Did you watch it at all?
[00:03:56.410] - Mike
I did not.
[00:03:56.940] - Rev and Eric
I didn't either. I just, I didn't even know it was on, but Bachelor in Paradise starts Monday, I'm in, full out.
[00:04:07.480] - Mike
I heard, I think that happened yesterday. I already happened yesterday.
[00:04:07.809] - Rev and Eric
Oh was that? Oh..
[00:04:08.125] - Mike
Yeah, David Spade was the host.
[00:04:08.160] - Rev and Eric
Really?
[00:04:08.520] - Rev and Eric
So true story, the ringmaker from the first three seasons designed this ring. (Points to ring)
[00:04:12.840] - Rev and Eric
Really? Well, he didn't put much effort into that. That's black.
[00:04:15.440] - Rev and Eric
I've also not ever seen a single episode.
[00:04:17.733] - Rev and Eric
We watch.
[00:04:17.760] - Mike
I saw it on Fallon last night because I went to bed early, in my hotel room.
[00:04:23.760] - Rev and Eric
Wow. Look at you!
[00:04:24.360] - Mike
And Fallon was talking about how, uh this girl goes and like meets David Spade and she's like, "Oh, my God, I didn't think I'd meet Dave Chapelle."
[00:04:34.860] - Rev and Eric
So I want to ask you about your keynote this morning. I was there. It was phenomenal. When you're backstage and the video is going and then the countdown starts and it's like, and you hear the laughter because, you know, you've put the little queues in for things to happen. Are you like, yeah, got it. Nailed it.
[00:04:51.310] - Mike
Yeah. It's a lot of waiting for it to hit and I had the video and all this stuff. No one, not even Jim, no one had seen any of these videos. I wanted it all to be fresh. No one, not even...who was doing the intro. I'm like just like know it's going to be different and no one and I was like, if you want to show it, I can send it to Jeremy the editor and then he was like, I was about to open it and I deleted it because I wanted to be surprised. Cool.
[00:05:14.420] - Rev and Eric
Well, I saw right after you were done, we were out in the hall, Pete Lachapelle came up and I said, "hey, what did you think?" And he stopped for a minute and he said, that was the greatest keynote speech I've ever seen. at Pizza Expo. Those were his exact words.
[00:05:29.940] - Rev and Eric
So, for people that weren't there, that are getting it here. What would be like, the one takeaway that you delivered for somebody that wasn't here to see it?
[00:05:38.520] - Mike
A unique takeaway of that speech was the cliché narrative of "I'm a New York pizza guy and I own NYC pizza". It's all dead. It's about you and your story and your pizza because pizza, it's not, it's not Italian food, even on DoorDash. It's not Italian, it's in a different section, it's pizza. It's like a sandwich at this point. I'm not saying I'm not Italian, I'm not proud to be from New York, my heritage. But if you're a lawyer in Alabama and you went and started a pizza place, have it be Pizzeria Esquire and do your thing. Stop trying to do this old narrative and that's what's going to win over the next 3 decades.
[00:06:21.400] - Rev and Eric
What's next from here for Mikey Bausch?
[00:06:23.890] - Mike
Well, I have a speech about third party delivery in about 2 hours. I'd like to eat something. Looking forward to our party tonight.
[00:06:33.200] - Rev and Eric
Yeah!
[00:06:34.400] - Mike
And just dominating expo
[00:06:35.870] - Rev and Eric
All right, well we're going to let you go. Hey, thank you for being a Perfect Crust customer. Thank you for being my friend. And also thank you, Marqii for sponsoring. Yeah.
[00:06:54.700] - Mike
Pizzeria A'OK. Time square, let's go.
[00:06:56.340] - Rev and Eric
Awesome. Thank you, brother.
[00:06:57.151] - Mike
Alright guys, have a great day.
[00:06:57.970] - Rev and Eric
Appreciate ya.
