Marketing Happy Hour - Restaurant Marketing 101: Infusing Hospitality Into Your Brand | Esther McIlvain of Hawkers Asian Street Food

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Esther. How are you? I'm doing so well, Cassie. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. We're super stoked to have you here on Marketing Happy Hour. And you are local to me specifically. I'm not too far from there. I'm always in Orlando. So it's fun to always chat with kind of a local business. I mean, you guys have expanded outside of Florida, which is awesome, which we'll kind of dive into that. But yeah, so good to chat with you. I have to ask, of course, what's in your glass this morning? I know we're recording a little bit earlier in the day, but I don't know if y'all have anything coming up here soon at the restaurants that you want to share. We do. I'm so glad you asked. So today, like you said, we're recording in the morning. I have a fruity fizz in my glass. That's tea with a T-E-A. We just launched our summer beverages and we packaged up some non-alcoholic booze-free options in with that too. So I'm drinking a mocktail right now and it's dragon fruit, green tea, fresh lemon, ginger beer, and then basil seeds and fresh mint. So super, super refreshing. But if this was happy hour hours, I think I would be drinking

Starting point is 00:01:26 our new Domo Arigato Mezcal Roboto. It's a mouthful. I know, but it's our first Mezcal cocktail we've ever put on the menu. So I'm just head over heels for it. It's a spicy one, and I love it. And I can't wait to see how it does. Oh, yum. I love mezcal so much. So that sounds delicious. Okay. Well first, can you tell us a little bit about Hawkers? I, again, I'm familiar with the brand. I've been many times to your St. Pete, Florida location, but tell us a little bit more just on first glance. Like if you're checking out Hawkers on social, it's very vibrant, very beautiful. The food looks absolutely delicious, but tell us a little bit about the brand. Absolutely. So Hawkers Asian Street Food is a casual dining restaurant

Starting point is 00:02:13 concept that started in Orlando, like you mentioned, about 13 years ago in 2011. We have since grown. We have 15 locations in seven different states. And the whole concept really is surrounded around hawker stalls and hawker centers in Asia. So if you've never been to Asia before, the best food is often found on the streets of Asia. And one of the best examples I can really give is if you've seen Crazy Rich Asians, the moment that they step off of the plane into Asia and they ask, are you hungry? They take them to this kind of outdoor food court where each stall has its own specialty. That's a hawker center. So that's where the name really derives from. We serve everything in small plate format. So I tried

Starting point is 00:02:57 really hard to veer away from Asian tapas, but sometimes it's the easiest way to explain it. So it's sharing and courage. We want you to come in with friends, with a group of people and order several things and really just have an adventure on the table and try several different pieces, similar to what you would experience on the streets of Asia. And alongside that too, we have a great cocktail program. The bar is really the center of our universe within the visual space of the restaurant, but we want you to be transported as soon as you walk into the restaurant and feel like you are stepping off a plane into the streets of Asia to experience something really new and exciting. Oh, I love that. It's so visual.

Starting point is 00:03:37 It's very easy to picture kind of where you guys draw your inspiration from. That's awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about your background. How did you veer into your position that you have today with Hawkers? Yeah, so I feel like, you know, five years ago, I was often finding myself saying I had a really untraditional background ending up into marketing. But now, I feel like it's actually quite common to start in one piece of the industry and veer your way into another because we blur the lines so often across industry. So I started in PR. I originally wanted to be a journalist. Growing up, I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to go to NYU. And it was like, I'm either working for Vogue or National Geographic, nothing in between. And I ended up

Starting point is 00:04:24 getting a full ride to University of Florida. So that changed my plans just a little bit. And when I went to the preview or the orientation session there, I went in full, full fledged on journalism. And I had a fantastic advisor who said, I don't think journalism is for you. I think PR is what you want to go into. I think you should do PR. And she ended up being exactly right. And I stuck with that and moved to New York City a couple weeks after I graduated with like $10 in my pocket and said, I'm going to make this work. We're going to make the New York City dream work either way and got really lucky to get an awesome position at a boutique PR agency in the city that was representing the majority of

Starting point is 00:05:05 Food Network chefs or Cooking Channel chefs at the time, which was a really fantastic experience because it meant I got to have a lot of hands-on time. It was a small agency. We were only about 12 people. And it meant that I was getting to work directly with the chefs and the personalities and getting to do all of the publicity stuff with Good Morning America, the Today Show, really just got thrown right into the deep end. So I said, PR is for me. It's what I want to do forever, all I'm ever going to want to do. And I ended up finding my way back to Florida because I was ready to work with some smaller brands again, specifically on the restaurant side. Stayed in the agency world, really enjoyed that for a bit until I think I started to feel agency burnout, which I think

Starting point is 00:05:51 is something that's pretty common and decided to kind of go off on my own, live the freelancer life for a little bit, enjoyed it, got to put my own schedule together, do what I wanted, work with who I wanted until Hawkers approached me and gave me essentially an offer that I couldn't refuse. But when I say that, the pieces that were in the offer were the creativity that this brand offers, the team that this brand offers, and just the whole storytelling scope. So I came on managing communications for the brand. And in that process, over the course of the last six years, I've really just completely veered all the way into the brand

Starting point is 00:06:33 marketing side. And now I oversee all events, PR, social media, marketing, both digital, traditional, everything as the vice president of marketing communications here. So it's a little bit of an untraditional path, I think, or it was five years ago. And now I see so many people veering away from PR and into marketing or into social. And I think that's really one of the beautiful pieces about what's happening in our industry right now. Yeah, we've heard a lot of professionals do that. I started in PR. Now I'm in general marketing strategy as well. So I think there's a lot we can learn from that space to apply to what we're doing. And a lot of

Starting point is 00:07:10 times, to your point, maybe there's a role where PR is part of that as well, right? And then I also love how you left for New York a little bit. I did the same thing and it was so incredibly valuable for myself personally, professionally, especially in the marketing space. I mean, you learn so much up there. And so I tell people all the time, I'm like, if you are thinking about going to New York, do it. Especially while you're young, like get it out of your system, learn from it. You can always come back. And again, I did the same thing and, but I would never take that back ever. Oh, so valuable. Yeah, I'm the same way. I look at my time in New York, the years that I spent there as

Starting point is 00:07:52 probably the most pivotal piece in building who I am and what I what I really stand for today, because it taught me so many lessons and a pressure cooker atmosphere. So it really kind of jump started my career and figuring out where I wanted to go in a way that is really hard to get in any other city there. I know that it sounds so cliche, but I so believe in the magic of New York still. And anytime I need that, that feeling again, I head right back to the city and soak up every minute because it is magic. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about leadership here for a second, because we have a lot of young professionals

Starting point is 00:08:35 who are itching to get into a leadership role or even are in a leadership role at a young age. And so I'm just curious, how have you navigated imposter syndrome, tough conversations, kind of growth very quickly, younger in your professional career? This is something I really love to talk about because I feel like it's not talked about enough quite yet. And I think that as like we talked about earlier, paths are really starting to change quickly for people and doors are opening a lot faster and people do not have to take a traditional career path to get to a high leadership level like they used to several years ago. So I am pretty young for

Starting point is 00:09:20 my role and I end up finding myself in a lot of rooms with people who have sometimes 20, 30 years experience on me. They are veterans in the industry and they bring so, so, so much wisdom and insight to the table. But it's really easy for me. I think especially we see this as women in leadership roles. It's very easy to face questions when you're at that table that make you think, okay, do I actually know what I'm talking about? Do I actually believe in what I'm saying? And do I actually know what the next step should be? And I think it's really important to note too, that you can be both confident and be feeling things like imposter syndrome at the same time. The two can and often do happen simultaneously. And that's usually why something

Starting point is 00:10:10 like imposter syndrome can be so difficult to navigate. But the most important piece about it and why I love talking about it is that everyone deals with it. Absolutely everyone deals with it. They feel that waiver at some point in their career, no matter what level, no matter what piece of experience they're bringing to the table, everybody deals with it. And we can talk about it more often so that we can get to a place where you're starting to see everyone a little bit more on equal grounds. I think the most helpful thing for me in this space has been just building my tribe and building my squad around me, making sure that I am surrounding myself with people who are really authentic, who really have honest conversations

Starting point is 00:10:53 with me and at their core, just make sure that they care about me deeply because they are the ones who are going to be pulling me out of that headspace when I need to, or giving me some real honest truths when I, when I need those too. And you just really have to also learn to embrace praise, I think, and not discount your accomplishments. I see this a lot in some of the younger leadership that I mentor where I'll give them a compliment on something and they'll say, thank you. But then they'll say, yeah, but you know, so-and-so was happening at the same time. And I'm like, no, just take the accomplishment, live in the wind, embrace the winds, both small and big and celebrate them at all points. Yeah. Oh, such good advice. That's so good. I think you need that confidence,

Starting point is 00:11:41 that foundation of confidence, especially because there's so many challenges being thrown at us a million different directions that having that to hold on to is so important. And you mentioned just the people around you. I think your environment definitely does foster the type of mindset you're going to have. So I think as adults in general, this is kind of a lesson, like we have to make decisions to cut things out of our lives or people even that are not supporting us and our goals and just personally and professionally. And it's hard, but I think it pays off in the long run. So it does. I think you should also consider doing that in the leader that you have to really understanding

Starting point is 00:12:22 that there are different leadership styles out there and making sure that you are paired up with a leader who really aligns with the leadership style that you need, because a great leader will challenge you, but will never make you question your intuition or your gut. So make sure that you are with a leader and at a place that really celebrates who you are and celebrates what you bring to the table. Yeah, 100%. So let's dive into marketing strategy a little bit. I want to hear about this hourglass strategy that you stand by. Super interesting. When I first heard about this, I want to hear all about how that works. But yeah, can you explain exactly what that is and how it's contributed to Hawker's success? Absolutely. So this is another one of my

Starting point is 00:13:11 favorite things to talk about because I just love the idea of taking traditional marketing foundations, learning from them and growing from them, and then flipping them completely on their head and saying, how can we make this better? How can we make this more innovative? So a traditional marketing funnel, as we all know, is really kind of based around awareness, consideration, and conversion. And then once you convert everybody, you go back up to the top and you're like, how do we create more awareness? And then go back down. You're just trying to convert them. Well, on an hourglass strategy, which is really what we employ here at Hawkers, you have those top three, but then you take it down one step further and you go into adoption and back down into raving fandom. And then you're really looking

Starting point is 00:13:57 at like word of mouth expansion at the bottom and brand ambassadorship. So when you do it as an hourglass function, if you guys are visualizing this, I know everyone's listening to this right now, but you're visualizing this in your head. The beautiful part about it is that in typical hourglass form, you can spin it around on its head to fit whatever strategy you need to fit. So when you're doing it really well and you're going further and past the conversion process and you're really building relationships with your community and with your audience and getting them to engage on a much deeper level, they start to do a lot of the marketing for you.

Starting point is 00:14:34 And they start to do it in a way that is not only more cost effective for your brand, but in a way that is much more organic and believable for everybody else that they are pulling into your brand. Because I love ads just as much as the next person and I get caught by ads and end up buying things just as much as anybody does. But I trust what my friends tell me 10 times more than I'm going to trust anything that I am seeing for the first time on social. So we really, really subscribe to that. And then some of our strategies, we don't even start at the awareness level, we are starting immediately at the adoption level, and just going down from there, because word of mouth is handling a lot of our awareness for us. Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, restaurants are a very, you have to be there to experience it type of thing, right? Like you're there talking to the team, eating the food, having the drinks. How are you kind of helping to create a similar experience that you're doing in the restaurants online in order to kind of continue to engage people when they're not necessarily

Starting point is 00:15:45 sitting at the restaurant or ordering takeout or what have you? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's something that we face every single day in the world of restaurant marketing. And I think that it really boils down to the community that we are building on the digital scape. So my team and I don't really look at don't really look at at the restaurant and the digital space as two separate things. We kind of look at them as one and the same, and we look at them as its own personality, its own persona as a whole. our guest base visits us eight or more times a year, which is a very high percentage for someone in the, in our category for a restaurant in our category, the typical, the typical percentage is usually around five to 6% to have that high of a loyalty. And we don't have a loyalty program. Almost every restaurant out there has a loyalty program. And we have chosen to,

Starting point is 00:16:41 to not. And one of the ways that we are doing that is by genuinely becoming friends with our audience on social, on a personal level. So our team spends so much time getting to know our audience on a first name basis, learning what makes them tick, what makes, especially the people who are our eight or more time a year visitors, what makes them tick, what makes, especially the people who are our eight or more time a year visitors, what makes them happy, what their interests are, things like that. And we'll do surprise and delight with that community where, you know, we've got, say, we've got Susie in the DC area and we know that she loves Taylor Swift and she is a diehard cat lady and she is posting like crazy and we're seeing her engage with our brand so much. So we'll ask for Susie's address and we'll put together a full care package full of Taylor Swift themed cat goodies to send to her

Starting point is 00:17:39 just to thank her for engaging with our brand and not asking her for anything else. There's a great book that I read often with my team, and it's called Radical Candor. And it's all about caring deeply about people on a personal level, while of course, having honest conversation. But we really employ that caring deeply, not just within our team, but within our audience too, and seeing them as people, not just as patrons coming in to spend money within our restaurants. Yeah, absolutely. We had a conversation with Paige Taylor from Amika recently, and she really talked about a very similar principle of seeing your customers not as customers, but as friends. You're literally literally building relationship with them. And if you think about like a real human relationship that you have, imagine experiencing

Starting point is 00:18:30 that from a friend, like a friend shows up at your house with a surprise basket of your favorite things, like how great would that make you feel? And so I think that creates those lasting memories of a brand and it goes far beyond, you know, just the stuff that someone's receiving. It's literally a lasting impression that you're making. And I think it's incredibly powerful, more than people know. Yeah, restaurants at their core are often tied to emotional response moments. So often when you're celebrating something, you're going to a restaurant, you're meeting up with friends, anything like that. It's in some ways, my CEO says something where, where he calls this sometimes restaurants are like the last frontier of true

Starting point is 00:19:18 human connection, because you can see food and cocktails through the phone, but you cannot physically eat food and cocktails through the phone. So you cannot physically eat food and cocktails through the phone. So you have to go out and you have to end up experiencing this in real life. So it is something that we really, really take to heart. And we take it a step further and get to know everybody as much as we possibly can. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you've talked a little bit about personalization so far, but just going a little bit deeper, do you have any more examples

Starting point is 00:19:50 of how you all use personalized storytelling and experiential activations to build those strong connections with your patrons? Absolutely. So we do this in two ways. There's a fantastic book out there. I'm a big reader, so I'm always going to bring up books. But it's called Unreasonable Hospitality. And it is very, very popular within the restaurant and the hospitality space. But it is one that I absolutely suggest people read across industries. And it's by Will Godara. And he is the, of course, famed 11 Madison Park brain.

Starting point is 00:20:24 And he is just incredible. And he tells this story in there about how a couple came into 11 Madison Park, which is very high end restaurant. And he heard them talking about how the one thing they didn't get to try while they were in the city was a New York City hot dog. And his chef got wind of that.

Starting point is 00:20:43 And his chef said, well, we're gonna go have them try a New York City hot dog. He ran out to the nearest hot dog. And his chef got wind of that. And his chef said, Well, we're gonna go have them try a hot dog, a New York City hot dog, he ran out to the nearest hot dog cart, got a hot dog, brought it in, plated it really nicely, you know, added some zhuzhed up sauce to it and whatnot, and brought it out to them at this table, this, you know, Michelin star table, and gave them this moment where they felt heard, they felt seen, and they felt special and taken care of by the restaurant that they felt just honored to be at. So we employ in our restaurant, something that we call hot dog moments now. And it is where we are really

Starting point is 00:21:20 encouraging our restaurant leaders and our restaurant teams to get to know the people who are sitting at their tables, have conversations so that you can understand who they are, why they're there, what their interests are. And then let's create hot dog moments for them. Let's create special things, whether that means, you know, going down the road and getting a personalized balloon for somebody because you hear that they just passed, you know, 10,000 subscribers on their podcast and you want to celebrate that moment with them. Do have those moments where you are personalizing the experience for them and making it feel like they are the only one in the restaurant. So that's something we do on the personalization side. On the experiential side, we really try hard to use experience to storytell with our brands. And both with the hot dog moments and what I'm about to talk about, I think the biggest key is making everyone part of the story.

Starting point is 00:22:19 I think that's the key to storytelling is instead of just telling them the story and saying it to them, make them part of the story and they will inherently understand what the story is and and move forward from there. So we love experiential activations and it sounds crazy because restaurants are experiential by nature, but we take it outside of the restaurants. One example is there's a great immersive art festival that happens here in Orlando called Immerse. And one year we said, we want to participate in this and we want to do an art installation that really represents what our food is and tells the story of Asian street food. And our brand chef and co-founder Alan Lowe always says the best thing about Asian street food is that it engages all five senses. So we said, why don't we tell that story by building a five room with a roof and everything building on the middle of Orange Avenue, which is the main road in downtown Orlando, and do a sensory deprivation installation

Starting point is 00:23:24 where one room, you can't see anything, can't hear anything, but all you can do is smell the aromas of Asian street food. Next room, you know, all you can do is hear. Next room, all you can do is see. Then we have a room of touch and of course, taste with food at the end. And we ended up getting close to 80,000 people coming through that art installation within the space of two days. And we saw so many light bulb moments happen for people on that realm. And it just created this really, really organic understanding of what our story is and what makes Asian street food so unique compared to some of the other Asian concepts that we see around today.

Starting point is 00:24:12 Oh, that's so cool. And I think with both illustrations that you gave, just kind of one going above and beyond with the consumer, right? And the second is just doing these unique, different experiences. I think personally, one of the number one most detrimental statements you can say as a business is, well, this isn't the way we do things, or we don't do that, whatever that is. And I think as a leader, empowering your team to use their own discernment, to make decisions about better serving a customer, better serving a client, whoever online, offline, uh, and going above and beyond for your customers. And, um, that's something that we were very much empowered when I worked at Disney to do as well. It's like, if you feel like you want to give this family a ice cream bar because the kid

Starting point is 00:25:04 never had an ice cream bar while they were on their trip, great. Do it. And so I think that's so incredibly powerful. And that book is amazing. There's also a TED Talk, too, that covers some of that story. But definitely, definitely highly recommend doing that. And we're seeing that more and more with non-restaurant businesses, which is really exciting. But I think that in this day and age when people are so inundated with so much content and businesses and everything,

Starting point is 00:25:30 that's the way you're going to stand out is really by tugging on those heartstrings, listening, really paying attention intently and serving a customer in a different way than never expected. So yeah, thank you. Absolutely. And something that kind of sets us apart too. And I think this is something we're seeing more and more in the restaurant space is we recently switched over from having a mission statement to a purpose statement. And we really kind of reset the foundation of how we look at things. And our purpose statement is we spark adventure and everyday moments through genuine connection. So through that purpose statement, just like you said, we are really, really, really trying to empower every single person on our team, whether it is the host who is the first, the

Starting point is 00:26:15 first person welcoming everyone into the restaurant, the first face that they see all the way up to our CEO, really empowering everyone to make those decisions and to make someone's day brighter. I think it's pretty similar to some, Disney does, I think, their magical moments or their pixie dust. It's very similar to that, really trying to up the level of personalization, but doing it on a person-to-person level. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I want to pivot a little bit and talk about your personal career. So you are a board member for the Central Florida Zoo, which is awesome, by the way, and the Botanical Gardens. Yeah. Can you share just the importance of having endeavors like that outside of your nine to five, specifically in like the volunteer giving back space?

Starting point is 00:27:05 Like, why is that important? And how does that contribute to yourself personally and professionally overall? Absolutely. So this is something that I think is paramount, especially within the marketing space, especially when you find yourself in a bubble within your industry. I think it is really, really, really important to feed your soul in ways that kind of breathe life back into you as you face things like burnout, or even as you face things like bubble bias, what we call it here, where you are really just

Starting point is 00:27:38 only looking at within your brand scope or looking within your industry scope and forgetting that there's so much world out there outside of your brand and outside of your industry. So for me personally, I'm a huge animal buff. So doing things that really give back within the animal welfare space is a really big, big deal for me. And I'm on the board. I'm really lucky to have been on the board for the past three years over at the Central Florida Zoo. And I just really believe in their mission and believe in their purpose and believe in their story. So doing that feeds my creative soul

Starting point is 00:28:16 and feeds my marketing soul and helps expand my knowledge into other spaces while also feeding that piece of me that remembers that my job is not my life. So I would say some of the hours that we work in our job, we'll say differently, but our job isn't our life. It's a piece of our life and it should enrich our life, but not necessarily take it all over. So making sure that you're going out there and you're doing things that also enrich your life in other ways is absolutely paramount to staying dynamic as a marketer, staying dynamic as a leader, and then just

Starting point is 00:28:50 staying dynamic as a general human. Yeah, yeah, couldn't agree more. And I know this is kind of a loaded question. But I'm just curious what advice you would give to aspiring marketers or even current marketers or PR professionals who are looking just to overall build a successful career in their industry? So I love this question because I answer it with a question that I need to or I answer it with an answer that I need to remind myself frequently. And I would say don't be afraid to fail. Do not be afraid to have hiccups and misstep and don't be afraid to push the boundaries and there will be moments that you will fail. There will be moments where it doesn't work out. There will be moments where you don't get the job that you really wanted or the campaign that you

Starting point is 00:29:39 implemented doesn't increase sales or you don't see the engagement rates you want from a post that you've posted, there will be those moments. But really, try early on in your career to rebrand what failure means to you. Because the sooner you can realize that failure is not a bad word, or a bad feeling that that you're rebranding it into learning a lesson or being proud of the fact that you took a risk. That's huge. Rebrand failure within your mind to be the space where you say, I took a risk and I'm proud of that. And I learned a lesson. It's easier said than done, of course, but that's where it's incredibly important to make sure that you're surrounding yourself with people who really understand that and will celebrate those moments alongside you. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So one more kind of restaurant marketing question to where do you see

Starting point is 00:30:35 the future of restaurant marketing going? Or do you have any predictions for the future? Or just things we need to be thinking about if we're in the restaurant space or even beyond that too, just with marketing in general, anything you'd call out? Yeah, for sure. I think, and this is tough because digital channels are expanding, platforms are becoming, you know, more and more prominent across the board, but I think it's going to be really important to take a one size fits one approach to almost everything we do versus taking a one size fits all approach. And this is something that I think we fight a lot with people who have only lived in the traditional marketing space and are still finding their way into this new world. But the general access to information and the way that the speed of culture is moving so quickly, finding ways to really connect one on one with your audience as much as you can and remembering that it is quality over quantity at every single turn, I think is going to be super paramount in evolving with the space as the industry really changes. So the one size fits one approach is

Starting point is 00:31:48 more work. It takes a lot more time. It takes a lot more bandwidth. It takes a lot more people. But I tell you, the payoff is greater every single time. And it's just an important outlook to see across all industries, I think. Yeah, so good. Well, this has been amazing, Esther. I feel like we could have gone on so many different rabbit trails of topics. So we'll definitely have to have you back and dive into some more things with you. But where can everyone follow you along personally, as well as Hawkers online? Awesome.

Starting point is 00:32:22 Well, yeah, I've really enjoyed being here. And I would love to connect with anyone who has any other questions or just wants to take a deep dive into anything else that we talked about today. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Esther McElvain is I believe the handle on there. And then you can also find me at hawkers. I've got a great social team, but I'm always lurking in the DM there. So you can find me at EATHawkers. You can find them across every social platform. Well, thank you so much, Esther, again, for just passing along all of your insights with us and sharing Hawkers with all of us. Really appreciate you being here today. Thanks so much,

Starting point is 00:32:58 Cassie.

Marketing Happy Hour - Restaurant Marketing 101: Infusing Hospitality Into Your Brand | Esther McIlvain of Hawkers Asian Street Food

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