2,400 Locations, Only 1 AI w/ Mark Gibson

The 6-Recruiter Empire: How Flynn Group Uses AI to Hire for Thousands of Locations

What happens when the world’s largest franchise operator, powering heavy hitters like Applebee’s, Taco Bell, Arby’s, and Planet Fitness, decides to burn the traditional hiring playbook? You get a masterclass in hyper-efficiency, AI-driven automation, and a "lean" strategy that sounds like science fiction.

In this episode of The Chad and Cheese Podcast, we sit down with Mark Gibson, Director of HR Technology at Flynn Group, to pull back the curtain on how a global empire manages 2,400+ locations with a core team of only six recruiters.

Inside the Playbook:

• Meet "Frankie": Discover how Flynn Group’s custom AI assistant (powered by Paradox) handles the entire candidate journey from first text to auto-scheduling while you sleep.

• The Midnight Launch: Mark recounts the "chaos" of launching a new system at midnight and waking up to a million applicants. How do you handle that kind of volume without breaking?

• Recruiters as Media Buyers: Learn why Flynn Group stopped asking recruiters to screen resumes and started training them to think like high-level digital marketers.

• The TikTok Factor: Explore the "One Flynn" branding strategy that uses Gen Z brand ambassadors to turn viral content into a massive pipeline of frontline talent.

• Beyond the Hire: It’s not just about getting them in the door. Mark breaks down their AI-powered 30/60/90-day survey strategy designed to kill "ghosting" and tackle high churn head-on.

Humanity vs. The Machine

Is this the "Judgment Day" for HR roles? Mark addresses the "Terminator" fears of automation and explains why human-centric roles are actually becoming more important as the "boring" tasks get automated. Plus, get the inside scoop on Flynn Group's expansion into Australia and New Zealand and why they are bullish on the "black card" membership model—for both fitness and fries.

Whether you're an HR leader struggling with slow hiring cycles or a tech enthusiast curious about the business case for AI, this conversation is your roadmap to the future of high-volume recruiting.

Listen now to learn how to turn your HR department into a lean, automated powerhouse.

More videos:

PART 2: 1 Million applicants overnight

PART 3: Robots Won't Replace Taco Bell Workers (yet)

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

[music]

0:00:18.9 Joel Cheesman: So, what's up, guys? Let's do this. You're watching the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined, as always, Chad Sowash is here. We're talking to Mark Gibson, director of HR technology at the Flynn Group. Mark, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.

0:00:42.0 Mark Gibson: Thank you. Thank you.

0:00:42.9 Chad Sowash: Buckeye fan.

0:00:43.7 Mark Gibson: Yes.

0:00:44.6 Joel Cheesman: Clevelander. Cleve lifelong.

0:00:46.3 Mark Gibson: More importantly, Buckeye fan. [laughter]

0:00:48.6 Joel Cheesman: I mean, he has grit and perseverance, basically, as...

0:00:52.3 Mark Gibson: With the weather up there, you have to.

0:00:53.5 Joel Cheesman: Yep. Yes, there's no choice. So, that's a little bit about you. What else, what else do you wanna fill in and give us the, uh, the elevator pitch on, uh, the Flynn Group?

0:01:02.0 Mark Gibson: Yeah. So, Flynn Group, largest franchise operator in the world at this point. Umm, it's, it's pretty impressive. Started off all in restaurants. Applebee's, uh, is what started it all, but now we're in Applebee's, uh, Pizza Hut, Panera, Arby's, Wendy's, Taco Bell.

0:01:19.4 Chad Sowash: Oh, you said it.

0:01:20.1 Joel Cheesman: Speaking my love language, Mark. We've also recently gone international with Pizza Hut, umm, Australia and Wendy's in New Zealand. And then recently, umm, moved out of restaurants and gotten into Planet Fitness as well.

0:01:33.6 Mark Gibson: What's this fitness thing you speak of?

[laughter]

0:01:36.3 Joel Cheesman: Not familiar with it.

0:01:37.8 Chad Sowash: Fitness Pizza Hut in your mouth.

0:01:39.4 Joel Cheesman: Exactly. [laughter] Could we combine all of those franchises together?

0:01:43.8 Mark Gibson: Yeah.

0:01:44.2 Joel Cheesman: So, those are obviously some significant, interesting recruiting challenges.

0:01:46.4 Mark Gibson: Absolutely.

0:01:48.9 Joel Cheesman: Global, exercise, different kinds of food. Umm, yep. How do you make sense of all that? How do you standardize that and scale it?

0:01:56.2 Mark Gibson: Yeah, I mean, it's something that we're, umm, you know, we're working through right now as we've grown incredibly quickly. Umm, and we have, you know, launched this initiative of Lean Into Flynn, which is really, let's use our larger umbrella for, you know, these frontline workers to be able to, you know, if most of our workers work in, have multiple jobs, right? Umm, how can we push where, hey, you are at a Flynn Taco Bell right now, there's a Flynn Wendy's down the street. How do we kind of bring that together? And that's kind of one of our biggest initiatives right now. Umm, and so having that pulled together with, umm, something like a, Olivia, uh, who, you know, they get used to, you know, texting with this, this person.

0:02:40.0 Chad Sowash: Name's not Olivia, though.

0:02:40.7 Mark Gibson: Her name is not Olivia for us, so we have it customized to Frankie. Umm, and Frankie at Flynn Group is, is who communicates with everyone.

0:02:48.2 Joel Cheesman: Why Frankie?

0:02:49.1 Mark Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Carla, my, umm, my counterpart, she actually pushed, umm, the name Frankie. But, umm, when I was coming in and interviewing, I found out that it was Frankie, which is my daughter's name.

0:03:01.5 Chad Sowash: Wow.

0:03:01.9 Mark Gibson: Yeah. So, I have a three-year-old daughter named Frankie. So, I'm in the interview process and that pops up and I was like...

0:03:06.6 Joel Cheesman: Whose named after Frankie Goes to Hollywood? The '80s. No, just kidding.

0:03:11.4 Mark Gibson: Relax.

0:03:11.8 Joel Cheesman: Like, just kidding. Yeah, don't do it.

0:03:13.2 Chad Sowash: So, how many franchises? Number one. And then number two, how do you get all of those franchises standardized under a certain system? Or do you? I mean, because again, you're, you're, you're global, so therefore it's gonna be different from, from country to country.

0:03:30.2 Mark Gibson: Yeah. So, we have, we're at around 2,500 restaurants plus the will be 50 Planet Fitness locations. Umm, and that's really across the US plus what we now have, umm, in ANZ. Umm, and it's, it's difficult, umm, to standardize because there are different franchise needs. You know, we have, umm, quick-serve, we have sit-down, you know, we, we kinda cover the gamut there. Umm, so we need systems that are agile and, umm, customizable enough to, to fit that need while all still looking and feeling like the same one Flynn system. And I think that's what we've done, umm, pretty well here with our Paradox implementation because, you know, we, we have enough where we can have each brand kinda have their own, you know...

0:04:18.7 Chad Sowash: Silos.

0:04:19.4 Mark Gibson: Exactly, right? So, they, they get what they need. Their journey as a candidate might be a little bit different. You know, same thing with manager versus a, uh, team member on the floor, things like that. Umm, but the look and feel of everything is all the same, which is really nice.

0:04:33.2 Joel Cheesman: When I start thinking about the budget that you must work with and dealing with [chuckle] this many franchises, I kinda wanna puke. [chuckle] Umm, how has the efficiencies around AI decreased budget? Where did, where did money come out of? Like, talk about the savings that you've seen through automation.

0:04:50.5 Mark Gibson: Yeah, it's been massive. The, the biggest thing that we have seen in here is the time saver for general managers at the, at the stores is massive. It's just massive. Their... The auto-scheduling, not having to even, uh, put a thought toward that is huge. So, we're getting people, we're getting a ton more flow, umm, candidate flow, and we're able to get, get them all the way through to the onboarding step in, you know, two or three days. It's, umm, it's just wild what they're able to do there.

0:05:19.4 Chad Sowash: Well, talk about education and training for the staff because we've heard, and with, with tech, tech moves a lot faster than people do.

0:05:28.3 Joel Cheesman: Yep.

0:05:28.5 Chad Sowash: Right. Umm, we've heard in the news that, you know, somebody would show up and the manager didn't even know that there was something scheduled because the manager didn't look at their, their calendar. Talk a little bit about, because you're, you're having to herd cats in a much larger way, right? So, talk about the education and the adoption piece for all of those locations to, to be able to understand so that person doesn't show up and general manager doesn't know that they're supposed to be there.

0:05:53.6 Mark Gibson: Yeah. So, we rolled out, umm, when we implemented Paradox, we rolled out brand by brand, uh, all through last year. And, uh, we, the way that we kind of did it is we, uh, took kind of a train-the-trainer approach, umm, with like our HR teams. Umm, but we also held these, uh, trainings for the GMs at, at, umm, each brand. And the, I think the thing is, and, you know, we're going through this with Planet Fitness, we're actually integrating right now, they'll be live in November. They can't believe how simple it is. Like, they can't, we, you know, we're telling them, like, "This is, this is all we have to do."

0:06:28.7 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:06:29.2 Mark Gibson: Umm, because the technology, you know, if, if you look at apps on your phone, nobody trains you how to use them, right? Umm, and so we're trying to explain that right now, so we're kind of going through that. Umm, so there was some upfront training and, and, you know, it's mostly on like the administrative side, though, umm, through, like, uh, going through I-9s and pieces like that. That's probably the biggest thing. But once managers understand how to kind of come in and look at their calendar and make sure that's just up to date based on their interview availability, the rest is pretty hands-off. So, you know, we don't have a lot of ongoing need for training new managers because it is, it is so, you know, the technology's coming to them. They're on their phone, they're doing what they would normally do. It kind of seamlessly fits in there versus, "Oh, I'm logging into this, you know, this, this thing, this, you know, this HR system where I go do these," like, it, it's really has come to them, umm, which is I think why it works so easily.

0:07:30.0 Joel Cheesman: Chad, you said tech moves much faster than people, which is normally true unless it's me getting a Mexican pizza at Taco Bell, [laughter] local neighborhood. But I...

0:07:38.4 Mark Gibson: I digress.

0:07:39.2 Joel Cheesman: I digress, Chad. I digress. Let's not focus on this. You talked about the time savings and scheduling. I'm curious also in terms of the job promotion and, and how much you're spending on getting jobs out there. Are you saving money on that end as well? Yeah. And how so?

0:07:53.6 Mark Gibson: Yeah, so we're saving money on that end because it's so much easier to target which jobs we need to promote, right? Umm, so we have our, uh, automated feeds with like an Indeed and, and others. But then, you know, we only have, across our 2,500 or so restaurants, we have, I believe, six recruiters total.

0:08:02.2 Joel Cheesman: Okay.

0:08:11.5 Mark Gibson: Umm, and they, they kind of handle the, you know, they're looking at the analytics to see kind of where we need to spend the money and promote the jobs. Umm, and then they're helping from that perspective. They're not having to manage the open reqs. They're not having to, to manage that piece.

0:08:31.5 Chad Sowash: Sounds like they're media buyers more than anything.

0:08:33.9 Mark Gibson: That's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of what they do. So, you know, they're kind of the, the partner with the general managers and others to go in and, and help them fit very, fill very specific holes. But that's why we can now operate with so few, umm, recruiters for such a, you know, a large group.

0:08:51.1 Chad Sowash: Talk about, again, rolling it out. I can't believe you did all of those within a year's timeframe.

0:08:56.1 Mark Gibson: Yeah, we did those between, umm, April and, uh, October.

0:09:00.4 Chad Sowash: Okay.

0:09:00.9 Mark Gibson: Yeah.

0:09:01.5 Chad Sowash: What were, what were the bumps? 'Cause there were bumps. What were the bumps?

0:09:04.8 Mark Gibson: There were definitely bumps. Umm, you know, I think, uh, we were, we're still growing at Flynn Group. We're still growing into, "Hey, we're a big company." Umm, so we didn't have a lot of the implementation process, umm, kind of, you know, experience. And I didn't come in until about halfway through the, the project. Umm, so there are, you know, some of those things that, that we saw where we just didn't have our, our process down. We didn't have our change management down, you know, maybe as, as tightly as we needed to. You know, I think we're really there now. We have a, we have a great, umm, you know, we have a great team on it now. Umm, the other thing we saw, I would say, is, you know, immediately we didn't expect to see such massive benefits so quickly and such massive numbers. So we would implement Pizza Hut and we would do it at midnight, and at 6:00 in the morning, uh, you know, our director of TA, she, she would send something out that's like, "We have a million people who have applied [laughter] across the country." And we're like, "There's no... "

0:10:10.5 Chad Sowash: Literally?

0:10:10.6 Mark Gibson: Like, literally.

0:10:11.4 Chad Sowash: Okay.

0:10:11.6 Mark Gibson: And we're going, "How is that? That's incomprehensible. [laughter] Like, there has to be something, a glitch in the system. This isn't real data."

0:10:19.7 Chad Sowash: So what are those, what were the numbers usually? Do you have kind of like an idea of what, what they were and what do you attribute that to?

0:10:27.1 Mark Gibson: So I don't necessarily have like previous numbers. Umm, I can, I can tell you is a lot less. Umm, the, I attribute it to a couple of things. One, there was the first few steps in the process, no manager intervention needed and there was before. Umm, so it's, it's, it's done that kind of pulling in the top of the funnel and, and, and filtering that down very quickly without us touching it.

0:10:53.2 Chad Sowash: Less friction.

0:10:53.8 Mark Gibson: Absolutely. Umm, so that's a big piece of it. The other thing is, you know, it is these jobs are, are out there and so easy for. So we do, you know, like a quick apply. You say app now, right. And then immediately you're just talking to somebody. You're not filling out a form. I think that was the biggest thing for me when I was applying is, you know, I know as the, you know, the tech guy exactly what's happening in the background. But I'm sitting here just oh, hey, what's your, what's your name? You know, how, uh, you know, what state do you live in? This and that. And I'm just texting back and forth with this, you know, with Frankie and it, that, that like clicked in my head of like what the big difference is because you send somebody who's just to blow through an application as quickly as possible, which is a lot of our frontline workers. Right? And you send them this big long form and they're a quarter of the way through and they're done.

0:11:47.1 Joel Cheesman: So I think you're talking about an, an age old problem of uh, that's only getting worse as workers get younger and younger and used to very quick bits uh, of content and getting to what they need very, very quickly. Yeah. So on the mark... On the marketing side as well, how are you guys using, uh, social media? What's the branding message like? How do... And you have multiple brands. I assume it's not the same for everybody. So talk about how juggling that is, is a challenge and how you're solving that problem.

0:12:18.0 Mark Gibson: Yeah, it's Interesting. Umm, we, it's not the same for everyone, but we are really leaning into that one Flynn Group. Umm, so we do have social, ah, media presence. TikTok is our, is our biggest, umm, and we have kind of a brand ambassador, uh, in each one of those brands. They take videos, they submit them up, uh, through our director Ta. We kind of look at those here and then we, we turn those into, you know, branded content.

0:12:48.4 Joel Cheesman: So is that a Flynn employee that then does social media for all the different brands? Someone approves it and then it goes out and then is there a TikTok account for each.

0:12:57.3 Mark Gibson: So we did originally have an account for each brand. We, we now really do the Flynn Group and then we will kind of tag the brands. But we do have the one Flynn Group, uh, account is, is how we're... We're going now.

0:13:11.6 Chad Sowash: So who came up with that idea to be able to, to, to, to find these influencers, be able to have. Because they're going to have different voices. Umm, you obviously have to have to okay anything that goes out.

0:13:17.4 Mark Gibson: Right.

0:13:23.8 Chad Sowash: Uh, but at the end of the day you have different voices for different brands. Who came up with this idea? Uh, and are those uh, primarily Gen Z voices?

0:13:33.7 Mark Gibson: Uh, I would say yes. It's a little bit of a mix, but primarily Gen Z. Umm, Carla on our team, she had uh, a big influence in kind of that program. We also work really closely with our HR directors in each brand. So we have an HR director in the field in, in each of our brands and they umm, are kind of the, you know, the intermediary between us and operations and they do a great job. And it was kind of brought up that that be a great way to get the real voice of somebody who's going to be working at an Arby's versus somebody who's going to be working at an Applebee's. Umm, and, and can kind of promote the things that matter, uh, to those people.

0:14:15.0 Joel Cheesman: So you run a site called Work for the Hut. Curious. Umm, the, the role of that sort of I guess microsite, I, I guess call it how that plays into the, the Pizza Hut bigger brand. Are there like just talk about that because it's fascinating.

0:14:30.7 Mark Gibson: Yeah, so, so we have... [chuckle] so for each brand we have a, an internal career site. So the word for the Hut is our Flynn Pizza Hut career site. Umm, and then we have one for, for each other brand now on top of that. So that's going to be where a lot of people are coming through. Umm, if you get to... Umm, if you're Going on like an indeed or, or something like that. You end up funneling through our career site. You can also get there, you know, you're just go. Things like that go through our career site. You see that work for the hud. You're immediately interacting with Frankie at that point. Now then each of our franchisors have their own site as well.

0:15:10.0 Mark Gibson: So then we have an integration umm, that's automatically sending those jobs that we have open in Paradox, sending those to the franchisor website as well. So we do see a lot of people who just look for I want to work for Pizza Hut. They will end up at the, you know, Pizza Hut corporate website and then that funnels back umm, through to our website after they apply. And it's really interesting to kind of keep those relationships with every different franchisor because every integration is different. Nothing is standardized across. So even the yum brands that we have, they're, they're all different. You know, everything's different.

0:15:46.3 Chad Sowash: So taking a look at going down funnel, trying to keep employees as long as you can because these are in most cases very high churn. Uh, are you looking at prospectively using AI for employee engagement, not to mention to nudge them a little bit? Hey, you have a shift coming up tomorrow. What are you guys using to be able to keep them warm and keep them involved and engaged?

0:16:07.6 Mark Gibson: Yeah, that's, that's probably our biggest area of focus, umm, going into next year is that piece of it. So we also implement a, umm, a product from Paradox called Employee Assistant. Umm, and we use that primarily as, uh, a communication tool. So as you've already been talking to Frankie on the front end, now you're an employee, you can still talk to Frankie on the back end for things that you need. We use that to push also mass communications. Hey, open enrollment time, things like this. And it, it gets those comms to the frontline workers in the way that they want it and digest.

0:16:40.9 Chad Sowash: So do you silo that? Because you've got the, the, the pre... You got the candidate discussions and you've got all the FAQ stuff that's happening there, but there's gotta be a switch that flips that says, "Now this content's available," 'cause you're not gonna have that same content available for, for candidates up front.

0:16:55.7 Mark Gibson: Absolutely. So it's, it's very nice. There's, kind of, two records joined in the middle with one single ID. So we have candidate records, we have employee records. Umm, but the employee can always see all of their candidate profile when they're an employee. Umm, which is really nice. So, so what we see a lot is, you know, you get through the whole process, you're an employee, you wanna go back and look at your offer letter. So you just log into your employee dashboard in Paradox and you can see your offer letter, all the forms that you signed during onboarding, umm, you know, any compliance-related stuff, things like that. It's, so it's been really nice. Now, I think our, our biggest gap that we're trying to close now is using things like, uh, 7-day, 30, 60, 90-day survey, things like that, that we can, kind of, proactively find our, our weak spots or, like, restaurants that, umm, maybe team experience is not great, and then we can act on that quicker so turn, you know, can drop.

0:17:54.8 Chad Sowash: What about work schedule? Thinking about going that far yet?

0:17:57.4 Mark Gibson: So that, that's probably what we're farthest away from. And I think the, the big challenge for us there is the different, umm, corporate franchise, umm, they have some of their own technology there. Umm, so a Pizza Hut has a HotSchedules and, and there are others, and it's trying to find the best way to have maybe an overlay on top of everything. You know, we would love to get to that point, but that's where the franchise, kind of, relationship, you know, makes some things a little more difficult.

0:18:28.2 Chad Sowash: But you can sample from franchise to franchise to see which one is, kind of, best in breed, right?

0:18:32.5 Mark Gibson: Which one is the best. Yep. Yep.

0:18:33.9 Chad Sowash: That's kind of cool.

0:18:35.0 Mark Gibson: Absolutely. Yep.

0:18:35.6 Joel Cheesman: Gotta ask about automation. Yep. Uh, not a week goes by without a headline about Flippy's gonna make my burgers. I got a kiosk at my local fast food restaurant.

0:18:44.5 Chad Sowash: Chippy.

0:18:45.1 Joel Cheesman: AI's taking my order. Chippy. Yeah. Like, give us a sense of where organizations like yours are on replacing workers with automated tools. Are we... Are... Is it, "Don't believe the hype"? Are we way less than what we are? Talk about automation.

0:19:01.2 Mark Gibson: So there's a couple of things. So, you know, I grew up a Terminator fan and, and so AI in general, I, I always just go back to the Terminator series.

0:19:09.7 Chad Sowash: Skynet.

0:19:10.0 Mark Gibson: Skynet. So, funny, funny story real quick.

0:19:13.0 Joel Cheesman: It might as well come at the hands of a Pizza Hut.

[laughter]

0:19:15.2 Mark Gibson: Throwing a pizza at you. Uh, so, so, umm, I, I... So I actually just, umm, I had my third child August 29th this year, so a few weeks ago. Thank you. Thank you. Umm, and we had the... It was a scheduled, so we had the choice of a few dates, and August 29th was there, which is actually Judgment Day in the Terminator series. [laughter] So we chose, we chose that. We're like, "You know, this is the way we're going with it."

0:19:48.2 Joel Cheesman: So dirty. I love it.

0:19:49.7 Mark Gibson: Yeah. But, you know, so I, I think there is that, there is that, like, inherent fear that, you know, is it really gonna get to a point where we don't need workers? And I, I don't think it's that. I think things change a lot now as far as the roles that people play. Umm, you know, there's going to be the basic repeatable, boring jobs are, you know, that's gonna get automated, I think, for the most part. Umm, I, I do think there's just, there's a lot more, umm, that people will be asked to do in different capacities. Now, for us specifically, it's really interesting because we run extremely lean from a support standpoint. We have, like, 500 support people across IT, finance, HR, everything to support all 2,500 locations. So we're really lean already. So ours is more about how do we enable the scale, umm, without having to just scale people at the same rate? And so that's really what we're trying to solve for right now.

0:20:49.0 Joel Cheesman: So at Planet Fitness, if I have a membership, but I want Robo Joel to do the working out, do I have to, uh, have two memberships for that or can I just have one?

0:20:57.2 Mark Gibson: So if you have a Black Card membership, you can share it with Robo Joel. He goes free.

0:21:02.7 Joel Cheesman: He goes free at the massage, uh, table, right?

0:21:05.0 Mark Gibson: Absolutely.

0:21:06.2 Chad Sowash: And you get discounts on Pizza Hut. So let's talk about actually being able to afford this stuff, right? Because there's, there's budget. How do you go... How do you create, uh, a business case to go and get budget for these types of things? Because obviously you wanna, you wanna keep up with your competition, right? But that's not gonna be the only reason that, you know, you're gonna throw money at something. So what are you putting together from a business case standpoint to be able to say, "There's, there's no other way. This is the only way"?

0:21:33.1 Mark Gibson: Yeah, I think employee experience and scalability are the two things that just are so easy to point to. Umm, you know, employee experience, that's where we're, kind of, really focusing now that we have these systems in, umm, that's, you know, being able to... I can't reach out to every GM of every store and see how the, you know, pulse check on that or HR people can't do that. It's just too much. Umm, but if we can have somebody out there doing that first, you know, kind of that first swipe to see how things are, and then we can just, you know, consolidate and analyze from a more macro Perspective. Fantastic. Right. So we can, we can do that and then just scalability, the same type of thing. You know, I, I can't go in and turn on 5,000 jobs a day based on who needs what. Right. So we can automate a process like that. And, and that's something that I'm providing. No value in turning on and off a job. Right. None at all. So why not have that done by, you know, a, an AI, umm, system that can do it for me. I never even have to touch it. I can focus on things that matter more.

0:22:36.5 Joel Cheesman: Immigration has really been demonized lately. But I'm guessing you're a fan. Uh, talk about what immigration has meant to the business, how you look at different language. Frankie, I assume, speaks different languages and what percentage are engaging with it in Spanish. Talk about immigration and, and, uh, being open to other different languages, et cetera.

0:22:57.0 Mark Gibson: Yeah, so we're really flexible with Frankie does we'll, uh, do things in different languages. You know, umm, and also, as long as we're putting in, umm, content like policies and things like that in a different language, she can kind of look at that as well. Umm, so it works out really well. Umm, we have pockets of our workforce in different places that, that are mostly immigrant. Umm, and we're able to, to fill roles like that really quickly as well. Because again, there's no technology. They're having to come in and be trained on to learn to apply and get a job at one of our restaurants. Uh, it's just, it's something that, you know, everybody can come in there. There's, there's kind of no barrier to entry at that point.

0:23:40.9 Chad Sowash: So globally, how many different countries do you operate in?

0:23:44.7 Mark Gibson: Yeah, so right now it's just US, Australia and New Zealand. Umm, absolutely plans to go further than that. Umm, the Anz piece was our first foray outside of the US. So, umm, you know, we're still kind of building that muscle on what we need to do, umm, between different local laws, regulations, all of that kind of stuff. We're also in the process of, of looking at our entire HCM system, umm, and figuring out what's... If we're on the best system for a global company. You know, we're on something that was chosen 10 plus years ago when it was just some Apple, a single Applebee's franchise. And we're a totally different company right now, so we're kind of assessing whether that's going to be, you know, able to scale with us globally as well.

0:24:33.9 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Talk about the employer branding piece. It's not the most glamorous work in the world. People aren't necessarily lining up to do the job, but you have that challenge. But also multiple brands, different messaging. How do you sort of herd those cats?

0:24:48.1 Mark Gibson: Yeah. So we have, umm, you know, our, like our marketing team and our business insights that, that does kind of all of our, umm, they, they basically do all of our, uh, value when it comes to product, uh, at each of the different brands. So we have a centralized team that does that across the company. They work hand in hand with the franchisors very closely because most of the marketing that's all the franchisor. Right? Like we're. Our Arby's is not gonna have a vastly different, umm, ability to even market differently than, than Arby's corporate. So there's like a real symbiotic relationship there, umm, that we have. And then what we're able to do is just take that and layer on what... Why is it better to work for a Flynn Arby's or Flynn Applebee's or a Flynn Taco Bell than it is to work somewhere else. And that's where we're really starting to excel now.

0:25:42.3 Chad Sowash: So are you starting to use that messaging to standardize it and use large language models? Because you have different brands, you have different influencers, and those influencers could actually influence the large language model as well to be able to stay on point. Right. Uh, so are you looking at, or are you, are you currently looking at being able to use those different large language models to keep the silos and the different voices in key, but then also do a lot of that hard work, right? Do a little prompt engineering and then, boom, you've got a new, you've got a new, uh, marketing campaign, or at least you have a new line or something of that nature or something that you can feed to, to uh, the influencer.

0:26:22.5 Chad Sowash: So I would say that we're in the infancy stage there. Umm, you know, our company grew extremely fast in the last five years and we, we didn't add a lot of people. And we don't wanna have to add a lot of people from a support standpoint, umm, you know, so we're, were looking for... We understand that technology exists to allow us to continue to scale incredibly quickly, umm, without having to kind of have manual, you know, hands on the keyboard. And umm, so it's great working for a company who's now out there looking for those pieces of technology.

0:26:55.6 Joel Cheesman: So Chad and I go to quite a few conferences that have exposition centers and vendors that are out there. I can only imagine the number of calls and outreach that you get from vendors looking to sell you their stuff. First question is what, what advice would you give salespeople in reaching out to you? What are the most effective ways to market to you? Number and number two, what, what other technologies are you sort of bullish on? Do you see a lot of promise in that you have done demos with?

0:27:24.7 Mark Gibson: Uh, yes, I, I'm bombarded with those constantly. I, umm, would say, uh, I can spot an automated message from, you know, 10 miles away. It's like, you know, come on. Umm, and, uh, there are, you know, I, you gotta have, you gotta have a good feeling behind it. You know, for me to, I've opened pretty much every email, and then for me, I can that quickly tell if it's just a sales pitch, which I know in the back of it, it is. But if I get a good feeling about the person behind it, then I'll actually dig deeper, right? Umm, because the, the thing with sales right now, what's tough is just like that, I can go and find what I want, right? Like, I, I can go out there if we're looking for a new piece of technology, and in minutes, I can find probably 10 rankings of what's the best in 2024 and what's gonna be the best in the future and all of this. So from somebody coming to me, like, you have to make some sort of personal impression very quickly, umm, for me to not just, you know, do that myself and make my own choice.

0:28:29.0 Joel Cheesman: Okay. So if it's all about personable touch, you got a good story about someone that really, uh, cut through the clutter?

0:28:35.1 Mark Gibson: You know, I wish I could say I have, and I really don't. And that's what makes it... That's really what makes it tough. And it's what I'm hoping that, you know, automating a lot of these processes can do is if, if kind of the, the, uh, the simple, repeatable, easy work is automated, maybe we get more people that are putting more care into some of the things like that. I think you have so many people that are wearing 10 different hats and they're trying to do this administration and do all these things and move stuff around, and, and they can't put in the time and effort into the things that matter.

0:29:08.1 Joel Cheesman: For our viewers that want to know more about you, maybe apply for a job, where would they go?

0:29:12.1 Mark Gibson: You can go to, uh, flynn.com, and that's gonna bring you to kind of all of our different brands. You can kind of select through there. Or if, you know, you're interested in working for a Pizza Hut and you go apply at Pizza Hut, you can see what, you know, a Flynn Group Pizza Hut, umm, can bring you.

0:29:29.7 Joel Cheesman: That's another one in the can, Chad. It's lunchtime. We out.

[music]

0:29:32.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:29:36.3 Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad & Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.