About the Guest

Robert Thompson is Founder and CEO of Punch Bowl Social, an eatertainment concept first opened in his hometown of Denver, and now up to 20 locations. He began his restaurant industry career in Nashville at the young age of 25, opening multiple award-winning restaurants before eventually giving everything he had to launch Punch Bowl Social in 2012.

Episode Summary

Robert Thompson of Punch Bowl Social, credits the brand’s success to experiential F & B, and plans to continue breaking ground in modern eatertainment.

Episode Transcript

Zach Goldstein

(00:01):

From fake meat and robot chefs to ghost kitchens and delivery drones. The restaurant industry is rapidly evolving. Welcome to food fighters, bringing you interviews with the leading industry trailblazers. I’m your host, Zach Goldstein.

Zach Goldstein

(00:19):

Hey there, Zach Goldstein here. Welcome back to Food Fighters. I’m here with Robert Thompson, founder and CEO of Punch Bowl Social, an eatertainment concept first opened in his hometown of Denver in 2012 and now up to 20 locations. At Punch Bowl Social, Robert and his team are focused on encouraging real human interaction of customers with both food and experiences that simulate the old gathering around a punch bowl. Welcome to Food Fighters, Robert.

Robert Thompson

(00:46):

Thanks. I appreciate you guys having me.

Zach Goldstein

(00:49):

Well, I’m excited to have you. Not only because we have an office in Denver and so we’re certainly familiar with the original but I’m from Sacramento and have spent quite a bit of time near the Sacramento Kings arena at the Punch Bowl Social there. Two completely unique versions of the brand. Tell me about the customers that are coming into a Punch Bowl Social. What is, what is the appeal and what are you trying to deliver to them that’s unique from any other restaurant or entertainment venue that they could go to?

Robert Thompson

(01:19):

So, thanks for that question. We actually do cast a very wide net and bring in a lot um Gen X-ers and then, and then millennial families on the older end of the spectrum for our millennial cohort. But you know, the uniqueness there is twofold. One, our category which is experiential food and beverage or eatertainment as it’s also called, which is something that millennials seek out. We know this through psychographic study, but also just anecdotally and then two, our distinction within the category as best in class, um authentic experience within the experiential food and beverage category.

Zach Goldstein

(02:07):

Right. I mean, I, I think about the, the brand Punch Bowl Social, I think about what I’ve read: that it’s inspired by this kind of Victorian era tradition of gathering around the punch bowl. And obviously what you’ve done is much more: high end food and drinks, lots of awesome gaming and entertainment experiences. What are some of the more interesting things that you’ve experimented with on the entertainment side to draw people in? What are the big hooks? And then we’ll switch over a course and talk about the uniqueness of your, of your food and beverage program.

Robert Thompson

(02:40):

In the early years we didn’t experiment much. We stuck with activations of bowling, traditional darts board games, private karaoke rooms you know, anything that you can do in a group socially. But you know, at the end of the day, the hook for us actually to use those gaming elements to drive additional food and beverage. So you, you may have heard me reference a, a metric in the past that 90% of our sales are food and beverage. That’s unique within the category. Most of my peers have a higher gaming ratio than do we. But you know, in terms of the experimentation, more recently in the last two years, we have integrated something we call “Put Club”, which is which is indoor mini golf. In some locations we’ve integrated some VR parlors. This past January, we launched something we’re calling “Smart Darts” here in Denver, in the original Denver location which is dart flight tracking technology–

Zach Goldstein

(03:43):

Wow!

Robert Thompson

(03:43):

You throw a dart, cams track the, the dart flight, understand where it lands on the board and automatically scores and organizes the entire game for you. So you can put a group of five or six or 12 people together on a single dart lane. It expedites the process, it does the math for you so you don’t look like a dope when you can’t do math after having two punches. If you ever try to play 501, right? And try hitting a triple 18 and doing that math quickly, um you know, in front of you know, 15 people after you’ve had a couple of drinks. So it’s uh, it’s you know, we, we’ve had a lot of fun experimenting you know, with, with the gaming activations, of course the menu, um and beverage side are always evolving.

Zach Goldstein

(04:37):

The, the look and feel of, of every Punch Bowl Social is a little bit different. It obviously, there’s some themes, but the look and feel is different. The games are different by, by concept. And I, and I understand that in many cases the, the food and beverage offering has been customized. How do you think about creating a cohesive brand across those locations but then localizing them and creating that uniqueness that oftentimes is what your customers are really looking for?

Robert Thompson

(05:05):

You know, you need to scale, you need to have consistency. Everything needs to be operationalized in a manageable way. And the rub is, you know, how do you do that and remain authentic? Absent of institutionalism. We spend a lot of of our waking hours ensuring that we’re, that we’re putting this thing through a brand filter – all our decisions through a brand filter – that deliver the experience and in, in an authentic way to our consumer. You know, with respect to the design piece, you know, it has five design elements that we all fold together. Four of them are consistent and static, rather, it’s, you know, mountain lodge, Victorian, mid century modern and industrial. That fifth one is always this highly localized narrative where we go deep into the history of the trade area or the city that we’re in. And, and we, we, we sort of mine out these nuggets that we translate into design elements inside of the of our location. So you know we just opened in Miami this last Saturday…

Zach Goldstein

(06:19):

Give us some examples of the fun ones that you’ve opened recently and what some of that local flavor is. Cause it really does differentiate each location.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
So in Miami where we just opened in the Wynwood Arts District this past Saturday we we, we really reached out into Wynwood and the, and the Arts District itself. So we took our four consistent design themes for Punch Bowl and really went heavy on the mountain lodge side of it. And then for the localization piece, we took all these vibrant hues that live outside in the street art in, in Miami. And it’s almost as if we applied an acid wash to those colors as we, as we brought them into our mountain lodge setting. And it created a very funky experience we refer to as “acid lodge”.
Zach Goldstein (07:15):
Perfect for Miami.

Robert Thompson

(07:18):

Yeah, it’s pretty cool. And then Arlington, Virginia, there was something in 1906 called “The Great Elephant Escape” where these elephants escaped from the circus, actually they went running all around Northern Virginia knocking over barns and stuff. And it was, you know, sort of a famous event. And so we, we paid tribute to the, to The Great Elephant Escape. So there’s there’s some circus and elephant themes going on in our, in our Arlington location.

Zach Goldstein

(07:45):

Love it. It’s great. I mean, it’s, it’s fun to talk about this stuff because in an industry where one of the number one trends is people talking about the movement to off premise, you are doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on, on creating unique on-premise experiences for people to not only come to Punch Bowl Social, but to dwell there. And clearly that is, you know, you talk about the experience, that is one of the things that that ultimately has become a huge competitive advantage of yours.

Robert Thompson

(08:19):

Yeah, that’s right. We, you know, we don’t have a single delivery relationship anywhere in the company. We don’t, you know, if you want to come and pick up your food and take it to go, okay. Great. We’ll facilitate that for you. But we don’t we believe that the experience exists on premise. I don’t really know how to deliver an experience. I mean, I, I guess maybe eventually GrubHub will have stripper grams or something going out with your Shake Shack just to create some type of experience. But other than that, you know, experiences happen inside of the four walls of Punch Bowl Social. And you know, you can’t deliver a bowling alley, you can’t deliver an entire group of friends to show up at your house through a third party delivery service. So we try to provide that environment where you can come in and as you said, you know, sit around a bowl of punch and actually look each other in the eye and have real conversations instead of digital or synthetic conversations online.

Zach Goldstein

(09:21):

Well and what’s magical about that and, and probably why such a huge portion of revenue is really coming from food and beverage. But I would imagine the dwell times the amount of time that those large groups spend at a Punch Bowl Social is, is quite significant compared to the type of time that someone would spend just dining at a restaurant.

Robert Thompson

(09:40):

Yeah. Um have an expanded dwell time over the rest of the industry. And we also call it sticky factor. Right? Which means that, you know, it’s hard to unstick from a Punch Bowl once you get inside cause it’s just exploring the design and the expanse of the space or you came in just to, to game and play and you see other people eating and drinking and you know, you end up sticking around for an extra hour and having dinner. It’s very sticky to leave there. Which as you suggested is also dwell time.

Zach Goldstein

(10:14):

What are the challenges? I mean, I would imagine when people are looking for several hours of gaming and eating and drinking they must think of Punch Bowl Social as very high on their list. What are the challenges? Is, is it the middle of the week? Is it, you know, certain demographics? Where are you focused when you think about how do we, how do we actually continue to engage more people and more often?

Robert Thompson

(10:38):

There’s still a good old fashioned restaurant industry component to what we do. Which is, you know, the kinder you are, the better service, the higher the quality and consistency of your product. So we think a lot about that, which is zero difference than any other restaurant brand, right? We’re all trying to figure out ways to improve the guest experience and burning back. But you know, what’s interesting about our model is that, so early week, you would think that 24,000 square feet is problematic. But those are actually great times for us. We book a lot of private parties on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays because we offer something to do for a group as opposed to just go sit in a ballroom and you know, eat another rubber chicken, you know, during your corporate event. So it’s that, that’s great for us. One of the harder parts about what we do is we serve the entire menu over the entire facility, you know, and so what that means is that on Friday night you know, if you, you sort of have an ad hoc group of 20 come together, friends that want to go out and eat and play you know, that you can’t get a reservation anywhere in town, but you know, you can walk into a Punch Bowl and cobble together a bunch of high tops even if the diner is full and you know, you can get the full menu there. So that’s great for revenue. It’s great to have a reputation for that, but it’s really hard on the kitchen when you have three of those joint tops walk in all at the same time, time and want to, and all, all want to dine at the same time as everything else is going on in the space.

Zach Goldstein

(12:15):

Yeah. I mean that is a, that is an unpredictability to some of the operations that, that add some complexity. But it’s also, I mean, it’s what the customer is craving. That’s why they’re coming as you point out. They can’t get a last minute reservation somewhere else.

Robert Thompson

(12:30):

No, I was just gonna say it’s so easy for them to customize their experience at a Punch Bowl and we really can really can make decisions minute by minute when they get there because we do offer so much under one roof.

Zach Goldstein

(12:41):

Yeah. That’s actually where I was going is that’s kind of the magic for this, particularly for this millennial audience, is the fact that a group of people can come together at Punch Bowl Social, but then spend their time all doing different things if they wanted to. That, that really does appeal to this age group. And I was wondering, as you think about, what are the other things that you’re doing to really specifically target millennials and Gen Z, as you think about your marketing or as you think about the food and beverage program and the menu, how have you considered the specific population you’re targeting to, to, to make a uniquely Punch Bowl Social experience?

Robert Thompson

(13:22):

We know that our core customer can sniff out inauthentic environments and tell everybody about them and suggest that they don’t come in. And so we’re very hard at that. We also know, and this is the easy part for us because the people that run this company, we you know, we are all personally purpose driven and so we understand that millennials and Gen Z, they don’t look for the “what” in, in a brand. They also look for the “why”. Why does this brand need to be here? Why is this brand important? So and that relates to social responsibilities. So you know, we, we like to both from a feel good factor and our marketing aspects. You know, we do, we put our foot out there in terms of what our positions are for social equalities and also an effort to lower our carbon footprint. So those are things that we know, you know, additionally help attract our core customer.

Zach Goldstein

(14:28):

Food Fighters: stay on the cutting edge.

Zach Goldstein (14:30):
Not only are you mixing up the, the, the footprint of the restaurants as you expand nationally you’ve been looking into other concepts, whether to put Punch Bowl Punch Bowl Life into high end malls for instance, or perhaps a hotel in the future. As you think about expanding the brand to other form factors and other ways that you’re same consumers can engage, what has to remain consistent and then where do you want that surprise, that kind of that, that differentiation to come through as you, as you broaden beyond the current footprint?

Robert Thompson

(15:08):

Maybe I’ll answer that by describing some of the differences of how Punch Bowl Life will come together versus Punch Bowl Social?

Zach Goldstein

(15:16):

Great.

Robert Thompson

(15:16):

Um so we, we think about Punch Bowl as the master brand with Punch Bowl Social, Punch Bowl Life and Punch Bowl Hotel, um below that. And of course we know what Punch Bowl Social is. Punch Bowl Life is an opportunity to expand into more sophisticated mall environments. But but we don’t, you know, want Punch Bowl Social to be a mall product. There’s just a stigma around that even though Gen Z fascinatingly is, actually thinks that thinks that malls are cool again. Um so…

Zach Goldstein

(15:52):

It’s the rebirth of the mall.

Robert Thompson

(15:54):

It’s the rebirth of the mall through Gen Z and it’s, it’s, it’s hilarious and, and, and interesting. But we want to separate enough the, the, the two products between Punch Bowl Social, Punch Bowl Life. We know that in a mall environment we’ll sell less alcohol than we do at a conventional Punch Bowl Social. And so we need to replace that revenue with something else. And and, in the Punch Bowl Life experience, we are going to add in something we call makertainment, which is going to be, you know, classroom sessions where you can go in and with a drink in your hand and learn how to make candles or take a craft cocktail class, maybe a cooking class. And then we’ll also add in a some retail products, right? That we’ll sell since we’re also in a mall environment, that will connect to whatever some of these classroom sessions however they manifest. All that’ll be going on while we still have what you know as a Punch Bowl Social, we just are sort of activating it differently enough that it will distinguish itself from the urban Punch Bowl Social product.

Zach Goldstein

(17:11):

And a hotel? I mean, that seems like yet another big step, but one that makes logical sense when you’re building a true lifestyle brand at the end of the day.

Robert Thompson

(17:21):

Yeah. And you hit on the key word there, right? People often define themselves by the brands that they associate with. And, and in this case with millennials, Gen Z, will promote, right? Because it’s almost a form of self promo and they promote brands that they’re proud to associate with. So for us, we try to double down on that, that lifestyle. We know that we bring the experiences that millennials crave to them, which you know, and being best in class in the experiential food and beverage category allows us to lean into this lifestyle status, which is what led me to wanting to bring to life an experiential boutique hotel where the flag will be Punch Bowl Hotel, in a micro room setting. As they’re micro rooms, we’ll get people out of their rooms and down into the common areas where, where influential social will actually exist and that’s where the experience is and and will drive the F and B through the common areas of the hotel. You know, all encapsulated in a, in a boutique hotel experience.

Zach Goldstein

(18:28):

Do you have initial location or locations at this point or still in concept?

Robert Thompson

(18:33):

Both. We’re still in concept and we’re having conversations on location. Punch Bowl’s take a long time to bring together on a normal day. Some of my deals are three years out from the first time I touched them. But you know, a Punch Bowl Hotel is even more complicated. So you know, I can tell you I don’t have anything scheduled to open in 2021. And it is, you know you know, I’m actually working on our 20– 21, 22 pipeline right now, so um hotels are in the conversation.

Zach Goldstein

(19:11):

Great, great. And part of that, as you expand on the, on the umbrella Punch Bowl brand part of that is obviously having the, the capital and the runway to do it. And so you recently announced a financing deal with Cracker Barrel, which I guess at first glance, the two may seem like unlikely partners. Tell us about the deal, why it makes sense, how it came together and, and how that provides the foundation for this significant expansion of, of Punch Bowl over the next several years or decades.

Robert Thompson

(19:42):

Sure. well, first of all, they’re great people over there at Cracker Barrel, and you know, this is this is a minority deal with them. So they’ve bought a minority position in the company and provided us access to capital for, for them, you know it was access to growth. And also our core customer, which can be different than the demographic that services Cracker Barrel. It really was the gaps, the gaps that each one of our companies had that brought us together, right? Because we can fill those gaps for one another. And so I reached out to their CEO Sandy Cochran, who’s a great restaurant leader, she’s really is not heralded as much as she should be. She flies under the radar. We engaged in a fascinating conversation um that, lasted about nine months and then we finally, then we got a deal done. The brands don’t need to align, right? That’s not, that’s not important because there is no integration between the two. In this respect they almost act like a private equity firm. Right. Where they you know, they, they provided this capital and some, and some key insights with respect to some of the ways that they look at financial data and and we provided them with an opportunity to, you know, eventually acquire the rest of the company, if that’s what makes sense. But you know, none of us are making that plan right now. We’re just enjoying the partnership.

Zach Goldstein

(21:27):

It’s great. It’s great. It’s nice to see uh great brands come together. And, and as long as there’s an investment in future innovation, that, that’s good for all of us. So exciting to see that it’s been a heck of a growth story since you opened up the first Punch Bowl Social in your hometown. It’s exciting to hear about the 20th location, Miami and the, the Life concepts, the Hotel concepts coming soon. And, and so thank you for sharing that with us. As you think about, you know, the podcast is, is Food Fighters and we like to talk about what’s the next food fight? Is it, what is the future of experiential? How do you see that evolving? And is that, is that where you’re directing people to think about the future of food or are there other things that are on your mind?

Robert Thompson

(22:17):

The future of the category, right, is it’s going to continue to expand and we, we believe that, you know, we at Punch Bowl we helped define eatertainment. I think eatertainment was not defined. You had these, these legacy players like Dave & Buster’s out there, which are not the way anyone else is bringing – no one else is just trying to bring together the Dave & Buster’s experience and the, and the eatertainment category. So, you know, we helped define the modern eatertainment category and we’ve had some success and as a result there been a lot of entrants in, into the space. So I think because each market doesn’t hold you know, it’s not like a Chipotle where you know, you have 20 of these and you know, there’s all, there’s only so much space and so there’s a race to really the type of real estate that Punch Bowl started taking down you know, back around 2012. Um and that’s where, for me, my solution to that that that busy-ness or the noise in the, in the real estate pipeline is to develop things like Punch Bowl Life and Punch Bowl Hotel where no, you know, once again, we want to be groundbreaking. We want to continue to define what the experiences are in experiential food and beverage. And that’s so I think the food fight is a real estate, is there’s- there’s a land war and I think, you know, we’re going to try to we’re going to try to out think the question, right? And by asking a different question of where we can actually w- what ecosystem we can integrate into.

Zach Goldstein

(23:59):

Yeah that’s very interesting. And normally I would leave that as the last question, but, but you’ve prompted me on this real estate topic because so many restaurants are trending towards smaller footprints and trying to think through how do they get out of space? Uh and you’ve been able to make a gigantic footprint, not only work in aggregate, but on a per square foot basis, your revenue numbers are phenomenal. And so you’re going the other way. And it sounds like you think there’s a lot more opportunity to bring communities and experiences together and, and the real estate could actually become more advantageous for you as some of these other large, large footprint, traditional concepts struggle without the w without the experience.

Robert Thompson

(24:42):

Yeah. You think about what some of these restaurants are, are allowing themselves to become right with delivery continuing to expand. You know, they’re allowing themselves to become ghost kitchens in a way. So they’re trying to shrink their dining rooms and you know, because we issue delivery and we say, please, please come to our address to have the experience. You know, we take, we take full advantage of the large footprint. Um I don’t know how – it is, uh it is a wonderful academic question, try to figure out what’s going to happen to casual dining with the ongoing onslaught of demand for delivery and then the, and the, and the delivery vehicles that are, that are responding to that. But I know that, you know, the solution is not going to be that casual dining,uis going to just continue to shrink their footprint so that they can serve more to-go food at, you know, 20 to 35% delivery premiums, right? Cutting into their margin. That’s, you know, that that’s not what’s going to happen. I’m not smart enough to know what is going to happen other than to say it’s not that.

Zach Goldstein

(26:02):

Well that’s a great place to, to put a, put a period on it cause I, I agree. I think that we have much to shake out still. And the off premise landscape is certainly evolving, namely whether people are making any money on off-premise. But one thing’s for sure, deliver great food, unique beverages and lots of awesome experiences and quite clearly there is demand for that and Punch Bowl Social’s proving it. So thanks for joining us, uh Robert, really appreciate the conversation.

Robert Thompson

(26:29):

Cool. Thank you.

Zach Goldstein

(26:33):

You’ve been listening to Food Fighters with me, Zach Goldstein. To subscribe to the podcast or to learn more about our featured guests, visit thanx.com/food-fighters. That’s Thanx, spelled thanx.com/food-fighters. This podcast is a production of Thanx, the leading CRM and digital engagement solution for restaurants. Until next time, keep fighting food fighters.