Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty Executive Spotlight: Amy Barnett, Vice President of Digital Experience and Loyalty at Cracker Barrel
In our first Executive Spotlight of the year Loyalty360 CEO Mark Johnson dives into an energizing conversation with Amy Barnett, the Vice President of Digital Experience and Loyalty at Cracker Barrel, as part of the Leaders in Customer Loyalty Series. From spearheading a loyalty program that now drives 30% of Cracker Barrel’s sales to shaping an iconic brand’s transformation in today’s rapidly evolving dining landscape, Amy reveals her playbook for success.
This interview is packed with fresh insights on harnessing the "power couple" of first- and third-party data, leveraging generative AI for personalization, and shaking up outdated technology strategies. Plus, Amy shares her career secrets, her passion for mentorship, and the advice she’d give to the next generation of loyalty professionals. Don’t miss this dynamic conversation with one of the industry's most dynamic leaders, she’ll leave you inspired and ready to level up your customer loyalty strategy!
Good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I want to welcome you to our new interview series, the Loyalty360 Executive Spotlight. These conversations will be with some of the customer loyalty industry's leading minds and personalities who are driving success within the most revered and successful customer loyalty programs in the market today all of them who are members of Loyalty360. In this series, you will learn more about the individuals who are working behind the scenes to develop and maintain customer loyalty efforts. Yet we're going to take a more personal look into how they got to where they are today. Look at some of those successes and maybe some of the challenges they have faced along the way.
Speaker 1:Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Amy Barnett. She's the Vice President of Loyalty and Digital at Cracker Barrel. Amy is one of the most passionate people I know within the customer loyalty space. We've known each other for over 10 years, going back to her days at Klairs and before that at Briarley and Partners. Welcome, amy. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. It's a great honor to speak with you, as always.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mark. I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Can you please provide us a little bit of background on your role at Cracker Barrel?
Speaker 2:I would be delighted to. I'm the Vice President of Digital Experience and Loyalty and in the Cracker Barrel world that means that I manage the digital ecosystem, which includes the website. So when you come to crackerbarrelcom, we lead the product development, the product prioritization, the UX, the UI and the user experience on crackerbarrelcom. And when you download our app, it's also inclusive of our digital guest experience in the app, which, to us, is not just a rewards app, it's actually also a menu and restaurant app as well.
Speaker 2:And then the other two pieces of the business are the rewards program which launched about 18 months ago, which I'm sure we'll talk all about today, and then the fourth part of my job which I'm delighted to share with you is guest relations. Part of my job which I'm delighted to share with you is guest relations. So, in addition to you know the rewards program and the channels that our guests engage with us on, it's important to me that I think about capital L, and capital L to me means that it's so much more than the rewards program and the data that we collect and know about you, but it's about how we evolve the entire brand experience based, rooted in data and insights. But how do we change and evolve the whole customer experience across store and our digital properties to extend customer lifetime value and get our guests coming back and wanting more from us.
Speaker 1:That's excellent. You talked about it a little bit, but how does Cracker Barrel work to meet these evolving needs and expectations of today's customers, today's guests?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it is January 14th 2025.
Speaker 2:And this is a great time to be having this interview, because you've probably read in the press, you've probably seen Julie on the news or in other channels sort of talking about our brand transformation. But, as any amazing brand does, all brands sort of evolve over time and Cracker Barrel is in this really beautiful moment of embracing all of our history and our heritage and everything that we know and love about this iconic brand and the shopping experience we provide. But bringing that forward based on guest feedback, the changing dynamic, particularly since 2020, but just the changing restaurant dynamic and how consumers have changed in terms of their you know, their dietary preferences, their budgetary preferences, even you know, right down to the flavor of the food that they want and how they engage with the brand. So we are listening to quite a bit of guest feedback currently across so many different mediums. That is driving a lot of this brand transformation and, honestly, it's a part of the reason I'm at Cracker Barrel is to help provide the data foundational layer and the insights to continue driving that evolution.
Speaker 1:You've done an amazing job launching a very successful customer loyalty program while also evolving kind of the store a little bit the food offerings. You have some kind of test markets that you work on now. How does the customer loyalty play into meeting some of these evolving needs and expectations of your customers? The relationship that the customer loyalty program kind of develops with their customers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it plays a very significant part. I think Julie has shared this in other media, so I don't think I'm sharing anything. We track about 30% of our sales right now through the rewards program, so we have this enormously rich set of first-party data that exists in our customer data platforms. But we are no stranger to third-party data and I actually gave a speech this weekend and I talked about how third-party data and first-party data are the power couple and I think I borrowed that from somebody else and it's stuck with me and I just can't shed it but it's the blend of third-party data and the first-party data. So we have several partners in the space where we either augment or append third-party data to our first-party platform.
Speaker 2:So not just profiling information first party platform. So not just profiling information. You know we all know sort of the historical, demographic and profiling information but the ability to go out onto the larger data landscape and really understand in a very fragmented industry like ours. We have three day parts. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner, so pretty much every dining option in the market is our competitor but in all fairness it's a share game, right. So really relying on third-party data to give us overarching macro trends on consumer spend. You know where is our key consumer dining for breakfast, where are they dining for lunch and dinner, and then marrying that with the first-party data that we obviously know what they do with us through the first-party data to the data that we obviously know what they do with us through the first party data to the extent that we're able to see it.
Speaker 2:But the power couple exists when you have what they do in your own four walls married to all of the other data for what they're doing in the industry as a whole. So it's a big part of the transformation Everything from retail merch selection to you know how do we think about delivering real value for lunch and dinner. It's January, so everybody's in the value moment. You can't turn on your TV without seeing the three for me and the. You know all the Burger King and all the value plays. We're no different, right. So what's unique, though, since we launched the program 18 months ago, is we now have this really rich first-party data set. So we're not just relying on aggregate market data, but we are doing the power couple blend of bringing the two together in a data set.
Speaker 1:Excellent. For those of me that know you also have a very unique and storied history in customer loyalty, Did great work on the agency side. Now you've been at a number of marquee brands and been very successful at kind of adapting or enhancing or launching customer loyalty programs. What is it about customer loyalty that's kept you in the industry for as long as you have.
Speaker 2:You know right. I mean, how blessed are we, Mark, to be in this industry that we never get bored in? So I've always been sort of data and technology enabled. You know, I sort of back in the day thought I was either going to be a lawyer or an engineer and then I started to see this like beautiful blend between the technology and the data and the marketing. And I thought, you know, almost instantaneously I sort of found my spot. And what I feel very fortunate in is that the place that I'm in and the place that we are all in and experiencing is that it just never changes, it never stops changing.
Speaker 2:The data landscape has changed, the technology landscape has evolved. You probably were here too when the World Wide Web, you know, launched and we were all given permission, you know, to go surf the internet and then, just in the last you know, 30 years, everything has changed in our jobs. Some of the core principles are there around consumer behavior and, you know, staying true to the consumer and what it takes to measure and really understand the consumer. All of that is there, but how we receive information, the recency that we receive all that data and the space that we're in for direct marketing and specifically, the blend between data and technology and creativity is it's on. It's still got so much more growth coming, so that's what's kept me energized. I mean, not to mention the amazing people I work with. You know it's still a very people-based even with all the data and technology we work in. It is a very relationship, people-based business and I couldn't do another job. It's just I love it.
Speaker 1:That's excellent. When you look at the agency side and the brand side, what's the biggest difference between the agency side and the brand side?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So first of all, I got my start on the agency side. I spent a lot of time on the agency side, but I never did the same job for more than a few years, like I constantly was doing something different or learning a different industry. So one thing that I think the agency side allows somebody is to make those type of transitions. I can be working with creative directors. I could be working with the process directors who are implementing new technologies. I can be working with the product teams, or I could be working in travel and hospitality for a few years, and then I can go and work in, you know, the C store or the grocery store or a restaurant or retail, and every industry sort of has its underpinnings of sameness. But the agency world allows you, I think, to sort of you know, learn that expertise, and then there's so much opportunity to learn different aspects of the business and then change verticals. What I love about being on the client side is I love being in the details when you are on the agency side, and I was always a great partner. I hope I was a great partner. I learned to be a great partner.
Speaker 2:You could only take a strategy or an execution so far, right On the brand side, on the client side of the business, you own everything from strategic conception to delivery and then measuring and reporting and improving. So to me, you don't get quite the breadth but you get the depth and what I've been able to do is bring the breadth of that experience into now a few different brands, and evolve those brands with all of the expertise across the different functions. So, yeah, I don't think there's one answer. I can't give anybody one answer Do you go agency side or do you go client side? My intuition is trust your gut, like you will know when it's time to change, and you will know, sort of like based on who you are as a person, for whether or not it's agency or client side.
Speaker 1:You touched on a little bit, but what are some of the learnings from the agency side that help you on the brand side? You talked about maybe not necessarily owning all the details. Specifically, what do you like more or what learnings that you take from the agency side that kind of helped on the brand client side?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I'm a better client partner. I think I'm a better client partner having spent as much time as I did on the technology and the agency side. When you are on the inside of an agency, you understand the product very detail. You understand the strengths and weaknesses and resource constraints and all of the things that are associated, sort of, with supporting a business rather than being in the business, and so perhaps it's just maturity, but I like to think that it's based on my agency background.
Speaker 2:Is that I'm a better strategic partner, I think, as a result to my agency partners. I think that I know their strengths and I sort of know when my team probably needs to step up a little bit to fill in their gaps, and I'm just more understanding. I think that I've not only grown in my own career, but people are generally good, and if an agency is not doing their job, a lot of times it's because the client direction wasn't as sound or as solid or as thorough as it probably needed to be. So I think it's a win-win. Hopefully, I hope my agency partners think that anyway, Okay, and your opinion?
Speaker 1:you know what's the single biggest factor that influences a great customer experience?
Speaker 2:Single biggest influencing factor.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh, Mark, that is such an enormous question. Single biggest influencing factor. Well, there's no one answer. Okay, um, um, let's come back to that one. It's too basic to give a question.
Speaker 1:Okay, what is one passion outside of work that you enjoy?
Speaker 2:I'm a big reader. I, like you, do a lot of reading. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I'm kind of nerdy in that I don't turn on the TV very often, although I love a good binge. Like anybody else, I actually don't watch a lot of TV. I'm sort of a news junkie. I do a lot of reading. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I picked up tennis during 2020. I guess that's a little personal. Who cares about it? Anyway, play tennis. It gets a little bit of my competitive spirit out of me and onto the court.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's the derivation of tennis Pickleball? Have you picked up pickleball have?
Speaker 2:you picked up pickleball. You like pickleball? I do not. I'm I'm a hardcore tennis. I'll do it socially, but I'm, I'm true, blue to the game of tennis there you go.
Speaker 1:Um well, where did you go to college and what was your major?
Speaker 2:by chance, yeah, so I grew up. My undergraduate was from a small private technology school called Clarkson University. It's in upstate New York. It is a small engineering school. I thought I was going to go to school to become an engineer and this school in particular had an interesting program that they blended engineering with management. I can't remember even what industrial management, I can't remember the name of the program. It was one of the first schools in the country to actually do it and I was taking those management courses out of duress because I didn't want to take any management, you know sort of marketing, business courses. I just wanted to go straight up, you know, science, engineering, and become an engineer. And then I started to take these management and business courses and I just never looked back. So I got my undergraduate at Clarkson University. I did end up with a bachelor of science in marketing and technical communications. I got my graduate degree from the University of Texas at Dallas and it was an MBA with a concentration in marketing.
Speaker 1:So Okay, great, yeah. How did that, the Clarkson University, that dual degree, prepare you for the success you had in your career?
Speaker 2:Very much so. Actually they this is a trivial pursuit question, should it ever come up on your trivial pursuit game. Clarkson University was the first university in the country to make sure and and require that freshmen had laptops PCs we actually had. I don't even know if they weren't laptops at the time. They were those boxes, you know. So every freshman had a computer in our, in our dorm, which was one of the first times in the country to ever. Now all these kids are going to school.
Speaker 2:But that foundation and actually I was a coder, I was coding, but it prepared me for everything to come, because think about typing papers, thinking about submitting all of your assignments electronically, think about coding and doing all the things that PCs and computers were just starting to really build and do. And not starting. I mean PCs. They've been around for a long time, but my point is to make it available to a freshman in college was pretty important and to this day I still lean towards a writing degree. I do a lot of writing in my job in terms of, you know, copy and looking at what a consumer is going to react to and receive in terms of communication. So I use it a lot. I actually have used my degree quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what was your first job after college?
Speaker 2:My first job after college, I worked for a database marketing company. Well, my first job after college I worked for a database marketing company. Well, my job in college was McDonald's. So this is another ploy. Mcdonald's is my first true love and I worked there of. College was actually with a company, target Based Marketing. They were out of Texas, out of Dallas, texas. They were one of the very first. I think next to Epsilon were one of the first database marketing companies and I started by leading some of the RJ Reynolds tobacco clubs. Right Back in the day there was Marlboro Miles, if you remember the Marlboro man, marlboro Miles. So that got my start in consumer packaged goods. I spent a lot of time in consumer packaged goods and then, just in the course of my career, I got exposed to many other verticals. I spent about six years at Target Base and then I went on to other direct response or direct marketing companies after that.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's the best work advice you've ever been given?
Speaker 2:Here's the best work advice. Number one there's no room in business to take things personally. The sooner you can remove your feeling that somebody is directing something at you personally, the more mature and the higher emotional intelligence you will have, generally speaking. So that's one thing. The other piece of advice, which is directly in our space, mark, is one of the hardest lessons I learned is that early in my career I had held out a control cell and it was a huge program and my analytics team held out too small of a control cell and it basically did not give us the read of the entire two years of work that we had done, because our control group was too small to actually read the results. So there you go. There's two pieces of advice.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, make sure you have the right size control group. That's good. What's the biggest challenge you faced in your life and how does that shape you as a person?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I first of all I'm. I can't start this by saying I know I'm extremely fortunate. Ok, I have been. I was born into a place that I feel very fortunate to have been born into and I've worked extremely hard and I'm very proud of where I've come. But I just want to start out by saying I know that I am more fortunate than than others. But, that being said, some of the biggest challenges I've moved. Actually, I've taken opportunities to move several times in my life um, from upstate New York to Texas, to um, new York city to LA. I now live in St Louis. I lived in Dallas for 15 years, um, the hardest part for me at the time.
Speaker 2:Now social media makes all of this different right, but at the time I started over. Every time, every time, it's really hard to start over and build your network and your social networks and your professional contacts. Now the world has changed and one of the biggest pieces of advice I actually have for folks is hang on to your contacts, build that network. Hang on to your contacts, use those social outlets to network. Hang on to your contacts, use those social outlets to stay in touch. At the end of the day, a lot of this does come down to interactions and connections with people and you know I don't regret a single moment of the moves that I made. They were all for the right reasons. But it is certainly challenging at least at the time I was developing my career to stay in touch with a lot of people.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. What life lessons have shaped your perspective?
Speaker 2:I work really hard. So you're going to ask me later, I think, what my resolutions are, so I won't share that. I will just say work ethic and grit goes a long, long way. Education is important. I was fortunate to have a really incredible opportunity to get a great education and it's very important, but grit goes a long way. And collaboration and networking just you know I can't say enough about those two things.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. When you look at your career success, what are a couple of things you're most proud of?
Speaker 2:My career success. Well, the work I'm doing at Cracker Barrel I'm incredibly proud of. It is probably one of my career highlights, actually. First of all, I just I am in love with this brand. We are a brand born and bred to please people. I sort of feel like that's about me as a person as well, and so like this perfect blend of like my personal nature as well as the corporate culture, just is like this amazing blend.
Speaker 2:The leadership team here is phenomenal in terms of the way that they strategically think about the brand and the customer and how they're thinking about our transformation. So I'm very, very proud of the quick I've been here for two and a half years, so the work that we've done in two and a half years I could not be more proud of. There's been other brand moments that I've been incredibly proud of. I think it's mostly the people that I have hired in my career and I feel like I've developed a little bit. Most of them were already amazing, but when you hire really good talent and you invest the time and the energy and you see them grow and you see them move on. You know I've hired and promoted people and some of the people I've hired and promoted are now in, you know, amazing big jobs at these companies. So that's pretty fulfilling, I got to say.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. As mentioned, you've launched and enhanced many customer loyalty programs in your career, several customer loyalty programs in your career. What is the key attribute or key thing that you've done so well that has allowed you to achieve the success in these programs that you've launched or relaunched?
Speaker 2:You're asking me for my secret weapons, Mark.
Speaker 1:Yes, why not?
Speaker 2:Okay, I do have a couple of secret weapons. So there's a lot of research, there's a lot of data to inform it and I know everybody listening to this knows the data pieces and what you bring from a consumer listening perspective into almost everything that you do. It's got to be the foundation, have a good gut reaction and good gut feel. But you know everything needs to be grounded in data and insights. Number one but that's not my secret weapon is there is this beautiful blend of that data with a really really good, strong, creative communications plan. And so if you look back, I think, at the programs that I've developed or the programs that I've launched, or the emails you've got to sign up If you haven't signed up for the Cracker Barrel email, it is really strong. But the the blend of a really strong, creative strategy and communications plan, blended with the data and the insights to continually evolve and learn, that's one of my secret weapons the.
Speaker 2:The other secret weapons are that technology tools. You know really taking a look at your technology stack and being able to, in a very unbiased way, say this technology is not working. And we get married to technology because it's easy, you know these, you bring technology in and you go to the, you know you go through all of the work of integrating it and configuring it and training your staff and hiring your staff, and then you get them on the technology and then you know it's here for 10 years and the life cycle of technology. Just I really encourage everybody to think differently about it. It needs to be on a much more agile you know, composable, plug out, you test, you learn. Not everything, of course. Nobody wants to move a customer database or a CDP every two years, but I think everything else, though sort of on the periphery, should be continually evaluated and don't be afraid of it.
Speaker 1:Excellent. I think it's very salient. You know approach. Some people get married to technology and it could be the worst piece of the platform right the technology stack and they continue to build around it, versus yanking that piece out and putting something else that can actually do what it was meant to do. Those are great. You know keys to success. So thank you If you go back in time and change one thing about your life.
Speaker 2:What would that be? And why, oh my gosh, these questions, mark? Um, I really don't look backward. That's awesome. I really really buy into the belief that you know, the future is forward. And you know, we are all human beings. We are all human at our core. We learn, we make mistakes. We love, you know, we don't love. You know I think that I really encourage this with my kids to you know, shame and regret hold human beings back. And so, you know, as you think about the future and as you look forward, you know, take those lessons into play and think. You know, maybe I could have changed that interaction, or I could have changed the way I left that company, or I could have stayed in touch with that person, and I didn't. You know, most importantly, don't hold on to it. We're all human beings. We all, you know, are imperfect. We're imperfectly perfect, which is an overused phrase, but we're all imperfectly perfect and I fully embrace that within myself and within all of my team members and my coworkers as well.
Speaker 1:That's awesome If you could make one great change to the workplace. You know what would that be and why.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know. Okay. So one thing about the workplace, and this is debatable. So I would love, if you're watching this and want to debate with me. I'd love to have this debate versus hybrid, versus hiring great talent, regardless where they are the pressures that we all have as leaders to, you know, deliver, but then also to create an amazing culture. I think that it's very difficult. I think it's incredibly difficult to find the right blend. I tend to lean toward a more hybrid solution.
Speaker 2:I personally love to be in the office. I'm in my office today in Lebanon, tennessee, outside of Nashville. I love to be in the office. I'm in my office today in Lebanon, tennessee, outside of Nashville. I love to be able to walk down the corridor and see my colleague who runs the advertising paid media campaigns. I love to see my person who's running the website two doors down.
Speaker 2:But half of my team is hybrid and I really learned how to manage a hybrid team so that we have a culture of accountability and fun and you know the objective of we're all here to get something done together. And how do we best collaborate between a hybrid environment and an offsite environment. So if you're asking me about the one thing that I would change. I would say that I'm sort of in the moment of how do we think about these companies that are all now going back five days a week with hiring the very best talent wherever they are? So I'm in that moment of change Like how do we migrate out of COVID into this sort of new life going forward and how to create that culture.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. It's definitely a very kind of poignant and timely discussion, right? Some people take the belief that you need to have more, you know, in-person meetings to create that, engage, create that kind of opportunity. But it's definitely definitely everyone and the numbers kind of go both ways. You can read, as you know, you can shape the numbers to tell any story you want if you go in with a belief, right. So you have to go in, look at the numbers objectively, but not many people are doing that, so that's a great perspective. Next question Is there a book that you enjoy, you find relevant, maybe from a business perspective, that you recommend to your colleagues or the team at Cracker?
Speaker 2:Barrel. Well, actually I do a lot of podcasts. I do have some books. They're probably pretty boring, like our company just embraced OKRs, so I just finished OKRs for all. Don't read it. You can do the Clip Notes version. The couple of podcasts that I actually really enjoy there is an omni-channel I think it's called OmniTalk or I think the prior Target executives run something called OmniChannel OmniTalk.
Speaker 2:I do a lot of the New York Times, sort of unfiltered. I try and be as neutral as possible. I do a lot of news through Apple. Actually I find the Apple News source to be one of the most neutral sources that I actually read for information. I'm drawing a blank on. I mean I read all of the Loyalty360 stuff that comes out and I do a lot of industry. I like I listen to a lot of nerdy like industry podcasts, to be honest, anything on digital, anything on loyalty, you know, sort of definitely anything in the restaurant digital space, which there are podcasts for restaurant digital which I listened to. So I do a lot of those type of readings. I do a lot of personal readings as well, but that's awesome, yeah, great.
Speaker 1:I haven't checked a couple of those podcasts and this is a kind of a fun question. You can ask one question to someone else running a customer loyalty about their program and they had to answer it. What would that question be?
Speaker 2:At this moment.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:How are you using Gen AI? It is the hot topic of the moment. I, as a digital leader here at Cocker Barrel, believes that every single part of our company should be exploring Gen AI, not just in marketing. I think that there's so many uses. I've already started using it in my customer service contact center. I've seen really good results there. I'm encouraging my team to you know, really understand it and explore it in terms of content, personalization, offer development. You know everything, really everything, like how do we embrace and use Gen AI in a safe, like you know, that's the other thing. How do we create these environments through Microsoft or these other companies, to create the walls that gives us, give us a safety, but how do we use Gen AI in various parts of marketing? And then fraud, you know, I think just fraud is just everywhere. It's just popping up all over the place. And how do we stay on top of that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, gen AI is a hot topic. Fraud is a hot topic. Gen AI seems to be one where customer loyalty professionals are using it, but they're not necessarily kind of achieving the benefits necessarily, because they seem to have a higher threshold for approval. So they bring some gen AIAI and they have now 25 people checking the copy, right.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:It's very similar to, you know, the Tesla, the automated cars right, They've killed three or four people where there's 13,000 accidents a day in the US. So, yes, they killed a few people, yes, it has some mistakes, but there's hundreds of deaths every day from automobile accidents versus four. So the confidence levels we talk about from a statistic perspective is a little bit skewed right now. Hopefully that changed a little bit. From a statistic perspective, is is a little bit skewed right now. Hopefully that changed a little bit. You know you're very active in multi 360, which definitely appreciate. You know what do you like, what do you find value about the community? And then, what would you like to see more of?
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, first of all, I I want to participate more like this. Mark, what you've created in this community is really incredible, and I said this at the conference. Every single person in our space on any day has like 25 jobs. We're financial analysts, you know. We are operations specialists. We're analysts you know, you name it. We are a little bit of all of those things. So the fact that you have brought so many like-minded professionals together in a community for us to have a safe place to learn from each other and brainstorm You've heard me say this before Nobody can really mimic what happens within a company, right?
Speaker 2:So if we are sharing KPIs, if we are sharing best practices with technology or how we're using Gen AI, we're not stealing this from each other. What we're doing is we're making and evolving the guest experience to be better at the end of the day. So I'm a big believer in knowledge sharing to the extent that we're all comfortable, you know, within our boxes. I've gotten a lot of value out of the mentor program. I really enjoy being a mentor. I think my mentoree and I are getting ready to kick things off here in January, so I love that piece of it. I think you've done a great job in having some of the professionals align on the benchmarks in loyalty and really starting to align and share thoughts around. How do we continue to evolve our benchmarks and hold each other accountable, to sort of a standard set of metrics that we can start to train our colleagues and counterparts on?
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, thank you very much for that great feedback it's always great to hear. And the last question we try to end these up with some words of wisdom for marketers or customer multi-professionals newer ones, who may not be as tenured as you and I are. What are some things they should be considering with regard to their growth, helping them develop effective customer loyalty strategies and elevating the customer experience? What's? A couple pieces of advice you can give to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's two things. One is curiosity. There's two things. One is curiosity and ask the question. If you need to know, don't be afraid to ask. You know, be curious, explore, excuse me, probe, because guaranteed if somebody just starting has a question, chances are it's probably bringing new insight or new thought to something that somebody else isn't thinking of. So be curious and maintain your curiosity honestly throughout your whole career. Never stop being curious, always be a learner, always be observant.
Speaker 2:So curiosity is the one thing. The second one is courage. You know, have the courage to use your voice. One of the pieces of advice you know I got very early on was it can be overwhelming to sit in a room of executives who know each other or have worked together for years and as somebody you know newly in that room, you know newly sitting around that table, have the courage to use your voice. People, you're there, you've earned your way there. You know we want to hear from you, especially those of you who are just starting your career or learning or coming off. We're hiring you, we put you in a position. So be curious, continue to ask the questions and have the courage to use your voice, speak out.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Thank you very much for that. Now we have our quick fire round of questions. I'd like to keep these to a one word or a short phrase, and this is the second time that you've done these, so you have our second batch that we come up with, so we're going to try them out on you. Okay, how would you describe your work life?
Speaker 2:Balanced.
Speaker 1:Excellent. If you have a day off, a week off from work, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:Spending time with my kids.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. What are your New Year's resolutions?
Speaker 2:with my kids. That's awesome. What are your New Year's resolutions?
Speaker 1:I have, I do one word resolutions, and my word this year is love. There we go. That's awesome. If you could live in any city, any country, where would you live?
Speaker 2:I love the United States. I can't think about living anywhere else. I'm in love with our country. But if you were to tell me I had unlimited tell me I had unlimited.
Speaker 1:This isn't one word. The United.
Speaker 2:States. There you go. Okay, if you could go back to school.
Speaker 1:What would you study? Maybe law, but yeah, yes, that's on my bucket list too. I was accepted to a program but I haven't went back, so maybe someday probably have to apply again and probably won't get in then either. So who knows?
Speaker 2:What facet of the job would you like to know more about?
Speaker 1:Um, oh gosh, Gen AI and just generally speaking, technology is constantly something I'm learning about. How do you plan for projects? Are you a just-in-time kind of a person or are you kind of a very strategic planner?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I would love to be a strategic planner, Mark. However, you know I spent 10 years in retail and you know, guess what? Newsflash Restaurant isn't any different. So, yes, of course you have to have a strategic plan, but I'm very agile and pivot quite a bit off of the plan to take care of, like, where we are in the business.
Speaker 1:What motivates you when tackling challenges at Cracker Barrel?
Speaker 2:What motivates me? Yeah, oh, for somebody to underestimate me.
Speaker 1:Awesome when you what do you draw inspiration from? You know what lights your fire what do you draw inspiration from?
Speaker 2:You know what lights your fire. I think I think youth, you know, I think really, listening to the younger generations inspire me a lot.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's your favorite sports or hobby?
Speaker 2:Okay. College football I can't get enough of Okay.
Speaker 1:And tennis. Oh, so then, what is your favorite sports team then?
Speaker 2:Well, I have two kids, one at Tulane and one at Arizona state, and if you played attention to the football playoffs this year, Arizona state was the underdog new to the big 12 and ended up in a really great spot. They didn't they're not going on, but right now it's Arizona State and Tulane Anybody but Ohio.
Speaker 1:I live in Ohio. I'm not an Ohio State fan, so don't hold that against me, but that's good. And, amy, I want to thank you again for taking the time to speak with us today. It was great having you on the second edition of our Executive Spotlight. It was interesting and very thought-provoking. Your passion for the program, passion for your employees, what you've done in the mentorship program is just a pleasure to have been part of. We appreciate your sharing advice with our listeners and looking forward to hearing more from you and your team in the future. So thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank you for including me. I appreciate you guys, as always.
Speaker 1:Thank you everyone for taking the time to listen today to our second edition of our Executive Spotlight. Please be sure to join us back soon for another edition and make sure you sign up for our podcast and subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay updated on all things. Customer loyalty.