Dave Domzalski on Building Barmetrix Across South Florida, Michigan and Writing Best Selling Hospitality Books

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Codispode and today’s guest is Dave Dumsalsky. Did I get it right Dave? All right.

Dave Domzalski (00:22)
That’s it, that’s it, good job.

Anthony Codispoti (00:24)
He is bar inventory expert with BarMetrics, the global hospitality consulting firm dedicated to helping bars and restaurants cut waste and grow profit. Founded in 1999, BarMetrics blends on-site specialists, easy-to-use software, and ongoing coaching to slash beverage costs and recover lost revenue. The company has served more than 10,000 venues across seven countries.

They guide owners through detailed inventory audits and practical training that deliver measurable gains in just weeks. Dave is the author of two bestselling books, The Bar Shift and Hospitality DNA, and there’s another one coming out soon that we’ll talk about, and has spoken at Tales of the Cocktail and Bar Convent Berlin on why most bars lose money without ever knowing it. He spent over two decades helping hospitality operators find the

profit hiding in plain sight. Running bar metric franchises across South Florida and Michigan. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency. Listen, if you run a business, you’re likely stuck in the cycle of rising insurance premiums. You’re paying more, but your team is getting less. And many people can’t afford coverage at all.

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Results vary, but the consultation is free. See if you qualify today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, President and owner of Bar Metrics Miami-Dade. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Dave Domzalski (02:26)
Absolute pleasure, Anton. I’m excited.

Anthony Codispoti (02:29)
So what first attracts you to the hospitality industry? How’d you get your start?

Dave Domzalski (02:33)
So I think it’s kind of a classic, you know, classic story. It starts way back though. ⁓ When I was eight years old, my mother moved ⁓ us from St. Louis, Missouri to Columbia, Maryland. And part of that reason was to be close to family. So would have like somebody in the family that was around my age, my brother and sister, eight and 10 years old and me. So I didn’t have any siblings around and she liked that dynamic. And so she moved us close to ⁓ my cousin, Mike and his parents. And

You know, we grew up together. We were very, very close and we had talked about going to a restaurant for our entire lives. You know, we were going to go and put a bar, it’s going to be pool, whatever. And when I was 21 years old, Mike killed himself, which was, which is brutal. And at that time I was an engineer working for a company called Polk Audio. But it shifted my entire perception of what my world was, what I wanted to do. And I was already kind of bored of engineering anyways.

And so when I looked at the next career, was psychologically just stuck there. was like, this is, I have to go open a bar. I’ve got to learn how to own a bar. So I left engineering, salary position, all that to wait tables so I can learn. yeah, so I worked for a named Patrick Russell. Took three years for me to understand that I don’t have the right mentality and, you know, the right heart and soul to open and run a restaurant. takes a special character, but that’s what got me there.

It was sort of ⁓ a childhood passion that I had to follow that part of my dream and it turned into something amazing for me.

Anthony Codispoti (04:05)
Wow. How did that person’s suicide linger with you? If you’re comfortable saying more about that.

Dave Domzalski (04:11)
⁓

I wouldn’t have brought it up if I wasn’t. ⁓ so, mean, it still does sometimes, right? It never goes away. It’s gotten better. But for, I’d say for 10 years, it really put, I’m an extreme extrovert. I love talking to people, being around people, but I developed this side of me where I were after I was out of wanting to retreat. And so there was probably a bit of depression there sitting, you know, wanting to be numb, wanting to not feel that.

It definitely affected relationships. didn’t want to get as close because we were like brothers. I was closer to him than I was to my own brother and probably still am. And so the idea of getting that close to somebody again just wasn’t very pleasant. So I had some great relationships that I don’t have anymore because of that. But now I’ve processed it, I’ve gotten through it. I remember and talk, but you

that it drove me into this industry. in its own way, it ⁓ had to have a positive outcome or else, well, it’d really sad for

Anthony Codispoti (05:14)
How did you make that transition from, because what you’re describing sounds very normal and natural, Your soul, your heart is crushed because the loss of your friend who’s closer than your brother. And so you don’t want to feel that pain again, so you withdraw, you retreat, you sort of put up walls, right, to protect yourself. But it sounds like at some point those walls started to come down. How did that process unfold?

Dave Domzalski (05:24)
Bye.

There was therapy. Oddly enough, the woman, growing up, I had a mentor named Stan Winokur, ⁓ amazing, amazing human being. And after that happened, I was looking for a therapist and I’m having trouble finding a decent one. And he said, I want you to talk to this woman. And I did, I sat down with her. And in the first session is an interview, right? Halfway through the first session, we figured out that her son, his name was, my cousin’s name was Mike, her son was Mike’s best friend. And she’s like,

She kept saying this name, Aaron, this Aaron is I’m like, are you talking about Dino? She goes, what? She’s like, yeah. And his nickname was Dino. So, you know, we had a conversation about conflict of interest and figured out that now it was a perfect fit because I was able to talk about like, I’m a very open person. So that made it. That’s how I sort of started that process. I don’t think we actively discussed because I didn’t figure this out about myself until much later.

I looked at some relationships that like this, like what happened to those friends? Like, why did that happen? I didn’t understand. I’m like, oh, I disengage. I put it back. And naturally, again, extreme extrovert. So I think I was, it was going to eventually get that place. didn’t, I don’t know how much I actively thought about getting there. It just sort of naturally, you know, proceeded that way.

Anthony Codispoti (06:57)
through the process

of the therapy, just sort of working through things, understanding yourself, processing what happened. Okay, so let’s move forward into barometric stays. How did this opportunity come about?

Dave Domzalski (07:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So like I said, I’m working for Patrick Russell three years in and he comes up to me day, says, Dave, I’m to ask you a question. He knew what I was doing. He knew that I wanted to own a restaurant. And he says, have I just beaten it out of you yet? And I was like, beat what? And he’s like, the idea that owning a restaurant is a good idea. You’re like, you’re done with that, right? And I said, actually, yeah. It’s not for me anyways, man. I don’t have your constitution. I don’t work that way. And at the time he had brought, I was his bar manager and I was telling him like, look, we should use scales to the inventory because this is so imprecise. And I was showing him why.

You measuring by you doing this is complete totally like you might as well not Because the human the human brain and I and hand or horrifyingly bad measurement measurement devices and I was like I make a spreadsheet for you and all this could be engineering all that and And he kept putting me off and I didn’t understand why but like a couple months later He brings in bar metrics this guy Jason Yeager and I watched them work I’m like as I’m seeing these guys work for about six months

It occurred to me, like, okay, I can’t do engineering because I’m too much of an extrovert. Like I just can’t, it’s boring and repetitive, but also it’s a different type of person. know, ⁓ lovely guys, just different, but I love data and I miss the data. I miss the science, I miss the math. And these two things are brought together with bar metrics because it’s a, it’s a highly, say highly coaching focused business.

So while we’re doing inventory, that’s how we don’t see ourselves as inventory guys, even though that is what we are. We’re looking at ourselves as we coach our clients to success. We’re driving success in their business, at least in one aspect or a couple aspects of it. So seeing that melded business models like, this is really cool.

Anthony Codispoti (08:57)
So your brain was pre-wired for this. I you were already sort of throwing out these ideas like, we need to use scales to, and were you specifically thinking about, you know, measuring ⁓ liquor or was this like, you know, I don’t know, cheese and lettuce and beef as well, or was it like just focused on the alcohol?

Dave Domzalski (09:18)
It’s just the alcohol. was the bar manager. wasn’t the kitchen guy. I probably would have gotten there eventually because I can’t help myself. I like putting my fingers and stuff where it doesn’t belong, I guess. But yeah, I know it’s just a liquor. I’m like, dude, I can change your cost of goods by accident from acceptable. His acceptable was 20 % to your unacceptable 23 just by changing at the bottles by 0.5. So if I say, oh, this is a 1.5, that’s a 2.5, that’s

And I if I just say that to two, that’s a one or vice versa, depending on the beginning and ending inventory, all of a sudden your numbers become great or they become bad. And I’ve done nothing intentionally to do that. However, on the other side of it, you’re telling me that I have to produce numbers that my job depends on. I’m not firing myself. So if I know that, Hey, this is imprecise and we all know it’s imprecise. I’ll make those numbers like, well,

It’s a 2 or a 2.5 or a 0.25 because that makes my numbers just good enough that I’m not getting yelled at. And so I had a conversation with them. I was very open and honest with the company. ⁓ But that’s that’s that was that was where it started and where it was always good to go.

Anthony Codispoti (10:31)
Okay, so walk us through what bar metrics does. Are you teaching your clients to put each shot on a scale and then pour it in, or there’s gotta be something more streamlined here?

Dave Domzalski (10:43)
Yeah, yeah. So we’re back at. So we come in this morning. I had two teams out, one at a place called Roto in South Beach, Miami, and then the Blue Lagoon Hilton, a new client we started. And so each team goes in and we’ve got handheld scanners, little Android computers and Bluetooth scales. They’re weighing every single bottle of liquor down to a hundredth of an ounce accuracy. They’re counting all the full bottles.

They’re weighing the kegs. If there’s batches, they’re weighing those and converting that back into alcohol, because it’s the best way to track that process. And so they pull this information. They’re comparing. We’re pulling their sales information. So pulling sales files from your POS, and we’re mapping it in based on their recipes and their data and their information. So it’s very customized to each client. We’re entering in all their invoice information, updating their costs constantly, which is one thing that

goes by the wayside a lot in bars and restaurants. It’s very time consuming to keep accurate on your costs and what you’re actually paying. So we do all that. And at the end of the audit, we’re going to create what we call just a double check report. And it will say, hey, you’re missing a bar. James sent two cases of Heineken. This, that, the other. And we tell our guys, go double check the book. We won’t leave until we believe it’s as close to 100 % accurate as humanly possible. I mean, we’re human, so we make mistakes, but we mitigate that a lot. And once that’s done, we have a report.

And that report goes out to the client. And then we coach them on it, discuss it, ask questions. I just had a meeting last, this knows this week, phenomenal meeting with one of my clients and, and, and they were going all over the place. I’m like, let’s focus on rum. We got to a place where like, let’s focus on rum and the, a lot of five Y kind of stuff. that we’re like, I asked, why, how can I possibly missing nine bottles rum? I was like, okay, well, let’s stick it What does that really mean? That’s less than half an ounce per per average. Right. So we just average out on all your bar. Okay.

And then as we’re going, we’re digging. how could that possibly happen? And one of his guys jumps in and says, I watched yesterday, one of our guys doing the drag drag for, I’m trying to remember that term for like a week. Sorry. It’s my own internal excitement. It’s called a drag port. So I got my jigger and I pour and then I start pouring the jigger and I’m still pouring the bottle. No, that’s not how you pour it or the bounce port like they do. And then they bounce up and that’s going to, so he said, I watched him do it and I grabbed it afterwards. I measured it. He was, it should have been two and a half ounces. It was three ounces.

And then they got further and further in. And the answer that they got to after asking why, why, why was, is our team trained? Yeah, they trained in auto. OK. And one of them was like, you can’t see the line on the jigger. So because it’s too dark behind the bar. So let’s get some lights. So their idea right now, they came up, they’re like, we’re to get some lights so we can see. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something next. So our process is to gather data for measurement.

but to set goals against which we’re measuring and they’re going to try certain things until they get there. And there’s a thousand ways you can do it. I’ll give them like 10 ideas and they’re going to, like, nine of those sucks. Like, great, as long as you say one idea is good for us or you come up with your own even better, we’re moving forward. So it’s good for our.

Anthony Codispoti (13:48)
Are there any mechanical things that can like enforce a strict pour?

Dave Domzalski (13:56)
⁓ Yes. ⁓ So one of them is a very fast and little piece of technology. It’s a jigger with these ball berries, and it’ll cut off. The problem with those is the moment you use it on a sticky liquor like Kahlua or Bailey’s, it’s almost impossible to get them to work completely right again. And sometimes they just mechanically aren’t perfect in there, and so they fail. So they’re not perfect. ⁓ There’s also, I don’t know where it’s

There’s a technology out there, they’re the rings. If you go into an airport, you’ll see them sometimes, and the bottles have these weird, really tall, long, poor spouts, and there’s a ring. And the bartender rings up whatever, they take the bottle, and they put it into the ring, and it’s got this cord on it, and they’ll turn it, and the ring activates. It opens up the spout and forks and then closes it. ⁓ The last one is called objects. They use them in Europe a lot. You’ll see them sometimes in Irish or British bars here. It’s the bottle hanging upside down, and there’s this little black-spoked wheel.

and they push the glass up on the wheel and then pours an exact shot. Those work. Problem is in our market in the US and the States, most owners don’t like the idea of most of those things, right? Because they think it looks tacky, make people think we’re whatever. It just doesn’t look good. The perception isn’t like. And then they’re right. Because most people, go in a bar, you want to see your bartender doing the making my drink, they’re crafting my cocktail. There’s part of that culture and it takes away from that a lot. Works for some people. I think it’s brilliant.

⁓ But for most people I’ve talked to, they’re no, I don’t want to do that. Which is why us in the background, they like, ⁓ I can train my staff. I can have my staff practice. I can treat this as a profession and hold my staff to a professional standard rather than saying, they’re just transient bartenders and whatever. And so they sort of take that into the culture of their other business or they already had it to start.

Anthony Codispoti (15:26)
Mmm.

So is most of your work focused around hard liquor or are you also working with wine and beer?

Dave Domzalski (15:49)
everything, wine, beer, liquor, Red Bull, it’s expensive, man. And it goes missing like crazy. Expensive water. If they want, we’ve had clients who say, Hey, we want to track our cocktail cherries. There are 60 cents of cherry now. That is like, I can’t lose a chip, right? I know the fancy ones that they’re the really, really good ones. ⁓ yeah. So it’s anything, anything you could try. We do food as well. it’s just not as well developed to a program. We’re actually reworking that whole thing, but the liquor side, we got down to a science. So yeah.

Whatever it is, if it’s on the bar, I’ll help you with

Anthony Codispoti (16:21)
And so how often are you going into a client location?

Dave Domzalski (16:26)
So about half of our clients are weekly and about the other and the other mostly half are bi-weekly and then we have a few monthly. ⁓ The monthly clients are they’re looking for a stock on hand. It’s really hard to affect change when you’re just looking when you’re measuring once a month. Like what happened over the last 30 days? I don’t know. Where this bottle of Jameson go? Who knows? It’s been 30 days. Weekly gives you higher resolution, shorter reaction time and tends to drive numbers lower faster and keep them there.

The bi-weekly it’s possible. We have plenty of clients that do a good job with the bi-weekly, but it’s tougher and it takes a lot longer because you’re waiting for two weeks and then you’re thinking what happened the last 14 days.

Anthony Codispoti (17:06)
What percentage of time do you think the loss is from true theft? Somebody grabbed a bottle, took it home.

Dave Domzalski (17:11)
love that question

so much. Very little. In my 20 years of doing this, yeah, I know, right? ⁓ So I do a staff presentation and as part of it, I love studies and I’m pretty sure it’s from the Kahn Institute. They’ve done all these studies on will people steal, are people honest? And we’ve distilled it down to some really just broad number of like, okay, I asked the team, how many people do you think inherently come in here and are like, I can’t

Anthony Codispoti (17:15)
Really.

Dave Domzalski (17:38)
wait to rip off the owner. got a bar at home, I’m gonna stock it up and this guy sucks versus they come and say, I love this place, I have a job to do, I want to do it well and my intentions are good. I might give some stuff away, but I think that’s how it works. And the answer is 80-20 unintentional. And the science and the math gets way, way, more deep and interesting than that. But when you break it down, that’s really it. Most people inherently

want to do a good job and want to take the like who they work for. They’re not trying to steal or rob. frankly, capitalism doesn’t work really well without that in place. So what we found is over the years, I’ve caught some thieves. It happens. ⁓ We’ve helped owners catch some thieves. It’s happened sometimes internal, sometimes external. The most common ⁓

factor for increasing loss is forgetting to ring stuff in. So I tell my client to bring things in. So you had a question and you sent me these three questions, which thank you so much. That helps me out a lot. One of them was like, know, one of the most common things that bar owners could do today, ring in, bring it. Make your staff ring in every single order before they make it. First off, they don’t go faster when they take more floors. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (18:35)
Sorry, forgetting what.

Dave Domzalski (19:00)
The amount of time and footsteps and all that is the same. So that’s negates that idea. However, on the backside of it, if I take three orders and let’s say it’s just three or four items each, when I go back to my computer after I’ve made all that, a lot of time has passed. I human memory is garbage. It is really, really, really bad. Fasting. There’s a lot of stuff out there. And so when I get back to the terminal, best case scenario, I just pop a bunch of stuff in and I forget to ring one thing and worst case scenario, I do that and I’m standing there going,

I have some wasting time thinking about what it was. And if I have a guest and he ordered five beers and I can’t remember if it was four or five, I’m not gonna err on the side of charging him too much for the most part because that guy’s tipping me. And if he gets his bill and goes, why’s your next your beer? He doesn’t tip me as well. So I’m gonna err on the side of caution for the guest. Bring it, bring it, you won’t make that mistake, it goes away. And I have tons of stories on examples. Brian had 360 minutes in bottles of beer.

went through this process with his team. figured it out because he had three bars, four bartenders per bar, sports bar, great space in Northern Virginia. And when he went through this process with them, at first they’re like, bar metrics is wrong. He goes, what if you forgot five beers per shift on a Friday or Saturday when we’re doing games? They go, oh, yeah. Two weeks later, 36 beers out of 6,000 served. It went from 360 to 36.

It’s just remembering to, and he’s like, ring it, ring it. That’s it. You’re going to bring everything. Ring it, ring it, baby. Yep. Simple.

Anthony Codispoti (20:28)
Ring it and bring it. So ring it up first. Yeah, because the human

memory is garbage. So what is an indicator that something has been stolen rather than an honest mistake?

Dave Domzalski (20:43)
⁓ man, I’ve never, that’s a fascinating question that I don’t know if I can answer. Let’s see.

Anthony Codispoti (20:50)
Maybe think to like an example of a client where that happened. You’re like, they stole some.

Dave Domzalski (20:56)
Breaking of patterns. once it’s an anomaly, so we do these reports, right? So once it’s an anomaly, twice as a coincidence, three times as a pattern. Most of our clients, their reports are fairly consistent. Some are crazy, like the more complex cocktail places can be all over the place, but that the chaos is created by the culture and design of the business. I had a client in Wynwood in Miami.

beautiful neighborhood, the art district. And nothing, no problems, no problems, no problems. They’re always consistent, like 5 % laws, 5 % law. And, or less. And one day, I’m, this is back when I was doing the actual counts. They’re like, they’re missing a bottle of Johnny Walker gold, the 1942 Don Julio, like these are a hundred dollar plus bottles. And, and

Anthony Codispoti (21:45)
that you’re you’re not

you’re not selling a lot of those shots each night. So it’s all they were

Dave Domzalski (21:49)
Well, they were, but they were never missing.

yeah, this is Miami, man. They sell all sorts of crazy expensive things here. You’d be shocked. Dude, let me say I was in mid Atlantic and I come down here and they have these things called spray parties at the Hyde and on South Beach where you buy $10,000 worth of champagne, Don Perignon, you’re not allowed to drink it, you can only spray it in the air. And if you drink it, they kick you out or they charge you, yeah, it doesn’t cost anything.

Anthony Codispoti (21:53)
Okay. Okay. I’m just a Midwest boy. What do I know?

Dave Domzalski (22:17)
It’s Miami. It’s a different culture, my man. So the owner called, she said, Dave, there’s no way. There’s no way. said, look, I’m telling you, I know this is right, but here’s what I’m going to do next week. If it’s over and it turns out I missed it, I’ll discount your audit because if I screwed up that badly, I think you deserve some money back. What I’m going to do is I’m going to start photographing all those bottles for you everywhere there on the business. I did that. Missing, missing. Turns out there’s a homeless guy, his name is Willie. He’s famous in Miami for the people who know him.

Anthony Codispoti (22:20)
Okay.

Dave Domzalski (22:44)
He was, they had this huge gate with the spikes over the top. He was shimming through, cause he got really skinny. We were shimming through and he had a bag outside and got to the back and he figured out they had this cabinet locked in the front, whatever. And, but Willie is persistent. So he, he would put his name on the way back. Well, the back of the cabinet wasn’t closed cause they had this massive cooler there. So they thought, we don’t have to seal this thing complete. just have to make sure people can’t get in the front of it. He would get in there and all the expensive bottles are in the back. So he’s just grabbing whatever’s there. And then he goes to the gate and he puts them through the fence and he puts them in the bag.

gets back through and takes his bag and walks off. She sent me the She’s like, you’re never going to believe it. She sent me the video of this guy. I’m like, wow, the determination for people to steal alcohol when they really want it is fascinating. So breaking the patterns would be, it would be one piece of it. But usually, honestly, it comes down to eliminating everything else first. I tell every client I work with, was like, first off, I’m not going to accuse your staff of being thieves. In fact, when I do the staff presentation, say, I’m looking in this room based on that 80-20 after that part. I say, look,

That tells me that most people in here are honest people. And I’m going to assume all of you are. You look like great people. So that’s where I start. And then we start digging in. do we need to put a light behind the bar? Are our jiggers properly calibrated? Does everybody know the recipe? Does everybody know the port? We’ll go through all that first. And if the problem persists, and if there is a thief who doesn’t realize this is about to get serious, we can do spot-ons. So I have a client today. I’m actually setting up. They’re going to count their own beer on our app. It’s going to send it to us. We’ll do all the rest of the math because the math gets crazy.

and we’ll tell them what they’re missing per shift. And they’ll be able to say, okay, this shift you’re missing a case of beer. They start investigating into it. So that’s where, that’s the usual, it’s boring. It’s honestly boring artwork.

Anthony Codispoti (24:17)
Yeah.

What does your sales process look like?

Dave Domzalski (24:25)
all right. So like to get a sales meeting or once I’m in a sales meeting.

Anthony Codispoti (24:32)
⁓ Walk us through both. Yeah, how do you prospect and then once you’re there, what is that conversation look

Dave Domzalski (24:39)
So prospecting, most of it’s the traditional hard work. There’s a book that every franchisee is told to read. said, they think they give it to us. There’s two of them and they describe each side of it. One’s called The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. it is the idea in that book basically is it’s a numbers game. So before the sales, obviously marketing. do hard mailers. I do all that stuff. ⁓ We do the online stuff.

head office does optimization online and SEO and all that thing. I’ll go research. I’ll use like AI tools like Apollo to go find owner email addresses, whatever I can set up emails. So I’m pushing hard on all those aspects. Honestly, one of the best possible ways for me to get a non-referral sale, that’s number one. But one of the best ways to get a non-referral sale is just going in and meeting people. So part of the reason I’m sitting here in a cafe and not in my office, well one, it’s under construction. It’s really dusty and messy.

but there’s a place down the road here that I want to get. And I’ve been every day that I’m here, I eat lunch there and I ask more and more questions. I know the GM, the bar manager, it’s a franchise. I’ve met the head of franchise development for them, a VP level woman. I’ve gotten all this information and emails. They’re like, sometimes the owner comes to this location. So I’m scoping this out. It’s just the, it’s a hard long work, right? But knocking on doors.

creating relationships and asking for the sale, right? So I was saying, hey, do you know anybody? Please put me in touch with you. I’m trying to get to so and so, do you know that person? So that’s getting my foot in the door. If it’s not a referral, referrals are the easiest way to sell. There’s nothing like it. So once I get in though, there’s sort of two things that I do. And I don’t have a script.

But one is I’m asking a lot of questions about their business to get the information I need to determine whether or not it’s a good fit. And then the second is I do everything I can to consult a bit while I’m there. So that’s from the book Getting Naked by Patrick Lenzioni. And the idea is you give away the product while you’re sitting there. In worst case scenario, I get somebody who goes, wow, you’re a really nice person. Thanks. So I look at what’s behind their bar. look at the classic.

the classic potential pitfalls and issues that I might be able to point out or discuss with them. Asking about the cost of goods and where they are. know I say, what’s the industry average? And I’ll explain why that’s a fallacy and how to really dig into it and know what that means for you. Sometimes I don’t even talk much about inventory, you know, because they’re like, look, I want to have somebody in my business who understands the stuff and is smart about it and is nice to me. It’s relationships, right? That’s sales anyways, but.

In our industry, even more, it’s more of an elevated cultural ideal. This is the hospitality industry. You better learn to be nice to people. So that’s a piece of it. But then, you know, I’ll get into the data, how we do it, make sure they understand that. if they want to, I usually say, you want to see the reports? Do you want to talk to them? Like, Other times, like, nope, I can see, what you’re doing. I need this done. Let’s do it. So it’s a pretty…

It’s a consultative process, I’d say, more than anything.

Anthony Codispoti (27:53)
Yeah.

Is the biggest resistance in that sales process from folks who are considering a competitor of some kind or just the status quo, just not using a service at all?

Dave Domzalski (28:08)
Number two, our industry is…

Anthony Codispoti (28:09)
Hmm.

Dave Domzalski (28:14)
think famously resistant to technology and change. A lot of places believe my bar manager was hired to do this. And that’s great. I get it. I totally understand it. That’s how I was hired. And the owner that I worked for, Patrick, was a bit a big curmudgeoning in some of those senses. But even he was like, yeah, this is the way to go. So part of what I’m getting past there, and yeah, that’s probably my biggest objection, is why would I bring you and I already got to do it?

Part of that conversation comes down to discussing, that the right person to do this job? And not to say that they’re not good at a lot of things, but most bar people are hired because they do this because they like people. They like the creative process. They’re not looking to count stuff at two, three, four in the morning after running a long shift. So that’s the second piece. It’s like they’re doing it at a time when they’re already exhausted, done and wiped out.

Then you have the Fox card in the hen house, right? So the person who inherently is creating those numbers is now reporting on those numbers and the best person in the world. Again, I’m not going to fire myself. I don’t like getting yelled at. That’s human nature. And then the other, the other, the last piece of it in that conversation, which again, yes, is the biggest objection is we do this and nothing but this. I’ve got guys who make it better. find that people who actually like counting stuff, you your bar manager doesn’t, my guys do.

They practice it constantly. They’re doing this three to five times a day, five days a week. And we know what to do with the data and we can help you get there and the information we can help you get there. And there’s so much more information than they realize that’s available to them to help them guide and make decisions in their business. Then they, if you’re just counting for ordering, like most places, they’re counting to place an order. They don’t even know why they’re ordering as much as they are, right? They don’t know if it’s because somebody’s

throw away 10 bottles of something or they poured it for a guest. just going up. I don’t have enough. I’m going to order it. And that’s where it ends for most people, where we’re going, okay, let’s optimize your profitability.

Anthony Codispoti (30:20)
So in that sales process, you’re obviously trying to talk to the owner. That’s your preference. That’s sort of your target. And is the person who is responsible for that role technically now usually a part of that conversation?

Dave Domzalski (30:27)
Yeah.

Depends. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (30:38)
because that would seem to maybe get

a little uncomfortable.

Dave Domzalski (30:43)
It could, but here’s a great point. So the other side of that is I’ll ask a bar. First of ask for, I’m actually like, do you really want to do this? Do you really want to keep counting stuff? What if I could show you exactly what’s happening in your business? And instead of doing the owner saying the cost of goods are 23 % this month. Why? I don’t know. Saying, yeah, our costs are here and it’s cause the bottle of beer and we work for our metrics and we’re going to do spot counts and we’re going retrain the staff on

proper pouring of Guinness and this, that, that, that, that. We’re going to have the gas lines checked because there’s a problem there and have a drama three conversation with your, with your boss about what you’re going to do rather than, I don’t know. And please don’t yell at me. ⁓ We work with managers really, really hard. In fact, I mentioned earlier referrals being our number one, our number one sales process. We just last week had a manager tell us.

His buddy is going to call us because he used us at one place, took us to another place, told his manager buddy that they’re going to bring us in. So we’ve created a very strong culture of respecting that level, that employment level, like those people who are, you know, we’re going to make sure that we’re not going to increase your ability to be all that. And then if there is a place where it looks like you’ve made a mistake in school, we’re going let you know first, we’re not going to just throw you under the bus. So you’ll be prepared for whatever’s going to happen. happens. say, Hey man, so sorry, this this data, this data here, this didn’t happen.

I have to put in the email, they’re like, thank you, we’re telling you. So we just make sure they understand we’re not against, so we ally with every level of the business top to bottom.

Anthony Codispoti (32:14)
You’re on the same team. Ultimately. ⁓ Drama three conversation. Did I hear that correctly? What is that? drama free. thought there’s there’s levels to these conversations. It gets more dramatic as they go along. Yeah. And so you, you own a franchise and your franchise is specifically South Florida, Miami.

Dave Domzalski (32:16)
Yeah, that’s right. I have to be.

Drama free, drama free, no drama. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s probably the coffee.

That’s right. Screaming matches.

Miami-Dade, Broward County, and then I also own all of Michigan except for Detroit.

Anthony Codispoti (32:47)
So you spend a fair bit of time going back and forth? Okay.

Dave Domzalski (32:50)
I do. Yeah.

I have a partner down here. I actually invited him last year, Ryan Lagos. He’s my operations manager. And we invited him to be a partner in 2025. And he runs the operations series. He’s amazing. So I don’t have to be here all the time.

Anthony Codispoti (33:08)
So is most of your focus now in state of Michigan?

Dave Domzalski (33:13)
No, no, actually it’s still here. ⁓ We are in the middle of doing a redesign of a critical position in our business called the account manager. And we’ve split it into multiple positions sort of to match a standard professional services firm. There’s a book called Managing Professional Services Firm by David H. Meister. effectively, so our business is very much akin to accountancy, right? So auditing is a ⁓

is a subset of accounting, but it also goes along with lawyers, accountants, insurance, right? It’s service. And the way that our business was built is kind of like having an attorney and saying, you’re going to do all the research for your case, build the case, file the paperwork, litigate it with the judge, then file the paperwork afterwards, do all the payments, do all this, and then go get more clients. It’s that level of ridiculous amount of

weight on their shoulders and so we split that apart.

Anthony Codispoti (34:14)
and so many

different skill sets like, yeah, go ahead.

Dave Domzalski (34:17)
different personality

types, right? I got data guys and I got coaches and they don’t, they’re not like me, which I made a mistake. like, Ooh, I’m an extrovert who loves data. stupid. The classic owner mistake, right? If I could do it. so, so right now we’re, we’re, launching that we’re in the middle of launching it. And so I’m, I’m focused almost a hundred percent on Miami. And once that’s launched, the other side is it’s, it’s designed to help us scale better. So I will be marketing and selling aggressively here. However, once that starts, I will do it in both markets and then

I’ll be shifting shifting attention to Grand Rapids mostly.

Anthony Codispoti (34:51)
So

all of Michigan except Detroit. And then was it three counties in South Florida? Two.

Dave Domzalski (34:57)
Miami Dade is,

so Miami is called Miami Dade here. And then Broward, it’s a lot of space.

Anthony Codispoti (35:01)
Right? Okay.

And which has ⁓ more ⁓ customers, which has more potential? I mean, I’m gonna guess, but yeah, yeah. Not even close, right?

Dave Domzalski (35:12)
here, Miami. mean, yeah, I this is, this is not

even close. This is like some of the franchisees, they, love each other, but they’re like, I hate you for having a territory like that. It’s fish in a barrel, man. There’s so many places here. And the mentality here is different than I’ve ever seen. They accept, they accept outsourcing in Miami more than like I did Baltimore, DC. I actually sold there and it was sometimes a struggle to get up to be like, get the idea of like, can outsource this. Like I do other things here. They’re like,

Anthony Codispoti (35:39)
Mmm.

Dave Domzalski (35:41)
do tell managers like, can you please come in? I don’t want to do this part of the job. They don’t even care that I’m to be like, exposed, whatever. So that mentality is very, very different. The culture in this is, I think it’s a Latin influence, but the culture here is very much, hey, let’s get the right person to do the job and outsource it to.

Anthony Codispoti (35:48)
Mmm.

Dave Domzalski (36:00)
What’s.

Anthony Codispoti (36:00)
What’s a good target for you?

Is there like a certain size bar that is like, oh, if they’re, and I don’t even know how you measure it, like, what’s a good target for you?

Dave Domzalski (36:09)
Thank

So my ideal juicy client I would love to have, they have a simple bar. They’ve got about 200 different skews and they’ve got a liquor room. And if I’m getting my wishlist, no kegs. guys have to look those kegs and that’s difficult and can be dangerous. And they’re doing 20 to $30,000 a week minimum. That’s my ideal starting point. I can get in and out of those. They’re great. They’re profitable for me.

However, I have like Sweet Liberty on South Beach. They’ve got, I mean, you just go there and count it’s like 700, spews. They have this massive back bar. You have to get on a ladder to count. They batch a lot. You can see on the back where there’s all these batches back there. Very much more complex. Still a great client. Love the work. They’re fun to work with. But I wouldn’t say they’re in terms of like, you know, the backend of my profitability and all that stuff. They’re not my ideal.

But I love working with them and frankly, it’s a bit of prestige. They’re on the top 100 bar list ⁓ often and ⁓ They have a storied history. So when I say people like ⁓ we’re cheap Wow damn big of it. So, okay ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (37:22)
Is there a minimum

size under which it just kind of doesn’t make sense for everybody?

Dave Domzalski (37:27)
You go into a sushi place and they’re doing beer and a little bit of wine. I’m not going to be able to make you money and I won’t. Like I said, so in 2026, we’re launching our new food program. problem with food is, so liquor, we count everything. And then we do that in the clients like, count on my food. And well, that doesn’t work. It’s not cost effective for you. It’s too much stuff. It’s too complex. So our head office, one of our head office guys, one of the owners is obsessed.

with getting food working properly. So they’re redesigning everything, which is great. I love it. Cause that opens me up to that sushi bar is where I couldn’t make money on your liquor. If I do your liquor and your food and it’s fish, sushi, great fish. I think I’m making you money. And that’s the thing. Like I don’t, I don’t like working with people. can’t make money. I’ve actually had two sales meetings. can remember where their variance was so tight. we, we do a process called discovery view. Part of it’s free.

Some different offices operate differently. For us, have a database set up fee we have to charge tax. We have to cover our costs. But then the audit, the fee for the audits, we’re like, hey, at the end, if you like this, pay that. If you don’t, don’t pay that. And by the way, if you think this was stupid and I’m a total scam, I’ll give you back the rest of the money too, whatever. Like I’m not sitting here trying to nickel die people. And it’s kind of like, they say with drug dealers, right? They give them a taste. It’s rare that I do that and people don’t go, please take my money. I’m actually, I got you to say like, this doesn’t work, but please take my money. Cause that was interesting.

So I’ve had two clients where like their variances were like five or 7 % losses. And I said, I can’t, if you just want the, and I’m actually a third, I forgot about him, an Irish guy in DC, he was at 7%, he’s like, I want you to do any this. I just want to know. I always want to know. like, okay, fine. But I’m not going to make you money. He’s like, that’s fine. That’s not what I’m paying you for. Cool. I like making people more money though. That’s my personal target.

Anthony Codispoti (39:13)
Yeah.

So how are you guys going to wrap your arms around the food?

Dave Domzalski (39:19)
So our process already kind of is we do a subset. High cost, high volume items. So that could be steak. It could be french fries. A burger place, and I have done food in the past, a burger place is going to be losing around 250 pounds of french fries a week. And not even realize how it’s happening, why it’s happening. It’s all simple stuff. Dropping too many fries at the end of an order, having too many fries go out. You see like plates coming back half full while you’re putting all that on there.

So where do we continue that? What do they know what what most owners want is the result. They don’t necessarily want to know how many bushels of parsley are in their block and cooler. They want to know that their food cost is properly maximized and their plate costs are properly calculated and maintained, especially with the fluctuating costs of everything. So we’re working on a platform that’ll allow us to do that part of it.

And I could do it today because there’s other platforms out there. I’m a natural learner. I’ll learn whatever. But in terms of scaling, I’m waiting for head office to finish that process. And they’re putting together a package that’ll explain it well so that when I sit down with somebody, can you count with my food? You don’t want me to do that. I know what you’re asking, but let me show you what you really want. And they’ll go, ⁓ yeah, that makes more sense. Got it.

Anthony Codispoti (40:43)
just focusing on those higher ticket items, it sounds like.

Dave Domzalski (40:46)
higher ticket items, plate costings, then just ⁓ monitoring the costs as they come through. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (40:52)
Yeah, interesting. ⁓

Talk to us about the inspiration behind writing the first book, Bar Shift.

Dave Domzalski (40:59)
I love your topic switches by the way. If you see me keep smiling like that, I’m like, great, new one. ⁓ So the first book, The Bar Shift. So I was starting my, I was in my first year, think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My first year is around November and Dave Nitzel, owns, ⁓ he owns the Atlanta Market, calls me up, he’s a K-Man. What do you think about writing like a 12 tips for Christmas kind of thing for our clients? I’m like, sure, why not?

I was a new owner. was honestly caught up in what I think is classic of, you I went from employee 20 years, whatever, to owner and I’m like, freedom. And looking back in terms of I should have been selling more instead of writing a book, it was not the right decision. But now I’ve got this best selling book that I can use as my, go in and I’m like, well, I should have listened. like, well, read this book. If you agree with this, that’s my head. So that worked out well for me, I guess.

But he says, why don’t we do this? I said, OK. So we write that. said, well, first thing we have to do, because I’m the organizational one, he’s very much the people creative guy. We’re a good team for this stuff. I said, let’s write down everything, all the tips that we could do. And we got to like 41, 42. No, no, we got to like 45, 46. I realized there’s some extra ones in there. And goes, and we got it down to 41. He goes, why don’t I look instead? And again, super successful. was like, that sounds like fun. I could do whatever I want. I own my business. So we did. I started just writing out.

writing out chapters. If you read the bar shift, it is so it’s our best selling book. We sold around 10,000 copies. No, we sold over 10,000 copies now over the last eight years and it remains on the top like generally the top hundred usually, but it peaks up in like the teens frequently, which is really cool to see because I’m not an author. It is a practical book that solves the needs. The tagline is 41 management lessons. You don’t have to learn the hard way and we either get the feedback we get is either

This taught me so much because I never run a bar. didn’t manage a bar. didn’t know all this and I wasn’t taught. And that’s why we did the first, why I did it in the first place when he pitched this idea. you know, I was a bar manager and nobody taught me. I had to learn most of this either by realizing I didn’t know something and asking a question or screwing it up and going, well, what should I have done? So that was part of the purpose. But it’s incredibly approachable and quick to read. So people sit down.

I call it a bathroom book because you can read a chapter like five minutes or less. And it’s very light. all it’s what he called all the bacon, of the fat. But the writing is not great. It’s fine. You know, like it’s not a literary masterpiece. It gets a point. But people buy it. They’re like, oh, dude, I don’t care about the right. This is I get it now. OK, so that’s you know, that was it. You know, Dave asked me to do it. And I said, man, I wish I’d had something like this when I was starting the industry. And now I when I started

Anthony Codispoti (43:39)
It gets the point across.

Dave Domzalski (43:54)
I hire a new employee to get a copy. start a new client, I give them copies. I give away probably as many as I sell.

Anthony Codispoti (44:01)
How about the second book, A Tale of Two Taberns? that’s the third book. sorry, I just gave it away. Okay, Hospitality DNA. And then we’ll get to the new one. Yeah.

Dave Domzalski (44:04)
But that’s the third one. That’s that’s not out yet. That’s okay. DNA. That’s number two.

So hospitality DNA ⁓ was that’s our baby. ⁓ That was a three year research projects. And yeah, so after after the bar shift, Nitzel said we got to write another book. I was like, dude, I’m busy. And then COVID hits and goes, you got time now. Well, my wife and I started another business. I was like, I’m busy. He dragged me kicking and screaming. He’s like, here’s the deal.

I’m going to start writing and doing the interviews and you’re going to catch up because he knows me. It’s annoying. And he was right. I did. So what we originally conceived it as was we’re going to interview all these top industry professionals and we’re going to distill how they do hospitality. That was going to be it. Like it was going to be, how do you create hospitality? And as we started going through, we realized they all have the same answer and they don’t, they don’t 100 % articulated in the way that we wanted them to.

But as we were discussing our first four five interviews, which were all amazing and fascinating, because people had time, they were like one, two, three hours. was brilliant. We realized what we had was we started realizing these people, we were getting to their superpowers on how did they do what they did, get to where they were. Because we had access, just because of what we do, we had access to these award-winning people. And the entire concept of the book changed from

how do do hospitality too? What does it take to become number one in your field in hospitality? And we call it the Helix and I won’t spoil the broth, but Helix stands for, know, it’s H-E-L-I-X and there are these five things. And then there’s a bunch of other sub traits that go underneath that that drive to it. My favorite of those is Humble Nature. We found that, and that was one that said surprise, actually surprised us. We approached this like good to great. Jim Collins, great book.

we approached it more as a research thing. didn’t know we were, we didn’t have enough at that point, right? At first we did, but then we’re like, well, there’s this new thing. We, we decided to go through it and say, okay, well, let’s, let’s, let’s look at what we get from each person and just still out and teach out lessons. So Humble Nature came about that almost every single one of these people, we said, well, what, how, do you attribute your success? Like almost to a man was like, oh, my team. Like, what about you? Like, ah, no, no, no, that’s not me.

That’s my team. But you see these big crazy personalities on TV like Gordon Ramsay or Mario Battaglia or whoever. And it’s like, they don’t seem humble at all. Turns out if you dig into it, Gordon Ramsay is a really nice guy. he says, he’s like, that’s my team. Like so, he’s like, that’s my TV personality. That’s not who I am. And so that one’s kind of, ⁓ I personally love that one. And it surprised us a bit. So it’s these things. What does it take? And it’s these stories and journeys. And we took a lot of effort to

make sure that we did service to the people that we interviewed to tell their stories well. So we spent a lot of time on it. So it was a year of interviewing about 27 people. And then it was a year of research, like what did we get out of this? And then it was a year of writing and editing and writing and re-editing. And we actually spent a lot of money on a company like sort of we call it publishing company to help us with the book and writing the book. And it sells significantly less than the Varship. It costs like two grand to do.

But I love it. It’s my, I think it’s like my opus, but it just doesn’t solve a need I don’t think. I don’t know.

Anthony Codispoti (47:34)
Okay, so that was gonna be my question. Were you hoping to make money from this? Was this scratching an itch like a passion project for you?

Dave Domzalski (47:41)
Yeah, it’s more of a passion project. But we’re like, hey, we think we could we can write something that’ll make some money. And the guy at the publishing company told us you’re not going to make money off your book. This is a marketing tool. That’s what it is. It was the beginning of that. Like, you know, everybody writes a book now for marketing. was the beginning of that era. And so they told us we didn’t believe them. We didn’t care. ⁓ So but yeah, it it sells like it sells about four to one, ⁓ which is I’m happy those numbers compared to the bar shift. But the bar shift solves a need super approachable.

We did an interview the other day and the guy was like, yeah, he’s like, I love hospitality DNA, but that book, you got to read it and then reread it and think about it. The bar ship, you just go, it just goes.

Anthony Codispoti (48:21)
much more

like quickly digestible. You can do a chapter in five minutes and and each chapter you’re pulling like an idea from like that might be okay that one I’m already doing but that one I’m not doing yet like okay let’s focus on that.

Dave Domzalski (48:24)
Two hours max. Yeah.

Yeah. Or it’s reminded you

Or I used to do

that, why don’t I do that anymore?

Anthony Codispoti (48:37)
⁓ Okay, now let’s talk about the new book that by the time this interview comes out, hopefully is available on Amazon, Tale of Two Taverns, what’s behind the title?

Dave Domzalski (48:39)
Tell it to Tyron.

So, the Al Ba’hana title, the title, so this is a business fable. And we think it’s the first business fable written for the restaurant industry. We’re pretty sure. I haven’t been able to find one, so I’m like, I’m kind of proud. That’s kind of cool. It’s a story about a guy named Jim who is corporate. And just like I did, he’s like, I’m going to start a restaurant. I can do this. If I can be a VP of whatever, can’t remember his exact position, of corporate sales, I can open a restaurant.

and across the street and he opens up a restaurant called it’s called scheduled maintenance because again we think we’re clever across the street is uh the wonderland owned by alice we’re clever uh it’s it well you know it’s business famous there’s just enough cheese in there there’s a little bit of cheesiness and uh but it’s it is a at its heart i see it as a culture book it doesn’t teach you how to do culture but it’s a conversation about a particular aspect of culture

going into like a people first mentality, but internally inside the business. So our industry, there’s two pieces to it. One, our industry has gone through some major shifts in the last 20 years. When I started a car, a fancy cocktail was a cosmopolitan. TGI Fridays was the epitome of cocktail. They were prestigious. You went there to learn. Then we went through the revival of prohibition cocktails and, and molecular gas, grown grass gastronomy and

all this like really crazy amazing content and that became the culture was like the cocktail better be best because if it is then your guests then it went to experiences we need to go to the guest and my writing partner Dave Netsil and I we believe that another shift is happening and those who get ahead of it are doing very very well and you can see it and if you look at the back end of operations which is I was telling you I was looking at your catalog and

There’s quite a few people that you’ve interviewed who have a really strong HR focus and working with their people and focusing on the people. That is the space that we see coming up and our clients who are embracing that and doing that are actually not having the issues that a lot of people are with like my sales are way down ⁓ because they’re basically by taking care of the people behind the bar, that gives them the mental space and capacity to just easily and naturally provide that experience and take care of the guests. ⁓

That’s not to say it’s a magic pill. That’s sort of the concept without spoiling the book. There’s a plot, a subplot. ⁓ We’ve had a couple people read it saying this is brilliant, fascinating. It’s about an hour and a half read. And you come away with some really good stuff. The concepts basically come from, not basically the concepts, come from hospitality, DNA, and the bar shift, but they aren’t taught out like that. The bar shift is lessons. Hospitality is research and data. This is a story so you can.

you can grab, which is how I think, you know, culture books work. I mentioned earlier, Getting Naked by Patrick Panzioni. That’s a culture book. It’s about a cultural ideal of coaching and giving away while you’re selling, rather than trying to do this transactional thing. That’s a cultural ideal. So in the same sense, that’s what this book is. And I think it works best in the business field about content.

Anthony Codispoti (52:00)
It’s interesting to hear what this concept is about, Dave. And I think you’re right from the conversations that I’ve had, there’s increasingly a focus on, I hear lots of people, you know, tell the stories about, you know, in the old days, you know, talking about sort of, you know, back of house in the kitchen, you know, they’re throwing plates there, you know, it’s, it’s violent, it’s sort of like what you see on the right on the, the crazy TV shows. And they’re like, that doesn’t fly anymore. Like people

they don’t put up with that. There’s a big shift that has happened and is continuing to happen. And it’s like, you’ve got to be more ⁓ receptive to what people are experiencing in their personal lives. And you have to do a better job of making this a place that they enjoy working at.

Dave Domzalski (52:31)
now.

Yeah. And I think, think that’s something lovely that the younger generations have brought us. I’m Gen X. I’m like, do your job. It’s black and white. You’re here to do a job and shut up. Like why it’s a job. I know parts suck about it. Um, and I’ve had to learn to solve it. And I have, I, I love my team now and I’ve embraced that. And I think we got pushed by the millennials or the, or the Gen Zers to be like, Hey, you need to be nicer to me. They’re like, please care about what I feel and, and, uh, you know, what the culture of the company is.

I don’t see that as a bad thing. And that coming from a guy who’s like, do your job. That’s how I produce myself, right? That’s how I worked. ⁓ I like it. I got to say, I like it. I embrace it my own business.

Anthony Codispoti (53:31)
That’s awesome. know, Dave, in my experience behind every success story, there is usually a chapter that almost broke someone. Can you share a serious challenge that you’ve gone through, personal, professional, and how you got through that?

Dave Domzalski (53:46)
Sure, yeah.

So I’ll start with the time and then I guess how I got through. So for me, it’s a classic and so many people say, and it’s almost cliches, it was COVID. ⁓ What everybody knows is the restaurant industry was shut down to whatever degree. In Florida, it wasn’t shut down for that long, but once it was opened up, was the restrictions. So Ron DeSantis was like, I think it was like two to three months, he’s like, okay, we’re opening it back up. Get out there and do whatever.

25%, 50%, this, this, this, this, So while people get that, the secondary service industry to the bar and restaurant industry actually had to wait longer because they start up, we need now to get them, let them ramp back up and get enough revenue where they can afford to do stuff like what we’re doing. And so it was really tough. And I am of a mentality that I don’t break, I bend.

but you can bet me really hard where it hurts. Like it really, really hurts. going from, so going into COVID, I was doing about $4,300 a week. That’s how we do everything in our business. That’s how we think about our revenue. Cause it’s these weekly audits or by week the audits. So I was doing about 4,300 and I was about to close a new client that would put me at 4,700. I was approaching this magical benchmark in our company, which is five grand a week. That’s like a tipping point in part measures. And

That client that I was supposed to do, I’m literally in the business. I knew the guy well, I’d known him for a while and he’d open up this new place and I’m counting the bar, I’m watching the TV going, bar’s closed. They’re shutting down restaurants. like… And I went from growing my business, I had two employees to zero. And of course my landlord was a piece of human garbage and was like, you’re gonna have to pay me. With what?

I got some reserves, but they ain’t gonna last, And I said, what happened to all the people? Kick you out. And so that was existential. Like I said, I never saw that as like, I’m gonna fail here. Now I had backups, I called my mom, I’m 40 something, I’m like, mom, this is like, oh, can look back in with you? It’s like, sure, was like, my wife and daughter, it’s like, it’s fine, I’m like, okay.

So I had a safety net, some people wouldn’t have that. So that made it easier, Well, I guess I’m sure that made it easier than it for a lot of people. I’m a big opportunities are, or sorry, challenges are opportunities in disguise. And I also, I have a tenacity, cannot, I don’t see failure. I will not fail. I refuse to fail. I don’t have a reverse in my gearbox.

And so I just started digging into all the government programs, figuring out, making sure my guys were taken care of. That was how I, that was the main way I focused through it is to say, okay, I’m going to take care of my family, obviously, but I have reserves. But I didn’t, my guys did. And I said, I’m going to my first focus at PPP ERC. And then at one point I said, I’m laying you off so you can go get, so you can go get unemployment, go get it. It’s amazing. It’s, it’s too much money to ignore. You won’t be fired. As soon as I could rehire my dead.

And so that was, you know, that was, I think it’s a classic. A lot of people have that exact same story. ⁓ but I, like it was, I, I’d made the sleep in 2017 and then three years later it’s like, was this a stupid decision? So other beauty is 2021 I grew by 560 % and by the end of that year, I was a double what I was going into actually more than double going into COVID.

I had hit the tipping point, COVID, pause it, and then was just like fricking shot to the moon in 2021.

Anthony Codispoti (57:40)
Why do you think you found that rocket fuel after COVID?

Dave Domzalski (57:46)
referrals. So I mentioned earlier on today, I can’t remember if you’re recording it that way or not. so there’s a concept by a named, I can’t remember his name right now, but I’ll remember it’s called the four referability habits. And Vern Harnish, Vern Harnish out of Sydney, Australia, great guy, smart guy. He’s a CEO coach. I tell people if you haven’t heard of Vern Harness, it’s probably because you’re not a CEO yet, because he’s the real deal.

And he’s sitting around with his CEO buddies one day, he’s like, what’s the easiest way to sell? They know all the answers. They’re like, yeah, referrals. The easiest way to close the sale is getting referrals. Of course, how? How do you hire people that get referrals? So they started digging into it like a year, investigating the top performers, bottom performers, talking to their clients. And they figured out it was four simple things, four really, really simple things. They show up on time. Their top performers at a near 100 % success rate, they show up on time. They do what they say they’re going to do. If they say you’re getting a report on your desk at five o’clock on Monday, it’s going to be their fourth.

They finish what they start. And that’s not to say like, I started in this report. I’m going to finish it. If they start a process, whether or not they’re accountable, responsible for doing it, but if they start it, they make sure it gets done. Even helping the clients get through their parts, pulling them accountable to making sure this thing gets completed. And finally say please and thank you. Right. So a short way to say they’re respectful. They treat people with respect and kindness and so on. And those four concepts work.

because, well, first off, not a lot of people do all four and understand and hold them safe, but we do in our company. It’s one of our core values. We are referable. But what it does is creates trust. A lot of people, I think that I’ve talked to in my life, confuse trust with big things. I’ll invite my buddy over and he can stay in my house because he’s not going to try and make out with my wife and drink all my liquor and put a hole in my wall. That’s, I mean, sure, that’s trust, but that’s not the type of trust we’re building in business.

Trust in business is built with the schedule is going to be out on time. And I know as an employee, I know that my shift is what it’s going to be in two weeks. I know that I’m going get paid every other Friday. And if something does go wrong with my pay, and I tell my boss, he’s going to jump on it and make sure that it’s fixed and that I’m OK. Trust is repeatability. It’s doing what you say you’re going to do. It’s making sure people know that you’re going to be there when you’re supposed to be there.

And so we did that. embraced that 100 % all the way through up until COVID into now. So of all those sales, I’d say a minimum, a minimum just off the back of my head, like 10 to 20 were referrals. One of my clients were shut down by the city of Miami. It was rude. Of course, I’m going to take her side. like her. But she sent her managers all over the place. She had four managers and she told them all bring in bar metrics.

And so we got, we got four clients. One of them was a group. There was three venues off of that right away. ⁓ and then I had, you know, accountants who are moving from place to place. They’re like, we’re opening here. You’re going to be in here. You’re be here. So as the industry had to re sort of redistribute itself, these people who I had proven to that you can trust me, when I say you’re getting an RLI, getting it. ⁓ when I say I’m to make sure that I’m always there to counter stuff, I’m never going to not show up. I’m never going to be hung over. I’m never going be tired of getting the job done right.

They knew they can trust that if I make a mistake that’s too big and you and I agree that audit wasn’t wasn’t worth the money you paid. I’ll give you a discount or whatever I need to do. And that allowed me to, frankly, I didn’t sell, I didn’t sell a single thing that year. It all just came flooding in because of how I treat my customers and their people, their staff.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:20)
Wow. That’s,

yeah, that’s phenomenal. I want to go back to though how you got through that uncertain period. COVID shuts everything down. Even when the state of Florida is opening up sooner than other people. There’s all these restrictions, your customers are not at their full capacity, they don’t have the money to pay you. You don’t know how long this is going to last. You don’t know what this is going to be the way it is for the next 10 years. How do you get through that uncertainty?

Dave Domzalski (1:01:52)
So I’ve noticed in what I do in life that when people hit a crisis, they fall back to the default, whatever that default process or setting is, minus data numbers. So the first thing in research, data numbers research. Are you familiar with the book or concept called Strength Finders? Yeah, Donald Clifton.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:14)
Yes, but please explain.

Dave Domzalski (1:02:17)
Uh, so guy comes back from World War II and he, and he saw all these like metric tests, the Myers-Briggs and this and that. And was all, you know, what’s your weakness. And, it was very negative and he hated it. He just really didn’t like it. So he, he went out and started doing his own research and he determined, and I agree that everybody has a series of strengths and they’re different. Every person’s different. And if you play to your strengths and you focus on most of your time, right? Obviously we need to learn certain skill sets that we might not be very strong in, but then we have to get a basic level.

But if we just get that base level and then go back to, okay, let me invest in where my strength lies, then you’ll rise to a level that you never ever would have achieved otherwise. My strengths are, my number one is woo, right? Extreme extrovert. When I say extreme, I’m like, extreme. Woo is literally woo. The person who goes out, I’m going to get a room going. I would go to parties in college. I would get there early so I could meet everybody as they came in. And then people thought I lived there and I was throwing the party. I’m like, nah, I just like people.

⁓ My number two is achiever, right? So that helped drive me. But three and four are learner input. And those two combined together with me to be very, very strong thing. So the moment I, the moment that started happening, I’m doing research every day. I’m researching, researching, researching what project or what government program is going to help me. I started doing work for my clients. I’m like, okay, you’re all sitting on this product. Like you have too much in stock holding. Let’s look at how we can move that out in your business and what we can do when you open back up. Let’s prepare for that. Let’s plan.

So I reinvested in those relationships and let them know, while I’m sitting on my butt here, I’m still working for you, even though you’re not paying me. I was invested in the idea that this will end. It has an end date. So my research, by the way, went back to the Spanish flu that was part of my research. I went, what happened then? By the way, same shit. They had people wear masks. People hated the mask. The mask kill us. Close down the restaurants.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:06)
Hmm.

Dave Domzalski (1:04:15)
social distancing, like that’s all that happened. Like that playbook was written. And so I looked at him and like, okay, restaurants open up. Wow. That was different around the country. So I was like, okay. And I know I have a very conservative governor here and, and he was, he hated, hated a lot of protocols coming out. I like, I don’t want to keep my stand. He was making noise. So I’m watching him researching him. What does he like to do? I’m like, okay, he’s probably going to open this up quicker than other states. Georgia was first and I think Florida. So I had faith that it would come through.

I had faith that we had done the right thing by our clients and they would come back and sure enough, the day they could open, I had people call me on day one and now I couldn’t hire my guys back right away, but I started going out and counting. I had five guys come back, they’re like, Dave, we’re open, I need you in tomorrow. Done, done, because they saw, right? understood. It was, it was great. And there are people in my client base who…

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:05)
That’s incredible.

Dave Domzalski (1:05:11)
who will not open a restaurant without us, who will not open day one without us counting stuff, like they’ve understood, we’ve helped them understand what the value of what we do is and therefore.

they just brought us right back in.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:24)
Now, Dave, I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to do three quick things. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Dave, visit their website bar metrics.com. And I’m going to spell it for you to make sure you get it right. B, A, R, E, T, R, I, X, bar metrics.com B, A, R, E, T, R, I, X.com. And we’ll have it in the show notes if you missed that. If you’re enjoying the show today, please

Dave Domzalski (1:05:33)
Okay.

Thank

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:51)
Take a moment to subscribe wherever you’re listening. It sends a signal that helps others discover our podcast. So I appreciate you taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, if you want to get more restaurant employees access to therapists, doctors, and prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seems, actually increases your company’s net profits, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com. So last question for you, Dave, a year from now, what is one specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Dave Domzalski (1:06:21)
I’m gonna answer that question after saying this. I would like to book an appointment with you for you to look at my business for your products. When you said it the first time, I like, I’ve been trying to get my guys healthcare for a long time. I don’t know how to do it financially. So I’m hoping there’s a solution there for us. So I’m looking at that. Excellent. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:28)
I appreciate that day.

We’ll make sure we take care of that. Thanks for throwing it in.

Dave Domzalski (1:06:41)
So, celebrating next year. So, like I said, we’re launching this new protocol in our business. We’re redesigning our entire business structure. So at the end of 2026, the goal is to be able to start scaling and scale at rate we’ve never been able to before. So my hope is I’m ⁓ celebrating a ⁓ 2X growth in a year, which would be unprecedented in our company. Nobody would have ever done it before. And that’s, if it all goes perfectly and my theories are correct, then I’ll be looking at double my revenue by the end of the year.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:11)
we’re gonna have to follow up with you to see how that comes along. That’s exciting. Dave Dumsalski from Bar Metrics, Miami. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Dave Domzalski (1:07:14)
Please do.

Thank you, Anthony. was an absolute pleasure.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:28)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, try putting it into action today.