The Future Of Restaurant Insurance And Technology With David DeLorenzo (Ep 213)

publication date: Jul 16, 2024
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author/source: Jaime Oikle with David DeLorenzo
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the-future-restaurant-insurance-and-technology-david

 

Are you ready to turn up the heat in your restaurant business? In this episode, Jaime Oikle welcomes back David (The DELO) DeLorenzo, the mastermind behind Bar and Restaurant Insurance. But we’re diving deeper than just insurance today. Delo, who’s a seasoned player in the hospitality industry, shares his unique insights into the current landscape and reveals how he’s leveraging cutting-edge technology to help restaurateurs navigate the often turbulent waters of the business. From innovative solutions to manage slip-and-fall claims to revolutionary ways to streamline operations, Delo’s got the lowdown on how to keep your establishment thriving. Join us as we explore what’s sizzling in Delo’s world, and why staying ahead of the curve can mean the difference between just getting by and truly thriving. Tune in for a conversation that’s sure to light up your business strategy!

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The Future Of Restaurant Insurance And Technology With David DeLorenzo

We have a great episode for you revisiting with David DeLorenzo, otherwise known as DELO who's the Owner and Founder of BarAndRestaurantInsurance.com. We're going to talk more than insurance because DELO is plugged into a whole bunch of stuff in the industry. It's going to be fun to see what's going on in his world. DELO, how are you? What's going on in your neck of the woods?

I'm great, brother. Summertime is upon us in Arizona. We hit our first 100s last week and enjoying the mornings now.

Didn't you guys have the stretch of a billion days in a row of 117 degrees?

Yes, last year we did. Usually, the end of April right about this time in May is just like it's summertime from May to the end of October.

I won't preach too hard because I'm in Florida. We are similar, this part of the year just heats up but I'm not going to say we go to the 117th, but I'm starting to feel it. The weather's changed. Let's get into a whole bunch of stuff. I want to talk about the different things you're doing, but maybe, let's start with insurance real quickly for folks. We're going to hit a bunch of topics, but what's either new in your space or what the folks need to make sure they're doing as far as insurance coverage? I'll let you roll a little bit.

Insurance

Yes, let's talk about insurance. I was asked to put some information or I was interviewed by the Insurance Journal a couple of episodes back and we talked about hospitality and from that article, what we had talked about is what's going on in the marketplace and specifically with hospitality, because that's what I do. I've been doing it for 30 years.

I've seen what's called a hard market. I'm sure a lot of people reading, if they've talked to their broker and then they see that their rates are up 20%, 30%, and in some cases 50%, it's a common term that's used. It's a hard market. The truth of the matter is, that hospitality people or restaurant owners don't care.

They don't understand what that means but when you look at it from the conceptuality of its business, if the insurance carrier is having a hard time reinvesting money or making money on top of their money, therefore, everybody's going to suffer. If you look at it from let's just say a United States spectrum, even a worldly spectrum, you look at State Farm. They've gotten downgraded to a B plus.

That is huge. People don't understand how big that is. They may not have State Farm and it may not be related to them but as the industry as a whole, when something like that happens, it does have a triggering effect on other carriers, what they do, what reinsurance carriers do, and how they reinvest into places. Then what ends up happening is there's a sacrifice of coverages in coverage form.

As we had talked in 2020, everybody had the question, is business income covered? Of course, I didn't have a single case where it was. We don't need to go down that rabbit hole again. Thank God we're past all that for everybody's perspective. The fact of the matter is now we're running into social justice verdicts and all sorts of stuff where a lot of plaintiff attorneys are out there and they need to make their Mercedes bills and their 10,000 square foot house bills.

You're seeing a lot more lawsuits out there and unfortunately, at least in the state of Arizona, you can sue anybody for anything. Then it's up to the defendant being the restaurateur and the insurance company representing them to show that they weren't negligent to show that something had not happened. Restaurant owners, they're busy.

At the end of the day, I get it, I've owned 13 restaurants, and your bottom line's about this much, sometimes that much. The fact of the matter is to organize and train and do all these things that you say that you want to do. You have that perspective and that passion to want to do it, but you're just too busy. You’ve got to serve food and you got to get people in the door, you got to make them happy.

Many other things need to be done without technology, and we'll talk about it in a little bit because I've started a company based on that, but without technology and a little bit of an extra helping hand, things happen. You're still doing stuff the old-school way. You're doing stuff with the folder, the pen, and the paper. You're hoping people are signing off on stuff. You're hoping that you're collecting data if and when there may be a claim.

I can't tell you how many times I've had people's first claim or their second claim. They have all good intentions to have all of this stuff documented and put together but at the end of the day, what ends up happening is that these lawsuits get drugs out for a year, two years, or three years. I have a slip and fall right now that's four years old.

The demand just came back last week, $2.6 million. We're talking about a slip and fall of a lady who stepped up on a platform. She requested the seat out on the patio, the platform is this big, this is about six inches. She requested that, had a few drinks, and then upon leaving the establishment, even of her own free will, she left.

Even after she tripped off of the step that she was on top of, four years later, a demand for 2.6 million. That's not the biggest deal because generally what ends up happening is the plaintiff's attorneys will say, “I want this much.” They settle for this much because plaintiff attorneys generally don't want to go in front of a jury.

They're not looked at as the epitome of society, but, no offense, whatever. The fact of the matter is that this went out for a long time with no documentation, no video footage, nothing to go by, but their word and their word. Then what ends up happening is because of the period and how long it goes, you have defense costs, you have attorneys, and you're drawing up bills, you have medical costs, all sorts of stuff. There's going to be a lot of money that ends up being paid out anyway.

Merging Tech And Insurance

You mentioned before we got on the call and I have known you for years now, but we talked about what else is going on and you mentioned the startup that you just hinted at in the tech space and the insurance space overlapping with your experience going back a whole bunch of years. That is a pain point for restaurant operators. Data collection, doing the stuff, checking the boxes, and being covered for the things you say you should be covered for. How are you using tech to start to get around that? Tell me about it.

To parlay my story now and talk about my 30 years of building this agency and I would say in the last 20 years, I've been pen and paper, writing down ideas, things, and watching claims happen. If we had this video footage for this much longer, this could have been paid out at this instead of this. If we had other sign-offs or if we had better training, a lot of things could be avoided.

At the end of the day, it's not just necessarily saving the insurance company money on claims, but it's saving the restaurateur money because of the insurance companies not paying out all of these “Some claims are legit.” There are a lot of frivolous claims out there that just end up getting paid defense costs.

 

At the end of the day, it's not just necessarily saving the insurance company money on claims, but it's saving the restaurant more money.

 

If we can take that down a little bit or a lot, just based on having technology and having that help and not putting any more burden on the restaurateur, then guess what? Your rates are going to go down, bottom line. It is because you're not going to have the amount of frequency of claims or the excessive damages and stuff like that.

What I've been doing over the last 20 years is just documenting all of these case studies and all of these situations that happen. A couple of years ago, I ended up running into this man, at the time he was 19. He's now a 21-year-old, let's just say robot. He reminds me of C3PO. Let's just say I won't call him a Zuckerberg. Let's just say that avatar of that type of person when you talk to them and they are just thinking about stuff and then all of a sudden this now 21-year-old has the mindset and the ability to chat like a 55-year-old, it's crazy.

He and another partner, Brian, and Adam, had started a company where they were going to do training. Brian has a hospitality background. Adam's just a whiz kid. They had started a training app to just do training for hotels, restaurants, and stuff like that where people could log into their account, and then basically do whatever it was, food handling training, or liquor training. All those things, but more like cartoonish style and then being able to take quizzes.

Then the managers can see who passed their quizzes, what questions they passed, all that stuff. It's all documented and it's all saved. Albeit a great idea on its own, but they wanted to charge the restaurants for this. They had come to me because they knew that I had a big insurance business. They were looking at that book of business.

I said, “Guys, people aren't going to pay for that. Restaurants just don't have the money to pay much per month to do this. They're barely making it as it is. We have to figure out a better way but also, I have an idea to integrate insurance and to integrate hospitality and then give this to the restaurants for free. Let's make the insurance companies pay for it.

We figured out a back-end way to do all this and to create a product that's going to streamline the processes of when somebody gets an inspection or they have an audit. Even the training protocols that are sometimes asked about or if they have a claim, all the data and all the information that they have is already saved from liquor certificate training to all the other stuff. Eventually, I'll talk about it in a minute, the camera footage.

We created this app, we raised, I think it was like 1.8 million. Even before pre-seed, we had a lot of great, let's just say Silicon Valley sorts of people invest in this. Then we had a major insurance company invest in it as well. They're hospitality-specific only, and they're going to be our platform to launch it into all 10,000 of their clients.

What we're able to do is give this gift to all of their clients who are all hospitality-related to say, “Here's the deal. Use it as you see fit.” When Facebook first came out, people were unsure. They said, “I don't know what to do with this.” You're almost changing people's habits. You're changing the way that they do business. We understand that with this app and with what's going on.

We also understand that the wave of the future is coming. No matter what, it is coming. You can look online in the insurance journal and see all the different companies that are trying to do different things. Remote sensor technology, this and that. What we're doing is we're creating an app that's specific to restaurants, bars, taverns, coffee shops, and all that, that helps them with buying back time with processes.

Imagine if you could onboard an employee through our app, which is called Sinatra, it's live on the Apple Store. It's all put together. Imagine if you could onboard an employee with a link sent over to them from their house and they're able to take a quiz and understand your menu, you can send pre-shift out to all of your employees. Here's the pre-shift of what we're doing for this day or this week. Here are the new menu items.

All of it is going to be very specific to the location. We're going to have an integrated background of AI to actual customer service. That's going to help build it out even specifically for the restaurateurs themselves. Not only will they get the generic training per their state, but we can also put together training that's very specific to their establishment because we understand that everybody runs a different business. Now it's all logged in. It's all in one place.

Now, on the insurance aspect, let's just say you get one of those inspections. They want your hood cleaned. They want your fire extinguishers re-stamped. They want the different items around the restaurant taken care of because it could be a fire hazard or a trip and fall hazard. This can all be sent to you through the app. We're working on a program now where you can take through the database and set an appointment right there on the app to send whomever out to come fix your problem so that you're not chasing paperwork, getting back with your broker, and this and that.

Once it's done, it just streamlines right back into the carrier. Again, this app is going to be something that is technologically based and is going to help a lot of these establishments. It will grow with the establishments when we see their needs and a lot of what their usage is but I guarantee, just based on the ones that have used it far and put together their training and their menus, it just buys them a lot of time.

The last part of this is the saving of the camera footage. We're going to have camera tech that will be able to be implemented inside your already existing cameras. At the end of the day, we're going to be able to hold this for five years and we're going to be able to recognize anything that could be a claim. If there's water on the floor, we can alert a manager, “There's a wet area over here.”

If somebody does slip and fall, we're able to grab that incident through technology, and we'll grab it, we'll save it into a file so that if and when that person was to sue a year later, even though they walked out on their own, and they sue a year later, because nobody works there anymore, or nobody has an idea, we can have the data for that day and for that file.

I know a lot of the rebuttal we get is, “Cameras.” “Big brother.” Look, you're on the internet, your cameras are watching you. You're on Instagram, you're on Facebook. In my opinion, just understand that this is just the way that the future is going. If you're not doing anything negligent or wrong at all, this can only help you in my opinion.

That's right. I wrote down a bunch of stuff as you were talking and it's smart. I can see the perspective that you're bringing to the table and solving those things you've seen happen in the past. In an interesting way. A question for you because I see the guitars and I know you have the music background. Is the name Sinatra related to your passion for music or is it completely unrelated?

No, but look at the Eddie Van Halen picture I got. This is my home office and my wife designed it and did a beautiful job. No, my young partner grew up in New York. He's from New York. He's just a big Frank Sinatra fan. We were able to get it because it's a technology and not music so we wanted to be the voice of, “The voice of hospitality.”

Podcasting

I had to ask because we won't dig into it now, but Dave's got a big back experience digging into the music world and whatnot. Instead of that, I want to dig into your podcast background. You've been getting very active with your podcast. It has its flare for hospitality mixed with culture, mixed with your location and community. You do a lot in the Arizona marketplace in terms of speaking events, boards, chairs, and all that stuff. Out in the marketplace, what are you seeing from the speakers on your podcast? What else is going on out there?

I have a passion for life and business. As much as I like to fight myself saying, “My God, I'm an insurance agent.” At the end of the day, I'm very proud of what I've accomplished, what I've established, and how I've created a niche. I would see myself more as an entrepreneur and a relationship specialist. I enjoy talking to people.

The only reason why I've had a successful business, number one is because of my employees. I can't do anything without all 12 of them doing their job and having that same practice that I have of just taking care of the client. It's about the relationship and what a lot of people sell, like payroll and banking and all that stuff, it's all commoditized.

If you don't have a passion or a niche or an understanding of what it is, for what you're doing in business, let alone life, then what are you doing? I get up every day with just a fire in my belly to not just want to necessarily help people just in insurance, but also help connect them with many connections, many entrepreneurs.

Even your newsletter that I get daily, I forward over to entrepreneurs and help re-promote and stuff like that, because it's added value. It's about giving value to people, into their lives, and into the moment that they may need it. The podcast is great. I've been doing it since 2018. We’re about 120 episodes in. The whole goal of the podcast is not just to have another podcast.

 

It's about giving value to people into their lives, into the moment that they may need it.

 

Honestly, it's just to have fun. It's just to have people in my office and have a chat that I would probably have with them anyway. I've built my whole business by having coffee with people. Now, maybe 50% of those meetings never turned into anything, but I don't regret having them because you never know when they might turn into something. If anything, at least you had a good conversation with somebody with good intentions and that's just what life's about.

It's like running into a stranger in line and talking to them about something. That's what the podcast is about. I bring people that I think would have either value in the hospitality space or that they can give some added value to my clients. Everybody has a story to tell and everybody's story is different. I know you can learn from people's stories.

If you're listening and you conceptualize it in a way that could help you because you're not doing that now and you may want to try something like that. The other portion is just people that I like. People who have successful businesses and entrepreneurs. I had my friend, Michelle Claire, who's a spiritual channeler. It's great. It's fun to talk about this stuff. If we're not talking about it, what are we doing?

 

You can learn from people's story if you're listening and conceptualize it in a way that maybe could help you.

 

She was actually George Norrie on Gaia TV, which is cool. It's just fun to have a little bit of fun in life and have some variety and not just fit into the same box that I think a lot of us that are in business, even restaurant pros. I'm just an Asian restaurant or I'm just a pizza place. That might be the food that you serve, but at the end of the day, what's the community that you're serving and how are you doing it? How are you looking outside of that box of who you are to attract everybody in there and not just people who like this or that?

We were remiss in not naming the podcast. Where can they find it? What's the name of it?

It's On The DELO. It's everywhere you can get a podcast, Spotify, Apple, and all that. I go through Anchor, which is now a Spotify product. They just launch it out everywhere. I have a YouTube channel at I am the DELO, same with my Instagram and on YouTube, all the podcasts are the videos that are on there and they're getting a lot of great movement on there. They're fun to watch too, because we're just in the studio, just wrapping out and they're only about a half hour each.

Relationship-Building

You do a lot of social stuff as well and you mentioned some of your tags there and I've seen you speak recently. What do you see at those events? What's the vibe? What's the energy out there at the live events?

I just spoke at the Arizona Local Business Summit. I'm very heavily ingrained into the local community here. I was born and raised in Arizona. My business is local. I prefer one-on-one with local restaurateurs. I insure 500 locations out here, pretty much know all the owners. That's just the niche that I've created and what I enjoy.

I went and I spoke at their thing and they had asked me to speak. I'm speaking about a lot of stuff. I have three facets. I get another engagement that is completely different from what I just spoke at. The business thing was obviously about business, but it was about relationships and how important relationships are. Creating relationships to build a business, all that stuff.

It was great, it was a panel. The energy was amazing. It was packed and it was just fun to have a little bit of humor, also to be a storyteller, to be vulnerable, and just let people know that this is something that if you build good relationships, you will build a good life, and you will build a good business. Other things that I do speak on, and if you look on my social, you will see a little bit deeper into who the person is, besides just slugging you a policy, is very important to me.

 

If you build good relationships, you will build a good life. You will build a good business.

 

I just turned 50 this year, which was a monumental age for a lot of people. When I look at the age of where I'm now in the context of time compared to where I was, 10, 20, or 30 years ago, it's not just I'm saying it because I'm here, and it's not that when I was 20, 30, or 40, it was worse or better. It just is what it is.

It's very important now to make sure that I'm still on top of my game, that I take care of myself, I wake up super early, I get enough sleep, I work out, I eat clean. I do all these things that a lot of people will hear over and over and what they would think they would just hear from a fitness influencer. At the end of the day, that's how I run my business.

I want to be able to set a mind for my employees, for the people that I run into, that I engage with, to be able to give this energy for an interview. It's important because I don't want to show up as a bag of trash for somebody who is depending on me to help protect their business or give them good advice to do stuff. The way I do that at this age is to stay on top of taking care of myself first and my family.

Mentality

I'm glad you brought it up because I was going to ping you on that. I remember seeing that you hit the milestone. I hit it nine months ago now. It is a feeling and is one of those dates that stick out. I saw on your feed that you said, “I'm going to get in the best shape of my life.” You already had that mentality. If you look back at DELO's feed, you'll see hiking, biking, and running. You're already fitness-ready, but you’re committed to it. Is that a fair statement? What do you think?

Yes, no regrets. There are probably a good 10 or 15 years that I took off of, let's just say I was busy running restaurants myself and being in the hospitality industry. I'm not saying this is everybody's situation. It was mine based on my personality and who I am. I'm type A, if I go all in on one thing, good or bad, that's what I do. Drinking, eating unhealthy, staying up late partying, and getting to know people in the hospitality into things that were just priorities during that time.

I was 25 or 30 pounds overweight. I had reeled that in coming 40 or 41 years old, but I still wasn't quite exactly where I wanted to be. I had given myself a challenge by 50, I wanted to be completely shredded. I got there and I went and did a fitness show. I got all the things like pre-tanned. I got my body fat down to 9% and I weighed 144 pounds.

That was back in October 2024. It's fun to have had that goal, but now I just maintain that. As of this morning, I'm 146 pounds. I like just feeling good and knowing that, but I still go out and have fun. My wife and I went out and we ate too much on Sunday. Knowing who you are on the inside, what you can get away with, and how you feel and understanding when you do certain things, you'll feel a certain way. I know that is a complete winning formula to be able to progress personally, and in business as well.

Yes, that's impressive. You make me feel a little guilty there. Since we're on the topic, there's lots of bodybuilding in your family and history. That health side. Is your dad still doing that?

Yes, my dad had started the agency that I now own. I've owned it for about 15 years, and let him work there for a little bit, but he retired about three years ago. He primarily did home and auto and when the home and auto market just became more of a high commodity. My dad's all about relationships. That's where I learned that from. I let him retire.

He now trains people at a place called Anytime Fitness. He just trains them for free. It's just something to do. He's good monetarily, he's taken care of and he's worked for it. Now he gets to do that. He sponsors fitness shows. He sponsored the one that I had competed in. He likes to judge them, and he's going to be 76 this year.

He's still shredded and you can see him on my feed as well. We enjoy getting together once a week, every two weeks. For me, and some of you reading, if you have older parents and you love them, it's good to let them relax after a certain time but don't let them relax too much. I told them, “You can retire but you’ve got to have something else to do. You're not just going to sit around.” He's always been motivated. He works out every day, trains people, and does all that.

We hit a lot. Anything we didn't hit that you want to hit? Parting thoughts, closing thoughts, et cetera?

 

Make sure that you're completing the story within you so that you can go out and really just have fun in life.

 

Future Of Restaurants

I have a very good feeling about the future of restaurants. Embrace your passion, the people around you, and your relationships. Also, embrace the up-and-coming technology. Just do your research, look into things, and ask the questions we just talked about. Do things for yourself. Make sure that you're completing the story within you so that you can go out and just have fun in life and do all those things. That's what it's about all for me and I want to continue that for the rest of my life. I don't see myself slowing down at all because I'm enjoying it every single day. It's not work. Thank you for having me.

I appreciate that. We covered a lot. Folks, David DeLorenzo, BarAndRestaurantInsurance.com. We talked about Sinatra, the app we talked about On The DELO in the podcast store. Check that stuff out, for more great restaurant marketing service, people, tech tips, and more, stay tuned to us here at RunningRestaurants.com. Give us a like, a share, and a review. That stuff helps us. We appreciate it. We'll see you folks next time. Thanks, DELO.

Thanks. See you guys.

 

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