Mistie Boulton’s hospitality business success mantra - "happy employees make for happy guests."
“For me, leadership is inspiring others while being inspired,” says Mistie Boulton, who heads up “mystery shopper” consultancy EyeSpy and the Oren’s Hummus restaurant chain, and is a member of the WPO’s Platinum II chapter.
This focus on galvanizing the creative power of teamwork – not leading alone or working in silos – is one of the reasons why Boulton has enjoyed a stratospheric rise in the hospitality industry, innovating customer-centric solutions to help businesses along the way. She has come a long way since working in a restaurant as a college student to earn some extra cash some 26 years ago.
Discovering a passion for customer service and building teams, she quickly rose through the ranks from server to bartender to manager to general manager to regional manager – overseeing 12 restaurants by the age of 25! But Boulton was restless. Born into a tech-savvy family, she wanted to do more. All that was lacking was that “aha” moment.
It came soon afterwards. “I was actually in the hospital giving birth to my second son, at age 27. I was literally on the phone with a vendor for the restaurant and a manager while I was giving birth,” she relates. “And I said, you know what? I have to make a change. I’m working so hard for someone else.”
When Boulton started putting her feelers out, a company asked her to try out one of their restaurants and tell them what she thought. “And so, being Mrs. Detail-Oriented, I wrote up this whole thing – it was almost a novel – about my experience.”
It turned out the company was paying a mystery shopping company to do just that: dine in their restaurants, provide detailed feedback and see where they could improve.
Boulton’s lightbulb moment came full circle: “I left that interview and called my husband and said, I’m done. This is what I’m doing. The next day I went and registered EyeSpy. I had a huge restaurant network just from being in the industry for the last eight years. And three months later, I had more business than I could do myself.”
Using her tech smarts, she built an entire back-end platform to schedule and carry out secret shopper evaluations. Now, 22 years later, EyeSpy has grown to also provide health audits, consulting, operational and legal services, human resources, social media and more. “So we’re really a full-service stop for anyone in the hospitality industry,” she says.
Want to get something done? Give it to a busy person! Boulton also runs Oren’s Hummus – a restaurant chain serving fresh, authentic Israeli cuisine.
Boulton was brought on board by founder Oren Dobronsky to help grow his shop’s footprint outside Palo Alto, initially committing to 90 days of operational interventions. Twelve years later, she’s still there and Oren’s Hummus has grown to six locations, is present in up to 20 virtual kitchens and is franchising in 2024. “It’s a fun beast of a job,” she quips.
Boulton believes in being hands-on and says language matters when trying to build a cohesive workplace culture – preferring terms such as “leaders” to “managers” and “team members” to “employees”.
The “Great Resignation” (particularly of restaurant staff in the United States) hit EyeSpy hard, she relates, forcing her to quickly rethink her business model. This agility led to the company partnering with DoorDash and adding the evaluation of delivery companies to its bouquet of services, opening up a new revenue stream.
As for Oren’s Hummus, Boulton strengthened retention programs to incentivize team members to stay for the long haul – and it’s paid off admirably. “We’re a small restaurant but offer far more than anyone else in the industry,” she says.
This focus on employee retention, she says, was a direct benefit of her WPO membership. “I’ve always had a great passion for customer service – I love bringing people together, having training seminars and really getting them engaged and motivated,” says this certified life coach.
Boulton started shifting her focus to employee retention and team-building activities about five years ago, inspired by a group project in her San Francisco WPO chapter. She conceptualized an employee appreciation program that she not only implements in her own companies, but also in other organizations seeking to attract and retain staff. “My model became ‘happy employees make for happy guests’.”
Besides that, she says her Platinum WPO membership is a game changer. “There are so many leaders that I learn from – bad-ass women who are inspirational and authentic, and who share the same struggles. We learn from each other.”
For example, a WPO talk by Linda Ruffenach, author of How to be a Bourbon Badass, has prompted Boulton to take EyeSpy “to another level, rebuilding my entire platform”. She adds, “So, am I inspired by the WPO? Yes, it’s definitely helped me a lot!”
What’s next for this serial entrepreneur? Another soon-to-be-launched tech company, A-Eye Check, will help ensure standardized food quality and presentation at virtual kitchens – which offer multiple concepts or dining options for delivery. No doubt it won’t be Mistie Boulton’s last venture: “I’m a go-getter with a lot of energy, and I love it when the ideas of others spark another passion of mine,” she says.
Mistie Boulton’s Five Cornerstones to Building a Successful Business:
● Recognition – the more people feel appreciated, the more they are motivated to excel
● Integrity – do what you say you’ll do; follow through on promises
● Team effort – anywhere you’re successful, it’s because of the team you’ve built
● Growth – enable team members to grow personally and professionally
● Passion – if you have passion for what you do, everything else will follow