GETTING TO KNOW SHAWN WALCHEF

While some restaurants have closed down during the pandemic, others, like Cali Comfort BBQ in Spring Valley, were prepared to make quick adjustments, building on the digital-first mindset of owner Shawn Walchef.

Even before the pandemic, Walchef preached the importance of digital marketing and innovation in the food world — both at his own restaurant and on a podcast called

Digital Hospitality, where he invites industry leaders to share what they know.

Not only was Walchef in a position to easily prioritize online ordering, but his

Spring Valley restaurant has done some remodeling and Cali Comfort BBQ’S second location is opening up at the new Barrio Logan

Food Hub. The hub is home to what’s known as “ghost kitchens,” which operate uniquely to provide food for delivery or pick-up.

Walchef is this week’s

Name Drop San Diego podcast guest. Read excerpts of the conversation below or listen to the interview in any of your favorite podcast apps.

On the mindset of digital hospitality:

I mean, I think one of the most important things is that, actually, we do share everything. And I think that’s what makes us different and unique is that we know that it’s not about us. It’s so much bigger than us, and if we’re willing to share the new technology that we’re bringing into our restaurant, that we can help empower other restaurants to do the same thing. During the pandemic, we’ve become three times more profitable as a digital-first restaurant than we ever were as a full-service restaurant and sports bar. It was the first time that we opened a second location, which is our Barrio Logan ghost kitchen location. A lot of people talk about the pandemic and making a pivot, you know, pivoting to investing in digital and investing in social media content creation. We already knew that that stuff made us who we were. It was in our DNA.

On the Barrio Food Hub:

So we’re very, very excited about the ghost kitchen opportunity and what we call it is ... our expansion into “friendly” ghost kitchens. So the fear that I have with ghost kitchens is that it’s going to be kind of this gold rush for restaurant brands, and multi-unit concepts to go in and to serve food to thirdparty markets. You know, there’s a lot of people now that are ordering on their phones, they’re ordering on Uber Eats, they’re ordering on Grubhub, they’re ordering on Doordash. So there’s a huge market and a huge demand for people getting food how they want it. You know, no longer can we discriminate [against] having somebody that wants great barbecue to have to drive, you know, a half-hour from Escondido down to Cali Comfort on an NFL Sunday, wait an hour in line to get a table because you know the Chargers are playing the Raiders. And then maybe not have brisket because maybe we’re sold out. Like we have to be better than that . ... Now we can bring that to another location and service an entire part of San Diego that we weren’t able to service before. So you know, Barrio Logan’s just an incredible community that connects us to Downtown San Diego, to National City, to you know, the community in Barrio Logan, to the Navy base, to NASSCO. I mean it’s so many amazing people that now don’t have to drive to Spring Valley to enjoy our brisket. They can literally go on their phone and order through Uber Eats and get it in 20 minutes delivered, you know, to their office building or to their place of work.

On his preferred style of barbecue sauce:

I’m less of a sauce guy. I’m more of a meat guy . ... So we serve sauce on the side. We like to let people taste the smoke, taste the flavor, taste the meat. Obviously we love our sauce, but we’re a little bit more dry.