SUMMARY KEYWORDS
restaurants, price, dynamic pricing, data, hotels, customer, pricing, product, restaurant industry, carl, ashwin, industry, people, understand, item, delivery, jeremy, measuring, digital, bit
SPEAKERS
Ashwin (41%), CARL (32%), Jeremy (27%), Intro (1%)
I
Intro
0:02
This is the restaurant technology guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better
JJ
Jeremy Julian
0:13
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I thank you guys for joining us. I know that as I say every time you guys have lots of options as to how you spend your time and energy, learning more about restaurant tech, and I appreciate the fact that you guys give us the privilege to to educate you guys and introduce you guys to some new new people. Today is not going to be any exception. We are joined with joined by Ashwin, who is the co founder and CEO of juicer you want to Osman you want to introduce yourself to our audience, then we can talk a little bit about what juicer is and what it’s going to do for to revolutionize the restaurant industry.
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
0:49
Sure. Yeah. Ashwin Kalani, I really appreciate you having me. Looking forward to great discussion. So I My background is mostly in hotels, I used to be in the e Commerce Industry in hotels for about 20 years, got involved right around September 2001, when I went to the Cornell hotel school, so it’s very interesting time to get into the industry, but also very opportunistic time, because that’s really when ecommerce became, you know, such a big thing in the travel space. So I got to witness it from, you know, the birth until today and all the craziness that has ensued since then. And I think that said, it set me up nicely to come in and help the restaurant industry. And we started this company about, I don’t know, a year and a half ago, more or less, when we saw that there were a lot of parallels between what hotels went through 20 years ago, and what restaurants are going through now after COVID. Yeah, so a little bit about me.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
1:46
Wonderful. Well, I think that kind of is a easy clue into to. And we are now being joined by by the co founder sir Karl, we got started without you. But what we’re gonna keep rolling. So talk to me a little bit about juicer now that now that kind of we know a little bit about your background in history, talk to me a little bit about, about where juicer came from, you know, take some of that experience and, and talk to him because I do think I do think, in normal life, and I know when we talk to pre shows like, oh, you know, this is commonplace in so many other industries. But I think what you and and Carl are doing for, for the restaurant industry is very, very unique. And so I want to, I want to, you know, double double click on that and talk a little bit more about where we’re at.
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
2:31
So this idea came from Drew Patterson, he, I mean, if you don’t know Drew, he’s got an amazing track record of building pretty incredible businesses. And he was when I was in many hotels and resorts in the E commerce world, he was at Starwood, we have similar pads. But he then went on to become one of the founding team members at kayak, then found a jet setter, and then founded room 77, all which had incredible exits. But he was out to dinner one night, and, you know, was handed a digital menu, and it kind of struck him that this was no longer a static menu with prices that could, you know, that had to remain static, frankly. And so you started to wonder if there was an opportunity in the industry to introduce flexible or variable pricing. And he reached out to me, we’ve known each other for a long time. And he asked me what I thought about the idea. And we started to, you know, throw things at the wall and research a little bit and to speak to some industry experts. And before we knew it, we were like, Yeah, you know, this, this seems to make a lot of sense. The third parties are out there using variable pricing on their delivery fees. And so the consumer is already used to the idea that if they’re going to order delivery, then it’s going to be more expensive. They know that the $10 pizza in the store is probably going to be 12 or 13. Through an app, and they’re okay with that. Now, it’s not really clear if it’s 12, or $13, because the restaurant is charging a bit more because there’s a delivery fee attached or if that delivery fee is fluctuating. And so there seems to be an opportunity to optimize. Now the third party seems to be optimizing, but not restaurants. And so maybe we should do something about that. And so we started to talk to Kat Cole, for example, former president of focus brands, and she said, you know, this seems like a great idea, how can I get involved, she became an investor and advisor, a few other restaurant industry, you know, let’s say influential people. And then, you know, Drew and I looked at each other and said, Well, I don’t know how to build dynamic pricing algorithms, do you? And he’s like, No, I don’t either. Well, who’s the best person out there that can build these things? And we reached out to Monaco Benvenuti, who’s the co founder of Duetto, and the hotel space, a very well known company for dynamic pricing. And he said, You know what, I’ve always wanted to do this in restaurants, you know, how can I get involved and so he came in to help us build out you know, the initial product. And then I read this book delivering the digital restaurant and that’s how I met Carl here. Maybe we can let Carl, tell that story about who how we came together?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
5:02
Yeah, no, I’d love to. And our longtime listeners have probably heard Carl on the show a couple of times. So Carl, why don’t you reintroduce yourself and kind of kind of how you got involved with us for a little bit. For those that don’t remember, Carl has been on the show because of his book. And he’s become a an industry colleague and friend that, that we’ve talked through lots of different things. But Carl, why don’t you talk to talk to us a little bit about, about your role at juicer and how you came to be the CFO and co founder?
CO
CARL ORSBOURN
5:27
Yeah. Thanks, Jeremy. Great to be back. And always a pleasure to spend some time with you, sir. Look, I think the exciting thing about writing a book a lot, a lot of people asked asked me, Why do you write a book? And I still trying to answer that question? Because there’s a lot behind just the writing. But one of the real benefits is you get to meet so many different people that are trying to change the industry that you’ve written about. And, you know, when you get to speak to folks like Ashwin and Drew, who have been there and done it, right, these are the thing that attracted me immediately to the the kind of team, if you will, is the fact these are experienced entrepreneurs, they’ve been there done it. And that means, you know, as you as you think about the next step of what you’re trying to do in life, you’re trying to say, well, actually, can I go into this with a lot of confidence and more confidence than I would if I was perhaps just working with a couple of guys straight out of college. And so that was an important factor. But the fact that guys are telling me about dynamic pricing? Well, that just made it even more compelling, quite honestly. Because, you know, for me, I used to do a bit of pricing at BP and the gas stations in the UK and my goodness is never more political and interesting environment and pricing gasoline everyone’s got. And so I’d seen how a more mature industry when it comes to dynamic pricing can put these things to work. And I’ve always been at these conferences where everyone’s saying are guys, we’re still in the early innings of change. You know, these are still early days here. I think at the line I said to you Ashwin, when you told me about the idea that you enjoyed works up here, it was that this is the next innings. This This makes so much sense. Because typically, the reason why, and there’s probably a few reasons, but one of the key reasons why dynamic pricing hasn’t come to restaurants yet, there’s been because it hasn’t been as digitized as what it is today. And when you have a digital price point allows you to be able to play with price in a more functional way. And so, for me, it just made a lot of sense coming on board with the team. I mean, the I think anyone that’s been involved in you as well, Jeremy and found in something from the start. And quite honestly, it doesn’t really matter too much about job titles. We’re all in it together. You know, there are times where Ashwin is responding to emails on things that you wouldn’t expect a CEO to respond to. There are times where I’m throwing myself into technical conversations, which quite honestly, I’ve got no place to be having a conference. But you know, you do that. Because as a startup founder, you have to be flexible, you have to try and learn along the way. And I think we’re, we’re quite humble as a team. And I think we’re all very much in it together. And we’ve got a great team that we’ve been been able to amass. And in fact, one of Ashwin special skills that you might want to explore is how he’s able to attract so much talent at such an early stage in organization, because we’ve certainly built an amazing team.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
8:12
I love it. I love it. Well, and so I think kind of on that thread. Carl, I’d love to have you guys talk a little bit about the vision, you know, you saw it, you saw it in you know, in hotels, you got to be at the at the front row seat, you know, kind of kind of managing your way through that on the on the hotel side, but you see an opportunity and most entrepreneurs have an itch that they need to scratch or some something they’re trying to solve that they think truly is a problem that the world has, that they think they’re uniquely you know, I guess they have, they have the skills and experience to be able to do that. So can you talk a little bit about the vision of where juicers at and where it’s going, and then we can talk a little bit more about, about how you guys are getting getting it done?
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
8:52
Yeah. So let’s let’s be clear about a couple of things. What we’re trying to do here is to give restaurants an automated way to use data to set a more intelligent pricing strategy. That is what we’re and it’s funny, because when you talk to people about dynamic pricing, they immediately get some preconceived notions in their mind about what that means, right? And you get questions like, Well, my customer is going to walk into the restaurant and see the menu prices changing in front of them, that’s not going to be a good customer experience. Or, you know, am I going to find out that the person in front of me paid less than I did you know, that’s going to upset me. And so, you know, I think it’s important to understand that first of all, we’re dealing with delivery, primarily, digital transactions off premise. We’re not doing this on site, you know, will that happen potentially in the future, but that’s not the focus. We are also not changing prices every five seconds, you know, this is not an airline. And, you know, we’re just really bringing this you know, introducing the industry to this and so, you know, it’s important to balance the customer experience. and send the loyalty of the guests with the opportunity that exists to make more more revenue. And the other thing that’s I think important to understand is, even if the data suggests that we could charge twice as much for a pizza than we would normally charge, we’re not doing that we’re just using very conservative price increases, sometimes it’s two or 3%. Right. So, but sometimes it could be 10, or 15%. Right? It just depends what we think the market will tolerate, and what we think will not upset the customer. But we are not doubling or tripling prices, even if the market will bear that in the short term. You know, we come from a hospitality background. And so we understand the blood, sweat and tears that restaurants have put into these businesses over the last years and decades. And so we’re not out to jeopardize that in any way. So that being said, the vision is for our system to sit in the background within the restaurant point of sale system, and determine what the optimal price is, per product per channel. And we are using predictive analytics to do that we should be able to get, we should get so good, that we should be able to say this Thursday, this game is on. And within your zip code. This is the expected weather. And so our our intelligence tells us that if we were to increase the price of your chicken wings by 15%, this will be the resulting sales, you know, output. And then we should be able to measure ourselves against the actual revenue and get better and better and better at using all these different factors to determine the optimal price, and then get the best outcome for the customer. And it’s only it’s not only about increasing prices, we should also be able to say, You know what, this Wednesday, between two and 5pm, you’re going to be quite slow. And so we should run this particular special. And we should link that to this particular type of advertising and Uber Eats and DoorDash. And therefore that will produce this optimal outcome and make the most efficient use of your real estate, your labor, your ingredients to minimize waste and get the best possible profitable outcome for your restaurant. So that is the vision. Now, of course, we could talk for, you know, for another five or 10 minutes about how it actually works today and probably do that. Because, you know, that’s what we want to get to. But the reality is, you know, we’re a year and a half into this. And there’s a ways to go.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
12:32
Well, and I know when we were talking about, you know, setting up time to record our conversations, because again, and I know I’ve had this conversation with quite a few people, I start I started the podcasts really as a as a means to get, you know, information out that I have the privilege to sit in and learn about and so I love the idea but what you guys are doing while at the digital channel in wall using data has been happening within restaurants for a long time, whether that’s happy hour, or that’s the Tuesday Blackboard special offer that’s even the same item being on a on a on a on a lunch menu versus a dinner menu might be a smaller portion size at lunchtime, but it’s it’s very much the same item. But they if I pick up the dinner menu, and I pick up the lunch menu, and I see the chicken parm and one is 1099 and the other one’s 1299. Chances are they’re probably not a whole lot different. But But restaurants have been doing that for years. So talk a little bit about that. Because I do think that is very true. And it happens it has happened. But now we’re getting to a place where we can do it a little bit smarter.
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
13:31
Yeah, Jeremy, I think you’re touching on a very important point. And that is that restaurants have recognized for a long time that there are things that they can do to make more money during certain periods, or to drive more volume during certain periods. I think the difference is that some of that’s been relatively gut feeling driven. You know, I mean, of course, they’re probably measuring, Hey, is it worthwhile to have this happy hour? And they can say, Yeah, you know, yes, it’s worthwhile. But, you know, to actually determine exactly what the price of every menu item should be based on what has happened in the past or based on all these different factors. And maybe not every single happy hour should have the same exact prices. And how do you really measure the price elasticity of every item to determine that. That’s, as you just said, things that we’ve seen happening in other industries for a long time. But it’s just now coming to restaurants and the I think the economic environment that we’re living in today, has allowed for that to happen, because two years ago, restaurants would have said, Nope, we’re good. You know, what we’re doing works. We have a general sense of what our profit margins are. We don’t really need this and we were afraid of what the customer is going to say or do about it. But inflation has changed all of that. And the labor crisis has changed all of that. And restaurants find themselves in a situation where they need a lever to pull to increase their revenues and profitability and the need to do more with less. And they’ve been so overwhelmed over the last few years with more and more and more technology solutions, and more and more subscription fees, that can’t really do a good job of measuring the impact of each one. So I think, frankly, we were pleasantly surprised by the welcome we received from restaurants when we came in and said, first of all, we’re not just going to give you another technology to manage this is going to work in the background, you don’t have to manage anything. You can, you can set guidelines for us, you know, to play within this certain range of prices. But, you know, most restaurants tell us like, I don’t want to do anything, just tell me how much more money we made every month, or every week. And that’s great. And then on top of that, to be able to say, Look, we’re not just gonna dump a bunch of analytics and reports on you, that you then don’t don’t know what to do with because you don’t have a team of people are a data scientist or a revenue manager to act on that. You know, if you’re a larger organization like McDonald’s, or Chipotle, you probably do have staff that are analyzing prices and testing things in the market. But most restaurants don’t have that. So, you know, we we, we found a very positive response from restaurants when they heard that this was our approach, and that we’re taking a very hospitality friendly, consumer friendly approach to this. I think that lifted a lot of worry off the shoulders of the restaurants about how exactly we’re going to come do this responsibly.
CO
CARL ORSBOURN
16:27
I think that’s right. The slide that I think is interesting, Ashley alluded to this earlier, Jeremy’s dynamic pricing can be kind of divisive, you either for it or against it. And we’re starting to use this term data informed pricing. Yes, and I, you know, even the biggest trends, even the most accomplished, and those with the biggest support centers still struggle with this. And perhaps I could give you an idea as to why this is the case. You know, when we were looking at a chains worth of data, we were looking at the menu items and the different days of the week and the different units in that particular chain. And for whatever reason, and we don’t try and determine what the reason is, you’ll find that certain locations, have certain products that sell more than another location, or the peak of a particularly popular item will be an hour or two earlier than what’s typical for the network, or you’ll find that one location has a busier Friday than it does a Saturday versus another. And so all that minutiae of detail, which may infer a different price point is something that just would be completely impossible, even for the most accomplished of analytical restaurant owner operators, it will be very impractical for them to be able to use. And so I think what we’re doing is we’re trying to build a solution that absolutely is going to support the training executives and what they’re doing with pricing. But this, this applies to everyone because no no one individual can cope with the level of detail. I think that this is working.
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
17:55
The you know, there’s another element to this, actually, which is that, you know, there’s certain things that restaurants have been tracking in the past as much as possible, like food costs, or, you know, the, for example, what we were talking about before does the happy hour work? I think that because of the data driven approach we’re bringing to the restaurant, they’re going to be able to start tracking new metrics. And I think they’re going to start to innovate and change things based on those metrics. I’ll give you an example. So I believe and we all believe that there is a correlation between the wait time in Uber or DoorDash, and the customers willingness to pay quickly. So if all things being equal, you have two pizza ideas, and one has a 15 minute wait time, the other has a 45 minute wait time, how much more would the customer be willing to pay for that? 15 minute wait time, there is an answer. And we will be able to help restaurants figure out to figure that out. Have you talked to the folks for example over a Capriati is in wings zone, they are reengineering their kitchens to reduce the wait times to get those wings out the door because they recognize that there is a financial benefit to doing so. Right. So these are the kinds of things that I think the data driven approach to what we’re doing well will will help restaurants improve efficiency and profitability.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
19:10
Yeah, and I think to the data side, I mean, almost every single one of our guests recently has talked about the fact that data is becoming more accessible to be able to actually and compute is getting less expensive to be able to do these things. That exact example, Ashwin, that you talked about, we have a chain that was doing suggested order times, you know, I just did a podcast recording last week about suggested order times and it’s a pretty binary calculation unless you’re integrated and they changed it and figured out that you know, a Caesar salad that’s going to take four minutes to make might be the sixth order in the queue, but they can get that out the door faster and give you that quote. But if you wanted a well done steak and the and that Caesar salad, it’s a different quote time and so having even dynamic quote times back to the third party delivery companies changes things significantly, but you can’t do that without Aida, the second thing I would say to you is, as I remember, I was sitting in in a relatively large chain with a huge menu, casual dining chain. And, and we were talking about some pricing strategies. And we were talking about some pricing strategies, and they had this full on crazy, crazy hypothetical, if I changed my price by the cheeseburger by $1, what’s going to happen to my sales? what’s what, you know, how many sales am I going to lose versus what extra profits, the models that people have are insane, but they oftentimes are based on like, passion was data, and then they may or may not go back and say, to what you guys are doing? Did it actually work? Does the happy hour work? Or is it just feel good? Because I got a whole bunch of people in my bar for happy hour. But now we’ve got the ability to use data to make these decisions, no different than than you did in the in the hotel industry, or, or Carl, you did in the gas industry?
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
20:51
That’s exactly right. And I think the main reason for that is the people are understaffed, and they don’t have the talent to be able to dedicate a team to constantly testing and measuring and retesting these things. So that’s why we think there seems to be a really good fit for what we brought to the market. And for what restaurants need right now. I mean, even if you look at Chipotle, his last earnings report, you know, they missed their numbers significantly because of pricing. You know, in the admit, you know, what we just we overpriced, and volume dropped off. And I would humbly argue that we could have prevented that, right, we could have been testing and measuring in real time and made adjustments to prevent such a steep drop off of volume.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
21:37
Well, I would love to dig into how because I, you know, and again, I know you guys are focusing on digital channel right now. And I know we’ve also talked about kind of the in store, whether it’s happy hour, or you know, or the dinner lunch price. And I again, when we were setting up this call, we’ve got a chain that, you know, it’s that we happen to be recording the week of, of Lent, I think is starting next week or this week, you know, fish pricing is going to get you know, fish consumption is going to go up on Friday for the next six weeks up until Easter. We all know that that’s going to happen. Regardless of what we do. Should we charge a little bit more at a fish restaurant for fish on a Friday that we wouldn’t charge? Otherwise? Talk to me a little bit about kind of the how, you know, you’ve talked about the data and nobody needs to get into those logarithms and dealing with all of that. But how does it actually work for the consumer? And how, how does the restaurant understand their profit margins? How do they understand what happens when you change that price from 1199 to 1299? For that pizza that you talked about earlier? How does that all work digitally? And how does that work? From the restaurant owners perspective?
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
22:41
It’s a big question. We’ll get into it as much as possible. So as of today, the first thing we’re doing is analyzing as much historical data as possible. And we’re looking at every single transaction for at least a year or more with every product sold and looking for patterns of demand. And based on those patterns, our algorithm can come in and say, hey, look, based on what we’re seeing, we think there’s a consistency here. This particular salad between four and 7pm on Thursday, is, you know, a popular item. And so there’s an opportunity here to do something, that doesn’t mean that we automatically say, well, let’s raise prices, you know, in your cases, for example, with fish on lens, there, there are many restaurants that might say, You know what, I don’t want to raise prices, because I want to be the go to restaurant during this period, I want I want to be top of mind, I want to get as much volume as I possibly can. And there’s a marketing opportunity, right to get that exposure. So it’s not always just oh, there’s volume, let’s raise prices. It’s not quite that simple, or binary. And so, you know, part of what we do is to understand the restaurant and what they’re, you know, what they want to accomplish. But, so right now, it’s primarily based on historical data. What we’re also doing, though, is looking at restaurant competition. And this is something that is par for the course, in the hotel industry. I mean, any hotel has access to standardized reports that can show them, you know, there are five main competitors, what are they doing with pricing and where how do they stack up in the restaurant industry, I can’t tell you how many restaurants I’ve spoken to that spend hours monitoring what their competition is doing in all these different channels. And now that’s become even more important because with inflation restaurants have been changing prices more frequently and more aggressively. So we’ve developed a way to tell restaurant, look, when you start working with us, tell us who your four competitors are five, and we will monitor the competition for you. And in fact, we can, pretty soon we’ll be able to send a monthly report that shows them how they stack up. But then, you know, tell us how you want to be compared to that competition. Maybe people will say, Well, I always want to be 15% below whatever those competitors are charging or maybe my product is superior and so I want to be 10% Above all those competitors and so that’s An important factor for us to consider that we’re already looking at. Then there are also non direct price related things that we look at, for example, customer reviews and star ratings in these delivery channels. So our customers thinking about price or talking about price with a particular restaurant before we even get started. And then once we start to test different prices, let’s continue to monitor that. So we can detect whether customers are starting to talk about it more, because that’s, you know, that’s a signal for us that what we’re doing is making some kind of impact. So these are all the things we look at to today, determine how we want to impact the prices, the prices of a restaurant, you know, we’re already looking as you know, about integrations with point of sale systems and bringing in outside data that can help us make smarter decisions and do that in more real time. But that’s, you know, that’s the focus of the next year for us.
CO
CARL ORSBOURN
25:59
I love it. The The other thing around that, Jeremy, for me is, is that a lot of this comes down to enabling a restaurant just to realize that it’s about handling their prices very carefully. So you asked about the how, whenever we start working with a new client, we ask them about the guardrails they’d like they’d like us to work with him. And so they might say, I don’t want you dropping my base price to more than 5%. And I don’t want you going more than 15%. But what we’ll do in those initial few weeks, is we will operate perhaps within, you know, a zero to 5% range. And we will monitor the elastic elastic response to price changes during that particular period, to see whether the customer has got a level of sensitivity to even a 5% price change. That then gives us more confidence about then in the secondary phase of of working with the restaurant to move and perhaps try between zero and 10%. And, you know, there there may well be only a handful of items that move up to 15% once we’re actually in full swing, but anything like this is all about testing, right? It’s all testing, and it’s a B test. And it’s been able to see what’s different in different locations and building the algorithms around that. So that that’s very much in the how of this, you know, it’s yes, for sure. There’s a magic box and for sure there’s an algorithm, but ultimately, it’s about testing things, learning things, being able to see what works and what doesn’t. And obviously, as you get more and more data. And we’re coming out of a period of time right now, where data is a little sketchy as well, right. Whereas with the pandemic period, there was a lot of restaurants that were doing huge amounts of off premise, and then the following year, a little bit less perhaps. And so we would look in your example with fish and Lent, you know, do you do you start to see a level of increase in fish products being purchased during that particular window? But we’ve only got one period of Lent, right? Yes, right. Yeah. So it’s not as easier, at least in the first year to be able to determine, that’s something you’ll see. And I think it would depend on the density of fish items on the menu in that example. So if it’s a football, you’re probably going to see it overall. But if it’s a restaurant that has multiple different types of protein, then you might only see it in the fish products. So a lot of it depends on the restaurant type. But it’s also about the amount of data points that we can actually accumulate over time.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
28:20
I love that you guys take that consultative approach, sorry to cut you off. But I just I love that you guys take the consultative approach to truly understand what the brand is trying to accomplish. Because I can tell you that from my you know, from my perspective on dynamic pricing, and kind of this whole idea, my sense was just hey, you know, we’re gonna get the maximum price for the maximum dollar for the product on whatever the day is, or whatever our interval is that we’re changing. And the fact that you guys, try and understand truly where the where the group is at and what they’re looking to do, because every brand has a different brand promise out to their consumers, and making sure that you guys uphold that with this dynamic dynamic pricing, while also maximizing guest throughput. And profitability is awesome, you know, no different than hotels. I mean, when you go to, you know, certain brands, you’ve got the, you know, Marriott’s got 12 Different brands or 15 Different brands in their portfolio. And each one of them has a different value proposition. I don’t go to the residence in, you know, and stay there and expect the same experience as I go to the courtyard or whatever. So I think I think no different than then then hotels or airlines, you’ve got different brand promises that restaurants need to understand as they start to engage with us.
AK
Ashwin Kamlani
29:32
You know, that’s exactly what I wanted to dial into a little bit here is that I hope as a company, we can help elevate the game of the entire industry. There are things that we’re learning along the way. And I’ll give you an example. I just made a video about this yesterday. You know, we are clearly trying to help restaurants improve their revenue through delivery channels, and there are certain reports we need to understand the impact of what we’re doing. And we’ve come across a few restaurants where we say okay, well, you know, and let us see a report that shows us how we’re doing. And they don’t have a report that breaks out first party delivery from third party delivery, for example, it’s all just in one bucket, you know, to Carl’s point earlier, that might have been okay, before the pandemic. But now that delivery is such an important piece of the business. I think it’s critical that restaurants take the time to go into their POS and just start to separate those things out. I know, you know, it takes some time to figure out exactly how to do that. And they’ll take more time with each order to make sure they’re in the right bucket. But I don’t think restaurants have realized yet, how important that is, and coming from the hotel industry, where hotels have spent the last 20 years trying to figure out, how do I get as many people to book directly on my website as possible through vs through the third parties. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that Uber and DoorDash are the enemy. I think that but but there has to be a very mutually beneficial relationship. I think until now you hear a lot of restaurants thinking that it’s a little bit one sided and not as beneficial as they’d like. And so the if with more data, you can be more in control of that relationship, and how much profitability you’re getting from each channel and how much volume is coming through each channel is a very important metric to understand. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think we can help restaurants understand, hey, this is a simple step that you can take with your data today to help start cleaning it up. And you’ll see benefits from that six months, 12 months, 18 months from now.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
31:31
Yeah, no. And I think it’s some I mean, I think it’s a it’s it’s great advice to restaurant tours, whether they decide to to, quite frankly, use your guys’s product or not understanding the input to your business because a DoorDash customer, I mean, I happen to use Lyft Not, not Uber when I go travel. Why? Because I’ve had better experiences with Lyft drivers than Uber, quite frankly, oftentimes for the same price. It doesn’t matter that much other than the fact that I have I as a consumer, but I promise you that when I ask the drivers, and I often ask them what’s better, because most of them drive for both. They they will give me an opinion one way or another. And I’m pretty certain that restaurants have the same, the same gut feel the question is, does the data support what their gut feeling is, which I love the fact that until you look at the data to understand that Uber Eats, versus DoorDash versus GrubHub versus, you know, direct delivery, you know, yourself too, you know, there’s so many different ways and then the the local guys, it, you’ve got to do it via the data. So, Karl riff on that for just a couple of minutes, if you wouldn’t mind.
CO
CARL ORSBOURN
32:35
Yeah. I mean, I’m really excited about where this is gonna go. So the one thing that you’ve got to understand the difference in the motivations between a third party platform and the first party, a third party platform wants you to come back to that platform as often as possible. And ideally, you know, that might be back to your restaurant. But ultimately, the third party platform is encouraged by trying to encourage you to come back to that platform. It’s why things like dashpass and Uber oneness are so critical. When you when you think about it from a first party perspective, and you’ve heard me talk about this quite a bit, Jeremy, there’s a lot to be done still to create a frictionless experience which party experience today. But similarly, you could see this becoming a great way to be able to utilize customer data in the future. Now, we’re not doing this right now. So we’re not incorporating our service into loyalty. But we definitely see that on our roadmap. So you can almost imagine a world whereby a customer that is more value orientated in a segment attributed to value is going to be able to receive push notifications, when they go past a certain geofence, next to a restaurant to be able to say, take advantage of this special. So now, it’s not so much about the 10 cards on a table saying Happy hour at a certain time of day, it’s actually been able to provide the right level of value to the right customer at the right time in the right location. Now, that is an incredibly exciting proposition. Similarly, it might be a case of those customers that perhaps aren’t as value orientated, but perhaps are love newness and want to be the first to get access to the latest new products. Well, that isn’t necessarily a pricing thing. But it could be something whereby those customers get prompted through a push notification, again, about the latest new item. And restaurants can then use that as a way of being able to test well, what is the right price for a new product? Right? So you can actually then use your first party platform to be able to test well, do I get more conversion, when it’s at 999-899-1199? What actually makes a major difference. And so you can see pricing playing a role in all these different ways. Going further down the line here. I think that’s what really gets us excited about where this is headed. Last thing I’ll say is, even if all of these things existed today, and you know, Asher has already mentioned things like events, I think, you know, weather is clearly something we’re going to be building into the algorithm. Cost of product is another piece of it. And I was speaking to a customer last week, and he was saying to me Yeah, but look, I want to make a price increase in July. We I’ve got it scheduled in my plan in July, that’s what I’m going to be putting my prices up. And the traditional way for price increases outside of things like labor has been at once, twice a year price increase, typically early January, and again in early July. In this world, we don’t necessarily have to do that. Now, if you get to a place where you can actually incorporate your cost of product data into an understanding of what impact it’s making, to your base cost, and your product margin, that’s going to enable you to make those adjustments in far more subtle ways than you’d have to do to make something far more, you know, elaborate, and far more distinctive in those moments of January and July. And that means customers will be getting more used to the fact that prices fluctuate, and won’t get the sticker shock, the sticker price shock associated to those twice a year changes. And I think that’s gonna help restaurants as well. And often it’s gonna help consumers have a better experience.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
35:56
Well, I think in general, we we’ve again, talked about it when we were prepping for the show, I think that the more things get to digital, and again, I know you guys are, are today looking at the digital channels, but even the in store channels, I think are going to continue to be this way. I was at NRF earlier this year. And that’s really focused on retail, but digital pricing on products versus, you know, tags that go on a shirt or that go into, they’re continuing to expand and continuing to make their rounds in places I can, you know, we’ll be showing it Vertec, a digital menu that allows you to change prices on the fly, should you want to part of why they had to do these these prices twice a years because they were printing menus or changing their menu boards, and it’s expensive to do those things. The more and more that gets digital, the more and more people are going to be willing to change based on consumer demands on based on the needs of their, of their clientele. And and really where do they want their business to go? So I know we’re getting close to time. What is the engagement look like? What’s the perfect brand that you guys want to be working with? You know, talk to me a little bit about, about what would life look like if I say, You know what, I want to be one of those first adopters, I need to get to a place where I understand this model this business practice. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about what engagement looks like and how they can get in touch with the team to figure out if they’re the right fit?
CO
CARL ORSBOURN
37:15
Yeah, so it’s a great question. And of course, in any business a year and a half in, there’s still a point where you’re saying we’re trying to figure that out a bit. I’ll tell you where we are today, Jeremy and that is, you know, our heart is very much with the independent in the sense that we look at independents. And we see the fact that they probably have the most thin margins when it comes to off premise. But like any product, and I think any restaurant technology company will tell you the same. Typically, you’re able to get a certain amount of scale and proof of concept through the mid enterprise and enterprise chains initially. But you know, let’s be very clear, we think our product can help restaurants of all types. The initial way into this is that they need to have a certain amount of off premise business. Earlier I was mentioned about a certain level of frequency of of transaction, if you have a particular item that’s only purchased four times on a particular day, then that is only going to give us a limited amount of evidence attributed to whether that item is something that is having an elastic response or not. So a price change. If that item has been purchased 40 times in a particular day, then clearly you’re in a place where you can have a better level of understanding as to whether that price change is reflective of any change in performance. So therefore, when you have got a multi unit business, that is changing its price on that particular products at the same level of insurance at that particular point in time, you’ve got more data points. And that allows us to get to a place where we can prove the elasticity of that item faster. So I think for us, it’s very much around working with within that kind of mid enterprise to enterprise customer initially, because that’s going to inform our ability to help the restaurant itself. And then I think the rest of it will then come further down the line as we start to build in these other components. And we start to be able to find a more fluid route to market for for independence, I do think what we’ll end up having is probably an enterprise product and a product that is more attributable to the independent. For example, you can almost imagine the ability for us to provide a report to the independence to say, look, there isn’t a huge amount of volatility in your restaurant right now. But we can send you some recommended price changes on Monday at 8am. That should be the representation of what looks what should be a good representation for the week ahead. And then they would make those price changes themselves. But our plan is, is to try and build this product in such a way that the restaurant doesn’t have to have a huge amount of involvement at all, but I think that might be a direction we head in.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
39:47
I love it. And I think I mean, I think as you guys and your competitors get out into the market space. I think that more and more brands are going to recognize that they need to be doing this and so, so why don’t we wrap it up. Hello Vici guys talk about how They get in touch with the brand. How do they get in touch with? You talked about answering emails and, and all that kind of stuff you guys are, you know an earlier stage, but I’m excited to be along for the journey. So how do they get in touch with you guys? How do they learn a little bit more, I know you guys also host your own web show, I get to see you guys show up on my on my feed every every you know, every week or whatever that is talk to talk to us a little bit about to our audience, tell them a little bit more how to get in touch with you guys and learn more about what y’all are doing?
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CARL ORSBOURN
40:26
Well, you can certainly reach out to us at juicer pricing.com. So check out our website there, you’ll see our various different blog and blog entries and Ashran. Right, as you say, Jeremy have very, very often on LinkedIn, so if you’ve, if you’re on that platform, feel free to reach out to us there. And so certainly we’re trying to, and we haven’t talked about it much today. But our our video series, our vlog is is very much about how do you build a business of this type in a very transparent and open manner, you know where we are, we’re trying to be led by our values in Indiana to do something in a very transparent way. And that’s, I think, important to demonstrate our own credibility with the customers that we’re working with. And so we’re talking about the trials and tribulations, the successes and sometimes the failures in those meetings. And so that I think will be of interest to your audience. But of course, you can reach out to me at Carl at juicer pricing.com If you have a particular interest in looks boring working with us, I would love to be able to speak to any of your audience members that are interested in this even if just for a conversation, very happy to talk about that. And ultimately, over time, we hope to be able to you know that more of the industry events as well. And so if any of your your listeners are there, then we’ll see them that
JJ
Jeremy Julian
41:37
perfect, perfect Well, I, I would encourage any of our listeners because obviously if you guys are sitting listening to to my mug, every week, when I post these things, you guys are wanting to learn more about the restaurant industry. So the fact that you guys are out there learning you guys have done a fantastic job even for myself who’s on the ground floor, oftentimes the restaurant technology of educating me about the things that are that are going on. So I appreciate not only what you guys are doing for the industry and helping to educate but, but really taking us into the next generation. So thank you guys for being on the show. To our listeners, guys. We know that you guys have got lots of choices. So we appreciate you guys spending some time with us while you’re out checking out to share and what they’re doing for the industry. If you haven’t already done so, give us a rating on your favorite podcast player because it helps others find the show. And lastly, if you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the newsletter. Once a month you get an email of all the blog posts and podcasts and all the other nonsense that we like to put out on the interwebs so that you can you can hear what’s going on. Ashwin and Carl thank you guys for your time and to our listeners make it a great day. Thank you. Thanks.
I
Intro
42:39
Thanks for listening to the restaurant technology guys podcast. Visit restaurant technology guys.com For tips, Industry Insights and more to help you run your restaurant better
