Jeremy Julian
Jeremy Julian
42:12
Owner: Jeremy Julian
restaurant, tablet, technology, order, solve, operators, delivery, checkmate, restaurant industry, solution, pos, brands, tech, absolutely, digital channels, third party platforms, helping, consolidation, check, building
Vishal (56%), Jeremy (44%), 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 each and every time that we jump on the air and share a little bit about what’s going on in the world of restaurant technology and restaurants and just kind of how they’re growing and pivoting and changing and doing all sorts of different things. The air many a longtime listeners know that I’ve spent my entire adult life in the restaurant tech industry. So it’s always fun to to educate myself, I’m as much of a listener as I am a host on these things because I end up learning from almost every single episode from one thing or another. And so today is a very special episode, we’re going to be talking with the founder of it’s checkmate, bashall, and I’m not even going to try and say your last name. But Michelle, why don’t you? Why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience, you can tell everybody how to say your last name. And then we’ll talk a little bit about what you guys are doing over? It’s checkmate.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
1:03
Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Jamie, for having for having me. It’s Michelle in their world. I think the most common pronunciation here is Agere. Well,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
1:13
yeah, I was gonna say Edgar Wallace, how I probably would have probably would have hacked it for you. So sorry about that. That’s absolutely
VA
Vishal Agarwal
1:18
fine. You know, we wouldn’t expect to go to another country and then be able to pronounce their names very accurately, the rights are absolutely acceptable. And bizarre, mashallah Duvall, I’m the founder and CEO of it’s a checkmate. Like we were chatting briefly before, I moved to the US about 11 years ago, or another company started technique in early 2016. The idea was to develop a mobile app that you could use to pay and split your check using your phone. That was the initial concept of the company. That’s why the name check made. A lot of our employees love to ask them this question. That’s why the name check made. When I was starting out, I was trying to look for the domain checkmate.com, it was going to cost me roughly about $200,000. It’s a checkmate.com was available for $12. easy decision to me. So that’s how we got the start. And, you know, tried a few different things in this industry over the course of 2016 and 2017. I think in mid 2017, early 2017, I met with a few operators who said, Hey, you seem like a nice guy. You know, but the problem that you’re trying to solve for me is not really the problem, I have the problem, I have this, this whole bunch of tablets that live on my counters, from GrubHub, UberEATS, DoorDash, ChowNow. And they provide us tremendous value, but it’s a horrible situation to manage. That’s where this idea originated from, like, hey, let’s integrate these third party orders into the POS systems of restaurants, right? Because if you think about it, delivery orders or online orders have always been treated like the stepchild. Right, if a customer walks in to my restaurant and orders, that’s my real business, that’s who I should serve first. And then everything else is annoying, but I will tolerate those annoyances if they are bringing in revenue for me. But if you were to take those orders, you know, take the menu from the POS sinking to the third party platforms, take the orders from the third party platforms, inject it into the core of their kitchen operations. Right, then it ceases to be an annoyance and it’s a growth driver and then I want to do more about it. So we processed our first order in June of 2017. With this integration it’s been going well since we obviously started off servicing vsmp customer base. First largest client that we’re immensely grateful for for giving us a chance was five guys, our first large national brand. Since then, you know we have other large brands like White Castle, we worked with Arby’s, which got us an investment from the Inspire brands because technology and service. We now work with Arby’s Buffalo Wild Wings and Sonic in the Inspire portfolio. And as of last year, we signed on Wendy’s perhaps very cool facing client great size. So it’s really great that you know, we are able to walk this entire spectrum of being able to service a single location mom and pop shop, all the way up to an Arby’s and a Wendy’s. So, really excited about this opportunity and the various products we’re offering. They’re
JJ
Jeremy Julian
4:50
wonderful. So talk to me a little bit why restaurants were you a restaurant person? Did you grow up in family restaurants, you know, before you move to the states? Were like, you know, you were trying to solve this What check thing, and oftentimes I was just on on another recording earlier today, and, you know, this person had nothing to do with restaurants and he was sitting around with some friends and said, I need to solve this problem. And he happened to be a photographer that was, you know, photographing fine art. And he was working with high end, high end restaurants that needed to get photographs of their, of their, their finished dishes. And he wanted to be able to spread that beyond just where the chef was working to the third and fourth and fifth restaurants. And ultimately, it created this whole recipe distribution product. And, and I was like, Really, you were you were you know, Carl, you were a, you were a photographer turned, you know, turn, you know, tech guy. So we’re, where did restaurants come from? You know, you said that the that the product started with the whole idea of you and your friends going out and having some drinks and not being able to split the check and have enough having a difficult chat, you know, challenge I’m assuming. But But it turned into this whole tablet hell and and the idea of third party delivery integration and what that looks like. So talk to me a little bit about, what’s the backstory? Where did where did restaurant, restaurant tech come from?
VA
Vishal Agarwal
6:02
Should I wish I had that story? You know, it’s always a fascinating story, like, hey, you know, I was working in restaurants. And I saw this problem. And my last five generations of Indian restaurant, nothing like that I am born and brought up in India. You know, I guess he moved a living two years ago, in the previous job technologies, what fascinated me, I’m not an engineer by design. I have not written a single line of code in my life. But I understood that technology is a means to solve a business problem.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
6:35
Yes, very much.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
6:37
And I started understanding technology, about technology more and more from that perspective, how can I use technology to solve business problems, and bridge the gap between the tech team and my business team? Right, so I started taking on more and more of that role. So when I wanted to start something in 2016, I really felt that restaurant industry as a whole was the furthest behind in terms of adoption of technology, very much, if not the furthest, like, this is one place that could really benefit by catching up to the 2020s. Right? Very honestly, I was at a restaurant in at the SF airport. And, you know, it was, I ordered my food, like the waiter took a long time to come, and then I ordered my food, and the waiter took a long time to come and get me the check, very close to missing my flight. And like, there’s got to be a better solution for this. Okay, that’s where it started. But I think the the non pervasiveness of technology in the restaurant industry is what attracted me as an opportunity.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
7:48
I love it. I love it, and you’re not, but you’re not an engineer by trade. And again, back to the cheque transaction. And it’s funny, because obviously, there’s other solutions out there now that, that solve that problem that are a little bit different than then the challenge that you guys are talking about. So, talk to me a little bit about the pivot. Where did the pivot come from? How did you guys go from, you’re about to miss your flight in San Francisco to I’ve got to solve this tablet, you know, tablet circumstance, you know, you said you were talking to a friend. And they said, because, and I this is a very true story. I’ve got four children, my youngest is seven. And so seven years ago, we got our very first DoorDash, I’m in the restaurant technology industry. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, for almost 30 years now. And a friend when my wife, my wife had the baby, I was traveling, and a friend texted her a gift card to DoorDash. And at the time, I didn’t even know what DoorDash was. She didn’t know what DoorDash was. And she’s like, Oh, this was like food that I can get delivered. This is strange, you know, you’ve traditionally had your delivery from a pizza place, or, you know, Chinese place or whatever. But you hadn’t had this proliferation of these tech companies that are getting into the delivery model. And that was only seven years ago. And it’s 2020. You know, I guess she’ll be she’ll be, she’ll be eight this year. But still, even eight years ago. That’s, I mean, that’s a lot of the time where you guys started. And these, these solutions started going out. And a lot of the tech companies started. And it’s still very, very relevant today with tablets on the counter. And they look at the tablet, and they entered into the, you know, entered into the kitchen system into another transaction system for point of sale. But where did what, how and when did that pivot? Come and talk to me a little bit about that journey?
VA
Vishal Agarwal
9:28
Sure. I think, you know, a lot had to do with my, like I said, I loved understanding about technology and what it can do, right? When we started the first business of, you know, splitting your check and paying your checks on your phone. One aspect that I was I was absolutely clear about is we’re not going to put another tablet on the counter for the restaurants. We want to start off with POS integrations so when this problem came about and you know I’m I’m going to try to share my screen I had an image that I pulled up I want to share with you.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
10:07
And for our audio listeners, I’ll post the image in the in the blog post, so you guys can go go check it out if official can can pull it up.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
10:14
Yes. Because we’ve just gone through that gets the go. Can you see this? Yes,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
10:27
I will be able to hear in a second. I absolutely can see it. This probably looks really familiar to a lot of the listeners out there because they a lot of them have this with different standards and different tablets. And so I’ll let you finish.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
10:41
No, this is 2017 You know, restaurant on taco Dumbo, in Dumbo in Brooklyn. You know, I as as as a wants to be entrepreneur, if you look at this and you don’t see an opportunity instead of a problem, then it’s not the right mindset, right? When we said, Okay, we’re going to integrate with the POS systems. And that concept didn’t take off that well, when we looked at this situation, and I said, Well, we are already building or have built the POS integration side of it to some degree. Right? So one equation has been solved, why not? Now look at the other side of the equation, which is taking the orders from GrubHub and UberEATS and DoorDash. And integrating those into the POS systems? Because even by 2017, you said eight years ago about your daughter? So about six years ago, it was already at this level? Yes. And I see because
JJ
Jeremy Julian
11:41
because DoorDash I think was one of the very, very early originators. And then, you know, as people started to catch on, they recognize the same problem that you have. And obviously this was well before COVID. And everybody experienced that, but I’ll let you finish. No,
VA
Vishal Agarwal
11:52
exactly right. And you know, I think one thing that really helped me recognize this problem is because I lived in New York, and you know, when you see this, and then every time I would walk into a restaurant with either a friend or a girlfriend, it was crazy. Like, okay, you look at and like, Okay, this is a real problem. You know, GrubHub is really popular in New York. And obviously, there was that tablet there. There’s Chow now. And at that time, I don’t if you remember, there was Amazon delivery, you know,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
12:24
Amazon tried to do it. And caviar
VA
Vishal Agarwal
12:29
done that right here in the screen for you. So that’s where the mindset happened is, you know, can we start off low tech, we have one part of the equation. Now I know that GrubHub would send order confirmation emails, yep. Can we take those emails, parse it and put it into the POS system, extremely low tech, scrappy, like a startup, and it worked. And it it filled a need and solved the problem. So that’s where it took off from?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
13:02
Yeah, well, and, you know, there’s two trains of thought that I want to go down. The first is you came into the, to the restaurant, I’m gonna unshare that that tablet, tablet screenshot, and we can just talk, but you know, so you talked about how low tech restaurants were. And part of that challenges is how disparate the technology stacks are, you know, and I’m sure you’ve, you’ve had the fun of running into that, because you’ve got, you know, 400 different point of sale solutions that are deployed in different restaurants. And, you know, it shouldn’t be so simple. It’s not, you know, it’s not as high tech, you know, there’s so much legacy tech out there that doesn’t like to play well with others. And, and they struggle. So why don’t we talk down that train of thought and kind of the the, the items that you had to overcome? And what did that look like, because I can only assume we being in restaurant Tech, we have watched it and the legacy platforms that have been out there, you know, it’s tough, it’s tough. And then and then that’s not to mention, the fact that you’ve got, you know, 20 different delivery companies out there that all do something different based on how they, how they deal with it. The second train of thought after we get through with that is that I want to talk about as sometimes I talked with Karl and Meredith, from, you know, the digital restaurant book, the whole idea of operationally how integrating this is going to solve your problem. But talk to me a little bit about the tech side of things because I don’t know, maybe ignorance is bliss, and you just said screw it. I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna solve some friends, you know, solve some problems for people. But, you know, as you’ve gone through it, I’m sure you’d look at the legacy players of a posi touch and aloha micros, you know, and then you’ve got the new newcomers, the toasts, and the, you know, the squares. And, you know, I don’t know, there’s just so many out there. So talk to me a little bit about kind of how that journey journey transpired.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
14:45
I think of a fair point, there was what you mentioned, not knowing the breadth and scope of this head started, right?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
14:54
Because if you didn’t know how, known seven years ago where you were going, maybe you wouldn’t have get started that All thanks. So,
VA
Vishal Agarwal
15:01
but Jeremy, let me let me back up a second and clarify one thing, right? It’s true that the restaurant industry was way behind in adoption of technologies like I come from an E commerce background, like Amazon, you can spin up servers, it doesn’t cost you as much. But as I went through speaking to a lot of restaurant operators, literally pounding the streets and walking in doors, what I realized was, they haven’t adopted technology, because startups like us have burned them.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
15:31
Yep. Oh, yes. Oh, very much. I’m not I’m not saying you guys particularly, but Oh, so many of them have, are so skeptical, because they’ve they’ve had all we’re gonna solve all the world’s problems with technology. And back to something you said very early. And it’s a very common theme on the podcast is, technology needs to solve business problems. technology for technology’s sake is worthless, technology that’s making your life better, easier, faster, smarter, you know, better guests engagement, better staff engagement, is why technology exists. So I’ll let you keep going. Sorry about that. No, absolutely. Exactly.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
16:03
My train of thought is one of our goals here, Jeremy is to become the plumbing of the restaurant industry’s digital operations. Yep. Right. We want to be invisible. We don’t care about being visible. But we want to power it and make your life simple to manage your digital operations overall. Yep. A lot of startups have come the promise the heaven and the earth and then failed to deliver gone out of business in a few months. And these operators and literally, literally playing with fire, every single day, they’re cooking, and they’re handing the technology and handling the staff. So once you burn them two or three times, they don’t be so skeptical about adopting anything new. Yes. That was one of the earliest business philosophies we had is we will have a free trial and a month to month contract. We’re not going to lock down anyone for long term contracts. Because if we can prove ourselves, the restaurant should be able to walk away easy. Yep, absolutely. Right. So we’ve we started with that philosophy of this. We’ve stuck with it right up into today. But I think going in with that mindset helped me like, okay, the restaurant operators are skeptical because they’ve been burned before. Yep, not because they are 20 years behind the knowledge they want, they want
JJ
Jeremy Julian
17:21
the solutions, they genuinely want them, but they want them to work and they want to make their life better. And if you can prove value, they will pay for it. Because it’s it’s hugely valuable.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
17:31
You have to prove your ROI simple. So I think that’s where we started. That’s the approach we went down. And then honestly, as we kept looking at the POS landscape, the legacy POS is to meet with just opportunity. You know, if you can turn those into opportunities and look at them as a way to grow your market share, then that’s what I keep telling our team like, if you’re not here solving difficult problems, then you’re not relevant. Somebody else will come solve them eat your lunch go away. Yeah, no, for sure. I think that’s that’s what’s continued to drive us.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
18:05
Wonderful. So for those that were able to see the photo, or downloaded it from the website, on the audio, only those that watch it on video, you guys will get to see us going through that. But that tablet, hell is an operational problem. I would actually happen to be at an Indian restaurant a couple of weeks ago, with my son after after guitar lessons or whatever. And we were having trouble getting service because the tablets were buzzing. And the staff member was really struggling struggling to understand, do I take care of the tablet? Do I take care of the guests that’s in my dining room? What am I doing, as it relates to that, for those that have not taken this leap? Talk to me about what the engagement looks like and how life changes when you build technology integration between your core point of sale system, how you’re collecting payments and, and ringing things up your kitchen management system, whether that be printing or video, and no longer having tablets and no longer having to have somebody sit and manage it. But having having it go straight through. Talk to me a little bit about what the operator’s experience with the guests experience looks like? How does it change?
VA
Vishal Agarwal
19:10
Sure. Honestly, the guest experience does not change much right? Apart from the fact that they get their food on time. And it’s more accurate. But that’s
JJ
Jeremy Julian
19:18
huge. It’s huge. I was just talking to another brand 70% of their complaints were based on order accuracy online. And you know, from from third party delivery end or first party delivery, seven 0% of their complaints came from that. So just the accuracy is a huge piece of it. So I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cut you off, but it’s huge. Because now you no longer have somebody having to you know from a staff perspective, take that order and translate it. Every hand every different set of hands it touches is an opportunity for error. So I’ll let you finish with with the the guests experience because the guests might not water differently, but their delivery of their food is going to be better.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
19:58
Exactly. See What I meant was, you know, if you’d ordered a week ago and you ordered again today, like perceptively you will see anything, but you expect accuracy, right? But from a staff experience, Jeremy huge. So obviously when when I started, I was doing the sales and onboarding and customer support and all of that. I still remember, you know, freezing snowy January’s standing in the basement of a restaurant here, you know, doing the testing, doing the implementation and making it work. The biggest source of satisfaction was seeing the look on this face of the staff. Like, are you serious that this works like I don’t have to do anything I don’t have to accept, I don’t have to manage the tablet. And the kitchen receipt that prints out is just like as if you punch it in when somebody walked in your kitchen, the efficiency of the kitchen operations actually increases two or 3x. Yes. Right. So but again, you know, coming back to an earlier point, we had to show it like, because they’ve been missing, a lot of people have come and said that they can make my restaurant fly, we haven’t moved an inch to get out. Absolutely fair. But I’m giving this to you as free of cost for one full month. If it doesn’t work, you don’t pay me anything. Even when it does work, you’re only paying me month to month to month. We don’t have an annual payment policy, like we don’t accept annual payments or contracts. But it’s this philosophy that prove your solution out. You know, that’s really helped us get adopted by these operators, at the staff level at the manager level and at the overlap.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
21:49
Yeah, well, and we talked about the guests, but at the staff level, now this, this young lady that was serving us no longer has to manage the difference between one of the four tablets that’s dinging and she probably has the sounds memorized from the DoorDash tablet, to the GrubHub tablet to the UberEATS tablet, she’s got the one memorize that, oh, those guys have a little bit longer time for me to accept it. So I’m going to take care of this cast. Whereas if it was a different one that might cancel the order on them, she’s going to leave me and end up dealing with that cast, I have a very true story that I that I shared with, that I’ve shared with our audience a few times, it’s just, there’s a brand that we won’t go back to anymore because they don’t care. They don’t care about it, the third party delivery was more important than the guest standing in front of them. And it made for a terrible guest experience. So for those guests that are walking in the door, that are there on property, they don’t longer get a second fiddle to this, you know, and again, some brands have done it better than others, some brands will staff it, even in tablet, hell world. Where is it going to shop? Like where’s this world going, because if you’d told me seven years ago, that I was going to pay 30%, more 20% more to order and have it delivered to my house or 50% more in some cases. But my credit card would say different. You know, my credit, my personal credit card would say different if somebody would have told me seven years ago that I was going to order this much takeout and delivery and have it delivered to my house from these third party apps, I wouldn’t have believed it. But clearly the consumer has spoken there, they’re willing to spend the money, they’re willing to spend the energy to go through those different platforms. And tech like yours is helping make it more efficient for restaurants. But where’s it going? Where’s the industry going in your mind? And where do you see that? See that that the future is as you look out, because you’re on kind of the forefront of it and on the front edge of it with with so many others?
VA
Vishal Agarwal
23:36
Sure. I think when we talk about third party apps as a whole, right, how we’ve started viewing this is these are all just digital ordering channels. Right? You know, there’s one of this very prominent and pervasiveness, that third party delivery is evil. They’re here to suck the life and blood out of the restaurant industry. I think that’s a very targeted narrative being peddled by some players for whom it benefits them. And they’ve pitched this as a war of first party versus third party. I think that’s absolutely wrong. And it’s very, very dangerous. Because we’ve had some operators tell us like, Hey, we’re starting of a third party because we have a first party solution. And now all the orders will magically just show up on the first party. And I’m like this could shut down your business like this narrative. Jeremy is something that’s really dangerous that I really don’t subscribe to. I think it’s a matter of first party and third party, which means you use these third party platforms for your marketing purposes. Right now two blocks down from my house me amazing mom and pop shop and another place might go you come to New York, you should try. I would not for the life of me have ever discovered it if it was Uber Eats or DoorDash
JJ
Jeremy Julian
25:00
Yep, right now you’re now in your regular
VA
Vishal Agarwal
25:03
non regular right? Nyah, express amazing Mediterranean food here in New York, I actually discovered it or DoorDash or UberEATS. And now I ordered from them directly. But the point is, these platforms are providing a marketing engine that none of the operators except if you’re a Domino’s or a subways, you can’t do that. But the ones having a quieter customer, whether you’re a one location shop, 1050 100, you need to have your first party solution where your loyal customers can come back in order for me. Yeah, so it’s first party and third party, its marketing and media. It’s not one versus the other. Right, a really bad narrative that’s been going on in this industry. Where I see that evolving even further is there will be more and more digital channels that will become available to the operators. For example, you could order food on your Alexa, right? order food from the Amazon watch DoorDash. And when he’s had a very amazing announcement that you can order Wendy’s through DoorDash while watching TV or your Roku,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
26:14
interesting Oh, yeah, I saw that. I saw that recently. It’s
VA
Vishal Agarwal
26:17
it’s nothing but the pervasiveness of digital channels. So I don’t have to go to an app to order. But I am watching TV I’m on my smartwatch, my Alexa is always on I am watching video games on Twitch, I’ll just be able to order food.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
26:36
I love it. I love that concept I do. I do think that that’s going to continue to be there. And I think consumers, I think consumers are going to continue in restaurants, restaurant tours need to figure out how to serve those guests. If, if they choose to, you know, I’m guessing the Ruth’s Chris of the of the world, most likely are not going to continue to grow that through the Alexa but Chipotle or Wendy’s, or, you know, five guys, those guys are gonna, those guys are going to continue to double down in those worlds. You know, and allow for people to order through whatever it means they want the Apple Watch the Alexa, you know, their phone, a full browser. Yeah, I was talking to somebody recently about the whole idea of even group ordering. And I think the idea of group voting, talk to me a little bit about group ordering. So you know, we’re all hanging out watching football on a Sunday afternoon. And we want to order from Buffalo Wild Wings. But I want my traditional buffalo wings, you want yours with barbecue, my wife wants to lemon pepper. Today in that world with third party delivery or even first party delivery, it turns into this. This like, Oh, let me pass my phone around the room and let people order on my phone, versus being able to send out links and talk to me a little bit about where you see that going?
VA
Vishal Agarwal
27:43
Sure. I love that. You mentioned one of our brands, one of our clients. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Jamie, if you don’t mind, there’s one other interesting screen that we haven’t talked about. Absolutely. We always talk about our TV, we talk about our laptops, we talk about a full your screen in the car, I think is the next frontier.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
28:09
Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I can see it. I haven’t been tested. And I happen to be a Tesla driver, which I can’t wait to do that. Because well, and I do see, you know, and I have this philosophy and one of my friends who has been in the restaurant industry for a long time. If I said to you, what do you order from that empanada place? If I say do you want to go to the empanada place, you’re gonna pick one of three items. And if you don’t feel like that, you’re gonna say no, I don’t want to go to that empanada place. They might have 30 empanadas on their menu, but you’re gonna think about the one to three that you want. And do I want that we are creatures of habit as humans and you’re going to, you know, this, this might not I mean, it’s at that same Indian restaurant that I was telling you the story with my son the other day. I thought I wondered, you know, kind of the very American you know, chicken tikka masala. I happened to have ordered paneer masala on accident. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that until the food Shut up. And I’m like, This doesn’t taste like my normal chicken tikka masala. But it was a new Indian restaurant that I’d never been to before. And I looked at the menu and I just kind of said, oh, I want that. And later, I’m churching on my phone. What is paneer? I didn’t even know what premiere was I thought it was, you know, again, I thought I had because the lady walked up and says, you know, printer, but at the end of the day, I think we as humans are going to be creatures of habit. So back to the phone. Right now. My Tesla. When I get into my car, if I get in my car in the morning, it says you’re going to work. If I get in my car in the afternoon and it sees an appointment for my son’s baseball game. It starts to navigate me to his baseball game. Why is it not going to be the same thing? When I get into my car? My iPhone does the same thing where it’s like, Oh, you must be going here. Or you know, and so I can fully see that the car giving me recommendations and suggestions that says you typically order Chipotle on Tuesday nights. Do you want me to put in the same order as last time or do you want to modify it? You know what I’m picking triple tape I know it’s not one of your brands, but just you know, in general.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
30:02
Exactly. We don’t we’re creatures of habit, you know? Have you watched the Big Bang Theory? Yes, Sheldon is not that different from us, we think of him as an oddball creature. But think about it Thursday night to pizza nights, you know, it is what it is Tuesday night and laundry night. So we are creatures of habit. And when you get in your car in the evening, and they say, Hey, this is Wednesday night, and you’d like to, you know, order from this place. Would you like to just repeat your order? You say yes. And it goes through? You know, I think that’s the next frontier. But where I’m thinking this is going is these are all just digital channels. And we want to be here is the infrastructure, the pipeline that is that manages all of these digital channels, and funnels them right into the core heart of a kitchen operations. Yeah. So that the restaurant operator, whether it’s a one location, mom and pop shop, or 1000, location chain, they don’t have to worry about onboarding with different solutions. They can just automatically be present where the customers are first. Yeah, yep. Right. Because I think this idea of going to an app to order food is going to it’s going to stay. But now the food is going to come to you where you are to tell you like, hey, been watching this video game for three hours? Are you hungry?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
31:31
Yeah. Well, and I think I think back to back to that idea that, you know, we are pretty attached to our phones. But as we are starting to get wiser about that and be where people are, I think at the end of the day, if that means that, you know, it’s just all of these digital channels, whether that’s the phone, whether that’s the TV, whether that’s your computer screen, whether that’s your tablet, or your car. Talk to me a little bit about the consolidation in the industry. There’s been quite a bit of consolidation, Restaurant Brands are consolidating technology companies are consolidating point of sale companies are consolidating? Do you think that’s good for consumers? Do you think that’s bad for consumers? Is that good for tech, bad for tech? Talk to me a little bit about about what that looks like. Because I think at the end of the day, it creates opportunities. And I’d love to know your opinion and thoughts on it. Sure.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
32:21
You know, when we started out, we were trying to raise funds. One thing that we kept hearing from almost every VC is, you know, there’s going to be consolidation in the space, are you going to be relevant anymore? Right. And my only response to that was, you know, the restaurant industry, the food industry, whatever you want to call it, it’s no different from any other industry, just in a different life site. Right? So there’s going to be consolidation. You’re not really Nostradamus, like you’re not predicting something that no one has ever seen before. I wouldn’t give you credit for is if you tell me when that consolidation is going to happen. Don’t tell me the server is going to set tell me the exact time the server is going to send because we all know the sun is going to say,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
33:10
yeah, exactly right. Well, and even in even in the case of what you guys are doing, it’s a checkmate. You have multiple competitors in the space. So there’s constantly going to be people that are going, so this brand is going to consolidate, and somebody’s going to come in behind them and backfill that space, even during COVID. And everything coming out of COVID. I was in New York in January, for the first time since before COVID. And while there was still you know, quite a bit of stuff shut down. I was blown away with how resilient it was. Because at least when you look at the news media, that places it goes down, and nobody’s you know, there’s all 80% of the restaurants have shut down in New York. And at the end of the day, humans are resilient, they’re gonna go back to doing these things, you know, and again, even 20 years ago, somebody told me there was an empanada place, or like, what’s an empanada? But now that that’s like a huge, huge, you know, so I love it. So I’m gonna, we’re gonna wrap up here in just a few minutes for show, but talk to me a little bit about your product. Talk to me a little bit about your product. Where’s the product going? You know, you guys started, you know, seven years ago, you guys have been building this platform for quite some time. You’re new, you’re looking to be the plumbing between the different pieces of tech that are out there, the the ordering platforms and the and the technology in the store. But where are you guys going? You guys just had a had a recent release. I’d love to have you talk about that for a few minutes.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
34:24
Absolutely. where we’re going. They shouldn’t even as cliche as it may sound is continuing to solve actual operator problems. We do not want to be the people sitting behind computers building technology for technology’s sake. Exactly. We discussed in this recent release the pad with DoorDash. You know, after speaking with multiple operators, they said you know, the integration is great, but we need better reporting. We need better control over our digital orders. lodash was extremely great in working with us building out that API. So We can serve up these reports in a ready to consume manner to these operators. We also, you know, again, listening more and more to these operators, they said it’s like the same problem in your life, you have one problem, that’s a really big problem. And once you solve it, then the next biggest problem, because the biggest problem absolutely right, we’ve, we’ve kind of solved this tablet health problem. But then they say, the the the financial statements that we receive from these third party platforms, it never matches up to what shows up in my bank account. Yeah, like I have to connect those. So we have a product called accounting reconciliation that helps them do exactly this. It unifies all of the orders, the summaries from each of these platforms, and ties them all the way to the POS into the bank account. And then we have our marketplace. So we’ve obviously built integration with over 50 Different POS. We’ve released marketplace as a really easy to consume API’s for developers to develop on top of it online ordering channels to develop on top of it, so that they can get easy access to these 52 pos and with very, very simple distribution. Right, so they don’t have to go building about, you know, there may be a really good delivery service in southern Florida. But if you go and sell your service to a restaurant operator and said I want to put a tablet in your location right now, in 2023, they will be shown the door. Yeah. What we are doing your Jeremy is we’re flipping the model on its head and say we don’t care how many customers you have. Come work with us build the integration and then go out and sell your product.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
36:41
Yeah, so they they have their go to market strategy ends up being fully baked rather than a point solution. That’s just the tablet going in there to have a bunch of numbers, you’re
VA
Vishal Agarwal
36:50
developing an app for Apple watch or a smartwatch, right. And let’s just go to an operator and say, Hey, I will give you 10 orders a week. But you’ll have to put this tablet on your shelf, it’s not going to fly. But we’re saying is build your app, they’ll be integration with us, then go out and sell. So we are the ones doing the rest, because we are putting in the effort to work with that developer to build that channel out a lot. So that’s how we’re helping, you know, hopefully grow the adoption of Digital Champions in this industry.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
37:26
I love it. I love it. I’m gonna throw a curveball at you real quick, just because this is a common thing that we get from people. How do I update my third party delivery with what products are available, what my pricing is, without having to manage two and three and four and five and six and eight and 20? different websites? You know, I mean, whether it’s the the countdown 86, that I’ve only got 10 Salmon specials left? Or it’s the the price on, you know, might be from, you know, beef short ribs went up by $3. Today, how have you guys solve that challenge? Because I do think that that is some of the reluctance for people to even get into multiple third party delivery. Yes, platform. So I’d love to, I’d love to have you talk about how tech can help solve that. Sure.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
38:10
It’s a core part of a solution. So we not only integrate the orders from the third parties, but I think a huge part of the solution to provide a steak in the menu. With your POS and syncing it up all to all of the various third party platforms, we have two different kinds of integration. Either you can do it directly on your POS, or you can do it from a web based portal that we have, where you can update your price. You can update the availability, you can add an item, you push a button, and it goes out to all of the delivery platforms in one go. Not every but we’re now starting to talk about as digital channels you want. Yeah.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
38:46
Because it’s not just delivery, it’s not catering to the pickup. Yeah, it could be
VA
Vishal Agarwal
38:51
yassky, it could be your tea table, whatever digital channel you own. And our business model supports that. Because we don’t keep charging you more and more for every integration that you have. It’s a flat monthly price per month per location. So we are encouraging and hopefully pushing the ball forward in helping the adoption of these digital channels with restaurant operators of all sizes.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
39:13
I love it. So I’m not five guys. I’m not running an IT shop that’s got you know, more employees than most of these mom and pops have How do we engage with the team and it’s a checkmate? How do I learn more about how you know, I’ve got tablet health today. I’m a restaurant chair. I’m sitting here listening to the restaurant technology, guys. I’ve said you know what I gotta have it’s checkmate. These guys have sold me that this is something I need. What does engagement look like? What can I expect from your team? As they start to work with them to understand how do I get it integrated back to my opponents up?
VA
Vishal Agarwal
39:41
Phone number is listed on our website. Not very deep on customer support and a CISM is the first thing that you will see on the top of our website once you go there. Call us email us at hello to checkmate my email id is Vishal added to checkmate.com engage in any which way you want our folks is here again, like I said, It’s hardcore built into a business model that we have to prove out our solution to you. I know we don’t have time to go into the length of the onboarding process. But we don’t own a single any from you if you don’t continue our solution. And if we don’t continue to service you month on month, you can cancel at any time. So reach out, get a free trial, see where the rubber meets the road, it actually works and the tickets fit in your kitchen printer. That’s it. That’s the bottom line are the tickets printed in my kitchen printer? Right? That’s the service and promises stand behind.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
40:35
I love it. I love it. And so for our listeners, guys, I know many guys will hit me up at trade shows and tell me I didn’t even know that this existed. I didn’t even know that something like this was out there. Which is part of why we do this podcast is to share products like what you guys have out there. So what you guys are online checking out, it’s a checkmate. You know, I’m going to still go I’m gonna go see what checkmate.com is the you know, the tuner $1,000 website, you know, you’re gonna go figure out what that means. But, but while you guys are online, check it out. It’s checkmate. Please go like and subscribe to the podcast. So you guys get new episodes every time. If you haven’t already. Done your review on your favorite podcast player, it helps others find about the show. Go share it with some friends. For shell, thank you so much for talking about your origin story, what you guys are doing to solve restaurant challenges. It’s so much fun to talk restaurant tech. And I’ve been a huge fan since you guys started and I know you and I talk pre show with with some of your some of your team. So it’s it’s fun to have you on the on the show to talk about all of the success that you guys have found.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
41:36
Thank you, Jamie really appreciate the opportunity to come here and speak about themselves.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
41:39
Awesome, awesome. And to our listeners, guys, we know that you guys have lots of choices. So we appreciate you guys spending an hour with us each week when we post one of these episodes, for sure. Have a fantastic day and to our audience make it a great day.
VA
Vishal Agarwal
41:52
Thank you Take care.
I
Intro
41:54
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
