In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael0Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Jeff Handler, chief executive officer and President at Hopdoddy Burger Bar & HiBar Hospitality Group.Handler grew up in the business, he has been in the industry for more than thirty years. He shared, “My dad was a tavern owner and growing up, if I wanted to spend time with my dad that meant kind of sometimes early mornings and weekends hanging out at the tavern picking quarters out of booth seats and cleaning the grill and cleaning beer lines and emptying pool tables.” Handler joined Hopdoddy Burger Bar in 2016 as CEO and in 2021 he was also named CEO of HiBar Hospitality, a growth-focused umbrella company owned by L Catterton that in 2022 completed its first acquisition, Grub Burger Bar.The guys ask Handler about Hopdoddy and he says, “I don't care what you call us as long as you call us the best burger place you've ever been to.” He adds, “That's what we aspire to do. Hopdoddy plays in the better burger space. We look to be disruptive and really rethinking, reshaping kind of what a better burger joint looks like and acts like.” Hopdoddy is based out of Austin, Texas and currently has 50 locations really from coast to coast.Handler talks about what differentiates Hopdoddy and says, “So what makes Hopdoddy different I think it's that we really are open minded to what a burger is. Most people just think it's a bun and meat and some toppings and we look at it as a vessel for flavors. Anything that we can grind, grill, we're going to make a burger out of it and so we've done some pretty cool creative things with different proteins.”Off-premise is a focus topic on this show and Handler shares his tips and some recommendations for operators that may still be struggling since the pandemic. Handler said, what they learned quickly was they could be profitable, they could take care of the guests and they could take care of the team members by getting them back to work. Hopdoddy’s off-premise business was about 12% and post-pandemic is now at 40%. To hear about the founders of Hopdoddy and how Hopdoddy’s tackled engineering the food for takeout plus experience, check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” bring you this episode from FSTEC. They chat with Daran Han, Cargill Digital Business Studio Lead, Stacey Hey, Digital Product Owner of Kitchen Blueprint, Jessica Stanchfield, Digital Product Owner of Hot Take and Nate Shrader, Digital Product Owner of Chekt. Cargill Digital Business Studios is a startup studio backed by Cargill investment and expertise, designed to incubate and scale digital businesses within Cargill that address the most urgent problems facing our global food and agriculture system, now and into the future. Han says, “over the last couple decades we've really kind of doubled down around investing in new solutions and integrating the way that we bring our entire offerings to our customers.” He added, “so we're kind of found on the history of entrepreneurship over the last 165 years as we think about what's ahead for us and we look at the environment that we serve and agri-food everything we're seeing is a digital disruption starting to come in and impact the environment that we operate in and as Cargill we're investing in a digital business studio.” Han explains that it is a place where they incubate and build new businesses from the ground up, meshing the capabilities, expertise and the resources at Cargill, doing good work to impact the environment. Stacey Hey, the digital product owner of Kitchen Blueprint stops by to talk with the guys. Kitchen Blueprint creates transparency with data and insights to show where costs are going, where loss is happening and how processes can be more efficient across the back-of-house. Hey says that, “there's a whole host of new opportunities that come to bear whether that be optimization of profits. Whether that be reduction of labor reliance. Whether that be whole new opportunities to automate areas of the restaurant they otherwise would not have gone or would have gone undiscovered so that's really the heart of what we focused on.” Digital product owner, Jessica Stanchfield of Hot Take, the food-focused research platform that connects businesses to their customers stops by to chat with the guys. Stanchfield says that Hot Take is an innovation and insights platform. They bring the consumer voice and insights into the innovation process and that they are critical to making better business decisions. Checkt’s digital product owner Nate Shrader stops by to talk about Chekt, a contactless food pickup system designed to meet the demands of high-volume foodservice environments. Shrader says, “it's a modular smart food locker solution designed to transform take out and pick up for restaurants and really anyone who is a really high congested food service provider. So stadiums, colleges, and universities as well.”To hear customer stories from each of the guests plus the quickfire questions from Texas, check out this episode Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” were on the road and with a special edition live from FSTEC in Dallas. Andy Freivogel is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Science On Call. He has over twenty-five years experience in both technology and retail. He also spent years creating specialized data networks and systems for end-user support in the residential digital services arena. Freivogel stops by to talk to the guys about the show, Innovation Alley and Science On Call, a tech support platform for restaurants. Freivogel says that the theme of the show is optimism and enthusiasm, people are happy to be back. CEO of Copia, Kimberly Smith stops by and chats with the guys. Copia’s technology allows businesses to safely donate their excess food to nonprofits and access tax deductions. Copia is helping the industry track food waste. Smith shares that Copia has just closed a Pre-Series A with Branded Strategic. Smith says from an operation standpoint they are continuing to grow. She adds that operators that are not focusing on solutions to donate their waste are missing out on tax benefits. Stephanie Sollers, CEO at Virtual Dining Concepts, stops by and talks about the new brick-and-mortar launch of MrBeast Burger. Virtual Dining Concepts creates large virtual brands with celebrities, media companies and influencers, helping them expand their businesses into the food category. Sollers says the ethos of the company is to bring these concepts into restaurants and kitchens that have extra capacity. Chris Keating, EVP at Winsight comes by to talk about this year's FSTEC. The show had over 700 operators. They talk about the panel CEO’s in the hot seat, and Keating says that chief executive officers are technology professionals now.To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by to chat with Schatzberg and Frischling at FSTEC, check out this episode Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Jay Fiske, President of Powerhouse Dynamics, a Middleby Company while in Dallas at the FSTEC Conference. As president Fiske is responsible for leading all strategic and day-to-day company operations. He is a technology executive and investor with over twenty years of experience building businesses and innovative technology products to market. Fiske says, “Powerhouse Dynamics, we are a Boston based technology firm and we are the folks behind the open kitchen internet of things platform. We help large multi-site restaurant operators manage their critical infrastructure more efficiently, save money on energy, reduce risk on food safety, help make sure all their cooking equipment is up and running and producing high- quality products.” He adds, “So think about this as the internet of things. The critical back of house infrastructure and you know driving those kinds of efficiency that this visibility and control and connectability suddenly affords these multi-site operators.” Restaurants can use Open Kitchen to connect, analyze, and control equipment like refrigeration, HVAC as well as a large range of kitchen equipment brands to automate essential facility functions. The guys ask Fiske, “can you share with our listeners about what Open Kitchen is doing to help operators maintain their equipment before they even break and have issues? And the importance of what we're learning from you is the smart kitchen.” Fiske says as Open Kitchen integrates with different types of equipment and makes and models, the business case for connectivity really varies by the kind of equipment. There is a common theme across all equipment for uptime and maintenance. Fiske says Open Kitchen can give operators insights to the data and all you to be proactive on prioritizing any issues. Schatzberg makes a point and says that what he really loves about Open Kitchen is that it can integrate with equipment from many manufactures, not just Middleby. Fiske says that when operators are integrating with Open Kitchen that their data can not be shared with anyone else. Frischling talks about how data is a hot topic and asks Fiske, “Can you share the role that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) generated data is playing with Powerhouse Dynamics Open Kitchen and how is it helping everyone?” Fiske says that they provide the infrastructure to get all the raw data to the cloud and it is creating the business tools around the data for effective outcomes. To hear about the foodservice feud plus Frischling and Schatzberg answer to the talking back question, where they see automation going in foodservice, check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Robert Irvine, world-class chef, fitness authority, philanthropist and restaurateur. Irvine has appeared or hosted in several shows on television, including Food Network’s Worst Cooks in America, Next Iron Chef, Restaurant Express, Chopped: Impossible, Guy’s Grocery Games: Impossible, A Hero’s Welcome, Food Network Star, ABC’s Body of Proof, ABC Family’s Melissa and Joey plus more. Irvine is known for his support for our nation’s military and believes that his success would not be possible without the men and women that so bravely defend our freedoms. Frischling asks Irvine to share how he got started in food and he says, “so basically eleven years old I started to cook in home economics class at school because there were thirty girls and me and I thought what a great way to get a girlfriend.” He adds, “I made my first Quiche Lorraine, I took it home and realized that pastry, egg, a little bacon, onion, some garlic and cheese made a meal that somebody would be really happy.” Irvine at fifteen years old said he joined the military. When Irvine was nine years old he said he had become a sailor, now he cooks. He says, “food to me is the ultimate passion job, a lifestyle, whatever you want to call it because it affects so many other people.”Irvine for many years was involved with the Gary Sinise foundation. Schatzberg asks Irvine about the Robert Irvine Foundation which Irvine founded in 2014 to support the veterans and veteran causes that need the most help. Irvine says,” I wanted my focus to be so strategic on food fitness, mental fitness and physical fitness. So pretty much everything to do with physical and mental health. He says about the foundation “that there's just a whole bunch of things that we do but mainly to give freedom back to those that have lost it.”Irvine talks about not being a fan of virtual kitchens but after a meeting with Robert Earl of Virtual Dining Concepts, he has converted. Virtual Dining Concepts and Irvine teamed up to create Robert Irvine’s American Heroes, a virtual sandwich brand that will have a direct impact on supporting our nation’s military heroes. The guys ask Irvine about Irvine Spirits in partnership with Boardroom Spirits, creators of handcrafted vodka, rum, whiskey, and more. He talks about hand picking the botanicals himself for Irvine Spirits. To hear more about Irvine’s many successful businesses, his dedication and passion for supporting the military and his FitCrunch Campaign, check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.

This month on Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” are taking a break from their usual interview episodes and bringing you a Best Of season of all your favorite segments. They bring back “Best Of” old favorites such as “Which Came First” and “The Crystal Ball Moment.”In this episode they feature a Best Of Who Would You Beat Quickfire question with special guest and Co Founder & CEO at Chowly, Inc., Sterling Douglass. Schatzberg and Frischling would ask each guest who they would choose to have better odds of beating in a selected game. Frischling says, “It is by far the funniest question, and one where I will say, I hold the record as the stronger competitor over Schatzy. We’ve had funny answers throughout the season such as Schatzy being compared to a skinny can of shaken soda waiting to pop.” Schatzberg asks Douglass, “If you were to challenge Jimmy or I to a game of Paintball, who do you have the better odds of beating?” Douglass answers definitely Jimmy. You can check out the best of episode to hear Steven Simoni who at the time was the chief executive officer at Bbot choose who he would have the better odds in beating at Scrabble. Michael Jacober, CEO of Blanket gets asked about Clue, Clockedin’s chief executive officer, Eric Smith’s question was a round of bowling. Smith sounds like he was going to choose Frischling but picks Schatzberg. To hear all of the best of who would you beat answers to the questions they asked CEO of Ingest, Daniel Meth’s challenge response to Slip N’ Slide, Targetable, CEO, Andrew Nash pick his odds for Gin Rummy, Minnow’s CEO, Steven Sperry’s choice for Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, who Mighty Quinn Barbeque’s co-ceo, Micha Magid picks for Pin The Tail On The Donkey, Josh Goodman, chief executive office of PourMyBeer answer for thumb war and Dispatch Goods CEO Lindsey Hoell gets asked who she has better odds of beating at Yahtzee. Ivan Matkovic, CEO of Spendgo gets asked who he would have better odds of beating in a game of risk. Matkovic picks Schatzberg. Tune in to hear the challenges and learn who Scott Siegel, chief executive officer from Curbit, Clayton Wood, CEO of Picnic, Rob Carpenter of Valyant AI, Kimberly Smith, chief executive officer of Copia, Taj Adhav CEO of Leascake, Zack Oates, Ovation CEO, Brandon Barton, CEO of Bite, Gary Goodman CEO of Yumpingo and Agot.AI CEO, Evan DeSantola on this best of episode on Hospitality Hangout.

This month on Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” are taking a break from their usual interview episodes and bringing you a Best Of season of all your favorite segments. They bring back “Best Of” old favorites such as “Top of the Tech Stack” and “Which Came First.”In this episode they feature a Best Of Top Of The Tech Stack with special guest, Sterling Douglass, Co Founder & CEO at Chowly, Inc. Top of the Tech Stack first made an appearance in season 2 and held up strong through season 6. Branded is all about the tech stack, each guest who played “Top of the Tech Stack” was asked, what areas of hospitality technology would they recommend that operators have on the top of their tech stacks?

This month on Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” are taking a break from their usual interview episodes and bringing you a Best Of season of all your favorite segments. They bring back “Best Of” old favorites such as “Best of On The Road” and “Top of the Tech Stack.”In this episode they feature a Best Of Which Came First with special guest and Co Founder & CEO at Chowly, Inc., Sterling Douglass. Frischling says, “the idea for this segment came about over a common joke that the only other industry slower to embrace technology behind hospitality is coal mining. This got them thinking, is hospitality that far behind or actually ahead of the game? Each guest on Season 6 got to take their very best guess on whether hospitality was ahead of the game, or not, in a string of fun questions.Here are a few of the Best of Questions: Which came first, the first online pizza hut delivery order or the first online amazon order?Which came first, the digital menu board or the first digital billboard?Which came first, the restaurant drive-thru or the bank drive-thru?Which came first, the automated baggage claim at airports or the supermarket conveyor belt checkout lane?Which came first, the ability to make a restaurant reservation online or the ability to make an airline reservation online?Which came first, the car wash or the dishwasher?The first question went to Evan DeSantola, CEO of Agot. Which came first, the restaurant drive-thru or the bank drive-thru? The answer is the bank drive-thru. Schatzberg says the first drive-thru in America was Hillcrest State Bank out of Dallas, Texas in 1930. It was Harry and Esther Snyder, of the In-N-Out Burger chain that built the first drive-through restaurant in 1948. Fun fact, so In-N-Out because the restaurant name promised exactly what it delivered: In-N-Out.The guys close out the Which Came First episode with Robert Earl, Co-founder of Virtual Dining Concepts and Chairman of Earl Enterprises. Earl’s question was which came first, the clothing iron or the waffle iron? The answer is the waffle iron. The waffle iron was created in 1869, by Cornelius Swartwout of Troy, N.Y. The Clothing Iron was not invented for another 13 years when Henry W. Seely patented his electric flatiron on June 6, 1882. To hear the questions they asked Lindsey Hoell, Founder & CEO of Dispatch Goods, Alonso Castañeda, VP of Brand Development & Strategy at Savory Restaurant Fund, Scott Siegel Co-Founder & CEO of Curbit, Tim McLaughlin, CEO of GoTab, Jon Sherman, Co-Founder and CEO of Sticky’s Finger Joint, John DiLoreto, President of Flipdish US, Danny Klein, Editorial Director at Food News Media, Scott Gladstone, SVP Strategy & Innovation at Dine Brands and Kimberly Smith, CEO of Copia , check out this best of episode on Hospitality Hangout.

This month on Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” are taking a break from their usual interview episodes and bringing you a Best Of season of all your favorite segments. They bring back “Best Of” old favorites such as “The Crystal Ball Moment” and “Top Of Tech Stack.”In this episode they feature a Best Of On The Road with special guest and Co Founder & CEO at Chowly, Inc., Sterling Douglass. The guys said they have been fortunate to have been able to record the show on site at industry trade shows like Winsight, EnsembleIQ, The Spoon, Franchise Times, and Networld Media Group. Schatzberg says that the show offers a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends and gain insights plus create new connections. Frischling gives some takeaways for this Best Of On The Road episode, saying technology, innovation, virtual and ghost kitchens are here to stay, it is incredible to be back in person and connecting for the first time with clients and co-workers, off-premise is still a big topic plus food tech and the way we eat is heading to a new era. They kick off with Wade Allen, SVP Head of Innovation at Brinker International and Derek Canton, Founder of Paerpay for the first on the road episode at 2021 FSTEC. Allen, when asked about what he is looking to learn from the show replies he is looking to find inspiration and to see who is doing something different. He is also looking for the evolution of tech and how it changes his environment. Canton says how it is like being in the middle of the action being on the floor of the marketplace with innovation alley. Next Schatzberg talks about the 2021 Food on Demand Conference in Las Vegas where they ask Trish Giordano, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Earl Enterprises what she has learned from the show and what’s everyone talking about. Giordano says, the big thing is relationships. She said that the most important thing is all of the new technology companies that have come to market, especially with the labor shortages. Through tech you can create efficiencies for restaurants. She added, everyone is talking about virtual brands. In this Best Of Talking Back Series you hear from Steve Heeley, CEO of Poke Works and Dirk Izzo, President & GM of NCR Hospitality at the the 2021 Restaurant Leadership Conference, Michael Wolf, Founder & CEO & Editor in Chief at The Spoon from CES show, Phil Crawford, CTO at CKE Restaurants and Astric Isaacs, CTO at Bloomin’s Brands both judges of the MURTEC Start-Up Alley all offering insights to the shows. Plus check out what Laura Rea Dickey, of Dickey’s BBQ and Josh Halpern, CEO of Big Chicken and Beer Park have to say from the Restaurant Franchise and Innovation Summit. They wrap up the On The Road episode with Alyssa Abraham, Digital Innovation Lead at Cargill and April Rogers, Director of Off-Premise and Guest Relations at Ruby Tuesday. To hear all of the insights and recaps from the industry trade shows, check out this best of episode on Hospitality Hangout.

This month on Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” are taking a break from their usual interview episodes and bringing you a Best Of season of all your favorite segments. They bring back “Best Of” old favorites such as “Top of the Tech Stack” and “The Branded Quickfire.”In this episode they feature a Best Of Talking Back with special guest and Co Founder & CEO at Chowly, Inc., Sterling Douglass. When Schatzberg and Frischling started Hospitality Hangout podcast to talk to people in the industry, they quickly learned that their guests had questions for them as well. They created Talking Back to give their guests the opportunity to ask them questions. This episode shares several great questions from many industry leaders. David Bloom, Chief Development and Operating officer at Capriotti’s and Wing Zone had a three part question. He asked, “What are you the most excited about for the future of tech?” Frischling answered he was most excited and loves the optionality and the large “menu” of tech available to operators. Bloom also asked, “What is the biggest lever a brand can pull to position themselves ahead of the curve?” Frischling said that the biggest lever would be to leverage AI and automation to address the issue of labor shortage and that he’s interested in a combination of data and analytics dominated decision making. Marty Hahnfeld, Chief Customer Officer at Olo was a guest on season 4 and he asked, “What is one thing that is a normal part of the restaurant experience today that will be gone in 5 years?” Schatzberg answered, Handwriting menus and written reservation books will be a thing of the past. Everything will be done on mobile. Also the idea of walking into a McDonalds and an employee asking what you would like, that will become fully automated. When Anand Gala, Managing Partner at Gala Capital Partners asked, “What does Branded think about restaurant companies buying tech companies?” Frischling believes no one size fits all and that there are opportunities for restauranteurs to be good investors in tech companies, as well as good clients in tech companies. It depends on the company goals. Schatzberg said being a good customer is key, but maybe as a defensive measure, a restaurant could invest in a company to stop it from going exclusively to a competitor. To hear Dan Rowe, CEO of Fransmart ask about trends, CEO of Piestro, Massimo Noja De Marco’s question about helping smaller operators and Steven Elinson, Head of Worldwide Business Development, Restaurant, Catering and Food Service Industries for Amazon Web Services ask about opening a new restaurant during the pandemic plus get the guy’s answers, check out this best of episode on Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” are bringing their listeners a “Best Of” season series with all of your favorite segments. Frischling says, “ We are bringing back Best OF old favorites such as Top of the Tech Stack and Which Came First as well as tried and true favorites Talking back and The Crystal Ball Moment. And of course – we can’t leave out the most popular segment (at least according to Schatzy…) The Branded Quickfire.” This episode features the Best of The Crystal Ball moments, with special guest, the Amazing Kreskin. They ask their guests to put on their “Kreskin Hat” and predict the future as it relates to hospitality and technology. And now I’m going to ask you the same question. Where do you see hospitality and technology in 2 years from now?Hospitality Hangout kicks off the Best Of with Brian Anton, Managing Director at Citi, who was the first official guest to get the official Crystal Ball moment on season one, episode ten. Anton’s response to the question was, “People will want to go back to dining in person… and experience more valuable 2 years from now. People will want to be with their friends and share terrific experiences. BUT behaviors for dining in person will shift as customers now value convenience and technology. Friction points around health and speed will shift – fewer menus will be printed… it will be easier to pre-pay… and more menus will be on the phone.” The next guest Andrew Smith, Managing Director of the Savory Fund, answered the question and said, Restaurants will strengthen their foundation, have a better tech stack, more touchless, less interaction with humans. On the menu side…food qualities will improve and we’ll see more foreign ingredients. On the experience side…. People will enjoy being together in person…. He believes everyone wants to get back in person and restaurants will thrive better than ever.Kimberly Grant who is now with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts as the Global Head of Restaurants and Bars at the time of the episode she was with FAST Acquisition Group, said during her crystal ball moment, there will be continued blurred lines between fast casual and dining. Think of a food hall with a diverse business model. Her prediction is that hotels, movie theaters and retail are going to move to new models in how they serve food – whether that is operating something similar to food halls, or host virtual kitchens or allowing outside food via delivery. Lines blurred in how we consume and source our food and experiences. Also hopefully that restaurants can still provide beverage experiences through delivery. To hear all of the guests' crystal ball moments, including Robert Earl owner of Earl Enterprises, Brita Rosen Partner at Culterra Capital and Bryan Solar, General Manager of Restaurants at Square check out this best of episode on Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Taj Adhav, chief executive officer at Leasecake, a platform that lets tenants, brokers and landlords manage location-related services, ranging from lease management to lease accounting to insurance agreements. Adhav shares his background and says, “So you know, first generation kid, youngest son of an immigrant family. My parents said hey you better get into business so I was a CPA for fifteen years, big four, spent a decade at Disney as an imagineer being involved in lots of large scale commercial projects, hotels, restaurants and business launches. One of them was the Disney Cruise line billion dollar project and launching a couple of cruise ships with that business. A phenomenal kind of experience and I decided I needed to repot myself so I joined a small tech company.”Leasecake was started over a cup of coffee at a diner, says Adhav. “After a great ride of successes and failures in life I met a gentleman in the commercial real estate space and he looks at me and he's managing this really large commercial real estate portfolio $50 million probably 50 tenants and nine buildings and he said to me, he's like listen you're a business guy and you're a tech guy, I'm losing track of things. I'm losing track of rent increases and lease expirations renewals and month-to-month rents. And he's like we should build an app,” Adhav shares. Jim Banks, the co-founder and Adhav’s idea while meeting over coffee created Leasecake, an operating system for location management and the reason it’s called Leasecake is because it is so easy. Frischling says, what they love so much about Leasecake is that Adhav was highlighting the fact that they have applied a tech solution to an otherwise antiquated model. He adds, “So many small and mid-sized property owners for all intensive purposes forgotten about when it comes to creating a solution to organize tenant leases and get ready folks. Nearly 80% of the one trillion dollar global rental market falls into that category.”Adhav is asked about how Leasecake is truly a solution for the multi-unit restaurant and food service operator. He says, “It's having the most accurate accessible answers in something that's easy to use and that allows them to stay focused on running an amazing restaurant experience not to be sidetracked by some time wasting effort because some permits have not been established or understanding.”To hear more about managing your commercial lease portfolio, learn about the other tools Leasecake offers and winning Techstars, check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Stratis Morfogen, Book Author and Co-Founder of Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, to discuss Dons, dumplings, and disruption.Frischling asks Morfogen about his background in the industry. Morfogen shares that although he has owned Chinese restaurants for the last 17 years he actually grew up in a typical Greek family. He talks about his family of restauranteurs running 14 different restaurants when he was a child, including the Chelsea Chop House which his father owned. The guys talk about Morfogen’s concept for Brooklyn Chop House and his commitment to creating a menu that he says, “married Beijing Chinese food to an American steakhouse and I made both cultures true to each other.” He talks about innovating the restaurant's appetizer selection by reinventing and reimagining two subcategories: dumplings and sandwiches. He says, “Everything that was once a sandwich I converted it into a dumpling.” He adds, “When we opened in 2018, we doubled our projections, the restaurant just went gangbusters and everyone was ordering a bunch of dumplings.”The guys talk about Morfogen’s new book and his unique pastime as a child. Morfogen shares that as early as age 6, he was hanging out with mobsters at the Fulton Fish Market. He talks about even declining trips to Disney with his siblings so that he could spend time with his dad a the infamous fish market which happened to be run by Alphonse "Allie Shades" Malangone of the Genovese crime family, or “uncle” as a young Morfogen would come to know him by. Morfogen talks about seeing the hustle and bustle of the scene and learning a lot there that he says, “they’re just not gonna teach you in school.” He adds, “My father didn't hide it from me, you know, and I believe that was one of the greatest things he did for me because he really grew me up quickly and basically showed me the real world at a very early age.” Morfogen's experience includes running nightclubs, and 40 restaurants on his own, and becoming a published author. When asked about his new book, he says, “I got to tell you for the last twenty years people would say, “you got to write a book, you got to write a book” and this is what I did with Simon and Schuster, I wrote ‘Be a Disruptor.’”Morfogen talks about the recent MURTEC conference where he was a guest speaker. He tells the guys that one of the members of the audience addressed him with profanity and accused him of stealing jobs. Instead of shying away from the subject, Morfogen decided to use the platform to provide education and insights. He shares that the person was referring to automation. Morfogen explains that he didn’t create automat for safety, it was created for economics and efficiencies because the number one reason a majority of restaurants go out of business is due to excessive payroll costs. He says, “If 7 out of 10 restaurants are failing because of 30 to 40% payroll and we have a method and it's proven now, it's not just hype, that you could bring this down to 14 to 18%, you got a chance of not just surviving but thriving.”To hear more from Morfogen about his new book, his thoughts on the rise of technology, and news on franchising the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, check out this episode of The Hospitality Hangout on iTunes!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Buck Jordan, Founder and CEO of Wavemaker Labs, to discuss his early fascination with automation, scaling brands through robotics, and why he thinks franchising is dead.Frischling asks Jordan to share a little about his background and Wavemaker Labs. Jordan talks about first being exposed to automation 20 years ago, when he was an armor officer going through tank training in Fort Knox, Kentucky. He vividly recalls seeing four, unmanned, armored, personnel carriers whizzing by at 40 miles per hour and how that moment planted a seed that would blossom into a career in automation, which ultimately led him to found Wavemaker Labs. He shares that the company’s mission is to automate the supply chain of food, from seed to fork, with the outcome being higher quality food, with less cost to the masses. He explains that they take the highest consumption food categories in the United States and automate them. He says, “We believe that our business will end up kind of along two tracks, one, supplying the existing brands with automation solutions and helping them, you know, kind of modernize and reinvent themselves. And then two, we are also building a suite of digitally native brands that we'll be operating.”The guys talk about ways Wavemaker Labs is solving some of the biggest problems in the restaurant industry. Jordan tells the guys that he has always liked the idea of robots doing jobs that are too dangerous for humans to do or simply tasks that they don't want to do. As an example, many operators, clients, and friends complain about dishwashing. Jordan talks about not only automated dishwashing but also, fryers as well as other robotic kitchen assistants. Jordan shares that while he is excited to build his brand, it’s also about, he says, “Really enabling existing brands to scale faster and better.”When Jordan is asked to elaborate on a quote that he made about franchising being dead, he talks about the logistics and challenges around the franchise model. Jordan says, “Well, let me just walk you through the logic, right? So in the ’60s and ’70s, every QSR went 99% franchising as fast as they possibly could. Why’d they do that? Because it costs anywhere from half a million to three million to build a restaurant. And then you gotta manage dozens and dozens of people on and off a shift, and so just offload that expense and that management headache to the franchisees. That’s what the brands did.” He adds, “But the future, if the future really is 100% fully automated and if the future successful brands are going be digitally native brands, meaning that their menus have been designed to be a hundred percent automated, then do you really need franchising again?” He talks about how vending machines will be able to make and deliver Michelin-level, incredible food. Jordan asks, “Do you really need to have a franchisee do that? Especially when you're a big brand and you can finance the cost of that machine.” To hear Jordan share more about, automation, robotics, and his thoughts on the democratization of venture investing, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with John Davie, CEO and Owner of The Buyers Edge Platform, to discuss his mission to help local restaurants, the importance of clean data, and how he is leveraging tech to help the environment. Frischling asks Davie about his background. Davie shares that he has spent his entire career helping small, independent, local, mom-and-pop restaurants, get some of the same advantages as the larger chains. He talks about recognizing a need in the industry because smaller restaurants simply could not compete when it came to real estate, technology, software, and buying power. Davie, along with some insights from his father, decided to “even the playing field”, by developing a company, 25 years ago, that would give those businesses the same leverages and collective buying power as the big brands. Their concept evolved into Buyers Edge Platform, which is a digital procurement network, that leverages over $2 billion in collective food spend.The guys talk about the company’s culture and how it helped them not only navigate the pandemic but rise to a new level together as a team. Davie talks about working with his own family at Buyers Edge Platform. His father, siblings, inlaws, and cousins, make up part of the team, but the family-oriented feel extends throughout the entire company and is a key to their culture. He shares that during the pandemic, both he and his father suspended their salaries and several employees voluntarily took temporary pay cuts to protect each other and the company as a whole. Davie shares that they were able to keep nearly the entire 700-person staff employed throughout that pandemic and collectively they spent that time building tools and software to make everything they did easier from a remote scenario. Davie shares how those efforts paid off. He says, “We added over 30,000 new restaurant locations in 2020.” He adds, “Then in 2021, last year, we came roaring back and we were 50% up over pre-Covid, but it was all due to our team really seizing the moment and sacrificing, voluntarily and then over-performing tremendously, to where now the company is just more than double up, versus pre-Covid.”When asked about the company’s efforts regarding building incentives for restaurants to use, and switch to more sustainable solutions, Davie shares that it all goes back to data and analytics. He says, “The core thing that I learned early on with trying to bring restaurants together, is that you got to have clean, normalized data to be able to do any of the cool stuff with software and really help operators, manufacturers, and distributors.” He shares that as the company has grown they have been committed to giving back and doing great things for the environment. He shares that from an ESG perspective, they are able to leverage their massive amount of data to find products that are better for the environment. He acknowledges that while eco-friendly packaging tends to be more costly, Buyers Edge Platform offers rebates and assistance to help operators make the transition away from products like styrofoam. The goal is to find eco-products that hold the food temperature better and perform better for the operator. He says, “They will hopefully see the value in going into a little more expensive packaging, that ultimately gives them a better experience for their guests, especially in the takeout and delivery space.”To hear more from Davie about clean data, his predictions on BOH rapid technology adoption, and breaking news on the company's new partnership, check out this episode of The Hospitality Hangout on iTunes! This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Tom Gordon, President and CEO of Slim Chickens Restaurants, to discuss, launching a fast-casual chicken concept, robotics, and why technology is key to survival.Gordon talks about the early days of his career. He shares that after college, armed with a finance and real estate degree, he was on the stockbroker track, but he quickly learned that he loathed the path. He decided to leave the world of Wallstreet for the restaurant industry, where he started waiting on tables and bartending. Gordon tells the guys that in 2001, he and his business partner, Greg Smart, began conceptualizing Slim Chickens, a fast-casual chicken tender restaurant. He shares memories of developing recipes in Smart’s garage, along with their friends, who provided feedback on everything from breading, sauces, and sides. Gordon says, “You know we really are still tracking with the majority of stuff we put together back then in the garage. From the garage, we found our first spot, and the rest is, you know, 19 years of history.” Gordon shares some growth metrics around Slim Chickens, which officially launched in 2003. He says the brand currently has 170 units, including 23 International locations, and has plans to scale to 600 units by 2026.Frischling asks Gordon about the company’s early adoption of technology and why it is a key to survival. Gordon talks about recognizing the importance of technology early on and embracing it. He says, “We were early adopters of better POS systems, digital menu boards, and being able to change products and LTOs on a quick pace and a quick run.” He adds, “I think the most consequential investment we made, and the thing we did was, we invested in a really robust app and loyalty system about a year before Covid showed up.” He talks about technology being table stakes for the future and shares how tech helped the brand sell, maintain comps, and communicate with their guests through Covid. He admits that without the technology being implemented early on, Slim Chickens would have been in a much different position today. He adds “That embracing of technology, app-based ordering, online ordering, curbside delivery through the app and then all the ancillary parts and pieces, I mean made the year 2020 for us, and made sure 2021 stayed on track and here we are in 2022.”Schatzberg talks about tech and innovation and asks Gordon to share more about the reactions employees are having to the food-running robots popping up in some of the Slim Chickens locations. Gordon shares that some franchises are testing the food-running robots and that they have been very open to embracing this type of technology. He says that while it’s been fun for everyone to see the new robots, there were concerns from some team members who worried about the robots making mistakes, such as delivering food to the wrong table. However, once they saw the robot in action, working successfully over and over again, they realized the usefulness of such technology. Gordon is quick to point out that while robots are helpful, they aren’t currently a complete replacement for people. He says, “Hospitality is hospitality. You got to take care of the guests, you got to seat people, and look them in the eyes and make sure they're happy. But I think this is an adaptable technology with the right footprint in a restaurant.” He adds, “It's a useful piece of the puzzle.”To hear Gordon’s thoughts on automation, robotics, and more from his chat with Schatzberg and Frischling, check out this episode of The Hospitality Hangout on iTunes!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Gary Goodman, CEO and Founder of Yumpingo, to discuss his early fascination with the industry, the necessity for customer feedback and the importance of creating a healthy company culture.Goodman and the guys chat about Goodman’s background. Goodman shares that he was born in Manchester, England, where he would go to restaurants with his family as a child. He talks about how, even as a toddler, he had an absolute fascination with the industry and he recalls fond memories of seeing food on tables, looking into the kitchen and watching the food being cooked. He mentions that although he is qualified as a lawyer, he knew that wasn’t the right path for him. He decided to go into marketing and then onto a career of building digital platforms, where he has spent the past 20 years connecting people with processes and data.When Schatzberg asks Goodman about his customer experience management platform, Yumpingo, Goodman says, “We deliver real-time guest insights at unique scale for restaurants across all service styles, and we're transforming how they're making key decisions in the business.” He shares that when it comes to the market, the Yumpingo app answers three questions better than anyone else. He explains how they do that as he breaks down the company’s name. He says, “The ‘Yum’ is related to how happy your guests are eating food, so we basically track happiness at a greater scale than anyone else. The ‘Pin’ is to do with what's driving that happiness, so effectively the kind of why behind happiness, and the ‘Go’, critically, and for as uniquely is, what you do about it.” He adds, “Our view is that feedback is really just opinions if you're not sure what to do about it.” Frischling talks about the incredible expansion of Yumpingo and congratulates Goodman on the company’s growth, which now extends into twenty-two countries. The guys talk about the current labor market woes, the key to happy employees and why a healthy company culture is critical. Goodman talks about experiencing an incredible company culture when he worked abroad as an 18 year old, and why he has a mission to create a similar environment at his company. He says, “When you work in a restaurant environment, that is a family that you've just built out around you, right? To put that into a technology company is not easy, but for me and the team, it's all about a common purpose.” He adds, “We have a broad church of people that have come from either hospitality or just have a passion for the cause of helping people, the servers, connect better with the people that are eating their food.”To hear more from Goodman on customer experience, the importance of feedback, and how Covid forced change in the space, check out this episode of The Hospitality Hangout on iTunes!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, Authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food, to discuss their new book, ghost kitchens and how to win at off-premise.Sandland talks about her background in the industry. She shares that she has spent over 10 years in the space, initially at Taco Bell, where she worked on brand turnaround, and then in real estate development. As she continued to scale the brand and opened locations in more expensive markets that had deliveries accounting for 40% of sales, she thought to herself, “It would be so awesome if there was just a commissary that we could deliver tacos out of.” Her forward thinking became a reality a few years later with the launch of ghost kitchens. Sandland connected with and joined the team at Kitchen United. She says, “They were making the thing, that I, as the customer, the Chief Development Officer of a big national chain, wished existed, and so I went and joined them.” She teases that this part of her story intersects with that of her co-author, Carl Orsbourn. Orsbourn, who held a senior level position at a major convenience retail leader, where he was accountable for $1.3 billion in sales of all in-store products, shares that during his experience in that role, he started to see a change in dynamics of food, and the way in which customers were becoming increasingly more demanding about convenience and better foods. He talks about his interest in getting involved in the start-up environment, which led to a mutual friend introducing him to Meredith Sandland. He shares that although he was new to the ghost kitchen concept when Sandland first mentioned it, but once he realized the opportunity in building out a customer success model and being able to scale it, he knew it was the right next step for his career.Schatzberg asks Sandland and Orsbourn to talk about what led to them writing their book, Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food. Orsbourn shares that between the two of them, they had been working and communicating with “pretty much every major restaurant chain in America”, and as they spoke to many independents, those conversations all had a similar thread, restaurants were having an immense challenge in trying to figure out how to win when it came to off-premise. Operators wanted to know, “How do we succeed in a ghost kitchen? What are some of the ways in which we need to be better, or what we do to succeed?” Sandland shares that they decided to buy a book to help navigate operators through those uncertainties, but after doing some research, no such book existed, so they decided to write one. Sandland recalls saying, “Let’s write that book. Let's help the industry. Let's try and take all the various different players that are doing some really exciting things in this space, and tell their story.” They discuss the process of interviewing numerous players in the space, such as technology and restaurant leaders, to gain the insights and strategies to winning the off-premise game. They acknowledge that although some operators have shared their fears about this being “a very scary time to be in the restaurant industry.” Orsbourn says, “It's also one of the most optimistic and exciting times as well, and the future is bright and hopefully anyone that reads Delivering the Digital Restaurant will get that feeling.”Frischling says, “I think your book is not just for the industry, but it's also I think, for the consumer and our guests to understand what is going on in this transformation and how all these different generations are interacting with the food service and hospitality industry.” Sandland adds, “It has been really well received. We're very pleased about that.”To hear more from Sandland and Orsbourn about their book, their thoughts on the rise of curbside and what’s next with ghost kitchens versus virtual kitchens, check out their full chat with Schatzberg and Frischling, in this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with David Bloom, Chief Development and Operating Officer at Capriotti’s and Wing Zone, to discuss his passion for the industry, strategies for scaling brands and the adoption of technology.Bloom and the guys chat about Bloom’s background in the industry. He talks about his humble beginnings growing up in New York and how restaurant life is a family affair. Bloom shares that he worked in the back of the house growing up, and that he has a brother who is an Executive Chef and a sister who is a Pastry Chef. Bloom reflects on realizing the tremendous opportunity he saw within the restaurant field, not only for himself, but for anyone wanting a chance to achieve their goals in the industry. He says encouragingly, “First and foremost is, one of the things I love about the restaurant industry is, you know, just talent and hard work go a really long way; if you stick with it, learn from the best and go wherever the opportunity is.”Schatzberg asks Bloom about his extensive experience working with and scaling major brands, and why he decided to join Capriotti’s. Bloom talks about the significance of working with people he admires, which drew him to Capriotti’s, and how much he enjoys working with an incredible team while creating success together. Bloom talks about his passion for scaling brands and shares some insights into the growth of Capriotti’s, and the acquired brand, Wing Zone. Both brands are experiencing considerable growth domestically and internationally, and when considering current development, Wing Zone will be reaching 170 units while Capriotti’s will be hitting an impressive 500.Frischling talks about Bloom’s company being one of the most tech-forward operators in the space. Frischling says, “You have this incredible, and I'd say enviable philosophy to try out major tech, so by the time it becomes mainstream you're already ahead of the curve.” He asks Bloom to share more about the brand’s adoption of technology. Bloom shares that it comes from their investors and board members in terms of a mandate for the brand and what they feel is a differentiator for them, because they own and operate their own stores as well. He adds that having a platform in which they are able to try technology, “on our own dime and figure it out and take the risks”, is not a luxury everyone has, but it’s a critical investment that sets his company apart. He says, “I've had the opportunity to work with some, what I would call technology-enabled companies, and they grew at a rate that others just couldn't, both here and abroad, so we feel like it's sort of table stakes anymore.”To hear more from Bloom on the adoption of technology, including his thoughts on drone deliveries, and the relationship dynamic between employees and robotics, check out this episode of The Hospitality Hangout on iTunes!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Daniel Meth, chief executive officer at Ingest and take a deep dive into restaurant data. Meth talks about his education saying, “I wanted to be a doctor and so I went to college a little bit later in life double majored in molecular biology biochemistry and cell biology neuroscience. Not because I was so smart but I found out that if you double major in science. It's typically a conversation stopper.” Meth shares that he started tutoring and eventually growing an academic services business. Frischling asks Meth if he could share how he has seen the shift in operators who now understand the numbers are the data. Meth says, “Getting people to understand that data isn't this you know, what's historically been this esoteric concept right? It's all of these things that they've already been paying attention to, just better contextualized so it can paint a more complete picture of what's going on in their business.” Adding, “We need to put this incredibly complex information into a more relevant, easily digestible format and language for the operators so they can better understand it. Meth says what they are trying to do is improve the viability, sustainability and profitability of the business.  Ingest helps operators look at the data from all areas including point of sale system, reservation management system, cogs data coming out of purchasing tools, guest sentiment, marketing and loyalty. Meth says that Ingest asks three questions, what happened, why did it happen, and what would happen if. He says, Ingest fully contextualizes the entire data story. Meth talks about what’s next for Ingest, he says they are focused on growing the team on all fronts, they are actively growing Ingest’s footprint in fast-casual and QSR space, and working towards telling better stories with data. To hear how Covid has accelerated the Ingest road map, and how Ingest can use the data to forecast for operators check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” were on the road and live at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, where they chat with Dan Rowe, CEO of Fransmart, about the show, the benefits of multi-unit franchises, and the importance of landscape when considering new brands. Fransmart CEO, Dan Rowe and the guys chat about how Rowe got started in the industry. He talks about deciding as a teenager that he wasn’t going to go the traditional route and attend college to find his career path. He says that he wanted to figure out how to become successful, and while at a motivational seminar, he was faced with the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” His answer was, “I want to get wealthy helping people get wealthy.” He shares that his goal for attaining riches was not to be at the expense of others, and that’s something that drew him to the franchise space. He says, “What I like about franchising is that basically the model is that, you know the franchisors only make money if the franchisees are making money, franchisees are only making money if they've got a good team and their people are making money.” He adds, “Honestly, I find a lot of joy in this space. It’s the kind of job that even if I wasn't getting paid, this is exactly what I'd be doing.”Rowe, who was also a successful multi-unit franchisee, shares his insights on why it’s better to invest in multi-unit franchises rather than just buying a single unit. He talks about the Fransmart formula for success, that includes finding the right emerging franchise opportunities, which are less expensive to build and are more likely to be able to leverage conversions. He says, “It's the ultimate wealth builder to me, when you get into a brand when they're young, they're just less expensive to build, you get your money back fast and then you roll that into another store, and at some point those self-fund multiple locations, making millions of dollars.” He adds, “You've got an asset now that you can sell for a life changing amount of money. Frischling provides some data, sharing that Fransmart has sold over 5,000 franchises worldwide.Schatzberg talks about the company’s current restaurant portfolio which includes, The Halal Guys, Brooklyn Dumpling Shop and Savannah Seafood Shack. He asks Rowe what Fransmart looks for when considering an emerging brand. Rowe shares that it involves a lot of unit economics, because high volume indicates that customers like the restaurant. He says, “High volume tells you customers like the concept, you know customers vote with their wallets. So if they've got really, really good sales, that's a good indication.” Rowe talks about the importance of landscape and the tremendous success of The Halal Guys, largely due to the huge opportunity he saw there. He shares that while opening more that 50 American brands in the Middle East, he found himself falling in love with the local Mediterranean street food, and he realized that no big brand in America was offering this concept. He says, “It dawned on me. You've got a billion and a half Muslims, Middle Eastern food, Mediterranean food is amazing and I just saw there's a huge opportunity if somebody gets this right, you're going to have a monster on your hand, and that's exactly what we did.” He adds that the chain is already at 100 units and on its way to 500.To hear more from Rowe’s chat with Schatzberg and Frischling at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, check out this episode Hospitality Hangout.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Bryan Solar, Restaurants GM at Square, to discuss his unique journey into the industry, the rebranding of Square, and the importance of POS innovations.When asked about his start in the industry, Solar talks about his background and coming from a family of restaurateurs. He tells the guys about his journey to working at a strategy consulting firm that helped really big companies turn around in the recession. He shares that during that time frame, he learned that his aunt’s restaurant was struggling. He says, “One day my aunt called me and she said “hey you know the family restaurant is struggling,” and I thought to myself, if we can do this for really big companies, why can't we do it for restaurants?” Solar decided to start a nonprofit to help restaurants turn their businesses around. He adds, “Working with those restaurant owners, I mean it felt like working with family.”  Solar shares that he decided to attend business school and started a new business with the goal of helping restaurants. Google soon took notice and partnered with Solar, which led to the development of Reserve with Google. Other companies were also starting to take notice of Solar’s work as well. He talks about receiving a call from Square, a company that he deeply admired, and being offered a job with them. He says, “They said, “hey do you want this job” and I was like, you know I would absolutely love that job because in my mind you know the point of sale is the future.” He adds, “For me, this is the dream job, I get to help all the folks that you know, look like my aunts, uncles and cousins.”Frischling asks Solar why Square recently decided to change their name to Block. Solar shares that the name change was derived from several different components. He shares that the name Square became synonymous with walking into a store and interacting with a payment system. The change to Block acknowledges the company’s growth, considering new things like bitcoin, and the company adding Cash App and TIDAL, the name change creates room for further growth. Solar adds, “Having the name Block kind of captures the 3-dimensional aspect of like what Square is trying to do.”The guys chat about the relevance of POS. Solar, who recently spoke on a panel to discuss POS being its own ecosystem, talks about the importance of building really important technologies and the need to constantly make updates on a weekly or sometimes even daily basis. He says, “I actually think the kitchen is the heart of the restaurant. I mean everything flows in and out of the kitchen, that's how the business runs. The POS is the brain. It is the thing that directs everything, makes it better, faster.”To hear Solar’s thoughts on labor costs, the future of technology, and more from his chat with Schatzberg and Frischling, check out this episode of The Hospitality Hangout on iTunes! This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” were on the road and live at Food On Demand in Las Vegas, where they chat with Laura Michaels, Editor in Chief at Franchise Times, Alyssa Abraham, Digital Innovation Manager at Cargill, April Rogers, Director of Off-Premise and Guest Relations at Ruby Tuesday, and Maia Tekle, Co-Founder of Dispatch Goods about the conference, strategies for increasing off-premises efficiency and the tremendous growth within the virtual brand space.Franchise Times Editor in Chief, Laura Michaels stops by to discuss being a moderator on several panels at the conference. She shares that the big topic driving a lot of conversations is how operators are navigating their approach to improving accessibility for customers, whether that means through delivery, adjustments to their physical store footprints with pickup windows, introducing AI technology within drive-thru service, and geofencing so restaurants can better anticipate guest arrivals to create a better customer experience. She says, “There are an entirely different set of considerations for what sort of interactions consumers want to have with their restaurants right now.”Abraham stops by to talk about the exciting innovations happening at Cargill and attending Food On Demand live for the first time, where she was able to hear directly from operators and see first-hand interactions with the different start-ups. She shares that her two key takeaways from the conference panel discussions are focus and problem-solving. She talks about the importance of operators using technology to solve both problems and enhance user experience. She says, “What I'm hearing more about is focus and problem first. It's hearing them really refreshing and thinking, ‘Hey, we’re not just gonna push technology to push technology, let's again figure out what we're doing to make the guest experience better, make the employee experience better and drive that forward.’ ”Ruby Tuesday Director of Off-Premise and Guest Relations, April Rogers stops by to chat with the guys about launching new virtual brands, ghost kitchens, and embracing the latest technology and innovation. Schatzberg asks Rogers which innovations she’s most excited about. She says, “For me, it's the virtual brands, I love the impact they're having on restaurants, especially restaurants with some additional kitchen capacity. And just the fact that everybody's kind of going out and doing some different things and really thinking outside the box. It's very new, very fresh.”Dispatch Goods Co-Founder, Maia Tekle, and the guys chat about her panel, “Packaging Up A Better Experience”, focusing on transporting food from the in-dining experience to the at-home consumer. She says, “I’ve been amazed to see how much innovation and thought is going into packaging, as well as the thoughtfulness for their own circulatory.” They talk about reusable packaging, and what is new at Dispatch Goods. “Our east-coast partners are bringing this drive for change.” She says, “If there is a better and newer system, we want it, and we want it now.”To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by to chat with Schatzberg and Frischling at Food On Demand in Las Vegas, check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Tony Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Restaurant365, to discuss rising food costs, labor shortages and how his company is using technology to combat both of those challenges within the industry.Smith co-founded Restaurant365 over ten years ago and works with over thirty thousand businesses. The restaurant management software developed by Restaurant365 allows operators to experience the only cloud-based, all-in-one restaurant accounting, payroll and HR, inventory, scheduling and reporting software that can also seamlessly integrate to their POS, vendors, and banking partners.When asked about launching Restaurant365, and how he got his start in software development, Smith shares that he never had any intention of going into the field and that he actually didn’t even have a computer in his home growing up. Smith also shares that he was rather intimidated by them. He talks about his time at college and deciding that he should probably become familiar with computers, as he assumed he might be working with them at some point in his career, this led to him studying both business management and information systems. He says, “My first job out of college was working in software and I was doing that with a couple of other guys, John Moody and Morgan Harris, and the 3 of us were the ones that eventually decided to start Restaurant365 together.”The guys chat about the importance of operators embracing technology but how that can lead to tech fatigue. Smith shares that from day one, the goal at Restaurant365 was to make connecting restaurants with the best technology as simple as possible. He says, “We really wanted to solve that for restaurants. We looked at this huge industry, and there were so many tools, it was crazy for a restaurateur to be buying 10 tools to run their business because they're not tech people, so they didn't really understand how to connect them together. And so that was really the goal for us, was to make this simple and make data immediately accessible, and so in order to do that, you need all your data in one place.”Frischling asks Smith about upcoming industry conferences and which subjects he thinks will be the hot topics. Smith shares that unfortunately the issues of food costs and labor shortages continue to drive conversations. He shares that while he’s seen restaurant sales up 10%, he has also noticed food costs up 12% and labor up by 10%.Smith shares some insights on how Restaurant365 can provide some relief for such challenges with the company’s software forecasting feature. He says, “You've got to be able to forecast what you're going to be doing in your restaurant in the coming days, weeks, by daypart.” He adds. “You want to know those things and the better the forecast, the more accurately you can shoot for your employee schedule as well as the menu items you're going to be selling. When you get down to honing in on those order quantities, getting suggested quantities because you're forecasted, you're gonna keep that food cost low, you're gonna have less waste and the same thing on the labor side, and those are things that we help restaurants squarely within our tool.”To hear Smith’s thoughts on the company’s culture, his predictions on future technology, and more from his chat with Schatzberg and Frischling, check out this episode of The Hospitality Hangout on iTunes!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Robert Earl, Co-Founder of Virtual Dining Concepts and Chairman of Earl Enterprises, to discuss virtual brands, how influencers bring value to operators, and the company’s latest concept.Earl talks about growing up in the United Kingdom and how being the son of a very famous singer exposed him early on to show business, talent and brands. Earl jokes that he was reluctant to go into show business or to work at all, but he soon realized that he needed to find something that would benefit his future. He shares that once he discovered hospitality, he decided to study the field at University.   When asked about his career path following school, Earl talks about working at two of London’s most famous hotels. He shares that he worked in every department, gaining lessons and insights which he says gave him the foundational experiences that he still calls upon to this day. By the age of 22, Earl shares that he was developing a Medieval concept that would become the most successful restaurant in London. Earl’s impressive resume includes founding Planet Hollywood, expanding brands, such as Buca di Beppo, and launching new concepts like Chicken Guy!. He says, “I realized that hospitality was for me, and I've had the beauty of working all around the world with every type of level of restaurant food operation, and that makes me who I am now.”They discuss the massive growth in the virtual brands space. Earl predicts that within the next few years, every restaurant will have a virtual brand, and he believes that consumers will not only know about these brands, but they will actively seek them out. He talks about founding Virtual Dining Concepts and how the company is able to help operators increase their revenue streams by utilizing what they already have existing in their restaurants. He says, “When we talk to a restaurant and we identify their equipment, their labor, which corners of the kitchen are quieter than others, what skus do they have, what produce do they have that has a limited shelf life, and with all of that knowledge, as restaurateurs, we come back to those restaurants and say, ‘Boy do we have a brand for you.’ “Earl shares what’s next for the company and he teases a bit about an upcoming collaboration with TikTok, and talks about why working with influencers and celebrities can bring tremendous value to a restaurant’s virtual brands. He shares breaking news about a new concept launching, Steve Harvey’s Family Food, which will feature a menu of both healthy and indulgent recipes, as well as a signature drink developed with the restaurant’s namesake. Earl shares the exciting news about a mega, multi-concept opening the heart of New York City. The four story concept will included Planet Hollywood, Chicken Guy!, and an entire floor of constantly changing brands, completely dedicated to curbside pick-up, to-go and third party delivery partners. To hear Earl share more about virtual brands, the company’s new aggregated app and his take on where the hottest restaurants are opening, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Kimberly Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Copia, to discuss food insecurity, how restaurants can track food waste and what Copia is doing to help the industry reduce carbon emissions. Smith talks about her background in the advertising tech industry and having nearly 20 years of experience in data and analytics. She shares that becoming a parent gave her a new perspective on the world regarding how we would be leaving it for future generations and why that led her to join the team at Copia. She says, “Copia was like the culmination of everything that I wanted to do, the impact I wanted to make. And I knew that I could bring my experience in the data and tech world, to leading this company into solving a lot of problems.”When asked about what Copia is and how it works, Smith shares that Copia’s technology allows businesses to safely and efficiently donate excess food and ingredients to feed people in need. She talks about how easy it is for businesses to sign up and use the platform. She says, “It should take no more than three minutes of your team's time to be able to track your waste for the day, or submit a donation.” She adds, “Our matching algorithm tells us exactly where your donation should go, to the local nonprofit that's most in need of that food. It not only finds a home but the right one.”They talk about the benefits to businesses that partner with Copia. Smith shares that in addition to helping out the community and the environment, operators receive other advantages from Copia as well, including providing the business with audit-proof donation receipts and tax deduction dashboards. She says, “Your accounting team loves you at the end of the year, your program analytics help inform waste reduction plans, impact reports tell businesses all about the nonprofits they fed, the carbon emissions they reduced by diverting this perfectly edible food from landfills and the gallons of water saved. She adds, “We're making it as easy and beneficial to reduce and prevent your food waste, as well as donate any surplus that you have.”To hear Smith share more about streamlining your operational processes, onboarding a national brand, and partnering with Project Drawdown, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” were on the road at the Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit in Nashville. Schatzberg and Frischling chat with Laura Rea Dickey, CEO of Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurants, Inc., Josh Goodman, Founder & CEO, of PourMyBeer, Cherryh Cansler, Editor of FastCasual.com and VP of Events at Networld Media Group, and Josh Halpern, CEO at Big Chicken, about the summit and latest innovations in technology being highlighted at RFIS. Dickey, stops by and talks about being back in person at the Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit, being a presenter at the summit and how data is driving the restaurant industry. She talks about the importance of being able to pull data, clean it, and present it back in a way that is simple and actionable. She says, “If you can do that with your data, then you're not drowning in that data lake, you could really use that data to drive the business forward.” She shares that Dickey’s built and launched its own proprietary data analytics platform 10 years ago. Dickey shares that because of their in-house technology, the restaurant's management is able to run their own POS, loyalty initiatives and scale the business, which now has 550 locations. PourMyBeer, Founder & CEO, Josh Goodman, stops by for his second time on the podcast. He chats with Frischling and Schatzberg about how the other attendees and operators are reacting to the self-serve revolution that PourMyBeer is leading. Goodman talks about partnering with Coca-Cola. He says that by implementing the technology developed by PourMyBeer within the European market, at places like amusement parks, Coca-Cola has seen gains between 140% to 180% in both increased revenue and traction. Goodman shares that whether the company is collaborating with a Mom & Pop shop or at the enterprise level, technology is paramount. He says, “Your technology has to evolve.” He adds, “That's really where we've been focusing our energies, is getting our technology aligned with the various point of sale systems through direct integrations with them, because it all comes down to checks and balances.”Cansler checks in to chat about moderating the summit’s session, ‘Getting into the Self-Service Game’. She talks about how operators are eager to enter the self-service space but have questions regarding things such as, how to determine which system is best for their business, what set-up costs look like and ROI. She says, “We're going to let each panelist tell their story about why they've entered self-service, how they're using it, whether it is a kiosk, or a beverage wall, how much it costs, ROI. Everybody wants it, but is it cost effective?” Cansler talks about the overall success of RFIS, adding that over 350 guests are attending this year. Cansler adds, “It’s our biggest year yet, even before COVID”. She says that the talk of the summit has been all about innovation, from ‘what’s new’, to ‘what’s going on’, to ‘what does the future hold’. Regarding the future, Cansler gives a sneak peek into details for the upcoming Fast Casual Executive Summit, happening this October, in Indianapolis.Big Chicken, CEO, Josh Halpern, talks about his summit session, ‘Executive Perspectives: Inspiration for Today’s Restaurant Leaders’. He shares his insights on the importance of working together to mitigate each other's pain points. He says, “We learned there's five pain points; driving traffic, driving check size, being innovative, having well engaged staff and a capable supply chain”. He adds, “So if we work together to mitigate those pain points as an entire community, to make sure the guest has a great experience, franchisees are profitable and suppliers have what they need, beautiful things could happen fast.” To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by Hospitality Hangout at the Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Scott Gladstone, SVP of Strategy and Innovation at Dine Brands, to discuss the state of the industry, virtual brands, and how new technologies and innovations are going to drive sales moving forward.Gladstone talks about the state of the industry and shares that consumers are returning to Dine Brands restaurants in record numbers. In addition to consumers dining in again, Gladstone shares that the company’s restaurants IHOP and Applebee’s have seen considerable growth in off-premise sales which the brand hopes to scale. “We've also been making significant investments in technology and the things to drive the off-premise experience”.When asked about the brand's latest concept, FLIP’D by IHOP, Gladstone says, “FLIP’D is a fast casual version of IHOP. Not every consumer has time to to sit down and enjoy a great IHOP meal with the family or significant other, sometimes they got to get it on the go.” Gladstone shares that although the concept was built for speed with features like digital menu boards and kiosks, the menu items are still prepared with the high quality ingredients consumers associate with the brand. They talk about the latest trends in virtual brands. Gladstone shares that Applebee’s has launched a nationwide virtual brand, Cosmic Wings, which the company is very excited about. Gladstone talks about Dine Brands new partnership with Nextbite and the introduction of two new IHOP virtual brands, Thrilled Cheese and Super Mega Dilla.He says, “I think virtual brands are important. They're a big and important piece for full-service restaurants.”  To hear Gladstone share more about Dine Brands newest concepts and his take on robotics and automation, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Danny Klein, Editorial Director at Food News Media, about his unique leap into the industry and the debate regarding pizza and tech.Klein shares why Food News Media offers free magazine subscriptions to industry professionals. He talks about the outlet covering both QSR and FSR segments. Klein says the company’s day one goal was to help operators run their restaurants. In addition to not charging for the magazine content, Klein shares that the outlet also offers a free e-newsletter which keeps track of the news day to day. Klein says, “Our e-letters are free. We don't have paywalls on any of our content. We're really here to help people run their restaurants.” He adds, “That's been kind of the day one goal.”Klein talks about restaurant growth and industry shifts in a post pandemic landscape. He shares that independents and ‘mom and pop shops’ are really struggling to get back on their feet and how recovery for them could take years, but on the opposite side, the quick service space has become one of the hottest retail sectors in all of the country in terms of growth with brands like Chipotle and Wingstop each adding another 1000 units. He says. “You know the state of things right now is you have one side, who I think is going to be on basically the precipice of embarking on what might be the greatest growth stretch that they've had in probably 30 years versus another side that's going to be a lot slower to adapt.”Klein shares his thoughts on industry trends. He shares that the number one trend he is seeing was virtual brands, particularly in virtual wing chains. He talks about the segment slowing slightly but being a force within the space that was scaling at an incredibly rapid pace. He says, “There was a period there though where in terms of us trying to keep track of who was introducing a virtual brand, it was just outrageously out of control, and I get why it was happening.”To hear Klein’s thoughts on the future of pickup and curbside growth and more from his chat with Schatzberg and Frischling, check out this episode Hospitality Hangout.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” and Sterling Douglass “The Technology Guy”, were on the road and live at MURTEC Las Vegas, where they chat with Michael "MJ" Jacober, Founder / CEO at Blanket, about the show, participating in Start-Up Alley and restaurant-technology being highlighted at MURTEC.Blanket Founder and CEO, Michael “MJ” Jacober stops by for his second time on the podcast to discuss Blanket’s mission to help multi-unit operations and frontline teams to thrive, and bring joy to their everyday work. Jacober says, “By thrive, you know, it's about communicating tasks and any and all things that need to be communicated all the way from the C-suite down to the frontline store level.” He adds, “We wanna make sure that we create a very meaningful and enjoyable experience for the frontline teams.”Jacober talks about his career in the industry and how his more than 20 years of experience as an owner operator helped him to understand the difficulties that came along with communication with the frontline staff. He shares how he was able to utilize this knowledge to develop the Blanket platform and provide solutions to store teams and operators.Jacober shares his thoughts on being one of the 17 participants in this year’s exciting lineup at MURTEX 2022 featuring the industry’s hottest start-up technology companies. He talks about the contest, and how it has been an interesting process but also a humbling one. He talks about his chances of making it to the final, he says, “I think, you know, we're not solving a highly abstract problem. I think the problem that we're solving every operator can relate to.”Jacober talks about what’s next at Blanket. He says the company is investing heavily in IoT solutions and integrating those solutions in an open way. Jacober shares that the company is heading increasingly up and up in the market. He talks about spending marketing efforts to bring in clientele with 10 to 50 units as well as larger organizations with unit numbers in the 200-300 range. He shares that while Blanket has seen a lot of traction for larger customers, he also understands the need to make sure all his clients feel supported. He says, “I think really diving in deeper to continue to try to solve larger organizations' problems while also not entirely forgetting about our midmarket clientele as well. To hear more from Jacober’s chat with Frischling and Douglass at MURTEC Las Vegas, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify. This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy”  and Sterling Douglass “The Technology Guy”, were on the road and live at MURTEC Las Vegas, where they chat with Phil Crawford, Chief Technology Officer at CKE Restaurants, Inc., Tom Seeker, Chief Information Officer at Earl Enterprises and Astrid Isaacs, Chief Technology Officer at Bloomin’ Brands Inc., about the show and restaurant-technology being highlighted at MURTEC. Crawford stops by for his second time on the podcast to discuss CKE Restaurants [https://www.ckr.com/] getting involved in MURTEC with the focus of restaurant technology. They talk about the impact that covid has had on the industry and how that has forever changed how operators engage with new technologies from day to day operations to goals and objectives. Tom Seeker, Chief Information Officer at Earl Enterprises stops by to discuss how the pandemic has put technology into play in new ways and why it has shaped the industry to do more with less thanks to new technologies. “It's about technology, I think everybody's finding out. You cannot do anything without technology and our industry.” Bloomin’ Brands Chief Technology Officer, Astrid Isaacs stops by to chat about valuable lessons and key learnings prompted by the pandemic. Particularly with regards to efficiency. “We're in a world now that has changed because of the pandemic and so having solutions that solve and drive efficiency is critical.”To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by to chat with Frischling and Douglass at MURTEC Las Vegas, check out this episode Hospitality Hangout. This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with John DiLoreto, president and general manager North America at Flipdish about digitally connecting restaurants to their customers. DiLoreto leads the business for North America at Flipdish. It is a digital technology company focused on the hospitality industry. DiLoreto says, “Specifically what we focus on at Flipdish is what we call the digital consumer experience and what that means is we focus on everything between the brand meaning the restaurant and their customers and helping restaurants better engage directly with their customers and so what that can mean is, we build websites, we build mobile apps, we build kiosks, we run digital advertising for our customers. We've got loyalty programs, marketing programs, engagement, you name it everything that exists that connects the restaurant and their customers. That's our specialty and our focus. We do that in about thirty countries today and are proud to work with thousands of business around the world.” Frischling shares that Flipdish just completed a one hundred million dollar raise in their Series C round led by Chinese tech giant Tencent. Flipdish reached a valuation of $1.25 billion, making it a “unicorn” in startup speak. It follows a $48.5 million investment. DiLoreto said when asked what Flipdish will do with that investment, “I think you know it's just a testament to our mission and our focus on building the technology that our industry needs and that ultimately that consumers are looking for. When it comes to interacting and engaging with their favorite brands and restaurants in terms of what we are going to do, we're going to do what we've always done which is strictly just focused on our customers.” He adds, “what we're going to do is continue to invest in our customers.”DiLoreto talks about what convenience technology is bringing to hospitality and says, “ultimately the way I think of it is as an operator, you know what's most important to you is your customer in meeting your customer where they are and where their needs are and I think from a macro perspective there have been significant investments that have shaped and changed the way that the customer views convenience.” To hear DiLoreto talk more about Flipdish meeting the customer’s demands, QR codes growing in the United States, and his thoughts on where ghost kitchens are heading, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chats with Jon Sherman, chief executive officer and co-founder at Sticky's Finger Joint about becoming an entrepreneur, developing a new brand, and the lessons learned. Sticky’s Finger Joint was founded in New York City ten years ago in 2012. Sherman says Sticky's makes boneless, fried and grilled chicken and it is paired with eighteen different dipping sauces with different flavor profiles. Sherman was in finance for years before founding Sticky’s. He says, “but I always had a bit of an entrepreneurial itch and I also always had a love for food and I didn't even realize that I could put the two of those together and that it was even a possibility or an option.” He talks about there not being a great option for chicken fingers in New York City and his love for chicken fingers when coming up with food ideas. Sherman was living on the lower east side and saw the original Meatball Shop open. He said they had a great vibe and just had meatballs. It resonated with Sherman that people, especially living in New York City, want to go get the best of something and everybody likes chicken fingers. Sherman was asked about where the sticky’s came from, he says, “from early on we realized that sauce is going to be an incremental part of this. The beauty of chicken fingers is part of making this differentiated best in class chicken finger, you got to make a great piece of chicken.” He also says, all of the different sauces is what makes the experience the next level. When Sherman was asked about lessons he had learned, he said there were so many and the first three to six months they had to figure out what the real business model was. Sherman says he was able to use his past finance experience to overcome some of the early hurdles he faced at Sticky’s and what the unit level economics needed to be. Sherman adds, he really learned that they are in the people business. To hear Sherman talk about Sticky’s operating model, how long it took to develop his core team and opening their first drive-thru location, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chats with Alonso Castañeda, vice president of brand development and strategy at Savory Restaurant Fund about finding emerging concepts and helping to develop the brand for fast growth. Castañeda says “the Savory Restaurant Fund is a fund that works and identifies brands in their infancy stage and when I say infancy I don't mean that the brand is brand new. They could be in business for ten years but as an emerging concept. They are starting to think about growth, and that's where we come in and we identify these brands that are loved in their communities that are financially healthy and that have a great product and we come in and we support them.” He adds, “We help them grow from five to fifty, we've identified that we are experts at that stage. We know how to come in and set up a good foundation for growth and build a team and then start scaling. We grow those companies from five to fifty in anywhere from three to five years depending on the concept. So it's fast growth.”  The Savory Restaurant Fund has built a team of sixty food and beverage veterans with diverse backgrounds to help each of their companies to succeed. Their team consists of experts from real estate,  payroll, sales, accounting, marketing, operations, training and development, says Castañeda. They don’t just provide the money they provide the team that helps build their partner's brand. Castañeda shares the names of a few brands that Savory Restaurant Fund partnered with including Hash Kitchen, Pincho Burgers + Kebabs, and The Crack Shack. He says that they are currently looking at brands and they have seven brands that are opening eighty-five stores. They talk about the current climate of the real estate market, Castañeda says, that the perception is that due to the pandemic that there would be available real estate but on the contrary, a lot of brands did very well especially fast casual. He adds that everyone is looking for the same drive-thrus and the same corners, and there are not many great opportunities available. Castañeda talks about what the company does when they take on a brand and says, “it's a lot about identifying where the opportunities are and we can come in and make an impact.” Adding, “yes, we're onboarding the brand but our real estate team is already going strong because we all know it's going to be ten or twelve months before they find something but they're moving right away.”To hear Castañeda share how the Savory team helps a brand grow, the tools to retain talent, and how new technology is constantly evolving, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Tim McLaughlin, co-founder chief executive officer of GoTab, Inc., about technology that can optimize daily operations, while improving communication between restaurant operators and their guests. McLaughlin talks about his background, he says he has been developing software since he was young and then he went to school for mechanical engineering. McLaughlin says, “I co-founded GoTab in 2016. We've taken many turns and twists as hospitality has in the last five years for those who know, started in payments ordering and then we're a full system now. Our real focus instead of being like most POS, we are focused on making the guests have a better experience as well as the operators.” McLaughlin shares the evolution of GoTab, saying that in 2016 you were able to pay your tab by entering a code, in 2017 you were able to do it with a QR code. He adds, “our whole goal was to turn tables faster. As many hospitality tech companies want to do is get guests in, get them out, take their money as fast as you can. It turns out we couldn't really get enough traction with that but that's what we've seen overall is it just doesn't solve enough problems.” GoTab then added ordering and they kept expanding and filling in the gaps. QR codes have been around for some time, McLaughlin says GoTab thinks of QR codes as a point in space. He says, “a QR code is unique all throughout your restaurant. It could even be in a hotel next door but that lets us know where you're standing or where you're sitting or maybe laying. I don't know but the point is that we know where you are which means we know what menus you can access, who you are and what's available at that time. How long it's going to take to get it to you and as a result we can then start optimizing a lot of things in the kitchen.” Frischling asks McLaughlin to explain what he means when he says to think of the kitchen like a factory. He says that you should optimize for production, speed, quality and efficiency and have a process. GoTab eliminates a lot of the work with the software, letting chefs and cooks focus on making food. To hear more about the solutions GoTab can bring to the operators, including wrong orders and communication, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Nabeel Alamgir, chief executive officer and co-founder of Lunchbox about the current state of delivery and what the future will look like for restaurants. Alamgir who is on the 2021 Forbes list 30 under 30, is the co-founder of the digital ordering and marketing platform Lunchbox. The operating system for managing a restaurant's entire digital experience. Alamgir talks about starting as a busboy at Bareburger when he came to the United States and how he loved the industry, working his way up to chief marketing officer before he launched Lunchbox. Alamgir discusses how Lunchbox recently has raised fifty million dollars in Series B funding so his food technology company can accelerate product research and development as well as expand teams. Alamgir says he wants to do three things with the capital, one is to push the Lunchbox agenda, building a digital storefront and make sure it’s incredible looking, two is to build more engagement tools that can convert third party sales into first party, three is to bring in the best talent in the world to the Lunchbox team. The company brought on a new executive to the team, chief operating officer, Kieran Luke from the General Assembly. Lunchbox is about to release the first Metaverse restaurant, fully walkable. You can go anywhere and order food, it will be sold on OpenSea on the blockchain, says Alamgir. Alamgir talks about the partnership between Lunchbox and Olo saying he is excited to partner with them and be part of their ecosystem. Adding, they are excited to elevate their design and elevate their marketing as well. They've paved a way for companies like us to exist so we're pumped to work together.Frischling asks Alamgir what the current state of the delivery market is looking like from a growth perspective and he says, they are studying companies in China, specifically BingoBox. It is a convenience store with no staff that is entirely automated and compares it to Amazon Go. He adds, “our prediction is it'll be seventy five percent delivery and the rest will be in store. The number of seats you have within your restaurant is limited. You know it's fifty to hundred but the number of people you can feed around your community is a lot more. More importantly, right now, it's a sign of shame if you have a second brand out of your kitchen. It means you're not doing well.” Alamgir goes on to say that it is a stigma that is not real and in the future that will be how you run and optimize a kitchen to be efficient. To hear more from Alamgir about branding, marketing and the Lunchbox vision, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Scott Siegel, co-founder and chief executive officer at Curbit, about the continued critical component of pickup and takeaway in the restaurant business. Siegel talks about his background in commercial real estate, representing restaurant owners and how finding locations for their business inspired the development of Curbit. He realized that drive-thrus were a difficult asset to come by and he wanted a solution that would allow his clients to compete and level the playing field. Siegel says, “You know that my mind was racing. It was like I was thinking about all the challenges with curbside pickup, you know you get dedicated parking spaces, there's all this negotiation around getting the spaces and it was like why can't a car just arrive in a parking lot, show up, and have somebody walk food out to their car in less than two minutes.” He adds, “I've had this sort of burning desire to solve, to address a problem and help the industry and it was a light bulb moment for me.” Siegel shares the original idea of Curbit saying, “so the the sort of the genesis of Curbit occurred before the pandemic, a lot of people think wow, you guys, you came up with timing so great, you know with with what's happening and sort of this demand for curbside, this was in 2019 when the company formed.” Siegel addresses order timing and says Curbit takes the signals from the kitchen display system, digests everything that is happening in real time. Curbit will now communicate that information to the guest. This system makes it a guided journey from checkout to handoff, managing the guest’s arrival expectation and experience.“If I have a crappy pickup experience, I'm not going to return, but if all of a sudden, it's seamless, it's smooth, it's easy, it's frictionless, I'm going to come back,'' says Siegel. He adds that Curbit is really loyalty, it is about creating an experience that the guest wants to return more frequently. To hear about Curbit’s partnership with QSR Automation and the data that they use, and the demand consumers have for curbside pickup, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Lindsey Hoell, founder and chief executive officer of Dispatch Goods about how restaurants can help reduce waste with reusable packaging. Hoell had a career in cardiac surgery first on the clinical side and then started selling the equipment in Hawaii. She is a surfer and was confronted by plastic pollution in her favorite surf breaks. Hoell got involved with Surfrider Foundation’s program called Ocean Friendly Restaurants where they helped restaurants transition to more sustainable practices. She says Dispatch Goods was created because of her love for surfing. Hoell describes Dispatch Goods by saying “we are a reverse logistics infrastructure that's supporting circular packaging. What that means is we're kind of like recyclers just we reuse instead of send stuff to another country to hypothetically be recycled but probably not.” She adds, “And what we started to build is essentially a curbside and business collection system for reusable goods and that we process more locally and which also reduces the carbon footprint of travel and process and then we basically redistribute packaging and other items back to businesses. We started with the restaurant industry because that's generally consumers' number one waste related pain point is food packaging so that's how we got there.”Dispatch Goods has launched on the East Coast. Hoell says, “we're not doing home collection yet. That's something that will be building out but navigating the kind of complexities of apartments is a new challenge. And I would say that there's probably just more people eating kind of on the go and where they put things on the go than in San Francisco where food's generally going to either offices or homes. So the home collection piece we're going to need a much more kind of robust collection system, so that's one piece that we're working on right now.”Dispatch Goods partners with restaurants to offer food to customers in completely reusable packaging. Hoell says, “so Dispatch really, we've thought about this from both the end of life as well as like the beginning of life, the entire process. And why reuse is really the clear solution and not just from a sustainability standpoint but we think about the customer experience, restaurants take so much work and care into preparing meals and we just don't think that the trash that you're eating out of represents the quality of the food. So that's another place where we think reuse really has an opportunity to have an off-premise experience that's much more closely in line with what the dine in experience would be for customers.” To hear Hoell’s insights on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and Dispatch Goods’ partnership with DoorDash, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' kick off season six and chat with Evan DeSantola, Co-Founder & CEO at Agot AI about using AI to achieve consistent service.DeSantola and his co-founder Alex Litzenberger met at Carnegie Mellon University when they had come up with the idea for Agot AI. They had noticed the advances in computer vision perception technologies were not being commercialized. DeSantola says, “so when we left CMU we figured hey we know that this is a really ripe area for innovation in the computer vision space and we just kicked it off.” He adds, “we're just excited to bring this technology to scale across multi-unit foodservice.”DeSantola explains how it works, “So our system, we just put cameras over the line and we watch what's being prepared.” He adds, “we just flag different operational issues that could potentially emerge in foodservice whether this is an employee getting to send out an extra chalupa, to perhaps certain operational practices not being performed to the best way that they could be.” Agot AI’s Kitchen Awareness platform captures meal orders from in-store, online, or drive-thru and their Interventional Order Accuracy technology identifies items being prepared and issues real-time correction alerts to line workers ensuring items are ingredient accurate and bagged correctly.“We're tracking from the beginning to the end of every single meal item. As they're going in the bags as all the ingredients are going on these individual meal items as they go out to the customer and that really allows us to provide a ton of different effective points to provide value for the restaurant,” says DeSantola.Frischling asks DeSantola how accurate Agot is in picking up order discrepancies and he says, “so with our technology franchisees can reduce the majority of their order errors with almost no changes to the current off flow. So the exact reduction is going to differ brand to brand and it's mostly dependent on compliance of fixing these errors as they go out the door. But we're talking near zero employee error rates as opposed to the current error rates that we're having and that's for napkins, that's for pickles, that's for drinks.” Adding, “It's just about what's in camera view.”To hear how Agot AI can improve labor performance, employee training, plus recruitment and retention, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality, and foodservice operators.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” were on the road and live at CES Las Vegas, where they chat with Michael Wolf, founder, chief executive officer, and editor in chief at The Spoon, Picnic’s founder and chief executive officer, Clayton Wood, Steven Sperry, co-founder and chief executive officer at Minnow and Ritukar Vijay, founder and chief executive officer at Ottonomy, Inc., about the show and food-technology being highlighted at CES. Wolf stops by to discuss The Spoon getting involved in CES with the focus of food technology. They talk about the three panels, how food and cooking will change the future, the future of meat, and welcome to our food robot future. Wolf says, “I think there's lots of whitespace opportunity with bringing innovation to food.” As far as the future, Wolf says, we will see food becoming a platform and it will be getting bigger and bigger over time. Picnic founder Clayton Wood stops by for his second time on the podcast. Wood talks about Picnic’s food automation system preparing pizza at the show with their partner Sodexo. Wood is a panelist on the welcome to our food robot future panel and addresses automation for restaurants. Wood says there are a lot of new entrants in the space and it is still not well understood but it is not about stealing jobs. The Picnic system and the systems like it allow operators to operate profitability and make working conditions better. Sperry checks in to chat about the show and people’s reaction to the Minnow Pod. He says, we are in the middle of a revolution in the food industry, and the entire food ecosystem is being redesigned from food production to how food is prepared and more. Sperry talks about the opportunity in terms of delivery and robots. “If food is cheaper to have delivered and it’s better quality than you can make yourself, a lot of people are not going to make their own food,” says Sperry. Ottonomy founder Ritukar Vijay stops by to chat about contactless deliveries with autonomous robots, and about being the world’s first to offer autonomous deliveries at airports. They talk about Ottonomy’s partnership with Presto to offer robot-powered curbside pickup. Vijay says the buzz on the floor at CES is that labor shortages are redefining how food tech is happening and this is an exciting time for food technology. To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by to chat with Schatzberg and Frischling at CES Las Vegas, check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Rob Carpenter, founder and chief executive officer at Valyant AI about automated order taking for quick service restaurants. Carpenter says, “There's a little bit of a labor crunch out there, one point seven million unfilled positions across the hospitality industry right now. So what we do is stick revolutionary cutting edge technology into your restaurant, greets customers, answers questions, takes the customer's order and then submits it directly into the point-of-sale system. Making the operators and the employees' lives easier and along the way what we see is anywhere between a five percent to twenty percent increase in top line revenue. So if you're doing one to two million a year you can add twenty percent to your top line overnight. While solving the labor problem.”When asked about where the idea of Valyant AI came from, Carpenter says, “so the core initial idea for Valyant which we will eventually get to is the idea of automating customer service in physical locations. So what the very first version of Valyant’s product was effectively a holographic employee. So imagine a transparent OLED display which is effectively a piece of glass merged with a flat screen tv and we render a five and a half foot tall digital person and her name was Holly and she could blink her eyes and lean in and the idea was that she could carry on a conversation with you.” Carpenter talks about there not being holographic employees or automated customer service available in many places because the technology is extremely hard. They pivoted the business saying they would need to solve the problem of conversational AI in order to bring a holographic employee to market. Carpenter says, “we've effectively spent the last four and a half years hyper focused on solving conversational AI and right now it's for restaurants. Eventually we want to roll it to hospitality in general and then we would look to in the future to take it to additional industries beyond that.” To hear Carpenter breakdown how the AI translates for the customer in a drive-thru, and how Valyant AI can help address the labor crisis that hospitality is facing, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with David Rolston, president and chief executive officer at Hatco Corporation about automation and efficiency in foodservice equipment. Rolston has an engineering background and has been with Hatco for twenty seven years. Hatco was the first to recognize the need to sanitize dishware and developed the technology to do so. Hatco, now one hundred percent employee-owned company, designs equipment for foodservice, including warming, holding, and cooling equipment. Shatzberg asks about the company getting into automation and efficiency, Rolston says, “now it's all about labor savings and so these electronic eyes really aren't much of a labor savings but they were meant to be an energy savings device, so that we're basically looking across the surface of a heated surface, see if there's any food there and if there's no food there we turn the heaters down. It's a very simple concept.”Rolston says when asked about Minnow, “We got into lockers before Covid, we were fortunate that we had started focusing on this area prior to Covid hitting because it became a big deal and during that process we started to see ads for Minnow lockers and we thought oh my gosh, there's another competitor from outside the industry and you know, just one more person we got to deal with as far as competition.” “We realized there was tremendous synergy here because they had great depth in both industrial design and the software that was going with this system.” Rolston shares that Hatco is manufacturing Minnow lockers. In terms of robotics, Rolston says, “you know you can have an actuating lever that pushes a burger off a conveyor or onto another conveyor and these days I think more about automation than I do robotics and to me automation is a broader category that includes software and I see software adoption tremendously throughout our business and restaurants. When you think about something as simple as POS adoption I mean, what restaurant doesn't have a POS these days whereas you go way back they didn't have that and the savings that has brought us is tremendous. So I think software adoption is a no-brainer for restaurants and for manufacturers.”To hear Rolston’s insights on the hospitality industry's adoption of technology, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” were on the road at the Restaurant Leadership Conference in Arizona. Schatzberg and Frischling chat with Steve Heeley, chief executive officer at Pokéworks, Dirk Izzo, president and general manager at NCR Hospitality, Sterling Douglass, co-founder and chief executive officer at Chowly,Inc., and Alan Hickey, co-founder of VROMO. Heeley from Pokéworks stops by and talks about being back in person at the Restaurant Leadership Conference. He talks about technology innovation and technology consolidation. Pokéworks started in 2015 in New York City, the company started franchising in year two and has eight company stores, seventy franchised locations and is in twenty states plus Mexico. Fresh seafood sales have increased by sixty percent and Heeley says that Pokéworks has felt that momentum. He says, “I think people are eating more plant-based, more clean proteins, and you know seafood particularly, raw seafood is very clean protein and people are more conscious of their health but they also want to know where their food comes from.” Izzo has been running the restaurant business for the last two years at NCR Hospitality. He chats with Frischling and Schatzberg about servicing over one hundred thousand restaurants as well as NCR’s Aloha restaurant POS system and their cloud-based solution product Silver. Izzo talks about being back at RLC, what’s new in the hospitality space for NCR, and where the restaurant industry will be in two years. Chowly’s co-founder and CEO, Sterling Douglass stops by to talk about what’s new. Douglass says, “it’s whatever is new that’s helping restaurants adopt new technology, so you know we talked a lot about virtual restaurants at our last show, our partnerships with C3 helping restaurants get more brands and more concepts generating more dollars in their unutilized kitchen space.” Adding, “That's been awesome for us the last couple of months. We've been able to launch tons of new restaurants on this, and it's really helped a lot of these restaurants increase that monthly revenue five, ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars a month which has been great.”Hickey, CCO and co-founder of VROMO, a software built to optimize delivery operations, talks about the conference and the adoption of technology. He also chats about what's new at VROMO saying, the big news is that VROMO has been working on building an ecosystem and an infrastructure that’s going to support restaurants and they will be putting their software into restaurant delivery companies. To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by Hospitality Hangout at the Restaurant Leadership Conference check out this episode. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Sam Oches, Editorial Director at Informa's Restaurant & Food Group.Oches, who started out as a reporter but had never worked in the restaurant space, this past May became the Editorial Director at Informa where they cover restaurants, supermarkets, food management, hospitality news, and recently added podcasts. Oches talks about how he ended up in the restaurant space saying, “I'm a drummer, I've been drumming since I was twelve, I was a musician and you know look when I went to college I wanted to be a journalist. I went to Ohio University, it's got a great journalism program and look you know at that age everybody wants to be the next you know, great Rolling Stone’s contributor.” Adding, “I was the luckiest man in the world to find a job at a restaurant trade publication which was QSR and a week after I graduated college, I joined the team.” Oches shares his thoughts on hospitality and says, “I think the best part of my job is the people. I think you know the reason I'm the luckiest man in the world to end up in this industry as you guys well know and this is hospitality. The best part of hospitality is the people and the work you get to do in meeting new people, interesting people and interesting people who have big ideas.” Frischling asks Oches about the current state of the industry and he says, “I think about the state of the industry is its creativity. I said I got into this industry in the great recession and so I watched firsthand as the fast casual industry emerged back then, added this need to adapt to the state of things back in 2008, 2009, and 2010, you know there was an incredible amount of creativity that came in that season which was primarily I think around culinary and menu and it was this idea that fast casual is going to do something a little bit better.” He adds, “because of the pandemic I think what we're seeing is that same sense of creativity. But it's really more oriented around operations and this was obviously by necessity. It was forced innovation that restaurants had to adapt or die and I've been just blown away by the flexibility of the industry of restaurant operators to be able to ride with all the changes that have come in the past eighteen months.” To hear from Oches about technology in the restaurant industry, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Joel Montaniel, chief executive officer and co-founder of SEVENROOMS about helping operators build their direct and personalized relationship with guests. SEVENROOMS is a guest experience and retention platform that works on helping operators utilize guest data to provide experiences that boost business. Montaniel says, “So many many years ago we tried to figure out why hospitality technology systems didn't have any guest data in them and we really were surprised by that because we were like this is the hospitality industry. It is all about understanding the little things, it is all about making people feel special. How can operators do that when the very ingredient you would need is not available in the systems they're using to run their business?” He adds, “we got our start as a guest data CRM company and that we've now evolved ourselves into a guest experience platform with a mission of helping operators make their guests feel at home.”When Frischling asks Montaniel where he thinks we are in the lifecycle of technology, Montaniel says, “if we take hospitality technology as the starting point I believe we're still in the early innings at the very beginning of this cycle.” He adds, “And I think the cloud has enabled a lot of opportunities, in addition of course the mobile, so it feels like we're still in the very very early days.” Montaniel says when asked about the new functionalities SEVENROOMS added, “as we were building the company we started with this idea of guest data and so how do we help the restaurant capture as much guest data as possible and how do we make it as easy as possible for them to capture it. And actually when we first started we had restaurants that were using our CRM system side by side with their reservation seating system, that's how important it was to them and then what we realized is if we wanted to help the restaurants, how could we actually also build the reservations and the seating so that they could have one system to look at everything together.” SEVENROOMS is giving the operators a personalized picture of their consumer on-premise and off-premise. Montaniel talks about delivery, saying in the United States before the pandemic forty-two percent of consumers had done delivery, now delivery is more than fifty percent and growing. He says, “what's interesting is we thought that when covid was stabilizing that dine-in would pick back up and delivery would slow down a little bit, but actually what you're seeing is both are accelerating so dine-in is up, delivery is up, and so what that means is now a restaurant needs to be able to understand and work across both of those different channels.”To hear more from this episode with SEVENROOMS, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Massimo Noja De Marco, chief executive officer at Piestro and a founder at Kitchen United about robotics in the food industry. Noja De Marco talks about how he grew up in hospitality, his mother was a chef and his grandfather ran seven hotels making him seventh generation in hospitality. He says, “this is what I live and breathe and I’m having so much fun doing it.” Noja De Marco talks about launching Piestro, a fully automated pizzeria a year ago. He says, “we are doing tremendous progress on getting this machine in the hands of our corporate partners. Right now we are not in the market yet, but we are testing these machines with the private recipes of each one of these pizza brands and things couldn't be better.”Noja De Marco says the company produces a number of robotic solutions and Piestro is one of them and they are creating the machines that will fit the needs of a number of brands. He talks about Kitchen United, saying the original idea came from Jeffreey Kalt and they wanted to find a way to optimize the space for their friend’s restaurants and do it better. He says, “They had all these issues executing in their restaurants especially because all the orders were coming in at lunch and dinner time, crunch time and they would turn down all the platforms so they were leaving a lot of money on the table.” He talks about the first Kitchen United location in Pasadena where they rented out to a bunch of restaurants, some big and some small brands. When Noja De Marco is asked about technology and automation in the food industry, he talks about the challenges in the industry, saying it is one of the toughest industries and so many things can go wrong at any given day. He says, “So if you can take a chunk of those issues and put them away by using technology and automation, I mean who better than you guys know how much technology has helped these operators right?” Noja De Marco says, operators and restaurant brands need to do all they can to get educated on groundbreaking technology, automation, and robotics before they end up running into challenges like the pandemic brought. When asked about robotics and automation, Noja De Marco says, there are a bunch of robots that actually can go to the line and pick up that package and take it outside to the drivers. Some of the drivers don't even have to get out of their cars. He added, “You don't have any more runners running back and forth in the ghost kitchen space, so that's one of the ways, that's one of the solutions but we are bringing co-robotic solutions. It's not a full robotic solution into a kitchen, because we still want one person that can actually oversee.” To hear more about Piestro and the technology, automation and robotics advancing into the foodservice industry, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Anand Gala, managing partner at Gala Capital Partners to explore what insights a well experienced investor can bring to your business. Gala shares his early introduction at nine years old to the restaurant industry while working for his family's business at Jack In The Box as a franchisee. After college Gala talks about becoming a franchisee of Applebee’s, Del Taco, and Famous Dave’s BBQ and eventually changing over to a full time investor after 2014. Gala, who has almost five hundred restaurants, says that going through a lot of different experiences in his life like starting so early in the business, the dot-com bust, 9/11 and now covid, teaches you to find opportunities and find ways to do a better job. He realized that everybody in the industry was going through the same thing and they needed a good partner and somebody they could trust. When Gala was asked about his super power, he says, “I'm a jack of all trades,” “learning enough across a lot of different disciplines whether operations, finance, HR, real estate development, accounting I’ve essentially done a little bit of everything for a couple of years minimum each time.”Gala says his team can help with finance, site selection and modeling, as well accounting or even automating accounting technology. Gala Capital Partners can also provide support in operations and marketing. Gala adds, “there’s always something all of us can learn about operations and how are you using technology, how are you simplifying things and the same is true with marketing.”To hear what Gala has to say about best in class unit economics and growing a brand, tune into this episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Kevin Tan, co-founder and chief executive officer at Snackpass to explore a social ordering platform for restaurants and the customer experience. Snackpass is the company Tan co-founded with Jamie Marshall while they were students in college. Tan says, “It’s a social ordering platform for restaurants, you can skip the line and the wait, it’s much more convenient for consumers.” Adding, “we have a social commerce layer where you can get reward points with friends, send gifts to friends, group buy, and see what people are ordering making the experience personalized, social, and fun.” Tan talks about when they got started, they would hand out fliers around campus and immediately got traction with their fellow classmates. He says, “within a few months over eighty percent of the student bodies started using Snackpass and became kind of like a household name.” Adding, “ it became the default way for students to order instead of going and standing at the cash register.” Snackpass started launching multiple campuses and today they are at twenty campuses in multiple states. Tan points out that Snackpass just raised their Series B financing which is going to help expand around cities and beyond the college campus. When asked about delivery and third party, Tan says, delivery will just be an API call and it will be commoditized. He says, “the opportunity for us is definitely on-premise and you know that's a huge chunk of a pie.” To hear how Snackpass came about while Tan was sitting in a dorm room, the experience of going through the Series B round, and how the name Snackpass originated, tune in to this episode of Hospitality Hangout Podcast. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality.