Evolving Restaurant Operations through Advanced Technology Solutions with Its a Checkmate - podcast episode cover

Evolving Restaurant Operations through Advanced Technology Solutions with Its a Checkmate

Apr 08, 202437 min
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Episode description

 Evolving Restaurant Operations through Advanced Technology Solutions

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, the host welcomes back Vishal, the CEO and founder of It's a Checkmate, to discuss advancements in restaurant technology. Vishal elaborates on how his company integrates digital ordering channels with POS systems to streamline operations for restaurants. He emphasizes the growing complexity and variety of digital ordering, from kiosks to social media, and how It's a Checkmate manages this integration seamlessly for both large brands and small establishments. He highlights successful collaborations with major brands like Wendy's and Five Guys, and discusses the importance of offering a consistent ordering experience across all digital platforms. The episode also explores menu management, capacity management, first-party ordering solutions, and the potential of voice ordering. Additionally, Vishal shares insights on the profitability and challenges of third-party platforms and the importance of being where the customers are, showcasing the dynamic and evolving landscape of restaurant technology solutions.

00:00 Welcome to the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast
00:18 Introducing Repeat Guest Vishal from It's a Checkmate
01:05 Exploring the Explosion of Digital Ordering Channels
02:11 The Future of Digital Ordering and Its Impact on Operations
04:31 Innovative Solutions for Complex Digital Ordering Challenges
06:10 The Importance of Being Where Your Customers Are
10:37 Integrating Digital Orders into Restaurant Operations
12:36 Addressing Capacity Management and Customer Expectations
16:57 The Evolution of Menu Management in a Digital World
26:18 The Role of Voice Ordering in the Future of Restaurants
33:30 How to Connect with It's a Checkmate for Solutions
36:22 Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Transcript

This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Helping you run your restaurant better.

Jeremy Julian

Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I say, each and every time I know you guys have got lots of choices. I appreciate you guys spending time with us today. We have a repeat guest. It's always a privilege when I get to have a repeat guest on, I'm gonna let him introduce himself here in a second. But, if you guys didn't catch the episode, it aired, earlier in 2023. So about a year ago. So you might go check that out.

Cause he talks a lot about what he's been solving for. But Vishal, why don't you reintroduce yourself to those that. Didn't get a chance to catch that episode. And then, we can talk about what you've been up to in the last

Vishal Agarwal

Absolutely. Absolutely, Jamie. Thank you. I also think it's a privilege to be invited back. because of the previous one would have been a disaster.

Jeremy Julian

up the first time bad enough. So

Vishal Agarwal

I'm not going to count that. I won't do it again. But, thank you. Thank you for having me back. I'm Vishal. I'm the founder and CEO of It's a Checkmate. What we do is integrate digital ordering channels to the POS systems and the core systems of the restaurant. Today, as we understand the digital channels as a whole are exploding You can obviously have your first party ordering experience.

You can have your third party ordering experience but now you have a kiosk and you have you can order through carplay and you can order from your apple watch and Facebook messenger all of these are considered Drive through phone ordering right? All of these are considered digital channels what we are solving for us And it's a checkmate is a restaurant operator should be able to make their menu and their presence available in all of those channels without burning their operation to the ground.

That's what we are solving for. We work with some of the largest brands in the industry today, including the likes of Wendy's, Arby's, Sonic, Buffalo Wild Wings, Five Guys, and quite a few others, as well as a local mom and pop shop. as a New York City resident, we have a special place in our heart for them. so working through all of the spectrum and, enjoying what we do. So that's for my friends. It's a technique.

Jeremy Julian

I love it. I love it. And for those, for those that didn't listen, you went through it a little bit, but you talk about the explosion of digital ordering, Vishal, I think there's a lot of people that, that, that do digital ordering and they think. It's just, what do you need to really solve for? Because there's really only one channel digitally. It's the website or it's DoorDash or it's whatever their preference is.

But talk to me about the number of different places that people are getting orders into the point of sale, 10 years ago, quite frankly, or 15 years ago, there might've been a website. And there might have been somebody walking into your dining room or walking up to the cashier. There may have been two ordering channels, maybe a third if they were really out there. But now there's lots of places that have 15 or 20.

So talk me through what all of those different digital channels are so that people that maybe are, I guess myopic in their view because they've only got what either they order from or what their restaurant supports. Talk me through all of those different things you alluded to it earlier, but I think it's important for people to understand where it's at now. And then we can talk in the future about what it's going to look like in five or 10 years, because I think it's going to keep going crazy.

Vishal Agarwal

Absolutely. And, happy to list them out and some of them may seem like fringe channels. But I just want to remind everyone that Doordash, seven years ago, seemed like a fringe channel, so what may seem fringe right now, you obviously have your first party experience, you have your third party experience. Which I'm going to put on the record and say that they're not evil. everyone in the industry says they're very core to our entire survival ecosystem, that they're very core to it.

kiosks are taking off, which we are now diving into and will be having our own kiosk release in Q2. drive through ordering, phone ordering, you could have, ordering through Amazon Alexa. We are working with a company that's enabling ordering through CarPlay. we had an extremely interesting, release by our client Wendy's where they partnered with Doordash. So you could order Wendy's through Doordash on Roku.

Jeremy Julian

Yep. I heard about

Vishal Agarwal

these are experimentative, but. That's how you move the ball forward by experimenting. Nine will fail, but the one that succeeds is going to make up all of the others. the explosion of digital channels is happening, right? But Jeremy, what's even more amazing to us is the kind of experimentations now our clients are doing within these experiment, within these digital channels, that's making it even more complex to manage their operations. I'll give you an example.

we, you want to encourage people to walk into your store and go to a kiosk instead of going to the POS. So now the brand wants to launch a specific menu for the kiosk with a hidden item, not a loyalty, not a free item, just a hidden item. Hey, if you go to a kiosk, you'll find a hidden gem there. Great. how do you manage the menu for that one now? just had Super Bowl go through. We have March Madness coming up.

Grants, like the kind of national grants we work with, organize their campaigns around these events. So hey, if you order this during the Super Bowl weekend, you get this free. Or during March Magnus, we have the special offer. we have a large brand and I can't mention what kind of promotion they're running, but it's a very interesting celebrity endorsed campaign that's going to launch in the next couple of weeks.

So it's not just about digital channels and its explosion, but the ability to experiment on those digital channels to be able to run exclusive offers, to do special promos and. Tie that back to the ROI. I think that's the most fun and it's amazing part that you're working with very large brands on at scale and developing the infrastructure to do that very efficiently. So that's very exciting for us.

Jeremy Julian

and one of the things that I want to, double click on is really the idea that I, the more I talk with people, the more they talk about trying to be where their consumers are. And sometimes that consumer is inside of a video game.

Vishal Agarwal

I forgot to mention

Jeremy Julian

is watching YouTube. Yeah. Sometimes people are watching YouTube. Some people are watching. Roku. Some people are watching Hulu. Some people are what you think about the different mediums by which we're consuming data, I don't know, 40 years ago, there was four channels and you got to place a national ad on one of those four channels and you got a bunch of eyeballs. And now those eyeballs have been split. And so now how, not only do I advertise to them, but now how do I have a CTA?

The only way you can have a CTA And capture that digital order through that is to have it integrated back to your systems. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys are thinking about that, because I think enabling all of these different methodologies where you're at is really critical to this timing and what consumers truly are looking for. And if you can't offer it, they're going to go somewhere where they will offer it or

Vishal Agarwal

I come from an e commerce retail background. And I think this phrase that you just mentioned that you have to be present where your customers are was true there a long time ago. And I think it's now getting prevalent in the restaurant industry as well. If you're literally in the middle of a video game and It is 2 30 p. m. I'm a big fan of this

Jeremy Julian

a video gamer, as

Vishal Agarwal

or here

Jeremy Julian

be 2 30

Vishal Agarwal

Or am I'm a big fan of the show the big bang theory and you know We are creatures of our habit some a little more extreme than the others. Sure, but we are all creatures of our habit So if it's a thursday night at 2 30 a. m Like you mentioned I know where i'm going to order from and what am I craving? The ability to give you the ability, the option to order right then and there It's fabulous. But we had it's a checkmate.

We've been very focused that we're trying to solve the problems for the restaurant operators. In doing so, the customer, the end user, the customer experience does get better. But how can we make this better for the restaurant operators? To your point? Sure, the customer can make, order a burger, delicious five s burger while playing a video game, But it's no use if that results in seven tablets being laid out on the counter.

And then the operator having to make from there, then the juice is not worth the squeeze, but

Jeremy Julian

Yeah. And we talked about it. We talked about even the guest experience, if you don't do it

Vishal Agarwal

if

Jeremy Julian

I'll let you keep going, but I think it's, I think it's so critical for people to understand that, yes, that's great that you have the ability for your consumer to interact with your brand, but if it tarnishes your brand, when they actually do order it. It was worthless because you're only going to get that one bite at the apple versus potentially getting the multiple So i'll

Vishal Agarwal

no. You're exactly

Jeremy Julian

you guys think about tech because I think it's important To think about the tech and how does it operationalize? How does it get into the pos? How does it load balance? How does it make sure that you're able to take that order at 2 30 in the morning and produce it? At the level that you need to so keep going on that thread if you

Vishal Agarwal

No, absolutely. to add to what you were saying, if you enable that order taking a 2. 30 AM, but don't deliver the food, it's a net negative because that person is going to talk about it. So you've just not lost that one customer. You lost more than that one customer. To us, what is critical is, we've talked about ordering at 2. 30 AM.

And then we were also looking at our volume right now at 5. 30 p. m. this Sunday, and we all know what happened this Sunday at 5 at 6 p. m. Being able to ensure that your infrastructure supports volume at scale. Is a given like you can't have a downtime. That's not acceptable. But imagine being president, all of these channels now put on your, brand hat, you're an operator, you're president, all of these channels.

So you as a marketer have done the best job that you can to put your brand in 20 different channels. And what you've told your kitchen, now your kitchen is freaking out. Are you telling me that I'm going to get orders from 20 different channels in 20 different formats? One will say cheeseburger and another will say burger with cheese and one will say chicken burrito and another will say burger with a modifier of chicken?

What you can tell them is, you don't need to worry about any channel, every single order is going to print from your POS in that exact same format and you don't have to worry about where it came from. Obviously you have to capacitate the chicken, the kitchen, otherwise you are in a soup, literally, but if you make your kitchen operations efficient. Making sure that all of the orders coming in are transformed into the same format that your viewers understand. And that requires them.

Jeremy Julian

And what? Your operations understands to your point, not just the the kitchen, but it's also what is your operation do? Because they have to know that.

Vishal Agarwal

no. Absolute. no,

Jeremy Julian

but I think it's important.

Vishal Agarwal

What does your operations do? How does it flow into your accounting system? How does it flow into your inventory system? I think that's where Making your brand available on 20 different ordering channels is actually the easier part.

Jeremy Julian

Yeah.

Vishal Agarwal

What's difficult is managing your kitchen operations, your overall operations to make sure that you can actually service them well. And that's what's been so tremendously exciting for us in terms of what we've been working, what we want to put out and keeping the restaurant operator at the center of everything that we're doing, you can have different perspectives, right? hey, I want to solve for the customer experience. I want to solve for the accounting person.

For us, it's the restaurant operator. Who basically has his or her hands in multiple different parts, trying to solve for technology, for finance, for marketing. That's who we are focusing

Jeremy Julian

Yep. and I think the other piece of that, Vishal, and I know we talked about it on the, on our last episode is, 20 years ago when we talked about it a little bit pre show, when you walked into a dining room or when you walked into a place, when I walked into a five guys, I knew quite frankly that I was fifth person in line. I was probably going to have to wait a little bit longer digitally. That is completely. Blind to the consumer, completely blind to the consumer.

Talk to me about how you guys are dealing with capacity management and guest communication as it relates to that. Because I think if I know that I've got to wait 20 minutes when it, cause I'm standing in line, I live in Texas and the number one, Texas barbecue place is about 30, 40 minutes south of me. Me and my coworker waited three hours for barbecue one day. I can tell you it was fantastic, but.

You know what I knew because there was a huge line and everything online said I was going to be waiting three hours. So I wasn't upset when I was waiting three hours, but when I go online, if I expect that my burger, because my third party delivery, my first party, whatever said it would be done in 20 minutes. And I'd have my food in 30 and it's an hour and a half later. I'm a dissatisfied user. Talk to me a little bit about what that looks like.

Vishal Agarwal

fantastic and a very top of mind question. Just for the listeners, we didn't gain this before the call. this is something that's so top of mind that we've had multiple conversations. If I brought on my product manager who's working on this right now, your call, your podcast could be 450 minutes. Top of mind free balling it so important to set the expectations right. I live in New York City. I, I ordered delivery food at least four to five times a week.

I know my fries are not going to be piping hot. I know sometimes my coffee will spill. And yes, I order coffee on delivery. But if you set the right expectations. this is going to take 40 minutes to get to you as a delivery provide as a consumer of delivery. I'm okay with that. So we understand that aspect and we're working really hard to work with various operators understanding the needs on what they think they can successfully deliver. So say, for example, you as a customer wants to order.

suddenly, you have a 200 ordering that you want to place. The standard prep time for a restaurant is 20 minutes, but you can that's for an average check size of 40, right? So you want to let the customer know that this is not going to be 20 minutes. It's going to be more like 45 minutes, right? And then let the customer make that decision on whether to go ahead and order or not before they place that order.

like a very simple solution, but then you also have to take into account the capacity of the kitchen. And how much can they handle? What are the items that are included in that 200 item? So these are all of the aspects. We don't have it figured out yet. if we have one out of the next six things figured out, that doesn't mean we haven't figured out.

But what I can tell you is, especially with us acquiring the first party solution and our philosophy that first party, third party, digital channels, they all work together for the restaurant because it's all going into one pipe. This has become a very high topic of discussion for us.

Saying how do we provide and see some operators are saying just send it in like we don't care the more you send the more our kitchen becomes efficient and we have seen that at first I thought they were bluffing and then I walked into the kitchen like

Jeremy Julian

They're operators. That's

Vishal Agarwal

boom, like they,

Jeremy Julian

putting it on top. Yep.

Vishal Agarwal

a big bus of football players dropped in while my kitchen just got more efficient, right? Others say no, I have a max and beyond that I can't do it. Beyond that, either you cancel or you push it to the next time stop, right? So we're trying to work with all of these different combinations, provide solutions. It's not a cookie cutter approach. you don't have a one size fits all. You have to develop different solutions.

And then maybe you have five solutions that 5, 000 operators can pick and choose from. So that's how we are looking at this, trying to understand the kitchen capacity, trying to understand. Prep time on a poor item level and then delivering accurate timings. for the customer.

Jeremy Julian

and, 20 years ago, if I would have called and said, I needed a 200 order, number one, the person taking that order would have told them whether they had the capacity. They probably would have given a more accurate quoting time, or they would have said, unfortunately, our kitchen's going to be too busy. You probably should go try a different restaurant in our same vicinity in New York city. You might have two, two stores of the same brand that you're right in between.

It might be easier for you to pass off to this other group. One of the other things that you and I talked about pre show before we hit the record button is. Not all menus are created equal. Not all prices are created equal. Not all options are created equal. You talked about french fries. I know some brands don't like to deliver certain products that are not going to fulfill their capacity outside of the four walls.

I've always had this theory that fried food is probably not best, taken to go or taken out of the four walls. That's just, that's been my philosophy. I don't like a fish and chips. I'm going to sit down in the dining room and eat fish and chips, but probably not take it in third party delivery where it's 30 or 40 minutes out of the kitchen.

talk to me a little bit about how you guys are solving that technological challenge because there are a lot of pieces that you might not want to do via third party, or you may need some different way to communicate with the guest via third party or via kiosk or via voice that you don't need to necessarily in a trained staff member at the point of sale.

Vishal Agarwal

absolutely. So going back to our earlier point, how do you make yourself available on those 20 different channels, right? you probably don't want an Arby's burger with all of the customizations available on an Apple CarPlay solution, right? You'll probably cause a lot of car crashes depending on what part of the country you're in. So you want to have a cleaner, more standardized menu, like you get it as it is, no customizations allowed.

Um, we had a situation where we were working with multiple franchisees of a large brand, and that brand required all of the franchisees to have at least three drinks out of a recommended of seven. And then you could have three to seven, any number of combinations, right? Both of these situations, they're not very dissimilar because they all come back to menu management and the ability to have different items and different structures of menus on different channels.

That's what we've been working, very hard at solving over the last one year is. Creating, is we think POS is the source of truth right now, right? They house the menu, excuse me, but how do you capture the menu from the POS and constantly optimize it and tweak it and change the format, change the structure, give different names and send it out to different channels based on the requirements of those channels.

We also talked about, having a special unique items on your first party or on your kiosk versus on your third party. And even with third party here, I'm running a huge promo with Doordash and Uber Eats during March Madness. And I want to have a specific menu for that. So we've been working hard to create this amazing enterprise grade, menu management solution that allows a branch to be able to take advantage all of these options that are being present. Thank you so much.

For them in the present, actually, not even in the future. it's been a challenge because you've taken a lot of feedback. You've listened to a lot of operators, a lot of preschool being called and everyone has different requirements and everyone has different scenarios and you can't do them all. But we do believe that's going to be a solution that's going to help operators not only be present across multiple channels, but be able to manage them well.

Like the initial first push is easy, Jeremy, like I can just go sign up for 20 at a time. Later on when you have to manage it from a menu perspective, from a finance perspective, from a reconciliation perspective, that's where you realize, is it really worth

Jeremy Julian

pricing perspective from a and it doesn't give you the flexibility to even do I want to do this LTO But I'm trying to drive behavior. I'm trying to drive people to this third party deal.

I'm trying to drive them in store I only offer this item if I come in store if I order on the kiosk and all of that And so I love that you guys are building these tools that are gonna allow the flexibility because at the end of the day The operators, while you talk about it, not being a evil empire, the third parties, which I would a hundred percent agree with, they don't necessarily make it easy because they're very large companies and they say, do it my way or don't do it at all.

So because of that, it is a value add to your business and you've got to be able to play nice with them in order to get the guest experience the way you want

Vishal Agarwal

I think it is a core part of the reason we've survived. There is a disconnect in how the operators want to do it and how maybe the third parties want to do it. And what our role becomes here is we come in and say, Hey, you have a certain way of working. You have a certain way of working. We are flexible. So let us be the catalyst. Let us be the hook in between to meet both of your needs. And that's why today we have such an amazing relationship with the third party platforms, right?

Whereas otherwise it's very contentious, even though we own our own first party solution. So it's never us versus them. It's listen, this is all working together. And at the end of the day, it's the brand operator that decides what to do. A lot of brands will say, I want to drive revenue to my first party. Great. We'll support you. But we are actually hearing a lot of brands saying third party is profitable for me. Like I don't get the logic. I have inflated prices on third party.

They're driving amazing customers. They're driving regular business. It's consistent. Every Tuesday I can expect between 55 and 60 orders from them. How is that not amazing for an operator to plan their operations?

Jeremy Julian

Well, a lot of times the basket sizes are bigger. funny enough, I, I talked to an operator recently and he said the basket sizes are any between 15 and 20 percent higher on third party than they are on first party, which not only the inflated prices, that's taking the inflated prices into account saying, you know what, I'm charging more on door dash, but the basket sizes still are bigger. Is that what you guys are finding in the data that you guys have?

Vishal Agarwal

They have amazing upsell and recommendation algorithm. I just literally for lunch ordered a poke bowl. I was adding it to cart and then it gave me five recommendations and I added one to cart and I checked out. The It's not a coincidence. It's by design. There's a reason why they protect the data to have applications like a recommendation engine and an algorithm to recommend more to customers, as a result of which the basket size is higher. So the value that they are driving, right?

when the brand operators say third party is profitable for me, higher check size, consistent operations, I want to lean in more on that. Like we're short. We said, sure, we have the tools, we can get you more menu exposure, we can add more options there, we can have more of your latest imagery there, we can do test markets. in Nashville, I just want to try out this new chicken sandwich that we're experimenting. Can you launch it in just these 20 locations?

Yes. And guess who will give you the right exposure, the third party platforms, right? Because they have the thing and that's what we're really loving and enjoying about this space.

Jeremy Julian

one or two other threads, Bashal, you alluded to it earlier since we last talked, you guys have picked up a first party ordering, first and foremost, to find what first party ordering is for those that don't know, and then second, talk to me a little bit about why you guys went down that

Vishal Agarwal

Absolutely. Absolutely. first party ordering, for example, if you go to one of our customers, farmerboys. com and you want to order directly from there. It's a fantastic Southern California brand for those who don't know.

Jeremy Julian

I miss it. I moved to Texas. I used to eat it all

Vishal Agarwal

you did. You did.

Jeremy Julian

Oh, I did. I grew up on farmer boys and there was 1 right next to my house. So I was very, I'm very familiar with

Vishal Agarwal

I will share this with them when I speak with them next week. we speak every week, when you go to their site and you order directly from there, that's a first party experience. So it's on the web, it's on the mobile app. We're releasing the mobile app shortly. fantastic custom branded experience. So it really looks like their website. it reflects the true identity of their brand. we actually rolled out scan and pay a table with them very recently and, just a very good native ordering experience.

So that's what we've, recently purchased. Why we went down this route is, it's very easy for, SaaS solution providers to talk enterprise. But what happened with us was we rolled out, with Wendy's and Sonic in 2020. And, those were large scale deployment over 10, 000 locations and over a few weeks and realized, wow, we are now enterprise, right? And in my opinion, there's like truly one enterprise player in our space, right? oh, wow, we are now competing with them.

But what had happened was we had started losing a lot of deals to them. So I spoke to a few CIO, CTO that said, you know what, why did we lose? And this is for my learning. They said, we love your solution. We love the service aspect of it, but we're just looking for one solution that can manage both a first party and a third party solution. And we didn't have a good first party solution at that time.

So that was the intent behind going out and buying an enterprise grade first party solution to be able to offer this holistic tech stack to the operators.

Jeremy Julian

Thank you for sharing that. And again, for those that aren't aware, these guys have now got both first party integrated straight there, or if you want the third party, the second thread, Vishal is we've talked, there's been a lot of hype. About voice ordering, and or I guess alternative ordering methods. And I'm gonna say alternative ordering methods, because I think, everybody has seen a web order.

Everybody's seen an order from your phone, but there's this whole idea of voice and how voice is going to become an input method that is going to. As prevalent, if not more prevalent 20 years from now than even typing on a keyboard or typing on a screen. I know for myself, when I have to send a long text or send a long email, oftentimes I voice text it in there and I go back and tweak it. So I know even for myself, I know the technology is, has been growing quite a bit.

Talk to me a little bit about how you guys think about that and where you guys see that part, you guys playing a part in that, that, that space.

Vishal Agarwal

Absolutely. I think there's a lot more to come. and I do believe the hype is real. I don't, I'm not saying, everything that I have predicted has gone to plan. But, if I take the last two instances, at least one of them was virtual kitchen. So I've been proven right. But this one, I am also very gung ho on that voice ordering is going to have a big impact in the restaurant industry. Absolutely.

And there could be a few different applications, whether it's phone ordering, drive thru ordering, you want to order on your mobile app via your voice, you want to order via voice on your kiosk once you walk into a store. So the applications are quite big. I am quite careful when I say this because it may seem self serving, but I do believe a lot of, again, it is yet another digital channel. It's going to be an important one, but it's another digital channel.

The challenge is going to be, how can you, how can you make sure that this is not disruptive to the operations of the restaurant? How can you make sure that this goes straight to the kitchen in the same format as if somebody walked in and punched this order on the pos, right? So I think that's going to be, while the voice ordering the voice ai side is going to keep evolving. Excuse me.

The, part that is going to, maybe hold back the widespread adoption is going to be, the integration into the POS systems. Because, I don't think whether it's enterprise or SMB, anyone is going back to the tablet jungle situation that we've had in the past. all been there, hopefully a lot, and I know you were mentioning a couple of examples who have not come out of it, but we for the most part think we've come out of it, and I don't think there's a possibility of going back there.

Jeremy Julian

and I think, funny enough, one of the, one of the challenges with voice ordering versus even guest ordering, guest ordering on a phone or on a, Tablet or, somewhere at a kiosk is you can structure the point of sale. You can structure the kiosk, you can structure it to force them, force the guests to go through some workflow. You can force them to put a type of sauce or a type of bun or a type of protein on a burger. You cannot necessarily do that with voice as easily.

And so that is, that to me is the challenge and. Tack on top of that, the fact that it is continuing to, with edge computing, with the ability to identify these voices and different accents and all of these kinds of things.

I was quite frankly, blown away when I got my first demo of, the converse now platform, they've been on the show, I've sat and listened to the soundhound, there's three that we've had on the show, Kia, soundhound and converse now, and all of them blew me away with how much they could understand. again, even me and my kids and I've got four children and a wife and like we go through a drive thru and it's a freaking disaster half the time.

I just say, let's just park the car and walk inside because it's just going to be so much easier that way than trying to scream the orders through the drive thru window. And at the same time, I think the compute has gotten so. Much better to be able to do that. That, and then really it's your job to now translate that to what the structured data is, that's in the point of sale. So I'm sure there's lots of challenges for your product team on that.

Vishal Agarwal

a lot of opportunities is how we're looking at this. Absolutely, Jeremy. Um, you're absolutely right to be, the voice ordering is very, fluid, it doesn't force you into a structure. And, we partner with converse now and they've done a great job at this. It's, especially with the advent of AI and open AI solutions and other LLM solutions. I think the most, yeah. Difficult part has been substantially solved.

I'm not saying it's been fully solved, but at least the most difficult part has been taken care of and now companies that can build the right context around restaurant ordering and make it structured, specific to the restaurant industry and deliver a solution. That fits the restaurant mode. I think they're going to come out ahead. but I still think there is a ways to go. I struggle to answer this question sometimes exactly to your point. I'm blown away by what they've been able to achieve.

Why hasn't everyone adopted it? that's a question that I'm struggling to answer, but I'm sure there's an answer somewhere.

Jeremy Julian

the thing that I've heard, and I guess I'll throw this at you because I think it even goes to your capacity management is your data set has to be so big to understand what's going on with this. And so the data is not quite there. Open AI spent eight years, seven years, scanning the Internet to be able to get what. open AI is able to do in chat. GPT is able to do for you now, and that's taking the entire internet or as much as they were able to get in that data center.

if you're a single one off pizza place, you only have so many orders that come through, and you only have so many that come in that different format.

And to me, The reason why I think it hasn't gotten the widest spread adoption ultimately is because the data set is not big enough yet to be able to know that I'm going to say pep versus you're going to say pepperoni for that pizza today, and and then training that AI, same thing in computer vision, I think computer vision is just going to change the way we do business in the restaurants. But the data sets not quite there yet. I guess I'd love to, to get your opinion

Vishal Agarwal

I think that's fair. I think that's fair. And again, in terms of data set, that's what I meant when I said, taking the, Building the final solution on top of an open AI or other LLM solution has, to some extent solved that problem because even though it's not, specific to restaurant industry, that versus pepperoni and a burger and the cheeseburger, they're sent pretty commonly across the board, but again, it's not a fully solved problem.

and we're working with some very interesting companies, to see how we can get this closer to, to. I wouldn't say mass adoption, but at least a more generic adoption.

Jeremy Julian

and I think, you said it, the amount of digital channels is only going to continue to grow. And I think it's only going to continue. People are going to expect it. They expect it from Amazon. They expect it from Google. They expect it from Apple. They are going to expect it from five guys and from all of these different brands. But for those that are out there that are listening, they want to know how to learn more about how to do what you guys are doing.

Tell me more about how do they get connected with your team? How do they get connected with you? what does it look like if they decide they want to get? They're still one of those laggers. They've still got what I call tablet hell. They got tablets. I actually yesterday I was at lunch. Funny enough, I was at lunch at this brand new restaurant and I'm sitting there having a business launch and I hear doing because it's a stupid tablet from some third party delivery.

Company and they've got it sit in the middle of the dining room and it's interrupting my business lunch because they didn't have it integrated to the point of sale So the place I had breakfast at this morning and the place I had lunch at yesterday Both are still living in that world And so both of them need a solution like what you have or some of the other Competitors that you guys have got out there talk to me about what it looks like to engage with it's a checkmate

Vishal Agarwal

To me. Yes. happy to, share like you can just go to our website, sign up, reach out. My email is always available. It's Bishal, my first name at the checkmate. com. we believe what we've created a really seamless onboarding experience. even for the smallest of customers, for enterprise customers, obviously get a dedicated team, but even for S and B customers, it's really good. I want to be very clear. It's not a self service solution.

We tech people like to live in this utopian world where we like to think we can create a solution and everybody go help yourself. That's not where we're at. We learned this the hard way. We have a place where you can fill out most of the information yourself. At any point you get stuck, there is a phone number that you can pick up the phone and call. Our average time to answer is less than a minute right now. so very easy to get connected, very easy to get onboarded.

We have a month to month contract, no long term contract, no set up fee. So try this out for a month. If you don't like it, always disconnect. There's nothing that you've got to lose. yeah, that's what we offer. And then very, let me say zero risk option here.

Jeremy Julian

well again, I know that You and I connect outside of the show. So I appreciate, I appreciate you coming on and educating really our listeners. Cause I think, as I say often, and part of what I love about the listeners of the show is they oftentimes hear about things that others are doing and then go now they know what their next quarter's project or their next year's project. Cause they may not have thought about voice ordering. They may not have thought about kitchen capacity management.

They may not have thought about, I was talking to an operator the other day and they said. You're allowed to charge more on third party delivery. And I went, are you kidding

Vishal Agarwal

What year is

Jeremy Julian

you laugh, but you're like, are you stuck in, 2010, like what is wrong with you? But at the end of the day, that's part of what I love about having guests on, like yourself that are at the forefront, you're talking to brick brands. And I would also encourage those listeners. This is not just for the five guys of the world. This is not just for the Wendy's of the world, but Shell's got a solution for small, medium and large businesses. So please go check it out.

to our listeners, guys, thank you guys for, for listening. As I said at the beginning, it's always a privilege to come on the air and talk to you guys, but shall thank you for your time. And to our listeners, make it a great day.

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.

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