WelcomE back the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Uh, I am actually very excited because, uh, this guy I've known for a while now. I was actually a fan of his on social and then eventually we got a chance uh, to meet. But, um, Nabeel, don't you introduce yourself to our audience for those that don't know who you are. I want to talk more at the about who you are, a little bit of your background because I think it's, it's really fun to, to talk through those things.
And then we can talk through. Um talk through a little bit about what you get to do for a living.
Yeah. I mean, listen, thank you much for having me and thank for joining our pod as well. It was so awesome to have there. And I was telling you that we, we started ours inspired by yours and, and thank you for letting us emulate guys and emulate you and what you're doing and everything you guys do for the So thank you for having me. Uh, my name is Nabeel. Yeah. My name is Nabeel, uh, Nabeel Alamgar, Alamgir, CEO and co founder of Lunchbox. We are a five year old company.
We do all things off premise. We do online ordering. Your first party online ordering, we do your catering, we will build your app, it looks like the Chipotle app or the Sweetgreen app, except you don't have spend millions of dollars. We will do your order aggregation, and take all your third party orders put it into your POS. And we'll do everything else between. Everything off premise, everything outside four walls, we want to do. Everything within the four walls, we want CVS do.
So that's the best way look at Lunchbox, and yeah, very grateful to be here.
Awesome Well, and uh for those that haven't checked out bill's podcast. He's had some Uh more prominent guests than than myself on the show for sure so it's uh, it's certainly fun to uh to listen to his show uh, um, but Talk to me a little bit about the background because the company's only been around five years and quite frankly when you guys started coming out I was like Who the heck is this guy and you're very active on social. I'm like, he's posting all the time.
He's got this lunchbox thing, you know, and it's kind of, you know, I don't want to say before, I mean, you guys really were have set out to go there. So talk to me a little bit about where, give me, give me a little bit about Nabeel, like, where do you come from? How did restaurant and restaurant tech and off prem. Even become something that you were in? Because it's fun. I always love the, the, the founders that have scratched an itch that they.
They've struggled with, or they see as a problem, or they see as a true opportunity. And, and, uh, I am inspired by some of the stuff that you've already done. And, and then I'm, you know, a huge fan, and we'll talk little bit about where Lunchbox is at and how it's grown the last five years. But to give me a little bit of background, cause I do think it's, it's amazing when our listeners can hear where, you know, your background.
you know, kind of, of, kind the, the, the, the mentality and how you got into restaurants and the things that you had done throughout your career. You know, starting at a very young age.
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's similar story, right? Like, you know, there's a thing called history doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes. I mean, your story on how you were the first support person over there and it, picking up the phone call, it happened accidentally as it happened for you. It happened very accidentally. And similarly for me, the way I was introduced to hospitality and restaurants, um, you I'm an immigrant. I came from Kuwait and Bangladesh. Uh, not.
Not countries where there's a, a lot of opportunities like we have here in America, right? And so, you know, I came here, I came here to, you know, Queens, New York. Uh, perfect, like, the incredible place for immigrants to come. The most diverse borough in the entire country. More languages spoken here than anywhere else in the world. So when you come here, everyone is not here. And that's, that's how you all come together. That's how New Yorkers or people Queens come together.
So I came here, uh, I'm learning English. I'm learning English watching Mafia movies. I use hands a lot. I think I'm American Italian. I'm not. I'm watching Godfather, Scarface. Should not be watching these movies. But I'm learning English and I'm loving it. And I'm, and finding my voice. And where I found my voice was at I got a job as a busboy at a burger joint. Uh, that my, that my, uh, my, my teacher's brother started. So got a job as a busboy. And I'm cleaning tables. And it's an easy job.
don't have to speak a lot of English. And you get learn hospitality. You get to see appreciation when clean the table. You get use some English because they they think you might be the server. Uh, you know, can I get this, I get that? And you get practice some English. And, yeah, I, that's, that's my introduction to hospitality. And, and, and, I was at that same company from 17 to 27, a decade. And no one does anything a decade anymore, especially folks like my age.
But I loved it and we grew it to a 50 unit chain. And we started Lunchbox because similarly, we saw another problem. Like, hey, like, how can we build a a better ecosystem? So it all happened accidentally.
I love that. I love that story and at some point we'll have to get into the Kuwait story because I got the privilege to go there actually 11 years ago. Um, and that was a that was an experience in and of itself being a you know, uh, born and bred American going to the Middle East for the first time. Um, and even just kind of some of the stories.
But, uh, let's, let's dig into So lunchbox, um, started with a vision really, and, and that vision, you know, I'd love for you to share with our audience little bit. What is that vision that you said? You know what? You alluded to it just now. Um, you look at it and go, I really want to get to a place where off prem can be done better than, than people have done it in the past.
So talk to me a little bit about how and why you thought that that was such a problem to be solved because there's others that have done it. And I would say, you know, you, you were joking at the beginning about emulating the RTG podcast, um, you know, with your own podcast, but you guys look at it and say, you know what, this is something that we can truly make dent in the world by doing off premise a different way. Why?
Here's folks we saw and used and thought it really well. Right? We thought Ola was doing parts it really, really well. We thought they were doing order well and web well. And we thought that was awesome. And then we looked at LevelUp. They were doing apps really well. They were building apps for Sweetgreen. Um, and CEO is an investor of ours. And we were asking him, how do you like it? And there was amazing stuff there. We saw other agencies like Koala come in and make it all look amazing.
Right? And we just saw all these different components were inspired by them and we said, that is not affordable for a lot of restaurants to bring all of these folks together. And can we be a company that is a second mover here? Right? Facebook was a second mover to MySpace. And, you know, a lot of second movers win and they win because You know, can they really go deliver on what first movers have built? So we sit on the shoulders of giants.
We sit on the shoulders of companies that have done an incredible thing. And we want to if we can do a couple of things. One, consolidate it. Number two, look at it from the problems for, you know, 2023 and beyond. Right. And three, give restaurants the option to say, turn my catering on. I want to test it out or turn it off and for it not to be a big multi year investment and multi year contract.
We just wanted to bring that flexibility the sub 1, 000 unit chains because think those, those people don't have 200 engineers in house. And that makes sense. We want to work with them build something for them. That was our vision. And our vision also, like more than anything else, we zoom out, was to be a company built by restaurateurs. A lot of these are built by technologists. I don't know how to write a single line code.
I look like it, because, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm Bengali, but I actually don't know how to write it. And all I know is, hey, this doesn't make sense, or this pricing doesn't sense, or our operator would never pay this, or our operator needs to experiment.
And so, The company is filled with characters like that, like Chrissy, our, you know, Chrissy, our VP of Develop, you know, partnership and Earl, who was the founder of Monkey Media and this incredible who are like, we're restaurant people pretending to be tech people because the multiples are much better.
Yeah. Well, and I think, I mean, I'd love to double click a little bit on that because one of the things that talking about pre show is the hospitality industry. You're in the hospitality industry. You need to be hospitable. And a lot of these tech companies, including, you sometimes my own and sometimes some of the other players that are in the space. Forget that they're in the hospitality industry. They have to deal with people. They have to, they have engage.
And so the, the way you guys go to market very different than some of the other tech providers, which I think allows the opportunity for you guys to get into different places because you guys are telling real stories about how you guys are solving real problems and in a hospitable way. Talk to me about that culture building because.
I also know that not only are you founder and CEO, but I know from what you do publicly and even privately that your main role is to build the culture within the organization that says this is who we are and this is what we do.
I mean, before I touch on that, like I. Can call you anytime and he will pick up anytime, you know, and I know your customers you all the time directly and, you know, like when I first got introduced to you guys and it was such an honor, your dad and I were on a phone call and I'm like, why is the CEO of CBS on a call, uh, with me right now? Like he just, he's like, call me. I emailed him. He said, call me. And we jumped on a call and we talked about his trip to Egypt.
And after the call, he sent me a of his itinerary and the agent, the travel agency and where to go and what to do, what not to do. That's hospitality, You know, So to hear those stories and to watch companies like yours, you know, we're learning from it and we're like, okay, how can we bring it to a, a. young, brash, sometimes unreasonable company, and still bring all the elements of just great hospitality. Because great hospitality, you cannot hack it. It's just, it's slow cooking.
It's slow roasting. it's, it's doing the work. it's up the phone.
And so, you know, As I'm trying to our culture, I am, I have the honor of, you know, picking and choosing from what you are doing and from, you know, are the other greats have done before us, what, uh, you know, the reason Starbucks has been successful, the reason, uh, you know, Panera has successful and all these other companies and say, let's, let's bring that here because while we sit here in tech with, like we can fundraise differently, our margins are better, restaurants don't have that
privilege, but look at what, look at the, Look at what they've built. This is the second largest workforce in the country, and this is 50 percent of all Americans first job, you know? And this is a massive group people, and they do it with nickels and dimes, and we to go ahead and learn from them bring hospitality instead of being what tech companies are, which is entitled.
Like, we are in tech, so we can be so entitled, especially when we're VC backed, and we sometimes like, know, hey, talk to our support team, and like, don't jump on a call. Sometimes the customers just just want to on a call and know that you are sorry, and you'll fix it when you'll fix it, but you're sorry. So those are some the things we're trying to teach our team here. And it's incredible to build that culture together.
Uh, We just rewrote our culture, uh, Two ago during our offsite and our leadership team, we put like, Hey, are the authors. And we wrote down all our leaders name because I didn't write it alone. We did it together. So having so many people on our team are restaurant people who are failed restaurant owners, successful restaurant owners, first job was a restaurateur, has been amazing to build that culture together.
uh, and, and again, the one thing that I love that you, that I get the privilege to do, not only are we. Are we friends outside of the podcast? But, you and so I get to see it, but you do, and your team actually does a fantastic job of building in public. So we get to see it and even the failures. I mean, I know you're pretty big about, about even talking about those things. at the end of the day. We're all going to fail. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to do the wrong things.
Um, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to change gears a little bit. Um, you talked about how big the industry is, how, how second mover advantage in a lot of cases. Um, and at the same time, there's a lot of people that interact with off premise differently. There's some that do catering.
There's some that do third party there's some that do first party delivery, There's some that an app, there's some that want just a mobile web, and talk to me a little bit about how you guys try and tackle those things because it's, Again, more and more brands and you guys hit, hit the timing really well because you're in the middle of the pandemic and not that anybody wants the pandemic to happen, but for a brand like yours and a company like what you guys have built, it's been a huge hit.
Growth engine for all off prem. I know I was talking with recent client of ours. Um, and he said before the pandemic, there were eight, 9 percent off prem. Now they're close to 40 percent off prem. And so it creates a second level of, of issues. And tech has to work with the ways that that they want it to work. talk to me a little bit about how you guys think about that.
Yeah. Listen, we would not be here. And this is terrible say, but I'll say it out loud, which is we would not be here if it wasn't for the pandemic. We started few months right before the pandemic. And the pandemic was awful in every way possible. But what it has done for us is it gave our you know, it put a spotlight on us that we may maybe that was shined brighter than ever than any other time.
And more importantly, I think The restaurant industry did not, the pandemic not change the restaurant industry. It sped it up. It sped up the that maybe would have taken 15 years or 10 years and it said, okay, we're going to do that very quickly. you guys, and you, these tech companies, you have to out how to go ahead and be a good partner to restaurants right now, because they now need you more ever. So get good enough mediocrity for off premise.
And so those are the two things that happened as the way we see our history, or we have rewritten our history to say we would not be here if it wasn't for the lift pandemic has given or the light that has shined on off premise. And now more than ever, it's our responsibility for off premise company to do more than. Do have a mobile app? Do you have catering? You know, do you have these, do you have this like table stake tools? Like you can get it from many different companies.
I think what matters is. you know, and you know, this is exactly like your technology. What can it do for enterprise operators and operators in general? And that's where you guys do incredible work. What is the off premise version of that? The off premise version of that is how well do we integrate with the CBS Northstar? The off premise version of that is, can we ahead and have all of. Most it under one roof and not five companies.
And whenever something breaks, they point at each other Because we love doing We love like, okay, it wasn't us. was, you know, uh, Grubhub. And it wasn't Grubhub, it was Lunchbox. And so we were, we're trying to go ahead and do that and build a ecosystem where we can iterate quickly. Right? What do I mean by that? For example, one of the things we just launched was our prices, I'm sorry, our will fluctuate and move around. Based on the weather.
Based on the weather, the soup either goes on top or it goes to the bottom and the dessert pops up on top. And other things. And that is something that historically the McDonald's of the world with dynamic yields have done. Why that be so expensive? Let's bring that to all the restaurants around, uh, the country. And give them the same opportunity to go ahead and not just do discounts. Show customers what they want to see when they want to see it. Right.
Uh, something else we do similar, and I'll stop here, which is we know if you stopped coming in for lunch, and we know if you usually used to in on Tuesdays. So next week, on Tuesday, let me ping you a 10 with a great offer when I I know you have appetite, pun intended, to go out and have this meal. So I can go ahead and win you back instead just sending you blind discount on days you're not at the office. So those are the kind of things we're trying do.
And those are the ways we're trying to be a second mover.
I, uh, I, I love that forethought that you guys put into it. Again, it really goes back to how do we make it, how do we make it better for the restaurant tour? And you guys always, every time you guys put out messaging, every time you guys put out, you know, the product, it's always, how do I make it easy for that restaurant that not be, may not be at a thousand stores to be able to afford these things?
There, there's also the flip side of that, which is the consumer consumerization of tech, you know, Apple, Amazon, Google have done a fantastic job of setting our expectation says I can order food and have it be Amazon easy, Apple easy, I order it and within 15 minutes, um, you know, I've got product on its way and I'm getting these again, five years ago, that wasn't the expectation.
Five years ago, you know, 30 percent of the places that I went didn't even have an online presence, you know, where you order food now, everybody's got to have it. So the consumer behaviors also have changed and the expectations have changed, not just of what product they can get, but how they can get it and how easily they can get it.
Talk to me a little bit about how you guys think about that from a product roadmap and an engagement with your team and with your customers, because you've got two customers you're serving. you're serving the restaurant, but you're ultimately are serving the front end. In my business, I'm only serving the people that are standing at the cashier standing, you know until get out to a Web facing kiosk facing for the most part.
We're dealing with Just the the the staff member You know, as you guys are to have to deal with the general public You guys have to think about it differently. So talk to me a little bit about how you guys deal with that.
Yeah. I mean, listen, only are we building things that they look at and click and play with and are with or disappointed with, but we're also taking Uh, support calls and support tickets from the end user, not just, not just, you know, so we're a B2B2, uh, B2C, uh, B2B2C company, and we're taking customers, so our managers are messaging us, and the customers who did not receive that, uh, special sauce, they're also upset, right?
So, so we, so it's, it's, it's awesome and challenging, and what we have to What we really have to do is figure out who are the three different types of end user we're serving because there's three types. Type one is people who are dine in customers. They don't order delivery from this place. Type two is someone who does delivery from this place and they do dine in. And type three is I have never walked into this restaurant. I never will. I will only order delivery. Right?
So those are three different people. That third group is one that's like, okay, I will not use GrubHub DoorDash UberEats and use your first party ordering, but you really, like, I have to either love your product. And rep your product, I'll buy your t shirt. Or maybe, or maybe you're going to really make it exciting for me to use your app. It cannot be the same. If it's the same, I'd rather use Uber app. It's a fantastic app. It's well designed. My card works. And it's the everything store.
I get eat from everywhere, every night, whenever I want. So, we really have to go ahead and make the first party app and web really dynamic. We make it dynamic terms of the menu, weather based menu, which I just mentioned. We make it dynamic in terms of pricing. The Pricing will move and shift based on what day of the week it is. We make it easy to log just as easy as those apps like Google Sign in, Apple Sign in, Google Pay, Apple Pay. We're to not only match, but then we have to go beat it.
How do you go beat it? Uh, like, you know, you look at some our restaurants, uh, some of our apps. Uh, Island Fin Poke, when you download the app, you can see how busy the restaurant is. There's a camera of, uh, the, the store. I mean, that's, that's a good reason to say I'm walking in here. I'm not, I'm going to do a or not. Uh, have like our clean juice app for this 150 unit chain. They have a subscription where I will get a massive discount.
If I become a subscription user, just like you become a subscription user for any app. And I'll give you guys 40 bucks a month, and whenever I walk I get a juice, walk in, walk out, it's much cheaper, much more affordable. So these are the things doing to it exciting for the super users to say, I will download your app. But, but it's not for everyone. We're never going to convert all third party customers. But our job is constantly cultivate and move people to the super users.
Just like some dine in users are going be regulars that we should buy a beer once in a while. We're just trying to fix that delta off that dine in hospitality to a, if someone was ordering the living room,
Well, and I think, uh, I think that's a huge, um, very, very poignant message for our listeners is the experience has to better. It has to be better than going to those third parties. And I think that all too often people are like, No, no, no, I want everybody on first party. It's like, that's great. Then make the experience better. just say come to my app, because if it's tarter, I'm going to go back Uber Eats. I'm going to go back to DoorDash.
I'm going to go back to whatever that other app is. so, um, one of the other distinct advantages that I know you guys have is the ability to take those third party delivery Orders and them back to the POS and manage that. That is a big piece. I mean. Just dining out with my family. We often go out to places and see what we call tablet help. Talk to me a little bit about why that was something that you guys felt you needed to do to, to round out that ecosystem.
Cause can't compete with a Reeds and DoorDash. I mean, maybe you can raise enough money to compete with those guys, but I doubt it. Um, you know,
we're not to be
you're not going to compete with those. So, so, so it's like, you know what? At least give people the first party option and give people the third party option. If that's what the brand wants. So talk to me a little bit about about how and why you guys took that approach as well.
you know, I, I lacked a lot of, when my first three years of running this company, I lacked a lot of maturity and I thought it was us versus them. Uh, and, and small part of me still feels that way. It's a good feeling to have to, to rally your troops and your team against a, a Goliath. And and while that is exciting, does that really benefit? the restaurant tour or does that just benefit Lunchbox? And I think in that, I had to grow up, uh, and, listen to our leaders.
And we said, we're going to go out there and buy a company and instead of building it, because it be really hard, really expensive, really complicated. It's one of the hardest products to implement and build. Uh, and we bought, you know, our mutual friend Novodyne's company, uh, George's company. and, and that was how we, uh, that is how we entered that space. But the we did it was because I had to grow up. I think we haven't realized that this does, doesn't matter what our biases are.
Uh, We need to go ahead and look at what restaurant operator wants. This is their company. We run it, but this is their company. And if treat it like their company and do for them what they want. And not to shove something down their throat that not profitable to their PNL and bottom line. We're going to succeed. So there was some growing up Needed on part. And that happened very publicly. Uh, uh, that that happened very slowly. I wish would happen sooner.
And and so that's why we made that investment. And the reason we want to make investment is because want to send as many dollars as we can to our operators. And we want to convert as much of it as as can to first party. But it's a funnel. It's a funnel, and we want to fill the top of funnel with as much possible, knowing we can only convert 20 percent to users. And that's the win for everyone, including Lunchbox. So we need to coexist.
I love that humility and thank you for sharing that because I do think that that's something that, a a lot of I mean in the beginning think that I can, I can do it all. And the end of the day some consumers I've got a dash pass, my Chase rewards card gives me a dash pass.
And so if she were to go on my dash pass and get the delivered that it is for to go first party Then I'm gonna do that and I am a restaurant guy and I love restaurants and I want to make sure that they get taken care of and at the same time. There are times that, that it's more efficient for me to go on DoorDash because it's just more efficient where, know, they've got some features and function that they can do.
The other piece that I think is, is always the part people underestimate is the legacy tech that's in the, in the space. Most of those brands that are 30 to 500 units have technology that may be 10, 15, 20, 30 years old And integrating to it, it's not always as easy. And as you said earlier, you get finger pointing back and forth saying, it's not my fault. It's their fault. It's not your fault.
Talk to a little bit bit about how you guys think about that and how ultimately, at the end of the day, your, your, um, desire to have a hospitable restaurant tech company that's solving restaurant problems goes into that because at the end of the day, you're it culturally. I see you guys, you guys have to have to deal with that because you're not going to change your POS potentially. Um, you know, so talk me a little bit about that.
I mean, you have to look at it be humble yourself, which is we're the second most important tech in the restaurant. The first most is POS. And it's most expensive. It's the most necessity. where the most dollar is going through. It is the most expensive, if I've not that. It's the hardest to implement. Right? So, so when you start there and you say, okay, okay, all right, if POSs are like countries, we are a universal connector. We don't want the country to change their voltage systems.
It's 110 wherever they are. I don't know the numbers. Uh, I don't want to make a fool of myself. But, but we have be a universal adapter, a universal connector. We need work for whatever the device is, whatever the voltage is. And so that's how we live. And that's a A, a different pressure than POS have, because POS have so much pressure of their own and you know this more than anyone else. It's much harder than anything we're doing. We need to take this one on for restaurant tours.
This is the one we need to take on, which is when POSs are making changes, need to upgrade our system, refine our system, so we can keep up. When POSs are outdated, we need to go ahead create technology that can upgrade it. And still deliver that same app same website or same catering system that anyone has with a cloud based system, if it's not, right? So, we need to pivot. We to, you know, be chameleonaires. And we need to just accept the fact that we're going to need amazing product people.
who are experts in Aloha, experts in CBS, experts in Not NotToast. Um, and more than anything else, we need to have a wonderful relationship with these POS companies. Because, um, We need their help. Like we need, like we call so often on like, hey, can you help here? Can you help us there? As we're trying to solve the problem for the end operator, we to have a wonderful relationship uh, with Julian so we can call him when we are, because sometimes we are, because we're coming in on top.
We sometimes need the expertise you guys have to say, how can we, can you tell us how you solve this problem so we can emulate it or mirror it? And I think that's how we see our role when we see POS companies.
Yeah, no. And I think it's critical to, to, for operators that are out there listening to understand the marriage between these two because. If there's not a marriage, ultimately you're the one that suffers because they're going to start pointing fingers back at each other. The other thing that I would say that people need to consider, and I think we've done a good job with our two organizations is the content management system between the two talk.
So I'm not having to make changes in the point of sale, then make on my online ordering, then make changes in my third party delivery. They're seamlessly talking to each other. So when you add a stock, something, when put something on sale, when you change a price. It goes through, um, and I know that's not always case, and I'm not looking to bag on anybody else, but it does make the life of the operator better. And so,
I mean, ours is the best we have, One of the, if not one of the best, which is just do things on your POS, on, on the CPS Northstar and it will happen everywhere else. right? Uh, and, and, and that is ideal state that hard to achieve everywhere, but I'm, I'm, I'm glad we have
yeah, no. and, uh, and thank you for the partnership there. The last piece I want to talk about is a bit about the future. Um, AI, machine learning, generative AI has, has changed our lives. You know, many in many places for the better. Where do see that impacting off premise ordering? Where do you see that?
You know, talked a little bit about dynamic and I think that's that's probably a portion of it, but I'd love to to say, how do you guys look at that and how the interaction with a food service place is going to change? Is it going to to be voice? Is it to be pictures? Is it going to, you know, talk to me a little bit bit about where you guys think things are to be at in the next three to five years and how you're going to to have continue to evolve the product.
Yeah, the tool we are focused on right now, and I'm going to send a video if you want to add it. Um, Uh, and for the who can't see it, I can explain it. Is, we're calling it the the lunchbox AI. we've done is we've added open AI to our system. And let OpenAI AI ingest all our data. And we've built models on top of it. And so what you have is a chat bot on our admin panel. And you can say things like this. You can say, Who are my top performing locations?
Or what are my top performing locations and why? And get different thesis from uh, our AI tool. It will say, This menu, uh, What happened at this location was, For once, really it was weather. Uh, You know it five degrees lower than usual. And, And that's what's happening here. there's nothing else here. Here, the sales are low and we don't understand why it is, but noticed a spike in, uh, this item not selling. Usually this item sells 20 percent more, right?
So you can now get complex data that operators and franchisees, especially franchisees are not able to understand. Right? Franchisees are busy. They're busy running a business.
Running a restaurant is, uh, I've heard this from a franchisee, which is, I'm a parent to, uh, I'm a mom and dad to 40 people in our company, uh, in our restaurants, and I have know if they're upset, they're not coming in, I have keep attendance, I'm a teacher, I'm, it's so hard to keep a restaurant working, and that's like 3 percent of it. I don't have time go and analyze all our data from all the different systems use. We so many. We have third party. we have first party, We have POS.
And go ahead and tell a clear story, right? And so we trying to make those stories clear. And we're basically building a tool for operators. It's not going be for the front end user. We think that's We're not doing that. This amazing company is doing that. Well, we think we really to go ahead and look at AI from what do operators and what operators need is to ingest all of this data It's sitting on goldmine and hear simple stories. What are my top three selling items?
What are the things on my I should. cut and why? What are, take all my menu items and build me for Father's Day. Do not add any new items. Price it. Those are the things we can do now. And I would love demo it to you directly as well. And we're just really excited by that. We don't it's as sexy as a consumer tool, but we don't need sexy right now. We need to build more and more tools for our current operators to make more money their small real estate that they have and make it more efficient.
I love that because I, I, you and I both talk to operators all the time where they, they have ideas and they have, they have theories and they have premise that something's going to happen, but they can't get there and building a tool like that where they can say, you know, give me my top five selling items. Give me my bottom five selling items. I don't have to go run 12 different reports. They can type this in.
Or, you know, even voice texted into your AI and allow it that opportunity to help them make better business decisions, which ultimately goes back your premise. That says we're going to build tech for restaurant operators to make their lives better and easier. Um, what else did we miss? What other things that, uh, should we have talked about other than? you're a fantastic human that, uh, that's very active on LinkedIn and everybody should connect with you after the show.
uh, well, I mean, listen, you and I talk a lot about health. Right? We talk a lot about health and the importance leaders taking care of themselves, putting oxygen masks on themselves before helping the person next to them.
very much
Uh, and I'm very inspired by the stuff you're doing. I'm trying to run a marathon. I know you've already done that. So, I mean, we talk about health a lot.
Yeah, no, we definitely do talk about health and, and, uh, I think, uh, I think that's one of those things that I know and I have rapped a bit about it, and if you haven't read, uh, you know, Outlived by Peter Atiyah, it's, it's, uh, I, in the last year, I don't know that there's a book I've recommended more than that book. My chiropractor's all over it. He's, he and his wife both are reading it. My, my dad's reading it.
Um, he now, he's like, I need the CliffsNotes version of it because I can't, I can't read, you know, whatever it is, 800 pages. I I don't
There's a, I have a YouTube video a version of it that is basically a podcast where he basically did a great So, I mean, there's so many versions of
yes, no and and, uh, that, that my wife's like, all right, all right, you're bringing back up that book again I'm like, yeah, I am, You know, um, and I had somebody to me at lunch the other day I was uh, I was traveling for business and they said has it actually changed behavior. I said absolutely So absolutely it has. So I went with uh, the Apple watch or ultra recently to start to track more track.
I'm a, I'm a Garmin
Yeah, no one. I was, I was listening to our buddy Shervin Shervin on, on YouTube. And I, I, I ultimately went cause I'm an Apple guy in the Apple ecosystem. I ended up the, uh, the Apple watch ultra about a month ago. Um, and even that, for that matter, it's changed my behavior exercise.
And, um, and I would encourage all of our listeners to think about that because you're no good to your staff if you are not healthy and, you know, both physical health and there's emotional health and spiritual health. Like all of those things are very important because as Nabil said, you're out there serving your community, which is oftentimes your team members.
And so if you're operating a restaurant, if you're running a department, You oftentimes are the biggest influence in these people's lives that you get impact and you've got to be healthy in order to be able to give to those people.
I mean, you know, I just did a call with doctor today. I have a functional medicine doctor instead of a regular doctor. So a functional medicine doctor's job is not fix something when it's broken. Their job is to make sure things don't break and help you outlive, right? And so he me, listen, you have a bacteria in your gut called H. pylori, Alright, You have a bacteria, this, 70 percent of the population have it, uh, and it's not a big deal. I can get rid of it in two weeks.
And this is what happens I, when I get rid of it. When I get rid of it, you will ingest, you're eating chicken now, you're only ingesting, let's say, half of it, you're gonna ingest, and your body will consume more of it, so you'll, you know, you'll just get much more nutrition, you'll sleep better, your cortisol level will be better, Cortisol is what you and I, whenever you and I get stressed, cortisol goes up. goes up, So basically can get more stressed and not feel it less.
Why would we not want that? Why would we not want that for our family, our, our co workers, you know, our employees? Like, why would we not want to make that investment? In two weeks can fix it. Like, it's crazy to me. So a lot of this is easy. It sounds complicated, but I think Peter Attia and all his awesome YouTube videos and Shervin Pervez on YouTube and others have made super simple to biohack and experiment.
No. And, uh, my wife, uh, let it let on that. One of my Christmas gifts end up being a DEXA scan. She's trying to find a place that I can do the once a month DEXA scan and get my body scan. So, you know, we're, we're, we're on that journey together. How do people get in touch with you? Get in touch your team. How do they learn more about you guys are doing over at Lunchbox?
Uh, You know, I know, I know there's, there's lots of different ways, but, uh, why don't you tell everybody how should they get in touch with you?
I mean, in honor of hospitality, just contact me, Nabil at Lunchbox. io, or text me, 646 5395. Uh, I, uh, uh, you can send memes, uh, please send memes. If not Lunchbox. io itself, uh, uh, go to our website, and, uh, there's video game at the bottom, go play it, but, uh, contact us, or just contact me, and I'll connect with the right people, or jump on a call.
Awesome. Awesome. And I know that, um, 2024 coming up, uh, right around the corner. And, uh, I know you guys can be out quite a few trade shows. And so if you guys see them at the trade show, they, uh, they always have a fantastic group of people. He, uh, he's built a fantastic team of humans that, uh, are, are really willing to help, and I don't just say that I, I live it and I deal with this team. You know, on a weekly basis.
And so I I don't say these uh, just in order to blow smoke up his backside. I really genuinely believe that he's built a great team that that's willing to to help and want to jump in so um to our listeners guys We know that you guys have got lots of on how you guys spend your time and energy if guys haven't already done so please go subscribe to the podcast, whether that's on your favorite podcast player you're an audio guy. If you do want to watch us on video, we just launched the YouTube page.
Um, recently restaurant technology guys on YouTube, you can check it out Last thing I would ask is, is if you haven't already subscribed the newsletter, once month, we send out a newsletter with all of the episodes, all the blog posts that you can get once a month, uh, go read through it and figure out what you want to listen to and click on it. Um, thank you so much for your time and to our listeners. Make it a great day.
Thank you, Jeremy.