The Hospitality Hangout | Restaurant Industry Trends & Hospitality Leaders

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” take the show to Food On Demand in Las Vegas. Schatzberg and Frischling chat with Michael Beacham, president of Reef, Zack Oates, chief executive officer at Ovation, Tom Kaiser, senior editor at Franchise Times Magazine, and Trish Giordano, chief sales and marketing officer at Earl Enterprises. Beacham talks about how ghost kitchens have grown as a category over the last year and the best ways for operators to get involved. He says that now he is seeing local chefs and regional brands trying to expand. Beacham says, “Reef is a platform in the marketplace of proximity and so we believe the closer that you can get to where people are working, we can deliver goods and services to them quicker, better, cheaper.” Beacham shares his background, the launch of DJ Khaled’s one hundred and fifty restaurants, and Dubai-based cloud kitchen iKcon. Zack Oates stops by to talk about Ovation’s growth since 2020, he says, “we’ve just been exploding, it's been tons of fun and honestly it’s been really incredible to build a value.” You can tune in to hear Oates talk about what's new at Ovation and more. Kaiser from Franchise Times talks about the early stages of ghost kitchen innovation and the growth that is still coming to the category. To hear his thoughts on speakers and panels from the show, as well as what's new with Franchise Times and Food On Demand tune into this episode. Trish Giordano of Earl Enterprises says “the most important thing is technology companies that have come to market and with the industry having so many issues with staffing and supply chain, we as an organization have to figure out how you create efficiencies for your restaurants and how you create efficiencies for your customers.” To catch what Giordano has to say about loyalty, buying distressed companies, ghost kitchens, and MrBeast burger launch listen to the show. To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by Hospitality Hangout, 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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Atul Sood, Chief Business Officer at Kitchen United to explore the multi-restaurant ordering experience. Sood shares his background that included leading global food delivery partnerships for McDonalds during a time Doordash and Postmates were just getting off the ground and UberEats didn’t exist. He had the opportunity to set up global partnerships in the United States, Singapore, Canada, Australia and more. When asked what makes Kitchen United unique, Sood says, “we are front and center where people live and work. We have a front of house in each physical location. So consumers can walk in place an order on a kiosk and take their food to go. We allow for multi-concept ordering.” He adds, “We are excited because we've been around for four years now and we've learned a lot.”Sood says when asked about Kitchen United acquiring ghost kitchen developer Zuul, “The ability to acquire a team that was that knowledgeable in the space and that had been pioneers in their own right in New York City was an opportunity that we just couldn't afford to pass up.” Adding, “In addition to getting their technology stack which is very complimentary to ours and really the driver behind this infrastructure business.” Sood talks about food halls and Kitchen United’s partnership with Westfield Malls, he says, “It's been in a test for nearly nine months now ten months now and really what we're doing is we're enabling two different groups of customers to get access to the food court and other restaurants around them all.” He adds, “the first group is people who live close by who used to have to commute into the mall to get the food, now they can get it through delivery and by the way we make the delivery process a lot easier for the driver instead of having to park go into the mall go up the escalator.” To hear about Zuul Market consolidating group ordering technology, how the delivery process was streamlined and Kitchen United’s partnership with Kroger supermarkets tune in to 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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Geoff Alexander, President and chief executive officer, to explore using dark kitchens to generate revenue. . Alexander talks about how he started back in 1993 with the privately held restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants that Rich Melman launched in 1971. He says that Lettuce Entertain You has created over two hundred and twenty different brands in its fifty years, currently operating about one hundred and sixty restaurants among sixty different concepts. “I’ve worked on twelve different concepts, give or take, in my tenure with Lettuce. It’s coming up on twenty-nine years in May.” Adding, “In 2009 I took over the concept of Wow Bao, a three unit brick and mortar store in Chicago serving steamed asian buns, potstickers and rice bowls.” Alexander goes on to talk about introducing self ordering kiosks, mobile desktop ordering, food trucks, and then getting involved with consumer packaged goods. Alexander talks about Wow Bao’s growth, saying how the brand opened up fully automated restaurants with no front of house people, where the food came through automatic LED computer monitors. Since April 2020 through today they have opened over four hundred and fifty dark kitchens across the country and are on track to break five hundred by the end of October 2021. When Alexander was asked about ghost kitchens, he defines them as a space that does not have a storefront and a dark kitchen is the areas in a restaurant that are dark right now, an area in your kitchen that you are not utilizing. Alexander says about how Wow Bao’s model was built that they have the ability to allow restaurants to turn the lights back on or start using that area of the kitchen that was dark before. He adds, based on the revenue that they can help operators generate and the profits they can bring to the bottom line. “They’re able to keep the lights on, keep people employed and that’s how we use the term dark.” says Alexander. To hear about Wow Bao’s early insight to grow the brand, what Alexander has to say about technology, and third party delivery, check out 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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Clayton Wood, Chief Executive Officer at Picnic, to explore solutions for solving labor shortages and automation in food preparation. Wood says when asked to share about himself, “So my background I'm a mechanical engineer by training, I've worked in a bunch of industries including Aerospace renewable energy agriculture, robotics and after a series of startups, Picnic is really where I want to be.” He adds, “you know Picnic is a combination of my passions, robotics creating new businesses and really helping customers be more successful.” Picnic is very focused on our customers and that's why it exists, says Wood. He explains that Picnic is not building technology for technology's sake and that they really want to help customers, knowing everybody in food service needs help these days.Wood says, Picnic is the intersection of how you can apply technology in a way that improves customers' operations that helps them be more successful. In Addition, they are really focused on food service, the jobs are hard, and Picnic is here to make it easier for the workers. When asked to share more about Picnic, Wood says they are in food preparation automation and there are not too many companies in this space. Adding that Picnic started with pizza, it is one of the most popular foods on the planet and they are discovering that restaurants are having a hard time finding workers. To hear about how Picnic is transforming the world of food preparation to automation innovation, check out 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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Carissa De Santis, chief information officer at Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurants to explore hospitality technology and what’s in the pipeline for Dickey’s Barbecue. De Santis talks about building Dickey’s virtual brands, the interest from franchisees around Wing Boss, and the decision to bring it to brick-and-mortar. They recently opened their first location in Dallas, where they have their virtual food menu and a full bar. Dickey’s Barbecue is currently operating in forty-four states and De Santis talks about expanding internationally. When asked if Dubai is loving barbecue, De Santis said, “they’re 100% loving barbecue over there” adding “they were actually our first international debut as a franchisee and partner there.” De Santis says Dickey's just opened a second location in Japan and first in São Paulo, Brazil. De Santis talks about Dickey’s early hospitality tech foresight, saying that part of their original tech stack started out with reporting and analytics, collecting all of the data on their customers and transactions. Smoke Stack is Dickey’s Barbecue custom data platform, it was started almost a decade ago. De Santis shares what their tech stack looks like today on this episode. To hear about Dickey’s Barbecue successful loyalty program, the growth since its launch, her thoughts on technology and scams, and what is next for Dickey’s check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout. Dickey’s is offering a special deal to the Hospitality Hangout Listeners. Use code HHFREE3 at checkout and get 3 free Sausages with any $100 purchase on this link at Barbecue at home by Dickey’s.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Brita Rosenheim, Partner at Culterra Capital and Venture Partner at Better Food Ventures to explore restaurant technology.Rosenheim got started with an interest in the food world and left banking, she went to Italy to get a Masters in food communications. She is an investor and advisor, sharing her excitement for the innovation in technology. Rosenheim talks about the Restaurant Tech EcoSystem map and how the selection is made for the map.When Rosenheim was asked about the rise of technology in regards to new categories being added to the map, she says food safety and quality was given recognition, which had historically been part of operations. Rosenheim adds, most of the pandemic trends are more of the same, it’s not completely new innovation and the biggest shift is really adoption versus full on new technology.Rosenheim addresses the ghost kitchen trend saying it is here to stay much like meal kits. “It’s a new concept and it is disrupting the way things are done, it’s shifting peoples minds about how operations can be managed,” adds Rosenheim. “It still needs to figure out the right business model and the right users.”When asked about categories losing steam, Rosenheim says it’s not becoming less important but search and discovery, reservations, and event management has a little slice on the wheel because there has been consolidation. She adds that five years ago those were the largest categories...now most of the efforts have turned to optimizing back of house.To find out what category Rosenheim thinks will be the shrinking next and her thoughts on robotics, tune in to this episode of Hospitality Hangout. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” take the show to the first in-person trade show, FSTEC 2021 where restaurants and technology connect. Schatzberg and Frischling chat with Wade Allen, senior vice president, head of innovation at Brinker International, Inc., Derek E. Canton, chief executive officer and founder at Paerpay, Sterling Douglass, co founder and chief executive officer at Chowly, Inc., and Marcus Viscidi, VP, Enterprise Sales - National Restaurant Association Show & Foodservice Conferences at Winsight, LLC.Allen talks about what he is looking to learn from the show, saying that he looks for organizations that inspire him and are doing things not in the traditional way, adding companies that can truly change their business. Allen says he is looking at new technology in loyalty programs to delivery drones to the future of POS. He talks about Brinker International’s development of virtual brands and launching them.Derek Canton from Paerpay stops by to talk about being on the market place floor at FSTEC. Paerpay is a contactless payment platform for restaurants and Canton shares what’s new at the company. He says the number one thing he wants the audience to know about Paerpay, can get their customers up and running in an hour. Tune in to hear Canton’s quick fire answers.Sterling Douglass of Chowly, who has been on the show before chats with the guys about technology change for restaurants and consumer adoption having an impact. A lot of technology that has been around has finally been picked up, like QR codes and delivery technology. Douglass says that he is excited to see the maturity in virtual restaurant space as well. To learn more about Chowly’s partnership with Google, listen to the show.The last guest to stop by to chat, Marcus Viscidi from Winsight, LCC, he talks about putting together the first in-person restaurant trade show, FSTEC 2021 since the pandemic and answers quick fire questions.To hear more from all of the guests that stopped by Hospitality Hangout at FSTEC 2021, 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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Chris Campbell, CEO at Review Trackers to explore the importance of restaurant reviews. Campbell founded Review Trackers over ten years ago and helps over fifty thousand restaurants in thirty-five countries track and manage their customer feedback from websites like Google, Facebook, and Tripadvisor. When asked about what he thinks of restaurant operators that don’t pay attention to customer reviews, Campbell says “operators are crazy, if you think about things that can influence your business and have major ripple effects, reviews is one of the biggest things.” Adding “Ninety-one percent of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.” Campbell was asked in reference to Yelp and according to Review Trackers, where a majority of reviews are coming from today, he shares that it depends on the market you are in, but adds the reality is Google is winning. Campbell says, Google, Facebook, and Tripadvisor, all just growing multiples faster then Yelp. “Ninety Five percent of people start their search on Google,” says Campbell. You can listen to Campbell address Yelp’s importance in today's competitive review platforms on this podcast. In regards to sales, when Campbell was asked how reviews and responding reviews help search engine optimization, he says that reviews are the leading factor in influencing how you appear on a google map ranking. Adding reviews is the thing that influences your ranking the most. To hear Campbell’s advice for restaurant operators that don't have a review tracking system in place and how you can start making your business better, tune in to this episode of Hospitality Hangout. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on iTunes!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Tom Pickett, Chief Revenue Officer at DoorDash, to explore delivery and virtual cloud kitchens. Pickett is responsible for building out restaurant partnerships from big chains to mom and pops helping them become successful. Pickett says, “for the last year and a half we really have been working very closely with merchants to help them navigate the challenges of the pandemic.” He adds a stat saying that restaurants that have been on DoorDash are eight times more likely to still be around today than those not on DoorDash. In terms of what DoorDash is seeing, Pickett says, “a big acceleration in delivery, delivery has become a more prominent part of business and they find the most successful are treating it like a new line of business.” Another highlight is the operations experience of getting delivery in and out of your restaurants and Dashers love to go to the restaurants that are efficient and get them out of there quickly because they are able to make more money when operators are moving out deliveries.Pickett talks about Storefront, a DoorDash product that takes their online ordering capability and makes it available for restaurants for free to put on their own website. Underutilized kitchen capacity is a great opportunity for virtual brands and the cloud kitchen space. Pickett says that virtual brands and kitchens are a way to expand in a very cost effective way, using the power of delivery platforms. Delivery is at the center of these and DoorDash works very closely as a consultant for restaurants. To learn more about all of the new partnership programs, daily payouts for merchants, and DashPass, a subscription program for consumers, tune into this episode. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Paul Allen, President and Cofounder at NextBite, to explore delivery only brands for restaurants across the country and how they can add value for these operators. Allen breaks down Ordermark and NextBite saying they are obsessed with developing technology and brands to help restaurants thrive, and that is their focus. He adds, what makes the company distinct from ghost kitchen and commissary model businesses is that NextBite exists solely to help existing restaurants. Allen discusses the differences in working with traditional and non traditional kitchens in reference to celebrities versus chefs. NextBite focuses on authenticity, brand authenticity and says that the celebrities need to be committed to the success of the brand, be involved, and care about the food. “It really has to be a partnership and there has to be something genuine beyond it when it comes to a celebrity,” says Allen. He adds, “that you can’t replace a restaurant that has built a reputation over the years with a new celebrity brand.” When Allen was asked how NextBite addresses marketing the brands, he talks about it being stage dependent and how it changes as the brands grow. He says, the secret sauce for NextBite exists in the technology, the operations, and its relations to marketing. Hear what Allen has to say about operations, training, supply chain, and technology being the meat and potatoes that drive efficiency and profitability. Plus, why data operations and technology drive marketing efficiency. Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify! Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with Marty Hahnfeld, Chief Customer Officer at Olo, to explore the future of delivery. “The things that are happening within our business right now happened a decade ago in the hotel industry,” says Hahnfeld, and the industry felt like they needed to deliver without understanding all of their options to have food delivered, letting an oversized number of consumers shift off direct business and shift off to the market places, adds Hahnfeld. Hahnfeld says, for any brand that doesn’t invest in serving their loyal customers directly, it could be rough days. Citing two-thirds of all restaurant transactions are consumed off premise, of that two-thirds only sixteen percent of those transactions are delivery. When discussing what types of things an operator can do to make sure they are set up correctly, Hahnfeld talks about what Olo can offer. He shares how Olo’s platform has a solution called Expo, a tablet-based software focused on enhancing the front-of-house workflow in restaurants. Hahnfeld talks about how Olo addresses deliveries in regards to urban vs. suburban markets, and says suburban delivery has been proven to work, although there is a cost problem, investments will continue to improve handoff and delivery. Olo focuses on their platform supporting delivery long term and Hahnfeld gives his take on ghost kitchens, virtual kitchens, delivery kitchens, and the idea of restaurants aggregating. To hear about Olo’s success and it’s process of going public, check out 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. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Tom Recine, the founder of Recine Hospitality, to explore the latest innovations in point of sales tech.“It’s not just a restaurant, it’s an experience,” says Recine. “And that’s what you have to create these days to attract attention. No one wants the same-old same-old.”Recine was a partner and the chief operating officer for Sugar Factory for eight years. While there, he helped build the business and craft a strategy that emphasized the restaurant’s unique experience of candy, excitement, celebrities, and fun drinks. According to Recine, Sugar Factory was ranked the number one venue in the world for social media posts.Recine recently developed a new cash register system inspired by ATMs. Called the automated till register (ATR), the register has no drawer that opens or closes. Transactions are fully automated and closed from the moment they are initiated.“At the point you put the cash in, it’s deposited to your bank. No employee or manager will have to touch it,” adds Recine. “It’s a simple idea that’s never been done before. I truly believe cash drawers as you see them now will be replaced forever.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Brandon Barton, the chief executive officer of Bite, to explore digital hospitality and improving the online ordering process.“We see an incredible amount of information that we’re helping restaurants to take and learn about their guests, and then personalize ordering experiences for them,” says Barton. “There’s more visibility into what options you have when you get to a restaurant before you get there. Now, you can give people digital experiences in-store or at home—and what’s going to flip here is the concept of hospitality.”Bite offers restaurateurs solutions for making their restaurants better. It is an omni-channel digital ordering platform for restaurants, providing restaurants with every digital ordering channel they can have: websites, apps, contactless ordering, kiosks, QR codes, curbside pickup, and even drive-thrus.“Take labor out of the equation when it comes to the order. Every single person knows how to order food digitally. Let’s just let people do it—in the lobby, at home, or in the restaurant,” adds Barton. “If you want us to know who you are, and you want us to use that data, we’re more than happy to provide you with a better guest experience.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Zachary Goldstein, the chief executive officer and founder of Thanx, to explore marketing and elevating the digital experience for consumers.“Generic, unpersonalized guest engagement just doesn’t cut it anymore,” says Goldstein. “You’ve got to know who your guests are, you’ve got to give them an easy sweep of digital tools to make those purchases, and you need to treat them personally using the data you have to give them a reason to return. And that’s what we do at Thanx.”Thanx specializes in supplying best-in-class guest engagement technology for brick-and-mortar brands. For Thanx, the goal is to make the consumer digital experience accurate, efficient, and truly seamless.“Digital sales are rapidly becoming the lifeblood of the industry,” adds Goldstein. “Ease of use for the customer always wins. Placing an order online or from an app or phone is just easier… we’re going to see the mass majority of sales move to digital.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Joshua Sharkey, the founder and chief executive officer of meez, to explore an exciting new tech solution for chefs.“The genesis of meez was the result of something terrible… I lost my [cooking] notebook,” says Sharkey. “As chefs, we don’t have the time to adopt these technologies that aren’t built to how we’re used to doing things. When I first created meez, it sucked. Chefs told me everything that sucked about it—and that was one of the most valuable things we had that first year before we launched.”Meez is a professional recipe tool created by and for professional chefs. Chefs can use the operating system to upload their recipes and access them via an interactive database. Meez allows chefs to organize the recipes, determine costs, connect to their inventory, and much more.“Everything we design is from the vantage of: how is this actually going to work in the kitchen? How is the chef going to hold this? Where is this thing going to live?” notes Sharkey. “That’s the most important part of the product: it has to be something that’s really easy or the chef won’t use it because they don’t have time.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Giancarlo Fiorarancio, vice president of Hospitality Technology/IT for the Howard Hughes Corporation, to explore technology and redevelopment in hospitality.Giancarlo Fiorarancio oversees the technology behind Howard Hughes Corporation’s hospitality division. Properties include hotels, restaurants, and event venues in The Woodlands, Las Vegas, and New York City.“We approach each one of these communities differently and unique to the environment that they are in,” says Fiorarancio. “In New York, part of our strategy is to enable [the property] to become a destination for shopping, retail, and entertainment.”Howard Hughes Corporation specifically focuses on master plan communities—long-term investments on acres of undeveloped land. The goal is to build out that land in a thoughtful way over many years.“When you’re trying to restore full traffic to an area that currently doesn’t have it, you have to take a different approach,” adds Fiorarancio. “Not many restaurants would decide that they want to open up in an area that has no foot traffic… so instead of trying to get somebody there, we decided to create our own concept, and operate it on our own.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Josh Goodman, the founder of PourMyBeer, to explore the latest in self-serve trends and developments in self-pour technology.With over 8,000 taps in 24 countries, PourMyBeer is an industry leader in self-pour technology, offering a next-generation system that facilitates quick, efficient access to beverages. Consumers simply pour their beer, wine, cocktails, cold brew, or kombucha and pay by the ounce.“One of my prerequisites for my partners in Austria was that it had to be so simple that my six-year-old son could install it and support it,” says Goodman. “We’ve doubled in revenue almost every year… it’s all about integrations and making it a seamless process.”The company has enjoyed immense success and attention—Coca-Cola European Partners just invested in PourMyBeer last year. For Goodman, quality construction remains the primary goal: every system is restaurant-grade with long-lasting screens designed for 24/7 use.“We are going to be transitioning more to PourMyBeverage over the next year or two because our number one selling product across all of our taps was margaritas,” adds Goodman. “Cocktails on tap is where everything is going.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Micha Magid, the co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Mighty Quinn's, to explore virtual restaurants, nationwide delivery, and making the transition to digital.Mighty Quinn’s is a restaurant franchise that specializes in authentic, slow-smoked barbecue. The team prioritizes high quality ingredients, all-natural meats and poultry, and carefully cultivated spice blends for seasoning.“As we moved through the pandemic, we realized we needed a seamless platform—one system that was accessible via web, app, or catering that customers could use for ordering. So we switched over to a new platform that enables a more seamless guest experience,” says Magid. “These systems live side by side with third party delivery. We think having a solution for our guests outside the third party world was important.”Mighty Quinn’s works with Goldbelly to ship frozen barbecue nationwide within two days. The food is fully smoked and ready to go, crafted in the chain’s large central commissary area.The company also recently partnered with Otto’s Tacos to create a virtual taco restaurant via Mighty Quinn’s kitchen space. Otto’s was unable to keep its network of stores open after the struggles of the pandemic.“We saw an opportunity to really utilize the kitchen space in our operation and relaunch them as a delivery-only brand,” adds Magid. “Similar to Mighty Quinn’s, Otto’s does a few things but does them really well. That was right up our alley.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify! Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Abhinav Kapur, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Bikky, to discuss the best way for restaurants to understand, engage, and retain their guests. Bikky is the first CRM for restaurants that helps them power digital hospitality by providing the system of record for all of the restaurant's guest data. Bikky maps the guest footprint across all of their channels, from point-of-sale to delivery to loyalty, helping restaurants to know their guests. Bikky provides your restaurant with a picture of how your guest is ordering across every single channel. Giving restaurants the capability to take that data and use it to precisely market directly to the guest. “Bikky is your system of record, your source of truth for every way you engage your customers,” says Kapur. Prior to covid third party delivery was about twenty percent of a restaurant’s business, after covid hit restaurants went one hundred percent digital. During the pandemic Bikky built their in store POS and reservation integrations, thinking about what restaurants will need when customers want to be back in store. Bikky built an automated email campaign that they can plug in and restaurant owners can use it to engage new customers every single day. Kapur says, this set it and forget it automated marketing tool will make restaurants money, allowing them to focus on food and service. Kapur talks about the future for Bikky, and their main focus is how they can help restaurants map their entire customer journey and put it on autopilot. Bikky wants to provide the tools to engage customers based on behavior. When it comes to must-have tech, Kapur thinks that all contactless ordering and payments is the best investment that operators can make. It allows restaurants to focus on hospitality.Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Simon de Montfort Walker, the senior vice president and general manager of the Oracle Food and Beverage Global Business Unit, to explore how restaurant operators can leverage their tech to build and expand their business.Oracle Food and Beverage provides point of sale systems to restaurants as well as sports and entertainment venues across 160 countries, handling 330,000 points of sale and processing 5.9 billion transactions annually. The company specializes in giving operators fully customized and integrated solutions designed to fit their unique business needs.“For a lot of people consolidating right now, we see it as an answer to the questions customers are asking—how are you creating integrated solutions for them? How are you tying together loyalty and point of sale?” says de Montfort Walker. “Our core priority is having an incredibly open system that allows us to touch as many other vendors as possible for real-time integration so our customers have a lot of choice.”Oracle offers systems for online ordering, curbside pickup, and delivery, and supports menu expansion ventures via cloud kitchens and virtual brands. Your front of house, kitchen, and back-office operations are easily connected via the most secure cloud point of sale in the industry.“Customers and clients we’ve seen be successful throughout COVID and all the changes in the marketplace are those that have invested in flexibility,” adds de Montfort Walker. “Technology has failed for a long time because it was innately not flexible… you have to build flexibility into the model without breaking the core of your business. There’s going to be a lot more experimentation and change to come.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Savneet Singh, the chief executive officer of PAR Technology, to discuss how operators and companies can rethink tech to better serve the ever-changing needs of restaurants.PAR Technology is a global restaurant tech company and platform that creates innovative technology and hardware for operators to build their business and strengthen the bond between the restaurant and the guest.“Companies are just a collection of people working together,” says Singh. “A lot of what we did was align on the culture we wanted to build, and hired and focused on that culture.”When Singh joined the company, he and the PAR Technology team decided to work on four key issues: commence a dramatic restructure, remove distractions, change the culture, and raise money.“The industry is moving toward open API and moving away from all of these closed systems,” adds Singh. “The next wave of innovation will not be in the point-of-sale system—it’ll be the innovation of the ecosystem that matters.”This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Solomon Choi, the founder and chief executive officer of 16 Handles, to explore the digital side of hospitality.16 Handles is a frozen dessert chain that specializes in innovative frozen yogurt, ice cream, and smoothies. Established in 2008, the New-York based chain offers a wide variety of fresh, quality, better-for-you flavors and toppings.“Discovery for our brand in our markets was being made online. It was a digital experience first,” says Choi. “I realized this is huge—it’s not just the billboard that’s driving people in… I realized we needed to start investing into our digital presence. The entire guest experience could live online only.”Over the past decade, 16 Handles has expanded to over forty international locations. The chain prioritizes expansion, menu development, and meeting the needs of a millennial lifestyle. Right now, Choi is focused on rebuilding the business as the pandemic comes to an end.“We’re just trying to manage consistency across the brand. We don’t have real people out there visiting stores—it’s been over a year since we’ve had that,” adds Choi. “I do think Times Square will be busy this summer… I do think domestic travel to New York City will go up.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Steven Sperry, the founder and chief executive officer of Minnow, to explore the ins and outs of food safety.Minnow is committed to creating a better food delivery and pickup experience. Established in 2017, the company offers contactless Pickup Pods to ensure the process is safe, secure, and convenient for everyone.“Minnow is solving the last-mile problem in food delivery,” says Sperry. “There’s nothing to prevent food from being picked up [late] when it’s no longer safe to consume, or someone with a food allergy could easily pick up the wrong order with potentially disastrous consequences. Minnow gives our customers complete control over access to the food.”All orders through Minnow are given a pickup window. The default time is two hours, but it can be customized to a longer or shorter time. Customers are notified via text or by email when their food is ready. If you do not pick up your food in that window, you will receive two reminders before your order is discarded for food safety reasons.“Over the course of the pandemic, there has been an 80 percent increase in deliveries to multi-family locations. It’s restaurant and grocery deliveries, and it’s the most immediate pain point that the Minnow Pickup Pod can solve,” adds Sperry. “We believe there is an opportunity to make food delivery more efficient and less expensive by making it look more like packaged delivery… we’re working with other companies so that food can be more accessible and more affordable for more people.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Kelly MacPherson, the chief technology officer of the Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), to explore technology strategy in the restaurant and hospitality industry.Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group is best known for creating some of New York’s most acclaimed restaurants, cafes, and bars. The company is committed to providing outstanding food with exceptional warmth and hospitality services. Since its founding in 1985, USHG has added operational consulting services and built a catering and events business.“The connected restaurant is a robust ecosystem that enables a seamless flow of data to all the components of the restaurant,” says MacPherson. “There’s all these pieces that enable a restaurant’s operation. The connected restaurant is making sure that they all talk to each other in the same language—otherwise everything is disjointed and draining from a managerial perspective.”For USHG, communication is key. For your staff, make sure to explain both the what and the why behind any changes you make. And know your customer—build out a robust CRM that reflects your customer’s priorities.“We’ve made strides in tech in the restaurant industry, but consumer tech has outpaced the other industries,” adds MacPherson. “We’ve really underinvested as an industry, and I think the pandemic exposed that in a big way… there’s been so many advances in forecasting and analytics. There’s a huge opportunity in forecasting. Machine learning should be driving forecasts. Let technology do most of the science.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Phil Crawford, the chief technology officer of CKE Restaurants, to explore the ongoing digital revolution in the restaurant industry.CKE Restaurants is a Tennessee-based, privately held company that runs and operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. The two regional brands combined represent over 3,800 franchised or company-operated restaurants in 44 states and 43 foreign countries and U.S. territories.Crawford moved from New York City—having previously served as the chief technology officer for Godiva—to Nashville to join CKE in the fall of 2020.“Nashville and New York City are two parts of the spectrum. But the exciting part is that when it comes down to hospitality and technology, there’s a lot of synergies within both cities and corporations,” says Crawford. “They both have a desire and drive to be the best they can possibly be… it’s all about scale and size, and ensuring that we have the guest experience in mind.”Restaurants—looking to adapt to evolving operational and consumer needs—are moving away from POS systems. Most systems and processes have entered the realm of mobile technology, leading to the creation of more cloud-based systems, direct-to-consumer interactions, analytics, and artificial intelligence to better reach customers.“Any kind of digital ecosystem that’s out there that you can infuse the guest experience is where everything’s going,” adds Crawford. “It’s all about trying to bridge that gap between what we think our consumers know and what they do know, and making it a personalized journey. That’s the kind of tech incorporation that we need to be thinking of to become technology evangelists and to have that competitive edge in our industry.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Victoria Vaynberg, the chief marketing officer of Resy, to explore how the company is rethinking and revolutionizing the hospitality experience with technology.Resy is a global dining platform that leverages state-of-the-art technology to better the restaurant and hospitality industry. Established in 2014, the app services over 5,000 restaurants globally in over 200 cities, overseeing restaurant reservations via back-end management software. The company was also acquired by American Express in 2019.“The product is built by restaurants and for restaurants—what we built is informed by our partners. It truly comes from a place of how we can best provide what restaurants need to thrive,” says Vaynberg. “Restaurants shouldn’t have to pay for the guests who are trying to come to them.”Resy endeavors to be an ally to restaurant operators. According to recent Resy data, this past April was the strongest month for reservations since before coronavirus hit. The company was determined to help Resy operators survive the financial troubles of the pandemic and get back on track.“Fee relief was no question in our minds. Being part of American Express helped make that a reality very quickly. It wasn’t a debate. We’re here for the industry, and the most important thing we can do first is alleviate them of things they can’t do right now,” adds Vaynberg. “It was all about, what can we do to help your restaurant not go out of business?”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Mike Bell, the chief executive officer of Miso Robotics, to explore how robot technology is transforming the restaurant and hospitality landscape.Miso Robotics is a robotic restaurant platform powered by artificial intelligence. The platform was created to support high-volume restaurant operators by making back of house processes safer, simpler, and seamless. Clients include CaliBurger, White Castle, and Levy Restaurants at Dodger Stadium.“There hasn’t been any real automation since the dishwasher,” says Bell. “Computer vision… is now available to the restaurant industry and it performs really well. The next wave of adoption for this technology is upon us.”“Flippy” is the platform’s autonomous robotic kitchen assistant. At present, the latest iteration of “Flippy” is a robotic arm that hangs from a frame right over a fry station at an existing restaurant, managing the dirty, repetitive, and often dangerous tasks that humans generally do not want to do.The goal for Miso Robotics was to humanize the robot for restaurant staff and make it like a colleague.“Flippy does a lot more than flipping burgers,” says Bell. “It is really hard for operators to recruit and retain people to do this job. It’s just not a job people generally want to do… it’s about $2500 for one shift—for one human being to stand over a fry station. So we thought, we’re going to provide our robots for the same amount of money.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with John Rigos, the founder and co-chief executive officer of Aurify Brands, to explore the culinary, marketing, and technology behind building a brand.Aurify Brands is committed to conceiving, building, and growing original concepts that last for the long-term. Their brands include Melt Shop, Little Beet, Table, Fields Good Chicken, and Five Guys. The goal is to foster brands with a great culture and lasting value that stay true to each business’s mission.“One of the nice things about how we’re structured as a platform is that we can pretty readily do a bolt-on acquisition to leverage the platform and integrate it into our portfolio more readily than a typical restaurant company,” says Rigos. “A typical restaurant company has a management team that supports the growth of the brand. We have that at each of the brand levels, but we also have this platform above them that supports the brand.”Aurify recently secured a major acquisition: Le Pain Quotidien. The popular chain was going to go bankrupt before the purchase.“We did pivot very strategically… we proactively started looking in the marketplace for brands that were great brands but were struggling on the liquidity side,” adds Rigos. “The company was sold to a private equity firm in 2016. In the ensuing years, some of the decisions at the management level crushed a lot of what made the brand special.”For Aurify, the bankruptcy was an opportunity for them to acquire the brand.“Either the company was going to go bankrupt or the company needed capital to take it through the bankruptcy process,” says Rigos. “The beauty of the bankruptcy process is it enables you to revisit your contracts. We started negotiating with all the landlords, as the bankruptcy process enables you to shed all the leases you don’t like… we felt really good being part of the solution that was going to be bringing back jobs and paying landlords and start paying suppliers.”Click here for more recovery and relief information for restaurant, hospitality and food service operators. And to keep listening, check out The Hospitality Hangout podcast on Spotify!This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Corey Manicone, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Zuul, to explore the growing popularity of ghost kitchens.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Troy Henikoff, the managing director of MATH Venture Partners, to offer best practices for investing, as well as advice for young entrepreneurs fundraising for their new business.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Jordan Boesch, the chief executive officer of 7shifts, to explore how the restaurant and hospitality industry has evolved over the course of the pandemic.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Steve Elinson, the worldwide head of restaurants and foodservice for Amazon Web Services (AWS), to explore what Amazon offers restaurants today.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Andrew Feigenson, the new chief executive officer of Personica, to explore the relationship and connections between hospitality, tech, and finance.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Andrew Nash, the chief executive officer at Targetable, to explore two-for-one branding and rethinking your digital advertising strategy.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Chris Webb, the chief executive officer and co-founder of ChowNow, to explore how restaurants today are enhancing and elevating their online ordering system.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Kimberly Grant, the co-sponsor and chief strategy officer at FAST Acquisition Group, to explore her rise in the restaurant industry, and what lies ahead for FAST.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Alex Canter, the chief executive officer of Ordermark and Nextbite, to explore the rise of virtual restaurant concepts in the industry.Where Ordermark helps brick-and-mortar stores make the transition to digital, Nextbite focuses on an altogether different type of clientele: virtual restaurant concepts.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Ivan Matkovic, the founder and chief executive officer of Spendgo, to explore the ins and outs of cultivating customer loyalty.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Andrew Smith, the managing director of Savory Fund, to explore the ins and outs of fundraising in hospitality.This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the latest episode of the Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” sit down with Bo Peabody, the Co-Owner of Mezze Restaurant Group and Executive Chairman of Seated, to explore the ins and outs of digital hospitality. This syndicated content is brought to you by Branded Strategic Hospitality. Episode Credits:Sponsored by: DirecTVProduced by: Branded Hospitality MediaHosted by: Michael Schatzberg, Jimmy FrischlingProducer: Julie ZuckerCreative Director: Adam LevineShow Runner: Drewe RaimiPost Production: Three Cheers Creative www.thehospitalityhangout.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.