Latest / Choppin’ It Up by Bloomberg Intelligence / Checkmate’s CEO on Voice AI, Kiosks, Catering

Transcript

Checkmate’s CEO on Voice AI, Kiosks, Catering · Choppin’ It Up by Bloomberg Intelligence

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Chopping it Up. I'm your host, Mike hallon
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the senior restaurant food Service Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence, our
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: research and that a BIS five hundred analysts around the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: globe can be found exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal. If
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: you enjoy the pod, I'd love it if you could
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Today I'm
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: joined by Vishal Agarwal, the founder and CEO of Checkmate.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me, Mishelle.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me. It's fun to
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: be here. I get your emails pretty regularly, Like I
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: have a pretty good span blocker, but I get your
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: emails pretty consistently consistently in my inbox. So glad to
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: be here. Looking forward to seeing my name on there.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you man.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I'm excited for the interview. You look sharp in your
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: LinkedIn profile. Pick be honest. Who sported the leather jacket first?
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Was it you for Jensen Huang and video ceo?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I hadn't heard of in video back then. You
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: know true story that pick is from my free wedding shoot.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: So we were doing a pre wedding shoot and I'm like, wait,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: I don't have a good LinkedIn profile picture. Can you
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: just make one into a professional one? They're like sure,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and the background I'm pretty sure it's not evident there.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: But the background is actually a shape shot. It's at
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Madison Park here in Manhattan. I love that park, and
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the shake shot right in the middle there, so that's
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: where it shot at.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh good stuff.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Listen for the record, I prefer your style. Jensen goes
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: a little over the top in my personal opinion.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I will let him know. I think that's good feedback
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: for him. Thank you.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: All right, So let's start at the beginning. How did
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: checkmate come to be?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: How did Checkmate come to be? It's so funny. I'm
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: based in New York. I've always been based here and
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: moved here from India in about early twenty twelve. But
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: the funniest thing is that this idea did spark off
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: from San Francisco, right, so, as they say, the mothership
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: always has some bearing no matter where you're at. I
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: was working for an e commerce retail company here, wanted
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: to try out something new, wanted to, you know, build
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: a solution to an existing problem. And I was dining
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: in at at a restaurant at the SF airport and
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: it was just taking an enormous amount of time for
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: me to get my check and like I could miss
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: my flight, right, So that's where the idea came from.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Was the first idea that we had was to build
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: a mobile app that you could use to pay and
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: split your check when you're dining in in restaurants, so
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: you know, you don't have to wait for the server
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: to bring your check, you don't have to spend time
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: in splitting all of that. Right. That's why the name
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Checkmate and our website is it's a Checkmate dot Com
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: because somebody was asking me for two hundred thousand dollars
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: for Checkmate dot Com in twenty fifteen, and it's a
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Checkmate was twelve dollars. I said, that was one of
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the easiest decisions that I've ever made in my life.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: You know, I'll go with it to Checkmate dot com.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: So that's that's how we started, right, And then that's background.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: That's great for the listeners. Mishal and I met at
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the very first Food on Demand conference, which was in
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Dallas back in twenty eighteen. Your comments about who owns
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: customer data really calls the ruckus.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: It did it did, like, I still remember that Drinkydinky hotel,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: that that small lobby that was supposed to be a
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: conference based food and demand has come a massive, massive
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: way since then. But you know, we started with that
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: mobile app Checkmate, and I was going door to door
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: selling to various restaurants and an operator said like, hey, listen,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: what are you selling me? Seems like a nice to have,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: but come here, come just come behind the counter and
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I'll show you what the real problem is. And what
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: he showed me, I'm like, okay, this is a problem
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: worth solving. Where he had two POS systems and at
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: least nine other tablets, and a customer had to tower
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: over those tablets to place an order with the restaurants,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: so they were literally creating a wall between their customers
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: and themselves. Like why do you exist in the first place? Right?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: That's how you know we looked at that problem. We said,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: this is a problem worth solving. We went down the
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: route of let's integrate these orders into the POS systems.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: You know, in a startup, you usually make if you
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: make one hundred decisions, ninety eight of them, you're like,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: why in God's name did I make those? But there
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: are a couple that stick with you through your journey. Right.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: The one thing that we decided since day one is
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: we're not going to consolidate all of those orders into
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: yet another tablet. We'll go straight to the prs And
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: that was a harder route, but it has served us
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: so well and that's the entire foundation today on which
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: our business has been built. So that's how we got
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: the start with, you know, integrating third party platforms into
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: the POS systems. A couple of POSS they had APIs
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: with the third party platforms. We scraped emails and pushed
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: them through the POS system, became large enough for the
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: third party platforms to give us API access and then
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: grew from there.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was that was a crazy time tablet hell
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and people having to read off a tablet and punch
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the order into the POS ordering accuracies or through the roof.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: That was definitely a good problem for you to solve.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Not just that though, not just that. The one thing
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: that always blew my mind whenever I walked into a
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: new restaurant here, especially in lunchtime, is all of those
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: tablets will be going off at the same time, right,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: So imagine if you have a phone in your pocket,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: it starts ringing. What's your first instinct, like, have to
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: shut it right? And I imagine you're a staff, you're
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: a deployee standing behind the counter, there's a line of
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: customers waiting, and you have six other mobile phones going
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: off at the same time. That always blew my mind.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: So it was really fun to solve it.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So you expanded your offering pretty significantly from there.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: What was next? So obviously it was the right problem
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: at the right time integrating third party orders into the
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: POS systems. Worked with five guys on next larger enterprise customers.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Rbs it's buyer Brands is also an investor in US,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: and as we scaled that out, what we realized was
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: we can't survive if we are a one point solution,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: which means if you're only doing the third party degradation,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: they're going to last very long. So we had to
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: diversify and add products that were tangential to what we
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: were already providing. The next obvious stop was first party ordering.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: We were working with brands like RB's Sonic, buffaloil Wings
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: five guys, so we had the enterprise capability and now
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: we wanted to add a first party ordering, and you know,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: referencing back to that all time famous conference, it was
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: always a fight between of them versus us, first party
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: versus third party, right, and my stance since then has
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: always been, it's not them versus us, but a restaurant operator.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: It's part of the same value chain to have both. Right,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Unless you're a Dominos or a subway, you're not going
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: to have the kind of marketing reach that a door
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Dash or a grap or a new Breed has. Use
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: those platforms to gain customers, and when you've gotten some
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: loyal customers, allow them to order directly with you. So
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: it's part of the same bucket. We were only offering
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: a part of that bucket. So then we added a
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: first party solution to us. So we acquired a company
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: in March of twenty twenty three, right, very small company,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: really solid product, and started offering first party web and
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: app solution and a very very strong catering platform as well.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: With it first party catering, so if somebody came to
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: your site, you could audit catering from there. What we've
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: also done is built a Kiosk solution on top of
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: that platform to basically be able to provide the customers
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: a very holistic sense of their digital ordering channels, and
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: like I was saying earlier, the fundamental foundation of all
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: of this, the fundamental foundation has always been the POS integration, right,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: because if we think back to the days of multiple
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: tablets on a tablet on a tabletop, what coused a
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: problem is these were all disintegrated, disjointed solutions. They were
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: providing the revenue, but at what cost. I'm earning one
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars, but it's costing me eighty dollars just to
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: maintain that revenue. Right, at first, that one hundred dollars
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: seemed good. When the accounting team got up, They're like,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: it's not that good. So what a lot of the
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: enterprise customers started demanding was I just need a solution
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: that works with my core system. And my core system
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: is the POS. So we have the third party integration
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: built on top of the POS. The first party solution
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: just works out of the box, integrated with the POS.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Catering works with the POS. Kiosk you eighty six something
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: on a POS, it goes out to all of your channels.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Kiosk orders print to your POS. Right, So we're providing
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: this holistic digital ordering suite to the restaurant operators, primarily
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: to enterprise operators. As we continued moving on, the next
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: big opportunity that came to us was the drive through
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: AI right or in general voice AI solution. Again, as
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: we looked at the market and saw the rapid evolution
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: of AI, we realized a lot of the companies that
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: were developing these solutions were spending fifty percent of their
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: time and just doing POS integrations. That's when I, like
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: bubbe hit like, we already have this right week, so
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: why don't we do the other fifty So we acquired
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: a small team along with the you know, code that
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: they had developed and the software they developed, to start
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: down this journey of developing a very robust right through
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: AI and a voice AI solution again going to come
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: back to the same point or just integrated with your
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: POS it just works right out of the game. So
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: that's where the evolution of our journey has taken us
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: to focusing on continue to provide enterprise grade digital ordering
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: channels so that the restaurant operators can be omnipresent. All right,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: good stuff.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I'd like to dig into those verticals a little bit too.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: What kind of average check increases are your kiosk customers
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: getting from the technology and how much of the improvement
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: is more consistent up selling versus giving customers more time
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: to browse the menu versus the fact that credit card
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: customers just tend to spend more.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: That was our hypothesis as well, right when we were
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: getting into kiosk, Right, that's what everyone claimed, like, hey,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: we will increase your average check size by fifteen to
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: twenty percent. We're not necessarily seeing that right at the
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: end of the day, Like again, these I go back
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: to the statement that one of the initial prisoner had
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: told me, what's the nice to have versus what they
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: must have? Chiosks have made a comeback into having into
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: being a must have, whether it is going to increase
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: your average check size or not. Right when I've spoken
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: with enterprise brands walked into their restaurants, spends time on
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: the floor that have chaosks, their thought is it may
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: or may not increase check size, it may or may
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: not save labor, because those are the two biggest selling
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: points of chiosks. Right, but today customers have come to
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: expect a kiosk. So if you're not doing kiosk you're
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: taking away one of their preferred channels. So it's not
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: necessarily about like, hey, come here and spend more. It's like,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: come use the channel that's more preferred to you. So
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: if you want to come in browse at leisure, you
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: don't want to have the social pressure of the person
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: in front of you or the light behind you. Use
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: a kiosk. Right. A couple of the brands that we
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: spoke with and actually went and saw, what they said
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: was we've just moved the labor from behind the counter
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: to the floor. You know what I'm saying. A customer
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: walks in the door, You greet the customer, you tell
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: them like, please order here. If you need assistance, I'm here.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Otherwise I will leave you. Right, So you're increasing that
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: touch point, you're taking away the barrier of that counter
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: and the pos So it's been very eye opening in
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: terms of how we are selling this. We did invent kiosks.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: We're not going to revolutionize kiosks, but we want to
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: provide a channel that seamlessly just works out of the
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: box and provides a great user experience for the brands
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: and for the diners.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely frees up employees to do more high
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: value jobs and just bring up a cash redit sure, right,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and i'd imagine you know, your clients are seeing, you know,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: an impact on employee turnover and employee satisfaction.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: We are starting to roll this out with a couple
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: of pilot with one in rollout with another large enterprise
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: customer in the three hundred plus location range, and the
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: conversation with both of them started off is like, yeah,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: I don't think so we need Kiosk. I said, how
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: do you know, why don't you try this out at
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: one two locations on our die and see if it works.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: We won't charge anything, and if it doesn't work, you know,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: keep the hardware or shape it back. We don't care, right,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: And that's maybe starting to see more openness and adoption.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Take oh, our customers are actually coming in and using it,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: and now can we have more options there? And can
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: we have pizza sliced in a few different ways there? Right?
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's what we're seeing exciting things about it.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting too how sometimes some of these
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: companies are maybe a little too early with technology. I
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: mean Jack in the Box installed Kiosks in their restaurants
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: a decade ago. Wow, uninstalled them and then went back.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Did not know that? Wow?
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, So it's it's interesting, man. I think
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: some can be a little too early. I know Brinkers
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: tried out robot bussers right and those, but who knows,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: maybe a decade from now they will and things have.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Changed so much the hardware what you can do with
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: the software.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and catering is another interesting vertical. A lot
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: of the companies I cover our working to expand their
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: catering business, including Chapaulae through their Hat and the Ring.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: On their first quarter earnings call, are you seeing increasing
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: demand from your customers for a catering solution?
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, In addition to the drive through the a solution
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: that we're working on, catering is our biggest opportunity. We
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: have definitely seen that a lot of the brands are looky.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: The funny thing about catering is it's it's like an iceberg.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Only twenty percent of it is visible above the surface.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Eighty percent of the work actually happens behind behind the scenes.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: So if it's a restaurant operator, you know, manager for
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: a brand, their ability to take in orders, to schedule orders,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: to provide a timeline, to provide a cutoff, to do
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: a minimum, to do a maximum, to reroute orders, to
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: do a house account. All of these functionalities are actually
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: behind the scenes. So the catering interface honestly is the
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: easier one. And that's why when we looked at the
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: catering market and then compare it with the solution that
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: we have, we were like, this is really good. And
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: we actually ran this by a few independent consultants as well,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: and again that's where we are seeing a huge opportunity
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: and scope for growth because now this gives the brands
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: and ability to create a catering sales program around it
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: and to create targets because now they have the tools
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: and the solution that can empower them to do more. Right. So, yeah,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: definitely seeing a lot of growth there.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Last year McDonald donalds they ended their AI
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: voice trial with IBM after some well publicized issues. On
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the other hand, Taco Bell and Wendy's are ramping up
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: their trials. What have been some of the issues with
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: voice AI to date and when do you think it'll
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: be ubiquitous.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: When you think about voice AI, right, we're kind of
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: segregating it into two aspects. One is a phone ordering AI.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: I think that's ubiquitous today, right if the people doing
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: that can get the menu right. Right, It's not about
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: the phone ordering, It's not about the AI anymore. It's
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: a huge comportit of that is the menu right. The
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: number of people I personally get approached by somebody saying, hey,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: I have a phone AI startup and here's a demo,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: and my only question to them is have you ever
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: connected this to a real pos and then have a
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: customer order? That's when the rubber hits the road, right
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: on the drive through AI side, which is where majority
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: of our focus and attention is right now, where we
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: also see the largest opportunity. We think that market is,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: if not one, maybe two years out from being in
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: a place where you can easily roll out and support
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: hundreds and thousands of locations. Right now, what we are
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: focused on is just one or two brands and getting
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: the experience absolutely right for them. The long tail here, Mike,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: is really really law right. Just think about the interface.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: You open up your Uber Eats app and you want
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: to order a chicken burger. They will tell you exactly
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: how to order it. They are guiding the interface. You
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: think you are selecting, but they're telling you this is
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: the only way to order. You select one year, two year, three? Here,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: how many modifiers, how many additions, divisions and submit? It's
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: very very defined. Drive through AI boys AI takes away
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: that interface, takes away those boundaries. So now like I
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: myself listen to over one hundred live calls from customers
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: every single week, my mind is the same order, how
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: many different ways can they be to order it? But
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: there are because every individual is different, and that is
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: what you know. Obviously, the technology is advanced massively and
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: we are catching up. So what maybe was a five
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: year time frame has become a one one and a
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: half year time frame. But that's how we are looking
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: at this is if we, as responsible restaurant technology solution providers,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: want to provide solution that the brands can rely on,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: that they can trust us with, we have to go
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: slough first. If we start saying like we haven't drive
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: through the ice solution that's at ninety five percent accuracy
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: and I can service twenty brands at the same time,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: you're going to burn the entire industry down. No one's
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: ever going to trust anyone else ever again, right, So again,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: it just feels like, you know, it's a new startup
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: all over again, and we are working on this problem,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: being deep in the trenches and traveling next week to
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: be on site, to be to listen to actual customer interactions.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: But such an exciting, such an exciting space to be
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: in and to solve problems for.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. I remember hearing a few years
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: ago that, you know, one of the major problems was
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: more about accents and dialects being understood but by the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: voice AI. But now it sounds like it shifted more
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: to menu customization. So is that is that accent park
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: kind of solved?
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: It's improved. You know, I have been told very clearly
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: by my engineering team never to use the word solved
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: or fixed when it comes to AI. You know how
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: kind of inherit like. It's now become inherited in how
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: I speak has become better. It's improved. It's not going
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: to be completely solved. And that's where I go back
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: to saying, the long tail here is really long. Right,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: you can hit that eighty percent mark, That twenty percent
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: is going to be very It's not hard. But if
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: you're not dedicated and focused on it, and you have
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: your attention all over the place, then you're going to
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: be stuck between eighty and eighty two percent for the
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: rest of your life. But it has to be a
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: very concerted client by client effort to say, for your brand,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: this is how your customers order. You know, again, it
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: comes from a place of listening to real customer calls
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and recordings. The same person in three different chicken burger
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: brands the same order, their customers will speak it out
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: in a different way. The way you order a Chick
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: fil A versus Popeyes versus you know, your KFC. It's fairy,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: very different. That's why it requires so much effort on
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: a per brand, per region basis to make sure you
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: get it right. And you know, we are even coming
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: across situations with the menu differs from region to region.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And it's a national brand. You know, you have thousands
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: of locations across the country, but just because of some people,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: because of customers in a specific region ordering their chicken
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: in a specific way has forced that brand to make
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: a slightly more nuanced menu in that region. You have
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: to account for that, right, So that's where we're seeing
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: the challenges come up versus you know, rolling out a
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: third party integration solution at scale. Now, that's a solved problem, right,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: you know the steps you have to take to get there,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: but drive through. We're being very very cautious and how
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: what we promise and what we tell the brands.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. Staying on the topic of AI,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: restaurant industries being inundated with AI solutions. I think some
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: of them were also known as big data solutions a
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: couple of years ago, but I think a lot of
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: them would fit into that nice to have category which
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: we spoke to earlier, excluding the areas you know you're
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: playing in. What restaurant pain points are AI best suited
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: to solve?
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Was watching an interview by Jeff Bezos, right, and he
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: made a statement that really stuck with me. Right, he said,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: AI now is like electricity. It will make better everything
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: that it runs through. Right. That made me think. So
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: that was one part of the conversation. Right then, I
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: was interviewing another candidate and I was talking to him
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: about his application of AI and what he's doing, and
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: he's like Michell. Today, the restaurant operators, if they have
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: a problem, they literally call me and tell me like
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I forgot my password, right, So that's how
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: behind they are on tech adoption. How are you going
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: to make them adopt AI? I tried to combine these
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: two conversations, and I said, do you know how electricity works? Like?
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Not really? I said, but you know when you switch
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: out the light, your bug goes on. That's what AI
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: should do the restaurant operators. We should basically help solve
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: the problems for the restaurant operators while AI works in
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: the background. That's how I'm thinking about the application of
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: AI in an industry that has always been to like, hey,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: your tech backward. You know, by the way, I think
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: the restaurant industry is take backward. Is tech backward not
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: because of their fault, but because of our fault at
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: some level, because we take people have come and said
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: we'll solve all of your problems on heaven and Earth
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: and everything in between. So they've become skeptical. But we
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: need to understand what their problems were were that they
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: couldn't solve earlier. But now AI can solve, right, So
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: we have to approach it from a perspective of what's
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: your problem? Not how can I make you use AI?
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: That's not an answer right. I run seventy locations in Florida,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: and I have no idea what happens. But suddenly, like
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: at any point in time, seven percent of my stores
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: are offline in on the third party platforms. That's the problem. Now,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: let's solve that using AI, making it more intelligent, either
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: telling you when your stores are going offline or telling
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: you in advance. Hey, keep a lookout. These four stores
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: are a problem, and usually they go offline because of
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: high drive away time, So that's what you should be
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: looking for. So basically, AI is helping us find the
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: needle in the haystack, pinpoint the problem, and not worry
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: about your other sixty three stores, but just focus on
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: these seven stores. That's how we are approaching the application
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: of AI in the restaurant space. And by the way,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: that password problem also solvable by AI. I mean you
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: don't have to use air for that, but get rid
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: of using a password for God's sake, not right, Like
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: I don't even input user in my password on my
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Chase banking app. It's faciety. There's different solutions to the problems.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: It's not always the I, but our goal is like
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: always come at it from a problem perspective.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Good stuff, man, this was fun. Thanks for doing it.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: It's a checkmate dot com right if you want to
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: find out more about that Checkmate.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for you appreciate you having me
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: here on Mike.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: You got it man. I also want to thank the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: audience for tuning in. If you like the discussion, please
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: share it with your friends and colleagues. Check back soon
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: for an interview with Felix Linn, the CEO of HF
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Foods Group.