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All right, So first of all, let's get into a little bit about

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thanks. I think some of our
listeners and viewers may be aware of thanks,

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but maybe not fully give us a
kind of a rundown. Yeah.

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Thanks. As a leading guest engagement
platform for the restaurant industry, we think

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about all things coming from interacting with
your guest through digital channels, the app

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and web ordering experiences, the loyalty
program the marketing that you send through push

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notifications or email, etc. You
know, capturing sentiment, all the information

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you need to understand your guests and
frankly to drive them back more often.

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I like the you know, the
customer engagement platforms usage there when you okay,

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so when you say customer engagement the
idea of around that is it really

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on loyalty by itself or does it
also include things like building the guest check

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amount or does it include other CRM
activities outside of yes, work, we're

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the core CRM for a restaurant.
We understand who the guests are, and

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frankly, we're combining two concepts that
restaurants have struggled with. The first is

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loyalty programs, which we'll spend a
lot of time talking about that are outdated

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and more dependent on rote discounts and
by x get y unchanging methods, and

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that's what gave loyalty programs a bad
name in this industry. But they were

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just not being done right, and
we've done some things to change that.

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The other piece is marketing really meant
spam email marketing for a long time.

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For restaurants, it meant just blasting
out the same message to all your guests,

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crossing your fingers hoping they come back, or even worse, patting yourself

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on the back when you get a
really good open rate, as if that

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has anything to do with how many
people are spending money at your restaurant.

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And so the ways that you use
data for a restaurant today have to be

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personalized. The actual digital ordering experience, show what I ordered last time,

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so it's easier for me to order
it again. Personalize those emails with segmentation.

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Use mobile apps for your best guests. Not everyone will download an app,

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but your top customers will and it
will increase their frequency. And that's

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why we've combined that into a single
solution. I think that's so CRM is

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so critical, I think, especially
in this era of restaurant consumers because we've

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seen the lack of brand affinity,
you know, from consumers, just a

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lot of moving around, you know, for many reasons. Price, sometimes

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it's experience, et cetera. Do
you go into the level of spend data

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on the CRM, So can you
take a look at John Smith and say,

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I know what John has spent throughout
his customer journey with us over the

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last six months? Is that something
thanks to us? That's exactly what we

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do. And in fact, we
have one hundred or so automatic segments that

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our system creates on behalf of restaurants
and infinitely more than a restaurant can create

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using our tool, so that you're
actually talking to guests based on what they're

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doing, When are they coming in, day part, day of week,

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what are they buying, how are
they spending? Is it for themselves?

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Is it for their family? Those
are all triggers that should lead to different

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forms of communication with the guests.
If you're ignoring them, it's no wonder

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that the guest is also ignoring you, right, I think that's a well

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good point to the guests is ignoring
you. This brings up another topic,

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and that is gen Z dining so
there's been some trends and some data that

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are reporting gen Z's dining out quite
a bit less in terms of frequency.

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I know if this is something that's
going to stick around, but it seems

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to be a unique dynamic and how
they basically eat away from home. What

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are you guys seeing around that trend? Is this something that's short lived or

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is this maybe just a new style
of how these types of consumers interface with

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restaurants today. Yeah, we've seen
a shift in the way consumers engage with

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restaurants, and frankly, digital and
off premises is here to stay. That

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behavior change during COVID, it's not
going back, so restaurants need to adopt.

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The good news is if you fast
forward or relying four years ago,

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I think there was a debate about
what restaurants need to invest in digital and

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enabling first party ordering. That debate's
long gone. Everyone knows that they need

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to have first party digital ordering or
they're going to lose their lunch to the

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third parties, and that customers demand
it. Now. The question is how

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do you take advantage of that to
not just say check the box, we've

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got a digital platform, but we're
actually driving customers to us versus DoorDash er

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Uber. We're actually making it convenient
so that customers who actually liked their experience

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want to come back and purchase again. And that comes down to using a

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massive amount of data generated from digital
to talk to guests personally. Now,

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the question around that you asked around
dining preference those gen Z and Frankly,

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as we get even into the younger
demographics, we're going to see more of

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this in my estimation, but millennials
and Gen zs are both demonstrating that showing

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up at a restaurant, dining in
the restaurant, and walking off when you're

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done with your meal. They'll do
it occasionally, but that's not the majority

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of their dining occasions, and you
have to be willing to embrace the multiple

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ways that they want to engage.
And the last point I'll make is to

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that point, we see that guests
who are omni channel, who dine in

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the restaurant and who sometimes take their
food off premiss either through pickup or delivery,

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they actually have much higher LTVs.
And so you're driving lifetime value by

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helping your customer understand there are multiple
ways you can use my brand is that

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something. You know, I hear
people talk about omni channel all the time,

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and you look at some of this
in the third party side. Some

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of this maybe going to e commerce, which is, you know, just

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another form of getting the order in
the house for maybe an individual pickup.

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Are you seeing any trends around that
in terms of people who are going online

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ordering or mobile ordering and flipping over
to picking up in restaurant versus the third

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party delivery. Absolutely, it's all
a matter of incentives. You know,

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Pricing across the industry has gone up, so check sizes are going up,

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people are delivering, restaurants are delivering. Sam store sales growth largely on the

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back of taking price. But what's
starting to be talked about is frequencies down

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industry wise, right, and that's
a major concern. It means customers are

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value sensitive and one of the things
that you can do with a well structured

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loyalty program is give consumers a reason
to come direct to you. Many consumers

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are driving right by your restaurant on
their way home from work. The idea

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that with the right loyalty incentive,
they would go two minutes out of their

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way to get their own food instead
of paying an eight dollars markup for delivery.

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That's appealing to a lot of consumers, but not if you don't give

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them a reason to do it.
They'll default to convenience if it's all the

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same. And that's where a loyalty
program needs to be used as a tool,

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not just a one size fits all. Yeah, I wanted to show

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you some general data. I want
to get your opinion on maybe the size

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of the loyalty sector of the market. If you look at just the general

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data right now, this coming over
from Statista that and I still think this

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might be a little bit underreported,
but global size of the food service market

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around two point five trillion, all
right, that's in twenty one. This

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is forecasted to go to four point
four trillion in twenty eight. So I

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just saw the report coming in yesterday
or earlier this week from Hudson really at

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the NRA that we've clipped over in
the United States over one trillion in revenue.

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Then you look at this data right
here. This is Research and Market

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so this is back in actually mid
last year. But what they were talking

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about, I'm kind of zoom in
on that for people and share that tab

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there. Let me zoom in on
this a little bit. There we go

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the a global loyalty market expected to
grow like twelve percent annual basis one hundred

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and thirty five. This is twenty
three, and now we're looking at market

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forecast of like two hundred and fifteen
billion by twenty seven, so continuing to

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grow at this pace. Here's my
question to you, if you look at

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those kind of stats that we're seeing
there on screen right now, and you

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look at companies like thanks, is
this underreported because it feels like that's not

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that seems loyalty wise, it just
feels like it should be so much bigger

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than what they're talking about here,
two hundred and fifteen billion out of four

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and a half trillion. So we're
in the midst of a catch up period

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in the restaurant industry. But the
good news is we already know where this

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is going to go because we've seen
it in other industries. There was a

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period where hotels could debate whether a
loyalty program was necessary for their business or

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whether it was a discount driver.
Loyalty programs are ubiquitous in hotels now,

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and they're necessary because of the arrival
of online travel agencies which disaggregated hotels from

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their guests and cost them margin.
You know, I talked a lot about

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this story and the four horsemen of
the restaurant apocalypse. Loyalty programs create the

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connection between a hotel guest and the
hotel chain, and they've become a requirement

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to exist. We are seeing that
happen in the restaurant industry. Where it

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used to be you could decide,
am I a brand that has a loyalty

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program or am I not? And
frankly, there's some famous examples. There

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are executives from McDonald's Chipotle who years
ago said, yeah, we don't need

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a loyalty program, it's not part
of our brand. Those are two of

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the fastest growing, largest loyalty programs
in the industry, exactly, and so

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loyalty programs are a requirement. What
needs to change is that if a restaurant

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is running a loyalty program, as
I said before, that's one size fits

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all. Hasn't changed in ten years. I can blindly guarantee it's not driving

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revenue for their business. Right now. That means more investment, more specialization,

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innovation from technology, and restaurants don't
want to hear this is going to

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be more spend on technology, margins
are already under pressure. Here's the good

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news. A loyalty program done right
is a massive revenue driver. It's not

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a cost center, and so it's
not like investing in your point of sale

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or other operational things, which are
just cost centers. If you're doing it

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right, it has many times multiple
on returns in terms of driving revenue.

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Coming out of a web three loyalty
platform that was launched by a company called

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Bubba Guys, we've reported on it
a couple of times, and the numbers

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that I saw coming back were almost
I just couldn't believe them, you know,

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So it was either just because it
was a new thing. I wasn't

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really sure. My question to you
is, do you see that we're going

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to see an expansion of other types
of omni approaches toward loyalty other than the

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traditional models that we've seen, say
in the last couple of years. No

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doubt we are indeed seeing that exact
thing. And one of the insights we've

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reported publicly is we've had several brands
who have experimented, for instance, with

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non discount reward models. One of
the ones that I think is most interesting

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are access to a secret menu.
If I had told people several years ago

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that a large chunk of consumers would
happily redeem their loyalty points for access to

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a secret menu instead of a five
dollars discount, people would have said,

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I'm crazy and that's why everyone was
giving out discounts, and then you know,

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shaking their fist at why is my
discount line so big? You need

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to think about loyalty differently. It
turns out many customers prefer exclusivity, they

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prefer access, and you can create
programs around that that drive frequency and drive

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attachment without a single dollar in discount. Yeah. This is something we've done

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even within our own media companies,
is we've created more closed groups and now

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and we have's on how many people
can be in those, and I mean

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they're full, They're full all the
time. You know, we have people,

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you know, what can we do
to get in this program? You

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know, because it's usually access to
additional research data all that kind of stuff.

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So I would agree with you.
I think that that's going to be

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an interesting tactic. You know,
from the stance of how do you grow

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you know, not only brand loyalty, because that gets here back to the

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point I had earlier, which is
where gen Z seems to be not very

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brand, you know, consistent.
Hey, what do you think about You

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look at the impact on restaurants,
you know, over the next couple of

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years, and you think about the
hot sectors and the sectors that have been

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cooling off. And I'll give you
an example, fast casual it's pretty much

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been a hot sector for almost a
decade and a half. Then you have

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QSR, which really has started to
change quite a bit, really positioning well

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in a better way, Casual dining
trying to make some move, and even

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fine dining to a certain extent,
traditional chain find dining probably a little bit

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lackluster because we're seeing the independence kind
of invating that space. What are your

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thoughts in terms of the sectors that
are hot right now? So here's the

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good news. I believe they all
have potential. And that's not just rosy

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optimist. I actually believe that we
have an industry that is behind in technology

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and in behind in data. Yeah, and yet is a trillion dollar industry.

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That's remarkable. You can't find that
there are not massive, hundreds of

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million dollar e commerce businesses who have
a broken digital footprint and don't use data.

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It literally doesn't exist. It's impossible. So we're doing a lot right

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to create great experiences something that consumers
want, which is great food in a

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way that they don't have to make
it. And now it's about adapt to

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the way consumers are changing their behavior, which was accelerated by five six years

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with COVID. Convenience. Convenience,
convenience, and at the end of the

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day, loyalty is there's only so
much you can do from a marketing standpoint

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if the actual experience of getting your
product is not convenient and easy. Right,

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Yeah, totally agree with that.
You talk about tech and the restaurant

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industry being some This has kind of
been the knock on the restaurant industry for

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a long time, is that it's
slow to adopt new technologies, new methodologies.

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I think COVID, of course,
kind of changed the landscape of that,

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but at the same time, we've
had a lot of companies now starting

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to regress a bit. Here's a
story, you know, as an example

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toast, you know, just cut
like five hundred and fifty people and you

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look at the tech sector as a
whole do you think this is going to

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be something that is going to stick
around and we're going to need I mean,

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because this has been I mean you
look at Elon's he comes in and

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he cuts ridiculous numbers on Twitter and
X. You look at Mark over at

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Meta, I mean, he kind
of did the same thing. A lot

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of repositioning in big tech. Now
you look at these, you know,

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more sub sector tech like what we
deal with in the food service space.

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Do you think there's going to be
a reset here on the number of tech

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companies and the number of products we're
beyond the restaurant space. We are seeing

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that reset for sure, as we
see a market adapt from growth at all

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costs to are you building a long
term sustainable business? And all these tech

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companies are adapting there, and you
know the challenge is most of them sell

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to other tech companies, so you
get this kind of reinforcing cycle. The

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good news is, in many ways, restaurant tech has not benefited from that

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growth at all costs environment because restaurants
are slow to adapt. And so I

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actually think it's a healthier tech sector
and one that has more growth opportunity than

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more wax sliding opportunity. That said, one of the challenges speaking transparently for

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this industry has been an understanding of
what good technology looks like. Restaurants often

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try to buy the cheapest solution,
and unfortunately they don't get the results from

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it, and there's a challenge there. And so I'll give you an example.

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Your chicken costs go up. As
a restaurant, you understand, Look,

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there's inflation and this is the reality
of the market, and I'm going

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to have to make a decision to
eat margin or pass this on to my

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consumer. And there's not much I
can do about it. And yet restaurants,

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when they look at their technology platforms
say I want more data analytics in

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real time, I want to slice
and dice my information more ways, and

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I want my partner to be more
dynamic in the ability to do that.

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That's based on some very expensive engineers, some very expensive technology like snowflake,

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and those costs are going up as
well, and so restaurants have a decision

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to make and we're trying to help
make that easier by saying, can we

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invest in technology prove that it drives
revenue so that we get the right virtuous

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cycle. Invest more in technology,
get more revenue, continue to invest and

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go the right direction because that's been
a leap of faith. That's really scary

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for restaurants. And understandably, you
spend more money on the newest and greatest

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point of sale, does it always
mean you've driven revenue for your business?

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Often? No, all right,
Zach. So when when you think about

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it that way. One of the
things that there's been a handful of companies

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that have done some acquisitions out there
in terms of technology. This is an

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example Aspire Brands. They acquired a
tech delivery firm FROMO and there's been others

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out there. You look at Chippota, who's invested in an autonomous delivery,

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and a handful of others. Do
you think that is something that is a

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new normal for restaurant brands to actually
starting to get into the tech industry.

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It may be a direction we see
restaurants go. These things go in cycles.

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I do not believe it will be
a long term status quo for the

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restaurant industry. Greg Creed for Mercy
of Young is on our board and he

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likes to say that restaurants do best
when they focus on the things they're excellent

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at, creating great food, great
experiences and being a marketing organization. At

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the end of the day, I
tend to believe that's true. Our business

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and building technology for restaurants is a
whole lot different, and I think specialization

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is often good for driving the best
outcomes. So I think we'll see some

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of this there. There was another
news article about Wingstoff reducing some of their

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technology and building it in house.
You know, they're they're deleting Olo as

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an example. That's a very expensive
investment and the bar is really high for

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that to pay off. We'll see
some brands can pull it off, but

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most probably can't in my estimation.
Well, and you know, we look

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a lot in the sector around new
innovation in in tech and while I agree

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somewhat with because I have a lot
of restaurant operators that kind of tell me,

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you know, we're not in the
tech industry, and I'm like,

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well, you used to not be
in the marketing industry either, but you're

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you know, you're in the marketing
business now, and it's it's going to

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happen. I think we're going to
just see so much tech invasion that it's

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just it's just a matter of time
before technology kind of be comes like marketing,

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you know, to h to restaurant
operators. Whether it's as easy that

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I don't know, but you know, so when you think about that and

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you look at AI self ordering loyalty
systems kind of shifting into that. As

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I said earlier, we had the
converse now guy on and I've had SoundHound

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on one of a lot of these
voice AI guys, which you know is

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going to change some of the customer
service equation. But I just wonder will

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well this new evolution, especially when
you think AI but in self automated order

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cycles more, you know, mobile
ordering, lead processes, et cetera,

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is that going to also shift I
just assume it's going to shift the loyalty

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business into kind of a different thing. What are your thoughts on that?

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Yeah, I think you know a
lot of the public company restaurant leaders don't

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want to say it, but the
initial implication of AI and restaurants will be

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cost savings initiatives, and ultimately that's
in the face of rising labor costs,

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and so it's not a popular thing
to say, but that's what they're actually

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targeting. And I think we're undoubtedly
going to see more of that when it

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comes to self ordering. When it
comes to automating things that are expensive back

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of house in the kitchen, that's
coming and it's inevitable as far as I'm

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concerned. The question then becomes on
front of house application of AI. You

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know, the big moment in AI
right now is generative AI. There's these

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00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:40.319
incredible models that open AI is producing
on Write three sentences and they can make

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you a video. Do I think
that's going to have an implication for restaurants.

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No, it's sexy. People want
to talk about it, but at

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the end of the day, you
actually hit on it. Before restaurants are

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marketing organizations, they have to be
unique. No AI model is going to

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make you a world class marketing organization. Where I do think it's going to

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be effective is the effort to treat
your guests individually. Five years ago,

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send out an email to your entire
list of two million people, cross your

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fingers and hope they engage. Today. Thanks offers you hundreds of pre built

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segments so that you can treat your
customers as unique groups of people. But

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it's still not one to one marketing. The vision ultimately is you can understand

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very deeply what makes Paul and Zach
different and send the right message at the

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right time. And by the way, e commerce has been doing this for

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a while, sending ten thousand variants
of the same campaign based on micro segments.

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I think we'll get there in a
way that it's not a restaurant marketer

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slicing and dicing data and manually creating
campaigns that will never scale. Yeah.

294
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So I guess I'm still skeptical a
little bit on where AI will insert,

295
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but that is one of the areas
that I do think could could open up

296
00:24:06.759 --> 00:24:08.880
in this. I mean, we
work now with some AI tools around some

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of the big data that we ingest
for some of our other businesses. And

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one thing that I'm continuously surprised at
at one at how inaccurate it is unless

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you ingest a language model in that
gives it a new learning tool. And

300
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I guess that's my question is does
the does the customer at some point,

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you know, kind of like the
personalization aspect of trying to create that customer

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relationship. There's a lot of things
that Chipotle doesn't know about me, but

303
00:24:38.880 --> 00:24:44.079
I could be happy to tell them
about getting my order right. I could

304
00:24:44.079 --> 00:24:47.000
go down a litany of things all
the way down to how you deliver it

305
00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:49.960
to my front door. You know. So if they had that data and

306
00:24:51.039 --> 00:24:55.440
an AI model, a language model
could take that from millions of customers,

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multimillions of customers and then create what
you're talking about, which is kind of

308
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this custom experience that truly is almost
like another person that knows me personally and

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00:25:06.799 --> 00:25:11.240
says, I know that Paul can't
take a delivery before five o'clock on Wednesdays

310
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because he's got his kids in violin
class. Yep, So why would I

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00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:21.799
come early on that? Which happens
all the time? Okay, So those

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00:25:21.880 --> 00:25:26.440
kind of things that and that causes
me to always kind of pause for a

313
00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:30.240
second. Okay, am I doing
takeout tonight with Chipotle? Or am I

314
00:25:30.279 --> 00:25:36.039
going to go drive over there?
Now you've potentially threatened your opportunity to engage

315
00:25:36.079 --> 00:25:40.279
with me, because now I'm loose
in the world. I can stop at

316
00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:42.799
Panera instead of Chipotle on the way. It's just right here, I'm just

317
00:25:42.839 --> 00:25:47.599
going to go there. That is
exactly right, and that's why it requires

318
00:25:47.640 --> 00:25:49.000
more and more data points. And
by the way, going back to our

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00:25:49.240 --> 00:25:55.519
should restaurants be tech companies? That's
also why technology needs to exist outside the

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00:25:55.559 --> 00:26:00.200
restaurant, because you could have as
much data about what your customers doing with

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00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:04.279
you, But if you aren't testing
it at what customers are doing with lots

322
00:26:04.279 --> 00:26:08.519
of other brands, your training set
for this stuff's just not large enough.

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00:26:08.759 --> 00:26:15.279
We've sent way more campaigns out than
any one of our restaurants could ever send

324
00:26:15.319 --> 00:26:19.319
on their own, so we have
far richer data to understand what is predictive

325
00:26:19.359 --> 00:26:25.240
of future behavior than any single restaurant
could. Yeah, this is going to

326
00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:29.000
be interesting to see how this evolves
in them, you know, in the

327
00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:32.960
coming years, because I think it
will take some time for a lot of

328
00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:36.000
operators. When you look at the
operators that are out there right now,

329
00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:37.480
is there anybody that sticks out in
your mind? I hate to put you

330
00:26:37.480 --> 00:26:41.799
on the spot, but in terms
of companies that even if it's just give

331
00:26:41.839 --> 00:26:45.319
me an example of somebody that is
doing it right, who would you say,

332
00:26:45.400 --> 00:26:48.160
maybe one of your best customers,
Who would you say this guy is

333
00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:52.200
really they got there, They've they've
zoned in on what the future is and

334
00:26:52.240 --> 00:26:56.799
they're they're locked and loaded. Well, i'll give you. I'll use public

335
00:26:56.839 --> 00:27:03.039
comps because it's probably easiest. All
my insight is not quite as exclusive as

336
00:27:03.119 --> 00:27:08.240
you might like. But Chipotle was
ahead here, focused on what I would

337
00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:12.759
consider the new definition of loyalty,
what we call loyalty three point zero status,

338
00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:18.559
convenience, exclusivity. They ran GUALC
mode. They created access to their

339
00:27:18.599 --> 00:27:22.480
case ada through digital and you couldn't
get it intore. They were doing a

340
00:27:22.480 --> 00:27:25.599
lot of stuff that put them way
ahead, and their stock price benefited.

341
00:27:25.880 --> 00:27:29.640
They were head and shoulders above the
Food and Beverage index for a while.

342
00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:33.599
Now is Chipotle missing on their execution
right now? In my opinion, know

343
00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:41.400
what's happening is others are narrowing that
gap, and that's partially what's driving the

344
00:27:41.480 --> 00:27:45.440
current trend. I'd say the other
sorry, go ahead. That's interesting because

345
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I think you're right. You know, we've seen it not only in sales

346
00:27:49.680 --> 00:27:56.799
numbers, but also consumer sentiment,
which has been ironically trending down with Chipotle

347
00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:00.400
here over the last three to four
months, we've seen ticks in the armor

348
00:28:00.440 --> 00:28:03.759
starting to trend down. I don't
know if that's the customer just getting fatigued

349
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:07.079
or what's happening, but there's some
interesting things happening. I think that's the

350
00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:12.559
challenge of building tech yourself. The
bars constantly raising. You can't just get

351
00:28:12.599 --> 00:28:17.720
ahead and then it just sustains.
You have to keep pushing innovation because others

352
00:28:17.720 --> 00:28:22.359
will catch you. And that's very
challenging. That's a constant rat race that

353
00:28:22.440 --> 00:28:27.640
you have to be on to stay
ahead or that gap starts starts trending down.

354
00:28:27.640 --> 00:28:32.400
And I think we're seeing that in
what you described. I think that's

355
00:28:32.440 --> 00:28:38.279
the burden of success here. There
are other stories. I actually think Sweet

356
00:28:38.279 --> 00:28:47.640
Green's loyalty strategy is excellent. Whoever's
thinking and designing that strategy around challenges that

357
00:28:47.680 --> 00:28:52.440
are truly personalized, so that a
three time customer gets an incentive only when

358
00:28:52.440 --> 00:28:56.000
they come a fourth time in a
month. That is absolutely the direction we

359
00:28:56.079 --> 00:29:00.759
see things going from a loyalty standpoint, and yet it's not yet driving the

360
00:29:00.799 --> 00:29:06.680
results that I bet that that brand
would want to see. And I think

361
00:29:06.759 --> 00:29:11.079
partially my guess is that's a lot
of technology that had to be built on

362
00:29:11.119 --> 00:29:21.000
their own, which means innovation is
burdens I think so quickly. Yeah,

363
00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:25.279
I mean you guys are constantly developing, reiterating things of that nature. You

364
00:29:25.319 --> 00:29:26.880
know, from a tech side,
this is part of what a tech company

365
00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:32.480
is, you know, it's it's
constant reinvention of Okay, everything that happened

366
00:29:32.519 --> 00:29:36.400
in two point zero is doesn't really
matter. Three point zero is the new

367
00:29:36.480 --> 00:29:40.079
version. So I get that,
you know. I remember the day is

368
00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:44.359
when I worked with Microsoft and we
were running you know, the original you

369
00:29:44.359 --> 00:29:47.240
know, launches of a lot of
the OS systems, and it was that

370
00:29:47.480 --> 00:29:52.400
very same thing. We almost ended
up doing complete new engineer teams in many

371
00:29:52.440 --> 00:29:56.160
cases, even though there might be
a lead engineer that jumped over from the

372
00:29:56.200 --> 00:29:59.359
existing version set that we were on, a lot of times it was a

373
00:29:59.359 --> 00:30:02.079
brand new team, you know,
because they're dealing with a whole new model

374
00:30:02.119 --> 00:30:06.079
and they wanted fresh ideas. So
I get that for sure. This is

375
00:30:06.119 --> 00:30:08.960
always fun to chat with people in
the in the business like this, Zach.

376
00:30:10.039 --> 00:30:11.359
So it's going to be it's gonna
be great. But thank you so

377
00:30:11.440 --> 00:30:15.759
much for coming in on the show
today. We appreciate it. Absolute pleasure,

378
00:30:15.240 --> 00:30:18.279
you bet all right. So,
if you guys are tuned in right

379
00:30:18.319 --> 00:30:22.160
now, maybe on the audio version
of this podcast. You can catch the

380
00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:26.799
video version of the podcast just by
going over to save dot fm. This

381
00:30:26.839 --> 00:30:30.480
is our sub stack, so make
sure and subscribe on to the substack.

382
00:30:30.519 --> 00:30:33.960
You'll get an email you'll get in
the loop of a lot of our other

383
00:30:34.039 --> 00:30:40.920
podcasts that we have on there,
including art which is our Accelerate Restaurant Hospitality

384
00:30:40.960 --> 00:30:45.839
technology podcast. We also do h
of course Restaurant hospital or excuse me,

385
00:30:45.920 --> 00:30:48.799
the Restaurant Report, and then also
a Fast Casual Nation. You don't want

386
00:30:48.799 --> 00:30:52.440
to miss that one big one.
So all you have to do again Savor

387
00:30:52.839 --> 00:30:56.160
dot fm is all you have to
do and you'll be there. Hey,

388
00:30:56.200 --> 00:30:59.799
Zach, it's been great having you
on the show. If anybody wants to

389
00:30:59.880 --> 00:31:03.519
check out Thanks, what's the best
way they can find you? Check us

390
00:31:03.519 --> 00:31:07.440
out at thanks tha n X dot
com. And I talk a lot about

391
00:31:07.480 --> 00:31:11.799
this stuff on LinkedIn, which has
been a good platform for us to try

392
00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:15.759
to educate the industry. So look
for me there and follow me there.

393
00:31:15.519 --> 00:31:18.359
You got it. We'll see you
later. Thanks again for stopping in.

394
00:31:18.440 --> 00:31:23.599
Zach, were absolutely all right.
So guys again, like I said,

395
00:31:23.640 --> 00:31:27.000
you know, the first of all, thanks for all the comments on the

396
00:31:27.039 --> 00:31:32.400
show. We appreciate your input and
you know, sometimes we'll throw out ideas

397
00:31:32.759 --> 00:31:36.799
that we're working on. One thing
I want to make a represent a recommendation

398
00:31:36.839 --> 00:31:40.319
to you guys, is we have
a new program that is launching this year

399
00:31:40.359 --> 00:31:45.480
called Brand Breakers, and it's a
it's basically an award mechanism that's going to

400
00:31:45.519 --> 00:31:52.359
look at the best brands and marketing
technology and branding those three elements and selecting

401
00:31:52.720 --> 00:31:55.839
the top ten every quarter and then
at the end of the year, we'll

402
00:31:55.839 --> 00:31:59.039
be doing a big award system.
So check out. We'll be talking a

403
00:31:59.079 --> 00:32:01.799
lot more about it. We'll have
stuff on the website soon talking about brand

404
00:32:01.799 --> 00:32:05.640
Breakers, But make sure and check
that out when you guys get a chance,

405
00:32:05.680 --> 00:32:07.640
and we'll catch you next time right
here on the Restaurant Report

