Meredith Sandland [00:00:00]:

2024 is all about, honestly getting more people on the system. Like, it's so good. I just want more restaurants using it and to see how different the world is when you approach it this way. So that's what 2024 is all about. I think it will continue to be a lot of more delivery centric type restaurants, folks who are doing significant delivery volumes. So it's probably not going to be, you know, the dine in restaurant that does ten out the back door. That's probably not for us. But for folks who are, you know, pay first, get food second models that do a lot of delivery, we are great for that.

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Meredith Sandland [00:00:38]:

And I can't wait to see it being used by lots and lots of people.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:44]:

Welcome to Wisking It All with your host, Angelo Esposito, Co-founder of WISK.AI, a food and beverage intelligence platform. We're going to be interviewing hospitality professionals around the world to really understand how they do what they do you. Welcome to another episode of Wisking It All. We're here today with Meredith Sandland, CEO of Empower delivery. Meredith, thank you for being here with me today.

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Meredith Sandland [00:01:13]:

Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to do this. Every time I say Wisking It All, I, like, get a little giggle. I love it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:20]:

Yeah. A little play on words there. As always, we like to start off with kind of what you're currently doing and what is empower delivery? So just, we'll obviously go into more detail, but at a high level, can you share with our audience what is empower delivery?

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Meredith Sandland [00:01:35]:

Yeah, empower delivery is an end to end order to fulfillment system. So what that means is it handles orders coming in from anywhere. First party, third party in store. They go all into our, I call it central brain. It's like the brain of the kitchen, and it's, you know, part pos, part kds, part CDP. It's got a lot of stuff going on in there and then fulfills it out any possible way, either for consumer pickup on site via first party delivery or via third party delivery. And then the thing that's interesting about that first party delivery, and unlike any other system out there, is that it enables a restaurant to have its own 1099 fleet of gig workers. And that is really, really powerful in terms of reducing the actual cost of delivery.

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Meredith Sandland [00:02:28]:

Because it's an all in one system, we're able to time together all of those activities. And our delivery drivers, therefore, are super efficient. And between no markup to some third party and lots and lots of efficiency, it turns out that it's cheaper.

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Angelo Esposito [00:02:46]:

I love that. That's amazing. So we'll definitely dive more into that. But one of the things I always love to learn is why people are doing what they're doing today and kind of what got them there. So I love to kind of just go back a bit, and then we'll definitely focus on empowered delivery. But maybe. Obviously, I was creeping on your LinkedIn, trying to understand some things you did. And one of the things that obviously stood out was being the chief development officer at Taco Bell.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:12]:

So I'd love to understand, like, where you were. Right. And then kind of what led you to the inception of empower delivery? Like, how did those experiences lead you to wanting to solve this specific problem?

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Meredith Sandland [00:03:24]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I was at Taco Bell in the old, old days when only pizza sold online, and the rest of us were just, you know, hanging out, selling things in restaurants. Like, you know, we had no idea. And we were building lots and lots of taco bells. About halfway through the journey of building 1000 taco bells, I thought, it's really weird that we're building these next to malls when no one goes to malls anymore, and all of those taco bells are still doing just fine. Thank you. But it planted a seed in my mind, and that seed only grew when I met Atul suit at Kitchen United. And we just met for lunch, and he's like, why don't you come over and see what we're doing? And I walked into that very first location, and I thought, oh, my gosh, they're making what I, as the consumer, wish that we had.

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Meredith Sandland [00:04:14]:

Because at the time, or the customer at the time, we were trying to figure out as Taco Bell, trying to figure out how to enter urban environments like Manhattan. And we thought it was very strange that you would pay the world's most expensive real estate dollar for 40% of your sales to go out the door delivery. And we thought, gosh, it'd be so amazing if there was a commissary that you could deliver tacos out of. And then there it was in the form of a ghost kitchen. Now, of course, ghost kitchens have gone through a lot of different iterations, and they've been in the news a lot lately. And I think folks have tried a lot of different models. And as I've looked around and what I've seen, the cluster truck model is the model that works. It is the largest and most profitable ghost kitchen in America.

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Meredith Sandland [00:05:01]:

And empower delivery spun out of clustertruck. It is the software that makes it so large and profitable. So interesting. That's kind of how one thing led to another. In the middle of that, of course, there was the book.

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:18]:

100%. Yeah. And I'd love to, you know, I love to chat about the book. And then for people listening, what can you, can you just elaborate on what a cluster truck is like? What is that?

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Meredith Sandland [00:05:29]:

Yeah, absolutely. So cluster truck is a vertically integrated ghost kitchen or delivery kitchen. You can think of it as almost like a pizza Delco delivery carryout unit, except it's serving all different kinds of cuisines, not just pizza, but unlike other ghost kitchen models, where they maybe have different kitchen suites and different operators inside of a giant building, this is one 2200 square foot kitchen that's putting out ten different kinds of cuisines, all under one brand, one operator, completely vertically integrated. They also take all the orders first party. I think the thing that's super crazy is that they're putting out 800 to 1000 orders a day. All of them are first party, and all of them go out the door first party delivery, not just first party order. So there's no like Doordash or Uber involved, which is pretty mind blowing for anyone else who has been trying to do this. They're very dependent on the third parties.

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Meredith Sandland [00:06:31]:

That causes all kinds of inefficiencies and expense. So it is a very different model.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:38]:

That's super interesting. And then you touch on it a little bit. But I know you co authored delivering the digital restaurant, your roadmap to the future of food. I'd love to hear. And then I think, was there a part two?

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Meredith Sandland [00:06:52]:

In fact? Is there a part two?

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:53]:

Is that my imagination?

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Meredith Sandland [00:06:54]:

In fact, there are two books.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:55]:

Okay, there is two books. I want to make sure there are.

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Meredith Sandland [00:06:57]:

Two books for those who are watching.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:59]:

Yeah, yeah, this is gonna go on YouTube.

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Meredith Sandland [00:07:00]:

One is Navy, one is white, one is your roadmap to the future of food. And the other one is the path to digital maturity.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:07]:

That's it. Got it.

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Meredith Sandland [00:07:09]:

I love that the first one is all about the why this is all happening, what's changing with the consumer? What are restaurants trying to do about it? What is happening with all the tech companies? And then the second book, your roadmap. Sorry, the path to digital maturity, that one is all about the how. What should restaurants be doing? 1st, 2nd, 3rd. How do they optimize themselves for this new digital world?

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:35]:

Interesting. And can you give people maybe a sneak peek? I think, number one, we'll definitely do a plug on where they can buy this book. So I'm assuming people can go to Amazon, do you want to do a quick plug, maybe a website? So where can people get a copy of this book?

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Meredith Sandland [00:07:50]:

Yeah, that's right. Well said. You can go to Amazon, and the books are definitely available there. And we'd be grateful if you bought one. But if you want to go direct, if you want to order first party, first party, as they say in restaurants, you can go to delivering the digitalrestaurant.com, and you can order the books there.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:14]:

Okay. I love it. So delivering the digitalrestaurant.com, you can order the books there. And if you like it, if you love it, leave a review. That always goes a long way, so please leave a review and maybe to give the listeners a little taste. I know there's kind of the how to. They'll have to buy it to know all the how to's. But can you give them maybe, like, you know, that, that first year you're kind of saying it, step one, step two, can you, can you give us a little taste of what step one or step two might look like?

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Meredith Sandland [00:08:39]:

So step one is all about optimizing your presence on the first party or the third party platforms on the marketplaces. And I think the way I would say it is very much like Yoda do or do not. There is no try. There's no try. So if you hate the third parties and you resent them and you're kind of like half assing it, and as a leader in a restaurant, you have a bad attitude about it, and that permeates down to your staff and they have a bad attitude about it, and therefore you're constantly making errors and deprioritizing those orders. And, you know, whatever, it's not going to go well. Right. So why are you doing it? And I think deciding, yep, we want this channel, and for some people, they don't, and that's perfectly fine, but then don't do it.

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Meredith Sandland [00:09:23]:

Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:23]:

Right.

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Meredith Sandland [00:09:24]:

If you decide that you want this channel of business, then you have to figure out, how am I going to do this? Well, and so that very first chapter is all about getting on those third party marketplaces, optimizing your presence on those third party marketplaces being found, we call it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:43]:

That's really cool. Okay, that's interesting. And so how many kind of parts is there to this kind of transformation? I guess, yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:09:51]:

So that's the easy way to be digital. Right? So any restaurant can go on a third party marketplace and sell things online and call it a day. That's sort of the easy step one. And so that is where the book starts because for many restaurants, that's the first place they go once you've been found and people know you, and it's all about converting fans. And this is about your first party ordering system. I'm sure you have this for your company. Do you have access to Brizo food metrics?

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:22]:

No. No.

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Meredith Sandland [00:10:23]:

Oh, my gosh. Maybe you have CHG. But they have these websites now that they basically track every other website and what technology is being used on those websites. And so you can go through and find all kinds of restaurants and what they're using. And so the other day I looked on it and I found that there are 467 online ordering systems in the restaurant world in North America. 467.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:51]:

I can name you three.

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Meredith Sandland [00:10:53]:

So you can imagine, first of all, if you're a restaurant, you're like, I don't even know what the difference is between all of these, nor could I. I'm not going to go research 467 of them. Right? Like, that would be silly. Waste of time. But they are all quite different. And some of them are quite bad. Not to name any names, but you can imagine out of 467, there's probably a bell curve capability. Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:11:18]:

And so the very first thing we talk about in the convert fans section is if you want consumers to order from you directly, no amount of, like, guilting them into it. Oh, it's better if you order from us directly or discounting. Oh, you'll save 25% if you order directly. None of that will overcome a bad experience. And so the most important thing that you can do to get consumers to order from your first party website as a restaurant, the very most important thing you can do is have a great ordering experience. Make it as easy and as frictionless as Doordash and Uber eats do. And unless you do that, you're just going to be like, yelling into the wind.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:02]:

Wow. That's well said. But I would imagine that Uber eats and all. Obviously not. Imagine these companies obviously spend millions and millions of dollars to kind of make that user experience pretty friendly and testing and all that good stuff. How does an average, let's say, restaurant try to figure out that ordering UX or UI?

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Meredith Sandland [00:12:25]:

Yeah, well, spoiler alert, Angelo. Of course, I think that empower delivery has the very best first party ordering system. Now, the reason it's so good is because it's connected to the rest of the system, which no one else can do. Everyone is like a first party ordering system that's layering on top of something else. And so it's a little bit disjointed but absolutely, I recommend using these first party experiences. Right. Like, use your own, see what it's like. Use doordash.

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Meredith Sandland [00:12:52]:

And even if you might be as a restaurateur saying, I hate Doordash, I'm never going to order from them. Well, try it. Try it and see what the experience is like and then try your own and see how they're different. And as a consumer, you will notice that there are differences and there will be things that bug you that stand out and then apply the same discipline. Whenever you're looking at a new system, ask for a couple of their existing customers and go through the ordering process as though you're a consumer and see what it's like. And you're gonna, those differences are gonna jump out to you where you're like, you know, I'm overwhelmed by the number of choices, or I can't do a modifier in the way that I want to, or I have to enter my email address and a password in order to use the system. You know, all these little points of friction that maybe you don't think too much of and you kind of say it's not a big deal. For a consumer, it's a big deal.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:45]:

Yeah. They add up from your point of view. Right. When a restaurant is looking for a first party delivery, and obviously we'll get more into empowered delivery. But what are some of, so user experience is big, but what are some of the key things to look for? Right. Like you said, there's so many out there, they're looking for something that, you know, ideally looks nice, but beyond that, are there certain things you're like, listen, this is some key criteria that I would consider when trying to pick that first party ordering.

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Meredith Sandland [00:14:14]:

Sorry, first party ordering experience. Yeah. You know, I think there is something to the restaurant approach of what is everyone else doing, right. That is easier. And I would say, you know, for brand new companies that are doing interesting things and they're just starting out and everyone else isn't using them, you know, consider those and see how they're different and new. But for the older ones, for the legacy ones that have been around for a while, you can kind of tell who's, who's decent at what they do because they've got more market share. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:47]:

Got it.

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Meredith Sandland [00:14:47]:

So that's a good clue. And then I think to me it is count the clicks, which is a good indicator of the number of friction points. Right. So for me to successfully place an order, how many different buttons do I have to press to get through and on Amazon the number of clicks if you're a registered user is three to buy an item. So that's what we're trying to get to. I think on Doordash it's five. Right now, most online ordering systems for restaurants, you're in the like seven, eight range and you can see if you were a consumer and you were used to three buttons and then you're done with Amazon, and then you go to a restaurant, you're like eight buttons in and you're like, ah, this is so much.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:35]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny cause in the restaurant world this might seem like kind of like foreign, but in the tech world it's like, you know, this is, it's so. I don't want to say obvious, but. Right, like, it's like you, there's so much testing that's done around like, oh, this form is, we're gonna split up in three steps and put two, four and let's try it with a drop down versus it. And it's the smallest things. And you're looking at these conversion rates for your, for your funnel or for booking a demo or for whatever, but it's, it's, yeah, same thing applied to restaurants. It's so important. That's awesome.

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Angelo Esposito [00:16:06]:

And so on your end. Right, tell me a bit about what got you interested. So you spoke a bit about your experience from taco Bell to then working, you know, kind of in that, that ghost kitchen space. And then what was the point where you're like, okay, this is interesting. I want to offer this to the world. Like, how did that transition happen where you're like, I'm ready to start my own thing now, you know?

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Meredith Sandland [00:16:27]:

Absolutely. So the founder of Clustertruck, there are two Co-founders, but we'll talk a little bit about the one. His name is Chris Bagot. He is a fascinating man. He was one of the Co-founders of exact Target, which sold for two and a half billion dollars to Salesforce. And then he founded Compendium, which sold to Oracle. And as you do, after you had a couple of billion dollars in exits, you become a farmer. So there he was farming and he found himself with a lot of beef and so he became a restaurateur and then he got into restaurants as a software guy and he said, oh man, I can do this better.

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Meredith Sandland [00:17:06]:

This is a hot mess, right? And I met him literally on a panel, the food on demand conference, I don't know, probably seven years ago now, a long time ago. And I just thought he was so smart. I mean, obviously he's so smart, having accomplished what he's accomplished.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:23]:

Right.

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Meredith Sandland [00:17:23]:

And so I kept in touch with him the whole time, and then ultimately became an investor in clustertruck because they were the only ghost kitchen that was doing, like, just phenomenal numbers. And as a restaurant person, you look at that, you say, they're doing phenomenal numbers. They've got something figured out.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:37]:

Right, right.

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Meredith Sandland [00:17:39]:

And I was talking to him one day. I was interviewing for a job, and I was telling him about the job, and he said, wait, if you're gonna, like, stop being a full time writer and go get a job job, why don't you come work for us? I was like, oh, that's very funny. I'm not gonna do another startup, which is a story we'll get into in a minute, but I gonna go back to my corporate life. And he said, no, no, just come see what we're doing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:04]:

Just come look. Classic. Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:18:05]:

And so I went out to Indianapolis to see what they were doing, and I walked into the kitchen, and remember, this kitchen is doing 800 to 1000 orders a day. Some of those orders are as big as, like, 70 top orders. Right. It's a huge amount of food that's flowing through this kitchen. I walk in, and it's silent. And I thought, that's weird. They're, like, just listening to music, jamming away. No one's yelling at each other that, wow, that's weird.

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Meredith Sandland [00:18:36]:

And I said, why are they so quiet? And he said, oh, because they're just doing what the software tells them to do. And the software tells them to do it. Like, there is no human person saying, drop this, do that. Where is mine? It's crazy. And so I was like, well, that's pretty impressive. And I said, all right, well, what are your labor costs? And he said, 19% of sales. And I said, okay, yeah, fair. But you don't have a front of house.

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Meredith Sandland [00:19:00]:

This is a delivery only kitchen. Right. All you have is back out. So what are your delivery costs? And he said, my delivery costs are 7% of sales. And I said, wait, let me get this straight. For 26%, which is four points lower than most people can run an entire restaurant.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:16]:

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:19:18]:

You are scratch cooking everything, making to order, and delivering it all the way to someone's home or office. And he said, uh huh. Yep. And right then I was like, oh, my gosh. This is just how restaurants should be run. This is crazy.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:31]:

That's crazy. Yeah, that is crazy. I'm sure people are listening, are, like, dreaming of that number, because yeah, like you said, 30% is good, and that's, like, for everything. So twenty's like, wow, that's amazing.

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Meredith Sandland [00:19:43]:

It's amazing. Yeah. And it's quite remarkable. It's quite incredible. The turnover is lower at the facility because people are happier. It's a less stressful job. Right. And it's less stressful because of the way that the software operates.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:00]:

That's so interesting. I'm just picturing this visual of, like, a typical back a house scenario in a restaurant or a quick service or full service, and I'm picturing this kind of just quiet everyone with, you know, Airpods in or whatever.

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Meredith Sandland [00:20:13]:

Yeah, it's crazy. It's totally crazy. My tech team said, because the software doesn't really go down. Like it. It pretty much just works. And, you know, so we were talking about how they handle customer service calls and what they've been doing with clustertruck, and they're like, we really haven't gotten that many over the seven years because the software never goes down. And then they started laughing. I'm like, what? They go, well, there was this one time they called us, and they were like, oh, our radio stopped working.

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Meredith Sandland [00:20:45]:

Can you get that to work again? They were like, dude, we're software engineers.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:50]:

That's amazing. And so let me ask you that, first of all, I'm just imagining this kitchen and this operation of 800,000 orders is, like, mind boggling, and with those margins. But so from there, is it that you were like, okay, how can I work this kind of concept and apply it, you know, to any restaurant kind of thing? Is that how the next step, the.

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Meredith Sandland [00:21:13]:

Evolution, I guess it makes, as a first point of adoption, absolute sense for anyone who's doing a lot of deliveries, right? So as you think about who does a lot of deliveries, a delivery kitchen or ghost kitchen setting, it's a pizza restaurant that's putting out two or three or 400 orders a night. It is chinese, it is indian, thai, that kind of, you imagine a delivery kitchen where they're not doing a whole lot in store, but it also is a fast casual, high volume fast casual that's doing $3 million a year, 40% of it is delivery. Right. And so, you know, you start very narrow in startups, as I'm sure you remember from your own startup journey. If you start too broad, you cause a lot of problems. So you start very narrow with those delivery only guys, but you kind of broaden out as you go to serve a much broader target.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:14]:

I love that. And so, like, for people to maybe just imagine walk them through, like, what's, you know, someone's interested in power delivery. They want to, you know, level up the restaurant. What is, what does the process look like? So, you know, I know there's probably a few steps, like you said. Cause it's essential brain. Right? So what is the kind of maybe. Yeah, I guess onboarding process look like to say, okay, I want to start using empower delivery, and maybe we can go walk through the different points that, like, empower delivery's hitting to help these restauranters.

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Meredith Sandland [00:22:44]:

Yeah, I think, you know, the first thing is probably being motivated by what you could have and thinking through. And I think a lot of restaurants, frankly, are already in this space where they're like, man, I wish I could have the Starbucks system. I wish I could have the chipotle system. I wish I could do what Domino's does.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:01]:

Right?

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Meredith Sandland [00:23:02]:

And everyone tells restaurants, oh, data's so important. Don't give it up to the third parties. You need to have it in first party. But then they're like, what do I do with it once I have it, right? And they're a little bit overwhelmed by it. They're swimming in it, trying to figure out how exactly to apply it to drive sales or reduce costs. So the first step is motivation. Like, I want to be able to personalize 100% of my marketing. I want to be able to know who those third party orders are and whether or not I was successful moving them over to first party.

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Meredith Sandland [00:23:36]:

I want to be able to give real time quote times to my customers so they know exactly when their food is going to show up. I want to be able to dramatically reduce my delivery cost. Right. Those are all the kind of outcomes of having the software. And if you are motivated by those things, then you're going to look into the software. Step two is you got to accept that we're going to replace the POS. And a lot of restaurants, I think, see that as the heart of their system, and they get a little nervous. But this system only works because it is the everything, right? So we're going to replace the everything.

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Meredith Sandland [00:24:17]:

And then once you've kind of done those two things, you've got the motivation and you've accepted that we're going to replace the POS because this is a new paradigm and a new type of software, right? You're ready to go, and then onboarding is relatively easy. You've got to put in some touch screens for your back of house because that's how all the orders get timed together, and that's how the software is communicating with the line cooks to tell them what to cook. When we use sticky printers in both back of house and at expo in order to ensure accuracy throughout the order. Our accuracy numbers are like, I won't go so far as to say in the five nines, but they are. We have about less than ten issues per thousand orders.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:06]:

Wow.

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Meredith Sandland [00:25:06]:

Which is insane, right? Like a fast food place would have. They'd be lucky if they had ten issues per hundred orders. That would be a good day. Right? So we use printers to facilitate that. So there would be a little bit of like, ordering and then installing that hardware.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:24]:

Got it.

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Meredith Sandland [00:25:24]:

And then other than that, it's pretty easy. Upload your menu and off you go. Probably need to train your people a little bit. I do find that very interesting. In most kitchens, the expo and or line cooks, they have spent so much time and effort thinking through what do I cook when? And keeping track of all those items and knowing I've got to do this. I've got to do this. That's part of their job, that at first it's a little uncomfortable to seed that to a computer and to say, I'm just gonna trust what it tells me. So there is a little bit of a learning curve there for the folks in back of house to see and then learn to trust that actually the computer is gonna tell them the right thing at the right time.

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Meredith Sandland [00:26:10]:

Because they're smart guys or girls. Like, they know they're generally doing things at the right time. They know they can do it. They've never seen a computer do it. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:19]:

That's interesting. And what's the reaction once they get used to the computer doing it? What's the kind of feedback you get from them?

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Meredith Sandland [00:26:28]:

Yeah. And then they love it because you've got the quiet back house. There's no stress. Right. I'm assuming that you've worked in a number of kitchens to end up where you've ended up, and, you know, the feeling of orders just keep coming in and the KDS is so full, you can't even see where it ends. Or like, things are coming off the printer, chits are coming off the printer so fast that they're just like piling up and they're now completely out of order and you've lost, you have no idea which one you're supposed to do. Like, you've been in this situation, right. That is so stressful to the kitchen.

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Meredith Sandland [00:27:02]:

Every single person in the kitchen is like, well, now I'm effed, right? I can't possibly fix this. Situation and everyone is mad at me and the front of house is yelling, where's my thing? And consumers maybe are yelling over the counter at you. I'm sure you've either had this experience in the kitchen or you've been the consumer on the other side wondering where your coffee is and if you'll ever get it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:24]:

Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:27:24]:

And this system that never happens because we manage the load of how, the kind of pacing of how those orders are coming into the kitchen and so that never happens. And once the staff sort of embraces and trusts, oh, the computer is going to tell me when it's supposed to, and that's okay. It's just like the whole giant breath of fresh air. It's amazing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:55]:

That's awesome, right? That's awesome. And then on the, so I'm loving it so far because I'm imagining this. And like you said, it's that number one feeling, that motivation and that need to do something better and do it, you know, more optimally. Number two is being okay with switching that pos once they hit that hurdle and then they kind of see this. How does the website part work? Because now, like obviously that's the back house and the printing for the ordering. What about the first party ordering? You guys have your first party ordering for them to kind of put on their website as well?

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Meredith Sandland [00:28:28]:

Yep. Because we're replacing the part of the Pos that does the menu management that resides in our system. Right, got it. So they would upload their menu and all the photos and everything to the brain, to the heart of the system and that would push to the first party ordering site. It would also push out to all the third party ordering sites.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:48]:

Oh, beautiful. So they do their menu once third party, first party on the website, plus the actual Pos itself, which is linked to your smart print.

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Meredith Sandland [00:28:56]:

And it would all, it would push out to, if you wanted up kiosk, like anything that you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:01]:

Wow.

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Meredith Sandland [00:29:01]:

Anything that you wanted to. Yeah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:03]:

Wow. Really cool. And so like I got to know like what was the experience like with one of like the early customers because obviously, you know, the more you get and then the more data you have and the more case studies you have, obviously things get, I mean, things always get harder, but generally things should get easier, but, you know, you just get different problems. But generally, but, but generally the sale becomes easier and people understand and you have see the value and you can, you know, you have more data on it. But I'm curious to know just more on the entrepreneurial side because we have a lot of entrepreneurs on the show as well. Like, what's that like getting your client number one and client number two, where you're, you know, you're kind of. They're taking a big leap of faith, you know, like, at least the early customers. What? What did that look like? I'd love to hear a story if you can share one of the earlier customers.

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Meredith Sandland [00:29:47]:

You know, we are in an unusual position because we spun out of our earliest and biggest customers, and we were co designed. You know, the software was designed with the operations, and so they were learning together the entire way. And so a lot of the normal growing pains that a startup has, we were free from. Right. We already knew the software worked. We already knew how it worked. We weren't giving something to someone that we had, like, thought of in a theoretical fashion and kind of fingers crossed, hope that it worked. So we were free of a lot of that, which I think happens in some startups.

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Meredith Sandland [00:30:21]:

And frankly, that's why they tell startups to start with MVP's. Right. Because you can be the smartest person in the world and think, you know how it's gonna work, but until you see someone interact with your baby, you have no idea if you came up with the right thing or not.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:33]:

Right, exactly.

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Meredith Sandland [00:30:35]:

So we were free from a lot of that, but not all of it. Right. And, you know, we were very blessed to have as our first customer, Umi kitchen, which is in Dallas, and Marcus Pinero there has been amazing in terms of giving feedback. Like every day he has thoughts and, you know, he is so detail oriented, and he always looks at things, you know, how he's describing. Like, when you're looking at first party ordering systems, you should be going through it like a consumer.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:06]:

Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:31:06]:

He looks at absolutely everything from the role of the person who's using that, whether it's the consumer or the line cook or the driver. And so he's always thinking like they think it's amazing. We've been very, very blessed to have him.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:21]:

Yeah, honestly, that's one of the things I think. And for restauranters listening, like, at least I'll speak for myself and perhaps echo what you just said there. But when there is that good feedback of, like, that typical, ideal, you know, customer profile, it's amazing because you're getting like, you know, we joke around internally sometimes it's like, it's like free, free Qa, you know, you got someone that's really giving you, like, just real feedback and, you know, just to tie to WISK real quick in the early days. I mean, still to this day, but in the early days, so many of, like, the good ideas that people like, oh, that's so smart. It was just real client pain. Like, oh, I'm doing my inventory, and I'm in my fridge, and there's no Wi fi, and I can't do inventory. It's like, oh, man, we should probably build an offline mode because, yeah, maybe people have things in the basement or in a fridge, but it's like, over time, you keep adding these things up and then, like, people are like, oh, wow, this is so smart. It's like, well, I got feedback from real people doing real things in the restaurant.

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Meredith Sandland [00:32:15]:

Doing real things. Yeah, totally. 100%.

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:18]:

So, yeah, that's huge. And I'd love to know what's kind of, like, next for you guys. So, like, I love to hear where you guys are, like, at today. Right? It sounds like you're solving some real issues, really helping restaurants. Like, what's next for you guys? What are you working on, let's say, now? And what would you like to do in the next? I guess 2024, right? Like, in the next.

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Meredith Sandland [00:32:39]:

What is 2024 all about? 2024 is all about, honestly getting more people on the system. Like, it's so good. I just want more restaurants using it and to see how different the world is when you approach it this way. So that's what 2024 is all about. I think that will be. I think it will continue to be a lot of more delivery centric type restaurants, folks who are doing significant delivery volumes. So it's probably not going to be, you know, the dine in restaurant that does ten out the back door, that's probably not for us. But for folks who are, you know, pay first, get food second models that do a lot of delivery, we are great for that.

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Meredith Sandland [00:33:21]:

And I can't wait to see it being used by lots and lots of people.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:24]:

That's awesome. And so for view listing, is it empowerdelivery.com?

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Meredith Sandland [00:33:30]:

Oh, good question. No, it's empower delivery.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:34]:

Okay. There you go. See, this is why I asked. Okay, good. So empower delivery. Okay. That's good to know. So for people listening, and you kind of alluded to who would be ideal.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:43]:

So if you. If they have heavy volume and if you want to add any specifics that maybe you, you know, I didn't mention, but people with high volume delivery, that's a substantial part of their business, is there any other kind of criteria that would be ideal? Like, I don't know, is there certain geographies or certain regions that you or.

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Meredith Sandland [00:34:02]:

Yeah, well, we can be anywhere in the US. Our team is based in Indianapolis, so if you want us to come visit you, I think if you're in a two and a half hour driving radius of Indianapolis, you know, Ohio, Chicago, Nashville, Lexington, those kinds of places, places the team would be very happy to come see it in action. But we work all over the US. And again, as I said, not servers, not dine in, but any place that has pay first, get food second. So, like a fast casual sandwich shop, pizza shop, that kind of thing, especially if they have very high delivery volumes. We're going to fundamentally change the economics of delivery and make it better. Clustertruck, as an example, charges no menu markups and no delivery fees. So they're hitting that 7% of sales delivery cost with no menu markups and no delivery fees.

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Meredith Sandland [00:35:00]:

What? As a consumer, why would you not order that? It's so much cheaper than ordering anything on Doordash or Uber.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:06]:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I can't tell you the amount of times I've ordered chinese, and it's just for two people. I spent like $98, and I'm like, what just happened? Yeah, what happened? It started off at 30, and then it was like, fees and taxes, and I'm like, that's weird. What's this $90 charge on my credit card? Oh, yes, that Chinese. Yeah, it's insane. And it's. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize, obviously, the restaurants don't, but a lot of people don't realize. It's like, as the consumer, you're typically eating that cost because, you know, there's.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:34]:

They're adding that margin, and so the menu price is not the same. It's funny because we had Ray Reddy, the CEO of ritual, and he was saying that was one of the core principles at ritual, which was, I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's just like a pickup head app. It was kind of like what Starbucks had for a long time, but giving that to everyone else. And so you can go in and just pick up your food and kind of thing. And obviously now things have changed, like post COVID, but really cool app, big and a ton of countries and whatnot. But he was just kind of alluding to that, that a lot of people don't know, or the consumers, I should say, don't know that on these third parties, the menu price is not the same. And it was one of the things, I think, to this day.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:15]:

But on ritual, they made sure that the price was always the same. So if you were, like, looking at the coffee shop and you're on the app, it was actually the same price, which is very hard to do because, you know, restaurants are trying to make certain margins and passing it off to the consumer. Right.

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Meredith Sandland [00:36:29]:

Yeah. It is amazing to me that consumers are still finding out, like, you see these TikToks where people are like, can you believe it? And they're all shocked, and you're like, like, oh, my gosh, it's almost 2024. How do you not know that?

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:40]:

Yeah, I thought it was common knowledge, too, but it was. He made me realize, like, a lot of people don't know.

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Meredith Sandland [00:36:44]:

He was like, the dirt, and they're just finding out. It's quite shocking.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:49]:

Yeah, it's pretty funny. That's awesome. And so I love to hear, obviously, because of your experience in the industry, in the space, you know, writing that book, working on Taco Bell, what you're doing now with empowered delivery, where do you see, you know, like, sorry, not where. How have you seen, you know, technology reshape the restaurant industry? Right. So we spoke a bit about the delivery side and the first party ordering and that side of things. What other interesting kind of technology have you seen kind of shape the future of the restaurant industry?

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Meredith Sandland [00:37:20]:

Well, I think 2023 turned out to be the year of the kiosk, which is similar ordering functionality, but in the actual restaurant. Seems like every time I turned around, somebody was talking about launching kiosks or the results of having kiosks in their restaurants. But maybe the more broad idea there is, labor costs continue to go up. They're not going up as much as they were, but labor costs continue to go up. And I have a vision for the restaurant industry that it will go through a transition very similar to what happened to manufacturing in America, except without all the offshoring of jobs. We won't have that part. You know, you remember in the old days in manufacturing, people were doing manual labor, repetitive manual labor, and now if you go into a manufacturing plant in the US or in Europe, there's still a few people there, but not as many. And the robots are doing the repetitive manual labor, and the humans are doing all of the troubleshooting, problem solving, custom work, setting things up.

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Meredith Sandland [00:38:29]:

Right. It's a little bit different, and the jobs require a little bit more skill, but there's fewer of them and they're better paid. And I think that will happen in the restaurant industry as well, where we will actually have fewer restaurant jobs than we do today. But the ones that we have will be a little bit more highly skilled and better paid than what we currently see. I think that will definitely happen. And so most of the big changes to get us there, the first one is around things like kiosks, things like automation in the back of house, which, by the way, automation, you don't have to go full robot to do it. You can start with a smart oven, those types of things. The software, at least the way we do it, is a little bit like having automation, but through software instead of hardware.

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Meredith Sandland [00:39:22]:

Right. Because we're timing and coordinating all of these things. So I think those things will get adoption in a big way as we start to see that transformation. And then the next set, I believe, will be kitchens. Transforming from gas based kitchens to more electric based kitchens. Okay. And, you know, if you look at someone like Tesla and the electric vehicle that they did, do they love the environment that much? I don't know. I can't say.

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Meredith Sandland [00:39:48]:

But what I can tell you is that it's really hard to automate a combustion engine. Really hard.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:53]:

Right.

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Meredith Sandland [00:39:54]:

It's so much easier to automate electricity because it's just ones and zeros. Right. You know exactly what's happening.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:00]:

Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:40:01]:

And I think that same thing will start to happen in restaurants. It's already happening in some places by law. Right. You think of like Berkeley passing the no more, no more gas stove law that everyone was up in arms about a few years ago.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:14]:

Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:40:14]:

But that will start to happen more and more. And it will start to happen not just because cities are passing laws, but because, number one, it is actually more efficient. And number two, you could do all this cool automation stuff that is just really hard to do with gas.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:26]:

Right. That's super interesting. It's funny, I had Kristen Holley from expedite on the show, and I was just picking her in on some cool tech she saw. And I'm trying to remember the name. I think it was Chipotle with their avocado slicer, but it had such a clever name. And I just remember being like, I think there'll be a lot of, to her point, really interesting to see some of the automation. And then you kind of alluded to right now, too, that all happening with the kind of repetitive tasks, whether it's an avocado or peeling of potatoes or whatever, but kind of those repetitive things. And it'll be interesting to see where the, the industry goes and what sticks and what doesn't because there's a ton of technology.

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Angelo Esposito [00:41:02]:

And I think for some, for some people, it could be overwhelming, especially for restauranteurs, right? They're being bombarded. I think, like, if you look, ten years ago, right, like, tech was still, I mean, you know, you got your reservation app. Maybe there was like, you know, two, three modules you kind of thought of in a restaurant. Your pos, maybe your reservation and maybe loyalty was like, starting, let's say, maybe a bit more than ten years, but you get the idea now it's like you have a suite of 20 tools.

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Meredith Sandland [00:41:28]:

You know, it's everywhere, and it's. And I view it as like the Frankenstein tech stack where I was like, I was in a state of emergency because of COVID and so I added online ordering. But then I realized that with online ordering and third parties, I needed, you know, an aggregate. And then I was like, oh, no, the chargebacks are out of control. So then I needed some kind of revenue management system. And then I thought, well, if I could really get people over to first party, all of this would go away. So I added loyalty. And then.

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Meredith Sandland [00:41:56]:

And you just keep, like, discovering a new problem or opportunity, and then all of a sudden, there you are, 20 SaaS fees later going, what have I done? Does any of this make any sense? I don't know. And what we really try to do at empower delivery is think through the root cause of those problems and say, why is this happening? And if we can address that root cause with one system, then you don't need that Frankenstein tech stack of all these different things.

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Angelo Esposito [00:42:24]:

It's a super interesting way of thinking about it. Cause, yeah, I think you nailed it. We're always kind of patching things together. Cause it's growing. And it's an interesting perspective to think about that shift, which I think will be for some restaurant tours, might be a hard thing. But I think, to your point, they'll probably be that tipping point of, like, not necessarily considering the Pos, the heart. Right. Because if you really think about it, I mean, I know now Pos has evolved, but when you really think about it, we used to have that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:42:50]:

That talk internally where it's like, it would almost make more sense if this was from our point of view years ago. But, like, the back of house, let's say, should be the starting point because you're scanning an invoice, you're building the item you're building, and then from there, then let me push it to a interface where I can sell it. And it's funny how the POS has become the central part, but it's a bit backwards in a way. So I think it's totally backwards.

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Meredith Sandland [00:43:11]:

What it really should just be is an order entry point. Just like your phone is an order entry point. Your kiosk is an order entry point. And instead of thinking about that Pos being the heart of the restaurant, it should be. I mean, I'm a little bit biased here, but it should be. Something in the back of house is really the brain of the restaurant. It's an order management system, taking things from all kinds of inputs, putting them to all kinds of outputs, and then keeping track of everything in a centralized database so that you're able to act on it. And that's what makes you able to do all the personalized remarketing.

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Meredith Sandland [00:43:42]:

That's what makes you able to do the real time quote times, like, everything flows from having all of that data centralized in one place.

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Angelo Esposito [00:43:50]:

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And let me ask you this. Just wrapping up here, what would you say is maybe advice to entrepreneurs looking to innovate in the space? So, as I said, it's pretty crowded space. There's a lot of noise. Obviously, I love what you guys are trying to do at empower delivery and, like, consolidate a lot of it, but for maybe people that are in the space or entering the space and trying to solve some problems, or maybe they are already solving problems. Any advice you would share with them?

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Meredith Sandland [00:44:19]:

If you want to start a software company and restaurant? Wow. I mean, it's a hard time to do it, I would say. I don't know if you saw that for Q three, funding and food tech was down 82% off at peak. I mean, a lot of that was Agtech, but still. And a lot of that speaks to how ridiculously high the funding was at peak prior. So it's not as bad as it sounds, but it's definitely more difficult now than it was two years ago, three years ago.

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Angelo Esposito [00:44:49]:

Right.

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Meredith Sandland [00:44:51]:

So you got to make sure that you have something that's truly differentiated from what else is out there. And I would say that means it needs to be a company, not just a feature, right. If you're out there selling a feature, unless you're hoping to get a bunch of people to use a feature and then sell that feature to a company, you probably really want to think through, you know, why does someone need me on that list of 20 random sauce fees that they have? Point the first and then the second. I would say the hardest thing about starting a company is trying to get everyone to believe at the same time. Right? So you're trying to. You need to get talent, right? You need some engineers, you gotta get them to believe that you're gonna get the money to show up. And for the money to show up, you gotta believe that the customers are gonna show up. And for the customers to show up, you gotta have them believe that the product works.

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Meredith Sandland [00:45:38]:

But then you need some engineers, right? So you're like in this circular thing where you're kind of conjuring everybody and getting everyone to believe at the same time. And I think that is absolutely the hardest thing about a startup that's well said.

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Angelo Esposito [00:45:52]:

It's funny because I guess that's why one of the things about being a founder is really, you know, they say vision, but it makes sense when you think about it because it's, it's true. You got to convince investors that it's worth putting money and convince your engineers to join and get paid less because you're startup and you got to join, you know, like, convince the customer to take a risk because you're a new product. Let's. And you're kind of, it's a really good way of thinking about it. And I think one thing I learned, like, tidbit was two things. One, I think you nailed it, is the way I've heard it said is don't build a vitamin, build, build a painkiller kind of thing. Vitamins are cool, and it could be like a chrome plugin and like, you could make money. There's people made money on plugins, but typically you want to really build a painkiller.

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Angelo Esposito [00:46:36]:

And the other lesson I learned kind of the hard way, you know, because I've had other startups that have failed, but on this journey, it's been a lot better. But it's trying to get paying customers as fast as possible won't solve all your problems, but solves a lot of them. So I realized, like, the faster you get paying customers, it's like it became easier, at least for me, to then recruit, let's say, developers or recruit marketing tech, because they're like, oh, okay, people are paying. Okay, cool, you're not crazy. Or they're raising money, oh, you're paying customer, you know, and I remember being in at the time I was in tech stars, was the first cohort in Canada at the time. And we kind of had these sessions where you talk to, like, you know, advisors, whatever, or VC's even. And the first kind of question I would get is like, yeah, but who would? And at the time was bar inventory specifically. And it's like, yeah, but I can't imagine someone paying more than what like, $20 a month for this.

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Angelo Esposito [00:47:26]:

And I was like, oh, no, we already got. And it wasn't many at the time, but let's say 50 restaurants paying, you know, $300 a month. And that was the best thing I ever did because I would always see their face, and I was like, oh, like, pop that bubble. They're now a believer. Like, okay, cool, you've done it. And so, like, all right, next question. So, like, for people listening, that's just my little piece of advice, is if you can, because some tech companies need a ton of funding, but if you can build something that is gets the customer as fast as possible or a paying customer as fast as possible, there's something really magical that happens, at least from what I've seen from my limited experience. So maybe.

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Angelo Esposito [00:48:02]:

Maybe that's something.

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Meredith Sandland [00:48:03]:

I think that's true, and I think that's why, again, going back to that MVP idea, why everyone says, don't overbuild, get an MVP, because if you try to build the perfect thing before you get a customer, that just pushes that date out before you're getting that feedback and you're being able to demonstrate that someone does actually want this and all that stuff.

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Angelo Esposito [00:48:23]:

Yeah, I love it. I got one more question for you, and then we're going to do all your plugs so we can end off with people knowing where to find you. The last one I got for you is, what would you say up until now has been the most rewarding part of, I guess, your career and maybe specifically in the kind of restaurant space, like, what has been the most. Yeah. Rewarding part for you.

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Meredith Sandland [00:48:43]:

I'm very proud of building all those taco bells and starting to take them internationally. And it's a powerful brand, right?

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Angelo Esposito [00:48:49]:

100%. I was gonna ask you, what was your favorite dish of taco bell, or is your favorite dish.

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Meredith Sandland [00:48:54]:

Well, my current favorite dish is the cheesy bean and rice burrito. But I take the nacho cheese sauce off and substitute three cheese blend, and then I have them grill it. It's very good.

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Angelo Esposito [00:49:04]:

I love it. Okay, you got. I feel like that's the inside scoop. I'm gonna. Next time I go, I'm gonna remember this recording. Second.

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Meredith Sandland [00:49:10]:

Also, the mexican pizza with double beans instead of beef. Excellent. Yeah. I have lots of little, like, substitutions. I don't think anyone at Taco Bell actually eats taco bell the way that it's on the menu. Probably because we eat it so often that we, like, change it around.

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Angelo Esposito [00:49:25]:

That's hilarious. I love that.

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Meredith Sandland [00:49:27]:

So anyway, so that probably up till now has been proudest. But now, as I think going forward with empower delivery and what it does, like, really, it gives the power of all these advanced tech stacks from huge chains. It gives that to independent restaurants and small chains, and in that way, kind of levels the playing field.

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Angelo Esposito [00:49:50]:

Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:49:51]:

And that, to me is very exciting and motivating because there are a lot of independent restaurants and small chains who, you know, with great technology, can do great things.

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Angelo Esposito [00:50:01]:

I love that. Very well said. So with that said, for people that want to learn more, we've done a few plugs, but just to wrap it up, empower delivery, they can go there. I'm assuming they can probably book a demo on the website and then.

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Meredith Sandland [00:50:15]:

Sure, can book a demo, watch a little video, take a tour of the software, all the good things.

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Angelo Esposito [00:50:20]:

Love it. And then in terms of second plug, if people want to find your book.

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Meredith Sandland [00:50:24]:

Once again, it would be@thedigitalrestaurant.com or Amazon. If you must.

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Angelo Esposito [00:50:31]:

If you must. Yeah.

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Meredith Sandland [00:50:32]:

First party.

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Angelo Esposito [00:50:33]:

First party. Okay. I love that.

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Meredith Sandland [00:50:36]:

And you can also hear Carl and I speak every other week on our podcast.

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Angelo Esposito [00:50:41]:

That was going to be my third.

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Meredith Sandland [00:50:42]:

Restaurant comes out every Monday and sometimes some bonus copies in between. But we go through the latest news in tech, restaurant, tech delivery, things like that, and talk about what's going on and what it means for restaurants.

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Angelo Esposito [00:50:57]:

Love that. So the digital restaurant, and I'm assuming Spotify, Apple music, all the typical.

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Meredith Sandland [00:51:01]:

All the places. Perfect.

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Angelo Esposito [00:51:03]:

Beautiful. Okay, well, you heard it here first. Great to have you on this episode, Meredith. You were a wealth of knowledge, super excited about your journey with empowered delivery. It's really, really cool to see what you're doing and how you're thinking of, you know, transforming the space. So thank you for being on the Wisking It All podcast.

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Meredith Sandland [00:51:24]:

Thanks for having me.

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Angelo Esposito [00:51:25]:

A pleasure. Beautiful. Feel free to check out WISK.AI for more resources and schedule a demo with one of our product specialists to see if it's a fit for.

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