Carl Orsbourn [00:00:00]:

It's difficult to stand out in the marketplaces, but by being on them, you're giving yourself a chance to be able to stand out. Now, the only other thing I'll say is if you do get great customer ratings, if you do fulfill your orders in good time, and that means being able to produce your items in ten minutes or less. So that way they can be delivered within 15 to 20 minutes and therefore be delivered within 30 minutes or less. The algorithm on the platform is going to reward you as well, which means you, as an independent, smaller restaurant, will also rank up higher on the algorithm, and therefore you'll be able to compete against the big guys.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:36]:

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. Welcome to another episode of the WISKing it all podcast. We're here today with Carl Orsbourn, host of the digital restaurant, best selling author of the delivering the digital restaurant, as well as a consultant and thought leader in the hospitality space. Carl, thanks for joining us.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:01:11]:

It's great to be here. Thank you for having me on the show.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:13]:

Yeah, super excited. I know there's going to be a lot of interesting topics we hit and I'm sure a lot of wisdom that will be shared with our listeners. So I'm excited as always. I like to thank you bringing the wisdom.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:01:24]:

Angelo, got much?

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:26]:

I'll try to squeeze it out of you. You know, one of the best places to obviously start is with your background. So. So I'm a big fan of. I know anyone can look to look at your LinkedIn profile, but it's more about the story behind it. So I'd love to just understand your journey of how did you go from working at, you know, big companies like BP to diving in the startup world with Juicer, with Kitchen United? So maybe that's a good place to kick things off.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:01:48]:

Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate the chance to speak to your listeners and, you know, talk a little bit about what's been a rather odd journey. I think it's fair to say I spent 18 years with BP, both here in the US and further afield in the UK, of course, where I'm from, and I came through their graduate program, so I didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up in my early twenties, I always had an interest in business and wanted to get involved in business in some way, shape or form. But my early career had me up in the very northern tip of Scotland, in the upstream part of the business where they extract oil out of the Shetland Islands, out that way. Thought that was a little too long term for my liking. And then I was over with AIRBP, the part of the business that sells kerosene to the airlines. And that happened around 911, which was an interesting time because I was part of an e commerce team back in the early two thousands. And then I had a year on the trading floor moving butane and propane around Europe.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:02:50]:

Let's talk about a weird introduction for three years, right? I really enjoyed the marketing orientated businesses, so I very quickly tuned my attention to retail, multi unit, and obviously in the BP world, that's gas stations, convenience stores. And I did a number of roles, you know, I did a number of roles from running pricing for the UK business, running finance and performance for our UK business all the way through to in 2015. I got the opportunity to then run the retail arm of the Arco AmpM network over here on the west coast of the US, which is about 1000 or so locations, over a billion dollars worth of revenue, you know, a GM role, but very much focused on the in store sales. And it was my second stint when I was 25, 26. My first stint in the US was when a great mentor of mine said to me, Carl, look, if you ever do want to run one of these businesses, one day you're going to have to get some operational experience. And he said, do you want to go to Krakow in Poland or San Diego in California? Now? Love, actually, I think we're about to approach the 20 year anniversary of love, actually, that movie, if you see.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:01]:

Yeah, I've seen it. I love it.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:04:03]:

There's a scene where the Brit goes across to the US, right? Well, basically that was me. I was like, yeah, I'm going to San Diego. I'll take the short straw. No problem at all. Great fun. Had an amazing time. Learned so much about the network over here, the retail business. My colleagues were amazing in helping me just learn what it takes to be a good operator and a good franchisor.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:04:22]:

And it was there where I met my wife. We ended up actually going back as boyfriend and girlfriend to the UK for a few years. Got married in Italy in 2012 and our plan was always to come back. And so when the opportunity came for me to then run that business unit that my mentor said about back in 2015, I came over. Now you might be saying, well, that's fantastic. Why aren't you still there?

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:42]:

Yeah.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:04:43]:

And I had these three objectives early in my career, and I had the objectives of doing an overseas stint, doing my executive MBA at some point, and then running a business unit. And so I got to a point where I was doing all these things, and I thought, well, I've achieved that. So now what? And then I met two individuals that about a month apart from each other who were in the last job or two of their career, and they were telling me the story of how they felt stuck. They were looking for their next opportunity, and they were stuck largely because they had stayed in one discipline their entire career, and they were now stuck relative to the younger cohorts coming through that were perhaps cheaper and also a little bit more relevant. So you can imagine me, right, running this thousand unit chain, and I was thinking, hold on, there's a small convenience retail company out there called Amazon. You should Google. They're doing pretty well.

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:33]:

They're doing all right. Yeah.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:05:34]:

And then here I am driving an electric car in a company that sells gasoline. And so I thought, this could be me 20 years from now. And so I always had this thirst and interest in entrepreneurship and being able to get into something that really allowed me to change the world in a way. And I used the opportunity at that point to say, okay, I've had a great time here. BP was amazing for me, for my career, but I want to do something a little different. And a mutual friend of mine introduced me to my co author, Meredith Sandland, who's been on the show. Right. And so Meredith had left a huge company and young brands to go and work over at Kitchen United and build out one of the first ghost kitchen companies.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:06:14]:

And so she and I met because I wanted to speak to someone that had left a huge organization and was getting into more entrepreneurial ventures. And so I wasn't meeting Meredith for the first time. Cause I was like, oh, ghost kitchens is my future, right. I was very much more about wanting to speak to people that followed a similar path. And I learned about what Kitchen United were doing and Ghost kitchens and met Meredith, and she's amazing, as you know, and the rest is history. And so my path into restaurants and to thinking about the future of food really started from that direction. And so I came into Kitchen United, helped them build out the operation. I was responsible for all the operations there and scaling the business from just the one location in Pasadena out to many.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:06:58]:

And it was really there that both Meredith and I met many of the top executives of restaurant trains across America. And you know, we saw the challenge that all of them were having to see. You know, is this off premise thing something to take seriously? Are we, are we really going to embrace it with all of our investment dollars right now, or should we just keep doing what we're supposed to be doing? You could see that hesitancy. And so after we left Kitchen United, Meredith and I set about trying to write a book that tried to tell the talist to look, this isn't a flash in the pan. This is something to take absolutely seriously. And we spoke to a lot of people, largely because something started happening in Wuhan, China, of course, the pandemic, when every restaurant became a ghost kitchen, when every restaurant had to embrace digitization. And our book just happened to come out in July of that year when it first hit everyone. And so timing was everything.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:07:56]:

And the fact that we were able to speak to people who were at home, running businesses, supporting the restaurant industry, running restaurants from home, gave us this access to an amazing amount of people. And to really tell the stories as to why this was something to be serious about, because, of course, now the pandemic accelerated so much digital adoption overnight to an industry that otherwise was quite a laggard behind it. Fast forward to the end of this story. Angelo, the benefit of that book was a real enforcement of my pivot, if you will, of my career, because then I was attending a lot of conferences as a speaker, speaking to industry leaders across, not here, just here in the US, but also globally, about restaurant digitization. And it enabled me to meet my co founders of my last venture at Juicer. They were coming in from an alternative vertical. They were interested in the book, and obviously I helped them establish their presence, which we can get into. And then also a bunch of advisory roles, both for a restaurant group that I sit on the board for in the Middle east, as well as other tech companies that are making their name for themselves across the entire ecosystem.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:09:03]:

So it's been a wild ride, but it's kind of crazy. From big blue chip to some startups and advisory roles ever since.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:10]:

Right? That's awesome. And so I'm curious to hear how was, you know, in the early years of that switch between maybe that corporate lifestyle to, you know, that entrepreneurial lifestyle, what were the things or lessons that really kind of stuck out to you?

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Carl Orsbourn [00:09:23]:

Well, the lessons are that actually, if you have the right mindset, the differences aren't as vast as you might imagine. I was quite surprised in that transitionary period from BP to Kitchen United, actually how many skill sets I was able to bring from the big environment to the smaller environment. And you're trained by some brilliant courses and some great folks that take you through your career at BP. And I'm sure for other big companies out there. And those principles were things that I could then bring to the organizations that were somewhat smaller than perhaps did not have the same level of resources available. So Part of what I prided myself all throughout my career, not just in terms of what I've done recently, but also throughout BP, is the ability to pivot across and try different things and do different things. That ability to be adaptable is super important because most people now aren't going to be staying in the company for 18 to 20 years. Right.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:10:19]:

I mean, we all know our parents generations might have thought that way, but that's not going to be the case now. And now I think people are starting to lead more portfolio orientated careers where they have a number of things happening at one point.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:30]:

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And, I mean, the trend I'm seeing, which maybe it's too much on the opposite side, but is, forget 18 years, it's more like 18 months. Right. You kind of look at an average person's LinkedIn profile and every.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:10:42]:

How much do you get done in 18 months?

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:44]:

Not exactly. Exactly, no. That's crazy. And just to dive a little into the book and then obviously I want to pick your brain also juicer. We'll talk about other topics as well, but diving a bit into the book. Right. So now that I understand the inspiration kind of behind it. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:59]:

So, like, where you were, what you were doing at Kitchen United and then, you know, met up with, with Meredith, who, by the way, shadow Meredith. She's awesome. And so you guys decide to write this book. So for people who don't know, can you kind of maybe just highlight who the book is for? Maybe some of the key concepts that they're going to be able to kind of explore in that book in a very simple way.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:11:21]:

The book is the why on restaurant digitization. It covers a lot of macro factors from the change in the customer, the change in the macro environment, the change in how people perceive food and their relationship to food. And it talks to other industries. We talk to certain aspects within the restaurant industry, like the pizza industry itself, and how that is so much more advanced than many other culinary types. And so we, we try to explain the why from a numerous different angles, again, telling the stories of others that have been there. And it's a curation of those stories in many ways that try to help people see where this ship is sailing. And it gets all the way through to touching on not just marketplaces and direct ordering and operational thinking and what it's like to be a driver. You know, I was a doordash driver for a bit of time just to research for the book all the way through to where's this heading? You know, what does 2030 look like? We asked every single one of the hundred or so folks that we interviewed, what does the future going to look like at that time? Eight, nine years ahead of ourselves.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:12:25]:

And so that I think hopefully gives people a sense of excitement. And obviously we're at a different point now because everyone realizes off premise is such an incredibly important part. But there's an entire chapter in there that talks about the economics of it and why you've got to look at marketplace transactions, at least initially, as an incremental form of profitability, but then why you need to quickly move on to being able to develop a direct channel after that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:53]:

That's so interesting. And I got asked just because you mentioned it, how was it being a doordash driver and what did you take away from that experience? That's super interesting that I love people, entrepreneurial spirit, who kind of get their hands dirty, whether it's for research, market research or whatever, so love to know what was that like and what takeaways did you gather from that experience?

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Carl Orsbourn [00:13:14]:

So important. Anyone that has any form of operational role out there, it's so important to roll up your sleeves and see it from that perspective. The dish pit in Kitchen United was a place where I really got a great perspective of where the kitchen United folks were at different times. For me, with the Doordash experience was brilliant, brilliant for different reasons. Because quite honestly, I wasn't treated great by restaurants and their team. I wasn't treated particularly well because from their perspective, I was the least profitable channel for the team members. I was taking the tips away from them and I was just an annoyance, right? The transaction was an annoyance to their system of operations. And so the whole thesis on that particular chapter is to say, if you give a bad experience to a driver, which includes not looking out for them, not letting me use the restroom, maybe not even giving them a cup of water, or making them wait, which is the worst thing you can do, then that experience is going to extend because they're going to take your brand in the back and they're going to drive 1520 minutes somewhere, and that brand is going to be the extension of that experience to the point when they hand it across to a consumer in front of their door.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:14:24]:

And so at Kitchen United and other restaurant groups like Buca de Pepo, you're seeing now what's happening is they're trying to embrace the driver. They're trying to offer them little bits of food just to say, look, this is the new LTO that's coming out pretty soon. And that could be something that you tell the drivers about so that when they are passing that dish across, it's almost like the same experience of when a server is at your table saying, oh, next time try the linguine. The chef has got a new recipe. If we treat gig workers like the new servers, which is the name of the chapter of the book, then we're going to basically use our team members, even though they're not necessarily employed by us, to be an extension of our brand all the way through the transaction. And that's a big part of the delivery experience today that's missing still to this day. The delivery satisfaction in terms of quality, speed and accuracy continues to be a major problem. And it's because I think we're not really thinking about how we can best make it work for drivers.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:15:20]:

And there's a whole big subject there about the economics of that we could get into too.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:24]:

That's awesome. No, it's interesting you say, because it's more obvious, let's say in a regular organization, like everything about WISK, it's like, okay, if my employees are not happy, how good of a job are they going to do taking care on the customer support or success side or sales side with our restaurant clients. But it's funny because it's like one little sidestep and it's not a direct employee, but that driver is basically an extension of that employee. So the way you put it doesn't make you think of like, hey, and hopefully people listen to this. I mean, hopefully they're not treating drivers badly, but maybe it's something to think about because it's true, that will trickle down to the end result. I know you briefly mentioned the union economics of maybe starting with a leveraging a marketplace, and I imagine, but maybe you could talk on why that's usually a good strategy and then eventually moving to a direct channel. I think that topic's super interesting because we have a lot of restaurateurs that do delivery and they're probably curious on like, huh, what's he talking about? What's Carl talking about? There again, I don't want to give away everything in the book, but I'd love to maybe just touch on that. On like, why, if you could? Yeah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:16:31]:

Just discuss the background of why from your point of view. That's, that's the best path to go.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:16:36]:

Absolutely fine. Look, the way I position it is there's only a certain amount of customers that are driving past or walking past the four walls of your restaurant today. And depending on where that is, there might be a slightly higher volume on Friday nights and Saturday nights, and there will be certain points in time where that restaurant itself isn't front of mind for a consumer. So a marketplace, and we're big fans of the marketplaces. We think they are integral to the future for the industry. And that's quite a contentious comment in its own right, given what people think about profitability and the way in which they're holding customer data, for example.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:15]:

Right.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:17:16]:

We think actually the access to incremental customers that were not thinking about your brand at the point when they're hungry is what the marketplaces are all about. And so if you almost position and think of it as a funnel, to be able to say, well, you might have had these two or three customers fallen into the funnel that were walking past your restaurant. Now you've got the opportunity to have access to customers within a four, five mile radius of your location that, importantly, may never have ever thought or heard of your restaurant brand ever before. That, therefore gives you the opportunity to be able to stand out. Now, the critics would say, well, that's all well and good, Carl, but there are now thousands of restaurants that are competing for that first page or two's worth of space. And that therefore, is more difficult for me to stand out, especially when I can't put the marketing dollars to really rank up the algorithm, if you will, so that I am, in the first two pages, a particular challenge for the smaller restaurant sellers out there. But this is where it's about trying to play into the second chapter of the book, which is about saying Folks now are starting to be more culinary. They have more of a curiosity about their cuisines that they're eating.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:18:25]:

They've got a "culinary curiosity" is what we call it. If you have a more niche food type, if you have something which actually allows you to be able to play in this space where there are fewer competitors, then you've got an opportunity to stand out. So, for example, if I'm searching for korean food in a particular part of the US right now, and there are only 50 other korean food outlets right now that fall under that category, that's far easier for me to stand out than if I'm creating a burger concept, for example. So it's difficult to stand out in the marketplaces, but by being on them, you're giving yourself a chance to be able to stand out. Now, the only other thing I'll say is if you do get great customer ratings, if you do fulfill your orders in good time, and that means being able to produce your items in ten minutes or less. So that way they can be delivered within 15 to 20 minutes and therefore be delivered within 30 minutes or less. The algorithm on the platform is going to reward you as well, which means you, as an independent smaller restaurant, will also rank up higher on the algorithm and therefore you'll be able to compete against the big guys.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:33]:

That makes sense.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:19:33]:

The challenge is, and this comes to the second part of your question, once you've acquired that customer and paid the 20 30% fee, or whatever it is that you've paid to a doordash or an Uber Eats or a graph pub to get that opportunity, The challenge is how much are you willing to invest to keep them coming back to order from you next time? Assuming you give them a great experience, which is a big assumption, assuming you treat them really, really well and give them a great experience, what type of incentive are you going to give them to say, you know what next, come to xxx.com and be able to visit my restaurant, and I will be able to give you an even better experience with this, this and that. That is the piece where today The big challenge exists because it's about third party to first party conversion. The marketplaces are reacting to that in the sense of creating things like DoorDash Storefront and being able to allow restaurants to be able to have their website, for all intents and purposes, on a DoorDash-type platform, but where they are not necessarily being advertised in the same way through the marketplace, but given a very similar experience. So they're trying to respond in that way. But the big thing, outside of the economics that sometimes gets forgotten about is the customer data angle. And again, the marketplaces are making some steps forward in that direction, certainly for the bigger chains. But if you can get customer data, and you understand what I mean by customer data is simple things like a name, an email or a cell phone, if you get that information, then you're in a position to be able to remarket to those customers, to be able to understand, usually order from us on a Friday night. And so therefore you can comment and send them a text on a Friday at 04:00 p.m.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:21:05]:

Saying join your usual. And that's creating a great customer experience. That's creating an experience that is akin to other ecommerce verticals that we're used to, like the Amazons of this world. We can get close to that and that's a very exciting future for us. But it starts in that marketplace. Great first party platform conversion tactics and then remarketing using customer data.

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Angelo Esposito [00:21:28]:

That makes a ton of sense. And just out of curiosity, what I'm just maybe is too specific, but what would you say is the way that people can go from a marketplace to a first party? So what I mean by that is, how do you get that first step of once you get their customer data? Maybe because you have, maybe it's your fast casual and you have Internet and they connect, whatever. But if you're using something like a doordash or an Uber eats, etcetera, how would you recommend that restaurants can think about that transition to then start thinking about direct to consumer? How can they collect or gather that data?

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Carl Orsbourn [00:22:04]:

There's a couple of ways to answer that question. The first way is obviously about how to activate and promote the awareness of the direct channel. Most people do that through the packaging, right? The packaging of how the food is being delivered. If you're delivering your food today in a faceless plastic bag, in a polystyrene container with no branding on it at all, then your restaurant brand has no resonance with that consumer. You can use things like labels. You can use little leaflets that you can clip onto the outside of the bag, not putting them inside of the bag. But the thing that's important, because a lot of folks do that, is that the offer has to be compelling enough. It has to be compelling enough almost to the point where you'd say, you know what, I'm going to put the same 20 30% that I would pay a doordash into this offer, so that way I can grab that customer over for my next occasion. Because even if you can get that piece of customer data, the email address or telephone number, you're then going to give yourself a chance to be able to communicate with them in the future.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:23:08]:

So that's one way. And that works to a certain extent. If you can get a suitably effective mechanic, the other way is to avoid it entirely. And that's about using things like Google and making sure your Google. My business profile directs customers to your first party ordering platform to be able to make sure that you've got really clear ways of being able to help customers understand why they should order from you. For those restaurants that have a large amount of on premise business, how much are you using your on premise business to convince your customers about using the direct channel? Which also therefore means not even thinking about this as just an off premise interface. If you can use it as an interface for every transaction where perhaps a loyalty program comes into it, where every on premise transaction is actually earning the customer some points, then why shouldn't they think about your app or your direct ordering channel, regardless of where they are, whether it be in the restaurant or for something for delivery?

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:06]:

Interesting. That's super interesting. Yeah, you got me thinking. I'm like, man, these are some good points. I love this because these are good nuggets. I think the, the restaurants will take away just thinking about how do you capture that data? How can you then remarket? And I'd love to hear, like, what's your take on when it comes to the actual delivery portion? You know, it was something actually, we touched a bit on Meredith, but I'd love to hear your perspective, too, because I know that's one of the big challenges. Is, okay, as a restaurant, I do my best. I'm organized now.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:34]:

My kitchen displays this, that, whatever. Cool. I become much better, let's say operation at getting things out. But now it's like it's kind of out of your control for most people on the delivery portion. I'd love to know, like, what's your take on that in the future of the actual delivery and the logistics side of the business?

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Carl Orsbourn [00:24:53]:

It's a good question because I think it's a piece of the equation that has truly yet to be figured out. Right. So from the marketplace standpoint, they're recognizing that they've got a level of churn in the drivers because drivers aren't getting enough business because they're only busy during peak times. That's why they've invested so much attention to alternative channels like convenience or pets or pharmacy or anything like that to be able to help them, their drivers, be able to get more business in the times when people aren't necessarily thinking about food. So that's that angle. I think when you look at the way things are heading in certain states like California and New York, and the minimum wage challenges, that's going to change up the mechanics of, well, is it better for me to be able to have my own driver fleet versus using third party fleets? I think there's an angle also attributed to using software to better select the right solution at the right time. I sit on the advisory board for Cartwheel, for example, and they help in that regard in particular. And it's about really trying to optimize routes in the most effective way to ensure that the dish gets to the customer as quickly as possible.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:26:05]:

Sometimes that might be through a third party marketplace driver. Other times it might be through a third party fleet. Other times it might be through your one or two drivers that you actually have yourself. So there are ways about trying to make sure you're making the right route selection with the right driver, with the right profile for the right customer. Because again, using these software platforms now, you're actually able to make decisions around your most loyal customers given a certain solution versus others, for example. The other piece, of course, is just in the technology side. You know, as seen we talked about on the digital restaurant podcast a few weeks ago, Walmart and the way in which they're embracing drone delivery in Texas.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:42]:

I didn't know this. Tell me more. I'm curious.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:26:44]:

Yeah, well, so they're partnering up with companies like Wing where they're going to be able to deliver to customers homes across Texas. I think they're going to be able to do certainly a seven figure sum of deliveries via drone this year, which is crazy, right?

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:59]:

That is crazy.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:27:03]:

That works for places like Walmart where you've got the ability, you know, there's such large units and large volume to be able to have a spot to load up drones and to have drones come back to be reloaded for restaurants. The mechanics of how to make drone delivery work is going to have to be thought about as to how the kitchens need to be redesigned appropriately. Right. Are you going to see people climbing up to the roof and letting the drones go free? Probably not. Right. But that is going to be a solution in certain areas where you've got certainly a spatially. Spatially, how would I put it, a spaced out communities where drivers are spending a long time going out to certain communities and back to restaurants again. Conversely, in very dense areas like Manhattan or certain areas of Santa Monica, you're seeing these Coco robots, for example, running around.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:27:57]:

Right. Because they have smaller areas of being out of distance. And that's enabling restaurants to be able to deliver through that type of automation. That's going to be a part of this which requires drivers. Right. The driver is not going to go away entirely, but automation is going to play a role in the right geographies.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:14]:

Yeah, no, it makes sense. We actually had a guest on the show, founder of. Obviously, I'm slipping on the name now, but it's a robot company. They're mainly in Miami right now. And it's basically the last mile delivery, but specifically for restaurants. And it's. You're right. It's interesting to see.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:31]:

I still. I'm still wrapping my head around the drone thing because it feels so futuristic. And you're like, this year? I'm like, it's this year. We're in the future. This is it. Like, it just boggles my mind. Switching gears. I'd love to just maybe chitchat a bit about.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:44]:

I know you were correct me wrong, but I think co founded Juicer with. Jeez, I'm blanking out today.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:28:53]:

Yeah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:53]:

With Ashley. Yeah, we had him on the show. Awesome guy. So I know you co found that I'd love to know bit about that journey. So, like. And for people that don't know, you know, we had him on and we spoke about juicer, but people that maybe are hearing this for the first time, quick intro to premise behind Juicer. What's the problem that juicer solves? And then I'd love to understand a bit about your experience and your role there.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:29:16]:

Yeah. It's particularly excited about what the team are doing there because it really is on the front end of innovation again, but it's on the front end of innovation for restaurants, but not necessarily from other industries, because it's around using data to make more informed pricing decisions. You could argue it's about advanced revenue management for restaurants in many ways. Right. And I've spoken through my time there to many restaurant CEO's and each one of them, not once, regardless of whether they ended up using juicer services or not, have said, you know what? We don't need you. We've got pricing down. Pricing is one of our core strengths. There isn't a restaurant CEO out there that thinks they've got pricing down.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:30:03]:

And especially in the last year or two, where we've obviously been in a very high inflationary environment, we've seen a situation where they've had to increase prices quite significantly across a number of things, not just because of food cost, but also because of labor. And that has resulted in a situation where now restaurant CEO's and their executive team members are going, they're closing their eyes and hoping that they haven't pushed it too far. And we've all heard the stories of folks where that has happened. The starting point here is, well, how can you use data to make better decisions around the price of a menu? Full stop. Right. It's not necessarily about the dynamism, necessarily, because dynamic pricing certainly puts people on one side of the fence or the other because of the connotations that they'll draw to other industries like airlines or hotels or as I call it, the Taylor Swift effect. When you have something popular, there is always an alternative option. There's always an alternative solution that, however, isn't necessarily taking into account the full scope of where we're at today.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:31:07]:

Because every single doordash Ubereats delivery is dynamically priced. Why? The bottom right corner will have a different price point depending on where the consumer actually is. So if you and I order exactly the same item and you're at home and I'm in the office, we're going to pay a different price. Right. And so I think that that's the mechanic where we've seen already today that consumers are embracing dynamic pricing of a sort. And a lot of juicer's focus on activity is very much around the off premise channel initially. And I think it will lead into even things around, well, how can we actually change the price at different times to drive volume? So in the quieter times, how can you reduce the price, perhaps to actually drive volume? Or maybe it's not even about the price. Maybe it's about incentivizing through loyalty points or certain promotional mechanic.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:31:58]:

Right. So price is one function, but there are many functions that I think using data like this to help explore ways to be able to drive better performance. Performance is going to help restaurants. And that's really what the team are doing over there.

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:11]:

It's super interesting because like you said, it's common now, obviously, in other industries like airlines and hotels and whatnot, but it's already around, right? Like you said, ubereats and Doordash and whatnot. But I almost feel. And then we can talk on this briefly. But, you know, the whole thing that happened with Wendy's and the press this week, and, you know, Ashwin did a really good job of explaining, like, you know, the media kind of spun it a bit. And it wasn't about surge pricing. They never mentioned the word surge. It was about dynamic pricing. But I'd love your thoughts on that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:45]:

Like, what do you think happened with Wendy's and why did it spiral out of control and. Yeah, what are your thoughts on, like, announcing it versus not? Because I see this theme of, like, if people don't know, it's almost better. Like, if I'm just ordering on Uber and I don't know, there's pro, there's probably like less pushback you know, like, if I go to a restaurant and it's cheaper. Awesome. And then one day it's more expensive, it's almost like the not knowing is fine. Yeah. Similar to when you book a flight, like you book, some days it's more expensive, it's cheaper, but you're not thinking like, oh, I'm getting screwed, it's just the norm. But, like, they don't announce this, you.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:33:16]:

Know, flashback uses the language to say, how many times have you sat next to a person on the plane? So how much did you pay?

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:21]:

Right, right, exactly.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:33:23]:

Probably one of my most viral LinkedIn posts in the last month or so has been my reaction to the Wendy situation recently. And a lot of people were commenting and providing their views and perspectives. The thing we've got to remember, first of all, is this wasn't about dynamic pricing. This was actually about a CEO being misinterpreted on what he was talking about in relation to a digital kiosk rollout, which gave them the opportunity to try things like dynamic pricing and flexible promotions. And I don't think it was necessarily received in the right way. And I think the New York Post used the term surge pricing because that's a term that's more understood, I think it's fair to say, by the consumer, than dynamic pricing. And of course, that creates a negative connotation as a result. So that's really what the wendy's thing is all about, actually.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:34:18]:

Do you really need to talk about it in a way that is not necessarily as well thought through? And ultimately, how much of this is something that consumers do need to be made aware of? Now, there's two schools of thoughts on that, right? One is, if you're going to be dynamically pricing things, you should tell your customers. Now, that happens with happy hours, right? Oh, come on. Welcome in. You got an hour left of happy hour. I'll come around and tell you when it's last orders. Right, right. That is a very much proactive way of being able to tell the consumer that there is some promotion happening right now. Correct.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:34:51]:

There's no reason why, in an on premise environment, why that couldn't happen as well for customers in a non happy hour type context. The other side of it is, well, how many times do restaurants announce to their customers when the menu prices have gone up? Do they always have a market price on every single item? No, they do not. And so a lot of this is not necessarily about huge swings. We're talking at times, at least from a juicer perspective, in nickels and dimes. We're not talking about a $5 swing up here or there. That is an important differentiator. And the last thing I'll mention, which I'll put my old operator hat on here again, is there's a huge problem I mentioned earlier about delivery in particular, has not had a particularly good run in terms of delivery satisfaction from customers. Accuracy, quality, and time are down.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:35:48]:

Well, guess what? Those numbers are at their worst when a restaurant is at its busiest. Makes sense, right?

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:54]:

Yeah.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:35:55]:

I'm going to get more order accuracy issues. I've got a busy kitchen or I've got my dashes that are particularly busy. So therefore, I can't deliver in 20 minutes. I can deliver in 40 minutes. The customer experience has actually been almost worse at the times when customers are most interested in your service. If I could pay $0.50, say more for an item and get it hotter, the actual item I ordered, and in a faster time period, then, yeah, I'll do that. And again, that is why today people are paying the likes of Uber and Doordash a three dollar fee to have it rushed as a delivery item. So I think this is ultimately going to be able to empower the customer with more choice to be able to say, if you want to have the cheapest possible, then sign up to our direct channel.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:36:48]:

Maybe everyone that goes through the direct channel always is promised the best price. Or if you want to be able to get the cheapest item, it's always ordered at 05:00, right? Or 530 relative to or after 09:00 or something. Right. May work for some types of food, may not. Similarly, though, for those people that want a consistent good experience every time, maybe paying that extra $0.50 during the peak periods will work. And again, using data science where you can understand that there are certain items that are more elastic than others, that's going to help inform which items to do on, because it's not right for every item. You know, what was the Costco? The $2.99 hot dog and Pepsi, right?

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:28]:

Yeah.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:37:28]:

Costco would never change that $2.99 price point. It's so elastic in people's minds that if you were to change that price, you would see a very dramatic impact on the volume.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:38]:

Yeah, but I don't know.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:37:39]:

I don't know whether you're a Costco member yourself, but yeah, no, I think it's.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:42]:

Isn't it? Isn't it? 199.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:37:44]:

What's the price of the ice cream sundae? Right. People won't necessarily think about that price as much as they will. The hot dog and Pepsi.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:49]:

Right, right. No, I was just thinking because I think that I'm trying to remember, I thought the price was 199. Now you got me thinking about Costco hot dogs.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:37:58]:

California for you. That's probably me.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:00]:

Oh, wow. Okay. That's why also another form of dynamic pricing, right?

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Carl Orsbourn [00:38:04]:

Yeah. Locations have different prices.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:06]:

That's funny. That's well said. Well said. But it's. Yeah, I think you explain it beautifully to breaking down the two schools and how you think about it and. Or how people think about it, it makes a ton of sense. I mean, on my end, obviously, WISK is COGS solutions that we help with, you know, inventory ordering, recipe costing, whatever. And all that to say is, you know, when I chatted with Ashwin, you know, my brain goes towards like, oh, how do you use dynamic pricing for things that are perishable? So if you know something's going to go bad, like something's still good, but it will be bad, whether it's produce or protein, like maybe there's an incentive to, you know, using machine learning and whatnot to understand.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:46]:

Okay, I'll take $0.10 less on this item or whatever it may be, because in 72 hours is going to go in the garbage. So that I see like an evolution happening for sure. Where to your point, it starts off like this and with the digital menus, it makes it even easier. Or the kiosks, let's say, and then that evolving in further where it's like, why not? I'd rather get something on a deal if it's going to go bad again, not that it is bad, but that there's more pressure to get rid of it.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:39:16]:

I'm really glad you brought up the supply chain piece. It's something we talked about very early on in the process of setting up the company in the sense of seeing that evolution heading towards the supply chain side. In fact, if you're a us foods, for example, you imagine you're dealing with all the fluctuation of food cost pricing all the time. And you know, restaurants at Max are probably going to change their menu prices once or twice a year, right? So you as the supplier are having to absorb that cash flow volatility. So if you've got an ability to be able to take the cost of something and channel it all the way through a system that can actually make sure the price is absolutely right within the constraints that the retailer restaurant wants to work within, right. That could actually be a great outcome for a lot of parties.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:59]:

Yeah, I agree.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:40:00]:

I agree.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:01]:

That's super interesting. And so let me ask you this. So obviously I love your story and the amount of knowledge you have in the industry and nuggets you were able to share from the book and the story behind juicer. So what are you up to these days? So I know you're still advising a juicer ton of experience. You got your book going on, you got your podcast. What are you up to these days? I'd love to understand a bit about that. Are you speaking, are you going to gigs? What's keeping you busy in 2024?

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Carl Orsbourn [00:40:32]:

Yeah, well, I mentioned that portfolio career piece earlier. While I've left Jusa to allow those guys to be able to really focus on growing the company to a point where they can get to cash flow positivity later this year, I'm now in a place of looking for my next gig. Much like many of the folks in the restaurant technology environment trying to get involved in. The word I'm working towards is scale, in the sense that that might be back in multi unit like my history in the past, and helping an organization grow from a smaller base to a much larger base using my kind of systematic way of thinking, but also with a view to how they must digitize in the direction that I've been talking to these last few years. Well, it might be back in a technology company, right, that has already gone past its mvp, that has got some enterprise customers in place, and is now looking to scale to the next level again. So that's really what I'm speaking to. But you're right, I'm keeping myself incredibly busy. The second book obviously came out last year, the path to digital maturity.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:41:31]:

So I often am speaking at events. I'm speaking at the National Restaurant show later this year, for example, about the themes from that book, which is more the how to the first books, why I go and support a lot of the advisory companies that I'm supporting, whether that be on virtual or in person events. And I'm very much enjoying the people, the people aspect of getting out there and understanding where others are on their journey, because it's not easy. You know, we're in a place right now where digital maturity for restaurants has slowed down, and that's a good thing. But that means a lot of restaurant technology companies are having to either consolidate their focus and be better at what they do with a wider array of features or build towards something that has yet really established itself. And in our second book, the past the Digital Maturity, we talk about this term holistic technology in the sense of what does that really mean. And the challenge, I think, today for restaurants is that they have somewhere between 15 and 20 different technology providers. And that's a lot of relationships to manage.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:42:38]:

There's a lot of things to go wrong. And where Meredith and I see the future heading is towards more of a vertically integrated setup whereby you do have one system, an operating system, for all intents and purposes, keeping everything tied together, where you have an interdependent set of functions that really enable the restaurant to function more effectively. The example in the path to digital maturity that I use is, well, imagine you have a situation where a couple of line cooks call out tonight. Well, in today's world, that will feed through to maybe your HR system, maybe your scheduling system, but in a holistic, interdependent system, that might feed through to the amount of tables that you're offering tonight on opentable, it might feed through to a juicer with regards to the prices that you're putting on off premise. Something where all of these different pieces of data can interconnect with each other and make more informed decisions. That's the technology future that we're heading towards. And that's going to need to need. It's going to need technology companies to be able to build towards thinking like that, which is beyond standard APIs, you know, what, a binary connection between one entity and another toward more of this web type of mindset.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:43:46]:

So I suspect whatever I do next, I'll continue the thought leadership, I'll continue the talk. And the podcast is now in the top 100 of business management podcasts in the UK.

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Angelo Esposito [00:43:56]:

Amazing. Congrats.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:43:57]:

And I think that's because they know Meredith and I have got our main passion through that, which is helping the industry and helping restaurant serves figure this stuff out, because it's not easy. And I don't think any of us all have it clear, which is why podcasts like the one that you're doing and the ones that others are putting out there are so important. And it's more about trying to help restaurant owners get access to 100%.

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Angelo Esposito [00:44:19]:

And for people who want to catch your podcast, first of all, congrats on making the top 100 awesome to both you and Meredith. It's really cool for people who want to find you, find the podcast, find the book. I'd love at the end to just plug. I mean, realistically, when we post it, we put all the links too. But for people who are maybe listening to this in the car on the go, where can they find you? Where can they find the podcast? This is your chance to just kind of plug away.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:44:44]:

Sure. Thank you. Well, of course you can connect to me on LinkedIn. Don't forget that rather weird spelling of my surname, Orsbourn, O R S B. But find out more about the books, the podcast at our website, which is www. Dot. You'll be able to get both copies of the books there. Obviously, it's available on Amazon as well.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:45:03]:

If you prefer to have me read it to you via audible, you can get a copy there. But yeah, we'd love any of your listeners who are interested in a bit more of the type of content that you're covering, which is usually a slightly different format to the way you do it. We have five headlines every couple of weeks that we talk about and give our opinion. Very quick type of format. But yeah, we'd love to share your audience as well. So thank you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:45:24]:

That's awesome. So much good information today. So I really appreciate you, Carl, for taking the time and sharing that. And once again, for everyone listening, you can find Carl on LinkedIn, on his website, on the podcast with Meredith. A lot of cool stuff. So I really appreciate you being here and sharing some of this wisdom today. So thank you for being on the WISKing it all podcast, Carl. I appreciate that.

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Carl Orsbourn [00:45:44]:

Thank you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:45:45]:

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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