DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:00:00]:

On an island in the Philippines called El Nido. Beautiful island, you know, not very developed. And they had one McDonald's on the island, which to me was even surprising that there was one McDonald's there. It was absolutely packed at all times. Like, probably the most crowded McDonald's I've ever been in. And there was a time my girlfriend and I were going to eat there after a day at the beach, and it was lying out the door, absolute mayhem. We were, like, in a mosh pit trying to get to the front of the register, and I noticed that they had a conveyor system on the roof bringing all the food out to drivers or folks that were ordering off premise. And that was pretty cool to see because, like, you're on this undeveloped island in the middle of the Philippines, and you're seeing this high tech solution, you know, helping.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:00:46]:

Helping solve. Solve some of their pain points.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:51]:

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 WISKing It All. We're here today with David Goldstein, both the managing partner at Food Tech Connect and recently the vice president, or as the most recent, I should say, the vice president of growth at Franklin Junction. David, thanks for joining us.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:01:27]:

Thanks for having me, Angelo. Excited for the conversation?

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:30]:

Of course, yeah, I'm super excited to chat to learn more about your background and your experience in the hospitality scene. So maybe a good place to start is just the obvious, which is you have a passion for food and technology. So I always like to understand maybe how that happened. How did those two worlds kind of intersect?

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:01:48]:

Yeah, definitely good place to get started. So I think separately, food and technology have always been passions of mine. I think when I was in school, I never expected food would be part of my full time job. I always kind of was drawn to technology and startups and venture capital, and that was kind of my thinking coming out of school. And actually what I focused on in school was entrepreneurship. So I was always coming out of school applying, very underqualified to most of the major tech companies, thinking that was going to be my jumping off. I think I was pretty fortunate that I managed to get an interview that turned into a job with the new division at Uber at the time, which was Uber Eats. And that was really kind of my introduction to food technology.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:02:40]:

When I started at Uber Eats, there was no Uber Eats. It was Uber testing at the time, what was called Uber instant in the Rider app, which was a really, really fun part of the job and kind of a good way to get my feet wet. It was we would meet up with Uber drivers in parking garages in Washington, DC at the time with about 200 sandwiches from a local restaurant. And put it. Put them in the back of their trunk, and you would open up the Ryder app between, like, eleven to 01:00 p.m. you get a push notification, say, hey, I want to get lunch within ten minutes from x restaurant. And you open up the Ryder app, and you'd see, you know, order one, two, or three sandwiches, three different options from one local restaurant. And that was Uber's kind of first attempt at food delivery and how I really got my feet wet.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:03:30]:

Not scalable, but really fun, especially for, you know, a new guy out of school trying to get their feet wet. So, yeah, that was the introduction. And I fell in love with working with restaurant owners, working on technology, kind of working at that intersection. So I've been really happy since.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:48]:

That's awesome. That's so cool. I'm just trying to imagine that, like, that's a, you know, in the tech world, we always speak about MVP's minimal, viable products, but it's like to hear, you know, Uber so big, sometimes you forget where they started. You don't even know, like, I didn't know that story, but it's pretty neat to just imagine that. And just out of curiosity, you know, not to go too much into Uber, but I'm curious, like, what happened, like, after that? Like, what'd you do after, you know, you're shipping these 200, 300 sandwiches every day, doing a bit of testing, seeing if there's a need. What was, like, the next evolution of that? I'm curious to know, like, version 1.1.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:04:20]:

Yeah, yeah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:20]:

What that looked like.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:04:22]:

I was brought on at the tail end of that. I guess you can call it experiment. And the next. The next phase of that was the Uber Eats marketplace. I think the learning.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:31]:

Oh, full on.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:04:32]:

Yeah. The learning during that experiment was a, you know, food delivery is a great way to leverage the excess capacity we have from our drivers on the road, but at the same time, people want more selection. The one restaurant at lunchtime is in demand, but people want more selection. So I think about a month or two after me joining the team, they launched the formal marketplace, and then it was just a full on sprint to get as many restaurants on board as you can. And it's interesting because at the time, Uber Eats the business direction was to only offer, I guess. Guess you could call them high end meals or meals from top rated restaurants. There was no. There was no focus.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:05:14]:

In fact, I got my hand slapped a few times for trying to start conversations with some of the local chains and fast food restaurants. And we had a very narrow profile of what we thought we wanted restaurants to be on the Uber Eats app or what we thought consumers wanted. And I think that was version one. It was almost similar to like, the postmates model, if you will.

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:36]:

That's super. It's super interesting how sometimes for our listeners, I'm sure this will be one little nuggets take away. But as much as you might build your mvp, you test, you iterate, and then you go with your hypothesis. But sometimes your hypothesis is completely wrong. In that case, thinking high end restaurants will be great, and then kind of the opposite happened and people wanted quick service or fast casual. It's funny how sometimes what you think is right just proves not to be so. Being open minded, I think, is super key when, you know, building a business, you know, and speaking of businesses, I'd love to hear a bit about your business. So I'd love to understand a bit, you know, and you can tell our audience, you have a lot of restaurant listeners, people in the food space.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:13]:

So, you know, what is food Connect? Tell our audience a bit about it.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:06:17]:

Yeah, definitely. I launched Food tech Connect in 2019, ended 2019, early 2020, after my time at Uber. I was at Uber for about four years, and the thinking then was, how can I leverage a lot of the experience that I had at Uber, but not only the experience, the network I built on the enterprise side with SMB restaurants and a lot of the strategy around go to market and whatnot. And so at the time coming, leaving Uber in 2019, I had a few restaurant tech companies that I was talking to that were interested in expansion and leveraging some of that experience. So at the time I was thinking I was just going to work with early stage startups on go to market strategy, enterprise strategy, really helping them expand in the US. And then when Covid hit a few, a few months later, it was a catalyst of a few things. I think, most importantly, a lot of restaurant brands started reaching out to me saying, hey, you sold us on this food delivery thing. Now 90% of our business is going off premise.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:07:18]:

What should we think about? What should we optimize? How should we strategize going into the next couple of years? That was an interesting point because then I was working with early stage startups on how to work with operators, but also working with operators and brands on how to think about technology, implementing technology, what kind of trends they should be looking for in the space. So more or less that's what we've been doing since 2019 is really bridging the gap. Yeah, it's been exciting and fun ride.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:46]:

That's super cool. And out of curiosity for do you have a typical type of client that you guys work with? Is it QSRs, FSRs, or is it anyone? Anybody that needs help, period. Curious to know, what does that look like? Yeah.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:08:01]:

Well, I think given my experience, both on the startup side and on the operator side, generally are pretty delivery focused. So it could be a brand that, you know, has a big delivery business or is looking to grow their delivery business, or it could be a startup that is adjacent or some way touching food delivery.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:22]:

That makes sense. That makes sense. And I guess with your experience being. Being involved in, you know, restaurant consulting and operations, what's some, or at least one maybe of the unexpected lessons that you've learned from the industry?

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:08:37]:

Yeah, that's a good question. Personally, I truly think that restaurants are the backbone of society globally.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:45]:

Really? Really.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:08:46]:

Anywhere you go, I think for a variety of reasons, people need to eat. The social aspects of going to restaurants, the learning aspects at a young age of being employed at a restaurant, which is often folks first job, I think from my experience in the industry, one of the things that. That I've learned is resilience. I think resilience from an operator standpoint, I think it's always been tough to own a restaurant. It's never been tougher than right now to own and operate a restaurant. And, you know, why folks are doing this is not because they want to make a ton of money, it's because it's the passion of theirs. Right. They love hospitality, and that's why they're doing it.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:09:25]:

So I think resilience from that standpoint, but then being on the tech side of things at Uber Eats and beyond, I think resilience from selling into and working with restaurants. Right, like selling into restaurants is a whole different beast, you know, than any other type of sale for a variety of reasons. And, you know, I think you need to have resilience to be successful in that space, too. Not just with sales, with restaurant tech, but I think in all aspects. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:52]:

Yeah, it's funny because, yeah, our whisk, I mean, again, not to make this, but WISK.ai, but a quick anecdote. Obviously, we sell into restaurants and. And when we first started, it was one of the challenges is like, you know, to your point, sales is hard, but selling to restaurant, there's a lot of gatekeepers, and in fairness, they get bombarded by a lot of apps, so I don't blame them. But trying to get the decision maker or trying to get the right person, or, you know, just them having the time, sometimes you schedule a meeting and things come up again, totally understandable. Things come up. The chef didn't show up, whatever. But, like, it's tougher than on the support side, right. Typically later hours, different hours, like, you know, so it's interesting, but it does present a totally separate set of challenges than a typical maybe tech company.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:29]:

And the other thing you said that I also just want to emphasize, because I totally agree, is that I think restaurants, I think about traveling. I'm curious to get your take here. But, like, when I think about traveling, what makes a city cool? There's many factors, but one of the first things is the restaurants, right? Like, and so sometimes you take it for granted, but it's like, oh, I want to go to Montreal. Why? I heard it's cool. Restaurant scene. Or I want to go to x's place in Spain or Italy or port, or I want to go to Lisbon. Like, one of the first things that makes that city cool is not the list of chains it has. It's those cool restaurants, bars, whatever it may be, you know, local shop, sandwiches, whatever.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:05]:

You get the idea. But the point is, like, it's funny, sometimes we take it for granted, but it's like, it's what makes a city cool. And it's usually the difference between living in, you know, a rural or an urban area is a lot of the times is like, the. The selection of restaurants, to a certain extent, I'd love to note. Yeah.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:11:22]:

Couldn't agree more. No, I couldn't agree more. I'm an avid traveler, and the biggest motivation behind that is to eat, experience different cultures through that lens. Right. I was just in Asia for six months, eating my way through different countries for the latter, the back half of 2023, and my family met me out there at the end. And, you know, the trip with my family was very different than the trip I had previously. And they were asking, oh, what did you do in this country? In that country, we did a lot of cool things, but everything that just came to mind was all the cool restaurants that we ate out. I wanted to tell them, like, oh, we had this restaurant in Japan, and this restaurant is just, they don't know what any of that is or any of that means.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:12:00]:

It's very different. But, yeah, yeah, that resonates for sure.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:04]:

That's awesome. And then I'm curious to know, on the tech side of things, right, because you kind of have that intersection of both sides, which is obviously really relevant for what you do. How do you see technology maybe changing the way we dine and experience food in the near future?

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:12:21]:

Specific markets, specific countries in Asia are very far advanced when you think about food technology. And that was part of my motivation for going out there, and it kind of felt like I was getting a look into the future, maybe 1015 years ahead from where the US is in some aspects, and especially when it comes to technology and automation, I think things that I'm pretty bullish on, and not just buzzwords, but I think truly relevant, are automation via robotics and AI. That's starting to hit restaurants, I think, still in its infancy, but you're starting to see adoption, I think, from a front of house standpoint, and I saw this firsthand, and markets like China, Korea, Japan, you're going to see, you know, robotics taking a lot of the lift off of front of house staff, like waiters and busers, which is going to allow them to provide better hospitality. Right. As opposed to just order taking running trays back to the kitchen. They can really focus on telling you about the restaurant, why they're different about the cool things on the menu, really getting to know you, and providing what I consider true hospitality. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:34]:

Yeah.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:13:35]:

I also think, you know, AI, artificial intelligence in the front of house is going to help customize and tailor and personalize the experience for, you know, for every consumer. Back of house, I think similarly, you know, robotics is going to take some of the mundane tasks off of kitchen staff, which is going to help with things like turnover. Right. And just provide a better work environment. And labor has never been tougher than right now, you know, and AI in back of house is going to help with back office tasks, reporting, inventory management, things like that, which I know, you know, you guys at WISK.ai are working on. So, yeah, I think robotics and AI, I think we're in the infancy, but I think there's going to be some really cool examples moving forward on how it's helping these operators day to day.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:24]:

Yeah, no, I can agree more. And out of curiosity, like, any. Any anecdotes you can share from your trip, like, of just things you saw, whether it's robotics related or not, but that made you feel like, oh, man, this is ten years in the future.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:14:37]:

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I don't even think it's. These examples are maybe super, super futuristic, but definitely examples that you don't see in the US. There's two examples that come to mind. One was on an island in the Philippines called El Nido, beautiful island, not very developed. And they had one McDonald's on the island, which to me was even surprising that there was one McDonald's there. It was absolutely packed at all times. Like, probably the most crowded McDonald's I've ever been in.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:15:07]:

And there was a time my girlfriend and I were going to eat there after a day at the beach, and it was lying out the door, absolute mayhem. We were, like, in a mosh pit trying to get to the front of the register, and I noticed that they had a conveyor system on the roof bringing all the food out to drivers or folks that were ordering off premise. And that was pretty cool to see because you're on this undeveloped island in the middle of the Philippines, and you're seeing this high tech solution helping solve. Solve some of their pain points. So that was cool. And then another example was in a hotel in China, and Xian in China. They had. There was many times I was going up and down the elevator with these robots, and I was like, this is pretty cool.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:15:52]:

But I didn't really, you know, understand what they were doing. And then we ordered food delivery one day, and I came down to get my food, and right as I was coming down to get my food, the delivery driver was loading the order into a robot. And that's when I was. That's when it clicked that what these robots are doing is they're acting as food runners, you know, bringing food up and down the elevators, whether it's for room service or for food delivery that folks are ordering at the restaurant. I was just thinking, in the US, there would be a massive line of drivers around the concierge trying to, you know, fight to get their order handed off, and the concierge ringing their, you know, ringing the recipient in their hotel room, trying to get them to come down. And this is just, you know, such a. Such an easy solution that was providing real value. Right? People get their food quick.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:16:37]:

The concierge doesn't have to, you know, run orders up and down. There's no waiting. So that was cool. And then I really appreciated my time in the elevators with the robots for the rest of our time in that hotel.

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Angelo Esposito [00:16:50]:

That's awesome. I think that's one of the coolest things about traveling, is the inspiration you get. You can just see so many things, whether it's just from a tech perspective, a design perspective, anything really, just a concept perspective. There's so many ideas you can get. And sometimes just stepping out of your bubble and traveling, I think is awesome. Speaking of, I know you're currently not based in the US. I know you're kind of hanging out, if I'm not mistaken, in Mexico. So I'd love to just quickly touch on that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:22]:

Like, what made you want to kind of live that remote life? I mean, sounds pretty awesome, but just curious to know, like, what made you want to do that? And how's that going?

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:17:29]:

Yeah. Yeah, well, it's going great. I've been based in Latin America mostly since 2019, when I left Uber, and Uber was actually what brought me down here originally. Uber Eats, after the rapid expansion in the US, had expanded to Latin America. And I remember, I think it was Mexico City that they. It was the first city that they launched here, and overnight it became, like, one of the biggest cities for Uber each to manage. And it was a bit unexpected. So they were just shipping people from the US and Europe down in Mexico to help with operations and on the ground.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:18:05]:

And I wasn't part of that first wave, but I think it was part of the second wave, which is when they were expanding outside of Mexico and trying to blitz to some other markets down in Central and South America. So that's when I got my feet in Latin America. I was a launcher for a few markets down here. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life, I must say. It was a little under a year that I was down here. And then my next assignment with Uber was in Chicago, working on Ubers. Working in Ubers of internal incubator. I'm from Florida originally, so after one Chicago winter, my skin was too thin and I was dying to get back to LAtam.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:18:42]:

So I left Uber and moved to Columbia, actually.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:46]:

That's awesome. I love Columbia. It's. It's one of my favorite places to visit. That's so cool. And so, and so, like, out of curiosity, what are some differences you see, like, in terms of, like, just the. The. Like, from your perspective working there? Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:03]:

So, like, obviously there's a ton of cultural differences, but, like, culture WISK.ai, from, like, you know, you working, let's say, in the US and are you working there? Have you noticed any. Any. Anything that stands out?

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:19:14]:

There's definitely a lot that stands out. I think, like you mentioned, it's culturally very different, and it's also Latin America is massive. Right? And when you go from country to country, there's a lot of cultural nuances between countries. I think as a result of that, a lot of my work experience down here hasn't been on the front lines as much as it is in the US because of those cultural nuances. The work I've done down back here is mostly kind of insulated a bit, mostly on the strategy side and operations. But I think the biggest takeaways, especially during my time down here with Uber, was Latinos. Latinas are incredibly motivated, hardworking people. I think they sometimes don't get all the credit that they deserve, and that's a lot of the reason that I'm incredibly bullish on the region.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:20:06]:

From an economic and startup perspective, I really think there's a lot of cool things going on down here with a lot of really bright people.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:15]:

It's interesting, you say, because my next question to you that I wanted to ask was that I read that you were an aspiring venture capitalist to a certain extent. And so I'd love to know, like, you're talking about your belief in Latin America. So what kind of startups, I guess, or projects get you excited, whether it's food and hospitality sector or not? I'm curious to know, like, what gets you excited? What are you looking for as a, you know, VC?

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:20:40]:

Yeah, I think a lot of now what gets me excited, given my experience in food tech, is food tech related. I think the same way I look for clients to work with employers or companies that are cool, I think is the same way I would look at venture capital down here, which is what are companies or trends in the space that are providing real value to operators. And I don't want to be too repetitive, but, you know, going back to some of the automation that I think is, is ripe to take foot in food service, there's a lot of cool companies doing cool things around AI, automation, robotics down here and abroad, some of which I've worked with, some of which, you know, I've only been watching from afar, but, you know, those are all very relevant.

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Angelo Esposito [00:21:25]:

That's cool. And like, you know, working with, I guess, early stage startups, do you have any, and unless it's like private, but do you have any maybe projects that you can consult it on or worked on that you could, you know, stood out to you, that you'd like to share if you can? Maybe they're private and you can.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:21:41]:

So I think one that comes to mind, I've worked with a lot of really cool, really innovative companies. I think I've been fortunate in that. But when I think of, like, the most high tech solution, maybe futuristic. Is this company not based in Latin America, based out in the UK, in London, called Satis AI. And their solution? Oh, the founder, incredibly, incredibly bright guy. He came from healthcare tech and AI and healthcare. So a very different field and saw kind of some of the inefficiencies and how restaurants operate and wanted to provide some of his experience. And what he built of Satis AI is essentially computer vision AI camera that sits in the back of house in restaurants and can see the operation, see the food being assembled, see how, you know, the different workers are moving around in the back of the kitchen and provide real time insights to help the employees.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:22:38]:

So what this looks like is, you know, on their kds as they're assembling in a burger step by step. When they put the, when they put the burger on the bun, it'll check that off. When they put the lettuce on, it'll check that off. Oh, you forgot the tomatoes on that burger. As they close the bun and seal the bag. Ding, ding, ding. They letting you know, hey, you forgot the tomatoes on that burger. That person ordered a double patio and put a single on.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:23:01]:

You forgot the coke in that bag. So it's solving a lot of issues for consumers, but most importantly, helping employees. I mean, a lot of the strain on employees in the back of house is the cognitive load, right? Especially when things get fast, there's a bunch of things moving around. So taking that cognitive load off of employees, which is reducing stress, which is improving their lives, it's improving the lives of consumers. Cause they're getting the right food that they ordered. So, yeah, I mean, that's a project that I really love.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:34]:

And then just switching gears just to quickly touching on the vc side of things. I think people are always wondering or looking for maybe tips on how to successfully raise capital. So I know there's probably a million and one tips, but from your perspective being on the other side, any pieces of advice you want to share to people looking to raise capital in the startup space that are maybe the food tech space.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:23:57]:

Yeah, well, the fundrise. I don't know what's harder right now to be a startup raising capital or be a restaurant owner. The fundraising scene right now is done a 180 to what it was a few years ago. Right. Which is, it's interesting. Obviously what investors want to see now is not just fast growth, but profitability. So it's an interesting time to be a startup founder. I think today you have to have really sound business, and that's not just a, hey, we're gonna blitzcale and grow really fast.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:24:30]:

You have to go back to the fundamentals. What makes a strong business? How can we be profitable from day one? You know, how are we not burning cash? What are LTV, CAC? Things like that have to be tighter than ever. So I think it's the fundamentals. I think that's what the investors want to see more than like, a really cool idea, a really innovative idea. I think that's important, but I think that takes maybe a backseat, a secondary seat to what are your fundamentals? What are the business metrics? How healthy is the business today?

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:59]:

Makes sense. And with that said, I always like to give a chance to just kind of plug how people can find you. So, like, really, if you want to share websites, social media, whatever you want, it's your chance.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:25:13]:

Sure, I'm active on LinkedIn. David Goldstein. You can find me there. I'm leading growth for Franklin Junction. Www.franklinjunction.com. we are actively recruiting new host kitchen partners in the US and internationally. Definitely in touch.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:30]:

Love that. Well, you heard it here first, guys. We're here with David Goldstein. Thanks for joining us on the WISKing It All podcast.

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DAVID GOLDSTEIN  [00:25:37]:

Thank you, Angelo.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:38]:

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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