Podcast appearances and mentions of meredith sandland

Send us a textCarl welcomes guest host Cijoy Olickal, a restaurant tech expert, to break down key industry trends.

Meredith Sandland is the CEO of Empower Delivery and the co-author of 2 books, Delivering The Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap To The Future Of Food , and Delivering The Digital Restaurant: The Path to Digital Maturity, both co-authored with Carl Osbourne. Prior to co-authoring those books, Meredith spent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After Building 1,000+ restaurants the Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands' Taco Bell, Meredith observed that the on-demand economy was starting to affect restaurants. Meredith joined ghost kitchen start-up, Kitchen United as employee #4 to create their business model, raise initial capital, and serve as the public face of the Google Venture-backed disruptor. Meredith previously joined Restaurant Unstoppable for episode 842! Favorite success quote/mantra: "Be intentional." In this episode we will discuss:  Tech stack Delivery Ghost kitchens and virtual brands Dynamic pricing AND MORE! Today's sponsors: Restaurant Technologies the company that helps restaurants, “Control the kitchen chaos.” With RT's total oil management, you get: Dependable fresh bulk cooking oil delivery; Filtration + oil usage monitoring and reporting; Used cooking oil pick-up, and recycling; And say goodbye to messy, dangerous restaurant rendering tanks-yuck. RT's end-to-end cooking oils solution helps you manage your used cooking oil storage, collection, and recycling- conveniently, safely, and cleanly- with no upfront costs. Head to www.RTI-inc.com, and let them know the Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast sent you their way. MarginEdge: Boost your efficiency and profitability without adding labor costs. MarginEdge is a complete restaurant management software that allows you to seamlessly manage all aspects of your business from one central location. Track food costs in real time, make inventory faster and less tedious, easily cost out your recipes, and get a daily P&L so you always know where you stand. See how it works at marginedge.com/unstopabble. Meez: Are you a chef, owner, operator, or manage recipes in professional kitchens? meez is built just for you. Organize, share, prep, and scale recipes like never before. Plus, engineer your menu in real-time and get accurate food costs. Sign up for free today and get 2 FREE months of invoice processing as a listener of the Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast. Visit getmeez.com/unstoppable to learn more. Restaurant Systems Pro - Join the 60-day Restaurant Systems Pro FREE TRAINING. This is something that has never been done before. This 60-day event is at no cost to you, but it is not for everyone. Fred Langley, CEO of Restaurant Systems Pro, will lead a group of restaurateurs through the Restaurant Systems Pro software and set up the systems for your restaurant. During the 60 days, Fred will walk you through the Restaurant Systems Pro Process and help you crush the following goals: Recipe Costing Cards; Guidance in your books for accounting; Cash controls; Sales Forecasting(With Accuracy); Checklists; Budgeting for the entire year; Scheduling for profit; More butts in seats and more… Click Here to learn more. Contact the guest: On the web: https://www.empower.delivery LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-sandland/ Thanks for listening! Rate the podcast, subscribe, and share!  We are on Youtube: @RestaurantUnstoppable

Meredith Sandland, CEO of Empower Delivery. Meredith has truly mastered the trifecta: tech, logistics, and joy! She shares her unlikely journey to the restaurant industry, her passion for solving complex problems, her unique perspective towards technology and its role in the restaurant experience, and so much more. Restaurants have always been one of my favorite topics, and Meredith is of the top voices in the industry. Let's dig in.

Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech's most innovative B2B founders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Meredith Sandland, CEO of Empower Delivery, a restaurant tech company that has raised $6 Million in funding. Here are the most interesting points from our conversation: Unique Founding Story: Empower Delivery is a spin-out from Clustertruck, the largest and most profitable delivery kitchen in the US, providing an innovative restaurant order-to-fulfillment platform. Industry Insights: The restaurant industry is late to the digitization journey, unlike sectors like travel and retail. Empower Delivery offers a fully digital native experience from order to fulfillment. Target Market: Empower Delivery serves restaurants with significant delivery volumes, focusing on those doing hundreds of orders a day from a single location, rather than categorizing by SMB or enterprise. Thought Leadership: Meredith is a recognized industry thought leader, having written two books on restaurant delivery and hosting a popular podcast in the space. Competitive Landscape: Empower Delivery aims to transform delivery economics by eliminating third-party fees, making delivery more profitable for restaurants and affordable for consumers. Future Vision: Meredith envisions a future with increased delivery penetration, potentially transforming real estate and restaurant infrastructure in the US, similar to trends seen in other countries. //   Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io   The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co

In a recent captivating episode, industry visionaries Carl Orsbourn, Meredith Sandland, Dan Londono, and moderator Kristen Hawley dove deep into the transformative wave sweeping across the restaurant and hospitality sector. Amidst a backdrop of relentless change propelled by digital innovation, consumer preferences, and the global pandemic, the panel explored how the landscape of dining and food delivery is evolving.The episode, rich in insights, began with an emphasis on the pressing need for adaptation within the restaurant industry. Facing new cost pressures, shifting business models, and an ever-growing demand for technological integration, the discussion underscored the importance of resilience and creativity among restaurant operators. The panelists, representing a spectrum of expertise from startup ventures like Alfalfa to seasoned authors and analysts, shared their perspectives on navigating these changes.Central to the conversation was the concept of delivering the digital restaurant experience. Carl and Meredith, co-authors of "Delivering the Digital Restaurant," shared their journey into writing the book and the necessity for restaurant owners to seriously consider digital adoption. Dan Londono shared Alfalfa's story, illustrating how a tech-enabled approach from the ground up can redefine the fast-casual dining experience, focusing on a balance between healthy eating and indulgent treats like salads and donuts.A significant part of the discussion revolved around the challenges and opportunities presented by off-premise dining options such as delivery and takeout. With consumer behavior tilting increasingly towards convenience, the panelists delved into how restaurants could optimize their operations and customer experience through technology, without sacrificing the essence of hospitality that defines the industry.Dynamic pricing emerged as a pivotal theme, with Carl introducing the audience to the concept of using data-driven strategies to adjust pricing in real time, mirroring practices from the airline and hotel industries. This approach, he argued, could lead to more efficient pricing strategies that align more closely with customer demand and willingness to pay.The human element of the restaurant business, particularly labor issues and the changing workforce dynamics, was also addressed. The panelists shared innovative solutions to staffing challenges, including leveraging technology for training and operations, and fostering a culture that values and motivates employees.As the conversation unfolded, the future of restaurants was painted as one of immense potential, driven by personalization, efficiency, and sustainability. The panelists envisioned a world where technology not only streamlines operations but enhances the dining experience, making it more tailored and enjoyable for consumers.In conclusion, the podSupport the show

Joseph is the former host of Forktales and is currently working as the VP of Digital Experience for 3 Owl. He's also the author of “Stop Blasting My Mama” (a book about effective email marketing) and “The Bullhearted Brand: Building Bullish Restaurant Brands That Charge Ahead of the Herd.” Joseph's book, “Stop Blasting My Mama,” tackles the topic of email marketing and how modern marketing is overrun with overly aggressive terms – like blast and campaign – to describe what should be a friendly and civil interaction with consumers. Consumers today have more power today and can ignore brands – or cancel brands – whenever they want to. Technology is changing the restaurant industry and restaurants need to get onboard with that technological evolution or risk being left behind. QUOTES “One day we'll be able to do a podcast without mentioning the pandemic. Today is not that day.” (Joseph) “I always cringe when I hear the words ‘e-blast' or things like that because it's antithetical to behaviors of humans in general. Nobody is walking around saying ‘Gosh, I really hope I get blasted today.'” (Joseph) “I like to think of this world that we're in as one big party. If you walked into that party alone and you said at top of your lungs, ‘Hey everyone, I just want you to know that I'm really cool.” You're immediately not and you're going to have a hard time convincing everyone that you are.” (Joseph) “Restaurants are the backbone of every single economy – from micro local to federal. If you lose restaurants in the city center, you've lost the city center.” (Joseph) “The first victims of AI are the ones who phone it in. The mediocre hamburger won't be there anymore.” (Joseph) “Bro, we are not eating bugs. It's not happening. Unless there's some sort of nuclear holocaust, Americans are not eating bugs.” (Joseph) TRANSCRIPT 00:01.20 vigorbranding Well hey there um some of you watching this may be a little confused right now usually ah Joseph is on ah on the left side of your screen and for those that who are watching ah this podcast. The reason he's on the right side is because he's a guest a guest today. And I was honored to be 1 of Joseph's guests way back when um, the reason we've switched sides is Joseph has accepted another position. He's no longer with vigor or the provone marketing group but he's off into some wonderful new things that he's going to talk to us about and we're excited to to catch up with Joseph. Um. For those don't know my name is Michael Pavone I'm the Ceo of the provevone group and we have several different agencies in our holding company and we're excited to talk to Joseph. He's created 67 fantastic episodes and we're going to hit a little bit of your. History the the the good old days. Ask you some questions and just just find out what you're up to. 00:55.28 Joseph Szala Awesome. It's great to be here. 01:00.95 vigorbranding Ah, since you're in your house. It probably is always great to be there. But anyway, all right? So ah, let's see let's it's talk. Let's talk about a little bit. What have you been up to talk about your career which you're heading to now and what you're excited about as far as the restaurant industry and technology. 01:04.39 Joseph Szala That's right. 01:17.37 Joseph Szala Yeah, yeah, so um, as you said I forayed out of the advertising and marketing world into more tech forward focus and space I'm currently vice president of digital experience at a transformation company There's not much detail I can say but. We'll we'll say that we're building an experience management system for restaurant brands. Um, you know what? What really got me excited about the tech space is how much this industry is going through a breakneck speed digital transformation. Um. one day we'll be able to do a podcast where we don't mention the pandemic today's not that day. Um, the pandemic really spurred on any mules that were out there and now everyone is realizing that tech is not the way of the future. It's now and um, part of that is how how do we get people. Ah, through ordering faster quicker keep them happy. How do we pull some of that share of wallet away from third -party delivery and then more importantly, how do we make sure that brand teams have access to the tools so they can um pivot and make pivots in real-time all through a singular. Portal that brings together an average of 5 to 8 different systems. So very nerdy stuff but that's the stuff that I get excited about. 02:39.70 vigorbranding It sounds like you have the secret sauce. It's awesome I Mean you're right I mean obviously the whole world's Changed. You see these lines that drivethroughs the delivery services you see the the clients trying to get their share back because these delivery services have come out and taken you know their hands in their pocket and it's really been. Ah. Ah, it's It's amazing how that how fast that happened It's certainly the pandemic exacerbated it. So it's It's kind of ah, kind of interesting to watch and I'll be great to watch you and what you're doing as the time moves On. Um, Okay, so let's jump back a little bit. Ah you don't like blasting people with emails. Ah, you want to talk about that. 03:15.85 Joseph Szala I don't like blessing people in general I think it's a broader what which started as sort of um, a tongue and cheek thing or not a tonguein cheek thing but like 1 moment I always cringe when I hear the words eblast or anything like that because it's inethetical to. Behaviors of humans in general. Nobody's walking around saying gosh I really hope a brand would blast me today. Um, and it sort of harkens to like the old school mentality of advertising and marketing when I say old school I mean like way back in the day where we were just doing billboards and magazine ads where it was push push push push push. Well. The the people have the power they have the power of no no longer just turning the dial as we used to say in the in the tv days um or flipping the page they have the power to completely ignore a brand and shut them out and even more so they have the brand the power to cancel a brand if they get too aggressive and so. Blast then as I pondered it more became ah almost a um I want to say rallying cry but it's going to be more the same There's just a lot of violent terminology in our industry and it's kind of sad because we're not at war with people. Um, we're we're looking to befriend and hopefully get some people to fall in love with our our clients. Um no matter what side of the creative or um, consulting table. You're on the goal is to get them to love the brand and you're not going to do that. 04:47.20 Joseph Szala By blasting them or launching a campaign another war term. Um, it's it's more How do you become friends and and I like to think of this world that we're in as as 1 big party and if you walked into that party alone. And you just at the top of your lungs said hey everyone I just want you to know that I'm really cool. You're immediately not and you're going to have a really hard time convincing anyone that you are after that moment yet. That's how we approach things today we meaning the collective creative advertising industry. Um, and so that really has kind of settled into maybe more of a um personal purpose to 1 identify better terminology. Um, for all these various things. Um, that is a little more in line with what we're actually trying to do and and that's that's why I hate the word blast. 05:50.95 vigorbranding That's fantastic. Um, you also wrote a book. Do you want to talk a little bit about that. 05:53.98 Joseph Szala Yeah, 2 books. So the first book is stop blasting my mama which is essentially building off of that whole line of thinking. It's specifically about emails. But I think maybe one day in the near future. It might get expanded into general messaging marketing theory who knows. 05:57.80 vigorbranding Right. 06:13.56 Joseph Szala Um, but what I would call my greatest achievement in in the literary sense to date or not literary because it is nonfiction. But um, it's called the bullhearted brand which is evocative of more I would say a general thinking and approach to how brands are built. Ah, fostered grown encouraged all the words and then of course marketed and all that other stuff and so the idea is um, boiled down into a bunch of different I would say 10 different um anecdotes that then. Unfurl into Theory. Um I've read a lot I've done a lot and this just happens to be the culmination of all my knowledge at the time and it's something I'm pretty proud of. 07:02.60 vigorbranding Very cool and you should be now speaking of proud I know you did 67 episodes this is my first. What's your advice I mean yeah obviously I'm not as good looking as you so strike one now where do we go from here I mean like what do I do? How give me some advice on. 07:13.58 Joseph Szala Okay, yeah. 07:20.24 vigorbranding And how to be an engaging podcaster or. 07:22.15 Joseph Szala Yeah, So what's good is you have a fantastic history of being able to speak So You're a pretty good Order. So when I when I talk to like a novice or someone who's looking to start I would say the hardest thing that you're going to have to do is get rid of the ums and the Us and the other filler words. Um, you're pretty good at that and so that that doesn't need to be delved into further. Um I think it's yeah and I just said um, too. Yeah, so. 07:45.27 vigorbranding But now that you put that in my head. 07:53.97 Joseph Szala What? Ah, That's usually the toughest thing for people to do. It seems like we're very uncomfortable with silence and pauses. But you start to get really used to them and it becomes an empowering moment I think is when you just stop and let the silence be what it is um on the other hand. I Think one of the other good things is just letting the guest talk but that actually starts not with the host it starts with the production team and making sure that the kind of guests that are brought on have something valuable to say so when when a guest is rambling on I might be doing that Now. It's really easy to want to jump in. 08:23.10 vigorbranding Very cool. 08:30.93 Joseph Szala Um, but when a guest has something really powerful to say it's a lot easier to sit back and let them go. 08:33.75 vigorbranding Fantastic. So the thing second thing I learned is it's all the the production team's fault if it's not good. Perfect well done. That's great. That's that's that's take home value. That's take home value. Fantastic. So so I want to ask another question on your on on the the blog. 08:42.47 Joseph Szala Um, that's right, Yeah, you're the talent you you could just point the finger. That's okay. 08:53.43 vigorbranding Or the blog I'm sorry the the podcast 67 episodes which one was your favorite. 08:58.98 Joseph Szala Ah, man it's such like God is so hard to say it's It's like when you have friends or or kids or or in your dating life. It's like every one of them was different and every one of them was amazing and terrible at the same time. Ah. 09:12.22 Joseph Szala No I think there was generally some great insights coming from people I was really impressed with it's really hard to to keep them apart. Um Carl oresburn which I think his episode should launch soon and Meredith Sandlin um they're just so brilliant and they're at the absolute forefront a digital transformation from a hardware and software side. Um, you know early, you mentioned a lot of the transformation that's happened on the front end like my drivethroughs and my and my lines and everything it's easy for people to ah, not know. Unless they were in the industry and forget if they are no longer in the industry. There's an entire backoffice engine behind the scenes that have to make stuff work. So I mean they're in the nitty gritty especially Marilyn or Meredith. She's absolutely crushing it so much insight and it was. 09:48.13 vigorbranding Sure. 09:59.28 Joseph Szala Both of those episodes were episodes where I wish I could have had more of a Joe Rogan format where it would have been three or four hours long um surprising was ah chef Scott Conant one I was surprised that he agreed to come on so that was awesome. Um, for those that don't know he's on. Tv Networks he's very well-known. But what's so surprising is he his approach his demeanor his intelligence. Um, and just him it was just a really really good talk and one of my prouder moments as well. 10:32.96 vigorbranding Very cool I mean it's It's ah it's interesting to me as you know obviously I've seen podcasts and doing this now being on this side is really ah, really interesting because it is all about the the guest and it's what they have to bring and I sit back and I ask myself too like what do people want to hear. What are they going to want to see and I'm thinking about people that have just great stories entrepreneurs people that have built things from nothing people that have just really you know taken a category if you will and expanded on it that that kind of stuff that excites me I don't know if that's something that that everybody else would would would glom onto I mean I know the. Technology I mean obviously all about food and beverage and restaurants and all that but the technology is super important. It's changing a light speed. Did you you spent most of the time with the technology side of things in the restaurants or did you find that it just hearing people's personal stories about how they got involved is that do you think that's intriguing to guess. 11:22.94 Joseph Szala Yeah I think it is I mean the reason why I'm so passionate about restaurants is they are the backbone of every single economy from micro-local the wholeway to federal and I think people forget that and that includes franchise systems and franchisees. If you lose restaurants in a city center. You've lost the city center. Um, it happened I would say decades ago. Ah, for instance down the street from Harrisburg in York you know York was a ghost town. What brings people back food restaurants. Do. 11:54.67 vigorbranding Um, yeah, yeah. 11:57.28 Joseph Szala Good restaurants and then comes the retail and then comes the businesses because they want their people to be in a bustling location with lots to do and then comes the residences people want to live there but without the restaurants you get none of that. Um, and so that to me is such a powerful thing and. 12:09.30 vigorbranding Ah, right. 12:16.90 Joseph Szala I Think in that vein the stories of how people got into that powerful industry are always interesting I think founders. How did you found the concept and grow it is another one. Everyone wants the secret sauce yet? No one wants to realize that there is no secret sauce. 12:31.58 vigorbranding Right? yeah. 12:34.66 Joseph Szala That the secret sauce from 1980 s is not the secret sauce from today. Um, and that I think how you know how how things are evolving today and how do these leaders continue to grapple wrestle pin down and ultimately win in an ever-changing environment with all these. Shifts that seem to have accelerated so quickly after the the big p. 13:01.76 vigorbranding That's Good. So what? What do you? Think's next for restaurants I mean the technology you're working on obviously is exciting. Ah, we do marketing of restaurants I mean I'm sure we'll continue to work together in the future. What What do you see as ah. I Don't know what's next. What do? What do you think is going to be the the new thing or the thing that we have to really understand. 13:22.37 Joseph Szala Yeah I think some of it is aligned with every other industry mediocrity has no place any longer. There's no place for it Ai the first victims of Ai are going to be those that phone it in so your mediocre hamburger. It won't be there anymore or if it is it's going to be replaced by. Ah. 13:31.65 vigorbranding He. 13:39.59 Joseph Szala By robotics and ai in in general I know it's a really big 2 letters but um, at some point I think we'll also see a complete shift away from the mindless person punching keys on ah you know on a register. And instead becoming more of a helpful entity to help people actually order from kiosks you kind of see it happening in retail already. Especially if you've used the self-checkout at grocery stores or or um, you know like Target or something there are people there whose job is to just help. 14:09.66 vigorbranding M. 14:15.38 vigorbranding Yeah, yeah. 14:16.92 Joseph Szala Make sure you know what you're doing make sure you're able to get through I think we're there especially for qsr restaurants. Um, there are restaurants out there that don't even have those people they just have cubbies and there's a person that backed that makes the food puts them in the cubby just like the old automat. It's been rejuvenated and. 14:27.25 vigorbranding Oh. 14:36.31 Joseph Szala There is a time and place where and I think we're we're at both right now. Full service I think you're going to see a divide. You're going to see a bigger schism between casual dining and fine dining where fine dining gets even higher touch with people who actually not only know the wine menu. But actually know the nuances of the wine If. That's an option at this particular fake restaurant that are very deeply integrated and are very high touch and most of us have had that experience and when you go to that and then you go to like a sort of fine dining or just full service. Man. 15:04.63 vigorbranding Okay. 15:12.67 Joseph Szala That's just going to get so much bigger whereas casual dining I think will become more tech enabled to where you can be more self-service but still have that sitdown moment and then there's the great frontiers of Self-d delivery or self-driving vehicles and what that means for delivery. Um, can I sit in my. Vehicle of the future and order directly from my screen that's in the car without getting in an accident of course. Um and then what does virtual Worlds and the metaverse start to look like um in general and that's where I start to get really weird with you know, ah, 3 D printed food and things like that. But. 15:34.30 vigorbranding Oh. 15:48.74 vigorbranding You. 15:50.90 Joseph Szala Everything that sounds insane today next year probably won't be insane at all. 15:54.12 vigorbranding Yeah, very interesting How about like you you spent a lot of your time branding and helping create Concepts. What do you see? I mean there's There's so many out there. I Mean do we have too many.. What do? What do you think is going to happen where is there a genre that you think is going to be prevalent or or place that people are going to head to I mean I don't think we need another burger joint right? I mean there's just so many burger joints right? So What do you?? What do you think?? What do you think from branding standpoint what's going to be What's What's next. 16:17.27 Joseph Szala Um. 16:23.86 Joseph Szala Yeah I feel like if you ask any anyone of the pundits that talk about Trends and and what's coming they're they're always going to jump to bugs like I swear every year I see a food Trends report. Not um, not on the retail side but maybe on the retail side but when I'm looking at restaurant stuff. It's like and bugs. Bro We are not eating bugs. It's not happening unless there's like some sort of nuclear holocaust like we're just Americans specifically will not be eating Bugs. Um, but I think I think outside of that there are a number of paths that. 16:45.40 vigorbranding Yeah, yeah, yeah. 16:59.20 Joseph Szala That can happen for concepts I think exploring robotics exploring alternative for wall experiences like I know some folks who are embracing all outdoor where the food is cooked outdoors. Everything's outdoors. Um. Very gorilla very interesting to me I don't know if it would have a su but as far as trending we just I think finished up the chicken sandwich wars um I think taco wars are bubbling. Um you know and and we're seeing it Taco Johns for instance, just released their. Ah. 17:27.16 vigorbranding O. 17:35.27 Joseph Szala Trademark of Taco tuesday along with a call to action from Taco Bell to do something charitable when they use it and donate Taco Bell ignored it completely. But we'll see if they embrace it? Um, but the fast food tacos are something that I would definitely keep my eye on. And then I think we're still looking for what's that next american food staple. You know we have tacos pizza. We have hamburgers like you said what else you know what? what else are we going to embrace. 17:56.33 vigorbranding Who. 18:05.82 vigorbranding Yeah, yeah, you know it's funny I had this idea one of my dreams was ah I wanted to create my own restaurant franchise. So my idea which was a terrible one by the way is I wanted to buy a location near every like single a double a triple a ballpark right. And I wanted to call it baseball hot dogs and apple pie and I just wanted to sell hot dogs and have different hot dogs on the menu named after the players tied into the players and then different like Apple pies like that's it and a draft beer so you can have it outside the ballpark. It would be a sports bar and everything else I just thought it had enough of a niche and I always wanted to create that business I just thought it would be the most fun thing and anyway. 18:24.37 Joseph Szala Um. 18:30.40 Joseph Szala Yep. 18:43.29 Joseph Szala Yeah, it's probably why you still have money? yeah. 18:43.82 vigorbranding I never did it but maybe one day and it probably fail. Yeah, exactly exactly it'd probably fail. So yeah I know I know how to stay in my lane. Ah all right? So so great I mean this has been fantastic now we going to go down through memory lane a little bit here. Ah. 18:50.96 Joseph Szala Right. 18:59.68 Joseph Szala Ah. 18:59.87 vigorbranding And ask you some questions we're going to test you on your knowledge of your guests and ah boy I hope no one ever does this to me. Ah, and we're and and I'll remember my first guess I'm good I got that one down so that's 3 things I got nailed down from this this interview. Um, who was your first. Forktails guest. 19:19.50 Joseph Szala Oh yeah, so it's funny. Ah, the first forktales guest was my friend sam slaughter he was also a copywriter at vigor at the time to known for bathing with a bunch of cheese balls. 19:25.71 vigorbranding It's correct. Oh. We We won't dig into that any deeper. But anyway, ah, ah, all right? So which guests did you have on the show more than once. Yes, very good, Very good. 19:34.86 Joseph Szala Um, listen to the episode. 19:44.15 Joseph Szala Justin Bartek yeah 19:49.15 vigorbranding All right? Let's see here which guest is described in his episode as let's see here lover of seafood and honesty. 20:00.10 Joseph Szala That is chef Andrew gruel. 20:06.80 vigorbranding And you're nailing them here. You might might have someone give you the answers ah finish this quote from your interview with Meredith Sandland if someone comes here and tries to take my blank. It's going to get really ugly very good. 20:19.42 Joseph Szala My gas stove I stand by that. 20:23.50 vigorbranding Ah, good. Ah all right? which guest beat Bobby Flay 20:32.66 Joseph Szala Ah, Kenny Gilbert right yeah oh man, best chicken sandwiches man if you're ever in Jacksonville chicken sandwiches and champagne. That's all you need to know. 20:35.12 vigorbranding That's correct. Yes, it is very good. Yeah, nice, nice sounds like a perfect combo all right, which guest was born and raised in Hawaii and is now a chef in Denver very good, very good. 20:51.55 Joseph Szala Ah, Chef Choy Guard Yeah, all about that Aloha ohanna. 20:59.80 vigorbranding And which guest said this is said my job as ah as lead creative is to give everyone creative whiplash. You never know where we're going to do next. 21:07.76 Joseph Szala That is the guy from liquid death whose name I'm blanking on Andrew Pearson there it is yep. 21:14.55 vigorbranding Andrew Pearson yep very good and the the folks of liquid death are killing it no pun intended. So right finish this quote from you in your interview with Lauren Fernandez 21:22.62 Joseph Szala Um, yeah. 21:29.75 vigorbranding You can tell how well a restaurant is managed if you just look at the. 21:35.38 Joseph Szala God landscaping now. 21:40.14 vigorbranding You know what? The only thing they wrote down was blank. So I can't answer it. The only one I don't have an answer on you don't have an answer on how about the bathrooms I would say the bathrooms. 21:48.40 Joseph Szala Yeah, it could be bathrooms for sure landscaping. Oddly enough is one and then I would say the happiness of the employees but they may all be wrong. 22:00.36 vigorbranding Um, we'll put all 3 down all right? Oh no, it's here the vents. 22:05.92 Joseph Szala Oh God The vents. Yes, oh next time you're at a restaurant either do or don't just look up at the air events man. Oh how can I forget that. 22:13.16 vigorbranding Yeah, we're all looking we're we're all looking around my office now at the air events but a bit aren they're okay, no, no yeah. 22:20.26 Joseph Szala Well, the good news is you're not making food but there's something pretty disgusting if you're making food and those air vens are just just C clopped full of old grease and the. 22:26.65 vigorbranding Ah, yeah, that's funny which which guest was described in her episode title as 1 woman economic engine. 22:36.81 Joseph Szala Oh that is Adena Ana Bio she's absolutely wonderful. 22:43.10 vigorbranding Yep, very cool finish this quote from you in your interview with Zach Anderson whenever I have a bad day I think to myself at least I'm not. 22:57.46 Joseph Szala Oh god yeah least I'm not working on 1 again. Um, at least I'm not mopping the floor is that what that isn't it. Oh I'm blanking on that one. 22:59.72 vigorbranding Ties into restaurants. 23:10.51 vigorbranding Know it's It's ah it's honestly it's how I started my career. It's busing tables. 23:17.30 Joseph Szala Busing tables. Yeah dude Oh God Although if we ever wanted to know the key to stopping time. That's it You can literally stop time by either planks doing planks or busing tables. 23:27.49 vigorbranding Yeah, yeah, you know I will say though in in all joking side I got one heck of an education from busing tables I worked in a restaurant called hobarts with a gentleman by the name of Hobart Umberger Hobart was this chef. He had a restaurant that sold a lot of quantity food was called ah it was called ummmies in Hershey and he wanted to do. He's got older. He just wanted to do whatever he wanted to do he wanted to do his thing so as the chef he opened up hobarts named after him white tablec cloth. He made maybe five things a night didn't care if you liked it or not and that's what he made. And was as simple as that but he taught me everything I won't get into what he called me as a nickname I think he actually liked me but I can't say to anybody what he called me. But anyway I digress he taught me how to pour ah mixed drinks because I'd have to make him mixed drinks at the end of his night. 24:04.58 Joseph Szala Yeah. 24:19.30 vigorbranding He basically taught me everything I knew about food and wine I got an incredible education at age I think it was 14 like I need to worry about wine at 14 and than anybody in my family and most any well all my friends you know, just because Hobart would teach me and it was ah was actually pretty cool. In fact. Ah, 1 thing that was kind of neat was ah he would go in at three o'clock in the afternoon to make his coconut cream emirata pie and no one was allowed in a building and go ah gourmet magazine ah begged him begged him for his recipe and he would never give it to him so he died with it. It was kind of interesting thing. They'd write him. Letters. 24:38.76 Joseph Szala And. 24:51.54 vigorbranding Because a lot of prominent people that came through hershey always ate. There was the best restaurant in Hershey and people would write letters to the magazine and so they kept begging him for this anyway, kind of a neat thing. But yeah, it was cool and I really did truly get a phenomenal education from that from busing tables and working in that restaurant business all right? so. 24:58.90 Joseph Szala I Love that. 25:06.56 Joseph Szala Um, well I think that's a testament to to the restaurant industry in general, not not to diverge too much. But again not only is it the economic backbone of every every locale. Um, but it's a hell of a way to get a hard knocks education that is unforgettable. No matter where you go after that I mean you're. You're you're the Principal partner of a very large advertising conglomerate I'd be willing to bet that your your your travel to that layer would have been a little bit more difficult had you not been in the trenches at that at that location. 25:37.82 vigorbranding Ah, yeah, look in ah in a restaurant you learn how to hustle you learn how to deal with issues as they pop up because that's what they do, they just pop up and you get to deal with customers and you make everyone happy. So you you learn a lot about yourself. Ah. You don't have 5 layers of folks around you to protect you per se and it's just ah, really kind of an interesting kind of dynamic and you're just thrown into it especially when you're young I've always wanted my kids to work in a restaurant and also somehow do sales I don't care if you're selling girl scout cookies. 25:56.11 Joseph Szala Okay. 26:07.82 Joseph Szala Ah. 26:09.34 vigorbranding Or newspapers I mean I'm now I'm really dating myself here but whatever it would be that you're selling just a sales job. Huge huge education that you don't even know you're getting that you don't even know you getting So anyway, um you had a great thing at the end of every one of your podcasts. You would ask the same questions and I want to continue that tradition. 26:14.76 Joseph Szala Absolutely yep. 26:28.51 vigorbranding Ah, so you have one last meal. What do you eat and why. 26:34.47 Joseph Szala Yeah, so for those that have ever listened to all of them back to-back which is literally nobody except for me I've answered it and I thought about this again because I did know this question was coming. It hasn't changed. Um I would have a Thanksgiving dinner. Absolutely hands down. Um, it's my favorite meal and I have the unique situation where I know that that's what I would choose because there was a time in my life where I thought I was having my last dinner and um, it was before yeah I mean good good good perspective um 26:52.12 vigorbranding That's it. Thanks Jimmy. 27:02.83 vigorbranding Nice, Well not nice, but right. 27:10.58 Joseph Szala You know I was going to have heart I had heart surgery. So although it was fairly so you know safe. It's still heart surgery you know and so I was like this very well could be the last mail Thanksgiving dinner man. Absolutely. 27:16.67 vigorbranding Sure really. Wow now I got a side question would it be just the meal itself because you love like the turkey and the gravy by yourself. Are you talking Thanksgiving dinner with everybody that you normally have a Thanksgiving dinner with and and hopefully none of your family's going to watch us to know the real answer. So. 27:31.95 Joseph Szala Um, to stay. Yeah, Absolutely um, I'd be I'd be selective with who I broke bread with because there's some family members that I love them because they're family but my God I would not want to have my last meal with them. And I think that's everyone. But for the food sake I could eat alone and be happy for the sake of the moment I Absolutely would love my family to be there. 28:00.95 vigorbranding Fantastic Speaking of family you have some ah big news. We love to talk about that. 28:03.36 Joseph Szala Yeah, sure yeah number 2 our second baby is on the way evelyn our first is about to turn ten months at this time of this recording and baby boy will be here by the end of the year and we're ah, really excited and honored and. 28:17.68 vigorbranding Fantastic. Are you gonna be the oldest father in the elementary school. 28:21.98 Joseph Szala Praying for Health and happiness. You know Absolutely I'm going to be in there with a walker. Yeah. 28:29.42 vigorbranding Ah, that's awesome Joe so I've known you for a long time and I'm happy for you I'm proud of you and I'm congratulations. That's wonderful. Wonderful. 28:35.46 Joseph Szala Absolutely well I'll drop one more piece of news that might get you excited before this is all over in case, you haven't heard Atlanta has finally been honored by being accepted into consideration for Michelin stars. So we were all. 28:48.93 vigorbranding Nice. 28:52.93 Joseph Szala Everyone in the food community here in this city. We're all, um, hoping and excited to see if one of our many fantastic restaurants will be graced with star stars. Whatever it may be so next time you come down to the city. Hopefully you'll you'll have that option. 29:06.41 vigorbranding very cool. very cool yeah yeah I'll be down in a couple couple of weeks I'm gonna watch a Braves Phillies game. So looking forward to that and I heard something in the background some'm cheering I think it was are yelling somebody was ah their baby I think was excited about the Michelin star. So that's awesome. 29:19.53 Joseph Szala Yeah, yeah, evelyn it's perfect. 29:22.54 vigorbranding But's awesome. Ah fantastic. Well, it's thank you so much for this. It's been great. It's always good catching up with you and I I know we'll stay in touch. 29:28.32 Joseph Szala Absolutely I'm looking forward to seeing hearing the guests and and hearing the interviews and really happy that you're able to continue continue on with us. 29:35.72 vigorbranding Yeah, only hopefully I can fill your shoes. It'll be tough but I'm gonna do my best. So awesome! Thanks Joseph. 29:42.20 Joseph Szala Um, if they're not that big. Yup cheers.

JUICER is bringing dynamic pricing to the restaurant industry. Together with their customers who operate more than 4,000 restaurants across the globe, JUICER is applying machine learning algorithms to help restaurants optimize their digital menu pricing. Carl is also the co-author of “Delivering the Digital Restaurant,” a book that explores the world of off premise food and the massive disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of restaurateurs, food industry veterans, and start up entrepreneurs. Dynamic pricing in the restaurant industry can mean lowering prices to increase traffic during slow hours, increasing prices for specific menu items to reflect changes in ingredient costs, or increasing prices for all menu items during peak hours, peak days or peak seasons. The result is a pricing model that ensures the right time for each sales channel to optimize a restaurant's profitability and the guest experience. JUICER's focus – for now – is on off-premise dynamic pricing, where the adjustment of prices is easler. On-premise dynamic pricing is more difficult (because of menus with fixed, printed prices) but will be more likely in the future. QUOTES “What JUICER is trying to do is become a full-service solution. We take 12 months of transactional data, put that through our algorithm, come up with recommended prices based on different times of day, and then our team will implement those price changes.” (Carl) “Consumers today are already experiencing dynamic pricing on DoorDash and Uber Eats. The delivery prices will change. The challenge is, restaurants aren't getting any of the upside of that dynamism.” (Carl) “The challenge of dynamic pricing as a term can be somewhat divisive. What we're doing at JUICER is completely avoiding anything related to surge pricing. We're talking about relatively small changes in prices that don't cause a negative reaction. In many ways, the customer doesn't even notice many of the price changes.” (Carl) “There's only one Taylor Swift. In a marketplace, there are hundreds of other pizza places that you can go to.” (Carl) “The whole idea of delivering the digital restaurant is to help restaurants understand that they have to optimize their off-premise channel. It's far more than just turning yourself on DoorDash or Uber Eats and letting those channels run themselves.” (Carl) TRANSCRIPT 00:00.41 vigorbranding Everyone today I am joined by my new friend Carl Orsburn it's oars burn or born say with me everyone um, all joking aside Carl. Thanks for taking time out of your day and your week hang out with me while you say hello and for those that don't know you give a little bit of backstory. 00:17.53 Carl Orsbourn Thanks! Thanks! Jo really good to be here and glad we get to spend a few few minutes together today. Um yes, I'm Carl Osborne I'm the co co-founder at juicer a dynamic pricing company for restaurants. But so. A lot of people know me from my first book that I wrote with Meredith Sandland delivering the digital restaurant that book became a bit of a bests selller and really um, cemented I think my kind of presence in the industry and been out to talk about restaurant digitization before that I was over at kitchen united helping. Ghost kitchen world gets settled helped build out their operating model and before even that I was in the seas storell world I used to run ah a thousand unit um franchise business by the name of ampm a billion dollars worth of revenue about 400000000 of it was food but in a very different and somewhat more stagnated industry and so. But I moved over to the startup space I was really excited into talking about more innovative type themes and everything that we're probably going to get into today. 01:19.20 vigorbranding That's brilliant. So ah, admittedly I didn't know about your C-s store stint ah probably more than a stint but I will wax about that for a second I grew up with ampms and ah I thought. 01:29.58 Carl Orsbourn How well. 01:35.68 vigorbranding That apm was what you called convenience source like because I grew up with it so growing up it was go to the apm because where we just said ap like dropped off the m too much too many letters. Um, and so I think I was maybe like 18 or 19 before I realized that. 01:42.12 Carl Orsbourn Yep yep. 01:52.62 vigorbranding Oh no, that's actually a brand name. That's not what you call C stores that's or like convenience stores. So for me, it was synonymous like band-aid instead of ahesive strip. It was the same thing. Um, so that's kind of wonderful and I think there's a whole world that we could talk about with C stores. Maybe not. We'll see if we get to it. But. 01:55.66 Carl Orsbourn Wow, That's interesting. 02:10.81 vigorbranding You know there is a discussion to be had around sea store's encroachment into the ah fast food and in quick service space and some of them are are doing a fantastic job of it. But what I really want to dig into first and foremost is dynamic ricing because you of course are a proselytizer you you have an entire company talking about it. 02:18.87 Carl Orsbourn Dot com. 02:30.13 vigorbranding And I I Want to say I'm a naysayer I'm just highly skeptical and I think I really want to dig into. Let's talk about the good side of it. Um, so before we you know butt heads against why don't you for the listeners try to clearly define What is dynamic pricing in the restaurant industry. Clear up the misconceptions. 02:51.27 Carl Orsbourn Yeah, look. It's it's a really interesting subject and I think you're right? It is quite divisive. Um, it's quite divisive just as ah as a theme and so before I give you my version of a definition. Let me tell you what I think our vision is surprising because we we see enormous opportunity to. To bring pricing science to restaurants and that's that's way before anything we get into around price dynamism right? So pricing. Let we know is tremendously complex. It's ah, a discipline it requires expertise in data science. It requires access to lots of market data the ability to quantify how changes in price affect demand. And these are not disciplines I think it's fair to say that have historically been part of the restaurant industry I think it's fair to say that most restaurants price using a blunt instrument and if you on where they want to be perhaps positioned against relative to the competition and a desired you know gp so you know with with due to what we're excited to bring. Our experience on working on these problems and my co-founders are these clairvoyance Joseph because they herald from the travel and hotel industry where they've seen all this stuff play out and not a week goes by without them saying yes but we've seen this happen before let me tell you how this is going to play out and it's always funks. We we riff on it a bit so so restaurants now have this kind of opportunity to use these tools. Um because the industry is undergoing to see a change. You know how it interacts with diners or everything I've talked about in my books um and and restaurants are for intents and purposes now an e-commerce category. Um. 04:22.20 Carl Orsbourn Fact that menus are presented as pixels on a screen not printed pages gives us far more flexibility than in the past and so I think that insight that restaurants can capitalize on this change in consumer interaction is giving us a more sophisticated idea about how they can price and that's very much at the heart of our vision Producer. So. How does dynamic pricing fit into this framework. Well for me, it's It's just a fancy way to say we measure Consumer demand and use algorithms to match prices to demand at that point in time. 04:54.92 vigorbranding So I think so that makes sense so there's a prerequisite though right? like you said you're going to have to know what those outside influences are so you can affect the pricing in real-time and of course you need. Digital menu boards that are more than just a I'm going to make a joke but a fire stickk stuck in the back of a Tv screen. Um, which you know for the the do it yourself as I've seen that happen many times but essentially what ends up manifesting though is pricing that changes. 05:13.51 Carl Orsbourn A. 05:28.14 vigorbranding I wouldn't say in real time right? I mean it happens in real time, but it's not like it's not like a stock ticker like as I'm in line I'm watching the price fluctuate from $2 for a cheap hamburger to $25 because of the outside influences. Um what what rate? or um. 05:33.87 Carl Orsbourn All right. 05:45.23 vigorbranding But kind of fluctuation have you seen or do you anticipate with it like what are the updates. What are the refreshes is it daily is it hourly when we're talking about the fluctuations and in dynamic rising. 05:55.27 Carl Orsbourn Yeah, couple couple of things in answer to that because the first thing I'd say is we are focused on off-premise transactions first so you talk about this idea of standard in line and digital menu boards I think that is to come. But I think the industry has to move a little further down the line before we start to see that becoming a major area of focus when it comes to dynamic pricing probably for all the reasons as to why you you might be a bit of a skeptic on the subject right? because for me the opportunity exists today and off-premise because consumers today are already experiencing dynamic pricing. On da dash and uber breeds right? The delivery fees will change. You. You are empowering the customer to say if you want to pay an extra $3 I can get it to you within 20 minutes as opposed to the advertise 40 minutes the challenge is restaurants aren't getting any of the upside of that dynamism today. That's all going into the marketplaces and so. Something here about really just trying to recognize that. How do you actually find the best way to introduce something like this into a part of the industry that is already experiencing it. But you know for me consumers are ah more sophisticated than they often get credit for you know dynamic or demand-based pricing is. Built on the the well-understood intuition that products are more expensive when there's a high demand for a product right? Um, restaurants have been doing this for ages Joseph. You know if we at happy hour em menus right? There's any diner need clarification when a drink or appetizer is less expensive before six zero Pm of course not 07:13.10 vigorbranding Um, sure. 07:21.19 vigorbranding Ah, right. 07:23.19 Carl Orsbourn Know that the restaurant's less busy and they're going to try and drum up more demand for it. So I think it's trying to work alongside those forces and try to help restaurants actually support. What is their lowest Margin channel. 07:35.84 vigorbranding Yeah I mean so that's a great analogy or or a great example I should say um and you're right? The prices do fluctuate then I think the most restaurants are banking on can I keep them here past the happy Hour Marker. So I can start to realize my margin. And and I Also agree I think Dynamic dynamic pricing um could be really fantastic from the monetary spreadsheet level of restaurant brands I think where I start where my yellow flags I Only call them red flags because I'm super interested or else I would have I don't want to talk about it right? like I'm like I'm already set I'm ah pretty malleable on it. 08:06.70 Carl Orsbourn 7 08:11.29 vigorbranding But I think the challenges that we have to overcome is um, the the brand experience that's not me being a carpenter and only seeing nails. Um, and what I'm getting at is if we take other industries that have adopted dynamic pricing that everyone's familiar with like otas. Ah. You know, um in in the travel industry so online travel agents I think is what that stands for which is kind of silly. But um, you know so like Expedia and the aggregators and things like that and anyone that has tried to book a flight and is trying to look for different options and you realize oh my original flight just went up in price. 08:34.34 Carl Orsbourn Yeah. 08:50.16 Carl Orsbourn And. 08:50.66 vigorbranding Which is really funny and not cool at all. Um, that becomes a frustration point for me as a consumer the other layer not to pile it on but I'm going to is if if we use hotels. Let's say as the model. 09:08.32 vigorbranding The hotel still gets the benefit of managing the brand experience when the person walks through the door. We don't have that with delivery as restaurants. So yes, we do want to realize more money but I think one of the issues outside of the the fees and all the other gripes that we hear. 09:12.64 Carl Orsbourn And. 09:26.57 vigorbranding 1 of the issues with that third -party delivery mechanism is we have no control over how good or bad. The service is We're just a machine you gave us money I made your burger. That's all I can do. So we're actually losing the things that add value incrementally. To pricing. So for instance, mcdonald's hamburger versus ah shakeshack versus choose your gourmet burger brand whatever you know? Um, yeah, there's quality ingredients and things like that. But part of it is the touch right? It's the the way it's presented the way it's delivered. The. 09:53.16 Carl Orsbourn It. 10:04.86 vigorbranding The the smile or lack thereof hotels get that opportunity. You know. So if you decide that you're going to spend a little bit more money for a hotel and you walk in you get the greeting. You get the high. You know the white glove even though they're physically not there anymore but like the white Glove Bell hoppy experience for more money. But if you took all of that away. It really does become a commodity I Think that's my worry is commoditization of restaurant brands meaning brands don't really matter any longer. It's just quality of products and that's it I was a lot sorry. 10:33.72 Carl Orsbourn Ah, really one ah lot a lot in that a couple of things. Um, first of all, you mentioned like airlines and the number of price changes what we're finding right now is is at most 2 or 3 changes a day so just to give you an idea that we're not talking about. And I don't think it will ever get there quite honestly where you see that mid-transaction and that change of price because. 10:56.38 vigorbranding So so so hold on hold on and I'm sorry what I'm getting I just so we're clear like literally if I'm on delta.com sorry Delta I love you. But I hate you too. Um I search for flight from Atlanta to to Phoenix because we're talking about our rlc right now. Um. Boom. Okay, hey it's ah, $1200 a first class because you know how I roll um, but then I well maybe maybe I want to go at 11 a m instead of 8 am m okay I look at the price. No not so much I come back to my 8 a m boom. It's gone up. 11:29.29 Carl Orsbourn He's gone. Yeah yeah, and look I'll give you one even worse right? Um, what about when Katrina happened right? and everyone didn't have a home and they had to go into these hotels and the hotels at 40500% price increases right. 11:31.13 vigorbranding That's what I'm like yeah that's the the reference. 11:44.31 vigorbranding Oh yep, Yeah yeah, yep. 11:46.87 Carl Orsbourn That's where I mean Taylor Swift ticket master right? right? if we want to go to an even more recent example that that's where the challenge of dynamic pricing as a term becomes somewhat you know, divisive and and I think it's an understandably so there's another term that. Someone closer to our industry started to create and that's uber and they came up with the term search pricing right? which is kind of in in this whole space it what we're doing at juicer is completely avoiding anything to do with search pricing. The pizza will never be 400 % and what we do with our approach is that we. We asked the restaurant. What is the range that you would like to operate within and it might be minus ten to plus 15 but that means the price only ever moves in between those zones. So what we're talking about here are relatively small movements in price. Don't create that level of negative reaction and as I say in terms of the amount of price changes. Not not a huge plentiful amount so you don't get to that delta example that you're mentioning before so in many ways the customer doesn't really even notice a lot of these changes. In fact, when we start putting our pricing in place. We do a few things. 12:44.54 vigorbranding Um, is. 12:59.86 Carl Orsbourn Because guest sentiment is absolutely central to the way in which we approach this and so before we do any pricing. We do a scan of every single reference to the customer voice in that particular restaurant unit looking for words like expensive or too pricey and anything affiliated to value. And then we look at ratings and then we monitor that all the way through any pricing activity so that we can see if there has been a reaction in terms of the customer voice now you could say well that's fine for those that leave a review but many will just vote with their feet so we also of course monitor volumes and we do diff on diff analysis. And we have test locations and control locations to accommodate any macro changes in the environment to really try and give a clear identification of the uplift we're able to demonstrate and what we've been had to do so far. Joseph is. We've been out to see a lift of somewhere between five and seven percent of off-premise margins without any detrimental effect on traffic and without any detrimental effect on gas sentiment and I think the reason for that is twofold 1 is because of the micro changes. We discussed. You know it's not huge levels of changes. It's just trying to optimize in a certain small area at different times of day and then secondly. I think a lot of this is actually to do with what I mentioned at the start and that is just getting the base price in right helping restaurants really understand what is the willingness to pay for a certain item for a customer and the last thing I'll mention on this is I write for for nations restaurant news with Meredith um every month or two and. 14:22.30 vigorbranding Here here. 14:31.69 Carl Orsbourn We had an article last summer that came out around throttling and I think this is one of the the hidden diseases in off-premise right now because throttling is something where you're you know, closing your virtual doors to your customers because your kitchen can't cope with the amount of demand that they're facing. It's almost like. 14:44.57 vigorbranding Um, right? um. 14:48.27 Carl Orsbourn Ah, good problem to have right? and you've got so many orders coming in but you can't cope with them so you're going to focus on your higher margin channels and that's the logic of why a lot of technology companies have built throttle it but that is perhaps the first time a new guest is discovering your restaurant same as like having ah an abusive price by the way you know if they see a bad price on a menu. 15:01.70 vigorbranding Right. 15:07.91 Carl Orsbourn Like you go wow that place is expensive I'm not going to go there for date night on Saturday even if they're just thinking about a launch third -party experience on this particular occasion. So so for me here. The the point is is how do you create a situation where everyone is free. Having a benefit of dynamic pricing. How do you actually empower the guest so they feel that they have a choice you know if they really want to eat from your restaurant on a friday night at seven p m when your restaurant is at its busiest and they have to pay an extra fifty sixty cents for that item. As opposed to it being completely shut down and not available at all. What would you rather do and similarly if we can get to a world and I think we will get to this type of world where you then can incentivize and almost train the guest to be able to say well if you order a head or if you order up six zero p m on that friday night you can actually get it for a slightly cheaper price. 15:44.27 vigorbranding A. 16:01.14 Carl Orsbourn Isn't that actually empowering the guest isn't actually empowering the restaurant to keep their guest happier by letting them have their control. That's where I think we're going to have a better experience. Overall. 16:12.44 vigorbranding Yeah, yeah I don't I don't fully disagree at all like I again I think there's there's still impediments. Obviously we're not in a perfect world and and idealism is rarely ah realized um but you actually just did spark something in my head with with the ah the throttling and all that. 16:30.50 vigorbranding While we're thinking embarking on this dynamic pricing opportunity. We've already experienced dynamic timing as a good and bad thing. Ah by by the very nature of time and how busy a kitchen gets right? so. Um, what I mean by that is you use Friday night at seven P M bro try to get a pizza delivered. You know I mean like it's going to take you anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes sometimes depending on where you are and what city you're in and that's just happening by the very nature of traffic. So it's it's it's dynamic timing right? So I know if I want to get a good pizza for Friday night I probably should get that order in at five P M so that actually tracks and makes a lot of sense now I'll maybe contradict myself here because um, I'll contradict myself but I do see it from the restaurant's perspective fully. And I've seen it because you know being being ah on the marketing side I've always tried to include operations as a part of the conversation and have a voice at the table. It's important. Um, what I think people consumers I hate that word but I'll use it. Consumers don't realize is how much. 17:30.33 Carl Orsbourn And. 17:41.31 vigorbranding Money has been taken on the chin by restaurant brands like it takes a lot for them to decide to move their price. You know so they'll they'll absorb a lot of costs. They'll eat into their own profit margins to prevent even a fifteen cent increment so when you start talking about the percentages of like the 10 to 15% plus minus that makes a lot more sense than maybe ah, a pure dynamic pricing in real-time jump allah miss swift. 18:07.74 Carl Orsbourn So yeah, yeah, absolutely and look. There's there's only a certain amount of seats on a plane or in a a theater right? or in ah, an arena so it becomes um, a little bit of an easier science I suggest in that regard if that's something that you want to do but also. There's only one Taylor Swift on a marketplace. There are hundreds of other pizza placess that you can go to and so that's the challenge today and look you you mentioned something earlier on I'll put my author hat back on for a second if I may and and that is. 18:41.20 vigorbranding Um, yeah. 18:43.72 Carl Orsbourn You know the whole idea of delivering the digital restaurant and at some point I'll tell you about the new book. But the the whole idea of it is to help restaurants understand that they have to optimize their Off-premise Channel It's It's far more than just turning yourself on on door dash or uber eats and just let them let that kind of channel run itself and off you go. 19:00.32 vigorbranding Right. 19:03.85 Carl Orsbourn Don't think guests have said anything particularly good about the off-premise experience in recent times. In fact, I'd go as fast to say that the guest experience for off-premise today has never been worse because guests aren't getting their food in the time that it was promised the quality of the food isn't. 19:14.13 vigorbranding Right. 19:22.88 Carl Orsbourn As good as they perhaps would expect in an on-premise occasion and ultimately the biggest issue that's happening with off-premise today is the accuracy of whether the order was indeed fulfilled correctly is it the right items is it. You know as per the spec that they request it. So. 19:36.68 vigorbranding Um, right. 19:39.93 Carl Orsbourn You know there's this thing here to be able to say well most restaurants today are putting on a threshold increase onto their third -party prices and even the door dashes of this world are sending notes out to restaurants that are going beyond a certain threshold to say look if you keep doing this. We're going to reduce your presence on the platforms and reduce your appearance if you will. Which is ah another entire subject. We should. We can talk about but the point is is if that's happening then the guest is saying well I'm paying this much more and I'm given an inferior product as a result and I think all that's going to lead to is customers. They've become even more switched on. 20:11.63 vigorbranding Um. 20:17.92 Carl Orsbourn To be allowed to know which restaurants can they rely upon which ones are able to do this consistently which ones are actually changing their operating system to be able to make sure they do get a better experience and so price is a function of value but the experience all those table touches and things you were mentioned in your earlier question. Are very much still central to it and you know in in delivering the digital restaurant. We talked about how gig workers are for intents and purposes your new server. Do you remember that chap sir Joseph you know that that that one was all about when I was going out as a door dash driver myself and feeling terribly treated by the restaurants that I went into. 20:46.79 vigorbranding Um, yep, yep. 20:56.18 Carl Orsbourn You know? and maybe so maybe understandably so because I was taking tips away from their staff and things like that. But but but um, the point is is that if you embrace those drivers if you give them samples of your new items on the menu if you give them a free cup of coffee or allow them to use your restrooms. They are going to to more likely more likely. Not definitely but more likely. 20:58.22 vigorbranding Sure yeah. 21:16.13 Carl Orsbourn Be, a better proponent of your brand and give the guests that they're servicing on on your behalf a better experience and so there are little bits and pieces that need to happen in that regard to try and bring more elements of digital hospitality into off-premise. But ultimately. It's the operation. The operation needs to get Better. We been now to do things to a better quality on time and more accurately and all of that's going to play into whether customers see they get value from this or not. 21:43.82 vigorbranding Yeah, what? what was the brand I want to say it was chipotle but I don't want to ah missattribute this where they they created a whole delivery driver experience for them to wait and hang out. It's kind of was kind of a lounge I think it was in New York um 21:55.95 Carl Orsbourn Ah, Buka Depeo Buca Depeo had a bit of reference to this in in the news a few months ago. But I think there were a few that are starting to do it so it wouldn't surprise me that partly I doing it as well. 22:05.80 vigorbranding Yeah, yeah, it makes sense I'm surprised inspire brands hasn't done it either I mean they've invested so much in this innovation center here in Atlanta on the west side. Um there's definitely the space for it. Um I think that's something it makes a lot of sense. You have to start treating them as such but then I think that starts to. Makes some folks in the c-suite a little cringy considering the back and forth pendulum swing that we see with labor ownership and things like that like you you treat them too. Nice are you starting to blur the lines right? and you know we know how that goes. Um. 22:31.92 Carl Orsbourn Yeah, well But then you've got these first party logistics software platforms. You know like cartwheel that are out there that are allowing you now to try and figure out how you wish to service different diners. You know, perhaps your most loyal diners with your better drivers from your own fleet. So there are. There are ways and means by which you know technology is enabling you to give the best service to your most valuable customers. 22:51.10 vigorbranding Um. 22:56.96 vigorbranding Yeah I believe ah Romo is on the forefront of that as well. We had Alan Hickey on the show a little while ago. Um, proud Scotsman he's gonna hate me for that. No, he's he's definitely proud. He's the proudest scotsman there ever was. 23:02.68 Carl Orsbourn Um, yeah Irish my Irishman ah he'll hate that you. 23:11.23 vigorbranding I do this every every so often. Some of the episodes just see if Allen's listening um and you know when I'm when I'm in person and I do run into him I'll say it again. It's it's an ongoing joke. But yes, he is an irishman and he is wonderful. Gracious guest but they're doing great things. So um. 23:23.55 Carl Orsbourn So. 23:28.36 vigorbranding Thanks for digging in so much into this I feel like there's so much to still unpack and and I am really excited about where you're going with Juicer which is the company that you founded to essentially tackle this thing head on. Can you tell me a little bit about juicer before we shift gears and talk about the the new book and even the original book. 23:45.60 Carl Orsbourn So yeah, so so Juicer has been around for a year and a half my my co-founders as I mentioned earlier have come from the travel hospitality space. In fact, our technical co-founder Marco he he builds a company called Duetto which is one of the 2 remaining platforms that help hotels dynamically price. But the difference the difference I think between hotels and restaurants beyond what we've already discussed is that hotels have revenue managers as part of the team as part of the property team restaurants don't so what juice is trying to do is become a full service solution and so we take twelve months worth of data transactional data. Put that through our algorithm come up with recommended prices based on the different times of day as we've discussed and then our team will implement those price changes so we we get given that range we talked about maybe the minus ten to the plus 15% and that's it the restaurant hands us the keys and then we report back to them the revenue up if we've been out to generate. Yeah, sentiment analysis. The volume analysis and a way we go from there. It's as simple as that now it sounds simple but there's a lot of complexity behind the actual algorithm as you can imagine. But also there's this piece that um is a complexity that affects many restaurant technology companies and that is integrations. Very early on into my tenure I said to the team look if we have to wait to build integrations with every pos out there. This is going to be a very difficult thing to be able to implement and what we're trying to do is to try and help brashchnault see the upside of our approach so that their voice can go to their technology partners to help. 25:19.37 Carl Orsbourn Build the necessary integrations because we have teams in India in Mexico and in Brazil that are actually making these price changes manually today and that's that's like wow what what does that? you sure that's the right way of doing it. Well it is because that way we've got more assuredness that it's going to happen and b it demonstrates the uplift. And then also the restaurants are going to have the louder voice in helping the tech companies see why they need this as part of their technology platforms. It's also adopting I don't know whether you've heard this term before but headless commerce um salesforce I think introduced it. But for those of you are your listeners that haven't heard of that. It's it's all for instance, all intents and purposes. It's a bit like ah a Chrome plugin right? as opposed to being Chrome or another piece of technology to add into the tech stack. Um, it's actually said no we want to be almost like a white label solution that sits on top of your current technology providers that supports you when you are ready for dynamic pricing. 25:58.80 vigorbranding Um. 26:12.10 Carl Orsbourn And I think that's really really important for many technology leaders out there to consider because the problem today is that restaurants have got so many technology solutions to choose from. They've got some folks that are out there saying oh we do it all. We do all, we're an all in one solution which isn't true and the other are those that are very specialist in other regards and so it's very difficult for The average restaurant owner-erator who let's face it remember that they didn't get into this industry because they love technology. They love food. They love hospital hospitality. They love seeing the smiles in their guest faces. Those are the reasons they got into it and so technology is a necessary efor if you will to to support the the business and where it is today. And so therefore we're trying to make things easier I think by building the company in this regard it it also then means the procurement practice is also a little easier as well and been able to find the necessary clients. So we we we certainly go direct out to restaurants. But also we're building partnerships with the lights of oracle with it a checkmate and others. To try and have that automated nature so we don't actually have to have manual teams implemented it but the best thing about it. Is it just it helps restaurants have this pricing capability without affecting anyone on the ground and because it's just off-premise focus. It doesn't really create any distraction for them. 27:25.63 vigorbranding That's great. Yeah I mean I think the the future obviously would be um, some sort of on-prem Maybe maybe with less real-time you know, maybe it happens on the weekly or things like that. But it needs it needs to happen for the restaurants in order for restaurants to thrive. Um. 27:35.48 Carl Orsbourn Yeah. 27:42.54 vigorbranding I'm always going to be the ultimate defender of the people or at least the brand experience. You know So How do you make sure that it's delivered in a way that isn't going to negatively affect the Brand's experience but like like you have said and I've even attitudes like the brand experience is already under threat and there are a lot of negative experiences happening. Um. This probably isn't going to.. It's it's pales in comparison like if everything was perfect and you're dropping a dynamic pricing model. Um outside of the even the 15 or 10 then maybe there's a conversation but I'm actually more more interested on the technology side like what's going to be done with packaging and how how can. Our delivery vehicles be ah, fitted with cold and hot areas to to keep food as good as possible. Um packaging that holds in the heat without sweat things like that like it makes French fries Such a bummer man. 28:29.70 Carl Orsbourn Um. 28:36.27 Carl Orsbourn Um, well look in our first book. Um, one of the chaps is was called why pizza works and it was when there was a bunch of references in to think about the amount of science and innovation that's happened to the pizza box right? So from the 4 little vents around the edge. 28:41.67 vigorbranding Um, yeah. 28:48.55 vigorbranding Absolutely. 28:52.48 Carl Orsbourn That little thing you'll probably tell me Joseph if whatever the little thing is in the middle and then the little trade that it sits on you know all of those little components are to ensure that when a pizza arrives at your front door. It's in the best condition possible and so you're absolutely right. Packaging is very much. It's vital with your marketing hat on. 29:03.79 vigorbranding Um, that's right. 29:09.15 Carl Orsbourn There's a great third party. The first party conversion angle on the packaging but there's also a quality angle to it as well. 29:14.88 vigorbranding yeah yeah I think there's there's so much room for growth and this is one of those permanent pivots. So one of the other things that happened. Um so I've mentioned this so many times on the show and I apologize to listeners. But. Back in 2019 I had the opportunity to speak at the fed summit ah held by restaurant design development design magazine great group of people over there at Zumba group. Um, and I predicted a lot of things that are happening now not because I'm a genius but because I know how to read and what I didn't predict was the acceleration that would be brought on by. Pandemic. Um, what's great is a lot of the things that we're talking about now and a lot of things that you covered in the first book that you and Meredith Pennd haven't had a chance to read the second one? sorry um, have come to fruition and and we are. It's no longer this sluggish. Dip the toe. Maybe the second toe into the water we are full plunge into digital transformation and that is essentially the topic of your you and Meredith's work in general from all your thought leadership. So can you give maybe like a quick hit on the first book. 30:09.13 Carl Orsbourn And. 30:20.40 Carl Orsbourn Yep. 30:24.20 vigorbranding Why why? it's interesting. Why people should grab it and then I want to make sure you have enough time to talk about this second book because I didn't give meritdiff any time to talk about it and I still feel bad about it. 30:29.28 Carl Orsbourn Yeah, and absolutely well it is a sequel to delivering the digital restaurant your roadmap to the future of food that was the name of the first book and and that was written in the early days of the pandemic. You know we were into the outline. Think we spoke to a big publisher and they said yeah, we'll get this out but it'll be 2022 and we went ah this this is happening right now restaurants need this so we had to go through our hybrid publishing path. Um and we wrote it to help restaurants see the why behind digitization but being you know off-premise and. 30:53.21 vigorbranding Are. 31:03.45 Carl Orsbourn But consumers are hungry for better ways to engage with restaurants and then it wasn't the evil tech companies or vcs forcing the change to happen but it was the consumer that was driving this to happen and of course timing couldn't have been better for us in in writing and given that book out of that time. The book came ah international bestseller. It's. Just got the romanian restaurant association would you believe agreed to translate it into romanian so I wasn't thinking the first foreign language translation would be romanian. But thank you Romania but you know the the fact that at this time in 21 every restaurant became a ghost kitchen overnight. They were forced to embrace digitization to survive and. 31:25.43 vigorbranding Um, that's amazing. Yeah. 31:38.94 Carl Orsbourn It really was a spray and prayy type approach just to keep in business but the second book you know now we're in a different phase restaurants are spending somewhere between two and four percent of revenue on technology I'd hasten to guess that they're spend in about across 15 to 20 different pieces of technology. And those different pieces of technology are probably just not being used to their optimal capability and they're certainly not talking to each other these different technologies in a way that restaurants really want them to so so our new book is called delivering the digital restaurant the path to digital maturity. 32:03.20 vigorbranding Right. 32:13.64 Carl Orsbourn And it's with the pandemic in the rearview mirror. We we believe that restaurants are now in a place where they're trying to consolidate their focus. You know where they want to deploy their resources where they want to deploy concentrated efforts to build the the right foundations that support a digital transformation because we're still in it right? We're still in the trenches on transforming this industry digitally. 32:22.51 vigorbranding Um. 32:33.59 Carl Orsbourn And restaurants are I think are are now largely moving on from begrudgingly accepting off-premise channels where they were did now see them as a vital part of the restaurant growth agenda. But many restaurants have that kind of scattergun focus as I mentioned and so I think many now have ah. Got solutions technology solutions because there are so many of them scattered across the entire restaurant ecosystem and they're not really using them to their best potential and so the new book helps restaurants see this path. It explains in a linear fashion where rest structure focus and when and I hope it's going to help them find their place on this path and. And from that give them more confidence on where to focus. You know it's it's a different type of book to the first you'll remember the first it was quite. You know one hundred or so interviews with executives that we spoke to it was ah a little academic if you will very businessy this one's more of a playbook. It's got tips. It's got worksheets at the back of each chapter. So. The the reader can self-ass assess reflect consider the lessons in the context of their own restaurant and through it. Hopefully they can chart their path towards you know, greater maturity and it asks them to consider some serious questions of themselves and you know it leads towards um, a new restaurant category that we believe is emerging. Um, a category that we think is going to represent some of the highest levels of growth available in the industry but the the title of that chapter when we discuss that is called disrupt yourself and it's saying consider how consider how you need to optimize if you had a blank sheet of paper if you were starting your business fresh right now. What would you do and we we introduce this term of the. 34:04.45 Carl Orsbourn Digital native restaurant and the digital native brands and how that is a channel that is going to move more of the costs into food out of labor out of ah out of rent and that everything will be focused on digital and fully focused and off-premise occasions and we think that category. Much like fast casual before it will actually be very very exciting and then we also talk to the technologists much like we've been touching on today. You know anyone in restaurant tech will want to to read the book because if we're really going to help restaurants for each digital maturity. We have to find faster better ways to enable tech tech solutions to talk to each other. In a symbiotic way and or just build our technology operating systems differently. You know a bit like the app store if you go for a restaurant. Could you imagine that? um you know I'd ah um, I'd love to see a world Joseph where where 1 input affects a restaurant. 34:51.40 vigorbranding Um, yeah. 34:58.16 Carl Orsbourn And a symbiotic fashion affecting other functions. You know an interdependability of functionality that that drives better decision-making and and a smoother implementation of change that that today the the average restaurant Gm has to navigate these factors. You know, can you imagine? For example, where if a supplier cost increase comes through there that 1 simple data input change can then have an autonomous effect on recipes inventory management menu build menu optimization pricing training documentation and on and on you know, the example I was using on a podcast. The other day was I imagine you're in a restaurant and two li cooks call out tonight. The Gm has to deal with that today. 35:24.58 vigorbranding Um. 35:35.45 vigorbranding Um, yep. 35:36.80 Carl Orsbourn Like there's no piece of technology that's saying how do I sold for that. So imagine if that technology could then talk to opentable to restrict the amount of table reservations or talk to juicer and increase the off-prem prices a little bit more as opposed to just talking to 7 shifts and payroll systems. You know that's the way in which technology needs to evolve. 35:49.38 vigorbranding Right. 35:55.15 Carl Orsbourn So that we can help restaurants really optimize the experience not just for off-premise but for on-premise as well, right? So the book is quite practical in that regard I think seventy to eighty percent of restaurants are probably in the first 2 chapters where we talk about third -party optimization and converting them to first. But. As I've touched on you know it goes into a bit more of the futurist stuff as we get towards the end. 36:15.90 vigorbranding Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Ah, the first book was great read. Ah it is I definitely turn the pages yellow with my highlighter. Um I'm one of those I still read the physical book and still highlight things. Um, so I can only imagine the second one is going to be even better I wrote an article about. 36:22.37 Carl Orsbourn So. 36:33.89 vigorbranding Removing the word pivot I'd like to commend you for not using that word. Um, mainly because pivoting keeps you anchored with one foot and I think that's what you're talking about with disrupting yourself I think ah what ends up happening especially the larger you get is making those cataclysmic um shifts. 36:38.85 Carl Orsbourn Move. 36:51.35 vigorbranding Requires you to lift the foot. It can't be a pivot. Um, it has to be movement forward. It has to be a change of direction or a narrowing of focus or or a mix of both and so many leaders are just crippled by the fear of what that means of unsementing one of your feet in order to go because if you keep your foot planted. You really can only go so far before you've stretched too too thin and then you have a young more agile company that will easily surpass you or or at least have ah have a competitive edge in their agility to do so um and so I think it's such a fantastic time to be a part of this industry with everything that's happening. Um I will say that. You have nudged me closer to an advocate of ah at least? Yeah yeah, it's a few steps closer I would say it's equivalent to the number of steps closer that Meredith got me on the topic of gas ranges versus ah induction heat. 37:31.60 Carl Orsbourn Yeah I'll take you I'll take that for today. Ah. 37:47.91 vigorbranding Ranges that are digital. Um I will still fight to to the death over my gas range at home. But I really appreciate the insights and I know there's so much more I mean man I had so many things that I wanted to ask you but I also like to keep these around the 30 minute Mark so 37:48.13 Carl Orsbourn Ah. 37:54.51 Carl Orsbourn Yeah, yeah. 38:04.92 vigorbranding Ah, like I said to meredith. Maybe maybe we should just do the first ever 3 person podcast we have you and her on it. We can just really start to dig into some of these topicics together because I don't think this conversation stops today. 38:12.67 Carl Orsbourn And I'd love that now. I'd love that I mean we we set out to do this to help the industry and so hopefully our our 2 books do that and I think podcasts like your angels are very much part of that journey as well. So we're all in it together and I think the more we. We talk about these things the more we're going to help the industry move forward to. 38:31.87 vigorbranding Absolutely so I have 1 final question. It's the hardest 1 ever and then I'll get you to drop some plugs on where to buy the book and and where to find juicer. So first the the most difficult question in the world if you had 1 final meal. What would you eat. 38:47.51 Carl Orsbourn Um. 38:48.69 vigorbranding Ah, where would you eat it and why. 38:50.48 Carl Orsbourn Well this one kind of comes back to one of my favorite dining experiences of my life so far and in many ways. It's not so much about the food. The food was freshly caught fish but this was about I'd say half a mile three quarters of a mile. By a dragon boat off the shores of pouquette Thailand and I went out in this dragon boat and there's this floating pontoon which they've built and there are some tables on top of this flob at this pontoon and in the middle. There's a a hole where they give you a net and they say choose your dinner and you you put the net in you choose the fish. 39:26.55 vigorbranding Um, oh well. 39:29.83 Carl Orsbourn And then they cooked the fish and I remember sitting there with my wife and overlooking the the kind of Hills of pouette. The sun was setting. It was beautiful and um I think that goes to show about just how occasions and moments like that are just as important as the quality of the food as well. So I'd probably go with something like that. 39:47.82 vigorbranding Yeah I would not blame you that it that sounds amazing. Um, great answer, great answer. Um, where is the preferred place to pick up the books. 39:56.77 Carl Orsbourn Well you see this comes back to third party first party if you like third parties and the and the flexibility that comes with them Amazon of course has a Kindle version a hardback a paperback the the audio book is read by me. It's going to be out a month or so from now. So Amazon of course is the place to go to for that. Ah, but if you want to support first party then you can head to ww.thetheboommis side again wwdot delivering the digitalrest dot com and there you'll be able to get a copy of a book or if you'd like to get a case of books for your team or for clients then that's the place to get discounted copies in bulk as well. So. Deliveringthe digitalrest.com for first party and we also have our own podcast there that we put out every couple of weeks called the digital restaurant where we we just have ten fifteen minutes between Meredith and myself talking about 5 of the top articles affecting off-premise technology and restaurants and so that's another place where. Your podcast listeners to heads if they're interested. Okay. 40:51.32 vigorbranding I that's great guys. Go first party I know Amazon's convenient it's awesome but look it puts more money in alls pocket pockets when you go first party I should know I prefer people to go to my website to get my book. But yeah I understand conveniences oftentimes the winner. Um, and then juicer how can we connect with juicer. 41:09.78 Carl Orsbourn So great. Well with juicy you can obviously reach out to me on Linkedin but our website isjuicerpriccing.com and there you'd be able to fill out an inquiry I would love to chat to you with particularly focus right now on restaurant groups of 20 units or more. Um, but if you've got an off-premise business that's sizable I think we can help you so I'd love to hear from you. 41:30.39 vigorbranding Brilliant. Thanks so much for your insights again. Ah thirty forty minutes is just not enough time and we'll have to do this again very soon. 41:36.51 Carl Orsbourn Looking forward to Joseph. Thank you so much.

On this week's edition of Give An Ovation, Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland join us for another forward thinking and innovative episode. With the publication of their second book in the Delivering The Digital Restaurant series, The Path to Digital Maturity, Carl and Meredith impress the importance of taking your tech seriously. From interface to optimization, their expertise within the digital space is far reaching!On this episode, you'll learn from Carl and Meredith about:Is third party for you?Tech resolving off-prem issuesInternal processes that aid digital channelsMore!Thanks, Carl and Meredith!

Two-time authors, Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, join Restaurants Reinvented for the second time!Hear their predictions about the next big restaurant concept > the digitally native restaurant and key snips from their new book “The Path to Digital Maturity.” Moments to listen for:The key phases in the path to digital maturityHow to better drive first-party data ownershipThe next new concept category to hit restaurants SVB's influence on the startup tech sceneImproving efficiency through AIInnovative approaches to off-prem dining through ghost kitchensRelated Episodes:Delivering the Digital Restaurant – Meredith Sandland & Carl OrsbournMastering the Digital Dance – Michael Chachula, CIO, Fat BrandsAI Inside & Outside the Four Walls – Phil Crawford, CKERelated Assets:8 Digital Trends Shaping 2023The Path to Digital MaturityConnect with Meredith & Carl on LinkedIn

Welcome to The Restaurant Coach Podcast, it is the cure for the common restaurant. Change. Weather you like it or not it's happening. Most people don't like change and long for the good old days…but the good old days weren't always so good of your honest with yourself. Today I want to talk to you … Continue reading Episode 116 – Digital Maturity is the Way with Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn →

In this episode, we welcome back previous Corner Booth guest Meredith Sandland, along with her publishing partner Carl Orsbourn. Sandland, a former executive with Yum Brands/Taco Bell joined forces with United Kitchens executive Orsbourn to educate restaurant operators on how to succeed at digital marketing, operations, and customer service. As co-authors of the best-selling "Delivering the Digital Restaurant", they share best-practices advice from their second book "Path to Digital Maturity."   Says Orsbourn, "There are tips and tricks that set the foundation for building a mature guest digital experience," which, Sandland adds, can "increase guest satisfaction and loyalty." Orsbourn and Sandland explain how the path to digital maturity also includes gathering consumer data that can be compiled and analyzed to improve the menu, labor scheduling, and operational efficiency. Join us for an engaging conversation on how to place your concept on the cutting edge of the restaurant industry's digital transformation.

Joining the show today are two individuals who I am sure you have seen all over social media and at conferences if your business is restaurants and technology. Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland join the show to talk about their new book, “Delivering the Digital Restaurant; The Path to Digital Maturity.” This falls on the heels of the must have book from last year, “Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food.”Meredith Sandland is the CEO of Empower Delivery, a software company that enables restaurants to profitably and sustainably serve off-premise demand. Meredith met with every major restaurant company, food-tech company, real estate company, and VC investor who is exploring the online food revolution. In Empower Delivery, she found what she had been looking for: a restaurant tech company built from the ground up to service the on-demand consumer. Prior to Empower Delivery, Sandland created and drove disruptive growth as Chief Development Officer at Taco Bell, America's largest Mexican-inspired restaurant, and as COO at Kitchen United, a ghost-kitchen start-up that is rolling out nationally.Carl Orsbourn is a global retail executive and board member whose experience spans blue-chip companies, disruptive start-up ventures, and restaurants. As COO of Juicer, Carl leads business development, partnerships, and operations for this innovative start-up supporting the development of dynamic pricing capability for restaurants. At Kitchen United, Carl established the operating model and led operations & customer success for one of the country's foremost ghost kitchen providers.Carl and Meredith serve as advisors and board members at several food-service and tech start-ups. They have been recognized as Power Players by Nations Restaurant News and Business Insider for their thought leadership in supporting restaurants to adapt to the challenges and opportunities offered through digitization, technology, and automation.Don't worry, this episode is not just a sales pitch for the book. We dig much deeper in conversation about things like figuring out what “digital” means to the restaurant industry, order throttling, dynamic pricing, converting 3rd party to a 1st party customers, the gig workforce and even talk about the good and evil of AI.How To Contact MeWebsite: https://SkipKimpel.com (all archived shows and...

I coach my clients all the time to stop running a restaurant and start running a business. You can either have a restaurant strategy or keep putting out daily fires. Having a strategy is pro-active and moves your business forward. In this week's episode of the podcast, I am speaking with restaurant strategy experts Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland. Listen as Carl and Meredith coach us on: - What many operators are missing in their restaurant strategy - A new approach to your business post-pandemic - Building on pivots restaurants have had to execute. - Being a pro-active strategist not a firefighter - Necessary technology for your restaurant today - The ins and outs of third-party delivery - Is a ghost kitchen right for your operation? And of course, we speak about Carl and Meredith's second Book “Delivering the Digital Restaurant, The Path to Digital Maturity”. This book gives you the how-to roadmap to execute a digital restaurant strategy in your operation. Listen, get inspired and then go out and Rock YOUR Restaurant! Roger The Restaurant Academy - Tools to increase sales, maximize profits, rock your marketing, and build new & repeat business! https://restaurantrockstars.com/joinacademy/ Learn the Top 3 Restaurant Profit Killers and how to fix them - the answers might surprise you! (FREE) https://restaurantrockstars.com/profits/ Thank you to our sponsors: Smithfield Culinary – Inspiring head-turning menu creativity. Visit us for culinary trends and chef-created recipes: https://smithfieldculinary.com/smithfield Zinch - Listeners of the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast receive their loan application fees waived, a $250 value at financingthatworks.com Whirks: We will help you determine your eligibility for The Employee Retention Tax Credit for 2020 & 2021 https://page.whirks.com/employee-retention-credit

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with the authors of “Delivering the Digital Restaurant: The Path to Digital Maturity,” Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn. Sandland, co-author of two books, “Delivering the Digital Restaurant, Your Roadmap to the Future of Food”, as well as the new one “Delivering the Digital Restaurant, The Path to Digital Maturity.” Sandland says, “My background, I was at Taco Bell for many years, leading development there and building lots and lots of Taco Bells and started to wonder, why are we building all these Taco Bells next to malls when no one goes to malls anymore? That seems kind of weird. And that planted a seed which only grew when we tried to enter Manhattan and I thought, why are we paying the world's most expensive real estate prices when 40% of our sales are going out-the-door delivery.”Orsbourn before meeting Sandland was working for a large oil and gas company but spent 15 years in the retail space. “I wanted to speak to folks that had made that transition from big company blue chip world into the startup environment and a mutual friend of Meredith and mine introduced us and it was through the conversation there that Meredith said I'm doing this thing in ghost kitchens now and at that time I thought well this is a doozy, isn't it,” Orsbourn said. Sandland who had joined Kitchen United explained the logic about why ghost kitchens made sense and Orsbourn was immediately drawn in. Orsbourn also joined the Kitchen United team and helped them build out the operational model. Orsbourn talks about every big restaurant chain in the U.S. that was looking to explore ghost kitchens and trying to understand the digital disruption that was happening, He says, “When you're doing something new, it's not easy to help people see that future, especially when there are hundreds of millions of dollars being plowed into this space and a lot of restaurants at that time were very begrudging towards the whole idea of this and that's where the genesis of the initial book came.”They talk about digital maturity and how an operator can recognize where they fall on the digital maturity scale. Orsbourn says, “A digitally mature restaurant is, and there's a story that is told in this, Jimmy, as you go through it because, in many ways, a fully digitally mature restaurant is one that in many ways needs to reorient its entire business model towards what it's gonna take to become digitally mature.” To hear about digitally native restaurants and holistic technology plus get the answers for Trivia Tuesday check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout podcast, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “ The Finance Guy” chat with the authors of “Delivering the Digital Restaurant: The Path to Digital Maturity,” Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn. Sandland, co-author of two books, “Delivering the Digital Restaurant, Your Roadmap to the Future of Food”, as well as the new one “Delivering the Digital Restaurant, The Path to Digital Maturity.” Sandland says, “My background, I was at Taco Bell for many years, leading development there and building lots and lots of Taco Bells and started to wonder, why are we building all these Taco Bells next to malls when no one goes to malls anymore? That seems kind of weird. And that planted a seed which only grew when we tried to enter Manhattan and I thought, why are we paying the world's most expensive real estate prices when 40% of our sales are going out-the-door delivery.”Orsbourn before meeting Sandland was working for a large oil and gas company but spent 15 years in the retail space. “I wanted to speak to folks that had made that transition from big company blue chip world into the startup environment and a mutual friend of Meredith and mine introduced us and it was through the conversation there that Meredith said I'm doing this thing in ghost kitchens now and at that time I thought well this is a doozy, isn't it,” Orsbourn said. Sandland who had joined Kitchen United explained the logic about why ghost kitchens made sense and Orsbourn was immediately drawn in. Orsbourn also joined the Kitchen United team and helped them build out the operational model. Orsbourn talks about every big restaurant chain in the U.S. that was looking to explore ghost kitchens and trying to understand the digital disruption that was happening, He says, “When you're doing something new, it's not easy to help people see that future, especially when there are hundreds of millions of dollars being plowed into this space and a lot of restaurants at that time were very begrudging towards the whole idea of this and that's where the genesis of the initial book came.”They talk about digital maturity and how an operator can recognize where they fall on the digital maturity scale. Orsbourn says, “A digitally mature restaurant is, and there's a story that is told in this, Jimmy, as you go through it because, in many ways, a fully digitally mature restaurant is one that in many ways needs to reorient its entire business model towards what it's gonna take to become digitally mature.” To hear about digitally native restaurants and holistic technology plus get the answers for Trivia Tuesday check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.

#223 - Digitizing Your Restaurant with Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: KICKFIN Thousands of restaurants across the country use Kickfin to send instant, cashless tip payouts, directly to their employees’ bank accounts, the second their shift ends. Get in touch today for a personalized demo and see how restaurants and bars across the country are tipping out with Kickfin. VISIT: kickfin.com/demo. ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: POPMENU If you’re a restaurant owner you need a great website that not only looks beautiful, but helps drive more traffic and sales. Use POPMENU to take your business to the next level. Best of all, listeners of this show can lock in one, set monthly rate… and get $100 off their first month. VISIT: https://popmenu.com/restaurantstrategy ***** Carl Orsbourn & Meredith Sandland are two of the smartest people in the industry, especially when it comes to the topic of digitizing your restaurant. Just last month they released their 2nd book, a follow-up to their wildly popular Delivering the Digital Restaurant. This new one is something of a "how-to" guide for restaurant operators trying to navigate this bold, new landscape. We dig into a bunch of different areas on Episode 222 of the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. IMPORTANT LINKS: Buy Both Books: https://www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com/order Original Book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/40qhHvk New Book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3K5RfSd ***** Same results, with a new name: The P3 Mastermind ProgramThe 3 Ps stand for PROFIT, PROCESS, and PROGRESS -- our 3 pillars! Learn more by setting up a FREE 30-minute Strategy Session: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/schedule

Join second time guests Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn where we talk about the practical application of delivery, digital ordering, and the tools all restaurants need to be thinking about when going to a digital channel. Delivering - The Digital Restaurant explores the world of off-premise food and the massive disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of restaurateurs, food industry veterans, and start-up entrepreneurs. Restaurateurs are experiencing a similar level of disruption to what retailers faced 20 years ago with the birth of mainstream e-commerce. Changing demographics, social interactions, new digital capabilities & expectations, omnichannel fulfillment networks, and a thirst for convenience & variety have shifted how, what and where people are eating their food.

In this special episode of Take-Away with Sam Oches, Sam talks with Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, co-authors of the new book “Delivering the Digital Restaurant: The Path to Digital Maturity.” This conversation was hosted via LinkedIn Live and covered digital evolution in the restaurant industry, how this evolution is creating opportunities for brands to better access and understand customers and their behaviors, and what has changed since Meredith and Carl wrote their first “Delivering the Digital Restaurant” book in 2021. Have feedback or ideas for Take-Away? Email Sam at sam.oches@informa.com.

Meredith is the CEO of Empower Delivery. The company's software combines the consumer journey, the product journey, and the logistics journey into one integrated piece of software. The software enables all restaurants to profitably and sustainably serve the growing consumer demand for delivered meals. Meredith is also the co-author of “Delivering the Digital Restaurant,” a book that explores the world of off-premise food and the massive disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of restaurateurs, food industry veterans and start-up entrepreneurs. Many restaurants face complexity in the number of tools and apps they use to manage their day-to-day operations. The restaurant industry is showing unprecedented levels of technological innovation – particularly when it comes to ordering – which makes third-party apps and aggregators important for streamlining incoming orders. Innovation is also being seen in restaurant loyalty programs, which have come a long way since the Subway punch cards of the past. Quotes “A lot of restaurant brands were forced into adopting delivery (during the pandemic) when maybe they otherwise didn't want to.” (Meredith) “For operations, it's really about eliminating complexity. There are so many channels and consumers are coming in so many different ways that it creates complexity. As you eliminate complexity, you will find that you have better financial outcomes.” (Meredith) “Every facet of the restaurant industry is being revolutionized by technology.” (Joseph) “Not every server can be the best, but technology can take the elements of that best server and make them consistent across every server. Technology used well in that setting should make the experience better.” (Meredith) “The restaurant industry is one of the only industries where all five senses are engaged.” (Joseph) “A really sophisticated digital restaurant is using 15-20 pieces of software.” (Meredith) Transcript 00:00.00 vigorbranding Everyone today I'm joined by my friend Meredith Sandlin she's the Ceo of empowered delivery and the co-author of delivering the digital restaurant if you are on Linkedin Chances are you have seen her or heard from her because she is out there rocking it. In the media talking about digital or delivery digital. All that stuff. So Marilyn before we hop in while you say hello and give a little bit of backstory. 00:24.58 Meredith Hi there. Well so good to be on the show. Um I've been listening and it is such a good podcast. So I'm excited to be part of it. Um, so yeah, my name is Meredith Sandland and I am the Ceo of empower delivery as well as the co-author of. Delivering the digital restaurant. Ah, your roadmap to the future of food and also the forthcoming delivering the digital restaurant the path to digital maturity which will be out in a couple of weeks here maybe by the time this podcast hears I don't know we'll find out. 00:54.94 vigorbranding Dad's awesome if it is. We'll definitely have a link to it or at the very least have a link to pre-order I'm excited to get my hands on it. Um, you probably can't really see it folks but right back here and on my bookshelf is the book and so um I'm excited to read the new one. Um. 01:08.90 Meredith Um, if you think awesome. 01:12.15 vigorbranding So delivery. It's acing it is just like a really big challenge for restaurant brands large and small. So I think before the pandemic a lot were sort of adverse to it because they didn't really see the value. Ah their format wasn't set up for delivery so on and so forth all all the excuses and then um. 01:16.84 Meredith Move on this. 01:29.71 vigorbranding One day we won't mention the pandemic in these things but it's still we're still in the after effects and what we know is it sort of slingshot at everyone to have to adopt immediately. Um, but it has become a begrudging necessity for a lot of restaurant leaders.

Carl Orsbourn is a global retail executive and board member whose experience spans blue-chip companies, disruptive start-up ventures (Juicer Pricing & Kitchen United), and restaurants (Alfa Co).  Carl has been recognized as a power player by Nations Restaurant News and Business Insider for his thought leadership in supporting restaurants to adapt to the challenges and opportunities offered through digitization, technology, and automation.   Meredith Sandland has created and driven disruptive growth at both Fortune 100 and start-up companies.  She has spent a decade navigating changing consumer demands and restaurant real estate environments. Meridith is the CEO of Empower Delivery, a SaaS company that enables delivery-centric restaurants to manage end-to-end deliver transactions from brand development to logistics through one platform.   We discuss the recent launch of their book Delivering the Digital Restaurant and explore the world of off-premise food and the massive disruption facing restaurants.  They are savvy food industry veterans and their insight on the future of restaurants is eye-opening.  

Meredith Sandland, CEO of Empower Delivery, is one of those people with a knack for creating positive change. In layman's terms, her company helps simplify complex ordering processes to make them more efficient. Listen now to learn about the tie that binds moving parts in a business, overcoming customer friction, and the follow-up to Delivering the Digital Restaurant. Sponsored by: Toast: All-In-1 Restaurant POS — https://bit.ly/3vpeVsc Atmosphere: TV for Your Business — bit.ly/3Mbc2TZ

Meredith Sandland, CEO of Empower Delivery, is one of those people with a knack for creating positive change. In layman's terms, her company helps simplify complex ordering processes to make them more efficient. Listen now to learn about the tie that binds moving parts in a business, overcoming customer friction, and the follow-up to Delivering the Digital Restaurant. Sponsored by: Toast: All-In-1 Restaurant POS — Atmosphere: TV for Your Business —

In this episode, I'm joined by Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, authors of Delivering The Digital Restaurant, and we uncover the importance of digitizing your restaurant in 2023 for increased efficiency, enhanced customer experience, and access to valuable data. We delve into the latest technologies available for the food industry, including online ordering systems, digital menus, and online reservation platforms. This video serves as a comprehensive guide for restaurant owners and managers looking to optimize their businesses. Click here to buy your copy of Delivering The Digital Restaurant

The rate of restaurant tech evolution seems to get faster and faster, with consumers adopting new behaviors and desires with every new app they download. How can restaurants keep up with market demands and use tech to make their business more efficient and profitable? On this episode of Tech Bites, host Jennifer Leuzzi talks to Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, the authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant. Using first- hand accounts of food industry veterans and start-up entrepreneurs innovating the future of food, the book explores the massive disruption facing American restaurants today and a roadmap to successfully navigate today's digital environment.Photo Courtesy of Delivering the Digital Restaurant.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support Tech Bites by becoming a member!Tech Bites is Powered by Simplecast.

In the 29th episode of the Food On Demand Podcast, hosts Tom and Jared interview Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant, about their next book coming soon. They also cover the Kroger-Albertsons mega merger and Reef hitting a municipal snag in Texas and Pennsylvania.

It's Episode 122 of the Restaurant Expert Round-up. In this episode we're chatting with Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, the authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant. We're going to DIG DEEP into TWO TOPICS today: 1st - How the future will make delivery work better for everyone 2nd - The changing consumer – why delivery is here to stay Meredith's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-sandland Carl's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/carlorsbourn Website: www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com  

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, Authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food, to discuss their new book, ghost kitchens and how to win at off-premise.Sandland talks about her background in the industry. She shares that she has spent over 10 years in the space, initially at Taco Bell, where she worked on brand turnaround, and then in real estate development. As she continued to scale the brand and opened locations in more expensive markets that had deliveries accounting for 40% of sales, she thought to herself, “It would be so awesome if there was just a commissary that we could deliver tacos out of.” Her forward thinking became a reality a few years later with the launch of ghost kitchens. Sandland connected with and joined the team at Kitchen United. She says, “They were making the thing, that I, as the customer, the Chief Development Officer of a big national chain, wished existed, and so I went and joined them.” She teases that this part of her story intersects with that of her co-author, Carl Orsbourn. Orsbourn, who held a senior level position at a major convenience retail leader, where he was accountable for $1.3 billion in sales of all in-store products, shares that during his experience in that role, he started to see a change in dynamics of food, and the way in which customers were becoming increasingly more demanding about convenience and better foods. He talks about his interest in getting involved in the start-up environment, which led to a mutual friend introducing him to Meredith Sandland. He shares that although he was new to the ghost kitchen concept when Sandland first mentioned it, but once he realized the opportunity in building out a customer success model and being able to scale it, he knew it was the right next step for his career.Schatzberg asks Sandland and Orsbourn to talk about what led to them writing their book, Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food. Orsbourn shares that between the two of them, they had been working and communicating with “pretty much every major restaurant chain in America”, and as they spoke to many independents, those conversations all had a similar thread, restaurants were having an immense challenge in trying to figure out how to win when it came to off-premise. Operators wanted to know, “How do we succeed in a ghost kitchen? What are some of the ways in which we need to be better, or what we do to succeed?” Sandland shares that they decided to buy a book to help navigate operators through those uncertainties, but after doing some research, no such book existed, so they decided to write one. Sandland recalls saying, “Let's write that book. Let's help the industry. Let's try and take all the various different players that are doing some really exciting things in this space, and tell their story.” They discuss the process of interviewing numerous players in the space, such as technology and restaurant leaders, to gain the insights and strategies to winning the off-premise game. They acknowledge that although some operators have shared their fears about this being “a very scary time to be in the restaurant industry.” Orsbourn says, “It's also one of the most optimistic and exciting times as well, and the future is bright and hopefully anyone that reads Delivering the Digital Restaurant will get that feeling.”Frischling says, “I think your book is not just for the industry, but it's also I think, for the consumer and our guests to understand what is going on in this transformation and how all these different generations are interacting with the food service and hospitality industry.” Sandland adds, “It has been really well received. We're very pleased about that.”To hear more from Sandland and Orsbourn about their book, their thoughts on the rise of curbside and what's next with ghost kitchens versus virtual kitchens, check out their full chat with Schatzberg and Frischling, in this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.

In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy'' and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy'' chat with Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, Authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food, to discuss their new book, ghost kitchens and how to win at off-premise.Sandland talks about her background in the industry. She shares that she has spent over 10 years in the space, initially at Taco Bell, where she worked on brand turnaround, and then in real estate development. As she continued to scale the brand and opened locations in more expensive markets that had deliveries accounting for 40% of sales, she thought to herself, “It would be so awesome if there was just a commissary that we could deliver tacos out of.” Her forward thinking became a reality a few years later with the launch of ghost kitchens. Sandland connected with and joined the team at Kitchen United. She says, “They were making the thing, that I, as the customer, the Chief Development Officer of a big national chain, wished existed, and so I went and joined them.” She teases that this part of her story intersects with that of her co-author, Carl Orsbourn. Orsbourn, who held a senior level position at a major convenience retail leader, where he was accountable for $1.3 billion in sales of all in-store products, shares that during his experience in that role, he started to see a change in dynamics of food, and the way in which customers were becoming increasingly more demanding about convenience and better foods. He talks about his interest in getting involved in the start-up environment, which led to a mutual friend introducing him to Meredith Sandland. He shares that although he was new to the ghost kitchen concept when Sandland first mentioned it, but once he realized the opportunity in building out a customer success model and being able to scale it, he knew it was the right next step for his career.Schatzberg asks Sandland and Orsbourn to talk about what led to them writing their book, Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food. Orsbourn shares that between the two of them, they had been working and communicating with “pretty much every major restaurant chain in America”, and as they spoke to many independents, those conversations all had a similar thread, restaurants were having an immense challenge in trying to figure out how to win when it came to off-premise. Operators wanted to know, “How do we succeed in a ghost kitchen? What are some of the ways in which we need to be better, or what we do to succeed?” Sandland shares that they decided to buy a book to help navigate operators through those uncertainties, but after doing some research, no such book existed, so they decided to write one. Sandland recalls saying, “Let's write that book. Let's help the industry. Let's try and take all the various different players that are doing some really exciting things in this space, and tell their story.” They discuss the process of interviewing numerous players in the space, such as technology and restaurant leaders, to gain the insights and strategies to winning the off-premise game. They acknowledge that although some operators have shared their fears about this being “a very scary time to be in the restaurant industry.” Orsbourn says, “It's also one of the most optimistic and exciting times as well, and the future is bright and hopefully anyone that reads Delivering the Digital Restaurant will get that feeling.”Frischling says, “I think your book is not just for the industry, but it's also I think, for the consumer and our guests to understand what is going on in this transformation and how all these different generations are interacting with the food service and hospitality industry.” Sandland adds, “It has been really well received. We're very pleased about that.”To hear more from Sandland and Orsbourn about their book, their thoughts on the rise of curbside and what's next with ghost kitchens versus virtual kitchens, check out their full chat with Schatzberg and Frischling, in this episode of Hospitality Hangout on Spotify.

The omnichannel experience that first wreaked havoc with the retail industry quickly began to make its impact on the restaurant industry even before the pandemic. The disruption caused by the pandemic accelerated this trend requiring restaurant owners of national chains and family-run businesses as well as every restaurant version in between to adapt or die.Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland worked together at Kitchen United, a ghost kitchen headquartered in Pasadena, CA in the early days of the company still in its start-up phase. Osbourn had formerly worked in the convenience retail world for 15 years at BP in the convenience store space where he first saw the shift in consumerism coupled with an increased desire for healthier food.Prior to joining Kitchen United, Sandland spent a decade working within the restaurant industry at Taco Bell where she started in brand development and then moved on to real estate development. When the omnichannel disruption created the desire for a “commissary where she could simply deliver tacos out the door and not have a restaurant, particularly in high-congested areas such as Manhattan.”At Kitchen United, the two worked together to create a business model that would support Sandland's dreams. And Orsbourn was introduced to “this incredible ecosystem of restaurants that are looking to change and move with the times. Even though they were looking to work in a ghost kitchen environment, which, of course, was pre-pandemic at this stage, a lot of them were actually still struggling to adapt to change.” Their experiences working with clients and consumers inspired them to collaborate on writing a book that would help restaurants succeed in a ghost kitchen world. And, in 2021, they published Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food.

The omnichannel experience that first wreaked havoc with the retail industry quickly began to make its impact on the restaurant industry even before the pandemic. The disruption caused by the pandemic accelerated this trend requiring restaurant owners of national chains and family-run businesses as well as every restaurant version in between to adapt or die.Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland worked together at Kitchen United, a ghost kitchen headquartered in Pasadena, CA in the early days of the company still in its start-up phase. Osbourn had formerly worked in the convenience retail world for 15 years at BP in the convenience store space where he first saw the shift in consumerism coupled with an increased desire for healthier food.Prior to joining Kitchen United, Sandland spent a decade working within the restaurant industry at Taco Bell where she started in brand development and then moved on to real estate development. When the omnichannel disruption created the desire for a “commissary where she could simply deliver tacos out the door and not have a restaurant, particularly in high-congested areas such as Manhattan.”At Kitchen United, the two worked together to create a business model that would support Sandland's dreams. And Orsbourn was introduced to “this incredible ecosystem of restaurants that are looking to change and move with the times. Even though they were looking to work in a ghost kitchen environment, which, of course, was pre-pandemic at this stage, a lot of them were actually still struggling to adapt to change.”Their experiences working with clients and consumers inspired them to collaborate on writing a book that would help restaurants succeed in a ghost kitchen world. And, in 2021, they published Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food.

On season 2, episode 14 of the Build Better Podcast, Anastasia welcomes Meredith Sandland, co-author of the book, “Delivering the Digital Restaurant.” Previously, she served as the chief development officer at Taco Bell, and as the COO of Kitchen United.  Sandland has created and driven disruptive growth at both Fortune 100 and start-up companies, and has spent a decade navigating changing consumer demands and real estate environments for restaurants. She shares more about the recent shifts in consumer behavior, and how the emergence of ghost kitchens and other methods of food delivery are impacting the restaurant industry.

Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland are Co-authors of the book Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food. They're also the Co-founders of Learn.Delivery, a website dedicated to helping food and beverage executives optimize their off-premise businesses and succeed in the digital economy. Carl has extensive global experience implementing product strategies, change, and innovation in retail, virtual restaurant, and digital food-related environments. Previously, he was Head of Retail at BP and the Vice President of Operations at Kitchen United. Meredith spent two decades as a consultant for corporate strategy and restaurant development. She helped build over 1000 restaurants as Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands/Taco Bell and served as the Chief Operating Officer at Kitchen United. Now, Meredith is at the forefront of the profound change in America's food consumption patterns. In this episode… The global pandemic crammed about 10 years of digital transformation into 18 months. What does this mean for the restaurant industry? According to Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn's research, it means that you now have to meet the consumer where they're at. Restaurant owners need to be prepared to serve customers wherever, whenever, and however they want to be served. This means adopting DoorDash, UberEats, or a first-party ordering platform. It also means rethinking your menu, packaging, and process for adding extra additions like beverages. So, how can you start adopting these changes today? In this episode of the SpotOn Series, Chad Franzen is joined by Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, Co-authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant, to discuss how to upgrade your digital restaurant strategy. They talk about the industry experiences that influenced their innovative ideas, why ghost kitchens and virtual brands are the way of the future, and the key takeaways from their new book.

​​Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn are co-authors of the new book Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food, which explores the massive disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of food industry veterans and start-up entrepreneurs innovating the future of food. Combining sociological observations, rich industry data, and insider knowledge, Delivering paints a picture of how food is evolving and how leaders, owners, and operators can successfully innovate and meet the new consumer demands to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.Meredith Sandland spent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After building 1,000+ restaurants as the Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands' Taco Bell, Meredith observed that the on-demand economy was starting to affect restaurants. Meredith joined ghost kitchen start-up Kitchen United as employee #4 to create their business model, raise initial capital, and serve as the public face of the GV (Google Ventures)-backed disruptor. Carl Orsbourn led BP-owned ampm and its billion-dollar grab-and-go food and beverage offering across the brand's 1,000+ convenience retail locations. At BP, Carl obsessed over consumer convenience and transformed ampm's fresh food offerings to deliver record growth. In 2018, Carl joined Kitchen United to lead Operations, working with restaurant brands to reinvent an operating system that capitalized on the rapidly changing face of food delivery. Carl & Meredith created Delivering the Digital Restaurant's online companion, LEARN.DELIVERY, to help restaurants succeed in the digital economy. Learn. Delivery provides access to tools designed by leading experts that enable restaurants to chart their own path to digital maturity.

Welcome to The Restaurant Coach Podcast it is the cure for the common restaurant. The digital frontier is here my friends and if your restaurant is not actively looking on creating a strategy that incorporates digital delivery into you revenue steams you are going to be in big trouble this year. Digital isn't just about … Continue reading Episode 90 – Digital Restaurant Strategies with Carl Orsbourn & Meredith Sandland →

Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn are the authors of the Amazon #1 Best-selling book, "Delivering the Digital Restaurant".  Meredith comes with experience at Bain & Company, Yum! Brands, and Kitchen United. Carl has previously worked as the Head of Retail at bp, VP of Operations at Kitchen United, and Managing Director at People's California. We are excited to share their insights!On this episode, Meredith, Carl, and Zack discuss: How restaurants can win in the coming yearsHow societal changes affect restaurantsConsumers are driving change, not VC/techWhat it's like to co-author a book during a pandemicMoreThanks, Carl and Meredith!

Without question, one of the foundational elements of our industry's future is food delivery. But, almost two years into the delivery revolution, many of us are still struggling with execution and profitability. But what if there was a roadmap that could guide us toward success? Today we chat with Carl Orsbourn & Meredith Sandland, authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant. Together, we tackle the big ideas in the book and offer some actionable advice on how you can capitalize on the massive demand out there for food delivery. TIME STAMPED SHOW NOTES [2:30] Building the playbook: The Origin Story [6:08] Translating marketing: Understanding your niche's values [7:35] The right offering for the right location [8:20] Giving the customer what they want: Making money while experimenting [9:50] Converting your customers off the delivery platforms [13:40] Expanding revenue through delivery: How to serve your consumer demand [17:20] Ghost Kitchens: The fundamentals of success [20:47] Strategies for Surprise & Delight through delivery [24:50] The rise of personalization & The future of Dine-In: It all comes down to data [28:14] Shaping your restaurant to serve [30:23] A hopeful view for the industry To pick up their book visit https://www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com FULL COMP is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time. ________________________________ CLICK HERE to Chat with Josh Free Download: 5 Steps to Achieve a 15% Net Profit We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out the FULL COMP media universe by visiting: FULL COMP Restaurant Marketing School The Playbook Industry Town Halls

The pandemic has permanently changed the restaurant landscape and the way we must do business in the future. As restaurateurs, we must stay relevant to our consumer and consistently deliver convenience, value, quality and service. Countless businesses and successful companies that once dominated their industries and didn't evolve, no longer exist. Don't let this happen to your operation. In this episode of the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast, I'm speaking with Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, industry veterans and co-authors of the new book “Delivering the Digital Restaurant, the Roadmap to the Future of Food” and cofounders of Learn.Delivery. Listen on as we talk about: • The massive disruption that continues to shape our industry and what this means for you the operator • What restaurant guests are looking for in the restaurants they patronize and their new expectations • Necessary technology and customer conveniences that you must offer • The steps you must take to not just survive, but to thrive now and in the years ahead • How the labor crisis will be resolved and what your restaurant can do now And how to increase efficiency, decrease costs and lower the need for labor by pivoting to a ghost kitchen or virtual restaurant. Survival of the Fittest has never been more relevant. To move forward as restaurateurs, we must stay ahead of trends, technology, and most of all the competition. Watch or listen to this episode and then go out there and ROCK your Restaurant! Roger Thank you to our sponsors: The Restaurant Rockstars Academy – The Ultimate Start-up & Management Courses. Everything you need to know to crush it in the restaurant business: https://restaurantrockstars.com/pricing/ Sysco - https://www.sysco.com/ 7shifts – Get 3 Months of Industry Leading Labor Management for FREE: https://www.7shifts.com/restaurantrockstars

Join us for a fascinating interview with Meredith Sandland, coauthor of “Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food.” Meredith, a former Yum Brands/Taco Bell and Kitchen United executive, joined forces with her United Kitchen colleague Carl Orsbourn to pen this best-selling tome. They artfully explore the current disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of restaurateurs, food industry veterans and start-up entrepreneurs.    A detailed, insightful and lively read, “Delivering the Digital Restaurant” is, indeed, a roadmap for independent restaurant operators hoping to successfully navigate the future of the business. In fact, helping independents prepare “for this new frontier was a big motivation behind the book," says Meredith.   In this episode of the Corner Booth, Meredith leads us on a deep dive into the development of ghost kitchens and virtual concepts, how and why they work, how they are different, and how more restaurant operators can succeed by using these models to expand their businesses. She also shares her three steps for takeout/delivery success that every independent operator should be doing today.   Many of us are fully aware that the digital age of restaurants is in full force. Listen in as Meredith explains how you can leverage it to build your brand. (By the way, you can order “Delivering the Digital Restaurant” directly from the publisher at https://www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com)

#142 - INTERVIEW with Carl Orsbourn & Meredith Sandland This week's episode is also sponsored by STOCK MFG. With Stock you get all the style of retail, with the price, continuity, and customer service of a traditional uniform vendor. They offer an assortment of everyday items that are ready to ship with no minimum order quantity, and can also create custom uniforms to fit any aesthetic. Visit: stockmfg.co/chip to get get started. ***** Carl and Meredith have written a book that is both limely and timeless. Delivering the Digital Restaurant tracks the events that got us to this moment and maps out a future that offers all kinds of incredible opportunities for operators who are hungry for change. The key to profitability, they say, is wrapped up in our ability to rethink what we do and how we do it. Convenience and individuality is going to be paramount in the next decade, and those who fail to recognize that will fail to exist. IMPORTANT LINKS: Order directly from Carl & Meredith: https://www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com Order the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1645439488/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1645439488&linkCode=as2&tag=restauran0e69-20&linkId=226fe096b8c05fd35f94dd228478def1 Continuing Education: https://www.learn.delivery *****Join me for a FREE 3-day challenge starting on Monday, November 29... get ready for the year ahead so 2022 can be your most profitable one yet: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/challenge

#142 - INTERVIEW with Carl Orsbourn & Meredith Sandland This week's episode is also sponsored by STOCK MFG. With Stock you get all the style of retail, with the price, continuity, and customer service of a traditional uniform vendor. They offer an assortment of everyday items that are ready to ship with no minimum order quantity, and can also create custom uniforms to fit any aesthetic. Visit: stockmfg.co/chip to get get started. ***** Carl and Meredith have written a book that is both limely and timeless. Delivering the Digital Restaurant tracks the events that got us to this moment and maps out a future that offers all kinds of incredible opportunities for operators who are hungry for change. The key to profitability, they say, is wrapped up in our ability to rethink what we do and how we do it. Convenience and individuality is going to be paramount in the next decade, and those who fail to recognize that will fail to exist. IMPORTANT LINKS: Order directly from Carl & Meredith: https://www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com Order the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1645439488/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1645439488&linkCode=as2&tag=restauran0e69-20&linkId=226fe096b8c05fd35f94dd228478def1 Continuing Education: https://www.learn.delivery *****Join me for a FREE 3-day challenge starting on Monday, November 29... get ready for the year ahead so 2022 can be your most profitable one yet: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/challenge

Hear what these two digital restaurant savants and best-selling authors, Meredith Sandland & Carl Orsbourn, have to say about the future of the restaurant industry and what possible challenges restaurant operators may face during the digital age. Our guests had the idea to write their book, Delivering the Digital Restaurant, as they ''want the industry to survive this big omnichannel shift. And to do that, they need some tools and a group discussion to talk about how to navigate this"!Moments to Listen For:• The 2 Sides of Algorithmic Growth for Restaurants  - Not only has the digital age introduced new avenues for exponential growth for restaurants such as with ghost kitchens and online ordering, but it will also allow operators to use data and algorithms to optimize their advertising & operations to help grow their brand. • Bringing the Restaurant to the People - The digital restaurant will allow brands to transcend their brick-and-mortar locations, and bring the restaurant right to their guests' doorstep. Convenience is key. • Cater to Your Workers - The new generation of workers, the Millenials and Gen-We (a.k.a Gen-Z), is a different beast. They are truly digital natives and have different priorities than previous generations such as being motivated by purpose-driven work. Reaching and appealing to them will be a challenge for many operators. • Be Nimble & Aim to Innovate - The digital age brings a lot of unknowns to the restaurant industry. To be successful, operators must be willing to innovate, experience, and recognize that they're going to fail at times. Being flexible and having an agile tech stack will help you be ready for any change that is still to come.Resources:• Get your copy of Delivering the Digital Restaurant! • 5 Things You Need to Know About Gen We.• Is Your Digital Foundation Built on Sand or Stone? • 10 Best Practices for Launching a Virtual Brand & Ghost KitchenConnect with Meredith & Carl on LinkedIn!

With excitement allow me to introduce to you today's guest, Meredith Sandland. Prior to co-authoring Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food, Meredith spent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After Building 1,000+ restaurants the Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands' Taco Bell, Meredith observed that the on-demand economy was starting to affect restaurants. Meredith joined ghost kitchen start-up, Kitchen United as employee #4 to create their business model, raise initial capital, and serve as the public face of the Google Venture-backed disruptor. Check out the book: Delivering The Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap To The Future Of Food by Meredith Sandland and Carl Osbourn Show notes… Calls to ACTION!!! Join Restaurant Unstoppable Network and connect with my past guest and a community of superfans. Subscribe to the Restaurant Unstoppable YouTube Channel Join the private Unstoppable Facebook Group Join the email list! (Scroll Down to get the Vendor List!) Favorite success quote or mantra: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” In today's lecture with Meredith Sandland we will discuss: All of the major points discussed in full detail in the book Delivering the Digital Restaurant Today's sponsor: Diageo Bar Academy equips bartenders, servers, managers, and hospitality professionals with the insights, stories, and tools to be better - raising the bar on industry standards. Diageo Bar Academy reaches a diverse audience, with backgrounds and skill levels of all ranges- providing them with skills, knowledge, and the techniques they need to improve their personal and professional lives. 7shifts is a modern labor management platform, designed by restaurateurs, for restaurateurs. Effectively labor management is more important than ever to ensure profitability and restaurant success. Trusted by over 400,000 restaurant professionals, 7shifts gives you the tools you need to streamline labor operations, communicate with your team, and retain your talent. Best of all 7shifts integrates with the POS and Payroll systems you already use and trust (like Toast!) turning labor into a competitive advantage for your business. Restaurant Unstoppable members get 3 months, absolutely free. MarginEdge is completely free for new customers until September. No setup fees. No integration fees. No commitment. Take your back office paperwork down to 2-3 minutes a day while creating real-time financial views to inform your path ahead. Contact info: You can buy the book right here! Get the book straight from the authors at www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com Check out learn.delivery Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for joining today! Have some feedback you'd like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for the Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them. And finally, don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. Huge thanks to Meredith Sandland for joining me for another awesome episode. Until next time!   Restaurant Unstoppable is a free podcast. One of the ways I'm able to make it free is by earning a commission when sharing certain products with you. I've made it a core value to only share tools, resources, and services my guest mentors have recommend, first. If you're finding value in my podcast, please use my links!

In the 20th episode of the Food On Demand Podcast, hosts Tom and Nick give a brief preview of this year's Food On Demand Conference, and interview Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn, authors of “Delivering the Digital Restaurant,” about delivery providers diversifying their offerings, the convergence of the grocery and restaurants, and how these changes will show themselves in the build form of suburbia.

Delivering the Digital Restaurant teaches how to build a successful digital restaurant business that will survive and thrive into the future. Authors Meredith Sandland (@meresandland) and Carl Orsbourn (@carlorsbourn) were guests on the Digital Hospitality podcast to discuss what they learned while writing their must-read restaurant business book, Delivering the Digital Restaurant Your Roadmap to the Future of Food. ➤ ORDER THE BOOK: https://www.deliveringthedigitalrestaurant.com Three Takeaways From This Podcast Episode: https://youtu.be/Wgqlw9npU28   1. Monthly Services Make Daily Differences – There was a time when only corporate companies could afford access to digital innovations that optimized orders or operations. That time has passed. Regardless of your size or scale, consider implementing software or systems that might come with a monthly fee but will change your business for the better day after day.   2. Your Competition is Your Community – We are all in this together. By having conversations with the restaurants in your community and discussing trends in your industry, you can create a better food landscape for your city or neighborhood as a whole.   3. There's No Such Thing as Throwaway Content – With all the research that went into writing a book, Carl and Meredith still had 90 percent of their conversations scrapped from the final copy that hit Amazon. So, did they just discard it? Of course not! They will continue to share untold stories through their social platforms as should you.   When Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland began writing their book, Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Road Map to the Future of Food, they didn't know how they'd finish it, but they knew why they had to. “Our 'why' is really about helping restaurants navigate this digital change,” beams Meredith Sandland on the Digital Hospitality podcast. “We are incredibly passionate about the magnitude of this change and want to see everyone successfully get through it and thrive because they have figured out how to master it.” As alluded, that change is seeing restaurants of every size, shape and scale embrace evolving technology to better serve their customer base and grow their business. For years, both Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn have worked in different ends of the food industry, expanding brands such as Taco Bell and British Petroleum to a new world with new customers. “I was seeing the enormous level of change of better quality food in the gas station environment,” reflects Carl Orsbourn. “There's so much change happening, so many exciting things that really are only at the front of where I think this industry is going.” Meeting at ghost kitchen company Kitchen United, the co-workers turned co-authors were already on the cutting edge of where the food industry was headed in the 2020s. After years of working for big brands and joining forces at a start-up, both could see that change was imminent. However, no one knew just how much 2020 would expedite this dramatic digital shift. “Everything that's happening is really an existential crisis for the restaurant industry,” Meredith Sandland shares. “We started the book back before the pandemic when we thought this would all take three to five years to play out. Of course, the pandemic accelerated all of that and laid bare the digital divide.”   Digital Restaurants: Because of the rapid change the restaurant industry faced due to the Coronavirus pandemic, restaurants either adapted or closed during the tough and evolving times. Even for those businesses that are still standing, it's essential that they learn through their competition and peers to best adjust their strategy and tools for the good of the communities they serve. “It is critical to figure this out together,” notes Meredith. “When I think in particular of our local independent restaurants, the ones that are the fabric of our community that make ...

For our tenth episode, we welcome the authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant, Carl Osbourn and Meredith Sandland. Delivering The Digital Restaurant explores the world of off premise food and the massive disruption facing American  restaurants through first-hand accounts of restaurateurs, food industry veterans, and start up entrepreneurs. We chat about how the book came about, who it's for, and how technology can help restaurant during the labor crisis.The Restaurant Growth Podcast is presented by 7shifts, and hosted by Dominick "DJ" Costantino.About Meredith SandlandSpent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After building 1000+ restaurants as the Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands' Taco Bell, Meredith observed that the on-demand economy was starting to affect restaurants. Meredith joined ghost kitchen start-up Kitchen United as employee #4 to create their business model, raise initial capital, and serve as the public face of the GV (Google Ventures) backed disruptor. Meredith lives in Orange County, California with her three favorite guys: husband, Scott; son, Lincoln; and dog, Kobe. About Carl Osbourn Carl led BP-owned ampm and its billion-dollar grab-and go food and beverage offering across the brand's 1000+ convenience retail locations. At BP, Carl obsessed over consumer convenience, and transformed ampm's fresh food offerings to deliver record growth. In 2018, Carl joined  Kitchen United to lead Operations, working with restaurant brands to reinvent an operating system that capitalized on the rapidly changing face of  food delivery. Carl, his wife Elicia, and their two cats, Positano and Ravello, live in Orange County, California.About 7shifts7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

For our tenth episode, we welcome the authors of Delivering the Digital Restaurant, Carl Osbourn and Meredith Sandland. Delivering The Digital Restaurant explores the world of off premise food and the massive disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of restaurateurs, food industry veterans, and start up entrepreneurs. We chat about how the book came about, who it's for, and how technology can help restaurant during the labor crisis. The Restaurant Growth Podcast is presented by 7shifts, and hosted by Dominick "DJ" Costantino. About Meredith Sandland Spent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After building 1000+ restaurants as the Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands' Taco Bell, Meredith observed that the on-demand economy was starting to affect restaurants. Meredith joined ghost kitchen start-up Kitchen United as employee #4 to create their business model, raise initial capital, and serve as the public face of the GV (Google Ventures) backed disruptor. Meredith lives in Orange County, California with her three favorite guys: husband, Scott; son, Lincoln; and dog, Kobe. About Carl Osbourn Carl led BP-owned ampm and its billion-dollar grab-and go food and beverage offering across the brand's 1000+ convenience retail locations. At BP, Carl obsessed over consumer convenience, and transformed ampm's fresh food offerings to deliver record growth. In 2018, Carl joined Kitchen United to lead Operations, working with restaurant brands to reinvent an operating system that capitalized on the rapidly changing face of food delivery. Carl, his wife Elicia, and their two cats, Positano and Ravello, live in Orange County, California. About 7shifts 7shifts is a team management platform designed for restaurants. We help managers and operators spend less time and effort scheduling their staff, reduce their monthly labor costs and streamline team communication. The result is simplified labor management, one shift at a time.

It all started with a good business model, some incredible people, and a cheesy gordita crunch. Meredith Sandland began her unexpected entrance into the restaurant industry as an executive at Taco Bell, then transitioned to work for the ghost kitchen role model: Kitchen United. Her extensive experience in the industry has led Meredith to publish a book, Delivering the Digital Restaurant, where she explores the digitization of the industry and the massive disruption facing American restaurants. (check it out here: https://amzn.to/3iCyfM6) Tune in to hear Meredith and Lee elaborate on ghost kitchens, sociology of consumers, and the future of restaurants.2:38 Introducing Meredith3:51 A transition to Taco Bell10:58 How Covid shifted the restaurant industry14:11 Kitchen United ghost kitchen21:25 Dominos as the original ghost kitchen24:00 Meredith's book release27:50 Sociology and food32:13 Reigniting Taco Bell's growth34:35 Who's killin' it?41:32 Public speaking tips from Meredith