 Welcome back to Geeks are sexy. I'm Jason Laduke. This is the fourth Thursday of the month taking over from Michelle Davis We have a another wonderful guest We're going to share with you in just a second But I do need to talk about our sponsor 5 a.m. Global in the last segment I told you about their event planning capabilities The first thing they always start with if they're going to be a club if you're going to be a client There's a 5 a.m. Global is branding. Do you have the right branding? Do you have effective branding and how they might be able to help you? That's not just your logo on your business cards. That's your whole branding concept So if you have your branding concept locked down, they'll help you refine that and get that out there But if you need some help with that 5 a.m. Global can help you with that too. So looking for branding help 5 a.m. Global Now we're back with our second guest just ran from original cocktail club. You're relatively new to Las Vegas Yeah, really now, but we both went to Boston University. Oh, I went I went a lot earlier than she did We both got our undergraduate degrees from Boston University and you've done a lot of work with other startup companies Yes, and that's what's helped you with your new startup company, right, which is called original cocktail club right here in Las Vegas So welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here So what is original cocktail club and how did you come up with it? Right? So original cocktail club is a subscription based app and members receive Half off their alcohol when they dine at any of our restaurants. Okay, so we have about 40 around town We have, you know, kind of more of your casual fun dining places to more of the fine dining places So we have firefly Chocos and beer we have and iron honey, salt Pierrot's Ferrero's so really like wide gamut of places and yeah when members go they get half off their alcohol and When they dine at any of our restaurants, right? So chances are if you have a favorite restaurant a favorite local's restaurant here in Las Vegas And you're already eating and you're drinking there chances are they're already on your list at this point Yeah, and so you should be getting half off your drinks. It just makes sense. I agree We like to say it's happy hour all the time. I agree. Well, it is Las Vegas So so now how did you come up with this idea? So that's really fascinating. Yeah, so I am a foodie I love going out to dinner. I also like to drink So, you know, I enjoy a good martini or a glass of wine here or there So, um, yeah, I would go out to all these fabulous places and I would see that that was kind of dead like on a random night So our whole concept is we help restaurants fill empty tables at slow times, right? So I was thinking what would help these restaurants bring people in, right? Well, what brings me in places is if they have a good happy hour So basically the concept is to you know, help the restaurants during these slow times And then for the members, it's great because they get to go in try all these new awesome places without breaking the bank Which is great. And so the way you get signed up for this is you have an app, right? And so you go you download you download the app, right off of the either the apple store or the google play store Or to make they can even get your website and get the app, right? Yeah so you can actually sign up on our website and then From there, then you can download the app, right? So you get signed up you download the app You're good to go. It gives you the list of all the places you can see, you know When they're going to have stuff and that's important too Because it's not not every restaurant's doing everything all the time, right? So you guys have a schedule out there that people can see, right? So, I mean, we have some places like honey salt pieros Uh seven than karson furrows. They're actually available every single day, which is great. Thank you. Thank you guys Yeah, which is great. And then some of the restaurants only have certain days But the app allows you to see what's available Like today you can check what's available Next on tuesday or whatever do you feel like going in and then there's also a map feature that allows you to see like What's near you at the moment, right? Which is really cool Which you can see what's going on right now if you and your friends are trying to decide where to go for happy hours So but technology is a big piece of this business, right? What did you learn about technology as you were pulling all this together? You know, um, I think it's really important to like decide what exact what features and exactly what you want And then really find a tech partner who's able to fulfill all those things Um, you know, there's a lot of important decisions that you don't really necessarily think of one year When you have an app that you want to develop like do I is it important for me to have them be local? Like for us that was something important. We really want to outsource Somewhere else we like to support local So there's just a lot of different kind of decisions that you really need to like do a lot of research on to figure Out exactly what you want and how you're going to get it Okay Now do you consider yourself and I always find this question interesting when you look at companies like uber And what they do because they say we're not a transportation company. We're a tech company, right? Do you consider yourself a hospitality company or a tech company and why it's funny because we're not like Really exactly either but I would definitely say that we're more of a hospitality company because Our restaurants kind of make us who we are, you know I mean if we didn't have any good restaurants, nobody would just download the app, right? People want to join original cocktail club because we have this amazing list of all these great restaurants that you can get Half off at and that's kind of what helps us, you know Get people, you know get people in the door help them Get the get download the app and that kind of thing. Okay. So so so kind of at its core while tech is a big piece It's really a hospitality company. It's it's helping these restaurants fill their tables But it's also connecting up it's also connecting up people to the things they love to do to go out and eat and drink So it's core you you think it was a hospitality company, right? I think that's really cool Because a lot of people just like no we're a tech company. Don't regulate us. Yeah. So What was your biggest challenge getting this company going? So there's obviously two sides of the business There's the restaurant side and then there's the user side So starting out I have this great idea, you know, we're going to help restaurants fill empty tables And you go into a restaurant and they ask well, what does your site look like? Can we see your site? Can we see your app? Can we who else is on board? Well, we didn't really have anybody on board. We didn't have a site yet Okay, we're just trying to get restaurants So trying to get restaurants when you don't have any restaurants is very challenging But once you know, you start getting a couple people on board who believe in entrepreneurs And they think that it's a really great idea Then from there, you know, it's we were able to build our restaurant list and What what was the pitch you made when you didn't have a site to show or an app to show? How did you approach doing that pitch to these restaurants because I'm sure they see stuff like this not every day but pretty often Yeah, so I mean it was definitely challenging because restaurants don't want to sign up with what if I Had this janky app. Nobody wants to be associated with that They don't want to put their logo on a website. Sure. Yeah, if it doesn't look good So I think the first thing that we did was got mock-ups. That was like a very first thing So at least we could show them. This is what it's going to look like Okay, and then as soon as we have something that we can you can actually play around with then We would send them those kind of test links and they were able to kind of go from there Okay So and then it just built one at a time until you had a couple then you had your app and you had a couple already To go in the app and then right and now you're off to the races And the other day I had a restaurant actually like a couple restaurants approached me saying how can I come on board? So that was really exciting. That's really great. That's a good position to be in So now that you have restaurants coming to you What do you think your biggest challenge is going to be going forward? So, I mean definitely Once people try the app and they use it one time. They see the value. They see how much they can save I mean, I went to pieros the other night had two martinis a martini. There's 17 dollars So, you know, it pays for itself in one time sitting there So I think you know getting people to try us getting people to see how valuable it is And then from there they see they tell their friends and then that's kind of how we continue to grow So let's let's shift gears. I know this was on the prepared list of questions but let's let's talk about the value right because There are a couple conditions that come on with getting the free the half price drinks, right? So let's talk about how this works when you go into your favorite restaurant if they're a member of this Right. So, I mean most restaurants don't actually have exclusions. A lot of them just say whatever you want So say the only really thing that you have to do is when you go in is order food Right. So once you order food all of your drinks for the night are half off Pieros has bottles of wine that are over 225 dollars are excluded. I think that's fair. I think that's reasonable I'm not a wine guy, but I think that's reasonable But but I mean point being is you need to go in and order some food and help out the restaurant a little but I mean You know if you if you order an entree or even an appetizer in some cases You're you're making out pretty well getting half price martinis somewhere, right? So Yeah, yeah, definitely. So where are you looking to take the company next what what's coming up next for original cocktail clubs? I mean we want to really You know kill it in vegas and then from there go city by city and really kind of expand that way Have you thought about which cities yet? LA would probably be next Based on you know proximity and also a lot of the restaurants that we work with here have sister partners that are there So I feel like it would be a little easier to kind of move into that market. Okay. Yeah All right. Well, how can restaurants reach you? If they're interested in being a partner with you, how can our viewers reach you if they have questions Or if they just want to connect up and learn more about original cocktail club And how could people sign up and and get the app? Yeah, so um, you can go to our website original cocktail club dot com And if you want to reach me you can email me directly at jess at original cocktail club dot com And I actually have a special treat for your viewers. Oh We love that. I know so if they put in w c o b m in caps, they get their first month free. So Awesome. So go to original cocktail club dot com Put in w c o b m all caps. Don't forget very important. Yes, and you'll get your first month for free and that's That's significant. That's right. Yeah, that's right And and I should mention you also have the same deal with a nonprofit, right? Yes So you do some work with nonprofits So you're not so in in addition to given our viewers a discount You actually have something set up where you help some nonprofits where that first month Will go if they sign up through the nonprofit that first month will go to the nonprofit, right? So yeah So and I love when when businesses are finding a way to make lots of money and be socially conscious Exactly and that's what it's all about. All right. Well, thank you for being here Just don't go too far because we're going to bring it back for our panel discussions And you guys don't go too far because next we have lee jackson the executive director from rethink world wide