 and welcome to Restaurants Hawaii on Think Kauai. I am your host, Cheryl Matsuoka, the Executive Director of Hawaii Restaurant Association. Today I would like to have my guests introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about themselves and the company that they represent. So I'm just going to go according to my screen. So I'm going to have first Tony, if you don't mind introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about the company you represent. Sure, well thanks Cheryl. First off, we appreciate the time to present to everybody and answer some questions. I'm actually the founder and president of Pop Menu. We are essentially the only all-in-one platform for restaurants in the United States and we put an extreme focus on the menu. We make that interactive and by doing so it really opens up a world of opportunities for restaurants. I think it's the catalyst for everything in terms of improving your digital footprint so we're excited to spend time with you and more importantly I'd like Kristen who's there locally and a key member of our team that she's there to serve a shoe so I'd love for her to introduce herself. Yes, Kristen please introduce yourself. Aloha and thank you Cheryl for having us on this morning. I'd like to say thank you to everybody for watching Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kristen Montero. I am based in Manoa. I've been in the tech space for I'd say about seven years and I've been consulting helping company scale for the last 10 years. With Pop Menu I'm really here to really help a lot of mom and pops aunties and uncles become more sustainable in their business be able to weed out the middle men and take that control of their business and power so they can drive more customers through their door. So thank you Cheryl. Thank you and Stephanie you want to introduce yourself and then introduce Scott. Absolutely. Hi everyone I'm Stephanie Rodriguez. I work for Spot On Locally I'm the Account Executive so thank you Cheryl for having us and having Spot On be a part of this incredible industry of technology for our restaurant too or so I appreciate it. I have here Scott Euclis. Scott. Hi everyone. Scott Euclis, Spot On I'm the restaurant-turned residence. I spent 30 years in restaurant business. Chef owner of four restaurants in San Francisco it's where I'm based now. I'm working with Spot On for a year and a half and for an end solution for all restaurants of any size from SMB to mid-market to enterprise so glad to be with you all today and thanks for the opportunity to speak to you. Thank you so everyone knows who's listening right now all of our members and subscribers. The pandemic and the employee shortage has changed and even forced the way the food and beverage industry looked at their traditional ways of doing business. So many restaurants have adapted a new reality to include more contactless technology and innovative digital solutions. Technology and innovation helped save many restaurants during this past pandemic so as we transform how we operate not just to survive but to thrive in this new era from going from online ordering to self-checkouts touchless payments the food and beverage industry can no longer afford to ignore the trends that are helping businesses reinvent themselves to remain relevant and competitive. So today the conversation is all about the digital innovative ways that restaurants have implemented these two companies. So let's start off with Tony. So how does your company increase a restaurant's foot traffic? Sure well I think the first thing is simplifying the tech stack you know too many restaurants have to manage six, eight, ten different tools or contractors and that becomes very hard especially when they don't talk to each other that limits basically your ability to optimize foot traffic. The most obvious answer is making sure that your website is optimized for Google. It is by far the number one way that people search and connect with restaurants will over 90% typically will find a restaurant through Google and or direct. And then I think the second thing most obvious and the way you do that is making sure that you have a site that has quality information that you can index the more information they can pull such as individual dish items will drastically improve the amount of free traffic you get. I think the second thing is you have to know your guests. I mean it sounds so obvious people have been saying it for years and there's no better opportunity to know your guests than how they're interacting with your menu. It's the primary decision point for every guest both new and returning. If you have a static menu experience meaning a PDF or static menu I don't know the things that Scott loves. I don't know that Kristen is vegetarian or the things that are Stephanie's that she wants to try. Knowing those things and then putting them into a remarketing engine will drastically improve not just your ability to capture people the first time but how do you get them to come back more frequently. And I think that's a big area of opportunity for every restaurant in the country. So why don't we go ahead then and have maybe Scott you want to take that one. How does your company increase a restaurant's foot traffic. Yeah I mean it's similar. I think Tony Tony nailed it. I think a lot of people are online. The business has changed so much and everyone's online searching for where their next meal what's their next experience. And I think we have a lot of the same ideas where we're trying to find help our help our customers and help restaurants just find the people and let them know where they're at and what they do and best way to kind of tell their story and maybe and restaurants differentiate themselves from maybe their competitors. I'm going to in San Francisco with a very dense more restaurants per capita than almost any city. So how do you really attract them and get them to come in. And I think that's half the battle but you know but then again to continue on Tony's point is once they're there you really need to find a way to you know meet them where they're at one want you know what are the things that they like enhance that experience whether it's from you know with our products like ours with the integrated reserve we call it spot on reserve as a wait list of reservation system that's integrated into the point of sale. So the moment those folks come into the door and the host seats them servers are already seeing all the guest diners their notes and the experiences they've had prior to them and maybe it's a VIP or it's a birthday the servers can you know and bartenders can treat them in a certain way and make sure elevating that experience. So and then obviously with with those great experience they have they're going to you're really ensuring they're going to come back you know and make it a regular spot for them. Great so so Kristen you have any examples of how you were able to increase a restaurant's foot traffic. Yeah so not only do we utilize our dynamic menu which is the patented software technology but we really drive and increase their traffic by really utilizing these remarketing tools right. We we all built a restaurant not to simply just get caught up in the hospitality but really to provide delicious food and when we want to focus on that it takes away from other places like marketing. So being able to nurture your customers in their full funnel so you're driving them back through the door we have something called smart messaging which really allows you to be hands off be in the kitchen do your thing chef it up and at the same time our software is doing the legwork for you and it's it's an employee that you can count is going to show up if they're not going to call off and it really tracks I mean all that data so you don't need to go in and find out okay it's this customer's birthday or they didn't leave a review yet and they ordered with us two weeks ago these are things that we want to automate to really encourage customers to come back. So we center everything around the brand for our customers and our clients and that way the customers know it's your restaurant it's your Giovanni pastrami that they're going back to it's your key head cafe that they're going back to. Nice so Stephanie you have any examples of how you were able to increase restaurants foot traffic? Absolutely and adding to what Scott said and Kristen the marketing tools right we want to make sure that we're targeting our customers and making sure that they're aware of maybe the restaurant tours have a deal going on this week and we you get it through the email us a text messages and coming back for that and I also want to add on little tools like loyalty programs who doesn't love a loyalty program right you're at home thinking I want to go back to my local restaurant my favorite local restaurant and you get a notification hey you get 10% off because you're visiting how many such times so a loyalty program making sure that everything my customer comes into the restaurant they have a smooth experience from the beginning from reservations to dining in to QR codes and at the end of the day I think it's all about that and understanding your customers. I love it I love it and you know one of the things we always talk about is when you have that opportunity and a patron is sitting at the table how do we increase that average check size how do we how do we increase their experience so hey Scott why don't you go ahead and take that one? I can I can tell you firsthand I being a restaurant under myself for many years that's always like that was the thing you know how do we turn how do we get more butts in seats how do we and then once we get them how do we turn them you know and I think with enhanced you know going to a cloud-based system and having being able to have that reporting and data to know where when and when and how often and who is eating your place and being able to you know staff properly and do all these things that it takes to make sure that you are you're you're in tune with your restaurant knowing where you're at knowing knowing the flows the naturally or even just within historically speaking you're looking back so I think those are all really important to it and then other device like the handheld right we're taking table side payments we're taking table side orders really speeding up the service getting I mean people come in after a hard day work if you know whether working at home or they're working in the office wherever they're at you know they're ready they're hungry they want to eat so let's get them those drinks let's get those food as fast as possible which really speeds up that time and making sure that we're getting more people through those doors and increasing that average check size that's awesome yeah yep the Tony any comments on how you're able to increase that average check size yeah again you know pop menu started out we built everything around the menu experience because again it's the primary decision point and if you think about your restaurant today if you have a pdf or static menu experience how are you able to influence the purchase pattern by highlighting your high profit items or signature dishes how are you able to tailor things towards their vegan customers restaurants don't typically do that and so you wait until someone gets on the on premise or you hope through the online that they just choose that one of the ways you can drastically change that is adding one visual content to your menu specifically to individual dish items because what happens is Scott can see that even before he arrives he sees a great visual of grilled octopus and he sees that 214 people love it well he's thinking it must it looks great a lot of people love it he's already thinking about he's going to try it by the time he arrives there so you know on our platform pop menu there's a couple of great sites you can check out hamptonsocial.com is one tracciatorio sofia is another one in texas but on our platform the menu items that are featured and have a visual attached to it have a 303 percent greater engagement rate meaning people clicking on it interacting with it sharing it to social or text ordering etc it is a 202 percent greater order rate so that clearly shows you that if you have a dynamic menu experience you can influence behavior much more than you ever thought possible the challenge is for many restaurants there's not a lot of technology out there that allows that to happen and even if it does part of it it often is expensive I think what we've done is really simplify that and the proof is in the pudding so with the pop menu we actually give free websites email social all those things as part of our platform because we want people to understand that changing the menu experience allows you to influence the guest check not just today but in the future and allows you to pick up all those valuable insights but adding visuals allowing people to interact with it clearly has a direct correlation between driving up the average guest check because you can steer people to what is valuable to you love it I love it thank you so do you want to make any comments Kristen on that yeah I actually want to add with our menu and how we really drive even more purchasing while they're sitting at the table is when they're looking at the menu there's reviews of that specific item on that menu that they're looking at on top of that say they're waiting and they're just waiting on the wait list they're going to get the menu so that by the time they sit down they already know what to order and now you're even getting a higher turnover rate when it comes to your tables so you can fit in more customers and increase your revenue for that evening I've also had one client who specifically pushes out a secret menu when people come to dine in that way people can see and know that there is a secret menu so it's not so secret but it gives that real experience of exclusivity and that ease ability to really just visually see nice imagery descriptions that social validation that we're all looking for going to other third party platforms to find these things and it's all centered around the menu I love that secret menu Stephanie anything you want to add of an experience where you were able to help a restaurant increase their tap absolutely and not only increasing but moving tables faster right we want to make sure that those tables are turning quicker so which I'm really excited to talk about this is our new QR code dining features so employees are busy service are busy running around so instead of waiting for the server to order our customers our clients are able to scan a QR code from their phone and order through the phone so they don't have to wait for that server to come to the table or take that order so we're kind of helping the servers bartenders to kind of speed up a little bit and have a little bit help and just recently we launched you know Hawaii family style yeah so when you have that group of five to ten people you can still order through that phone and just flip the check through that mobile app that we provide so what are we doing we're moving faster we're getting more people in and that's something that a lot of my clients are just not only mind blow but they're loving it because it's definitely helping them see and accepting more customers in the door so that's something that I wanted to add and I think it's something that is exciting that we're even at this level right with technology love it thank you so much all right I'm going to give everybody an opportunity to say one last because before we close you know one last key point maybe I didn't ask the right question maybe there's something that's new that has not been discussed already so do you want to go ahead and take that one Tony anything that I miss no I think you did it look I think every business owner in the country right whether in restaurants or in other businesses you're always looking to do one of three things one how do I drive more customers more revenue with less expenses with less time invested etc if I can't do that I need to figure out how to get more out of my current expenditures in my my current team I think technology I think people have overcharged restaurants for decades on again on a series of tools that we know are can optimize things that's one of the key reasons why we've included so many things in the platform I just think no matter what you do remember that design technology itself does not have to be expensive or take a long time to be great there's this I think about the restaurant space and there's this pie and on the back half you have POS and inventory you know companies like spot on for example companies like toast that do those things really well and then are stabbing or dabbling in other things this other piece of the pie I would argue you know obviously is more important in our in mark in our eyes meaning how do you attract people meaning how do you drive more people to you how do you have a unique user experience so more of them convert into the transaction path and then how do you learn about them so that you're remarketing is really tailored to christen is really tailored to scott's preferences which ultimately give him a much better chance at coming back to you a lot more frequently 10 times a year versus three so what I would just suggest for everybody is focus on the things that are the most impactful to you and then build from there the menu experience by far without a shadow of doubt is the most important thing to your success online that along with your google exposure you master those two things you're already drastically better and then you can really start getting into social and all those other things for really well-rounded solution but I shared a couple of examples in the chat I'm not sure how it came about if it helps people visually to understand what I'm talking about play around on some of those and uh yeah anyway hope that helps a little bit thank you Tony so okay so Kristen you want to go ahead and add before we have to close this show is there anything that we missed or something you have a burning desire to talk about yeah so um I just want to say one thank you Cheryl and thank you thank Tech Hawaii for having us on uh definitely when it comes to technology right especially out here in Hawaii um we have some aunties and uncles that are less tech savvy and then we also have some of the other restaurants that are way more tech savvy and you have a different client tell like UH or something like that either way technology is the way to move forward and survive in our industry today and at pop menu we have made it simple enough because our software is a software built by restaurant owners for restaurant owners and so it is completely simplified for even your gms to be able to go in and manage certain things or your social media person to be able to go in and post directly we're fully integrated into a lot of different softwares for that seamless experience and like Tony said we're the only one in the industry today that is an all in one solution fully integrated love it thank you so Stephanie any closing remarks anything that I missed go for it first of all thank you again for having us and having the spot on family here be part of this show I just want to say how excited I am how open-minded restaurant tours are becoming and let's talk about the mom in Hawaii I see it every day and I'm here for it I'm here to show up in person to help you and to guide you through our technology yeah so thank you so much for having us and we're excited to continue growing locally thank you Stephanie Scott anything that I miss oh this is good we could talk for hours I'm just sure I feel like we're all holding back but that's all right um no I mean you know to you know make to wrap things up I mean we we know as a company and I think we and most companies in restaurant technology have really understood what what you know what's needed and here to help and I think we set ourselves apart really to make sure that our you know our customers are well taken care of and we have you know the top you know customer support and is there to help and people things are going to go wrong or not you have people like Stephanie boots on the ground ready there to be there to help and make sure that you know everyone is taken care of and there and whether things go right things go wrong you know and I think it plays to exactly this the the idea of reducing those vendors and making sure it's easier to you know one less person to pay one and two to call in case something goes wrong so you know that's it's it's been a it's been interesting a couple years obviously and so we're hoping uh the next few years will be better with technology and with with people and so yeah I think uh and thank you for having us I appreciate your time very welcome and you're right Scott and it's our rush our workforce has been very challenging and in Hawaii everybody has right help wanted signs in every single location so technologies help the many restaurants get through this so in closing you know successful restaurants are expanding their digital footprint to stay in business we know that these last two years have been very challenging and even though we see a little uptick right now it doesn't take away the two years where we had no revenue so looking at a digital solution is a way that restaurants you can stay in business and that's my message to our restaurant members today while restaurants are increasing the technology it's also realizing that there are other ways to look at even the employee shortage and how can I use technology in replacing that and increasing my profitability again if you have any questions for today's speakers reach out to me at hawaiirestaurant.org again my name is Sharon Matsuoka the executive director of Hawaii restaurant association and hawaii restaurant association is the voice of hawaii's food service and restaurant thank you everyone thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com mahalo