Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Welcome back to the show and our latest episode where we're going to talk quite a bit about one of the biggest issues that a lot of restaurant tours are facing, which is abandoned orders. Our guest has built, him and his team have built a solution that will use AI to help fill that gap. And we talk quite a bit about how using AI can revolutionize those abandoned carts and make sure that we get those guests to order from us. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us as I like to say each and every time. I know you guys have got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out with us this week. Today, I am super excited and I know I say this every time, but truly I get pitches on a weekly basis. I get pitches from different people that are creating new cool products, but I'm really excited to dig in to understand what it is that... this team is solving and how they're solving it. But before we jump into this, Steven, why don't you kind of introduce yourself? Who is Steven Klein? Tell me a little bit about you. Where did you come from? How did you get into this tech industry? And then we'll talk a little bit about what you and the team have been building. Steve Klein and I dig deep into online ordering and talk a lot about how to boost visibility, reclaim control, and enhance loyalty so that you're not missing out on those abandoned carts that are out there. Every other industry that has e-commerce has a solution for this, and Steve and his team have built something that I think you guys will love. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer for CBS Northstar.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, that's it. ⁓ Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. So I'm coming to you now from Houston, Texas, where I grew up, but I did spend about 20 years of my life in California. ⁓ Moved back four years ago at kind of the post COVID when it seemed like everybody from California was moving to Texas ⁓ for two sets of grandparents. So my wife and I have a eight year old now and a two year old. And ⁓ so it's good to be home if you will.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: We wrote the Northstar PwnSL solution for multi units. Please check us out at cbsnorstar.com. And now onto the episode.
Stephen Klein: I spent most of my career as an investor in software in the public markets, ⁓ but have been in software startups for the last several years ⁓ since I moved to Houston and ⁓ came across this opportunity with a team ⁓ that I had gotten to know who worked on the previous venture that they sold. And ⁓ they brought this problem they were working on to me and I was excited to join them. So it's a quick little background. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Love it. I love it. Funny enough, long time listeners will know that I am also a Southern California person. I 40 years in Southern Cal and moved to DFW four and a half years ago, July of 2021. So I'm up just a few hours North of you and in the great country of Texas here. So we'll have to wrap a little bit about kind of the California connection.
Stephen Klein: Thank you. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: You I know you're working with this team talk to me a little bit about what you guys are trying to solve for because Again, I'm excited for you to dig in to kind of the business challenges that you saw and even quite honestly Where was the investment thesis in this group that you said dude? we need to put some money into this thing to help it accelerate and grow it because we really see it as a huge growth vehicle for for the restaurant industry
Stephen Klein: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the founding story, actually, there are four of us co-founders. Two of my partners had a business venture in the real estate tech world that they sold. And one of them invested with some of that money into a Mexican food franchise called Fajita Pizza that's 30 units or so around. There's some in here back.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Dude, their videos are so good for take out. They're an amazing, really, really cool concept. So I love that.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, so one of my founders, co-founders is a part owner and previous franchisee and operator and so forth. And, you know, they were ⁓ putting their heads together after ⁓ Matthew, one of my co-founders, made that investment and said, You know, we do a lot of online business and a lot of catering. You catering is, is super core to what we do. think their tagline is fast fajitas catered or, you know, out the door, et cetera. And, ⁓ but the problem is, is that, you know, we have people coming to our site and our experience for ordering is super onerous. Right. So it's, ⁓ 15 minutes worth of questions, how tons of clicks, ⁓ decision-making around how much of what you need filling your cart. etc etc and you know that does a couple things. A some people just abandon their cart because it's too onerous and perhaps they go and place that order elsewhere ⁓ or people aren't getting the optimal order for them you know and they they need to spend the time thinking through exactly what they're getting and they're not getting all the things that they should be or that would be optimal for their party. So they came together and they said, know, if you were, if, if we had a system whereby it acted like, know, the person, the knowledgeable person on the phone, and you could just say in simple language, I'm ordering X or this is what I need. You know, what would that person be able to do? And so the concept is they essentially said, we're going to have a field on this catering site where in plain language, you're going to say. I'm throwing a birthday party for 40 people ⁓ and we want the system to essentially nail that order for you. Of course you can edit, can change some things in and out and add and so forth, but it makes it super easy. So problem one that they were looking at was this is just too onerous and lengthy. And then problem two is, know, we, it's a tough time for restaurants out there, as you know, and everybody needs to have the imperative of driving, you know, first party sales and, you know, larger orders, more orders, et cetera. You know, but I think what he found was that as they try and reach out or acquire customers, a lot of their customers were coming to them via third parties. Not surprisingly, those third parties are really good at technology. They are good at distribution. They spend a lot of money internally and with tech teams and so forth. So, know.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Klein: That's great. It's great to have that business in that volume, but really, you know, it, a comes at a cost of the commissions that are associated with it and B, you know, you generally don't have that customer's information to continue to have a relationship with them for loyalty down the road. So at the end of the day, they said like, this is what we're solving for these, these two things. You know, we want more shots on goal with our customers. And when we get those shots, we want to maximize the value, the conversion, et cetera, for those shots. And they spent some time working on this maybe two years ago. ⁓ We're really pleased with the results in the first year or so and said, hey, there's a company here because lots of people are struggling with these kinds of issues. ⁓ And we incorporated a company at the beginning of last year and here we are.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I love it. And I think to exactly what you're saying, this is a huge challenge that almost every restaurant operator that one offers any kind of off-prem is looking to make sure that they don't have abandoned carts. I'd love to ask, I guess, go dig back into your Rolodex of other companies you've invested in. I'm sure you've got some kind of e-commerce experience. They're solving this problem, whereas restaurants really haven't, guess. And I'd love to kind of the juxtaposition and for you to share a little bit if you have any experience, even if it's just in board decks that you've seen, whether you invest or not, it's like there's lots of different other players out there in the space that are helping retailers and helping grocers to go get people that go look to their site to go drive that behavior to go order. But for whatever reason, it feels like restaurants just don't. And so I guess before we dig into kind of how you guys are solving for this and what it looks like, do you have any kind of examples of places that you've seen that might be able to help our? our listeners to think, hey, you know what? It's possible because guess what? Amazon sends me advertisement every time I'm in a cart and I look at something. Amazingly, I start to see these things on my Twitter feed, on Facebook, on Instagram, all of these different places. But for whatever reason, it feels like restaurants aren't there. So that whole abandoned cart scenario is huge. And it's a huge opportunity that you don't know why they abandoned, but to understand that and be able to drive even 20 % of those abandoned carts back in.
Stephen Klein: Hmm. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: know, pays for any technology you're going to put in place.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, absolutely. mean, I think there are examples certainly in retail with, you know, whether it's retargeting or various, you know, ad companies that kind of provide that, hey, you abandon and come back and here's 10 % off or what have you. But I think the broader problem or the broader challenge happens really everywhere. If you think about... In retail, customers or companies want to work through Amazon because there's volume there, but certainly they'd rather have customers come to them directly and build that relationship. Same in travel, right? mean, hotels are desperate to have you book directly through them, but they have the online travel agencies booking Expedia's, cetera, et cetera. It's a bit of a co-op petition, you know, both sides of the coin sort of thing, but You know, I think in restaurants, think, ⁓ you know, right now it seems like there's a bit, there's a lot of interest. I mean, you were certainly not the only people talking about the importance of first party orders and owning your customer. ⁓ I think people are testing stuff out. mean, right. The AI has been around for awhile, but. ⁓ you know, has gotten just really hot in the last couple of years. And I think people are looking for ⁓ proof points. I mean, we certainly have talked to a number of clients that are potential clients who have said, you know, let us see what the data comes back with pilot customer A or B. ⁓ And we'll figure out how to incorporate that into a pilot that we do or a deployment that we do. So, I think it's a pretty common ⁓ structure for some of these industries that kind of have the third party behemoths and then want to own their customer directly. And it's just an issue of getting something that has a proven ROI, right? I mean, I think right now, given the macro environment that restaurants are in, there's... not a lot of appetite to, you know, by many, least to, ⁓ invest in stuff that doesn't have a proven ROI. But we're also talking, we're also talking about, you know, a future where the customer looks very different, you know, or potentially looks very different and experience customer experiences with Chachi BT and you know, all the AI that customers are used to is changing the, the expectations they have for their experiences. Right. And
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yes.
Stephen Klein: It could be not too long before customers just go onto Claude or chat GPT and say, order me donuts and expect Claude to know everything about them, to know where they're going to be, what they're looking for, et cetera. like, find a meeting on your calendar and say there are eight people who ordering you an eight person breakfast and et cetera. And right now, as we talk to folks about that future, which we believe has a good chance of coming, there's a little bit of a sounds interesting, where's the volume or, know, is this happening now? And our real goal is the way we think about it is we want to solve problems for customers that they face today, things that can move the needle today, but also kind of future proof them for the various scenarios where, you know, AI does or doesn't become that next huge channel.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Well, and I think the one thing that I guess I'd love to dig into kind of that discovery phase where the abandoned cart comes in. I was actually talking to a customer recently who has a cuisine that they prepare that's a bit unique. It happens to be a poke concept. And he was trying to solve for this whole abandoned cart issue because he was struggling with, and I got on the phone with him. said, what exactly do you think the problem is? And I think there's really two ways people come at this argument. And this goes back to your AI conversation. I'd love your guys' thoughts on how you guys are solving for this is, I have $500 to spend. What can I get for 500 bucks because I want poke? That's one solution. I have a budget. I know that I've got a budget. I need to feed X amount of people. Can I get within this budget for this amount of people? And typically, we can create some equations that are going to help with that. And then there's the opposite. I need to feed X amount of people.
Stephen Klein: Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Tell me how quickly you can get it to me. My budget is between this number and this number. Just as long as it fits within that, then I'm good to go. But I think a lot of times, even for me, and I'm sure you as a consumer, it's like, you know what? I've got to feed my kids. I've got to feed my family. I've got three other couples over. We need dinner for 20. What's the deal? What can I order? And how does it come about? I don't really care about the price as much. because it's just going to get split amongst four different couples and we're good to go. And then there's the opposite. I'm the pharmaceutical rep and I need to make sure that I, you know, I've got a budget of 500 bucks to feed these doctors. What can I get for 500 bucks from Fajita Peets? And so I'd love for you to kind of talk about how is AI going to solve for that to be able to move people through that customer journey.
Stephen Klein: Yeah. Well, and that's, I'm glad that you brought that up. mean, that's one of the things that we enable and that I think AI enables because it can understand the intent of your language. Right. I mean, like I said, you can go onto our system and say, I throwing an office breakfast for 40 people and it can fill it out for you. Or you can say, I'm throwing an office breakfast and have a $200 budget, you know, build me an order. Um, and I mean, I think. As AI is so good at understanding intent or can parse out intent, ⁓ you can be as prescriptive or limited as you want, right? I mean, you can say, we need breakfast for 20 and we need coffee and kolaches and donuts, or you can say, we need breakfast for 20 and have the system know kind of what to put in there. And if you say, hey, ⁓ by the way, three of us are vegan or, mean, that these systems are intelligent enough to be able to understand from relatively limited context how to get your order 95 to 100 % right. And then of course you can go through and make changes and so forth. But as we all know, the more steps, the more time it takes to build a cart and to go through the ordering process, and this is true anywhere on e-commerce, the more cart abandonment you have. And we've actually spoken to folks who say, we get people on our website and they go through this experience and the experience breaks or is onerous and then they move over and buy it on Easy Cater or something like that. It's like, wow, that's... you're winning that customer engagement and your tech is actually winning against you.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: you're not getting the sale and you're paying easy cater some percentage to get them to come through. And that's really where I was going with that. mean, so take it back because a lot of people, and again, we're both in tech space. So, ⁓ you're going to replace that human that would take that phone call and create this experience and you're replacing it with AI. And I guess I'd love for you to talk to those operators out there that say that because I would challenge them to say, go repurpose that person.
Stephen Klein: Right? Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: create a hospitality experience, not necessarily tell them that eight kolaches versus 10 kolaches is the right way to do it. Because that complex reasoning can be done with AI, especially as you train the model, so much better than a human ever can. And now let that person be part of the experience, not necessarily part of the decision-making process.
Stephen Klein: Yeah. I think that's spot on. And candidly, we talked to folks who have two different viewpoints here. One is, hey, I don't want whoever is on the phones at location X to be answering the phone and doing that either. won't be, perhaps they won't do as sophisticated a job as we'd like, or they're focusing their efforts on customer ⁓ interactions and so forth. So we want this to be purely online. Then we hear some folks who say, get us, you know, get us that lead, get the order generated. I'm still going to pick up the phone and call that customer when the order comes on to build that relationship, to make sure that they got everything they needed, et cetera. And, you know, that's part of the loyalty building down the road. Um, but the point is, is, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the battle is kind of one by getting that order almost completely or completely done. And then having, as you say, you know, people spend time more on the relationship side or, or, know, working with consumers. We actually heard one interesting use case as well, where a high end restaurant said, Hey, you know, we. get these catering requests where somebody will call in and we'll talk through our catering menu and all the options we have. And then 30 minutes later, they say, what does that cost? And we tell them and they, that happens. And then they say, nevermind, right? That's not going to work for me. So there's even the chance that this can be kind of a lead generation, but lead qualifying opportunity.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. That was the argument I had with the poke guy. He's like, I bet you people come and they go build out what they think they're going to need for poke. And it's too expensive. And so they back out of the cart. And I think to your point, if that could be done with an AI, whether it's a voice AI or, or a list of questionnaires, like you're saying, does that disqualify the lead? So you're not wasting human manpower. Whereas the human in the loop really becomes the Steven, we're going to be there on Tuesday at 8 AM with the collages and you know, whatever that looks like.
Stephen Klein: Exactly.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: That's where you want them spending their time, not in qualifying who that person is. You want that whole suggestion engine. The other thing that I guess I'd love for you to ⁓ double click on a little bit ⁓ is the whole idea of customization. You talked about this whole, and especially everybody wants their own preferences. We've had multiple people on as guests on the show that are talking about these discovery engines to say, want gluten-free in Houston. I'm going and I'm in Cyprus and I want gluten-free.
Stephen Klein: Right.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: and vegetarian options under 20 bucks, you know, per person or whatever. You you guys can do that as well by loading in that menu and then being able to customize and allow them to walk through that journey rather than having a human have to go, ⁓ did they put walnuts in that? I don't know. You know, you have no idea. So they're a nut free person and they can't have walnuts. And so I guess I'd love for you to talk through how AI and how really kind of your, suggestion engine can help with some of that stuff, the customization.
Stephen Klein: To the extent that we have data and various different concepts, sometimes there's more, sometimes there is less, but that's easy to feed into the system. mean, if we have data about, mean, vegetarian vegan options is an easy one, but you can, if there's more data beyond that and depends on the menu, you can go deeper than that as well. All that's actually not that, I mean, it's complicated under the hood, but I mean, it seems pretty seamless to the user.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Klein: And that's something that AI is particularly well suited for. I mean, think that's, again, the vision is if the best salesperson slash waiter slash catering manager is answering the phone and we're having this conversation, how can we get as close to that perfect menu with AI? ⁓ or that perfect order with AI and save time, improve the customer experience, the economics for the restaurant, et cetera, et cetera.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Well, and then I guess I'm going to take it another step further. The demographic we're continuing to sell to oftentimes doesn't want to get on the phone with somebody for a catering order. They don't want to talk to another human being. They're like, no, I just, you know, why do they order on DoorDash instead of calling? Because they made it easy. Why do we order on Amazon? Because I don't have to leave my house to go get to the store to go to, you know, Target or Walmart to go pick these things up. It's not because it's cheaper. It's because it made it more convenient. And so I guess I'd love for you to talk a little bit about kind of How is it that you guys are able to make it so simple for them to be able to drive that? Because again, I think some of our consumers are getting to a place where they don't want to talk to anybody. It's easier just to go on their phone, reorder, and it goes, and we're done.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, and that's something we're testing, right? Because we're kind of specifically not a chat bot, if you will. I mean, we're really trying to be this AI ⁓ companion or this kind of agentic, obviously that's the buzzword these days, but this kind of agentic, ⁓ you know. system on top of the underlying website or what have you experience. ⁓ But I also think that, you you said maybe the younger generation doesn't want to pick up the phone and talk to anybody, but they also, you know, there's concern about fatigue around AI as well. you know, people are some don't love talking with a chatbot. It has to be easy and feel like it's part of the experience. Like it's baked in as fundamental to the experience to just say, this is what I'm looking for and have your cart be filled and be able to be on your way. So there are a number of things that we're testing ⁓ going forward, how conversational to make it, thinking about how to go back and change or what have you. But really the goal at end of the day is to make it seem like a very intuitive experience with AI under the hood.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, the last piece I'm going to ask, and again, I was just talking with another friend who happens to be a pharmaceutical rep. And I had asked her, we were just talking again, living in the restaurant tech space and, you know, the frenemy conversation that you said earlier about, you know, the door dashes and the, the easy caters of the world. They, you know, restaurants feel like they have to have it because they can't offer at least that level of an experience where better. And so they feel like they have to drive those sales, but it cost them a lot of money to be on those platforms. And I talked to her and she goes, I literally just go on EasyCater because it just makes my life so much easier. I don't have to worry about it. And so I guess talk to our listeners out there about kind of this transition of having to migrate these people. Because I think a lot of people trying to figure out how to get them into first party and to stay first party. So they're not building their entire cart on your site and then jumping over to EasyCater to do that. Because that doesn't solve. mean, that hurts the brain because they're now hosting the site and killing their margins because
Stephen Klein: and and your result.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: EasyCater is making their money.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, listen, I mean, I think every restaurant is facing that same concern right now, you know, and I'll tell you from the fajita Pete side and my co founder who talks about this at length, you know, it's a challenge, right? I mean, but if you, you got to have that first party experience once, and then you have the CRM assets, right? The, the consumer information and the ability to, to, reach out to them. And then it becomes more about loyalty, re engagement and that whole process. Right. And I see, I mean, I was at a pizza place this weekend where the boxes actually have something, the pizza boxes have something that says, you know, order from us directly for the best pricing and so forth. And here's a QR code. So there are lots of different strategies that people are employing, but I will tell you on the fajita Pete side, they've really been able to pull, you know, some of that, their, their mix of third party, first party more in the favor of first party because The experience is great, right? mean, people are in and out quickly and, uh, in terms of building what they're looking for. And when they have that information, they can do a smart job of marketing to that person several times a month and, uh, segmenting them based on, know, their specific use cases or needs or the data that they have. So, you I mean, think that's you're touching on what I would imagine is one of the biggest challenges or, you know, debates in the restaurant world right now. And it is that co-op petition, right? I mean, I think you do want that volume that you're getting from the third parties. ⁓ But strategically and financially, it's just really critical that you lead into first party.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, no, and there's a pizza place local to me here that does that same thing. And again, I'm a Marriott guy. You know, I have the Marriott guarantee that booking on their website is going to be, you know, as cheaper or cheaper than any other site out there. And so, you know what? I don't even go to, I used to go to Tri-Velocity or Orbitz or whatever those websites were to try and get stuff. Now it's just like, you know what? I want my points for Marriott. I'm just going to go book a Marriott and...
Stephen Klein: Okay.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I guess I believe that they guarantee the price. Maybe they don't, but either way, I'm on that first party. They now know who I am. They now continue to market to me. And this Pete's Place does the same thing. They actually give me a 10 % discount for ordering on their website rather than going somewhere else, which is, again, it's creating a loyalty aspect of me wanting to go eat there. Now they've got my content. And amazingly, every Wednesday night, my freaking email blows up because they know that I order pizza on Wednesday nights because it's softball practice.
Stephen Klein: Really?
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I need pizza before we go to softball practice or whatever else, you know, they get smart about it and help continue to drive the behavior.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, and I've seen some good pieces on this in terms of strategies, I mean pricing and price transparency is obviously a huge one. ⁓ know, experience ⁓ is a big one, et cetera. But I mean, I think everybody's kind of looking for the, I'm not sure that there's one silver bullet, but I think putting together a number of these strategies and really trying to, you know, tinker the knobs in your favor is what people are focused on now.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah. Well, talk to me a little bit. You and I talked to before we hit record about kind of some case studies you had. And don't necessarily need to know exactly what the brands were, but let's talk about some of the success that you guys are finding with some of the people that you guys have implemented. You kind of alluded to, if we hit a piece, but I'd love for you to kind of talk through, you know, people are out of place where they don't have this and then they start to implement these kinds of strategies and it's not a one size fits all and it's definitely not a silver bullet, but through just some repetition and some data mining to understand what's happening. What do you guys see as far as results and what can people expect?
Stephen Klein: Yeah, there's some information on this in case studies on the website, but I'll tell you, we have been very fortunate and honored to work with Shipley Donuts, which is close to 400 units. Very innovative, awesome team there where they're fantastic people and really want to be at the cutting edge. And with them, we have... Put for tech that drives better search visibility, so uses AI to drive better search visibility, i.e. try to beat the TripAdvisor, yell Uber Eats who always show up front ⁓ on Google search engines. try and use some of that technology in their favor to, you know, to boost that visibility. And we are seeing, you know, strong improvement in the rankings of keywords that we're tracking there. And then on their site, you know, there's ⁓ AI ordering two different elements. One is kind of the large order, hey, order me breakfast for 50 people in my office. And the other is something we call order autocomplete, which if you put certain things in your cart, it will recommend other elements that go correctly with it or go for, you know, are complimentary that, you know, other people tend to order. So recommendation engine, using a similar AI to the large catering order. And what we're seeing there is that for folks that go through those flows that use the AI, they are checking out at mid 20s percent higher AOVs than those that don't. And there are a number of reasons about that. And it's important, this is not about driving price at all. In fact, We have an algorithm for them that makes sure that a consumer knows that they can order, you know, up to, price things in dozens, half dozens. Hey, you you get a price break for, you know, for completing a dozen or et cetera. A lot of times it's also discovery, you know, I mean, if you, ⁓ if somebody's coming in and they know they want donuts, but maybe they haven't tried Shipley's kolaches, which are amazing. ⁓ And maybe they, you know, would. Love a coffee, but didn't think to put it in their cart. You know, those are things that get customers to experience new products and kind of deepen their Sampling of that, know that restaurants, you products and so forth ⁓ And it's not about price. It's all about getting kind of that optimal order, but it does tend to Help customers include additional items that you know boost the average price So, you know, it's really, it's focused on kind of discovery and, you know, ease of use and ⁓ streamlined ordering and so forth. And we're seeing good results.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I appreciate that. Before I go too much farther, this is the second time you've mentioned kolaches. Until I moved to Texas, I had no idea what they were. You grew up with them. For our listeners out there that might not be in a kolache heavy area, what is a kolache? For those that might need to know so that when they show up at a Shipley that they try it or any of the don't have places in Texas, quite frankly.
Stephen Klein: Yeah. Yeah, I would describe it as a larger pig in a blanket or, you know, a savory egg, cheese, et cetera, inside a, you know, kind of a flaky crust. I'll tell you that my tech co-founder is a jalapeno egg and I mean, he goes orders that on a more than he'd like to admit basis from Chipley's and they're fantastic.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I love it. Yeah. A little bit of a sweet pastry that's got typically some kind of meat in it. they're pretty fantastic. There was a, there's a local place here called the Colossi factory. sure you guys have known Houston as well. And you're like, dude, they've got Colossi for days of just different things. So sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to derail our, our tech conversation and what we're solving for, but I appreciate you sharing this.
Stephen Klein: ⁓ Yeah. That you bring it up. mean, folks, know, folks who don't know that, who, you know, say I want a dozen glazed donuts can immediately be introduced to, Hey, try these kolaches or for restaurants that are pushing LTOs, you know, we're doing apple fritters, you know, like give these a try, et cetera. ⁓ and expose customers to new things.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, no, and I appreciate that and to your point, I just think it's one of those things once you try Klotschi, it's like, you know, when I go to pick up donuts for the kids and I end up getting a Klotschi for myself half the time. So how do people engage? How do people learn more? You know, where are you guys at in kind of the cycle? You know, we're early 2026 on this, you know, love to love to let our listeners, what does engagement look like and what can they expect to have from your team if they engage?
Stephen Klein: Yeah, we're, you know, we're a small, nimble team. ⁓ and we're, know, we love to hear what customers, potential customers are thinking about. mean, we're really in the stage where we're learning what we should be building based on what our customers need. ⁓ you know, I think what I like about our team is we have that mix of. ⁓ software entrepreneurs and restaurant owners, franchisees, franchisee relationships, et cetera. So there's kind of that dual ⁓ thinking to everything that we do, but we learn a lot from our customers. mean, we, you know, that's, that's really, think what's the state we're most importantly at. ⁓ We're just starting to kick off some trade shows and things like that. So we're looking at looking forward to Mertek next, next month, if you'll be there. and we're on LinkedIn and our website on savory.com.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Awesome. Yeah, now the debate for me is, is it a Colacis for dinner? Is it fajita pizza for dinner? Or is it something else? I, yeah, no, certainly have to get, and not through a third party. Gotta go hit that first party and give you some feedback on it. Well, Steven, I appreciate what you guys are building again. I was excited when you guys approached, just because I do think this is a common problem that a lot of people are trying to solve for and the fact that you guys are.
Stephen Klein: Whenever you do order online. There you go.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: dug in and really at a place that you guys are passionate about making sure that you solve it through tech, but tech that's smart tech. It's not tech that's just for technology sake. It's tech that's gonna make the customer's experience better and ultimately the owner's experience better. And so I love that.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate the time, Jerry.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: So to our listeners guys, like I said at the onset, I know you guys got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out. If you haven't already done so, please go subscribe to the show and make it a great day.
Stephen Klein: I so.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, that's it. ⁓ Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. So I'm coming to you now from Houston, Texas, where I grew up, but I did spend about 20 years of my life in California. ⁓ Moved back four years ago at kind of the post COVID when it seemed like everybody from California was moving to Texas ⁓ for two sets of grandparents. So my wife and I have a eight year old now and a two year old. And ⁓ so it's good to be home if you will.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: We wrote the Northstar PwnSL solution for multi units. Please check us out at cbsnorstar.com. And now onto the episode.
Stephen Klein: I spent most of my career as an investor in software in the public markets, ⁓ but have been in software startups for the last several years ⁓ since I moved to Houston and ⁓ came across this opportunity with a team ⁓ that I had gotten to know who worked on the previous venture that they sold. And ⁓ they brought this problem they were working on to me and I was excited to join them. So it's a quick little background. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Love it. I love it. Funny enough, long time listeners will know that I am also a Southern California person. I 40 years in Southern Cal and moved to DFW four and a half years ago, July of 2021. So I'm up just a few hours North of you and in the great country of Texas here. So we'll have to wrap a little bit about kind of the California connection.
Stephen Klein: Thank you. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: You I know you're working with this team talk to me a little bit about what you guys are trying to solve for because Again, I'm excited for you to dig in to kind of the business challenges that you saw and even quite honestly Where was the investment thesis in this group that you said dude? we need to put some money into this thing to help it accelerate and grow it because we really see it as a huge growth vehicle for for the restaurant industry
Stephen Klein: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the founding story, actually, there are four of us co-founders. Two of my partners had a business venture in the real estate tech world that they sold. And one of them invested with some of that money into a Mexican food franchise called Fajita Pizza that's 30 units or so around. There's some in here back.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Dude, their videos are so good for take out. They're an amazing, really, really cool concept. So I love that.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, so one of my founders, co-founders is a part owner and previous franchisee and operator and so forth. And, you know, they were ⁓ putting their heads together after ⁓ Matthew, one of my co-founders, made that investment and said, You know, we do a lot of online business and a lot of catering. You catering is, is super core to what we do. think their tagline is fast fajitas catered or, you know, out the door, et cetera. And, ⁓ but the problem is, is that, you know, we have people coming to our site and our experience for ordering is super onerous. Right. So it's, ⁓ 15 minutes worth of questions, how tons of clicks, ⁓ decision-making around how much of what you need filling your cart. etc etc and you know that does a couple things. A some people just abandon their cart because it's too onerous and perhaps they go and place that order elsewhere ⁓ or people aren't getting the optimal order for them you know and they they need to spend the time thinking through exactly what they're getting and they're not getting all the things that they should be or that would be optimal for their party. So they came together and they said, know, if you were, if, if we had a system whereby it acted like, know, the person, the knowledgeable person on the phone, and you could just say in simple language, I'm ordering X or this is what I need. You know, what would that person be able to do? And so the concept is they essentially said, we're going to have a field on this catering site where in plain language, you're going to say. I'm throwing a birthday party for 40 people ⁓ and we want the system to essentially nail that order for you. Of course you can edit, can change some things in and out and add and so forth, but it makes it super easy. So problem one that they were looking at was this is just too onerous and lengthy. And then problem two is, know, we, it's a tough time for restaurants out there, as you know, and everybody needs to have the imperative of driving, you know, first party sales and, you know, larger orders, more orders, et cetera. You know, but I think what he found was that as they try and reach out or acquire customers, a lot of their customers were coming to them via third parties. Not surprisingly, those third parties are really good at technology. They are good at distribution. They spend a lot of money internally and with tech teams and so forth. So, know.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Klein: That's great. It's great to have that business in that volume, but really, you know, it, a comes at a cost of the commissions that are associated with it and B, you know, you generally don't have that customer's information to continue to have a relationship with them for loyalty down the road. So at the end of the day, they said like, this is what we're solving for these, these two things. You know, we want more shots on goal with our customers. And when we get those shots, we want to maximize the value, the conversion, et cetera, for those shots. And they spent some time working on this maybe two years ago. ⁓ We're really pleased with the results in the first year or so and said, hey, there's a company here because lots of people are struggling with these kinds of issues. ⁓ And we incorporated a company at the beginning of last year and here we are.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I love it. And I think to exactly what you're saying, this is a huge challenge that almost every restaurant operator that one offers any kind of off-prem is looking to make sure that they don't have abandoned carts. I'd love to ask, I guess, go dig back into your Rolodex of other companies you've invested in. I'm sure you've got some kind of e-commerce experience. They're solving this problem, whereas restaurants really haven't, guess. And I'd love to kind of the juxtaposition and for you to share a little bit if you have any experience, even if it's just in board decks that you've seen, whether you invest or not, it's like there's lots of different other players out there in the space that are helping retailers and helping grocers to go get people that go look to their site to go drive that behavior to go order. But for whatever reason, it feels like restaurants just don't. And so I guess before we dig into kind of how you guys are solving for this and what it looks like, do you have any kind of examples of places that you've seen that might be able to help our? our listeners to think, hey, you know what? It's possible because guess what? Amazon sends me advertisement every time I'm in a cart and I look at something. Amazingly, I start to see these things on my Twitter feed, on Facebook, on Instagram, all of these different places. But for whatever reason, it feels like restaurants aren't there. So that whole abandoned cart scenario is huge. And it's a huge opportunity that you don't know why they abandoned, but to understand that and be able to drive even 20 % of those abandoned carts back in.
Stephen Klein: Hmm. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: know, pays for any technology you're going to put in place.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, absolutely. mean, I think there are examples certainly in retail with, you know, whether it's retargeting or various, you know, ad companies that kind of provide that, hey, you abandon and come back and here's 10 % off or what have you. But I think the broader problem or the broader challenge happens really everywhere. If you think about... In retail, customers or companies want to work through Amazon because there's volume there, but certainly they'd rather have customers come to them directly and build that relationship. Same in travel, right? mean, hotels are desperate to have you book directly through them, but they have the online travel agencies booking Expedia's, cetera, et cetera. It's a bit of a co-op petition, you know, both sides of the coin sort of thing, but You know, I think in restaurants, think, ⁓ you know, right now it seems like there's a bit, there's a lot of interest. I mean, you were certainly not the only people talking about the importance of first party orders and owning your customer. ⁓ I think people are testing stuff out. mean, right. The AI has been around for awhile, but. ⁓ you know, has gotten just really hot in the last couple of years. And I think people are looking for ⁓ proof points. I mean, we certainly have talked to a number of clients that are potential clients who have said, you know, let us see what the data comes back with pilot customer A or B. ⁓ And we'll figure out how to incorporate that into a pilot that we do or a deployment that we do. So, I think it's a pretty common ⁓ structure for some of these industries that kind of have the third party behemoths and then want to own their customer directly. And it's just an issue of getting something that has a proven ROI, right? I mean, I think right now, given the macro environment that restaurants are in, there's... not a lot of appetite to, you know, by many, least to, ⁓ invest in stuff that doesn't have a proven ROI. But we're also talking, we're also talking about, you know, a future where the customer looks very different, you know, or potentially looks very different and experience customer experiences with Chachi BT and you know, all the AI that customers are used to is changing the, the expectations they have for their experiences. Right. And
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yes.
Stephen Klein: It could be not too long before customers just go onto Claude or chat GPT and say, order me donuts and expect Claude to know everything about them, to know where they're going to be, what they're looking for, et cetera. like, find a meeting on your calendar and say there are eight people who ordering you an eight person breakfast and et cetera. And right now, as we talk to folks about that future, which we believe has a good chance of coming, there's a little bit of a sounds interesting, where's the volume or, know, is this happening now? And our real goal is the way we think about it is we want to solve problems for customers that they face today, things that can move the needle today, but also kind of future proof them for the various scenarios where, you know, AI does or doesn't become that next huge channel.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. Well, and I think the one thing that I guess I'd love to dig into kind of that discovery phase where the abandoned cart comes in. I was actually talking to a customer recently who has a cuisine that they prepare that's a bit unique. It happens to be a poke concept. And he was trying to solve for this whole abandoned cart issue because he was struggling with, and I got on the phone with him. said, what exactly do you think the problem is? And I think there's really two ways people come at this argument. And this goes back to your AI conversation. I'd love your guys' thoughts on how you guys are solving for this is, I have $500 to spend. What can I get for 500 bucks because I want poke? That's one solution. I have a budget. I know that I've got a budget. I need to feed X amount of people. Can I get within this budget for this amount of people? And typically, we can create some equations that are going to help with that. And then there's the opposite. I need to feed X amount of people.
Stephen Klein: Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Tell me how quickly you can get it to me. My budget is between this number and this number. Just as long as it fits within that, then I'm good to go. But I think a lot of times, even for me, and I'm sure you as a consumer, it's like, you know what? I've got to feed my kids. I've got to feed my family. I've got three other couples over. We need dinner for 20. What's the deal? What can I order? And how does it come about? I don't really care about the price as much. because it's just going to get split amongst four different couples and we're good to go. And then there's the opposite. I'm the pharmaceutical rep and I need to make sure that I, you know, I've got a budget of 500 bucks to feed these doctors. What can I get for 500 bucks from Fajita Peets? And so I'd love for you to kind of talk about how is AI going to solve for that to be able to move people through that customer journey.
Stephen Klein: Yeah. Well, and that's, I'm glad that you brought that up. mean, that's one of the things that we enable and that I think AI enables because it can understand the intent of your language. Right. I mean, like I said, you can go onto our system and say, I throwing an office breakfast for 40 people and it can fill it out for you. Or you can say, I'm throwing an office breakfast and have a $200 budget, you know, build me an order. Um, and I mean, I think. As AI is so good at understanding intent or can parse out intent, ⁓ you can be as prescriptive or limited as you want, right? I mean, you can say, we need breakfast for 20 and we need coffee and kolaches and donuts, or you can say, we need breakfast for 20 and have the system know kind of what to put in there. And if you say, hey, ⁓ by the way, three of us are vegan or, mean, that these systems are intelligent enough to be able to understand from relatively limited context how to get your order 95 to 100 % right. And then of course you can go through and make changes and so forth. But as we all know, the more steps, the more time it takes to build a cart and to go through the ordering process, and this is true anywhere on e-commerce, the more cart abandonment you have. And we've actually spoken to folks who say, we get people on our website and they go through this experience and the experience breaks or is onerous and then they move over and buy it on Easy Cater or something like that. It's like, wow, that's... you're winning that customer engagement and your tech is actually winning against you.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: you're not getting the sale and you're paying easy cater some percentage to get them to come through. And that's really where I was going with that. mean, so take it back because a lot of people, and again, we're both in tech space. So, ⁓ you're going to replace that human that would take that phone call and create this experience and you're replacing it with AI. And I guess I'd love for you to talk to those operators out there that say that because I would challenge them to say, go repurpose that person.
Stephen Klein: Right? Yeah.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: create a hospitality experience, not necessarily tell them that eight kolaches versus 10 kolaches is the right way to do it. Because that complex reasoning can be done with AI, especially as you train the model, so much better than a human ever can. And now let that person be part of the experience, not necessarily part of the decision-making process.
Stephen Klein: Yeah. I think that's spot on. And candidly, we talked to folks who have two different viewpoints here. One is, hey, I don't want whoever is on the phones at location X to be answering the phone and doing that either. won't be, perhaps they won't do as sophisticated a job as we'd like, or they're focusing their efforts on customer ⁓ interactions and so forth. So we want this to be purely online. Then we hear some folks who say, get us, you know, get us that lead, get the order generated. I'm still going to pick up the phone and call that customer when the order comes on to build that relationship, to make sure that they got everything they needed, et cetera. And, you know, that's part of the loyalty building down the road. Um, but the point is, is, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the battle is kind of one by getting that order almost completely or completely done. And then having, as you say, you know, people spend time more on the relationship side or, or, know, working with consumers. We actually heard one interesting use case as well, where a high end restaurant said, Hey, you know, we. get these catering requests where somebody will call in and we'll talk through our catering menu and all the options we have. And then 30 minutes later, they say, what does that cost? And we tell them and they, that happens. And then they say, nevermind, right? That's not going to work for me. So there's even the chance that this can be kind of a lead generation, but lead qualifying opportunity.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm. That was the argument I had with the poke guy. He's like, I bet you people come and they go build out what they think they're going to need for poke. And it's too expensive. And so they back out of the cart. And I think to your point, if that could be done with an AI, whether it's a voice AI or, or a list of questionnaires, like you're saying, does that disqualify the lead? So you're not wasting human manpower. Whereas the human in the loop really becomes the Steven, we're going to be there on Tuesday at 8 AM with the collages and you know, whatever that looks like.
Stephen Klein: Exactly.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: That's where you want them spending their time, not in qualifying who that person is. You want that whole suggestion engine. The other thing that I guess I'd love for you to ⁓ double click on a little bit ⁓ is the whole idea of customization. You talked about this whole, and especially everybody wants their own preferences. We've had multiple people on as guests on the show that are talking about these discovery engines to say, want gluten-free in Houston. I'm going and I'm in Cyprus and I want gluten-free.
Stephen Klein: Right.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: and vegetarian options under 20 bucks, you know, per person or whatever. You you guys can do that as well by loading in that menu and then being able to customize and allow them to walk through that journey rather than having a human have to go, ⁓ did they put walnuts in that? I don't know. You know, you have no idea. So they're a nut free person and they can't have walnuts. And so I guess I'd love for you to talk through how AI and how really kind of your, suggestion engine can help with some of that stuff, the customization.
Stephen Klein: To the extent that we have data and various different concepts, sometimes there's more, sometimes there is less, but that's easy to feed into the system. mean, if we have data about, mean, vegetarian vegan options is an easy one, but you can, if there's more data beyond that and depends on the menu, you can go deeper than that as well. All that's actually not that, I mean, it's complicated under the hood, but I mean, it seems pretty seamless to the user.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Klein: And that's something that AI is particularly well suited for. I mean, think that's, again, the vision is if the best salesperson slash waiter slash catering manager is answering the phone and we're having this conversation, how can we get as close to that perfect menu with AI? ⁓ or that perfect order with AI and save time, improve the customer experience, the economics for the restaurant, et cetera, et cetera.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Well, and then I guess I'm going to take it another step further. The demographic we're continuing to sell to oftentimes doesn't want to get on the phone with somebody for a catering order. They don't want to talk to another human being. They're like, no, I just, you know, why do they order on DoorDash instead of calling? Because they made it easy. Why do we order on Amazon? Because I don't have to leave my house to go get to the store to go to, you know, Target or Walmart to go pick these things up. It's not because it's cheaper. It's because it made it more convenient. And so I guess I'd love for you to talk a little bit about kind of How is it that you guys are able to make it so simple for them to be able to drive that? Because again, I think some of our consumers are getting to a place where they don't want to talk to anybody. It's easier just to go on their phone, reorder, and it goes, and we're done.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, and that's something we're testing, right? Because we're kind of specifically not a chat bot, if you will. I mean, we're really trying to be this AI ⁓ companion or this kind of agentic, obviously that's the buzzword these days, but this kind of agentic, ⁓ you know. system on top of the underlying website or what have you experience. ⁓ But I also think that, you you said maybe the younger generation doesn't want to pick up the phone and talk to anybody, but they also, you know, there's concern about fatigue around AI as well. you know, people are some don't love talking with a chatbot. It has to be easy and feel like it's part of the experience. Like it's baked in as fundamental to the experience to just say, this is what I'm looking for and have your cart be filled and be able to be on your way. So there are a number of things that we're testing ⁓ going forward, how conversational to make it, thinking about how to go back and change or what have you. But really the goal at end of the day is to make it seem like a very intuitive experience with AI under the hood.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, the last piece I'm going to ask, and again, I was just talking with another friend who happens to be a pharmaceutical rep. And I had asked her, we were just talking again, living in the restaurant tech space and, you know, the frenemy conversation that you said earlier about, you know, the door dashes and the, the easy caters of the world. They, you know, restaurants feel like they have to have it because they can't offer at least that level of an experience where better. And so they feel like they have to drive those sales, but it cost them a lot of money to be on those platforms. And I talked to her and she goes, I literally just go on EasyCater because it just makes my life so much easier. I don't have to worry about it. And so I guess talk to our listeners out there about kind of this transition of having to migrate these people. Because I think a lot of people trying to figure out how to get them into first party and to stay first party. So they're not building their entire cart on your site and then jumping over to EasyCater to do that. Because that doesn't solve. mean, that hurts the brain because they're now hosting the site and killing their margins because
Stephen Klein: and and your result.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: EasyCater is making their money.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, listen, I mean, I think every restaurant is facing that same concern right now, you know, and I'll tell you from the fajita Pete side and my co founder who talks about this at length, you know, it's a challenge, right? I mean, but if you, you got to have that first party experience once, and then you have the CRM assets, right? The, the consumer information and the ability to, to, reach out to them. And then it becomes more about loyalty, re engagement and that whole process. Right. And I see, I mean, I was at a pizza place this weekend where the boxes actually have something, the pizza boxes have something that says, you know, order from us directly for the best pricing and so forth. And here's a QR code. So there are lots of different strategies that people are employing, but I will tell you on the fajita Pete side, they've really been able to pull, you know, some of that, their, their mix of third party, first party more in the favor of first party because The experience is great, right? mean, people are in and out quickly and, uh, in terms of building what they're looking for. And when they have that information, they can do a smart job of marketing to that person several times a month and, uh, segmenting them based on, know, their specific use cases or needs or the data that they have. So, you I mean, think that's you're touching on what I would imagine is one of the biggest challenges or, you know, debates in the restaurant world right now. And it is that co-op petition, right? I mean, I think you do want that volume that you're getting from the third parties. ⁓ But strategically and financially, it's just really critical that you lead into first party.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, no, and there's a pizza place local to me here that does that same thing. And again, I'm a Marriott guy. You know, I have the Marriott guarantee that booking on their website is going to be, you know, as cheaper or cheaper than any other site out there. And so, you know what? I don't even go to, I used to go to Tri-Velocity or Orbitz or whatever those websites were to try and get stuff. Now it's just like, you know what? I want my points for Marriott. I'm just going to go book a Marriott and...
Stephen Klein: Okay.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I guess I believe that they guarantee the price. Maybe they don't, but either way, I'm on that first party. They now know who I am. They now continue to market to me. And this Pete's Place does the same thing. They actually give me a 10 % discount for ordering on their website rather than going somewhere else, which is, again, it's creating a loyalty aspect of me wanting to go eat there. Now they've got my content. And amazingly, every Wednesday night, my freaking email blows up because they know that I order pizza on Wednesday nights because it's softball practice.
Stephen Klein: Really?
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I need pizza before we go to softball practice or whatever else, you know, they get smart about it and help continue to drive the behavior.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, and I've seen some good pieces on this in terms of strategies, I mean pricing and price transparency is obviously a huge one. ⁓ know, experience ⁓ is a big one, et cetera. But I mean, I think everybody's kind of looking for the, I'm not sure that there's one silver bullet, but I think putting together a number of these strategies and really trying to, you know, tinker the knobs in your favor is what people are focused on now.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah. Well, talk to me a little bit. You and I talked to before we hit record about kind of some case studies you had. And don't necessarily need to know exactly what the brands were, but let's talk about some of the success that you guys are finding with some of the people that you guys have implemented. You kind of alluded to, if we hit a piece, but I'd love for you to kind of talk through, you know, people are out of place where they don't have this and then they start to implement these kinds of strategies and it's not a one size fits all and it's definitely not a silver bullet, but through just some repetition and some data mining to understand what's happening. What do you guys see as far as results and what can people expect?
Stephen Klein: Yeah, there's some information on this in case studies on the website, but I'll tell you, we have been very fortunate and honored to work with Shipley Donuts, which is close to 400 units. Very innovative, awesome team there where they're fantastic people and really want to be at the cutting edge. And with them, we have... Put for tech that drives better search visibility, so uses AI to drive better search visibility, i.e. try to beat the TripAdvisor, yell Uber Eats who always show up front ⁓ on Google search engines. try and use some of that technology in their favor to, you know, to boost that visibility. And we are seeing, you know, strong improvement in the rankings of keywords that we're tracking there. And then on their site, you know, there's ⁓ AI ordering two different elements. One is kind of the large order, hey, order me breakfast for 50 people in my office. And the other is something we call order autocomplete, which if you put certain things in your cart, it will recommend other elements that go correctly with it or go for, you know, are complimentary that, you know, other people tend to order. So recommendation engine, using a similar AI to the large catering order. And what we're seeing there is that for folks that go through those flows that use the AI, they are checking out at mid 20s percent higher AOVs than those that don't. And there are a number of reasons about that. And it's important, this is not about driving price at all. In fact, We have an algorithm for them that makes sure that a consumer knows that they can order, you know, up to, price things in dozens, half dozens. Hey, you you get a price break for, you know, for completing a dozen or et cetera. A lot of times it's also discovery, you know, I mean, if you, ⁓ if somebody's coming in and they know they want donuts, but maybe they haven't tried Shipley's kolaches, which are amazing. ⁓ And maybe they, you know, would. Love a coffee, but didn't think to put it in their cart. You know, those are things that get customers to experience new products and kind of deepen their Sampling of that, know that restaurants, you products and so forth ⁓ And it's not about price. It's all about getting kind of that optimal order, but it does tend to Help customers include additional items that you know boost the average price So, you know, it's really, it's focused on kind of discovery and, you know, ease of use and ⁓ streamlined ordering and so forth. And we're seeing good results.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I appreciate that. Before I go too much farther, this is the second time you've mentioned kolaches. Until I moved to Texas, I had no idea what they were. You grew up with them. For our listeners out there that might not be in a kolache heavy area, what is a kolache? For those that might need to know so that when they show up at a Shipley that they try it or any of the don't have places in Texas, quite frankly.
Stephen Klein: Yeah. Yeah, I would describe it as a larger pig in a blanket or, you know, a savory egg, cheese, et cetera, inside a, you know, kind of a flaky crust. I'll tell you that my tech co-founder is a jalapeno egg and I mean, he goes orders that on a more than he'd like to admit basis from Chipley's and they're fantastic.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I love it. Yeah. A little bit of a sweet pastry that's got typically some kind of meat in it. they're pretty fantastic. There was a, there's a local place here called the Colossi factory. sure you guys have known Houston as well. And you're like, dude, they've got Colossi for days of just different things. So sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to derail our, our tech conversation and what we're solving for, but I appreciate you sharing this.
Stephen Klein: ⁓ Yeah. That you bring it up. mean, folks, know, folks who don't know that, who, you know, say I want a dozen glazed donuts can immediately be introduced to, Hey, try these kolaches or for restaurants that are pushing LTOs, you know, we're doing apple fritters, you know, like give these a try, et cetera. ⁓ and expose customers to new things.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Yeah, no, and I appreciate that and to your point, I just think it's one of those things once you try Klotschi, it's like, you know, when I go to pick up donuts for the kids and I end up getting a Klotschi for myself half the time. So how do people engage? How do people learn more? You know, where are you guys at in kind of the cycle? You know, we're early 2026 on this, you know, love to love to let our listeners, what does engagement look like and what can they expect to have from your team if they engage?
Stephen Klein: Yeah, we're, you know, we're a small, nimble team. ⁓ and we're, know, we love to hear what customers, potential customers are thinking about. mean, we're really in the stage where we're learning what we should be building based on what our customers need. ⁓ you know, I think what I like about our team is we have that mix of. ⁓ software entrepreneurs and restaurant owners, franchisees, franchisee relationships, et cetera. So there's kind of that dual ⁓ thinking to everything that we do, but we learn a lot from our customers. mean, we, you know, that's, that's really, think what's the state we're most importantly at. ⁓ We're just starting to kick off some trade shows and things like that. So we're looking at looking forward to Mertek next, next month, if you'll be there. and we're on LinkedIn and our website on savory.com.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: Awesome. Yeah, now the debate for me is, is it a Colacis for dinner? Is it fajita pizza for dinner? Or is it something else? I, yeah, no, certainly have to get, and not through a third party. Gotta go hit that first party and give you some feedback on it. Well, Steven, I appreciate what you guys are building again. I was excited when you guys approached, just because I do think this is a common problem that a lot of people are trying to solve for and the fact that you guys are.
Stephen Klein: Whenever you do order online. There you go.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: dug in and really at a place that you guys are passionate about making sure that you solve it through tech, but tech that's smart tech. It's not tech that's just for technology sake. It's tech that's gonna make the customer's experience better and ultimately the owner's experience better. And so I love that.
Stephen Klein: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate the time, Jerry.
Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: So to our listeners guys, like I said at the onset, I know you guys got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out. If you haven't already done so, please go subscribe to the show and make it a great day.
Stephen Klein: I so.
