Aaron Conant  0:18  

Happy Wednesday, everybody. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the Co-founder and Managing Director here at BWG Connect. A giant networking knowledge-sharing group with 1000s of organizations that focus on collaborating together to identify the newest trends, strategies, pain points, and partners that are shaping growth in the digital space. And this is a, I don't know, a ton of different verticals, anybody who's looking to grow or impact their business digitally. And that startup the Fortune 100. And so, as I'm talking to people, I'm a, what are the newest, coolest things that are popping up, they're having a huge impact on what you're doing. When those same things pop up over and over again, we host an event like this to try to spread the word throughout the network. And this one is incredibly interesting as a whole when you think about text order, the changing landscape, and what it means for, you know, the restaurant industry as a whole. But beyond that, you can get into hospitality and everything else. So anyways, AJ, I'll kind of kick it over to you. If you want to do a brief intro on yourself in a way that would be awesome. And then we can jump into a little bit around what you do, and in what people need to be aware of in this space and kind of how it's evolved.

AJ Vernet  1:25  

Yeah, my name is AJ Vernet. I grew up in the hospitality industry, and got into tech in the 90s in San Francisco. I'm the Co-founder and CEO of OhWaiter. We've been around for about 16 months in a kind of beta stealth mode. We are a text-to-order platform that sits on the table on-premise. And those pick are soon coming. In November, we'll offer delivery to restaurants, golf clubs, tennis clubs, hotels, of all sorts, focused on, you know, a direct text-to-order solution that requires no app, no download, and no website maintenance. It's just a one-on-one conversation with the customer.

Aaron Conant  2:06  

Awesome. So a quick note, we want this to be as educational and informational as possible. So as we go, if you have questions, drop them in the chat, or drop them in the Q&A. And we'll get those answered in real time as we go. So you know, I want to dive into this just a little bit because it is unique, right? It is not an app, right? And in what do you see as how this evolved? What is the impact that you're seeing? Yeah, people have to view this differently. 

AJ Vernet  2:34  

It's great. My partner actually owns a couple of restaurants in Santa Monica called the Independence and Lanea, and he came up with an idea of he wanted to figure out how to combat what was happening with labor shortages and created a simple messaging system that went between a table and QR codes, which everybody knows is blown up over the last few years, and the waitstaff. And in doing so he saw that the staff who knew how to use it were communicating what they needed, and realized that it was never going to scale to where it needed to be because it was adding friction because somebody had to reply. So we infused it with AI, which is now everywhere, we took a long time to figure out how to take the AI and get it to replace basically a staff worker and their knowledge. But once we did that, we successfully realized that we could communicate back and forth with the guests and help them place an order, you know, get napkins get water, get service in, and literally took the friction out of everything and have created almost a laborer-less channel that if we miss a glass of wine on the table, that person can order it without having to raise their hand and say, Oh, waiter, or can place a pickup order from sitting in their seat in order lunch and then walk down the street to the local restaurant. And that was something that every single one of our partners and every single one of the restaurants in our neighborhood needed help with you know, cutting costs and scaling and keeping the doors open and dealing with the labor crisis that happened after code COVID And the great resignation. And so we're kind of coming out the gates and tomorrow will be our first day as the Toast integration partner at 9 am on Eastern we will be inside the marketplace which is why we wanted to get DWG the scoop and let everybody know that basically you know we'll be the first text-to-order AI platform partner inside Toast for wall starting tomorrow morning 9 am.

Aaron Conant  4:31  

So, it can be then start to finish? Like is there a sweet spot where you find either a type of restaurant that uses this? Do you have it as a to-go order? I'm thinking of questions that people have along the way that I'm having conversations with. Then again others if you're on the line, you have questions specifically around it. It is completely new. It's why we kind of want to get the word out there but you know if people have questions drop into the chat or the q&a and we'll get them answered in real time.

AJ Vernet  4:59  

It's operationally what I experienced. So many times when I take my kids out with my wife I want that next glass of wine with, we want an extra order of fries, and our kids are melting down. And like, I'm constantly waiting and raising my hand trying to get a waiter's attention. So it was that second order that second round of drinks, then organically on prem was great. But once we infused AI, a number of restaurants were like, can I use this for pickup so I don't have to pay third party fees, you know, so I don't have to keep doing customer acquisition through a DoorDash or an old platform and everybody that's a customer will waiter now they currently do have an app, you know, they have a website they're working with, and ItsaCheckmate. And they're getting leads that way. But it's like, how do you drop something in a bag and already have that relationship with Aaron, and get him to order tacos whenever he wants from his phone? And that's where we really started to pivot from an on-premise solution to pick up. We'll do an integration in a couple of months and will now basically be able to facilitate delivery. And you'll see the trend and some communities where people are constantly trying to use AI or some streamlined ordering service to try and not have somebody pick up on the phone. And with our service, you know, you can get 20, 30 orders at the same time. And there's no backlog.

Aaron Conant  6:23  

And from the consumer standpoint, are they then getting that? I mean, it's tax so they're getting a number back, then are you just saving that number as you know, for me, Texas Coner's Brew Pub, right? Like I can just save it and then interact and reorder through that or is it have to be on-premise or...?

AJ Vernet  6:42  

So somebody has to scan something, you can save a phone number because we issue a phone number to everybody and then you can basically text back like I want to order. I want two tacos, a Topo Chico, nachos ASAP, hold the side of onions and literally you are having a relationship and a conversation with an ordering platform at the location level. So it can be on prem as a QR code sitting on the table, which everybody knows. It can then be a number on your Yelp page, it could be something that you're sending to you putting in the bag when somebody orders to promote that next interaction. We finding a variety of ways where we we also seen sweet spots is like the back patio that nobody has staffing at, the golf course in the carts, the pool area by a hotel, where they have one person trying to cover like 300 chairs and nine cabanas. We've seen a lot of success there. Because our system is built with AI and because we're fully integrated now with Toast, what happens is we're able to build the menu a certain way where if somebody orders, nachos, it tries to upsell them with a protein. If somebody orders a margarita, it tries to upsell them a premium tequila. And so we're able to just do what every waiter should do every single time. You order Caesar salad which is like a protein you order Margarita, would you like that with Casa amigos? You know, would you like a side of fries, we build all those things in. But the big difference in what we're really betting on with this new channel that a lot of people are starting to adopt is that we are literally just doing text. There's no fuzzy images, we're not popping you to a web page or a cart where you're basically filling it out. And so we really think the sweet spot moving forward is going to be that user that's already come in, that already knows your menu that comes a couple times a week or a couple times a month that goes to multiple locations. And they already know they want to cheese pizza, half mushroom, half pepperoni, right? They want an extra crispy, they want a two liter of coke. And there's a few other companies out there that I think were ahead of us, like Order AI with HungerRush. And I believe Ovation is bringing a text order chain, because it's so affordable. Like what we're launching with Toast is a promotion, that will be 5% of the transaction, capped at $149 a month. What we're seeing from our initial phase of 50 clients is that they're probably getting five, six orders a day on this channel. It grows over time as they promote it. The average order size is about 10% bigger, depending on the type of establishment, and that's just because we're constantly suggesting via text. What would you like? The add on. The little things to increase the cart. And AI does that great.

Aaron Conant  9:40  

There's also the back end, right? I mean, if I've been there long enough, like if I want another glass of wine, I want another beer but it takes 10 minutes. I mean I've got four kids, we're done. You missed it. Bring me my check. I'm going home.

AJ Vernet  9:52  

I'm at a food hall in Omaha called The Parlor, and The Parlor is really interesting because they have about 10 different food stations, they charge those guys that percentage of the food bill, and then they own the bar. And there's a two-level bar, it's all a bunch of nooks and crannies. It's about 67 tables that we cover on site. And the bars are far from the tables. And so our solutions on the ground on those tables, and basically, we're just selling drinks, and we're doing 15, 20 a day. Where they're ordering the specialties and more than pushing on a set of shots or something else. So the AI is amazing because it just plugs directly right into Toast, you see the tickets, you get it on the handheld, it's all reconciled. And if you set the menu up properly, you know, it does increase the check, because it's constantly trying to push those little modifiers that add to it. But then so …

Aaron Conant  10:52  

Yeah, yeah, a few questions come in. One is how long does integration take? And the next one is? How long before you're rolling out integrations with other POS providers and others? If you have questions drop in the chat with q&a. We'll get to them all. asked Is

AJ Vernet  11:07  

$149 a month but with Toast, we decided to allow people the flexibility to ramp this up. Because we've seen it takes a little time to promote and get it going. So to answer your question about onboarding, it is about a week. And you have to get us some information. But it takes about 10 days total to be live. Most of the work on our end, with syncing the menu and working with Toast. The second is the costs, we're charging 5% of transactions up to 149 and we will not go past that. There are no other usage fees or nothing else. And we're trying to work with you to encourage repeat order with someone like Aaron.

Aaron Conant  11:46  

So it caps at $149?

AJ Vernet  11:49  

That's it, that's all you ever pay. So if you sell $10,000 worth of food through the channel, you're only paying me $149. You know, we're what we're seeing with people like Sweetfin or Tocai or The Parlors that they're just trying to squeeze every margin. Sweetfin is going to be a client when they switch over. But at the end of the day, these guys, their businesses, they're trying to get, you know, 20, 30% of their business being direct orders, right? Not their party, and then the list.

Aaron Conant  12:24  

You have to mark it up, right like the DoorDash, GrubHub, whatever it might be. It's actual menu pricing, which makes people happier, right?

AJ Vernet  12:31  

Yes. And it's instantaneous. It takes two seconds to do a text message, it takes three or four seconds for the AI to respond. Within 30 seconds, you have closed out your cart, and you've processed the transaction. We processed the transaction directly with whatever POS system were integrated. And it is yes, 149 per unit. Couple of things, we have a we have an ItsaCheckmate partnership, and they approached us early on. Last year, we did an integration with them first, before we did it with Toast. The goal was to plug in the plug in to 42 different systems. We love those guys. They're great. So we can technically go into like a squirrel and Aloha and all these other systems, but you have to have your middleware set up really great. And I have to be honest, I really love the direct integration with Toast. It streamlines everything. We get such good access and insights. And it just takes like a day to set up on our end in the back and then usually work with somebody for signage and all those other things. Yeah.

Aaron Conant  13:37  

We're fast casual, this would work for pickup or delivery orders? Does it come through Toast, and print like an online order?

AJ Vernet  13:43  

Okay, so that was the whole point of integration like AI doesn't work unless it has a source of truth, which is the POS. So you get to set all the menu up, you get to set up the modifiers, the upsells, everything, the pricing, we read that so when an item is at six to goes, says this item is not available. So the AI knows how to communicate, it prints to whatever expo you want. In our own restaurant, for instance, any order that comes in food goes to the kitchen expo. Any drink water goes to the bar, it also hits the Toast handhelds. One other question I get a lot is we get a lot of service requests through this platform. So what we saw over the last year when we were beta testing was that not everybody was ordering. They were asking for napkins and forks and you know, my dad's birthday, can I get a free dessert? We're pushing notes like that, too. In our restaurant, the expo printer so that somebody can physically get a note that table one wants something for pickup. We push it as a modifier note at the bottom of the check. So, they're the ones that actually saw our solution to the note with a it's a checkmate the team sauce, we went through product dev, and one of the heads It's a product called us and said, I think you guys are a pickup solution should stop focusing on on prem. And that's when we started to pivot. And it actually is the perfect omni channel. As I was talking with Aaron recently. You already know, I already know what I want for lunch at Chico's Tacos down the street. Now I can place an order and three seconds and get my fish tacos inside of nachos, that my son and I are split. And it takes me 10 seconds, instead of then going on to Postmates or DoorDash and searching for it and finding it. And that's what I think we're betting on. People text all day long period. That's proven. People like my 80 year old dad, who when he finally tried it realized it was just texting. The downside is there's no fuzzy pictures in there. The upside is, is most people when they're repeat customer, they know your they know your menu, you can push specials, so like texting, because it's just texting, when they first scan, I could say welcome Taco Tuesday, you know, I can push a special, we built in all these marketing features. Because a few of us on the team come from that so that but somebody scans and it's a Wednesday and you want to push Whiskey Wednesdays, you can do that Brisket Thursdays, you know? Hotdog Fridays, it's built for that. Also, we built in some fun nuances that, you know, they're not going to make the day but they're going to add value like at the end of an order follows up and says, Hey, thank you for being a great customer. We're a small business, we thrive on reviews, your next meal is 25% off. And the system will remember that where we're going is what gets me really excited. Right now we're in a phase where AI allows us to take labor out of it and get like a perfect checkout for a high volume of people, which saves you money, and helps make us money. Because we're being a good partner. Where we really want to go into the marketing where we're reaching back out to somebody. And we'll do this by the end of the year and saying it's Tuesday. We know you love this order. Or thanks for coming back, you know, what would you like, are your two tacos and nachos off. And we'll start pushing orders. But only to people that we know are your customer completely irrelevant and bringing them back in to spend again, that'll still be $149 a month. And then where I think it really gets exciting is the insights that you get from being able to see all the nuances of customers order you can't get from the other systems because this is the most personal device. So once you have them in here, and they're talking to you, you can just keep that conversation going.

Aaron Conant  17:39  

Awesome. The next question, have you? How have you seen operations impacted? And how have those lessons learned over time? 

AJ Vernet  17:50  

I've seen us not have to pick up the phone at the to-go counter. And I've seen two other folks be able to increase their direct order business. And you know what's coming through our channel to like three or four or 500 bucks a day, which adds up over time and not have to pay somebody $75 to ship there to demand that. So you're saving like 150 bucks a day for the simple order channel. You've seen that? To answer the question, yes, we are using a version of the ChatGPT on a Microsoft Azure, but it's not like it's not like OpenAI you can't go in ask it. Like how far to the moon? Which people do. We're basically you can use almost any AI feature. And it's the prompts, if anybody wants to know that help us successfully navigate an order of sparkling water for a pizza. It's not. It's not a lot of learning as we go. We've spent the last year really beta-testing it in a multitude of environments before we decided we were ready for primetime. It's a checkmate really helped us grow. And then Toast has been wonderful in really coming out with a set of features that allow us to check text a person back, you know, I mentioned you could get 25 orders at once, which is totally true. But what happens when you get 25 orders to your kitchen, right? It gets logged up. So if you're promoting this thing, right, we were building in things that allow us to say, hey, come pick this up in 15 minutes, or we just got 25 orders, come pick it up in 20 minutes. We're building in some text back features with partners where you'll be able to like communicate like your orders ready earlier, we're going to need few extra minutes to get it ready, because we want to still give great service. But yeah, I've seen I know that texting is going to be 5% of the market by the end of this year. And I think it's going to be 25% in less than 18 months. And that's just because it's something that everyone does all day long. And AI now is at a place where it can views into this environment. And then it'll start becoming like, Hey, Aaron, welcome back. You're at a new restaurant or Hi, Aaron. Welcome to the independence. You haven't been here before. It's got four things on the menu that you like. And it's gonna be one that now that's 12 months out.

Aaron Conant  20:18  

That's interesting, right? Like, if you see that I'm always ordering the barbacoa nachos. Yeah. And I walk into a new restaurant and they say, Hey, how would you like to barbacoa nachos?

AJ Vernet  20:31  

That's what AI allows us to do now. We have it actually sort of built, we just don't have enough scale.

Aaron Conant  20:38  

You could also put in there. Hey, what's the number one thing on the menu?

AJ Vernet  20:41  

Yep. We'll build in like, Hey, what should I get? If I'm gluten-free? And it'll pull up all those items? You know, we'll start building in those things rather quickly. Like the number one thing on the menu, what's the Wi-Fi? What's all the little questions? Now for sit down, I come from a hospitality family in San Francisco and waterfront my uncle would turn over if I tried to revolutionize in technology across the whole premise. But trying to sell an extra glass of wine and sell 15 of those a night increases profit margin for pickup, I think it's absolutely a no-brainer for for delivery as well. And then, you know, we're gonna, we just signed a deal with like Hilton supply management to work with the franchisees for in-room. Right, it's just no brainer, we have a couple of restaurants that are outsourcing, helping hotels that are outsourcing their FMB. So like, small, you know, Mom and Pop hotel in Santa Monica is giving another restaurant that has our system, the ability to get all the FMB during working hours. So like, we're seeing a lot of fun things that you can do with technology when you take it to text. But then again, it has its limitations too, like, you're not going to look at a picture and be able to click on it. And then, you know, click six different buttons and fill up a cart. It's done slightly differently. Yeah.

Aaron Conant  22:07  

One more question. We use Gibby for text marketing with this replace that. That's just replying to customers, but proactively being able to message them. Not yet.

AJ Vernet  22:16  

All the marketing stuff besides like the follow-up texts that we have, which you can put in your Yelp link or Google link, or actually whatever you want, in the custom messaging, that's what we're currently launching. We will launch most of the marketing features that I talked about towards the end of the year. And in the first quarter, can we have Toast but use Lunchbox for ordering platform. We have Checkmate. If you have Checkmate, we can work with you. In any capacity. Can you work with Lunchbox? We like Lunchbox. For us, I think we're looking at possibly Square being another platform, which is relatively easy. And then we'll probably look start looking to what's the next POS is that we need to integrate with in order to service the customer. But that'll be customer-driven. You know, right now with Toast and a couple of these other partnerships, we have going that's a that's a big lift for a company like us. Like super exciting. I think where I'd like to see it is that, you know, customers that are in those high-density locations like that have some office space that's coming back to work or in the right neighborhoods that want to service that neighborhood. If they had a platform like ours, and they put like a QR code on everybody's refrigerator, we could easily start servicing that repeat customer.

Aaron Conant  23:46  

This is awesome. If there are any last questions, drop them in here. Anything that we didn't get to I mean, I think I could brainstorm with you for like three or four hours here. Because I am the person, I am on Yelp. I'm trying to reserve my place in line ahead of time. I don't want to wait. I do know what I'm going to order. And you know, I'm going there because I didn't have time to make dinner. Right? And I'm going in there's six of us. There are four kids. I'm getting, you know, a hamburger and three orders of chicken fingers. And then you know the wife and I it's meal. So 

AJ Vernet  24:20  

I think we want to go in like three or four years when we have enough locations. It's like I want Thai food. And basically the system starts delineating and driving orders to you because you've engaged it. The reason we can do marketing in it is that it's permission-based the user is initiating. You know the engagement. I don't know if Shawl Well, I know Stefan and the product team, but we love checkmate. They took an early bet on us and it really actually helped shape our future. So

Aaron Conant  24:51  

Emma says I'm a Toast customer. How do I sign up? Smiley face. It's only $149 Like, how can somebody not try it? Right? And you've been great about not sales pitching, because I mean, you've explained people the platform which I 100%. But it's like, it's no no-brainer for 150 bucks. That's just the reality.

AJ Vernet  25:13  

We're super excited 9am Eastern tomorrow morning, we will be in the Toast marketplace. And anybody can click on that. 

Aaron Conant  25:21  

We'll connect you to AJ, for sure. Awesome, any, like key takeaways as we get right here to the end?

AJ Vernet  25:30  

No, but this is a this is a growing medium. A lot of people ask me like, what to watch out for. I said, AI is coming into our future, right? Because automation is coming into restaurants. I think you still have to pick a right team, you have to pick people that are going to be in the trenches with you, and you're gonna help to customize this. I think the biggest hurdle with going into something like this is you got to have menu health. And she that's a problem for everybody. Right? You gotta have the right menu setup. And that is the key point. And if you have that this thing works all day long and can help make you money and save you money. Thanks. I appreciate the time. 

Aaron Conant  26:09  

Awesome. This has been a blast. Thanks, AJ. Thanks, everybody for dialing in and all the great questions. We'll be sure to send a follow-up connection to everybody here. But with that, we're gonna wrap up this webinar here. Everybody take care. Stay safe. Look forward to having you at a future event. Look for a follow-up email from us. Thanks again. AJ. That was awesome.

AJ Vernet  26:26  

Appreciate it. Have a good one!