This is the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.

In this episode of the show, I am joined by, uh, the team from House of Giants. They continue to push the limits of what web front end interfaces can look like for the restaurant business. As we all know, the website and really kind of how you interact digitally with customers continues to expand people's desires and use cases, continue to, um, want to push the limits of what it is that customers are looking for. I tease, um, oftentimes to restaurant. Restaurant operators that people are always looking for the Amazon effect where they can order and control their entire experience. The team over at House of Giants has been doing this for quite some time and has an amazing opportunity to help restaurants on the digital side for those that need to do a refresh or have never really gotten into the digital game. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy. Julian. I am the Chief Revenue Officer for CBS North Star. We sell the North Star point of sale solution for multi-units. Please check us out at. CBS north star.com and now onto the episode. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I say, each and every time, you guys have got lots of choices. So thank you guys for hanging out. this week. Today is a fun topic because everybody's got problems as it relates to what the, this couple is gonna deal with. And so I know we're gonna get super deep into why it's a challenge and why restaurants need to be. evaluating it. I happen to be recording this the week of Metech. Just got back talking to a lot of people that are in the restaurant space and we know so many more things are going digital, which is why the digital experience is such a critical part. And so I'm joined by the founders of House of Giants, but I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let Jeremiah introduce himself first. Why don't you give a little bit of a background. Where did you come from? How did you get into this stuff? you've been coding since you were 12 in your garage kind of thing. But, tell everybody a little bit of that story and then, you can introduce your business partner and we can talk a little bit about why it's so critical.

Yeah, I normally say I'm probably not the most important out of the two of us, but. What I would say is, so we got started a while ago. I got into coding, when I was younger because I really enjoyed problem solving and it was like the language to do at the time. And then worked my way through a lot of different platforms and a lot of different CMSs and Dom and I worked at a company before we, we didn't necessarily like, and I'll let him speak so it's not my words, but didn't necessarily like the approach. And when House of Giants was formed, it was a very, how do we diverge from this? How do we solve problems that need to be solved in ways that. impact or change. So I don't know, Dom, if you got a better way to describe it.

Good. No, that's that's absolutely right. I'm. I'm Dominic. I've also been coding, for quite a long time. got my start in more of the creative coding, kind of world. A lot of front end like designy, interesting stuff like that. and yeah, like Jeremiah was saying, we definitely got our start, working at a lot of agencies and seeing. The things that we know didn't work right. we wanted to approach, the agency partner relationship, a little bit differently, much more collaboratively, and using much more data to drive our decisions rather than just, checking a box. that was the impetus for starting House of Giants.

and I'm gonna, I'm gonna let our audience know that we're not gonna get super nerdy. We promised before we hit go that we're not gonna get into the weeds of, of any of the bits and bites of things. But, talk to me a little bit about what. your guys' premise behind the House of Giants. You guys talked about a little bit about your background, but talk to me about why restaurants and why do you, what is it specifically that you guys are doing for restaurant brands? Don, why don't you take that to start. What is it that your kind of go-to market that says, Hey, we really want to help restaurants do x.

For sure it, when we entered the space, we really recognized this like the disparate amounts of data, right? you've got your, point of sale systems, you've got your loyalty programs, you've got data in many different places, and there are very few. all in one solutions that are really pulling in all of that data in a unified kind of way, for a single experience, right? we're very much into, building the custom front ends, making things look nice and all of that type of stuff, especially for your brands and everything like that. But what has really become more important it seems in the landscape. is that unified experience, not having to go to two or three different places to check out, to order to, to do all of that. So that's the, that was the opportunity that we saw, entering the space was getting that unified data and then. To put on top of that the potential that there is for when you do have a CDP, like your customer data profile, the opportunity for the use of ai, LLMs, all of that type of stuff, to parse that data and make recommendations and suggestions is invaluable, especially in this day and age.

I think that's so great that you guys are doing that.'cause as I said earlier, I'm coming off the heels of leaving the Metech conference and I. Just got to listen to lots of restaurant leaders stand on stage and talk about the fact that these systems are disparate, the fact that they're having a hard time getting to those customers, restaurants and retail really for that matter. and restaurants more so than even retail, are one of the only offline commerce engines that you don't have the customer data at your fingertips. When I go on Amazon, you know who I am. When I go on gap.com, you know who I am. When you go on walmart.com, you know who I am. When I go into the store, they, it's a slower transaction volume, so you can do that. But in restaurants it's a struggle to figure out how people are doing that. And then the second thing that I heard you say, Dom, that I think is great is the unifying commerce idea has been something that people have been trying to figure out for quite some time, but. Oftentimes within the business, it starts at foundation. So Jeremiah, we were talking a little bit about where you guys are finding, as you guys are engaging with different brands, that they struggle and I equate it oftentimes to the architecture side of things. they often will start to build before they even know what their end goal is. Can you dig in a little bit on why you think that is and why? Having somebody like House of Giants can help them to walk through that business process to help them understand how architecting it properly makes a B much better foundation to grow into the future.

I think I was just having this conversation this morning. I had a two hour conversation about integrating AI into platforms and the struggle people are having because of the architecture. I. Think it's a mixed bag of nuts when you talk. So I think the reason why a lot of people start with the architecture decision is because a lot of people don't know what data they have, or it's an afterthought. And that's where a lot of engineering companies also start, if that makes sense. So typically when you approach a traditional engineering company, they will go, okay, show us the data, and they'll build up from there. I don't think a lot of people really start. The other way. So it's always a question of like chicken and egg. So I could either get your data architectured or structured or unified, and spend all this time bringing in together through different pipelines and any other technical routes. Or I could spend time on the front understanding what data I need and then just getting that data out there. I think the big discussion this morning was. To flip it on its head. A lot of executives want change now. They wanna see movement, but then a lot of technical people are mired in the details, A lot of the discussion that I was having this morning was focused around what if we just started with a clean slate and really reversing, the discussion. So instead of saying Hey, let's bring in bureaucracy. It's what if we started with a clean slate? What are we trying to do here? What are we trying to build? Getting a really good understanding of that and then building the data in to support that, or even migrating the data if it's too heavy. I know that some restaurants. have been around for quite a long time. We've worked with some, out in the San Francisco area and when you take over projects, it's just a lot of baggage you have and that could really weigh down where you're looking to go or what you're looking to do. And so I think it's really important to do that. Flip to your point, and then back in the architecture from there. I think if you start too early on that you just end up with probably a product that isn't ideal for what you have and a lot of budget that goes somewhere where you're not a hundred percent sure where.

and I always use the Stephen Covey start with the end in mind. And if you know where you're trying to get to, it's easier to back into it. And then you oftentimes will have data and then you might be missing some pieces of data. And so it's like, how do we fill that gap? But in the interim, and I see people do that all the time where they'll just go, we need to look like Starbucks. And so they, they want to just chase Starbucks and their CEO comes into this IT guy's desk and throws something down and says. Starbucks is doing this, I wanna figure out how to do it. And ultimately they're stuck holding the bag because they don't have, they don't have the pieces that go through that. Help me understand how you guys walk these people through this because it's a combination. I say this also on the show often, I. It is involved in a hundred percent of the restaurant projects. Now they have to be involved in every piece of it from an LTO that's going out to new POS to new music that's going in the store. Across the board, it is involved in all projects, and so their budget, their time is oftentimes stretched. Help educate some of our IT listeners out there. How do you guys help them to go back to the business and point these things out that says, I appreciate that you want to get to Starbucks, but we need to lay the foundation so that we can get there because it will be accelerated. With the advent of AI and such, how do you guys coach them through that process?

Yeah, it really starts it, it really starts with the discovery process, your initial discussion. with everybody, right? it's one of the things that all too often, especially in agencies that we've worked at in the past, it just gets breezed over where it's okay, cool. We think we have an understanding of what you need. We're just gonna go ahead and build what we think you need. The approach that we found that's just vastly more effective is we ask probably way too many questions. trying to really like, dig into the true reasoning behind the problems that our partners are seeing, right? So partner will come to us with a problem, they'll say, oh, we're not, we're not converting or we're not seeing as much traffic as we want to, or something like that. And we. We drill down to try to find what the actual solution is or what the actual underlying problem, is. in, in terms of talking to like with IT folks and stuff, it's really like it's data-driven decisions. It's, we've. Very often had to basically sell our expertise to, the C-level executives and stuff like that, where it's like, Hey, trust us. We've been doing this for, over a decade. here's the data to support the decisions that we're making and based on our experience and expertise, here are the user experience changes you need. You're losing people because they're, transferring to a third party site and maybe sometimes that redirects not working properly, or that experience is slow. using that data and it's a little frustrating sometimes, but selling yourself and saying, Hey, here's the value that we're bringing to the table, and here are the numbers that support it. So it all starts at the very beginning of that, documenting that, having those conversations, with the IT people in the room because they're the ones that understand the systems.

and I think, sorry, I don't mean to kick off your mind, but I think in general. We never had these elements of being able to capture this data to be able to present that back to'em. And at the end of the day, I think we all know, data is just a tool to drive a decision. Most decisions are made with emotions and then the data backs it up. But if you can show those things, you can change their emotions and back into it. And I had an experience. I was sitting with a customer at, I literally was sitting at this conference and it's a brand that I like to eat at, and I had a bad digital experience and I'm like, you realize that I went to a different brand because of this? and they were baffled. I said, go look at the data. How many times do people have that item in their cart and they go to order and it doesn't go through? What are you doing about it? And so you guys talked a lot about, and I promise not to get in the weeds, but you guys talked about kind of front end and CMS and different ways. Practically Jeremiah tell, what is that? I know what it is, but for our listeners that, that may not understand what the front end is or this front end development, it like practical, like CEO doesn't know anything about it. What exactly does that mean?

So I think it all depends on where you're coming from and where your organization is. So like we were talking to Olo the other day and they dropped the term CFE all the time, or custom front end. So it's, what it really comes down to is normally different restaurants or different organizations have a backend that they already choose or somebody that they're working with that they like, or maybe they're working with a loyalty program. So it's. Putting something in the front of the customer that doesn't necessarily always have to entail all the backend or all the baggage that comes with it. So reworking what the customer sees or what a user sees. a very good example is that Starbucks app, right? So I was part of that whole launch when they first came out with the loyalty program, the stars, if you've seen those. And so a lot of that discussion is just re-skinning the back end. So they didn't do a lot of rebuilding. A lot of it was just to say. Okay, what are our users doing? How do we, in that case, gamify it. Because to your point, for a shopping cart, how do we remind customers? Do you do a cart wiggle? There's a million different ways to drive people to use the different variations, especially in current day when video's becoming heavy in a lot of restaurants where users wanna see maybe food move or see the steam coming off of'em. It's a way for us to present the food or the menus or the offerings, whether it's drinks, in a way that appetizers customers, engages customers and allows them to, for the business side. This will make me sound a little consumers, but buy more because ultimately that is what you're looking for. The ROI is you're not just looking to have a pretty website. It's. How do we get these users to do it? And oftentimes it's incorporating some of the CDP data, so the customer data profile to say, Hey look, we've seen this customer has done this before. And pull it up to the front end like you're saying, so that a customer doesn't know you're doing all this complicated stuff, but it runs really smooth.

Yeah. And I think that, I guess you guys wrap for a little bit internally about the problems that you guys see when you guys go into brands before they've engaged with you guys.'cause I think it's, I think it back to the data points, I think all too often I. You'll hear from people and Dom you said it earlier, we gotta go sell our services and be like, trust us. But at the end of the day, I think all too often I have a good friend who used to do this in the consumer space, consumer, good space. He's you have no idea how many sales you're losing because you don't convert. And so help me, help our listeners to understand so that they can go back to their IT team so they can go back to their marketing team so that they can go back to their agency team. What are some of the common things that you guys are seeing that people are or are not doing, that are hurting their brand and hurting their perception out there? And really at the end of the day, to your point, Jeremiah hurting their top line sales.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we. See often is this it feels like a, like an everything or nothing approach, right? Where especially when you're talking about like data collection, and how to use that data and stuff like that, what Jeremiah was talking about earlier, where it's like backing into the problem is going to generally yield a better result for you. So let's actually drill down, figure out what it is that you really need. In order to effectively, effectively move your customers through your entire experience, end to end, whether they're in the restaurant, physically ordering online, all of that type of stuff. So the biggest problem I think right now that we've faced is just, it is just the overwhelming amount of data that there is and how to effectively use it. People just. People just wanna use everything. And if you're prioritizing everything, you're prioritizing nothing. So figuring out how

a true developer,

actually listen.

developer. gimme a priority list, man. and I love it. I tease that. I tell customers that all the time. You can't have 10 priorities. You can have one priority and then that one gets done and you go to the next one. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but I have to tell people this all the time. You need to give me a four rank list. Gimme the top five. Man. I can't get, so sorry. I'll let you keep going. And now a word from one of our sponsors. Every restaurant operator understands the chaos of a restaurant kitchen during the meal rush. Restaurant technologies, oil, total oil management solutions, an end-to-end automated oil management system that delivers filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking the dirtiest jobs outta your kitchen and letting your employees focus on more important tasks. Control the kitchen, chaos with restaurant technologies, and make your kitchen safer. No upfront cost. To learn more, check out RTI dash i c.com or call 8 8 8 7 9 6 4 9 9 6.

No, you're absolutely right.

I'm gonna cut you off now too, but I think also to, to dog pile on this, you also can't gauge success like when you're changing everything at once.'cause that's a lot of what it hits on is they're like, oh yeah, we wanna show movement or we wanna show our eye. And when you're making all these changes at once, it's really hard to gauge Okay, what's actually working, what's not. And then, very on point. sorry. Okay, Dom,

no, that's you're hitting the nail on the head. I think. between the prioritization. So doing too much at once. So you're trying to completely refactor your loyalty, completely refactor your front end, the user experience, the design, all of that stuff at once. It tends to become cumbersome and then you're again, prioritizing everything and prioritizing nothing all at the same time. but within that, one of the things that it, we've definitely noticed that is a little bit tougher of a conversation to have with folks, especially like from it to the executive level and stuff like that, is the value of the user experience and the. Like I said, the ends to end in-house, out of house, online. the experience tailored to the customer in a way that they can expect. and are familiar with, even if they've used your app one time, is massively important. And it's one of the things that we have countless conversations with folks where it's like the initial investment of doing the user research, doing interviews with the users, trying to understand how people are interacting with your brand and, moving through your space and all of that type of stuff is sometimes a hard sell. people generally, because you're not getting that immediate return. Out of those types of things, it's hard to sell people on. so yeah, between the prioritization of the, the efforts that you're trying to do, the development efforts, the branding efforts, and then the selling of the user experience are the things that we are challenged by, quite frequently.

and it's funny because I think that especially generationally, people see it and they can tell a disconnect between my online experience and my in-store experience. And if the, there are certain brands that the experience in store is better than it is digitally, and there's some that are the opposite. And so they're gonna drive some of that behavior, but not understanding to your guys' point, start with the end in mind and map that whole journey from start to finish has to be consistent.'cause if it's not. You get some disunity in the brand, and I love it when I go. there's some brands that are just awful and I don't wanna pick on any names I'm gonna talk about here in just a second. I hate, I'm never gonna talk names of people that do it poorly, the ones that have truly put an effort in to creating this experience versus not as it relates to that experience. Jeremiah, talk to me about how you guys think through. Creating an experience that's memorable, but also serves their purposes. I'm a father of four. Sometimes me getting on, I want to order fast, have it in the app, have it paid, and move on. Whereas other times, I want discovery and I wanna work through those things. And that's a hard thing to balance because again, whether the online experience is, or a kiosk experience, or the full browser experience, all of those things, depending upon how I'm interacting with a brand. you have to be cognizant of it. How do you guys think about those different things? Because to your point, Dom, you guys have to walk through the customer journey, both in store and away, and not doing it in a way that resonates. You ultimately could bounce them to your competitor and ultimately lose that sale for that time and potentially forever.

I think it's, what, when you say that, it's always the excessive amount of popups when I go through. So I'm always in a rush, but for some reason I. There's just a lot of popups. So I think it's really dialing in what our customers are doing and, when I say we, it's the restaurant or the brand, understanding what the customers are doing and why they're engaging with us and providing'em pathways through I know I just referenced popups, but it's a lazy way to deal with Hey, we don't know what they wanna do, so why don't we just throw a bunch of popups, or we try to upsell them. I know a co a lot of gas stations tend towards, in their, towards their, User menus, they have a lot of popups to try to sell you things. So you go to checkout, they're like, what about a cookie? What about a drink? You're like, nah. This isn't how to do it. So I think a lot of what we've done in the past is a ver a lot of variation of different ways to user test. So what we like to do is lead in with and understand what a user's going to do, why they're doing it. And then we also like to do things like. Do heat mapping, do eye tracking, which we've done in the past. And so really understand like what's a user doing when they're engaging with a kiosk or when they're eng engaging with a website. Like really dive down. And then also look at how far we're willing to go. Because to your point, not all customers are our customer too. So it's a good understanding to say, did that guy balance because it was price, which we've seen before where some restaurants are trying to chase price and you're like, look, those aren't what the. The metrics say, yes, we can get them, but we're be much better off making a better user experience for people that are maybe adding a lot of items to their cart. Or maybe they're larger families, to your point, or they're doing partying. So maybe the focus is on catering rather than on this. And I think really drilling down and understanding that front, because I think not every bad thing is an emergency, right? So not everything's a hurricane. Sometimes you just go look like, yeah, we lost a couple people, but that was to be expected. I think it's. As we said before, it's really driving at understanding what you're doing and why you're doing it. I think that there was a good phrasing that was explained to me earlier that a lot of people don't really understand the why or the how. They understand the what. So really when you look at your target, you have, I think I. Alex Simmick said it where you have the Y on the inside and most people don't make it past the w the why, the how, or the what, So they hit that, what? And they go, okay, this is what's going on. And they don't really dig down. So

Yeah. and it's funny'cause I had a customer call me a while back'cause they were fighting a lot of abandoned carts on catering. And I said to them, have you considered the fact that they're a pharmaceutical rep and they're considering catering, but they realize that your product is too expensive? And they were really trying to redirect them to a customer service person while they were in the middle of that cart experience to say, Hey, we have other options that might not be on this website. If you tell me your budget's$500 for this meal, I can get you something. And so it was an interesting experience that he had. He was trying to figure out that the bad customer. Service story that I was just about to share, which goes back to your guys' data comments. I just got an email four hours ago to order lunch from a brand and it, in the email it talked about ordering lunch from this brand and this brand, and it gave me the store name, which is my local store, which is in my CDP, which is in my. The store's been closed for 30 days. I don't know why it's closed, but the store was closed, so now I craved this product, but now I can't get it because they did the right thing. They got into my inbox, they got my attention, they got me to go click. I clicked it. I'm like,'cause. On the local Facebook page that said that they're gonna open up some time in March. And so we're recording this in March and I'm like, okay, hopefully they're ready.'cause I've been craving it. The next closest store is 15 miles away. I'm not gonna drive 15 or 20 minutes to go get this food, but right here in town, I might drive the 10 minutes or seven minutes to go get it. But now this comes back to your guys' data comment. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys consider the data elements, because that experience for me as a customer was not great. I got an email, I now got craveable product and now I can't get it. So now it turned into a, I'm gonna start to ignore their emails because they're not relevant to me and now they can, are gonna have a harder time getting my attention. When the store does reopen here in town, and again, I don't even know why it's closed, it's a national chain, but they just happen to have this store that's close to me closed. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys even consider that data.'cause that. To me was a fail on their marketing's part, telling me, come to this store in your town to get this product and then it's not there.

Yeah, there's no question that having near real time. Time data at your disposal is valuable, right? Because in that exact scenario, if instead of a, an email advertising like, Hey, go to your local store to get this. They could instead have sent you an email saying Hey, this store has been closed, but we're reopening in March. Here's a coupon for like your first time back, like after, something like that. Using that

DoorDash from the store that's 15 miles away to get the food to me, free delivery for that store. And I'm sorry, I'm just, but I'm giving these guys suggestions that says this would have gotten me to order a fricking pizza this morning. I promise you had it happened. So sorry. I'll let you keep going.

No, that's, it's exactly right. It's truly, it. It's truly just using accurate data to speak to your clientele. There has to be some in that CDP profile, there has to be some sort of, radius of a range, like here are all of the stores in Jeremy's area. Like how do we direct him to a new. Store to get food. So in any case, I to play on the previous conversation too, it, it's almost like an accessibility problem. It because even, the father of four single mom carrying two kids and not knowing how to like quickly reorder her last order, is a very common issue. So like. Developing and designing these experiences with basically, not necessarily like worst case scenario in mind, but all kinds of different use cases. a lot of applications, it seems especially like their mobile ordering experience and stuff have moved towards a quick reorder. Type of thing. So in your case, you're super busy, you don't wanna see all the popups. You can see your last two or three orders on your phone and be like, yeah, I know exactly what I want to get from this. this Indian food place that I go to all the time. I'd like to just reorder that super quickly so I don't have to think about it. And then other times, using it, it's hard to use contextual data like that to know when someone is in a, state of, immediacy. but there are indicators that you can use within your data to figure out, what the right time to pop up a message is. so it is truly assessing the data that you have access to and trying to understand what actions you can help make easier for the users through that data. So it's taking an inventory of what you have and really assessing how to use it properly.

I would also say it's how you're approaching sales too. So I think that was a huge let down for marketing. I think to your point, Dom. You could have all the data in the world, but you gotta really ask how and why we're doing it, right? So I think a lot of times when we do it, because we do a lot of different integrations with different CRMs, so customer relationship tools, and a lot of our questions come into why are we doing this? Why are we engaging with this? What are we using this data for? So like we said, the abandoned cart stuff, when do you stop emailing somebody on the abandoned cart? it's just as critical as when you do. And I think to your point, it's understanding how is my marketing team. Going to be engaged with the data that we're collecting and where are we sending this stuff so that we get a cohesive message? Because you also don't wanna become the brand that's desperate for sales, right? So we've seen those before where they take ads out everywhere, or you get a million emails about like discounts and that stuff, and you're like, the food was mediocre and now I'm getting hit a million times. Like I, I don't want to go back to my how many times. you end up in the spam box, which nobody really likes because then you're definitely forgotten about.

Or you only engaged with the brand when you get a discount. bed Bath and Beyond went out of business because they hit the 20% coupons that you're like, no, I'm not going with this 10% coupon. I'm not going with 15%. I need that 20% to get my new pillows for my wife for the couch.'cause we don't have seven other sets of pillows that are already on the couch. yeah, my wife is not here today, so she's not gonna come holler at me. one other thing that you guys talked about early on, Jeremiah is sending people to other third party sites and kind of the efficacy of that and really driving that behavior. Talk to me and especially in kind of some of these new privacy laws that we have around tracking customers in a digital way. Talk to me about how you guys help solve that to really, whether I'm going out to a DoorDash site or I'm going out to one of the larger online ordering sites, so I'm on the main site and how do you work with your clients to embed that experience in so that you don't have to let them leave? And or if you do, you track that, that, that backfill. because I think it's. All too often, oh, it's there. It's on the site. I used it this morning. It's working fine. But you don't realize what ultimately happened from that.

I think Tom said it best that we don't develop a lot of mobile apps. I think what it really comes in with is being conscious on why and what you're doing. With data collection, we always say you don't want to collect too much, but you don't wanna collect too little because at the end of the day, once you start talking about Europe or wherever you're going, It could be very problematic with data, forgetting and removing and then tracking and then sometimes you don't need all the data so it just becomes messy. Like you could ask the NSA about that. but I think a lot of it is being very conscious of when you're sending people out to another app or integrating it, right? So I think we hear that a lot with people that are doing different type of. like integrations with different buying, oh, it's totally blanking me now, but in store purchase options. So they have a menu in store that they want, they keep all their inventory in there, but they also want it replicated on the website, so they could track through one purchaser. And so I think a lot of it comes down to making sure that. When you're sending by somebody off to an app, it's a deliberate choice, right? So somebody's not going to DoorDash because you don't have an experience. Somebody's going to DoorDash because you want them to have that experience. I think that's a lot of the issues that we see with Yelp, with reviews, right? So a lot of people don't really command or control the brand or the story that's being told, so they let it occur off their platform and then you're dealing with that. So I think it, it comes down to. How big you are because it doesn't always make sense for you to manage your own. So if you're a small mom and pop pizza shop, yes, you could have the insurance, you could have the drivers, you could have all that infrastructure or potentially you could offload it. But I think it, it comes to a business decision on understanding. What money you're trying to keep in the house, right? And then what's the RO on that? So if we did do something like a progressive web app so that you could purchase, which we've done in the past instead of a native app, you get the best of both worlds, but you still have to have somebody that manages that. You have to have integrations on the back end. So I think. It really comes down to the brand, doing a deliberate choice and choosing, as a business, what you're partnering with. There's also a lot of local delivery that we've told customers about, especially when you're in places like New York, because that's also a brand story you could tell, where it's look, we're not choosing to go with DoorDash. We're choosing to go with us, local guy who will take orders, for us, and

and now even DoorDash and they've been on the show and Uber Eats, they both have the ability to dispatch their own drivers from your own. So you can take the first party delivery, but then dispatch their team so you don't have to do all of the insurance. But I think all to all too seldom do brands think about, Hey, I just sent them to DoorDash. And you know what? There was 400 clicks on the DoorDash button, but I only got 150 orders. What happened to that other 250 customers? Where did they go and why did I not get them? That goes back to your comment about, about, top line revenue and ensuring that you're keeping them in your, sphere of influence as long as possible to be able to drive that behavior to get that sale so that you're not the guy. That went to go order pizza today and the store closed and you don't wanna drive 15 minutes, obviously, I'm teasing. I'm not gonna say the brand name, but, let me tell you, there might be a time in, the next couple of days that I'm gonna be in that, that, 15 minutes away store area that I might have to, might have to go check it out. last question that I want to go down. You guys talked a little bit about ai, and AI has been, a huge topic. As programmers and as people that have been in the tech space for a long time. Ironically, it's just now it's become mainstream. A lot of what we've been doing for logarithms and these stories have been, but I think they've, I don't wanna say normalized, but they've gotten'em to, democratized, I guess is the phrase I used. They've democratized the ability to get to this data, whereas before you'd have to send it to a data scientist to go do all of this stuff, and then they'd spit back out data. How is that gonna impact? All of these things because without asking it the right questions, you're not gonna get the right answers. But how do you guys see that impacting the digital experience for marketing people, for executives, for finance people, for operators and technologists? how do you guys see that not only accelerating, but quite frankly harming?'cause I think there's a lot of harm to be done if you don't do it properly.

I think it's, I think it's choosing to be deliberate. I think that's, I think the more I say that, that's more of a story of a lot of our engagements. So right now we've seen a lot of people doing the AI integration onto the website. So while you're navigating, it pops up and it says, Hey look, I know you're looking at this. So I think that's a very deliberate use. It helps. Get in front of the person. We know the time to buy is very critical, especially when somebody's hungry, they're looking to get now. So if you put too many stops in the way, they'll tend to avoid. And so it's providing enough of the data to engage with an individual. If that individual is, already part of your CDP, you're able to pull that back and say, Hey, look, I've seen you buy this in the past. Is this what you're looking for? Really engage. I think on the other area and aspects of it, AI is used as a blanket term, so it could help with.

Sorry, I hear that all the time. It's you know what, no, AI is not just chat GPT. That's not the only thing that's out there. So I apologize. I'll let you keep

No, it is very much especially when you say marketing, people think Dahlia, think about some of the big people to just generate images. But I think. When it comes to ai, it's also things like your data interpolation, right? So when you're pushing data between systems, so ai, I had a conversation with today where they had no developers in their marketing department, so they allowed their marketing team, they educated them on how to rapidly develop websites in. Different AI programs that then they could take to developers.'cause it helped them define better what they're after. It define them to rapidly iterate, and then when they're going to corporate, they're not, they don't have to be faced with, Hey, I need this many people for this long. And a budget, it allows experimentations, but on the back end it allows you to do a lot more to augment the development, to augment the marketing, to augment a lot of that stuff because you could. With the proper prompt engineering and, mitigation of hallucinations, you could really drive it to, to do things that a lot of people don't expect.

the one thing that I'd add to that too is like. Yeah. Being a developer and being in this space for as long as we have, there's been like 10 different events where it's oh boy, this thing is going to take everybody's job. you're going to become obsolete now because X, Y, or z, is now so prominent. And it's happened with AI a couple of times. We've gone through a couple of cycles, of that. And the thing that remains true, especially like with these buzzword type of technologies or processes and practices, is really just like. Trusting or partnering with people who know how to leverage that tool in a way that is not. Only that tool you, you basically understanding how to use it in an effective manner as a supplement to what you're already doing is far better than a partner that would come to you and say, oh, we'll just throw AI into everything that you're doing and your sales will go up, traffic will go up, that type of thing. it's a surgical implementation at the right times. is the best way to put it, I think.

Yeah, and I think you've gotta figure out how to prompt it and you gotta figure out how to get it in there because you know what? Without the prompting and without the capabilities, none of it matters. It's like it will spit out so much. But if you're not, a tactician of that tool to be able to massage it and really, it does accelerate. I know it does accelerate the capability to create some of this stuff, but then you've gotta have the discipline to test it and test it again and see where it goes and see what happens with it. And I think I. Across the board. That's one of the things that I see too many people doing. I'm sure you guys get'em all the time. I get how many LinkedIn and blind app messages do you get that says, I see that you from these three things on your profile, I want to talk to you to sell you something. It's stop. I can tell it's AI and it turns me away almost instantly versus a genuine, I had somebody that, that, that went through and I could tell he was genuinely looking at what we were doing and it. it, you can tell there's a care and deliberate, I guess extension of who that brand is. And that goes back to some of our earlier conversations.

Absolutely.

I think what we've also been, I'll throw this out there too. What we've also been seeing AI used more of in the prompt engineering real realm is seeing, dialers. So when somebody calls into a restaurant, like instead of having to go through like Panera where you have to dial through restaurants and all that stuff, instead of doing that, it will. Use a prompt, on the backend where you'll call in, we'll grab the data, you'll pass it over there, and then I can get you to, not saying this is what Panera does, but a Panera that's local to your area. So I think there's also a lot of ways that we've been seeing or working with AI that's not traditional. A lot of people just think it's web only. It can also be used in admin dashboards. one of the big discussions we have is, making data. More human. So what we always say is that programming is you learning to speak like a computer. So it's how do you program either an LLM or something locally as well that could access your data to allow people to understand the sentiments, right? Or pull things out. So maybe you had. A lot of people calling franchisees or whatever aren't complaining. Like you could have that AI go in there and pull out sentiments from calls, things like that, or a lot of different items. So I think when people say ai, they also just think it's not really in all its facets. It's more of just saying, Hey, this is a website, or, Hey, I'm typing something in. there's a lot of different ways we've been seeing it done.

Yeah, and I think harnessing the power of people like yourselves, that house of Giants who have been there, done that they know what it's gonna take to not only do the core basics of what you guys have done for years, but also how can you incorporate AI to accelerate that and put the. put the tools in the hands of the users so that they can continue to accelerate their success. I think that's a good shot, good spot To wrap up, how would people learn more about you guys? again. I could sit here and wrap all day long because I love ui, ux, the use of data. I, I hate that old adage, half of marketing doesn't work. We just don't know what half nowadays, there's so much more that we can do with the data to be able to get to these things. There's tokens from credit cards, there's, the, just so many different ways that we can know who our guests are and how to engage with them, not only to build sales, but to build a loyal customer that wants to come back again and again. And if we screw it up. Use the data to be able to go make it right for those people.'cause that's, at the end of the day, what most people want is they want you to say sorry and then make it right. And so across the board. I love that. So how would people learn more about House of Giants? how would people engage and what would that look like?

Yeah, definitely. You can just, visit our website. It's just house of giants.com. that's where you'll find the most information we're on, LinkedIn, Instagram, all the social media is just House of Giants, yeah, that'd be the best place.

Awesome. thank you guys for, sharing some of your guys' expertise. I love,'cause there's so many practical things that you guys shared that. Even if they don't engage with you guys, which I hope they do, and I know that you guys will get some people that'll engage, but they're gonna get, make their brand better and ultimately deliver a best, better customer experience.'cause if they're not, I promise you, some of the other people that are in your neighborhood are doing it. And so they're gonna get that sale if they don't do it. And so to our listeners, guys, like I said at the onset, I know you guys got lots of choices. So thank you guys for hanging out with us. If you haven't already done so, please go give us a, a subscribe on your favorite podcast player or on YouTube and, to our listeners, make it a great day.

Thanks for listening to The Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit restaurant technology guys.com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.