Instant Financial: Revolutionizing Pay and Tips in the Restaurant Industry

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, hosts Jeremy Julian and David Alvarado delve into the world of financial technology and its impact on the restaurant industry. They discuss the critical importance of earned wage access, allowing employees to get paid daily, and the advantages it offers for both employers and employees. David Alvarado, who has extensive experience in the restaurant industry, shares insights from his journey, including his tenure at Blooming Brands and his current role at Instant Financial. Instant Financial provides a solution that enables daily pay for non-tipped employees and digital tip distribution, streamlining operations and reducing costs for restaurants. The episode also covers the broader implications of financial wellness tools, including financial literacy education, credit building, and health and wellness benefits, emphasizing how these tools can significantly improve employees' lives. This podcast is a must-listen for restaurant operators looking to gain a competitive edge by adopting technology that addresses modern employees' needs.

00:00 Instant Financial

01:17 Introduction and Welcome

01:45 Meet David Alvarado

02:14 David's Career Journey

03:36 Introduction to Instant Financial

04:57 Understanding Earned Wages

07:24 Benefits of Instant Pay

13:35 Addressing Concerns About Instant Pay

23:33 Digital Tips Management

31:09 Employee Financial Wellness

37:33 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

0:02

This is the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, helping you run your restaurant better. In today's episode, David Alvarado and I talk quite a bit about the FinTech world and how getting instant access to your pay is almost a non-starter for people applying for jobs. In today's day and age, more and more retailers, restaurants, and different offline brands are offering this. I was just, uh, traveling recently and I saw one of the. You know, help wanted ads, talk about get, you know, work today, get paid this afternoon and instant is a product that can help you get there. This is the second time we've had instant on the show. They do some great stuff in the restaurant space they've been around for. Um, you know, they're one of the longest standing people that's been doing same day pay, so they've gone through their paces. They're in quite a few large brands, and so if you haven't checked them out already, I would encourage it. 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 product for multi-units. Please check us out@cbsnorthstar.com and now onto our episode.

Jeremy Julian: 1:17

Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Thank you everyone out there for joining us. As I say, each and every time, I know you guys have got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out today. We are having a brand new face, but a similar concept, or not even similar concept, but a concept that we talked about a maybe 18 months ago. but it's really taking the restaurant space. By storm. And I think it's, it's something that all of our restaurant operators need to know about because not only hiring and retaining the employees and as well as just kinda simplifying their lives. And so I am joined today by David Alvarado. David, why don't you give our listeners a little bit of an insight as to who you are. We got a chance to meet, meet on camera just a little bit ago and I'm excited for everybody to hear your story.'cause it's gonna give validity to why you're at instant and what instant can do for people. And then we can, Dig into how instant really is solving a lot of problems that are challenges out there for the restaurant space.

David Alvarado: 2:08

Awesome. Thank you Jeremy. I appreciate your time and it's a pleasure to be on your show. My name is David Alvarado. originally from Michigan, moved to Florida many years ago, so I reside in Tampa, Florida with my three miniature dachshunds. I spent my career at Bloom and Brands primarily for 22 and a half years. Working my way up from a busboy all the way to a global vice president. I really learned my restaurant technology and everything about restaurants at my family's restaurants in Michigan. We had a Mexican restaurant. I grew up in it. People didn't show up. We had to go to work. We cooked, we cleaned, everything that goes along with the joys of a family restaurant. I then transitioned that to Outback Steakhouse. I was a senior in high school. I wanted to make money for prom. I needed$75 to buy prom tickets. I went and applied at Outback Steakhouse. I. I was hired as a busboy, and over 22 and a half years I worked lots of different positions and watched the company grow not only domestically, but also internationally. Seeing all the challenges in the restaurant industry, from my family restaurant to a multi chain that was international. Moving to the corporate office here in Tampa, and then seeing the challenges at the restaurant level from an enterprise standpoint. That really connected the dots from working at a family place, working in a corporate chain, and then being at the corporate office. I got to see all of the opportunities magnified and what it really meant to the restaurant business. After my career at Blooming Brands, I joined the founding team at Instant Financial. Where we provide and move wages for employees. As an example, we enable daily pay for non tipped employees so they can go to work and they can get paid daily and they can go handle life's challenges. Or we have a tips prop module, which we can move tips digitally as well. I love the restaurant industry. I wanted to be a part of it, taking all of my knowledge from corporate and joined Incent Financial. And I'm very excited to walk you through all the ways we can help restaurant operators. And this does not mean people who are Enterprise. Yes, enterprise, we can help them at scale and help to capture efficiencies. But if you're a regional player, we can absolutely help you just as well. So I'm very excited to talk about that.

Jeremy Julian: 4:27

I love that. And I say it all the time. I've got three teenagers. and I tease that all of them should have to work in the restaurants at some time because you know what, it, the world would be a better place if everybody had to serve the public. And and I know you and I talked a little bit about the wild ride that Bloom and Rent went on. that outback. success story and you and I were trading a little bit of war stories, so I'm sure you've seen a lot. we talked about instant, at a high level or I just had shared that I think it's something that all restaurants are going to need, whether it's an individual owner operator. All the way up and through. But I think you guys really started at the beginning, let's start at the beginning, was really earned wages. And so his the, why don't you tell us, 22 years ago when you started at Outback, how did that work when you were that busboy? Because you needed to be able to get paid to be able to, so let's go back to what it used to be and then why instant needed to get created. Because I think it's, it's enablement on the digital side that. in the past we just had, in a different way. So talk to me a little bit about kind what is earned wages, because I think that's really the inception of where came from prior to the tips.

David Alvarado: 5:27

so let's talk about earned wages and how it applies to everybody in the restaurant industry. earned wages is just merely giving you access to the money that you've already made. So if you worked eight hours today and you made$80. We're gonna go ahead and make you an offer after your shift for$40. And if you would like your money, you can accept it. You can go spend it on our Visa card, you can transfer it for free. We have virtual cards. You can do anything you want. Your money's not held hostage. Traditionally, if an employee would like their funds, especially if they're a non tipped employee, they would have to wait till payday. Okay? And if an employee wanted to get paid more often. The business needs to run payroll more frequently. So in order for an employee to get paid, they work a cycle of hours. They then get a check at the end of the pay period. As we know in the past 25 years, with the rise of Digi Digital Technology, we now get bills all the time. Bills 25, 30 years ago used to come on the first, on the 15th. You could plan your check or your pay periods to accommodate those bills. Now. Bills come every day to us on email. They're text to us and they're due on different cycles. So now we're not getting paid when we need our money to pay our cycle for our bill. So with instant pay, if an employee needed money and they didn't have it, they would've to borrow from family and friends, maybe borrow from the business, which is very common to see a lot of IOUs in the safe. They may not have access to credits. Then eventually, if all those things are unavailable to them, they will have to go to a predatory network, like a payday loan lender, which is gonna charge them, huge fees and huge amounts of interest. So the need for an employee to have their money to go do what they wanna go do is relevant. And employees do want their money. They want to go buy a tank of gas, a bag of groceries. They want to go to CBS or Walgreens and take care of whatever they need to.

Jeremy Julian: 7:33

Yeah, they get a flat tire and they need to be able to get to work to be able to work that next shift, and they're stuck and they can't wait till the next payday to get their tire fixed.

David Alvarado: 7:41

it, and it's small amounts of liquidity. So it's little bit just to get through the day and whatever the case may be. And it's very Pavlov. So before you'd go to work and you'd work 10 days and you'd have to wait for your paycheck, four days later. But with instant, if I need my money, I go to work, I get paid. If I need more money tomorrow, I go to work, I get paid. So it changes the relationship between the employee and the business to become more symbiotic, which is I now have the instant gratification of getting my money when I need it for free. Okay. And being able to go take care of whatever I need to for the business. This turns around everything because restaurant operators spend 15 to 20 minutes a day calling people up saying, Hey, would you like to come to work today? I had somebody, no call, no show. When we implemented earned wage access or instant pay for non tipped employees, they would call the restaurant in the morning to see if they could pick up a shift because they knew that they could get paid immediately when they were done, and now go get a tank of gas or a bag of groceries. So it really changed the dynamic of decreased absenteeism to now employees soliciting work because they wanted to pick up, pick up some more money and it was instant. So that's really been the rise of earned wage access, is in enabling it for a class of people who need it and can't afford it, and we give it to them for free because it is their money.

Jeremy Julian: 9:11

and I think, I'd, I'd love to talk a little bit more about this, David.'cause we all know that oftentimes those entry level jobs are the least paying jobs. So they're, they are oftentimes working paycheck to paycheck. And so because they're working paycheck to paycheck. The abil ability for them to get access to it. The other thing that a lot of the national publications have talked about is a lot of people during the pandemic and otherwise left the restaurant industry.'cause we weren't doing this and DoorDash and GrubHub and Uber Eats and Amazon did offer this option to be able to go work a shift today and get paid today. Talk to me about how this kind of levels the playing field for what has traditionally been a very open entry level job. You started as a busboy in high school. Turn into a, global vice president because of the opportunities to do that. And I know that we've lost a lot of that and I think that instant and tools like it have the ability to bridge that gap, whereas we didn't, a couple of years ago,

David Alvarado: 10:03

Yeah. I think what makes it really important, especially for somebody like me, or as we mentioned, these jobs are not very high paying because they are entry level. Imagine this world. You go to a job where they pay$12 an hour. But then you go to another job and apply, and they pay$12 and 50 cents an hour across the street. If this$12 job,$12 an hour job offers me daily pay, and I can take my money when I need it and handle life, that means a lot more to me with 50 cents less an hour than taking the job that gets paid 50 cents more an hour because I can't access my cash. I'm gonna have late fees. I'm gonna run behind on my bills. So there is a competitive advantage to being able to offer earned wage access, and as an employee, they are looking for that. And as an example, over the past eight years, we have done a survey of a thousand employees at a minimum every year, and we've asked them about when they would like their money and how they would like their money. as we would imagine over the, since 2020, it has continued to go up and to the right. To the tune of 86% of employees would work for a place and prefer to work for a place where they are paid daily with Uber, Amazon, all those things that you just mentioned, that is the rise in just the adoption of this new technology. Okay. And as evident by their success over the past four years and the introduction of it to the market, now more people are going to restaurant operators and other service industries and saying, Hey, I know what they're doing over there. Do you offer that here? Because it is a compelling benefit for an employee.

Jeremy Julian: 11:55

Absolutely. And I, and even retailers, I've seen more and more retailers and grocers go on that same route where it's like they're having to compete for that same entry level job where whether I'm a checker at a grocery store, or I'm working retail, and again, to that same argument,$12, 1250, if I as a brand can offer access to that wage, I'm now, it's less about. they, it's shift, it's management, it's all of that. But it's also, this is a compelling reason to consider that even if you're not paying, that extra 50 cents, but I gotta wait two weeks for my pay.

David Alvarado: 12:26

and it's just a, this is a great place to work if you're gonna work at Dave's Restaurant Bar and Grill. Not only is this a great place to work and we want to treat you well, but we're going to give you this great benefit because we care about you as a person. This will allow you to take your money if you want it. If you don't want it, you don't have to take it. But if you need the money, you have it, it's yours, it's free, and you can go handle life's daily challenges. So that was the precipice for Instant, which was earned wage access and being able to give everybody their money. What we found out in talking with hospitality operators was they loved earned wage access. But the real pain point was distribution of tips, believe it or not. And there's a lot of noise that goes around managing a tips process, and we have the technology that eliminates the noise, streamlines operations, and obviously makes our servers or tipped employees very happy.

Jeremy Julian: 13:25

Yeah, no, and I want to dig a little bit into that, but I'd love for you to help the naysayers out there because I get, I literally was just at a brand on Monday and they go. Why am I gonna give them access to their pay today? One, it's gotta go outta my account. Number two, what happens if they didn't punch out properly and they start playing games and then they, you get these questions, you have to deal with these restaurant operators every day. Talk me through the things that people are constantly asking, because that's what I hear is I don't wanna pay them. What happens if manager didn't do his job properly? whatever. I know that you guys have got safeguards in for all of that. I know that a lot of those things come up in every one of your conversations, so talk people down off the wall that says, not only is it compelling to onboard people and bring people and keep people, but there's also protections for the brand that you guys put in place to ensure that doesn't happen.

David Alvarado: 14:14

Yeah, I love that question. I actually just got this question from a very large, enterprise, company. They have over 500 locations and we were talking about earned wage access and they said, Dave, we're already doing the digital tips. We love that we're not really ready to jump into earned wage access because we're honestly a little afraid of it. Every time we bring it up, somebody will bring up a con and then the conversation just ends. And I said, I completely understand that. Instant financial and enabling wages to an employee does not make a person irresponsible all of a sudden, okay? A person who is irresponsible is going to destroy themselves no matter what. So when we give you money, we're not making you irresponsible. And as mentioned, we're only giving you small amounts of liquidity. 50% of your earned wages for that day. So the average earned wage or instant pay that is taken is only$35. Now, it would be selfish for an employee and not looking very long term. It would be very shortsighted if they just took their$35, declared independent wealth and quit their job. It's not, it's a tank of gas. It's a bag of groceries. If they want more instant pay, they do have to come back to work. They have to clock in. They have to clock out correctly, and we will send them another offer. If they fail to clock in or clock out correctly, it is void and they will not get an offer. So it is good for the employee and for the business because now punch compliance will become better. I know if I want to get paid today, I need to clock out. And I need to clock in. And I need to clock out. So from an employee standpoint, they know what they need to do in order to get their funds for free. For the businesses aspect, there's nothing that they need to do. They merely just offer this great benefit and say, Hey, if you would like to get paid, you merely just accept the offer and there's no barriers to turn your money and you can do whatever you want. And.

Jeremy Julian: 16:21

and the flip side, I know you said it in the description, they also don't have to take it, if they choose not to take it today, it sits there in abeyance and it'll hit their paycheck at the end of the one week, two week, three week, whatever your pay periods are, it's gonna hit their paycheck regardless, whatever's the balance, whether that's a hundred percent of their wages or just the 20% or 30%, of those wages correct. 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.

David Alvarado: 17:18

That is absolutely correct. So if I decide every day I get offers and I don't want any of them. Those offers will expire because you only get one offer a day. That offer will expire. It will come on your paycheck. In order for you to come to get another offer, you'll have to clock in, clock out, and then you will get an offer. Another offer. But again, if you want it, it's there. But if you don't, it all just comes on your paycheck, just like regular.

Jeremy Julian: 17:41

Yeah. And so what are my options to access that cash? Because oftentimes they're less banked, you talked about the Visa card that you guys issue, so I'd love for them to understand on the wage side,'cause I think it's gonna really flow through to tips just the same, but. If I'm now, Hey, I need my 35 bucks to go get gas, how do I get that? Because it's all this digital voodoo magic that nobody knows how any of that works. So talk us through, how do I get access to that as a buser, as a bartender, as a cocktail waitress, whatever.

David Alvarado: 18:09

so once an employee is paid, they're paid to the instant financial app, and from there they have many levers in how they want to control and spend their cash. It is paired to a Visa debit card. It's just like any other Visa debit card in your wallet or in my wallet. It has the exact same protections and benefits when they're paid to the mobile app. It is mobile banking. They can see their balance. They can see all of their transactions. They can go spend on the Visa card just like you or I can. They don't wanna use the Visa card. They can provision a digital card and just do tap to pay if they want that. If they don't wanna use instant and they would like to transfer to their home bank account, we allow unlimited free transfers so we're not holding their money hostage. If you'd like to spend it on our platform, we give you the tools to do that. If you would like to transfer it off, you can do that as well. If you'd like to go to the ATM and take money out, we have 37,000 ATMs in our network, which is the Money Pass Network. We are in all 50 states and we've never had any problems with coverage. Employees can go there, take out cash at their discretion, all for free, and of course they can go to a bank, any Visa member bank, and this is very useful because sometimes employees need$720 and 14 cents for rent. And you can't get that out of an ATM. So you can go to a Visa member bank and say, hi, I would like$714 and 20 cents so I can pay rent, and they will give you your money for free. So once they're paid, the employee has all the options and all the levers to pull as to what they will to do with their funds, and it's all fee free to the employee.

Jeremy Julian: 19:52

Love that. one other piece that I just know comes up from time to time is non-traditional banking, Venmo, PayPal. Are you guys supporting that at this point? Because again, same, that same demographic. I've got a sister who's. in her twenties and she's just yeah, I don't, I use Venmo for almost everything. And she keeps a balance on her Venmo account. I'm like, this is just baffling to me.'cause I'm a normal, not normal. I am a traditionally banked person that uses, a national bank and kind of deals with that way, but for her, the majority of what she does is on Venmo between her friends and such. And do you guys support those kind of pieces?

David Alvarado: 20:20

Yes, absolutely. we designed it our, we designed our system so that we're not holding money hostage in. The employee can do whatever they want with it. So yes, Venmo, cash app, Uber Eats. All of that stuff. So we are now living in a digital world. People are paying with credit, debit, they're moving everything digitally. We wanna give everything to the employee so that they can do whatever they want and enable whatever they want. if an employee is using the instant financial card, they can use it freely just like anyone else. If somebody, and this is the other great thing, if somebody doesn't qualify for a card with other companies, because. They're not 18, they're a minor, they're a hostess. they've got bad credit. They don't have a social security number, or they don't qualify for a pay card. When we work with a business, we take all of their employees because we verify the business. so we're allowed to have miners, we're allowed to have people that wouldn't otherwise have a bank account or are underbanked or unbanked at all. So when we go to large enterprises, they're like, oh, can you cover all of our employees? Yes, we can cover 100% of your employees.

Jeremy Julian: 21:31

I, I love that. And it's amazing. Quite frankly, I heard some statistics about the underbanked or the unbanked in the us. The number is staggering when you think about it, and it's mostly in the service industry that you guys live in every day. it's the guy that's the buser, it's the dishwasher, it's the cook. It's the. The bartender is the barback that are underbanked or unbanked at all. And, again, I think it's just, it's baffling because again, in, in my purview where I'm at, in my mid forties, like I've not, I've had a bank account since I was 15, but I know there's a lot of people that don't. and as I've read the statistics, it's amazing to think about and I think a lot of people that are listening, you may or may not, if you're not at the ground level any longer dealing with these types of team members. There are a lot of them that can't get a bank account, don't know how to get a bank account, have never gotten a bank account, and they would take their paycheck and walk into a cash loan place to cash it out or kick it to the grocery store to cash it out or whatever those things might be. And it's amazing to me, what flexibility you guys allow people to have in that or

David Alvarado: 22:30

Yeah, and for an hourly employee, I don't have a bank account. I don't qualify. Wow. I can work here. You're gonna pay me. I have mobile banking. This is all free for me. we're just giving them levers, like it's expensive to be poor. Okay. So the, for the reasons you just mentioned, like they give me my bank account for free, but for other people, if they don't meet the requirements of all the boxes for getting a free bank account, your bank will be kind enough to charge you 9 99 to$20 a month. Okay. I have credit cards, so I can put stuff on credit. I can have access to cash, but for other people, if they don't have access to that, they start getting into predatory networks. So we wanted to eliminate all of that. Let's give the employee their money, they earned it, no games, and let's create a great relationship for the business and the employee. If we take care of the employee, what happens? The employees will take care of the business, and the business takes care of itself.

Jeremy Julian: 23:31

Yeah. couldn't have said it better myself. Now you dabbled in the tip world, so you know, some percentage of, and it feels like more and more every day. we've got everybody's sitting in front of a machine that's asking'em for 18, 22 and 25% tips all day long. But it's a disaster to manage that. It is really hard. quite frankly, I worked with Outback when you guys built your whole tip module years ago with Pai Touch, so I'm very familiar with even the outback tip module that you guys had. I was part of some of those conversations long ago. It's, it also gets complex, but why is it such a disaster to, to manage that within the brands, especially in a. Digital first world where most people are in the 70, 80, 90% digital payments world. Some brands are a hundred percent digital and they don't accept cash at all, but being able to keep a living wage for your staff members, we're asking the guest to tip, but it's a huge burden on the restaurant tour to get that money and get it distributed. And Unless you're working in a really high end, a Flemings, back to blooming brands, if you're, unless you're working in a Flemings where these people are making a whole significant amount of money and it goes into their paycheck, it's hard to do that. So talk me through how it is before instant, and then why does Instant on the Tip side really solve so many of those challenges for people?

David Alvarado: 24:43

Yeah, so I'll go backwards before we go forwards, and I'll talk a little bit about from an employee standpoint, what the experience is like. So I'll use, I'll back as an example of when I was a bus. So I would work my shift, things were calculated, money was grabbed out of the tip drawer, it was stuffed into envelopes, and they wrote my name on it. The next day I would come to work in my shorts, in my flip flops. I'd walk around in the kitchen. I'd stop the manager from whatever they were doing so that they could go into the office, open the safe, give me my tip share. I then wrote a, I then signed a log, a physical log, saying I got my money and I went home. that's how it was for many years, because that's just how we did it. The other side of that coin, before we get into the complications, is as a guest. When you leave that credit card tip, it's not magic. Somebody has to convert that little number. You left under tip. They have to convert that to cash and then distribute it to me. Okay, where does that cash come from? As you just mentioned, and according to McKenzie, in the past, in the most recent year in hospitality, it is 89% credit or debit card transactions. So that means there is less restaurant, less cash coming into the restaurant. And if there's less cash coming into the restaurant doesn't have the cash on hand to convert that little credit card tip to cash and then give it to you. So what does the restaurant have to do? Somebody has to walk to the bank, drive to the bank, get money, come back to the restaurant, count it, put it back into the safe, then put it into envelopes and distribute it. That's the easy way. It gets more expensive and takes more time if you choose not to send your manager to the bank and you decide you want to use an armored car service. Most enterprise restaurants get two deliveries a week. Some non-enterprise smaller restaurants might get one delivery a week. The point being is you're paying an armored car, a hundred to$150 a stop. Okay. Just to bring you change so that you can convert that credit card tip to cash. So an employee, I am inconvenienced by coming to get my money From the businesses standpoint, it is time consuming and costly for me to convert this credit card tip to cash. Okay, so what do we do with instant? Let's digitize this process. Our customers are paying us digitally. Let's follow their suit and pay our employees digitally. So now Dave Alvarado, I work my buser shift. I don't have to come back the next day. I don't have to interrupt anybody. I don't have to sign any logs because that money will be sent to me digitally at the end of the shift whenever Outback or whoever finishes it. And I'll get a notification on my phone and it says, I just got paid. And then from there, I can go do whatever I want. I love it from an

Jeremy Julian: 27:50

to what we just talked about. I can transfer my bank account, I can take it out in cash, but now instead of all of it,'cause again, to your point on the example, and inevitably that bus shows up. Right at 1230 in the middle of the lunch rush saying, I need my money'cause I'm going outta town. And now they've gotta stop their shift versus it all happening in a digital world. you had talked about, 90%, close to 90%. That's baffling to me. I guess it, it all makes sense and. I don't, I have a money clip with cash in it, and it's had the same amount of money in it other than my kids' sporting events that I have to go to pay cash. I literally spend almost nothing in cash. Almost everything's in a digital way, and so I'm one of those customers that pays a hundred percent of my restaurant checks in, in credit. And I do that tip. What, what are you seeing from people? Because I, I know a lot of the high-end places have just added their tips to their paychecks, like at least working in the POS space like we do. A lot of'em have done that. are you finding that's the way to go or is a lot of people just are saying, you know what, let's add on the tip module.'cause you said that was really the game changer and where a lot of the pain earned wages is great, but quite frankly, especially in a highly tipped where that's a large percentage of their income, the tips move the needle quite a bit. for you guys at instant.

David Alvarado: 29:00

Y yeah, absolutely. tips. Tips. Just bring the biggest bang, it eliminates all the noise. For the restaurant operators and you just pay everything digitally. Now there's logs, there's no running to the bank. I don't have to spend money on armored cars and the employee's paid free and the restaurant operator now they don't have to. All those things we just mentioned and no more distractions and everything's digital, so if somebody's curious, if they got paid, they just open up their app and they can see, oh, I got paid.$700, for my tips.'cause I had a big party. So everybody's just happier. It's just, it's easier for the employee, it's easier for the business. And for large restaurant tours, we'll use Fleming's as an example, or any white table cloth, dining restaurant, those restaurants go through about$30,000 a week in tips. Okay. That's a huge amount of money. Okay. They decided to start paying tips on check. Because it was too much to bring it in. It was too much to count it, and it was too much to distribute it in high volume, heavy tipped restaurants, so they went to checks. We have been undoing that for the past four years. So high end restaurants or people that didn't wanna manage the process. And they said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get rid of all of the tips, complexity, and I'm gonna pay it all on check. Cool. Now we've come back to'em and said, Hey, we can undo that and we can pay your people instantly and your employees will be happy and you guys will be happy. And they said, let's do that. some people jump on it really quickly, other people don't have a problem because maybe they pay it on check. But we can help them to undo the check and start paying their employees immediately and giving them that instant gratification, which let's be honest, that's why everybody works in the restaurant business, is so that we can get money and we can go do what we wanna go do. And when you say it's being paid on a check, you're robbing me of that instant gratification. So we've had a

Jeremy Julian: 30:59

I would've had a hard time working in restaurants.'cause I used to love walking away with a hundred, 150,$200 in my pocket. And it was my food money for that night. It was my drinking money. Like it was just, it was what you did. And, David, you talked a little bit in our pre-show about kind of the next phase and I know that both of these things are amazing and I think that more restaurants, if they're not already dealing with it, have to do this. But one of the things that you guys also believe is the employee health, I guess is a really big piece and I don't even financial health. health in general because it is a, it is that level. And so you guys have released a newer product that I think is really great to help restaurant operators, again, be one of those places that you want to come work because of these things. Talk a little bit about what your guys', other investments to really help the employees and the people that are using the instant financial network. it's helping them do.

David Alvarado: 31:48

Yeah, so you know, having the ability of being able to get wages daily is awesome, and that is financial wellness. Okay. I can get some money to go take care of whatever I need to, but it's not getting to the root or to the academics of the issue, which is we need to provide tools to our cardholders, the businesses team members. To educate them on how to handle their money more effectively. So we have financial education tools inside of the app so that they can see how to create a budget and how to save for a car. Now, giving them money when they need it is step one. Step two is let's now give them some of the financial literacy so that we can step them up even further. So that's really the baseline of it, is let's give them money, let's give'em some education. The third part of that is employees pay a lot of rent. they don't have the ability to, or they don't get credit for paying their rent at the three credit bureaus across the country. So with our app, an employee who pays rent can report their rent and have it show up on their credit report so that they can build credit. Let's give them their money. Let's teach them and let's give them the tools to start building their credit. Let's let them take credit for what they're already doing. We also have health and wellness for a lot of part-time employees in the hospitality world. If they work below 28 hours, they will not be offered health insurance. With our app, they have the benefit of getting health and wellness benefits. Telemedicine for a small fee a month. You can see a doctor, you can get discounts on prescription medicine. You can do the things that you need to do that you otherwise would not have been able to do if you didn't have instant financial and this great tool. And last but not least, once you get all these steps in place, we have a high yield savings account. Which is up to 4%, which is very impressive. That's what my bank offers me with all the boxes that I need to check of minimum balances. But yes, we can pay them daily, we can teach them. We can help them with their credit, we can help them with insurance, but we can also give'em a place where they can put their funds and have them grow their money. So we believe that this is a lifecycle. let's get people on board. Let's enable them with their funds when they need it for free, and then let's give them all of these tools so that we can set them up on a better path of financial wellness.

Jeremy Julian: 34:35

Yeah. No, and I love that. I love that idea because it ultimately, at the end of the day, it also takes the burden off the restaurant brand to have to do that because unfortunately, a lot of times they lose employees'cause they can't get to work, they can't get the car, and so they end up missing a shift. And they can't find somebody to fill it. The manager's tired of it. They don't have access to the cash. But now once I've got their ear that they know that they're at a safe place, that they can get access to their wages, now they can get to that next level of financial independence that a lot of us are looking for when we start in the restaurant. But schools don't teach it. Oftentimes, the home doesn't have those skills in a lot of these places. And so how does the restaurant offer even more value to them to take them to the next level? And so I love that you guys are offering that.

David Alvarado: 35:18

and that's the premise of it. I don't wanna say we're for all mankind, but we really are coming. We're trying to provide a benefit for the people who need it most, and also providing a benefit for the business. Business. Lots of efficiencies save you money, streamline operations, but for the employee, the most important part, let's give them what they need when they need it, and give them tools to put them in a better position.

Jeremy Julian: 35:45

I think it's amazing. what did we miss? if anything, David, from, from today's conversation, I feel like I, I could talk to you forever about this stuff'cause I'm so passionate about the restaurant industry and ensuring that restaurant operators and. the people that work in the space just can live an amazing life. It's given me an amazing life. It's given you an amazing life, it sounds And so what else did we miss, if anything?

David Alvarado: 36:03

I would say this to my restaurant operators out there. earned wage access. Great tool for your cooks non tipped employees. Tips tipped employees. We got it. Okay. People often ask, earned wage access. I don't know if I want to give my employees their money, my money. What if they quit, so on and so forth, or I can't recover it. The great thing about instant when we partner with you is we advance our capital. It's not the business' capital. We see how much the employee worked, we know how much they're gonna make. We advance the capital on the behalf of the business, and we recoup our capital outside of the payroll process. And what that means is somebody at payroll, at Dave Alvarado's Mexican restaurants. They don't know how much Dave borrowed. They don't know how much I owe. They process payroll like normal. They send net to the employee. We recoup our funds at that moment and remit net to the employee, minus any advances, all for free. So the restaurant doesn't have to worry about keeping track of who got what money. They just need to make sure that they provide a great place for their employees to work. Because we advance our capital and we recoup our capital. So just another reason as to not, no reason to be afraid of earned wage access. It's our money. And the money that we're giving to your employees is just small amounts of liquidity so that they can handle day life's daily challenges.

Jeremy Julian: 37:32

That's amazing. How do people get in touch with you? How do I get people, get in touch with your team? How do they take the next step? Because I, again, very compelling story. I think to your point, every restaurant at least needs to be looking into it.'cause if you're not your neighbor, next door is, and unfortunately you're gonna lose that high talented employee potentially over, 50 cents an hour or over the fact that you're not offering this opportunity.

David Alvarado: 37:53

Yeah, so I, I would definitely say restaurateurs, if they've been slow to get on this, I would do it now. in the past seven years, the hospitality industry has been slow to adopt this, but with the way the economy's going and people looking for efficiencies and hiring, this is now becoming a must have benefit. The reason why I say that is chain restaurants above 500 locations are all gonna be offering this within the next 12 to 18 months. So if you're a regional player or a local operator, that's what you are going to be competing with. So it's in your best interest to have a solution like Instant Financial. They're more than welcome to go to our website, instant.co/rtgpodcast not.com.co. You can go ahead and fill out a form, schedule a demo, and somebody from my team will reach out to you and we will walk you through everything entirely.

Jeremy Julian: 38:49

Yeah, and I think it's, it is really funny, I don't even know if it's one of your customers, but I was in, in dining at a restaurant and I saw a help wanted sign and part of their help wanted sign, said, same day, access to your pay. And I was like, you know what, that is something that's gonna draw people's attention.'cause it's not the same, same as everybody else had. And so it is definitely a differentiator.

David Alvarado: 39:07

it is compelling people who need their money when they see something like that. They're gonna be drawn towards it, and that's what we're hearing from our clients and our cardholders. 86% of people would prefer to work for an employer that offers daily pay so that employees can take advantage of that benefit, and that has consistently gone up over the past five years.

Jeremy Julian: 39:29

Well, David, thank you so much for sharing more about what in Instant's, doing thank you guys for really the founding of the company, what it is that you guys are doing and how you guys are changing the lives. Obviously you changed a lot of lives at Outback and at the blooming side and now continuing that through this instant, instant journey. So thank you for that. to our listeners, guys, like I said at the onset, I know you guys have got lots of choices, so thank you guys for hanging out with us. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe to the show, give it a rating on your favorite podcast player and make it a great day.

39:57

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