Boosting Restaurant Engagement with CaptiveWiFi: An Interview with Founder Adam

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian speaks with Adam, the founder of CaptiveWiFi. The discussion delves into the ways CaptiveWiFi is revolutionizing the use of WiFi in the hospitality industry by providing cloud-based, low-cost, high-value solutions that enhance guest engagement, loyalty, and revenue. Adam explains how their platform creates a seamless customer experience through beautifully designed splash pages, efficient data capture, and intelligent loyalty integration. The episode also covers security measures, feedback collection, and the importance of leveraging guest data to create personalized and valuable interactions. Adam emphasizes the importance of a cohesive customer journey and shares insights on how businesses can make the most of their WiFi to drive customer engagement and retention.

00:00 CaptiveWifi

01:10 Introduction to Today's Episode

01:32 Meet Adam: Founder of CaptiveWiFi

02:44 The Problem with Traditional WiFi Systems

03:59 CaptiveWiFi's Innovative Solutions

07:27 Importance of Capturing Guest Data

10:55 Enhancing Guest Experience with WiFi

14:28 Managing WiFi Infrastructure and Security

15:59 Touchless Loyalty and Future Innovations

23:26 Innovative Customer Tracking Solutions

24:15 Maximizing Footfall Data

25:04 Optimizing Store Layout and Staffing

26:43 Advanced Kiosk Analytics

29:51 Integrating WiFi and Reservation Data

35:42 Enhancing Customer Feedback Systems

39:19 Agile Solutions for Businesses

40:50 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

0:02

This is the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, helping you run your restaurant better. In today's episode, we are joined by Adam, who is the founder of Captive wifi. And uh, as you dig into the episode, you'll realize that Adam's got a little bit of an accent. Uh, he's from over the pond, but they're doing some incredible work, really trying to solve the world of wifi to ensure that they know who is in the property and that they can continue to communicate with their guests, tie them into loyalty, tie them into all of the things that are going on. I think wifi is one of the most underutilized. Um, assets that restaurants have within their brand that they're not using to help drive sales and drive customer engagement. So listen around till the end to hear what Adam is doing to really accelerate people's revenue and continue to engage with guests. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy. Julian, I am the Chief Revenue Officer for CBS North Star. We wrote the North Star Point of Sale solution for multi-units. Please check us out@cbsnorthstar.com and now onto our episode.

Jeremy Julian : 1:10

Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us, as I say each and every time on these shows. Thank you for, uh, spending time with us. Uh, I know you guys have got lots of choices. So today, is a topic that I, I love talking about because I think, it's definitely underutilized in the space. There's a couple of, couple of larger brands that are doing a lot of it. But a lot of the smaller brands are missing some huge opportunities. And so before we jump into what you get to do, Adam, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners and then we'll talk what you guys have been building and why you think it's so critical for, uh, for our listeners to hear about it.

Adam Forman: 1:41

firstly, thank you for having me. obviously as you can hear from accent, I'm from the other side of the pond. Uh, it's not that late here. So we're, we're doing all right. I, I don't have to do a 10:00 PM uh, show, but, uh, my name's Adam. I, I'm the founder of CaptiveWifi. we built a platform just to fix that. Horrible I. Disgusting journey that you all see when you connect to a restaurant or a hotel. Um, and then we started to focus on loyalty, so we. We wanted to build a better experience. and, uh, and we are, we're now what, in 21 different countries. We've got about 60 clients in the US now, uh, across Europe, um, Asia, and um. And growing. And we're only small. So we're, we've, we've made it more cloud-based. I don't have to send you a box. You know these, there's lots of these companies out there. Uh, you sign up, they send you a box, you've gotta plug it in. They lock you down. We're not like that. we're low cost and max value. It's all about, uh, and it's all about conversion to loyalty. And that's probably something you guys talk about quite a lot.

Jeremy Julian : 2:44

Absolutely. Well, and again, I think, I said it, uh, you know, kind of in the intro, there's a lot of people that offer wifi, but don't capture any of the guest information at all. So talk me through, you know, I guess, why do you think that is such the case today? Because still every, you know, often I get in and then, and then we can talk about what the risks are behind not doing it, and then what the upside benefits are to, uh, to capturing guest data. But why do you think it is Adam today? That so many people are saying, Hey, use my wifi. They think it's a, a distinct advantage, but they're offering something and not necessarily getting anything in return.

Adam Forman: 3:17

I think there's a couple of different pieces, really. Like if you, if you have a standard router from your ISP, they might give you a little splash page. It does nothing. Right? So you think you are offering something. Uh uh, the other piece as well is, is that lots of parts in, in the US or anywhere really has great signal. I. So some people don't think about it. there are a lot of places with, with not good signal. Like half of New York is like a Faraday cage. You know, you're going to the restaurant and there's nothing. uh, so, you know, there, there has to be some form of wifi. The other platforms that are out there that we've seen. Don't look very nice. So it's sort of a deterrent. You go there and it's this horrible form, it like, it feels like you're being like, you're like going to an airport. Like it feels like you're being attacked. Like what's your name? What's your mother's maiden name? What's your bud type? All those things that make it look with that horrible form that you see. and I think, uh, there needs to be a better, a better way We've seen. we've replaced a ton of the bigger ones, uh, uh, recently, and the opt-in rate is just dramatically incr uh, increased using ours.'cause the customer journey is so nice. I think one of the biggest pieces, which is most important for any, anyone, and especially in the US it's, it's a lot of, SMS is a massive right. You know, sending cell numbers, sending messages to cell numbers is awesome. but collecting first party data is really important. And when you go into a restaurant. A lot of the bookings will either be done by third parties or you might not have that booking. You know, when you go into a restaurant or a hotel or any f and b business, once you've gone in and gone in, you might have the data for one person, but what about the five other people you're with? So, the challenging thing, the thing that we see is, is one, they haven't really got the, the design's not there. One, it's putting people off. Two, the nothing's happening with the data afterwards. So they may wanna have a Okay. Okay. Page for with the data. They may well as, as well have, you know, the data going somewhere, but it sits there and does nothing. And I think a big, point, and I think a lot of people in in hospital have said this is that re hospitality, any f and b business needs to email. They email's one of the biggest sources of, of bringing bums back on seats, as like, it's crazy. And that, that there's just not enough people that do with it. So that's one piece. And I think the other piece that we find is really important and it's, that's exploding all over the world right now, especially in the us. If you look at what's happened with Square recently, if you go anywhere. And you pay by Apple Pay, you get that wallet in your phone within seconds. So we've done something similar on the wifi. So you connect to the wifi and within seconds you, at the, when you've connected, you get that wallet. but we know who you are. So the thing about the square is great. You've got the wallet, but you're an anonymous person that's collecting points. They dunno who you are. They can sit, they, they can give you benefits, but we know who you are. So we know. We know your cell number, we know your email address. You know, we've asked you questions maybe on the journey. So we've been able to do the segmentation and we've added you into loyalty. So we've plugged into platforms like Patrons, Como in Europe. There's a platform called Piggy. We're currently speaking to Olo at the moment and punch. So there's some really cool, uh, and we're, we're currently working on cento, so there's some really cool loyalty platforms out there, that can really help you convert the customer into raving fans. That's the goal, right? You want to, you the get someone in, they, they've sat down, they've connected the wifi. Why should they have to fill out a form and to then, you know, why should they, why should they have to then get a card that says next time you come, fill Yeah, I, or use a punch card, which is crazy. You know, how many, I mean, I must have 50 punch cards in my, in my, in my, in my car. I don't know where they all are. So, it, it allows you to not only. Add the person, add it to the next step, but also allows you to add points, for example, if you wanted to. And then once the wallet's in their phone, and I know wallet's a new thing, uh, especially in the US it's, I spoke to a colleague of mine yesterday and she said in the US and she said, I. That, she thinks it's gonna take about a year and a half to everyone sort of fully adopt it because, you know, having the Apple wallet, you're used to it going on an airplane, maybe, you know, you're used to it and so on, but you're, it's in Australia and in Europe, it's massive. The wallets are everywhere. Less apps, more wallets. and once the wallet's in your phone, it's there forever. Now think about downloading an app for a, for, unless it, unless you're using that app every week. What does an Apple do now?

Jeremy Julian : 7:26

you don't need the

Adam Forman: 7:27

Yeah.

Jeremy Julian : 7:27

take a step back, Adam, because you, you threw out some insider language that I'd love to make sure that we define for our clients. So when I connect to a wifi experience at a retail outlet, whether that be at. At a Starbucks or at a Costco, you said something, it brings up a splash page. What is, what ex define what a splash page is, and then define what captive wifi does a little bit differently to make it not, let's ask for your mother's maiden name. Let's ask for your blood type. What's your first kid's, you know, when were they born and what city were they born in? walk me through what is that splash page and how is that traditionally defined, and what is it that you guys do a little bit differently?

Adam Forman: 8:04

Yeah, so, so on the traditional method, when you, if you were gonna go into a Starbucks or a, uh, any retail store, you, you connect to the wifi, it pops up. You have this page that arrives, right? It splashes up on your phone in your face, and it's usually this ugly, horrible box with some corporate logo, some terms,

Jeremy Julian : 8:24

say Cisco on the bottom

Adam Forman: 8:25

right? Yeah. And also, yeah,

Jeremy Julian : 8:28

agree.

Adam Forman: 8:28

a hundred percent. And so I'll give you an example. We, um, Gordon Ramsey's group across the globe, uh, their wifi is open. Just you connect, you, you connect to it. Like you said, the Cisco box pops up. There's a green icon that says connect, and then you are in. That's it. And then you, they know who you are. It's just left. If you look at like Starbucks, Starbucks don't really care who you are because they're so big. You go in, it'll pop up with their Starbucks thing and it will say, connect. Anyone, ask you for anything and it will let you straight through. And Starbucks one's probably a little bit nicer than the splash pages is a bit nicely designed. You know, you'll go to a gym and some gyms will also have it designed into their style, and then connect. What we've done is taken that concept of it and created a beautiful design splash page, and one of the things we built was video and entry. So that means that, I mean, if you think about a restaurant with, I know, 500, 500 covers, how many people throughout the week are coming through that restaurant? Yeah. If you can display, right, if you can display. that little video, maybe a, a Instagram reel or a promo or a showcase about your venue to 20,000 people in one, in like one week, that's a game changer. and it's basically an advert in your pocket. And that's where, what, that's what we've done. We've built this awesome tool to let you actually show, and we're actually speaking to some media partners at the moment that are basically wanting to pay restaurants.

Jeremy Julian : 9:53

the advertisement on the,

Adam Forman: 9:54

Because restaurants don't really care. They're like, I, I'll happily cut the data, but I don't care about the main splash. which is another, another revenue stream. But it's the, it's the welcome. So you connect, uh, we work with, uh, chat mate. They're in San Fran and um, uh, and in Canada. They've got some in London as well. And, um. We also work with Rock Hat and Zoomer, uh, as well, awesome brands. And they have a video, Zoomer themselves, have a video editing. They've got their own marketing team. They're like, awesome. And they're like 7 60, 55 venues globally. And they created curator specific video. So when you connect to the wifi, you get this beautiful rebut grill, you get the sushi chef cooking. So it's in keeping into the style and design of their venue, so it feels premium.

Jeremy Julian : 10:38

I love that. And we talk about guest experience a lot on the show, and there's, there's oftentimes a disconnect between the splash page and what you really want them to see. You go to their website and it's beautifully designed, but then you go to the the splash page that you're talking about and it's like, I. Is this, am I even in the same place? Am I connecting to a legit wifi signal? And I guess I'd love to have you talk a little bit about that, Adam. how often,'cause again, I was just in Mexico, I was in, you know, I was in Mexico, in, in Cancun, for a business trip and nobody needs to feel bad for me. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, I had a great time at the beach with my wife, and. I was there and I didn't want to use my cellular, so I didn't buy a sim'cause I was at the resort the whole time. But I was at the airport and now I see 40 wifi signals at the airport and I'm scared to connect to it. So both from a security perspective and then even from a brand reputation perspective, what does that splash page need to, I guess, instill confidence in the end user? And then what? Have you seen as far as brands, because I've heard bad stories of people sitting in the corner downloading stuff that they shouldn't be downloading, where there might be children and stuff. So love to talk through a little bit of that before we jump into kind of migrating'em over to the loyalty platform.

Adam Forman: 11:44

I think, I think, um, so being cloud-based is something where there, there's the line. So we, we have the IT team that work with their local IT teams and we make sure that the right thing's being put in for the right place. So we have guidance on what is recommended. So some of the hardware, so like for the smaller venues we work with. We just tell'em to go to Amazon, buy an Aruba Instant on access point that has its own version of a splash page and we plug directly into it. And that tool on its own has the facility to block things like adult has the facility to block things like even social media. I spoke to a wine club the other day who said to me, we don't want customer wifi. And I said, you've got no signal in your venue. Like, how are people gonna know to, how's someone gonna WhatsApp someone to get in if it's you're in a basement? And he said, uh, okay, I do want customer wifi, but I don't want social media. I said, that's fine. So we basically blocked social media. So the guidelines really are as long we will. Every access point that's out there, every little disc you see in the ceiling with a little blue light, you know, has the facility to put blockings in place. So we've got a guide, a guideline of what we recommend, but generally the bigger brands we work with will already have an information security policy in place to, to block that. So last thing you want is something, the one thing that's really important to, to remember when you are on a customer wifi is one. Most devices nowadays are pretty good at isolating yourself. And two, the hardware itself, the ones we work with, I sell every single guest. So you might be able to see that person on the network, but you can't access them. Things have changed over the years, you know, roll back five, 10 years, you know, you'd sit in a coffee shop and you could scan everything. You could even scan the credit card machine. The, the credit card machine is doing transactional data out, so things have, things have changed a long way. There's, there's a lot more security. Tools in place, uh, and there's guidelines. I think less and less, less and less is happening now in when it comes to it. And even the smaller ones. As I met as I recommended we that, I got a phone call, from a client and he goes, I just got a broadband router. Can you plug into it? And I'm like, no. He goes, well, I've opened my wifi. I said, well, it's gonna affect your till system. So we'll, we'll guide'em in the right way. We'll either tell'em to buy or we'll work with their IT companies. And then, you know, we've got tech talking to tech together. I literally had a client the other day, uh, in New York, an awesome restaurant called Caviar Seas, like the oldest caviar restaurant in New York. The guy's awesome. I had a conversation with him within 15 minutes. He, he basically did a teams called his IT guy. And it is Cisco Meraki, which is an awesome piece of hardware. and the guy was like, what do you need? I went, can you do this, this, and this? Yeah. And it was on path to entry. So yeah, so security wise is a lot better. We try and help with guidelines, nowadays to make sure that you are isolating every single device that's out there and blocking the nasties basically.

Jeremy Julian : 14:28

and so talk me through, because one of the other things that I hear from customers that talk about this is I don't want it to impact my phones. I don't want it to impact my point of sale. I don't want it to impact some of those other things. So how do you guys help, manage that infrastructure?'cause they only have potentially one internet connection into the building and they don't want. The services for the business, critical things to get, to suffer because we're giving somebody, you know, they're, they're watching, you know, the Housewives of Orange County on their, uh, on their tablet in the corner.

Adam Forman: 14:53

Absolutely. So, as I said, the majority of the platforms we work with allow us to, to block specific things. We always recommend to bring down that speed. if I have a client in, uh, Ontario, in Canada and they're using starlink,'cause the internet is so bad, horrific. So imagine running your whole business of a starlink and they've got to, they've got toast running all of their, uh, EPO system. and it works fine, but obviously you start to throw in customer wifi in the mix. And bearing in mind, Canada's a bit different to the us. There's three providers out there, and there's limited data. And if you are not in the, you're not in the the center, you know you're gonna struggle. So they have a lot of customer data, but we work with them and their team and their teams to just limit that speed a little bit. You still can get on the, on the internet. You can still do a bit of browsing. You probably couldn't do Netflix and Stream because, you know, depending on what they've got, but you can, you can still post that internet, the Instagram feed, or take a picture and post it to social media. That's the guide. You really want'em to be able to, you want your food to shine. Right? And there's the connectivity piece. You want'em to be able to be in touch with whoever's trying to get in, trying to get in touch with them.

Jeremy Julian : 15:58

I love that. So now let's flip over, Adam, real quick to capturing the guest data. You talk about capturing the guest data, both I guess overtly and then covertly. Talk me through kind of the overt side of capturing a guest data. And, you know, a lot of times the struggle, especially transaction volumes and things like that, they don't want to have them enroll in loyalty at the front because You know, they, they want as many people through the line as possible. It's a cafe and they're just. They're running through. And so figuring out other ways to capture who those guests are, what is the overt ways that you guys are doing it. And then I'd love to talk a little bit about how we can track frequency and things like that, even if they don't jump on wifi. But, uh, I know we'll get there.

Adam Forman: 16:36

Yeah, so one of the most important things that we see, uh, uh, um, especially in the QSR environment, you know, people coming in, you've got that huge queue. You've only got a certain amount of time to actually say, uh, to, if it's slow, Hey, what's your name? Let me add you into if you, you know, it's. It, I don't think it ever happened. I've never seen it, uh, in the US over here in Australia. I, I haven't seen anyone saying to me, can I add your name to the, to my database? To database? It just doesn't happen. So there's a couple of different ways of doing it, right? One, you can, you can do it through QR code if you can. Now we, I. Any, any new site that's opening. Uh, we work with a couple of different lo well water, different loyalty platforms, and we always recommend on your hoarding on the outside before you open massive, giant sized QR code, you know, so of loyalty. So they scan it and, and they fill it in. So that's pre-opening. Once you're open, you're busy. No one's got time to do it. So what we've done is we've, we've basically built the barrier to entry. Much lower. So all I really need is your email, your name, surname, email address, but we can go one step further and ask for your name and your date of birth. But what we've done as soon as you've filled those two or three pieces of information out. We will IME and you opt into marketing, uh, auto loyalty. We immediately straight with, within 10 seconds, you, you have been created loyalty, loyalty partner for that brand. Without even rea to be fair, without even realizing, all of a sudden you get a text message or an email saying, thanks so much for joining the Brew Club. Here's a free coffee in us. Click this link, download the app. Or tell you what, if you let us know your birthday, we'll give you a free gift on your birthday and we'll give you a free coffee now. And you're in the queue. So you are already like, you're already smiling, you're already realizing, hold on, I've just got something for nothing. This is crazy. You know, so that's one of the things, and it's working so well. we, we've actually, about a month ago, we added a. A global block list to stop those horrible nasties, like, so you can no longer log in with bob@gmail.com. Doesn't allow you'cause it's not a real account. and we've added stuff like, uh, icloud.co, or Gmail. All those you know, mistypes.

Jeremy Julian : 18:33

people are messing with, uh, messing with it, not allowing you to

Adam Forman: 18:36

Yeah, a hundred percent. So now, no, I'm sorry. No, no nasty emails. So we've now got something like a 50,000 fake emails and about five and a half thousand fake domain names on there. So it would just be a very nice, polite message saying, I'm really sorry this email doesn't exist. But going back to, the loyalty piece. The conversion to loyalty is so important. you want to build raving fans, and that's what we really excel in. you know, someone comes in, we've built the raving fan, they've damaged the wallet. Now that's just one piece. When they revisit and they connect, we welcome, we already know they've been, we welcome them back, and then we send the trigger into loyalty. So they may come in and not buy anything, but they've come in and you've triggered that visit if you didn't have the wifi system in place. You wouldn't be tracking them, so you wouldn't even know, you wouldn't even know they visited four or five system four or five times. And there's some really clever tools out there at the moment. It's, anyway, there's some awesome, loyalty tools out there. They've got some very clever machine learning and everyone will call it AI where it tracks your visits. Yeah. So if you, and it knows your, you go once a week. Now traditionally the old school, like data, CDP platforms out there will be like, Hey, oh great, this guy's come four times. on the fifth time I'm gonna give him a free something. the clever systems out there know that you're gonna come on the fifth time, so why would you give someone a free.

Jeremy Julian : 19:54

why would you give him

Adam Forman: 19:55

exactly. so it, so then what it does is it uses the wifi, uses the transactional data from the PO it uses, maybe if they've scanned it and it marries all that data together. And it looks at the platform and it goes, and this isn't us, this is what we plug into. It looks at it and goes, hold on. He hasn't come for three weeks. this isn't normal. We are gonna now trigger the offer. Hey, welcome back. have a free muffin when you buy a coffee. Uh, and that sort of stuff that's happening is. And it happens automatically. Now, you know as well as I do, no one has time. The biggest drain of resource is marketing. It is. Uh, and that colleague of mine said to me the other day that marketing teams are too busy writing the out of order sign on the toilet because it's gotta be on message. So ops have said, toilets are out of order. I'm gonna put a sign up. Marketing have run up, you know, it's gotta be the right message. So they're doing that and then they've forgotten to send the email. They've forgotten to do the automation they've for, forgot to do it. So these new tools are doing it all for you in the background. There's little machines running and sending the offers, tracking the visits, doing the automations, and doing the birthday reminders. You know, one of the biggest things in the world. And the biggest, uh, one of the first ever, uh, I think fishbowl were the first people ever to build it. was a be reminder. Uh, and just that one little piece of data.

Jeremy Julian : 21:09

birthday's in two weeks. I've started getting my birthday reminders or showing up from the brands that are doing it well. And quite frankly, and this is one of the things that Adam, I like to talk about is, is while you guys are not the engine of the loyalty, you are the engine for being able to capture. And I think oftentimes getting the person's data, they will give it up freely oftentimes, especially if there's a benefit to them. But figuring out how to create a frictionless way for for you to capture that is really, really critical. Is that, is that a fair statement?

Adam Forman: 21:35

Yeah, hundred percent. one of the biggest things we're talking about at the moment is touchless loyalty. So. If you go and book a restaurant, so say you go to book a restaurant and you book through seven rooms, for example. So you've gotta book a restaurant. You've booked through seven rooms, you've gone to the restaurant, you've connect to the wifi, you've opted in, All that data is now linked. So wouldn't it be nice rather than having to sign up for a form, fill out, download an app, get the waiter to scan it, all this sort of like con like congested old school layouts and designs of things are done. Imagine you go for your birthday, you, your wife books a table for or under your name. She books a table. You go to that restaurant, you connect to the wifi, you sit down. You pay, you leave, and then two days later we have a, we've added 250 points onto your law, onto your, you know, onto your, but even if you hadn't signed to loyalty, we can still, not we, but the whatever platforms are out there can still feed the data into the platform so that when you do opt in, you know, or

Jeremy Julian : 22:34

that you've been there

Adam Forman: 22:35

right.

Jeremy Julian : 22:36

to the wifi, so talk me through some of that, Adam.'cause that's a little bit of the covert things. I know our phones, I mean, we joke about it and I think way too many people are too ignorant about how much our phones know about us and how much they give away freely, whether it's Android or iOS. Don't care which side of the fence you're on. There's, they are sharing some of who you are, how often you're even in proximity of those things. Talk our listeners through a little bit of that, not to create fear, but as a business tool that restaurants and retail outlets can use. To make their lives better and ultimately deliver wow type experiences.'cause it's about the guest experience. It's about hospitality. It's about going above and beyond. Going back to your, they know they're gonna come in the fifth time instead of giving them free coffee, tell them if they go share their experience on Google now they'll get a free coffee.'cause now both sides are benefiting. Now it's a, it's a different way to opt in and to drive that behavior that you're looking for and the brand is looking for. But talk a little bit about what. Other things you guys capture once you're there and how you guys store that. because I think way too few people really understand that's out there.

Adam Forman: 23:43

I think that the, I think the challenge is, it all depends on the hardware you're using, right? So if you are, if you're in the smaller environment, you won't be able to have the, like the foot full tracking piece that, that is available, but on some of the clever tools that are out there. and we also provide, we can provide a device that does the tracking, but there's a couple different ways of, of doing it. So if you're looking at like the Meraki, which is the, the golden standard, right? The, if you're spending it, you know you're spending it'cause you've gotta pay the license fees for it. that can actively track. devices, even if you are not connecting, they can actually track where devices are going, and then how many times they've been. So for example, you want to open the store on a Sunday and it's dead and you are not sure. You could switch this, this on, feed the data into our platform, and we will scan for devices. So the system will scan for devices and send it to us and give you a report, which basically means you can actually see, see for example, you've got a wifi unit by the front door. and it's picking up that data. You can now see the footfall data of people coming past, which is super important because you know what? You might have had a really, really bad week, but the footfall outside is massive, so there's something going on, right? You are doing something wrong, but you don't know. You're just assuming in your mind as an operator, I had a bad week. It's, it's, you know, one of these things happen. If you have a look at the footfall, well, it was massive outside. Why didn't we have someone outside? Why don't we have someone outside bringing people in? Why don't we change what we've done? change the layout. We often get customers saying to us that we wanna open on the weekends. We're not in a heavy footfall area. It's mainly business. Should we open and we'll, we'll either if they've got the tools available or we'll, we'll give them the tools available. They'll plug it in. and they'll see, actually, you know what, Saturday afternoons. Brand in the area, but Sunday's dead, so let's not staff up a Sunday.'cause otherwise you're wasting labor. Right? And the labor force is more expensive now. Everything's more expensive. We can help with that, that those tools are clever. Also, we recognize when people come back. So if someone has walked past one, uh, one of the sites that we have and their phone auto connects. it will. It's quite nice to see that, you know, you've got people auto connecting in and tricking that visit, as well. But the footfall thing is, is quite interesting on how it works. I spoke to a partner of ours in the day that did some work for a humongous, like a fairground, huge fairground. And as you go in. they did a way finding, so they looked at where people are going, and it turned out everyone walked in. They went immediately to the right. So they, they're following all the devices, going, everyone's going to the right. So that half of the fairground was absolutely packed and the left hand side was dead. So they, they asked ops, ops were just like, we don't know why we've stood there. We can't really see. It's difficult when you're on the ground, but when you look at the data, the flow of people and the reason why everyone to the right,'cause there's two information centers on the right hand side. And just, they just didn't click. So they immediately put two more information to the left hand side, checked it out again, and then saw the flow of data. So there's some really, really clever stuff you can do, but the footfall thing is important you, it allows you to understand what's happening in the area.

Jeremy Julian : 26:35

Yeah, I love that. And I think way too few people understand the power of being able to do that and really ultimately how it can help drive. And we've got somebody that's considering putting in kiosks and it's like you don't wanna put in kiosks right? In the way of where people are normally navigating your store. So being able to look at those, some of those kind of things in in large environments for sure. Or the opposite. These kiosks are never getting used. Why aren't they getting used? Nobody's ever

Adam Forman: 26:58

Whoa.

Jeremy Julian : 26:58

how do I create signage and those kind of

Adam Forman: 27:00

Think about this with the counting, you can also detect how long people have been in store and out store. So if someone walks in and leaves within five minutes, it counts. If someone walks by, it counts. So the kiosk thing is really interesting'cause if someone walks in and looks at a kios and leaves, you know, there's, there's actually, another tool that we work with called So Link, I dunno if you've heard of them. amazing tool. And they basically do, analytics using the CCTV. So basically you can line out areas, where they are, and do those, those kiosks and see how long people have used them for, which is really clever. We actually spoke to a kiosk company a month ago about doing something cool. You come into the rest, you come into the QSR. You, your phone also connects to the wifi and then it tells, and then there's kiosks and then it says,'cause it knows who you are. I've already logged you into kiosk five. And then basically their kiosk, they've got some animation on the front and it waves and says your name. So, and there's a code like McDonald's, like when you go to McDonald's, right, you go to McDonald's, you can scan. But we were talking about making it even more fun when you walk in, you've connected to the wifi, and then the kiosk becomes you, you've already, it's auto signs you in. Obviously you can type in the code like the three digit code.

Jeremy Julian : 28:05

That shut up on your phone. Well, and and funny enough, we had a customer that was doing it via visual and they got shut down because they got sued by, you know, consumers saying, you're taking my likeness without my

Adam Forman: 28:16

Yeah.

Jeremy Julian : 28:17

to log me into this stuff. And so,'cause they tried it and it was kind of cool, but it was like, Hey, do you want the thing, same thing you had last week, but there needs to be an opt-in back to kind of even your opting into loyalty. You're opting into the, to the transaction.

Adam Forman: 28:28

I think the challenge you have in the US is, unless you're in California, the GDPR, the the op, the data privacy is since over here, square have a challenge, you know, and sort of toast. There's PCI compliance, which is super tight. And then there's the GDPR rules, which are super tight, which basically means that in America, you go to Texas and you'll go to Square Terminal in a coffee shop, and you'll go to New York. It knows exactly who you are. It pop up and say, Hey, over here you go to one shop, to the other. Everything's. Everything's siloed. no. You can't cross brand. You can't, like, you can't do what, what, uh, thanks, does, does. And lunchbox. You can't do that over here. There's no, uh, the, every, every, every person has an individual unique token. But the challenge is linking that token where you are. It's, you are winning every, but yeah, you're right. The, that's an interesting point. I've seen a lot of the, uh, articles on the kiosks with the facial recognition.

Jeremy Julian : 29:20

Yeah, this brand happened to be in California and they struggled with it. And but you just alluded to my next line of questioning Adam, which is kind of this whole token idea, obviously in the payment world. I love the fact, well, I love it because my card is tied to my wife's card on Square. So when she spends money on Square, I'm like, where, what were you buying over here? And, you know, I'll holler down to her and she gives me, she's like, how do you know? It's like, I hadn't even seen it on the, on the account, but I got the notice from Square. or vice versa. From time to time she'll get a text and I'll be at the farmer's market and I'll use the square terminal and she'll get a text saying, oh, you weren't supposed to buy that. but in general, you talked a little bit about how opting into wifi the rules might be a little bit different. I'd love to kind of tease that out a little bit that says, how do we cross pollinate? I happen to mean you and I talk pre-recording. I happen to be. you know, middle age father of four. My life circumstance is very different. Somebody than somebody else that's my exact same age, but might not have any children. Their dining preferences, their, you know, everything might be very, and I live in the suburbia. I don't live in a downtown metro area, so my preferences are gonna be very different than somebody else's might be. But if it ops in, and now I'm at different brands, how can you tie those things together and what's the value behind that? And, how, how does that all work?

Adam Forman: 30:28

I think the nice thing is, is that, the opt, so I if we, if we go back a step a little bit, so you were. We look at reservations. In reservations, I think it's 22% of people opt into reservations. We see the data. It is so low. So it is very difficult to start really marketing, to everyone. If you're, if people aren't saying Yes, I wanna, I want to hear from that restaurant. You know, you tick the box of reservations and it's not free ticked, it's just you have to tick it. Most people just won't. So you have this really big challenge with that piece. Right. So that's one piece. you, you, you're away from, but then when you threw the wifi into it and you've gone in, well now you've booked a table and you've put your allergens and your preferences into the reservation system, and then you've gone into the, into the venue to sign into wifi. And we have this beautiful little popup that comes up that says, uh, uh, our default text is, you'd like to perceive marketing. Don't worry, we don't spam. That's what it says, that they're very nice. Big black accept button and a very small decline button on the left hand side. So we get like a 90 odds, percent optin rate. But once someone's opted in, you can then marry that data together, right? You then can start mark, you can then pull that data out. So if you've got multiple venues, uh, we've got an awesome brand in the us. They've got like 15 sites. it's like Cuban style, really cool venues. Uh, and they have seven rooms. They have us and. Up into, uh, up into their res platform. So when someone comes in, we opt them in, and we increase their, their database. And so they've now got more data points for that person and actually be able to do stuff with it.'cause before you sort of sit there, you can, it, it, it just doesn't work so well, you know,

Jeremy Julian : 32:01

Yeah, well, and now you tie that reservation to the POS transaction, to the wifi transaction, and now you've got a much more holistic view of this person. Whether you're a coffee shop or you're a, you know, a three star Michelin restaurant, you now have the ability to communicate with them. And a lot of times it comes back to top of mind. I'm likely going to go to lunch today at a place that. Emailed me or text me in the last 48

Adam Forman: 32:22

Yeah.

Jeremy Julian : 32:23

it's top of mind. I'm thinking about it. And so, you know what? I likely will do that. And so, very, very critical. What else did we miss in the kind of captive wifi world that, that I guess our listeners need to know about that, uh, that you would say, Hey, if you're not doing this, make sure that you guys are at least thinking about it, because it's critical.

Adam Forman: 32:39

I think that one of the most, most important things is that customer journey. So you, we always talk about customer journey, right? Making the customer service experience be unbelievable and you could do that in store, right? So, you know, American hospitality is unbelievably next level. You know, you, they will fall over themselves to help you. It is an a hundred percent a career, and it's awesome. Which is great. The challenge then you have is, is when they leave, right? So you might do a bit of feedback, great, but the customer journey should be the same as you signing into the signing up to the email on the website, signing into the wifi, on the wifi. And if they are opting in, booking a table. It's that we try and help our customers on the welcome journey. So whichever point they take to come to your business, you need to trigger that off. And a colleague of mine did a test, 50 brands, large and small. He set up a brand new Yahoo account. And out of those 50, big brands, didn't get any emails from them, from the website, from the wifi, nothing. Nothing at all. Didn't, nothing. And then some of the smaller brands. Straight away. Thanks so much for coming. Thanks for visiting. I tell you what, why don't you have a coffee and ask next time you come. He got that. Two days later he went, had a coffee, typed a coffee into the, into the kiosk that then triggered the next journey of a on the email and said, thanks so much having coffee, have 20% off lunch. And it was just, you know, and then the last email was, Hey. This is who we are. These are our beliefs. This is where our food's from. We'd love to see you again. So it wasn't really pushy. It was this beautiful customer journey, and it wasn't me throwing you free, free stuff. It was more over enticing. So we took a lot.

Jeremy Julian : 34:19

and it's creating, it's creating a connection digitally. So few of the things that we do nowadays are the same way that I grew up, or you might have grown up where it was a human to human connection. So much of our interaction's but you've gotta have some level of humanity through it and creating some consistent brand messaging and imaging. I love that thought, and I think all too often having a big. black screen, white screen that just says, accept and shows the Cisco Meraki, what doesn't walk you through any of the brand imaging, any of that regardless. And, and again, I, I want people to know how to get in touch, but there's so many people doing it so poorly and they're not doing anything even with that data. Once they get it, they have the opportunity to capture it. They're not capturing it, number one. And number two, when they capture it, they're not doing anything with it. Number three is the whole idea that says you're not creating a brand, a brand and, and consistent, experience for the guest. And ultimately you're losing because of it.

Adam Forman: 35:11

Yeah, it's all about, listen, it's all about rete retention, right? You wanna, if you can try and get, they say if you can get that person back three times, they're yours forever. That's it.

Jeremy Julian : 35:20

years, forever. Oh, and, and, me, and the opposite is also true. If you don't save them because you had a bad experience, once you've gotten them, you're going to lose them. I mean, my family, same way when we have a couple of bad experiences in a row, even if it wasn't a rotation and we were there every two weeks, we're like, Hey, we're not going back. And being able to communicate with those people, especially in the digital world, is really, really

Adam Forman: 35:42

That actually takes me to the next piece. We actually build a customer feedback flow into the platform so you can do customer feedback within our system. And what we've done is, is that everyone's busy, no one has time to log into a. Dashboard to start replying to feedback. So we've made it quite automated. So you visit, you set the time out of after X amount of time. After. Now, good news is, is that, you know, the data privacy rules globally say that if there's intent, you can send messages. So feedback doesn't really count and you're allowed to send customer feedback to anyone. So we send feedback to everyone, and basically it's a really nice template and it's got five stars in the email. You, you choose the timeout of when the feedback goes. It sends an email. You choose the template of how you want to send, it's all fully branded with the same like logo design as the, as the wifi. And how's your experience now, if you hit four and five stars? we just take you straight to Google. We don't even see our platform. We, it doesn't see us. It just clicks and you click on it, the Google page and, and then,

Jeremy Julian : 36:40

because the three to, there are three to one stars. You want to talk to that customer.

Adam Forman: 36:44

So what?

Jeremy Julian : 36:44

four and fives, you want them to be out there publicly for everybody.

Adam Forman: 36:47

what we do, and also we give public feedback. So if you did wanna put QR on in your receipts or on your website, you can do that too. But the one to three, we basically, we help you write the content. Uh, we're plugging in like everyone else. We're plugging in some smarts into it at the moment. But you can write you, we, we give you the default templates, you can set the order applies. Um, or you received the email and says, look, uh, you know, hey, you've received a two star feedback. the burger was soggy. and then you have the opt in to respond with those templates or you can auto reply. The nice thing is what we've done is, listen, we're not a feedback platform. We do plug into third party feedback platforms and can send the data anywhere. what we can do though is. When the customer responds to the automated message and we, you can choose multiple automated messages, it goes straight to the straight to the brand. So whoever the GM is, whoever the is, and now they can resolve it because it's some of the most important, if you can recover that, that, that negative experience, you've won them back. so one of our, one of our customers does this. he, they, they're a bit techie, and they use a tool, uh, called make.com. Which is a bit like Zapier. It's one of those automated, if then and so on. And he's created a way where we send the feedback, uh, and if someone clicks the button on the feedback, he'll trigger, uh, an automation for a, for an offer, like a voucher for a free drink. So they basically say in the message, Hey, thanks so much for coming. We'd love to have, we'd love to hear about your experience. Good, bad, indifferent, doesn't matter. Leave feedback and we'll give you a free drink. And, and everyone does it. So what we've recently done, we now track all the emails that are sent. So we send, we show how many has been sent. we allow about 20,000 emails a month, but we don't really check. we, we send the feedback out, we track that feedback, we show the bounces and what we've done recently, we just really clever,'cause obviously some bouncers will get through. There will always be some bounce bounced emails.

Jeremy Julian : 38:35

Yep.

Adam Forman: 38:36

We now add that bounced email into our global block list. So that customer comes back next week and tries to sign in again with his, uh, you know, I, you know, his, uh, fake email account, he won't be allowed in. He'll have to put a real account in. So it's pretty clever. So the wifi and feedback's pretty good. Uh, uh, uh, on there. It's, it's super ex important to understand and also give the restaurants the tools to be able to do it. I went to a client about a month ago and I said to them. You've not responded to these like 50 feedback messages. What's happened? And she looked at me and she said, look at me. She goes, do you know how busy I am? I run five food halls. They're huge. I don't have time to, to click the button. I said, but I'm sending it to your email. She goes, can you just automate it? And we did. So the other nice thing about what we do, and we're super agile. We had, we had a steelworks company in the US call us and say, we've tried to build a splash page for Meraki. It doesn't look very nice. We like yours. Can we use yours, but can you disable some features? And we've just done it. We've just rolled it out for, for, for a, for corporate, not just, uh, so it can be used for anything. So we are super agile when it comes to stuff. So like, for example, at the moment, the loyalty, um, flow out there at the moment are of brands that are expanding and going crazy in the us It's all already on our list to plug into. So it's unbelievable that what the opportunities that where you can do the conversion. We're working with an awesome brand at the moment. A Poke brand. They had 10 sites and then I checked with them. I checked in with'em last week. Yeah, we're up to 56. I said, what do you mean? She goes, well, yeah, franchise within the next, within six months will be 56 sites. And that's crazy. You've got a good brand, you know that it will roll out. And that's one thing I love. So she, they were, they said to us. we love what you do. We want to roll you out with every franchisee. So then the head office is capturing all that data and doing it.

Jeremy Julian : 40:26

now they can enroll'em in, in loyalty. Now they know who's going into their brands. They're getting the feedback. That's amazing. I love it. Well, and the one other thing that I guess I would let our listeners, want to hear if they made it up, to the end of the show is just how creative you guys are trying to help solve the true problem. You guys have got miles o on the odometer. You guys understand what it is that they're dealing with. And now you're helping people to get there. And so Adam, how would people learn more? How do people get in touch? How do people, get a download of what it is that you guys are doing and, and figure out is it right for their brand?

Adam Forman: 40:58

Yeah, I mean, listen, we have captive wifi.com. we are there. I I do some content as well. So there's some, uh, you know, we, we have a little podcast, uh, not as as powerful as yours. We. we're only small. we are on LinkedIn. my email is adam@captivewifi.com. I'm weirdly available online. LinkedIn, you can book a meeting on the website direct to my calendar, uh, for 15 minutes for a crazy amount of time. So we are super open and super available because the most important thing we see is. The more customers I can bring you, the more money you make, the more sites you open, the happier we are and the, and we expand and help us expand our brand. So that's, that's what we care about. But I think the difference between us and everyone else, we aren't just a box, we aren't just a piece of service. We don't just leave you to do your own thing because like most re most retailers, most hospitality and, and most f and b businesses, they need guidance. And what we do is we give them the best of class. So I don't, we don't leave, I'm the founder, right? There's, there's, there's, there's eight of us in the company, and, uh, you know, techs and support, and. The most important thing for me is if you're one site or a hundred site or foreigner sites, I'm still available. I'm always chatting to the team. So one of the biggest brands we work with, we have a biweekly meeting and we guide. They're like, what, what are we doing wrong? Why? Why is everyone else doing this? Or what's happening? So we, we wanna give insight and also we've got some awesome partners who are like. Super experts on the CDP side. So we will guide them in the right way, you know? Oh, my email's not hitting what? Or we, what do you recommend? We work with so many brands, that it allows you to, uh, to give you, we give you the tips. The other thing I didn't mention, actually, before we go, we actually have a single sign on, which basically means that if you have, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 different brands across hundreds different locations. Whichever one you've been to. When you sign in and type in your email address in, it doesn't ask you any more questions. It sends you straight through. You get that welcome back piece, which is quite nice because we've got, a brand that've got, I think, I don't know, a couple hundred sites, four or five different brands. So you can imagine going into one. And so all you need to do now is when you go in, it will either remember you or when you type in your email, it skips you straight through to the end page. And they already triggered you. and so your app with loyalty, for example, or wherever it might be, were triggered. So that single piece is, uh, especially for like the coffee shop stuff that we work with, they don't want people to have to resign in every time. how many times have you been somewhere to the same brand and it's awful.

Jeremy Julian : 43:28

then I'm like, ah, do I even really need this? My food's about to come. Do I bother? they're, they're missing out on that

Adam Forman: 43:32

yeah, yeah. So that, so it's quite nice. we are a global admin, so as, as a global admin, I can click global admin and we had a, I did a little look in December and we, we,'cause we were zoomer, uh, and other venues we had, I was just following the flow of these people going from venue to venues. And then one of'em ended up in, in Dubai and then Riyadh. Which is really interesting because I was like, I was just interested to see, so the customer can log in and go into the single customer view and see which venues they've been to across Brandand, if they're multi-brand, see what they, what venues they've been to, and actually look at the flow we can all, it also shows you how many feedback messages has been sent, what feedback has been responded to, and then obviously plugging into the crm. So it's, it's, it's, it can be a bit like, you know, big Brotherish looking into, into it, but it's, it's looking at where the customers are going to their favorite outlets as well.

Jeremy Julian : 44:21

No, and I could see that being a huge benefit. You know, if you're a super fan, you've been to 90% of our brands or whatever, whatever that looks like. And so, um, I could see that being a big benefit. Adam, I love what you guys have built. I think it's, as I said at the beginning, it's so underutilized. And I think, even if people don't use captive wifi, which I would encourage you guys to go check it out, he's been so amazing to talk with at the same time. So many of the things could happen today, even in your existing environment while they're working on migrating, from getting a splash page that looks like your brand and, and functions that way to capturing their data. There's so many nuggets that you've shared. So thank you very much, um, for sharing. Thank you very much for continuing to put the, this good out into the world. and uh, to our listeners guys, make it a great day.

45:06

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.