Julian: Hi everyone. Thank youso much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have BhavinAsher, CTO of GRUBBRR, a self-ordering technologies company focused onautomating commerce with its award-winning line of hardware and softwaresolutions. Bhavin, I'm so excited to chat with you, not only to learn aboutyour experience and, and kind of, what brought you to building GRUBBRR and theamazing technology that it is today, but also kind of this whole revolution inthe the customer and kind of patron experience.

Restaurants and other kind oforganizations alike are, are seeing, and I'm curious to see what insights thatyou've gathered from this whole kind of change in, in kind of allowingtechnology to kind of disrupt certain industry that, ha had kind of maybefragmented resources or fragmented ways to, completing a satisfactory customerexperience.

It's really exciting to learn abouttechnologies, like cares that are really kind of automating a lot of thefrivolous processes, but also getting people through and out the door. So we'llget into that and what that means, but what were you doing before you startedGRUBBRR?  

Bhavin: So before I, I was incorporate America tech companies.

I was with Salesforce for around fourand a half years, and before that I was with Deloitte. So did lot, lot ofstrategy consulting, business consulting. The uniqueness was, I'm a tech personby heart, but I understand business really well. Yeah. So it was a very uniquerole at all the various companies where I could do strategy and talk tech.

Yeah. To a, A CEO. Or a ceo, right?  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Andthinking about you, you have a lot of experience in machine learning inparticular, and are a lot of, a lot of companies that you were talking withlooking to implement those machine learning models to the data sets that theyhave. What was kind of that kind of experience?

When you were talking to companies and,and working with this type of technology, were a lot of people looking to adoptit. What's that like?  

Bhavin: So there's a lot ofeuphoria around it. Like there's a lot of hype around it right now. I call itthe hype curve. It is on the peak of its hype. Look, data is hard.

The bigger the company it's multiplesets of data and it's fragmented. Yeah. Even like, especially the biggercompany, it's more fragmented. It is. So it's a, it's an end word, but once youget it in, and once you have that data, you can just do some magic. Right? Solike there are a couple of clients where like when you have to do a salescalling and they have so much data about their customer that they knew thatwhat quarter to call which customer and what is the highest propensity toclose, right?

Imagine if as a sales guy I told you,call these hundred. And out of that 120 has a propensity to close, right?Yeah,  

Julian: yeah. And describe, interms of what you have all that information accumulated, what types, how do youidentify what models to use? Are you building 'em internally as a company? Areyou using kind of some outsource information?

How do you build the right models?  

Bhavin: Yeah, so let's talkabout GRUBBRR then. So GRUBBRR, what we do is we use a lot of personalized dubcells. So let. Julian goes to the restaurant he goes to the fast casualrestaurants and his habits are pretty much the same. You don't like spicy foodand you don't do onions, for example.

Yeah. Now, when you welcome to thekiosk, can you enter your phone number or you scan your QR code? If you're aloyalty member, it says, welcome back Julian. These are your last five orders.And by the way, I know what you like. Yeah. And we would suggest it's, it'svery intelligent recommendations because I know what you eat during lunch inApril and what you have eaten the last three years.

Yeah. For that you can't, there's no outof the box machine learning model where you can just buy and just use it.Right. So yes, you can use some algorithms, but then we add our own algorithminside and then you create a model out of it.

Julian: Yeah. And describe alittle bit more of GRUBBRR, what is for the audience.

Just give a little bit of context.Describe the technology, what you're servicing and the customers, yourservice.  

Bhavin: Sure. So GRUBBRR is aself ordering platform for hospitality, restaurants, sports arena. Movietheaters, stadiums. So think of anywhere where there's food and you need selfordering. We are the platform.

Right? Yeah. Especially with covid, with$15 minimum wage, employees are not coming back. Right. We as people, as society,we don't want to do what we are doing. We, nobody wants a cashier job. Yeah.Nobody wants certain jobs at all. Yeah. So we are coming in and filling the gapthrough. And that automation is, it's called the front of the house.

So it's kiosks, it's QR code, it'smobile ordering, it's app ordering. Yeah. We do all of that, but we lead withkiosks in the restaurants and anywhere there's food served.  

Julian: Yeah. And what doesthat mean in terms of how restaurants are now able to operate? Obviously there'sa lot of external circumstances, like you mentioned, decreased wage.

And, and, and even just being a littlebit more strapped as a company at a restaurant to be able to operate at, highefficiency because the profit margins can be a little bit scarce with food, andobviously there's a lot of dynamics there. But what does that mean when they'reable to take the load and automate that portion of the position, or, or, orthat, that, I guess, critical part of the experience for customers.

How, how has that changed the way theyoperate?  

Bhavin: So, that's a greatquestion, right? So we call it the operationalization of. So you can put akiosk in or QR code, but if you don't operationalize that, the restaurant isgonna suffer. Right? They'll be like, oh, this does not work for me. And you'llalways hear when there's new technology adoption, oh, this doesn't work.

Mm-hmm. But in its true sense, it'sactually, it's, it's a double, double edge, edge sword. You have to train thecustomer to now go to a kiosk and order food, which with touch, and you have totrain the restaurant. Oh, the cashier is not there anymore. So how will youserve the food back to the customer? Right.

Right. And we help, we help on both, onboth sides. So when we put the kiosk in, the cashier position is not no longerneeded or it's, it's less needed. Sure. In the sense where there's lunch rush,you have two kiosks, there's a 10 deep line. Now technically you have three pe,three people, two automated people, and one real person taking orders or.

That person is like, oh, the kitchen isgetting backed up. Let me leave this to the kiosk. I'm gonna go help thekitchen to churn up, churn up the orders faster. Yeah.  

Julian: And what does thatmean? Yeah. And, and I guess, what was the biggest challenge, I guess, or orlearning curve? Was it training the customers or, kind of implementing theoperating model that would help these businesses?

Bhavin: Both. I would sayboth. Right? The bigger challenge is having businesses adopt to the change.That's the first. So that, that is where education and training. But then custas a customer, the first one or two times, they're a little skeptical, but thenthey get it. It's simple to use. Our UIUX is great on, on GRUBBRR side, so it'svery, it's very picture.

It's all picture based. So it's likeInstagram or Amazon. Yeah. You come click, click, click, click, click, typeyour phone or swipe your card and you leave.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And, andin regards to kind of the, the restaurant and the way they operate, what doesthat mean in terms of the overall experience that they're offering?

Are there, obviously there might be somepushback to implement technology, maybe it kind of, creates kind of adisingenuine experience, but I think more so it, it really creates the, whatthe consumer wants more quickly, right? We want our food, we wanna order, wewanna know what we're getting. We want it rapidly and we wanna have thatexperie.

Be very seamless. How have you kind ofmanaged pushing restaurants or convincing them of this new type of experiencethat customers are actually kind of craving for?  

Bhavin: Good question again.Imagine the job is easier for us, right? So when you put self orderingtechnology, when you put GRUBBRR in with kiosks, it's pretty straightforward.

You get instant up instantly. Well, it'sinstantly a creative. You're taking the cashier position out. So you're savingmoney on labor? Yeah. It's constantly upselling. So your ticket size goes up by18.5% and you just never makes a mistake. So when you ordered a burger, extraonions, no pickles and ketchup on the side, the kitchen will always get thesame order.

Yeah. Versus extra ketchup, no onions,no pickles and pickles on the side. Right. It's all, you'll never get amistake. The error rate is 0%. So you save money there. Yeah. You get upliftoff ticket at least by 15 to 20% and you are saving on labor. Yeah. So then itmakes a very compelling case. So even if you are on the edge of doing this, andthat is when we as GRUBBRR tell the customer, Hey, why don't you try this outfor 60 or a 90 day trial?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's when they come inand say, oh, this is great. Right?  

Julian: Yeah. And what's the,thinking, we talked to a lot of companies that deal and just digital, right?Just software selling that to different customers, direct to consumer ordifferent businesses. Describe the different challenges that you face having ahardware component and a software component, how you kind of operateefficiently and, and.

Think about, the connection with thecustomer when they have to purchase a physical object or use that, what's the,what's the unique challenge that you face being that you have to work with bothhardware and software in, in servicing your, your customers?  

Bhavin: So, that's a goodpoint. Before around I would say around three years ago, we would assemble ourkiosk with six different components and then put software on top.

So it was quite undertaking, right? As afounder, when I. Yeah, I did not, I did not know what I was signing up. Right.It's brute force. You're going on in, you believe in the idea. We, I knew thisis going to happen. Yeah. And frankly, I did not anticipate Covid, but I knowthis is where the world is going.

Yeah. And then Covid hit, but the majorvalidation came when Samsung released their own kiosk in 2000. In 2021. CalledJune, and then that was a major validation for a brand like Samsung to say,yes, we have a kiosk as a product offering. Yeah. And they went global and theycouldn't find a software partner who could do everything we could.

And now we are one of their top partnersfor self-ordering kiosks with Samsung. Ah, so interesting. Democratized themarket and took from $7,000 kiosk down to 2000, $2,500 retail. Wow. Yeah.Right. So now anybody can buy, buy. And doesn't matter if you're in a smallrestaurant or if you're in a chain who has to buy thousand of these, you canafford it.

Julian: Yeah. It's so fascinatingthinking about these different partnerships that a lot of founders findthemselves having and, and it almost kind of supercharges their ability to getadoptability in the market that they're facing. Obviously the decreased kioskprice. Opens up the barrier to multiple business, being able to purchase it andhaving, use of that technology.

What, when you're managing arelationship like that and building technology, when, when it's not justin-house and you're communicating with another partner, how do you make surethat that is effective in regards to. Implementing the right technology, makingthe changes, updating it. What kind of relationship do you have with a companylike Samsung to be able to, not only, create a great experience, but also implementingyour technology and update and iterate when you have to do, you have toconsider them in your decision making?

What, what's, what's involved in thatpartnership?  

Bhavin: it's interesting,right? So yes, we have to align our organizations in the backend to make surewe can. Together as a hardware and a software. Yeah. And it's just hard.Initially it is harder, but when we go to the customer, we actually show oneface and one company.

Right. Yeah. And we do a lot ofintegrations in the backend. So for example, we do the printer paymentsscanner. Yeah. Loyalty integrations, point of sale integrations and customers.They do not see any of this noise. They just see, oh, the kiosk is now in mystore and it works. Yeah,  

Julian: yeah, yeah. Now, whatkind of technology, I guess, is integrated in the backend and how, howchallenging is it knowing that a lot of these restaurants have like, legacytechnologies or don't even have, say, an infrastructure, still using kind ofreally rudimentary ways to taking.

Because it's working for them. Theydon't, maybe they, there hasn't been a lot of value to update, but howchallenging is it to to, to literally plug in technology that isn'tstandard?  

Bhavin: It is hard becauseit's legacy. It's all Windows 2000. Like probably I was, I was in high schoolfrankly at that point. And then their protocols and the code they have useddoes not even exist anymore.

Yeah. But does not get used anymore.Right. And we are on the. And that is one of the GRUBBRR secret sauce where weare integrated to every major PS platform in the US and in Canada and in LatinAmerica now. So it's global. We are getting global now. Yeah. So we can do, wedo like ncr, Oracle, par brink, square clovers of the world.

We are always there.  

Julian: Yeah. And how do youget past a scaling problem in regards to, you have so many. Ways the technologycan be utilized in different areas, not even just restaurants, I'm sure, maybeevents and all things around that nature. How do you kind of manage what tofocus on and where to invest kind of time and resources to being that?

If I'm you, I can see being very spreadthin on a lot of different avenues that I want to go to because it's excitingto get the, the technology adopted. How do you maintain your focus in, in onedirection?

Bhavin: Consciously. We, wemade an effort 18 months ago as a, as a founder, as a company where we said,we'll go after enterprise and mid-size business because all the innovation inthe last 10 years in the restaurant space has happened at the smb, which isClover Coast Square. They are all smb. Customers. Yeah.

And there's no innovation in midsize orenterprise. There's zero innovation. And we said as a company, let's just focusbecause there was a product market fit. The first issue was, is kiosk a real?Is a real thing. Will restaurants adopt it? Yes, they will. They like it. Theyunderstand that this is needed.

Yeah. Now where's the biggest gap? Thebiggest gap is. In enterprise or smb? It's both. But where is the maximum valuewe can add as a company? When you are in the initial stages, it's probablyenterprise, right? Because when you sell, once you get thousand dollars versusselling it a thousand different ways.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And, andis it like a proof of concept kind of sell that you do with these enterprises?What's, what's been the most effective kind of go-to-market strategy with,working with mid-size companies, enterprise companies, being that, Justinherently, they have a lot of barriers to entry four, new innovativetechnology.

There's a lot of people who have to makedecisions and kind of, there's a lot of bureaucracy that maybe can halt a lotof companies. But how have you found a way to break in and then kind of startbuilding out kind of almost, almost like a, it's like a slow grow, it's like afarming kind of concept.

Bhavin: It is, yes. It is.Seeding and then farming. Yeah. Seeding takes a long time. You, you have towait for the rain to come down. Yeah. So we do that, so we seed it. The mostimportant thing as a founder, as a new company is, is there a product marketfit? Because as a founder you might feel that this is what's needed, but therestaurant has to tell you, or the industry has to tell you, yes, I need this,right?

Yeah. So you get, once you get there andyou get some adoption, then it's trade shows, building relationships, and justa slow, tedious, and you just keep going at it till you make therelationship.  

Because the enterprise customer is usuallynot, it's not going Googling like a CIO is not Google.

Oh. Let me go Google and see if there'sanything on self order in kiosk.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah. In, inregards to, GRUBBRR, I always like to kind of get a good gauge of the traction.So tell us a little bit as an audience to give us a little bit more context andhow many customers are you working with?

How many kiosks are out there? What hasbeen the overall, exciting part about the traction you've seen thus far,especially the with behaviors changing after covid, but also what's on the nextfrontier? How are you, where do you look to expand to what's pretty muchexciting for you? Not only in the next milestone, but in milestones?

Bhavin: So we are a thousandplus loca, thousand plus kiosks installed. So it's over 800 locations now. Wepower them, we power the whole SoFi Stadium with our kitchen displaytechnology. Wow. We are in some major brands like BurgerFi, duck Donuts, DellTaco is in pilot, some really good brands. There's another big pipe, which Istill can't talk about because they have not rolled.

We also announced a, a recent partnershipwith Robert Irvine. Robert Irvine Is Restaurant Impossible. Yeah. And he cameto the office, he's like, I believe this. In fact, his latest book, which cameout, has a chapter on why restaurants need to adopt a technology. Yeah. SoRobert, I Irvine is actually now a partner investor at GRUBBRR, and that was abig that was a big.

How do I say it? Validation for us whenSure. A restaurant person comes in and says, you know what, Hey restaurants,you need this now.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andis it just for a certain, I know you said mid-market enterprise, I'm assumingmore like chain franchise restaurants really get the seamless experience, butwhere does the kind of buck stop in terms of where the technology isn'tnecessarily?

Do you see it, upscaling it to otherrestaurants and other types of services, or do you. Identified the type ofexperience that certain restaurants will have and and kind of carved out aniche in this market. How do you see kind of the growth of, of, of GRUBBRR inrelation to different types of restaurants?

Bhavin: So the question, soyes, we have carved out that we are gonna go after fast casuals and qsr. QSR isa quick service restaurant. Initially we are going after everything and then wefigured out self ordering does not work everywhere, right? It's a certainmarket and. And certain space. So it's restaurants, stadiums, movie theaters,airports.

In fact, we signed a partnership withHMS Host. They, they are at all the 52 53 airports in the us Right. Every timeyou go to airport and you at a restaurant, it's actually run by HMS host. Yeah.So it's, it's doing really well at, it's really doing self following doesreally well at the airport. So now it's Airports Stadium.

We are at SoFi Stadium and a couple ofother stadium. So it's stadiums and then restaurants. Yeah. The idea now is togo mid-size enterprise this year and next, and then asset. We are alreadyselling into small businesses today, but it's all inbound because people arelike, oh, I saw that at BurgerFi. Can I have the same thing?

And we are like, yeah, sure you can haveit. And it's $2,000, right? So yeah. And we're like, oh, I thought McDonald'shas it. That burger fight will be expensive. But that, and that is the othereducating piece we are doing as part of even this conversations. It isdemocratized now you can get it for $300 a month.

Hardware and software. Yeah, yeah. Andyou can go replace labor and increase your ticket size and help help you findinflation.  

Julian: Yeah. I, I, I don'tknow if this is, pure speculation, but I'm, I'm curious kind of where did theexperience of restaurants kind of, become more challenging or, or the latencybecome more from ordering to actually getting your food?

I, I just watched the, the movie founderbased on the, McDonald's founders and kind of heard that story. Yeah. I'm notsure how much of that is completely accurate, but the, the, the, the innovationthere was the, the speed at which they could deliver their service. And theinnovation behind the flow of service.

Right? Where did things get toocomplicated to where, the, the places where you were supposed to order quickly,get your food quickly, that kind of fast casual became not fast and, and didn'tbe, became a more involved service. I'm just cur curious, where have you seenthat behavior kind of change? Right.  

Bhavin: That's a good point.Right. I think Covid changed a lot of behaviors, right? Yeah. And alsoMcDonald's is a classic example. We as a, in America, we invented qsr, weinvented quick service. Grab, go, grab, go. It's fast, it's cheap. I wanna goget out, right? Yeah. And heads McDonald's Burger Kings and that founder is agreat movie.

There's a show on Netflix that madeAmerica, I think, amazing show. If you have not watched it, you should watchit. It's story about dominoes and some of these brands, how they have hustledand made their way out of way up. So, but that was, imagine that was inventedin the sixties and the seventies. Yeah.

Everything around that experience ofordering has changed. So think banks. Yeah. In seventies, yeah. Tellers were agreat thing. You would go to a teller and wait for an hour. You had all thetime, there were no cell phones, there was no busy life. There was no socialmedia, there was no internet. So all you had to do is kill time.

Okay, I'll go wait in the line to pay mycheck. You went to pay your salary sometime you had to pay. Like a paycheck.You have to go deposit in a bank to get the money. Right. You can't imaginethat now you can you it's you automatically get paid or you deposit your checkthrough a mobile phone. Think airports, 15 years ago, you'd go stand in thehuge line to just check in your bags and get your boarding pass.

Yeah. Now that Bank of kiosks and audityour phone. Right. And only the last resort is going to an agent. Even if youfind that is if you can find one. Yeah. So taking that experience. That foundermovie analogy is, yes, we have evolved as a society and that experience. Idon't think it has slowed down. It just needs to improve, which is the cashiersor the people in the behind the desk are not like, Generation Z or millennials,like we fall under.

I don't have, I don't wanna talk tosomebody. We don't want to talk to somebody. I would rather be on my phone ordoing my personal stuff. Sure. Rather than taking your credit card, nobody'spaying with cash and they're called cashiers. Yeah, yeah. But guess what?Nobody pays cash anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just taking your card or I, and,or most of the times I'm just tapping my phone and I pay while the person onthe other side has to just say, thank you.

So why are you. Right. Yeah. So becauseof the society we have involved and our pro, our behaviors have changed. Wehave restaurants or hospitality has to change and that's what we are at theforefront of where have a kiosk, it takes a, you are used to ordering on yourphone. It looks very similar, so it's convenient.

You order pay and now your food isready.  

Julian: Yeah. It's sofascinating thinking about also the the experience you can offer at GRUBBRRbeing kind of, we, we, I, I think everybody's part of some type of loyaltyprogram that earns them kind of rewards. I think what was super popularized 10years ago was having that little card that gives you certain benefits if youspend a certain amount, but nobody actually really got the rewards.

I think I got one sandwich once forfree, but it took a lot of money and effort and commitment. I think companiesare really thinking about engagement with their consumers a little bit more.You talked about obviously keeping track of what their previous order was, buthow do you kind of, think about the ecosystem of this kind of reward or, orcommunity around companies that, that you order from and even just usingGRUBBRR as a vehicle to not only know your behavior for one restaurant, butalso for another, and using that in, in, in tandem with, what the consumerwants.

I would love to kind of hear yourthoughts on, on. Community experience.  

Bhavin: Yeah, that's a goodpoint. Right. So I'd grab, so I'll give you an, I think we touched upon itearlier, machine learning. I don't, I'm not a fan of using the word AI a lot.AI is very broad. It's machine learning. So use, I think you are on right, ontarget, which is, Hey, how do I do machine learning?

It's all about personalization, right?Mm-hmm. Imagine your TikTok is personalized, your Instagram is personalized, orAmazon is personalized. We are used to that personalization without we. Yeah,so when you go to a restaurant, it's very frustrating to repeat the order, andthat's why that frustration or that customer experience is not the same becausethat restaurant is just oblivious to who you are.

Yeah, yeah. And if I'm in aneighborhood, and to your point, let's touch touch about that data analytics.So if you have a kiosk at eight different restaurants in the same zip code withGRUBBRRs ability, now I know if I'm a vegetarian, B is a vegetarian. If I go. Aa, a bold place and next I'm going to a pizza place and after two days I go tolike a another Asian concept.

Sure. A Pokemon place. It knows I'm avegetarian. Imagine I don't have to keep scrolling or keep looking and ask forthis vegetarian. The kiosk knows who I am. Yeah. And it shows me my five item,five items, which are vegetarian, and I can just order the same. It also, bythe way, it also knows I don't like spicy food.

Okay. So I'm gonna show three items.Yeah. Now I, oh, I'm like, oh, wow. You know who.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Andtraining those recommendations are pretty, I mean, it's pretty special thinkingabout the amount of, of catered service up to that point and, and what itreally means. But I'm, I'm curious, have you ever thought about, things like, Idon't know, like a o like out of the box section where, where you suggest kind ofthings that people don't regularly order to kind of enhance the experience?

Bhavin: Yeah. We call it thechef's Favorites. Yeah. Or yeah, we call it the order. The odd ones out. Hey,have you tried a secret, basically like a secret menu? Yeah. We actually did itat one of our customers, and we created a secret menu and said, these are thefour burgers, which nobody orders, or usually nobody orders in thiscombination.

Do you wanna try it? It was a super hit.Yeah. That ticket size was $24 on that burger. Wow. Wow. Yes. Average ticket is12 or $13 at a burger. Because of that secret menu, they were like, oh yeah,it's 22 to $23 average ticket. Because they're like, oh, I would take thoseWith all those modifications we are asking for.

Julian: Yeah. It must be sochallenging, kind of, organizing your, your, your technical team to both focuson how it can integrate best with restaurants, but also how to can enhance thekind of the behavioral experience with customers. How do you balance. Whatexperience to really focus on and, and increase?

Are you looking at data? Are you lookingat piece of information? Are you testing things out in the market to really seewhere the focus needs to be built? A lot of founders kind of have, it's almostlike a, it's, it's a, it's a first world problem, end of, I have so manyopportunities, I have so much things I can do with my technology on both sidesof my market, but I don't know what to identify as highest priority.

How, how do you do that as a.  

Bhavin: So as a, that, that'strue. Right. So whom are, whom are you catering? So we have a clear vision. Iwant to help restaurants. Mm-hmm. So at GRUBBRR, we want to create selfordering platform, which a restaurant can use and help with the laborchallenges, inflation challenges, customer experience, challenges, and how todifferentiate themselves apart from other 20 restaurants, which are out there.

Yeah. So then we are very focused. Sowhen we take that data, even though it's customer habits, I can go back to therestaurants and tell. How many average orders they're doing, what is sellingthe most? What is the food mix or the category mix they're having and whatshould be served up for lunch in your drive-through menu board?

Yeah. Because if your drive-through menuboard is with 50 items, but I know at lunch you sell this eight. Just show theeight As top eight, right. And show everything on the second board. I'm nowincreasing your drive throughput. Yeah. So if I can get 20 cars in instead of18, that two cars is 50. You just, I just made the money in the first day.

Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible thatinternal data. Yeah, it's incredible. And other restaurant also, therestaurants also don't understand who their customer is. They don't know howmuch Julian is spending every month. How do you know you have not been to arestaurant for three months? They don't even know. And maybe you are one of thehighest spending customers.

There's no way to recall. They can onlysign, send a blind loyalty coupon. Right. Doesn't work. Right. Like it mightnot get you back because you are one of their top paying customers. Yeah. Yeah.So we can now do that.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Thinkingabout, external and internal, kind of taking a step back, what are some of thebiggest risks that you think GRUBBRR faces today?

Bhavin: The biggest risk isadoption and education, right? So education on the customer side, which is re.Because they feel, oh, it still needs to be personal. I don't know iftechnology will hinder my customer experience. And on the customers consumerside, it's training them to use technology. Right? Right. So that is a bigchallenge.

Like why should I use the kiosk? Will Ilook stupid if I use it? Will I look, you know what if I don't know, willsomebody judge me? Yeah. But I think people are getting ordered now because youjust can't find labor. Right. And we are so used to ordering through our. Thatfeels similar when you touch the kiosk.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. If, ifeverything goes well, what's the long-term vision for GRUBBRR?  

Bhavin: World domination. Butno, the long-term vision is truly create a, right now there is no businessline, which says self ordering is a category of its own. Mm-hmm. In our space,categories are payments and point of sale. If everything goes well, we want tobe our own category.

That GRUBBRR is a. In self-orderingspace globally or in the us right? Yeah. And we are everywhere.  

Julian: Yeah. I love that. Ialways like this next section. I call it my founder faq. So I'm gonna hit youwith some rapid fire questions and we'll see where we get. I always like toopen it up with this question.

What's particularly hard about your jobday-to-day?

Bhavin: Slow. Prioritizing.Yeah. As a founder, you want to do everything at the same time. Yeah. But youcannot do everything. Everything is not a priority one.  

Julian: Right? Yeah. What,what do you use to kind of help prioritize, do you time block? Do you journalwhat in particular has been valuable for you?

Bhavin: One point I, I follow,yeah, I time block it.

It's 4:30 AM to 5:30 AM That's the mostdecluttered zone I'm on, so I try to wake up by 4 30, 4 45. Yeah, becausethere's no phones ringing. There's nobody awake. It's still dark. And I can getmy priorities for that quarter, for that month, and for that week. Yeah. Yeah.And then we make it down.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I lovethat.

The preparation.  

Bhavin: Yeah. Yeah. Becauseyou get lost into day to day and every hour, and it can be, yeah. You losesight. Yeah. What we're trying to do.  

Julian: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.That's a great point. I, I'm always curious what is there any unique way that arestaurant or a restaurant owner has used your technology that you didn'tnecessarily think was, was a possibility? Anything come to mind?  

Bhavin: Yeah, so there was onerestaurant owner. He put our kiosk in an office building. Really? Yes. And hesaid, okay, it's in the cafeteria. You can order and I'll deliver.  

Julian: So smart. Yeah, yeah,yeah. So you bring it directly to consumer,

Bhavin: 10 orders a day. Yeah.Because you in the cafeteria walking for coffee now you can use the kiosk toschedule your order and say, Hey, deliver at noon.

This way you're not paying Uber. Ithelps the restaurant because he has to Uber Eats and the third party deliveriescharge quite a significant amount of Right. Order. And even you have to pay adelivery fee with this. He was like, yeah, I can just deliver it from therestaurant, and it was free. Yeah. So it was very unique what he did with that.

Julian: Yeah. Bringing itdirectly to the customers. Smart. Right. Almost in there. Probably like I'm,I'm sure in their like, daily journey into getting whatever, food or, or takinga break or whatever, kind of keeps them keeps that experience so near and dear,and I'm, and I'm. Is there any way your client, your customers, aren't usingyour technology that you've thought of, could be really innovative or really uniqueor really drive traffic in a kind of a more productive or increasing way?

Bhavin: Yeah, I, when as a,yeah, as a founder, when we started, I thought I can replace the pos in thesense where customers will put this in the counter and force their user endcustomer to order from the kiosk. That did not happen, right?  

Julian: Why is that?  

Bhavin: It's still skeptical.Right? They're still skeptical about it, right?

Yeah. It's, it's slowly happening. Sothat adoption did not happen at the speed we wanted it. Yeah, it's happening,but it's. It takes time. It's training and education.  

Julian: Yeah. It's interestingthat if you put it closer probably to the POS system, that it kind of confuses,but if it's adjacent to it and kind of auxiliary, it creates more of a uniqueexperience that's probably easier to kind of train that behavior, which, whichis fascinating to think about.

Yeah, I, I always like to ask this what,what's something that you spend a lot of time on that you wish you could spendless on? Something that you spend little time on that you wish you could spend?

Bhavin: I would, yeah, I wouldspend, I would like to spend less time on all the process, the process workinternally when you grow as a company. Yeah. And amount of process you have todo to just get things done. I wish I could spend less time on that. I couldautomate everything. But I realized automation, because when you grow, you'reautomating the rest, the business.

But you have to then automate yourinternal business. Right, and you never think about that, that that's such aheavy lift to automate all the departments, right? Yeah. That takes a lot oftime once you are from the, when you go from a startup to a mid-size companyand after that, but from start to mid-size, you have to automate a lot of yourmarketing, your sales, your sales and ops together, your support supported opstogether.

Yeah. So all that automation takes atoll on you and, and it's thankless job because nobody sees that improvement asa company.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah, definitelytrue. What's something that you're good at as a founder?  

Bhavin: Vision? Yeah. Wishthere was more money or unlimited pool of money where you can keep inventingand keep coming up with new ideas because there are so many new things, whichas a GRUBBRR we are doing.

So now, like we have a machine we haveconversational voice, AI ordering. So what if you could walk up to the kioskand just talk to it? Right? Yeah. So that's next to the horizons now. But thenthe idea is, no, no, no. Let's do what we have now better before we go tovoice. Yeah, but I wanna do voice now, right?

Julian: Yeah, yeah.  

Bhavin: Its funny. And addvoice to it and include our, our proprietary GR algorithms, and now it's thesmartest ordering engine in the planet.  

Julian: Yeah, it's, it's thatpush and pull kind of, par I guess, phenomenon. It's like you don't want tonecessarily push too much for a certain, feature set or something that youthink is on the horizon, but you want to feel the pull of the market so that itjustifies all the resources and everything, incentivizing you to actually build.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. What's what's somethingthat you're good at as a founder now that you wish you were better at early on?

Bhavin: I would sayprioritization. Yeah. And, yeah, I would say prioritization. Yeah. Yeah. Beforeit was like, Hey, everything is an opportunity. Let me go build everything.Because as a, from tech background, as a founder, you can build anything youwant, but then you don't want to over-engineer stuff too. Yeah. Yeah.

You have to sell. Yeah, you have tosell, create a company while you're just making it because you have to thentrain the customer. If you have too much, then it's very hard to, to train andsell.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah.What's I always like to ask question this question cuz I love how foundersextract knowledge out of anything that they ingest.

Whether it's early in your career ornot, what books or people have influenced you the most?  

Bhavin: There are a coupleactually. There is the art of the. I think it's Guy Kava Kawasaki. Yeah. That'sa great, great book. And there was another bit stuck with me. Zero to One byPeter Thiel. Yeah. Yeah. What did you get out of there?

Yeah. So Zero to one was, yeah, zero toone was interesting, right? Because it says you have nothing in hand and you'retrying to do something and it's how you focus and focus so hard on doing onething and one thing great. Versus doing five things. Yeah, and that was mybiggest initial as a founder. I wish I did not do five things.

I did one thing and one thing reallydeep.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Iknow we're coming to the end of the show here, so I'd like to make sure wedidn't leave anything on the table. Is there any question I didn't ask you thatI should have or anything that you wanted to answer that you didn't get achance to bring up yet?

Anything come to mind? No, I think wecovered a lot. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Good, good. Bob, it's been such apleasure. Not only learning about your experience, but also GRUBBRR and howyou're really kind of focusing on this, this underserved market, but reallytrying to advance it in, in, in ways of technology to really benefit in a lotof different ways.

Both, outcomes and efficiency of theprocess, but also the customer experience and how quickly and, and we'regetting serviced on the things that we are wanting and really creating a, areally cohesive relationship between the consumer and the restaurant that, Ithink has. Probably a need for a while, but I think Covid definitelysupercharged that.

In the recent years. But last little bitis where can we find you as a founder? And if we wanna reach out or offer somesupport, give us your LinkedIns, your Twitters, where can we find you and be asupporter?  

Bhavin: Yes, you can find meon, well, you can reach out to my website, grubbrr.com, contact us page.

I have a LinkedIn profile. It's BabinAsher. It's pretty easy to find. You'll see me there. I'm not very active onany other social media, so LinkedIn. The website is the best way to reachme.  

Julian: Amazing. Bob, it'sbeen such a pleasure learning about your experience, your background, whatyou're doing at GRUBBRR.

I hope you enjoyed yourself on thepodcast, but thank you so much for joining us today.  

Bhavin: I appreciate Julian.Thank you.  

Julian: Of course.

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