Fixing Restaurants, Behavioural Science, Working With Marco Pierre White - Eat Club co-founder, Pan Koutlakis

39:14What do we take out of it? It's funny. There's a few things that when we're building a tech business, we focus on really heavily. And this is almost the flip side of your question. Yeah. How do I think restaurants could benefit from maybe how things are done in the tech space? One thing that we find really interesting, and we try to build the product in a way that can help restaurants understand this as well. When we're building a tech company, you acquire your customers. It costs some money to acquire that customer and that just gets them in the door. And then once they're in the door, you're really focused on how often do they repeat?

39:52So when do they come back to your product? What frequency do they come back in a period of time over a month or over a six month period? And how much do they spend over that period of time? What's their lifetime value? And I think that's like the only way you could build a tech business is if you knew that. But on the restaurant side, we don't have that single customer view. And a restaurant might think they have a customer. So someone that comes in, they might record a lot of it. We're getting closer to it, by the way. The restaurants are getting more and more data. Booking platforms, post systems are starting to bring all that stuff together.

40:28But I think a restaurant might have a customer that they saw once. And it might be a restaurant owner that saw them, said hello. Now that is a customer of mine. what does that customer do from that point onwards is often a little bit of a mystery to the restaurant and I think it's really interesting now that we're getting to a point where restaurants are getting more data and the technology is enabling them to do this to have a single customer view so that they know how much money should we be spending on acquiring customers how often do I need them to come back and then do I need to incentivize them to come back more often isn't maybe more valuable for a customer to come back four times a month instead of four times a year if I take a small kit on my margin each time that they come in do I make more margin yes overall yeah if we get closer to if we get closer to knowing who that customer is in the restaurant space which I think is definitely coming it's getting closer and closer and it's something that we try to help restaurants understand when we're like they might say oh you know we're doing these we're doing these offers to fill these tables but I've had actually this same customer come in now four times this month for the offer and that seems like it's a really bad thing or a really negative thing I don't want this customer to continue coming in and having 30 % off and I was like that customer a might never have been before he might have been before but never been as often how much money each visit are you making after the food cost and the cost of the offer that you're giving let's say you're making$30 instead of the$70 if he came in on his own if he's coming just twice as much as before he's as good as uh he's as good as any other customer and he's filling tables and creating atmosphere at the same time like you you kind of flip it to it's like pure economic benefit and there's there's real opportunity there yeah real opportunity that's the only thing i was going to ask you is what what have been some of the um pushbacks or common misconceptions conceptions or like with your sales guys and when you were selling of but actually this isn't a good idea.

42:32Because I understand it in principle, it makes total sense. But as you say, and that's why I like to go along with these conversations, you can get into the depths of nuance, which is like, oh, I don't want matey coming in 30 % each month. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, 30 % four times a month. Yeah. Or do you get to a situation of, say they've got a local in the restaurant and they absolutely love, I don't know, Tilly and Mark, a couple with a cute fucking chihuahua. And then some bloke and his missus comes in and they pull out the card and they get 30 % off. Does that piss off that customer? Like what have been some of the objections and how have you swam around them?

43:05Well, that's where the card is beautiful because it's so discreet and anonymous. No one else knows. Wow, okay. The card really allows you to move to, when's the last time you jumped on an airplane? Mate, ages ago, December. Did you know the person sitting on either side of you? No. Just random people? Yeah. They 100 % paid a different price than what you paid to jump on that flight. Maybe a wildly different price. Yes. One of them might have paid half as much as you. Does that piss you off? Yeah, I didn't know about it. You didn't know about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly the same with the card.

43:38But I'll tell you, the biggest objection, well, the biggest misconception is on the economic side. So because there is so much noise around low restaurant margins, and it's true, a lot of restaurants are suffering from really low net profit margins. At the end of the year, when all of their costs have come through, they might make a couple of percent net profit. that's what people hear in the news that's what people hear in the media it's a low net profit business and so that sometimes then confuses people when they say okay if I made 5 % net profit last year how can I possibly give a 30 % offer to get someone in to fill a table does that mean I'm losing 25 % on that table and the answer that we give and we try and help people understand is that if that customer wasn't coming to sit at that table that were never going to come.

44:30There was zero dollars there. It doesn't impact your net profit at the end of the year. But if they come, your food cost is 30%, your cost of the offer is 30%, there's 40 % left. Whatever that 40 % is, let's call it$40, let's say they spend$100, technically your net profit at the end of the year should be your 5 % plus$40. Yes. Because it's an incremental customer that you didn't have before and there is margin. It's this disconnect between what your net profit is, your net margin is and what your gross margin is yeah well mate as i said to you one of your superpowers i believe is and i think we talked about this previously is like contrarian views it's like looking at problems from the other way around or um i love sort of behavioral economic badgering about this but the the perception of value and the way you can sort of almost see like a special effect or a superpower like the whole thing of uh you know the reason they sell Rolls Royces next to a, it's like sort of price anchoring.

45:24The reason they sell Rolls Royces at yacht shows is a 200 grand, 300 grand Rolls Royce next to a 25 million yacht. It looks like fuck all, it looks like a lollipop. Do you know what I mean? Totally. But it's all they've done is put it there. Same thing with what you just said about the plane seats. And it's like, the restaurants kick the discreteness of it. It's like, well, did you just get a plane? It's like, you just change people's, I think a lot about getting these hard big ideas especially b2b ideas off the ground is you just have to basically change people's context and anchoring and then they suddenly it's like oh yeah it makes sense well you've got to change yeah you've got to you've got to change the perception but then you also have to execute in a way that works as well and i think that's really important so we're you know we're not just coming in and and preaching that you know that they should be doing x y and that but we've built a product that takes into account issues like imagine if each person you imagine on the plane if each person on the headrest in front showed the amount that they paid for the seat then you'd probably be a little bit annoyed that joe blow next to you paid half the price for the flight right yes um you've got to understand that yeah no one wants to you know no one wants to feel like they're you know have not got the same deal as anyone else but the reality is the price was right to get you onto that plane and the price was right to get the person next to you onto that plane.

46:47And because they got the price right most of the time, they've got the plane as full as it can be. That's really the lesson. You have to take this, which is really an irrational problem. You wanted to get from A to B. You had so much money, depending on how much you wanted to get there you know you had enough you had so much money to spend they found the you know you found a ticket which was right for you you got from a to b you should be pretty happy um see how just knowing that how much the person paid next to you it feels like it should yeah it feels like it should be a problem but is it a problem yeah no no it's not it's not and it's genius the way you guys are doing it so yeah we talked about sort of product market fit what are some other big ideas you've taken from tech or learnings that you've applied to building this business?

47:43It's a really good question. What are the big takings? I'd tell you an interesting one that I think comes down to just pragmatism. I think one of the reasons why we've been successful in getting a great restaurant network on board. Australia, we've got about 3 ,500 restaurants that use it in Australia. We're just under 300 restaurants now in London. So it's growing very quickly. We just, we meet restaurants where they are. We have ourselves people that have a hospitality background and know how to talk to restaurants and they do it restaurant to restaurant and pound the pavement. I think a lot of businesses are pretty obsessed, especially today in like the AI world in like automating everything and like you know you shouldn't have to you shouldn't have to leave the house anymore to get all your sales and I think people try that all the time in in the hospitality space and it misses one of the like what is the essence of hospitality which is like the people to people thing and so this is actually an instance of like this technology mindset of continuously automating and getting you know removing the human element of it it just doesn't land yeah in hospitality so you know what i was saying about wanting to learn about so almost tech to restaurant restaurant to tech that's why i was so fascinated this conversation is is it is is all the sort of their you know cost of acquisition lifetime value of a customer so important to a restaurant yeah but then also like hospitality needs you need to fucking have good crack with someone and be able that's how you're going to sell someone and as you say it's so pragmatic and so basic and so simple that it's almost people don't think about it well when i was in hospitality the cafe and the bar before i was managing right if someone picks up the phone and asks for the manager it's like no no one's there you know you know like as soon as you've worked at any hospitality venue for long enough if someone picks up ask for the manager it's generally the manager's not here you know so you've got to be you've got to understand hospitality to be able to sell into the hospitality space and I think hospitality is an incredible industry one it's you know there's thousands and thousands of restaurants so much of our life is based around food and drink there's so much optimization in the restaurant space still to come I think and I think technology will play a big part in that but I think it's not like for me it's not it's what parts do you optimize and what parts do you say no this is how what other bits should we not optimize oh i mean a lot there's lots of stuff i would say it's not such as i mean there's still no no as in we should never optimize oh why should we never optimize yeah yeah um i completely get the prag like humans buy from humans robots making the food in the kitchen fuck that you know what i mean yeah i know exactly what you mean like that's not yeah yeah i don't i don't it's that's not for me what hospitality is chefs with all of their craziness is what hospitality is that's like a thousand percent yeah that's that's special um what else shouldn't we do i mean like it does depend on the format of of the restaurant a little bit so for example you go to a mcdonald's now and you put your order into the screen i don't mind that i don't really want to do that at a restaurant or a cafe i think that's for me the limit because that's what i was speaking to liz about before is we have this umbrella term hospitality but actually it's like a kaleidoscope of nuance and different textures and as you say it's like you walk around here sort of bar well the restaurant we're in now right um saint bart's it's very different to a maca's totally how have you done how has that impacted um one of the ideas i love is like the the the 2d map uh sorry the 3d terrain is never the same as the 2d map and it's and it's explain that i don't know that one so so the story the 2d map is i.e hospitality is the same so we're going to have a sales team and you're going to go out and go out on the street here's your sales pitch mate bosh they walk around here there's four different restaurants one small plates one's mcdonald's one's nando's one's a bougie mission style place like this that 2d strategy or 2d map when they come to the 3d terrain is like there's so much nuance how do you navigate that yeah well there's there's a couple of different parts to that firstly it's what is the sequencing you need to set up to set up your business i mean when you're creating a marketplace which the whole idea is this is most valuable to restaurants when the marketplace has enough liquidity there's enough traction and volume going through it that anytimest bart's has a spare table they know they can reliably fill it in a short amount of time that's like what marketplace liquidity looks like so we we marketplace marketplace liquidity is the liquidity point is just like uh liquidity in anything is like how how well do both sides of it interact and meet in the middle and find a sale.

52:56So enough offers from restaurants, enough customers on the platform so that it's at some kind of equilibrium. When a restaurant needs a table filled, there's customers on the other side to fill those tables. Yep. And that's both the customer, Eat Club and the restaurant all have an interest in getting that marketplace to that liquidity point so that it's got utility for everyone, right? Yes. And there's a process or a sequencing of things to get it there. And you generally go sort of segment by segment. You don't want to just one day open a suburb for Eat Club and have one McDonald's, one St. Bart's, one, because it's like maybe you'll have something for the customer when the restaurant needs to fill a seat, but probably you won't because it's kind of scattered in a bit of everything.

53:41And so you focus segment by segment just to build the marketplace. This is not like, you know, this is not super romantic. This is just creating a marketplace. you go locally, so geo by geo, and you go segment by segment within that geo at the same time, within that suburb at the same time. Do you call it suburbs here? You call them neighborhoods? What do you call it? Yeah, yeah. More, yeah. Postcodes, whatever. Yeah, but it's just, mate, again, what I'm picking up from you is common sense is so uncommon, I think, sometimes. Sure, sure, sure. And it's, when you're describing to me, it's like, yeah, the salesperson if you're selling to hospitality being hospitality and even like the marketplace as I was saying I probably convoluted it and it's like yeah just geo by geo segment by segment yeah and it's not that you you go with whatever segment you think is what's most important to begin with and then you add more on but like in Australia for example where we've got thousands of restaurants the rule is not you come on Eat Club for fine dining restaurants or for mid-premium restaurants or for casual dining, the rule that we're trying to build or the rule is the wrong word, the perception of the app that we're trying to build is whatever you decide, whatever type of dining you decide for on that particular night, you're going to find a venue that is good at what they do.

55:01And that's like the broad requirement for any venue. You might have this hole-in-the-wall dumpling place that it's like, how can you possibly have a hole-in-the-wall dumpling place and then this great fine dining restaurant on the same platform. Well, what brings those two venues together is not the segment, it's not the type of food, it's that they both do what they're meant to do really well and there's a place for every venue that does what it does well on our platform. You try and avoid, you don't want to have too many, you don't want to have a marketplace full of tourist track venues that are really there just to look pretty but don't do good food and good service.

55:42you don't want venues that just don't do good food and those do exist like it's you know it's like in everything there are people that come in you know hospitality from different angles but there are so many segments of venues that do it well no matter what the segment is and they are just as valuable like that's it for us a fine dining venue is just as valuable as a very casual venue even hole in the wall venue that just does what they're meant to do really well and then i suppose you get the the sort of thing i learned from a lot of people i've spoken to is almost your distribution is your marketing whereby the restaurant's done a lot of the heavy lifting so you're in the fat duck maybe the fat duck probably wouldn't be the right one for this but like i don't know the fact it's heston blumenthal's pre-star restaurant in in bray but but you get to level my friend's building a brand called bativo if you're i don't know if you're we'll be in a lot of the bars around here it's an alcohol free but they position it kind of similar they ask the question the wrong way around which is it's kind of artisanal crafted stuff for like wild hedonists beautiful branding, yellow bottle but Emma's whole thing is we're trying to build this brand so we're just going to go and get into all the best, doesn't matter what it is but then all of that on branding on the menus is you're leveraging all those, the status of those sites and just the idea begins to spread wonderfully, it's so smart it's um yeah and i get it it just doesn't matter what segment as long as it's the the golden thread for all of it is do you do what you do well well it's important as well because what we're trying to do is it like every venue has a different curve in terms of peak and off peak times right every one of them is is slightly different um the uh the more casual venue might actually have a slightly better time filling their tables on a Tuesday and Wednesday because it is more casual.

57:40You can go in there and spend a smaller amount and still feel comfortable. Whereas a fine dining venue or a very trendy venue might have a much steeper peak on their Friday and Saturday nights and actually be much quieter on a Tuesday and Wednesday night. And what you find is when you're building this marketplace, the same way that restaurants need to be on an individual level, need to be available for their customers if that customer is going to keep coming and giving them a go. We, when you open the app, need to have something available for our customers as well. And it's not like the more you have on, it dilutes it and then everyone gets less through the platform.

58:19The more you have on, the more frequently customers will check it, find an empty table and be able to move quickly and fill that table for the restaurant. So by us building frequency within our app, it correlates into our restaurant's ability to be able to it correlates to utility for our restaurants essentially yes yeah what are some of the other you know we talked about the big ideas product market fit sort of pragmatic sales people um any other sort of big ideas that you've taken from anything that you've applied to building this well uh there's still a lot of things that we're currently building i mean i'll give you i'll give you one example and And this is probably another, just one of those broader beliefs around startups and business generally.

59:09Until you're in the space, you have no idea about the space. It's kind of like the idea. People talk about it a lot when they talk about ideas and how, you know, is this the right idea for me to focus on to build a business in? It's like it doesn't matter what the idea is. As in like the business or as like an opportunity within an existing business? Yeah, well, so I have an idea. I want to start a business. And people labor over, is this idea right? Should I do another idea? What should I? And it's like, it doesn't matter what you choose because you'll start building it and realize everything you thought would work when you started probably doesn't work.

59:41And the thing that works is something that you never thought about until you're in the space and talking to people and building it, right? It's the same for pretty much everything we do at A Club as well. When we came out with the card, we knew why we wanted to build the card and we knew what it would do on the consumer side. We knew that it would be way more discreet, really easy, really seamless we didn't really think oh man this actually means that onboarding is instant for a venue because a restaurant owner can sign up to the platform and doesn't need to train their staff on anything or do anything different that's a benefit that we didn't know about and then we're like you know it just it leads to one thing after another and since being in the space and developing the card one of the greatest innovations that we've we've now built is we can now tap the um tap the card and do a bunch of interesting operations from the um from the pause level at the same time you've got this connection between pause yeah pause the stuff goes through the till right yeah they're going through the till and then the actual terminal so we link all of that up and we're now able to do things really interesting for a venue so for example um we deal with a venue that does a happy hour between five and six p.m that happy hour is you know that's what they're using to attract customers at that time if they want to use e-club they can do it at the same time we tap to pay and if there's any happy hour drinks we can identify them and not double discount them for example like you can uh you can really get granular with what you're with what you're able to do in this couple of seconds because when you tap a card you've only got a couple of seconds to do all of these operations we can identify skill level items handle different items differently so it really becomes like the opportunities really open up and these are things that we were never thinking of when we started building the product the 2d map's not the same as 3d terrain until you're in the space you don't know the space exactly what have been some of the like unforeseen challenges or the monsters hiding in the in the weeds as you've as you've got into the space because i think i think a lot of it even with this right so i thought with lighting right i get a fucking light i turn it on done that not there's whole color grading as a whole that i'm going through that river of chaos now trying to work that out i was like oh god is anything like that for you yeah i bet you yeah without a doubt there is yeah you're starting to you're starting to see a little bit of my personality which is i don't dwell on these things very often and then i forget what we uh i just think it's good for listeners to understand Totally.

1:02:15It makes it more relatable. What slows us down? All the time things slow us down. I mean even probably probably within the same you know I just talked about this incredible uplift where we start to be able to read skew level items at the point of tap which really uplifts the experience for restaurants and and means that they can create offers at more times without worrying about their in-house promotions at that time which is a great utility um you then start to deal with hundreds of pos companies and the complexities that come with that i mean every uplift every improvement every feature creates a little bit of burden that you chuck into the back of the truck that you have to maintain and upkeep and and that's why these things get bigger and bigger you have to in a lot of ways choose which ones you tackle and which ones you don't tackle because if you tackle everything yeah yeah you're dragging around a lot of crap behind you it's so true you know what's absolutely mental mate london is literally the greatest foodie city in the world with so many absolutely banging delish restaurants opening on the reg i absolutely love it but look let's get real there's lots of times where tables are still sat empty when your favorite spot is silently struggling and look every single table counts everyone needs solutions and they need solutions very fast and that my friends is where eat club comes in eat club is a profitability tool created by hospitality insiders including the absolute don marco pierre white Eat Club gives top bars and restaurants control of a new stream of quality paying customers to fill those quiet times.

1:03:57No faff, no upfront costs, only upside. Look, if you're in hospitality and you want bums on seats when you need them most, please drop the founder Pan or the VP of the UK Liz, both absolute legends. Drop them an email, fillmytables at eatclub.co.uk. Fillmytables at eatclub.co.uk. that will get you straight through to them and they can help. Please, let's turn those empty tables into profit.

1:04:27In terms of contrarian beliefs and stuff, I think it's something you do very well. You're a bit of contrarian. You look at things differently, see the world differently. Sorry, I've got like a stitch in my back there. I tried to do too much. Tried to do a way too intense gym sesh hungover yesterday, so it sort of fucked me around. but one of the questions I love is that what's one truth you believe that most people would disagree with you on? And what would you say that is? And take your time on that because it's not an easy question. Yeah. And I feel like I've given you a few of those, but I'm going to pick one of the ones that I think is most valuable.

1:05:12Is it going to be a cop-out if I use one of the ones? No, it makes it more salient. Okay, well, here we go. We talk about this a lot in our product org. This is actually, I think, one that we've actually been discussing a lot recently, and it's in context with some of the products that we've been building recently.

1:05:34If we can imagine it, we can probably make it happen. And this sounds kind of fluffy. It sounds like whatever. but you'll be amazed how many people we speak to about certain things that we want to make happen and we'll be told that it's not possible or the technology doesn't exist yet or can't be done and we work out a way to get it done. The way we do the card was impossible for so long to so many people but we believe deep down that we're going to be able to make it happen and we find a solution for it. I think it's especially true in technology because there's so many ways to do the same thing.

1:06:17I think that's what people forget. Something might not have a clear path from A to B, but you add C and D somewhere along the line and bounce something off of something else and then it's possible again. And I think if you can build that culture, and I talk about this with our CTO a lot who shares that mindset with me, I think this is a big reason why we've been able to build some interesting stuff that hasn't been built before. And we're not, frankly, proud of the fact that we're not building a business that is just taking pieces from what's been done before. But we're trying to develop something new.

1:06:59And most of the solutions that we come up with are novel and haven't been done before. So we're really proud of that. We're talking a lot now about how do we instill that into the broader team as our product team grows. to 30 or 40 people soon that will have just developing encoding? How do they all believe that? Yeah, how do you do that on a day-to-day where people think the impossible becomes possible? Because I love that. I keep reminding people of the examples. Yeah, I suppose once it's done, but say I'm a new person joining in London. How do you do that? I think you've got to do it a little bit before the person joins.

1:07:40That's part of your hiring process as well. OK. Because it is like, I think everyone's malleable to a point. Everyone can learn new mindsets. But I think there's definitely some people that will start off closer to that mindset than other people. And so it's part of your hiring process. But then it's like it's showing people. It's examples. And it happens all the time. We'll have something that just comes up that, oh, We just don't think we can get it done. And then if the response is, no, no, we'll be able to work that out. Like if that's just always the way forward, there will be a way. I can't think of many examples within the product that we haven't been able to nut something out that was most of the way there.

1:08:28I think the best bit, like the most salient piece there was A to B may not work, but you add in C there, D there, then you eventually get to B. that's essentially the impossible to possible on a day-to-day basis and i i and then i suppose the way you see where c and d is on that map is through sort of contrarian thinking or like asking reversing questions which is you know the the biggest question you'll you reverse is with the businesses it's not a demand sorry it's not a cost saving exercise it's kind of a bring people through the door it's not a bottom of the pnl it's the top of the pnl it's like it just makes so much sense.

1:09:07And this is, I don't necessarily know why I adopted this view. It's almost definitely from people that I've worked from in the past as opposed to my parents. But I'll tell you an analogy from my dad. When I started getting into startups and business and knowing that I wanted to do a business of my own and tried a couple of things, I remember speaking to my dad who's a mechanical fitter and a boilermaker, so just working in trades. And I'd be like you know what are these things what are these tools that you use that you know could be upgraded you know what if they're like have you ever thought you know what if you change the I don't know the angle of this screwdriver or something and my dad always responded he'd be like oh there's so many people looking at this stuff like if if someone was going to work that out they would have worked it out already you know like that's his mindset whereas I'm just like oh almost nothing exists now and every year all these new things exist that didn't exist before constantly and that's a real that's a mindset thing like and it's also a i think deep down it's a belief that you can make anything that you want to make and it's definitely a mindset that most stuff isn't optimized yet a long way to go when you say most stuff isn't optimized like i think if you were to create almost like the utopian restaurant potentially right Hanging the house, hospitality, okay.

1:10:30Yeah, we sort of – Yeah, let's do it. Utopian restaurant, Shorwich High Street, down the road, to survive and thrive in 2025. And not necessarily just using – I think we've talked a lot about what we can do with Eat Club, but like other ways. What would you sort of do? I'll tell you a concept. I'll tell you about a concept that I really like that my cousin has in Byron Bay. I don't know if you know Byron Bay in – Is that Sydney? It's in New South Wales in the same state. It's kind of like, it's cool. I'm trying to bollocks it. Well, you nailed it. Yeah. It's a pretty, I mean, Sydney's where most things are, so you're doing pretty well.

1:11:08It was an A or B. It's actually, it's like an eight-hour drive north of Sydney, which probably sounds insane. For eight hours, you'd be like in the middle of the Atlantic or something. Yeah, well, like, yeah, proper Scotland. So she's got a restaurant that I admire it a lot. I think it's like a really interesting concept. It's not a concept that can work everywhere and it's different for everyone, but I'll tell you how it works. The first thing is it's a fixed amount per head that you come and sit. And it's kind of set menu, but it's like Greek style. You get whatever they cook. It will be some lucky.

1:11:50It will be some appetizers. You get a few choices. like do you want chicken or pork? So lucky you get a few choices like, I don't know, do you want some squid or some chicken? But very few options. You book in, they know how many people are coming. It's a fixed amount per head so you also know how much you need to spend on every person that comes. It's BYO alcohol so people just love it for a party and come in and bring all their booze and do what they want. from an operational perspective you always know how much staff you need on each day you know how much food you've got to buy in to be able to service all those people so there's very little waste um and it's just a vibe because it's so casual and easy you all rock up you all start drinking the food just starts coming out you don't have to worry about a menu and ordering it's like really really simple and i don't know i don't i'll make this up i think she's maybe got 100 tables and it's it's it's hard to get a table there because it's so casual it's not it's not just one big group though so how do they get them all to line up so they just say you come in at this time what's the crap they honestly manage it with quite a bit of flexibility you come in and out they do a couple of sittings a night but they're not like perfect sittings it's really like yeah yeah yeah Greek style taverna but in a modern Australian setting wow that works and it's accessible it's you'll go there for you could go there for a casual dinner but you also go there for a birthday it's really it's like nailed that kind of multi multi-generational there's parents that go there with their kids young people that go there for a bit of a party old people that go there so it's like it's a great concept it's really casual but works and then the food waste thing for me is really important like you more or less know what you've got to prepare and all of it goes because everyone gets most of the same stuff there's i love again i want to get some more for some more of your examples but why i love restaurants uh or hospitality is how you can just change change the rules change little things again so that's the behavioral economic stuff and you build a whole different restaurant have you been to dishoom since you've been out yet and yeah and previous times as well i love going to assume yeah so like again this is a rory thing he's good mates with the founders he said everyone that came came to Ogilvy, one of the recruits, 20, 30 years ago, one of the things they would do to sort of test their creativities is they'd say to grads, okay, we need you to get people in for lunch at a curry house.

1:14:28Especially in the smaller suburbs, curry house is either a takeaway job, they're all dark, but the actual food's extraordinary. And they always used to do that to probe creativity. And I think it was Shamil who's the founder, what rory says their genius was like open for breakfast again this is your groundswell of demand they see people in for breakfast eating by the time lunch comes around it's busy and suddenly they they are the geniuses that made people queue for curry at lunch around the block and it's all again just taking these little things do you know um the other one is they've actually been on the podcast they're geniuses and just such lovely people from new zealand actually is Caravan.

1:15:10Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Laura, again, their genius is they sort of brought all-day brunch over here. But what she was saying is her whole obsession is the lighting of a restaurant. So they'll have it really bang like that. And we've actually done a few of our suburb clubs there. And just by changing the lighting, as it moves, moves, moves, suddenly, and then, again, just that little thing, they've created a whole groundswell of demand. And I love that. And again, with your cousin's restaurant, Is there any – you've gallivanted the globe to see, you know, a whole sort of panoply of different restaurants.

1:15:42So is there any other real kind of quirky, esoteric ones that do things a bit differently? Well, my favourite dining type is the Japanese yakitori restaurant. Right. And that does not translate for some reason very well to Western culture. Yeah. But it's like the tiny five - or six-person bar. Yeah. simple skewers and just you go there, you're sitting next to probably someone you've never met before, you're drinking with someone you've never met and you end up, by the end, whatever one you're locked into is like the one you stay at and you're all drunk and best friends by the end of the night, no matter what age you are.

1:16:23That is one thing I'd love to see in London and in Sydney and Melbourne, a good yakitori. Have you been to the Golden Guy District in Tokyo? it's that I've been to Japan but whether I've been there I don't know so it's basically it's these I went there when I was at the World Cup well six years ago now but it's these essentially it's this district and every bar is completely different so one will be doing like house music and one will be doing death metal but you can only get three or four people in and it was during the World Cup so it was perfect I mean it's literally like an Englishman an Irishman a Kiwi an Aussie walks into a bar I mean it was fucking hilarious but it was just perfect and I'd never again another a complete example of doing things differently.

1:17:06And there's so much you can do in this space with that. Well, their dining culture, they do have legitimately unique dining experiences there that haven't yet made it or haven't made it at scale to the rest of the world. Yeah. A lot of solo dining that they're set up for there, which is quite unique. The boxes, yeah. The boxes and there's a curtain. And then that is weird because you basically, it's a vending machine, ramen vending machine, press the button. And I was like, my dad was next to me. And our family friends on the right. I was like, mate, what the fuck is this? Yeah, it's hilarious.

1:17:42One thing I want to talk about is Marco Pierre White. And he's obviously got massive involvement. So talk to me about the first day you met him. What was that like? Where was that? Well, I'll tell you how that relationship came about. When we were starting the business, One of my co-founders, Ben, literally started cold emailing all of the famous chefs, all of them, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Marco Piawatt. Unsurprisingly, no one responded. But after some time, Marco Piawatt's manager responded. They'd taken it to him. He thought it was an interesting concept that it resonated with him based on his work in fine dining restaurants.

1:18:26And this is where his view is very much like, you know, especially fine dining restaurants, what we see is the greatest brands in hospitality often, they're often put on a real pedestal, have the biggest opportunity cost if one of their tables goes empty. That's the other ones that have the most to benefit from. Because just to go a bit more granular on that. Well, because there's heaps of input costs just to opening the restaurant in the first place. And the price point means that you've often actually got gross margin in the food, but lots of costs that you need that margin to spread across.

1:19:09So every empty table in a fine dining restaurant is a really big lost opportunity. It's a significant amount of cash that should be used to pay off the rest of the operation. more so than a than a cafe a small cafe for example where you know you might make $15 of contribution normally you'll make$7 of contribution per table on Eat Club it's$7 at the end of the day$7 for that one table it's great it's important for your venue but put that in a fine dining context that one table that goes empty you might be missing out on two or three hundred pounds you fill it with eat club and you might get 130 or 140 pounds of contribution that you didn't have before 10 or 15 tables a week can make a pretty meaningful difference to your profit at the end of the year it's not huge amounts of activity you need to really change what your business looks like yeah so with the fine dining yeah yeah with the fine but i'll continue the story though so um he was into the concept um we got him on board as a you as an early investor and ambassador of the product.

1:20:14And we've caught up with him very regularly throughout the whole process. We had him with us in Australia two weeks ago and did a bunch of filming, went to a bunch of restaurants. Yeah, what's he taught you about how to dine? Because how to dine, the other side of this, there's an art to dining well. Like as a consumer, that's a real gracious thing. Like what's he taught you about dining? I'll tell you what is one of the best things about Marco, who is obviously responsible for a lot of how we see gastronomy today. He's a no-fuss diner. And I would say he's about the food and the service. I'll tell you a story.

1:20:58One of the first times we had him, we were doing a shoot once, and we'd organized a whole lot of sandwiches. and he's looking at this sandwich and he's like, is that real tuna? Not real tuna, is that like fresh tuna? Right. And they're like, oh, it's not going to be fresh tuna. It's a bloody sandwich. I'm like, what's he going to say about the sandwich? And they're like, no, it's canned tuna. He's like, oh, bloody good. I don't want any fresh tuna in my sandwich. So he's like, he's no fuss, you know. Really? Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah, yeah. He's good to be around. Really, he's enjoyable to be around.

1:21:30One of the best things I picked up from him was when I watched his episode on Bourdain in the UK. Again, reverse of the question, similar to what you guys do, is I think he says most people think a restaurant is food service setting. He would say it's actually setting service food. The setting and the service are sort of crazy. And again, as soon as I heard him say that on Bourdain, I was like, and actually kind of see that. Yeah, that's true because you could have a banging spaghetti vongole and you're overlooking the glorious sparkling sunshine and the blue vistas of Ibiza and it's unreal. Or I could be eating in the cupboard downstairs.

1:22:06It's exactly the same product, two very different experiences. We've got some footage of him that's just about to come out where he speaks about that particularly. Like if you don't have the atmosphere right in the venue, it doesn't matter how good the food is, that isn't the complete experience. Yeah. What's he taught? Yes, so kind of jump into that a bit more. What's he taught you about all those things in terms of the atmosphere and all that stuff? Well, lots of things, but I think he's really realistic about what our platform sets out to do, which is gives you an opportunity to create the buzz and to get the people on the seats that you wouldn't have otherwise.

1:22:48He speaks a lot about the practicalities of running a business. I think going back, one objection that a restaurant might have about joining E-Club is, you know, what does it mean for my brand if I have offers on a particular platform? And his view on that is really, really clear. He talks about this like very overtly. He says, your number one responsibility as a restaurant owner and a business owner is to make the business and the restaurant work. Because it doesn't matter how good your brand is or you think your brand is. if you don't have people sitting down at your tables and chairs that's all anyone remembers after they come to your after they come to your venue and this is like the it's and it's there's a bit of both i don't think you can go fully one way or the other but but he'll be really strong on your number one responsibility is to make sure your tables and chairs are full and that your restaurant is operating he talked he talks about the knock-on effects as well he he'll often talk about like and this is I didn't you know I think it's very true but never would have thought about it until he he said it when your restaurant is quiet and your staff have heaps of free time they somehow deliver the worst service possible and when your staff are busy and sometimes even a little bit run off their feet somehow the service is often even better than than what it is and you see it you walk into a restaurant as the first time and and this is probably talking about a more casual restaurant here but the waiters behind the till and on their phone and oh shit there's someone here and nothing's been prepared and the first few dishes that they pull out just aren't as good as what they would be if they're on a rhythm and they're really they're really rolling again it's uncommon common sense again which you've clearly applied with what you guys is like keep the restaurant open number one yeah and two yeah it's one of those things you see it and um this is what the jack and will were saying at fallow is they do all those have you been there have you no but that's one of that's one of the spots on my hit list i get there right i get their um instagram videos all the time i'm gonna check it out i went the other week but like it's a mahusive mahusive um place yeah and then i don't know what they didn't they did tell me exact numbers but and it's all day it's all day all day but he was like we want it to be convivial and we want it to be um have this energy and i think the reason if there's an energy the service gets better it almost sharpens the sword and so they were saying like you know if we can pick with we sense a vibe because it's open kitchen as well we just send out a shitload of shots and it's like it brings the energy up the service gets better well you know i can tell you working in bars working in bars it's it's about the vibe of the staff as well if staff are having fun everyone is having more fun yeah like and you're not having fun if you're kind of moping around and looking for something to do yeah you've gone there to serve drinks and it's so quiet so we've sent you out to clear out the fridges at the back and you're scrubbing the fridges because we've got to get you doing.

1:25:43That's not the fun part of working in the bar. Yes. The fun part is surfing the cocktails and, you know, because it's a buzz when you're behind the bar as well as out on the floor, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I really believe with people you can pick things up via osmosis. So it's like, you know, someone may tell you to, number one, with say for the same way he tells market tells you directly is um uh number one priority is to keep restaurant alive and but i think with osmosis and i actually i get this with with guests running the podcast right so um we were interviewing do you know it's if you've seen the brand it's yeah everywhere yeah yeah yeah so julian oh it's just banging and but julian's been on the podcast twice he did pret i don't know if you guys have got pret massive you know i don't know if we have in australia but i know we must have it yeah yeah it's it's banging actually i don't know if we've got it in australia i've just seen it 50 times yeah actually there's a there's a sort of adhd in here but there's a there's a mexican brand that's just that is just launched in london like a mexican um i'm gonna have to get it so it was on my pay the other day australian brand australian brand they've launched an island they just opened one in london mate it's not good as many gomez is it begins with a z i think a zembrero zembrero yeah we work with them in Australia yeah they play hip hop in the stores well they do in the UK yeah yeah I think it must be that because our quality is probably similar to the coffee our baseline of Mexican food is heinously shined yeah yeah the revolution will come it always comes it will be televised as well yeah it always comes but sorry what was I oh yeah lessons from osmosis is with Julian is before the episode is this guy is on the blower to like the tiniest bit of ingredient that's going into his seaweed thing and he's on it right and then as soon as the pod's done straight away back on his phone on a plane to fucking japan and it's like that obsession with product yeah what's marco taught you through osmosis that you could only learn through hanging out with him through eating with him i'm trying to think what we learned just from this this most recent when was the recent one just two weeks ago i think we had a bunch of restaurants had some food had some drinks um and also i've stayed with him a couple of times in in bath as well oh that's is that where he's he he lives on this great property which also doubles as like a b &b you can you can stay there and eat at the restaurant it's quite an experience oh really i do recommend it for anyone that's so good about it i mean it's on these beautiful grounds it's it's outside of bath it's in rudlow yeah yeah is it the rudlow arms well yeah the rudlow yeah yeah That's where he lives as well.

1:28:29Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. That's his baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool there. It's a great grounds. There's an awesome restaurant there. It's a cool place to be. Yeah. Really like a well done, you know, really of period, but also like it's really like it feels like you're in a, it's like a bit movie star, you know? Oh, wow. In as tasteful a way as you can imagine. It's very, yeah, it's a very nice place to be. Yeah. And what's he taught you about osmosis? What have I learned from him? I'm fine with him. Look, how, like, he is, what I like about when we're dealing with, when we're talking about Eat Club specifically is, and this is not going to answer your question about osmosis at all, but I'll tell you what we enjoy about being with him.

1:29:23he's a busy guy right he's flying around the world he's doing all kinds of things beyond beyond Eat Club and much greater than Eat Club all the time every time we're with him undivided attention gets into the detail interested in every bit of how it's going and full of ideas for for how to make it better someone that is endlessly busy and doing much bigger things in his life than it club it's uh it's cool it's really yeah i think that's just such a again again common uncommon uh uncommon common advice it's just it's like the amount of times i'm sat with someone even ironically this is the most hilarious things at a restaurant and because of emails on your phone and shit i'm not i don't know i'm really honest i don't know the last time i was actually present at a restaurant unless i was drunk because i'm not you know as soon as you have a few drinks phone away because that's from me as soon as if i've drank a few works done yeah yeah i need a few to take the edge like to be honest i quite like on a thursday or friday going to the pub on my own and then just having a cold one and then just sort of boxing things off it's just kind of a nice relaxing way to do it it's good lifestyle it has to be on my own and then because if we're friends there then and then it's almost like oh then you sort of just chin wag about the week and stuff like that and then you're then you're done one thing i want to talk about is uh aussie hospitality versus uk hospitality versus us hospitality yeah because i think as i said i've got a couple of mates aaron who does um aaron trotman who does non he's based where you guys are and then my mate mark palmer actually moved to melbourne a couple of years ago and they've been saying like you've got to come over here and do a pod do like a little tour series he knows loads of restaurants uh because the two cities london and melbourne are so similar but so kind of nuanced and different.

1:31:15And actually our band is way similar. Oh, totally. Yeah, and that's what Mark's doing is he's setting up a thing that takes Kiwi brands, sorry, Aussie brands into UK and vice versa. Cool, cool. More retail brands. Yeah, yeah. But I think one of his business partners launched Oatly into Oz. And they've done Dash, you know, Dash, Water. I think they're quite big in Oz. and they were saying it's actually what much so many brands look at going to america because it's you know the land of opportunity but there's actually you know um i think oscar wilde's got a quote which is america and the u.s uh so the u.s and the uk are two countries divided by the same language yeah and it's like we're so similar but so different what have you learned about the the differences between uk and and oz and then what do you think some of the challenges are with potentially get into the US.

1:32:08I'll tell you straight out why we're in the UK and not the US. Yes. From a technology perspective, just to start with, we've built a lot of conviction around our tap-to-pay card. Not there, is it? It's not there at all restaurants. It's getting better, and I think probably 18 months and you'll be able to move Eat Club into the US as well. But right now, there is literally a hard technology barrier, which is we think we've created one of the best experiences that we can for this type of business and it's really a big part of our success. We straight up can't do that at most restaurants in New York even.

1:32:46It's quite phenomenal. And the whole tipping process and pulling it. How does that come into it? Because the tipping process over there is mental. So I went to New York a couple of years ago and I was sort of, again, flabbergasted by the fact that I couldn't do that pay, that pay. But how would that work with you guys? Yeah, exactly through the method that we talked about. We read tips on point of sale. Okay. Yeah. And then if it's the cash thing. We can send it straight through to the restaurant. We only, you can only, oh, you can pay. If you pay cash tips, you pay cash tips. That's outside of our system and we don't see that at all.

1:33:19But you can. What is the actual, because I don't really know specifically, what is the situation there? They don't pay a service charge. In the US particularly? Yeah, yeah. In the US you've got a, what's technically compulsory. As compulsory as it gets. because if you refuse to pay your tip, I don't know what's going to happen to you. You know, you go to play, you play, you walk up, you're playing with fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I, I lived in the US for a period of time. Oh, sick, whereabouts? In New York. Oh, nice. And when I first went to New York on a holiday when I was 21, tipping was 12 % and they were talking about it becoming 15 % while I was there.

1:33:59This was what the discussion was. and wherever you go, all the prices are listed X tax, excluding tax. So if something's$20 on the menu, you've got to add your just under 10%, whatever their GST is. It's like nine, I think it's nine point whatever. It's not quite 10%, so it's complicated. You've got to add that on top and then your tip on top of that. So it ends up pretty much every price that you look at, it's plus tax plus tip. When I was living there, the tip was 18 % and it's just moved. it moved while I was there to about 20%. I did hear recently someone saying it's like 22, 25, like it's becoming a lot.

1:34:37So if you can imagine, you look at a menu price in the US, you're adding your 10 % tax and 20 % tip. Everything is 30 % more than what the menu says to start with. It's quite hard to get your head around. Yeah. The US, it's weird because they're so forward thinking. I mean, one of them, Silicon Valley, but they're so backward in some things. The airports, I think are crap. I don't understand it. Airports, how can you basically create an iPhone yet you can't create some sort of system to get people through the airport? It's wild. It's easy to rag on the US. I do, for so many reasons, think it's an amazing place.

1:35:14But while I lived there, I did get this feeling that everything that they export is extremely forward thinking, all the products, all the technologies. But then it's like what they get to use internally is like all the crap that they couldn't sell somewhere else. Like it barely works. That's such an interesting – It really feels like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything else you learned from just being – I think what you said, to understand it, you've got to be in it. The fish has to be in water to understand it, you know? Constantly. I've really enjoyed getting into the payment side of things, into the fintech side of the business.

1:35:51And without talking about too many specifics, I see that as the big forward opportunity for the product on the consumer side to become much more ingrained in payments and loyalty, which I think is going to be really interesting for the restaurant space as a whole. There's lots of things that once you see under the hood, there's some interesting stuff. And then you almost get it. I think the genius of putting it on someone's wallet is you're like tapping into that. I don't know. It's pretty dumb. I don't actually have a wallet because I'm just so used to my Apple wallet. But if my phone runs out of that razz, I'm fucked.

1:36:27And it happens, huh? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I should probably get one. But the – and then talk to me about the difference between – or the nuances between Melbourne and London and what have been, again, 2D map, 3D terrain. So first of all, fortunately, even more similar than what we thought. It seemed similar, but normally you're like, oh, we're going to get there and we're going to get thrown by a few things. But I'll tell you that they're quite trivial, but smaller nuances that are different in the management of the business between the two. So the first is the difference between how many purely independent restaurant owners in Australia.

1:37:07A lot of people have one restaurant. in London particularly, home of the small groups. I think you even might call them chains here, but we'd call them like a small group of restaurants. Like it's a streaming caravan. Yeah, four to ten restaurants, sometimes the same brand name, sometimes not, they're different brands, but a lot of people are in either on their own or in some kind of syndicate with a small group of venues. That's quite a big change. And so it means in Australia, you're really dealing one-to-one and it can be a very quick and easy process to sell because you're dealing with a single decision maker who knows what he wants for his restaurant and gets it.

1:37:48Slightly longer sell in the UK just naturally because you're dealing with more decision makers. But often it means you've got three or four or five venues instead of one venue at a time. So that's an interesting thing. Why do you reckon there's not many? That really surprised me. Why do you reckon that is? why i think maybe it's um it's maybe more accessible it's maybe more less barriers to entry in australia to get a restaurant started london rents are probably significantly higher than lots of the places in in australia i suspect um but it is it's quite stark like and even a restaurant that looks like a real pure independent restaurant in london you walk in and he's like oh yeah i got eight more down the road you know you wouldn't you wouldn't know that's so interesting I hadn't even thought of that.

1:38:33Yeah. So that's one thing. Here's a really trivial one. This is just, I mean, maybe interesting to people that are looking to start selling something to restaurants or building a platform in the restaurant space. Australia is very much a cold call to get a meeting. In the UK, I mean, we find that restaurants aren't even answering their landlines during service. It is much harder to contact anyone via the phones. I suspect Australia is still a small place. I think there's less spam calls and stuff like that. You know, I worked for that peanut butter company, that peanut butter store. So I was selling it into Ireland, a retailer called Ireland.

1:39:17When you're dealing with the big retailers over here, they don't want to do a face-to-face negotiation because it gives them more time to almost plan what they're going to say and then go back. so we i was taking that tact with this bloke in ireland and he would just say call me and it was like very much that was the and i was like so much better because you could actually pick up the nuance of emotion and but how they're actually feeling like because on an email it could be so pissy like i wish our culture was more like that yeah interesting that it's across not just hospitality as well you don't want to pick up the phone yeah just don't want to pick up the phone weird and it's like you could make that's another thing i think restaurants not just but just businesses in general could make way more money if they just had an old school sales line.

1:39:58Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's how beyond it is. It's not dead. It's not like there is still room for that sort of direct selling, but it's just slightly different. So our people have to often go in and establish a relationship face-to-face to get it started. Yeah, well, yeah, that's what I was doing with the peanut butter. If anything, it's actually you walk straight through the door. Yeah, my mate's got a beer brand called Local. It's a play on being a local boozer, but also low calories. It's quite a good name. But yeah, that's... You know, a digital marketer will tell you, what we can do is we can get really good with the targeting to know where this restaurant is and will be able to target this restaurant.

1:40:43And I'm sitting there, I'm like, I know where the bloody restaurant is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, common sense. In terms of marketing B2B, again, it's complicated. What have you learned about that? What are some of your big ideas or principles you've taken on that? Because it's both ways, isn't it? It's B2B and also B2C. How do you find that riddle wrapped in the enigma? I think it's still a riddle to us, to be honest with you. We haven't spent nearly as much time working out the marketing side on the B2B angle as we have on the consumer angle. because we've got this quite finely tuned sales process.

1:41:21But it's not to say that we don't need it. It just hasn't, we just haven't got to that point yet. Maybe in, you know, I might see you in a couple of years time and say, oh man, I wish we did. I wish we got the B2B side of the marketing engine working earlier because it's changed the game. It's going to be another one of those until you're in it, you don't know. But we've always, we haven't got that. We haven't got that to that point yet. we do really focus on the more linear sales strategy that we know. But we've actually made some highs recently. One priority is when I have this conversation with a restaurant, similar to the conversation that we've had now, our intent and what we're trying to do and why we believe this is in the long-term benefit of restaurants can really come across.

1:42:08And when you talk to the restaurant one-to-one, that makes sense. We do want to try to make that more widely understood. Like even on the consumer side, I think it's really important for a customer to understand when they go into a venue and tap for their 25 % off, they haven't taken 25 % away from the restaurant. They've added 30 % or 40 % that wasn't there before. And that B2B sell on the customer side is actually really important for the customer mindset as well. I think the truth is most people don't. Everyone thinks like that. No one really wants to take anything from anyone. And that's not what we're asking people to do.

1:42:53People look way more good-natured than people make out. Way more good-natured than people make out. Most people, yeah, I think most people would, yeah. I think a lot of people do know about that. And I think that's part of why we're successful. But it should be much more blanket. Like you're not really getting an offer. You're spending money actually. Don't worry about – because this is maybe part of the crux of it that we didn't discuss at all. Restaurants' price is often pretty arbitrary. They're often setting up their restaurant, deciding what they're going to put on the menu. They kind of try to work out how much of each thing is going to get ordered percentage-wise relative to another.

1:43:37and so you can start to work out what do I need to price everything at based on my food cost to get my average food cost to a certain amount but then you open the doors and you're busier or less busy than you thought you are people order more or less of different things and not a lot of restaurants the the real the you know the really sophisticated operators would but a lot of restaurants aren't adjusting their price very often I mean some some restaurants never adjust their price frankly and the reality is that means your price is really pretty arbitrary you've just decided what that price is um should there be a price and this is the airlines example there isn't a price of an airline ticket there just is um how do they work out on airlines well they've got they've got their um they've got their equations based on um they know the minimum cost of running the airline they know their marginal the marginal value of every customer that comes on the more customers that come on they would increase the staffing that increase the amount of food on there that would impact the amount of weight that's on the aircraft that means there's more fuel used for the trip that means they need to make more revenue on there like it would be a change it would be a fluctuating equation based on how full it is at any one time but you'll get to a certain amount of you'll get to a certain capacity where the plane's taking off in, I don't know, the plane's taking off in five days.

1:45:03Yeah, five days, yeah. And whatever seat's empty is empty. Someone paying, you know, 50 bucks is probably profitable at that point because all they need to do is cover whatever variable bits and pieces they give you. It really changes. And sometimes they, like, you'll see prices, like sometimes just before, sometimes you'll book really last minute and you'll get a really good price. But if you go to last minute, they know you need to fly there because something's happened and it's not going to be a cheap price at all. Like the last couple of flights on an airplane are incredibly expensive. That's because they're better off just having it there just in case you need that flight.

1:45:38Yeah, it's like, again, it's like scarcity and loss aversion. You don't want to miss not getting on that flight so you'll pay more. I was going to say it's kind of like lastminute.com. Do you have lastminute.com? Yeah, yeah. For restaurants, there is kind of that. It's that element of... It's another arrow in the same quiver, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's another little analogy to make it... The hotels are the same as airlines in a lot of ways. Like hotels, who knows what their actual price of a room is? They fluctuate depending on how full the restaurant is and the season. We have a little graph on our website, which I think sums this up really well.

1:46:17A resort in Fiji or, you know, where do you guys go to? the Canary Islands or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Peaking off peak times. And in the summertime or when the weather's warm, the price is really high because that's, you know, they've got product market fit. In winter, it's the same product but it's just in shit weather. It's way cheaper. It's so simple. I love it. Yeah, it makes sense. It's way cheaper in the winter. And that's over a year and that makes sense. The thing why it's a bit more hard to understand on the restaurant side is the restaurants have that same seasonality not only every week but every day, and I'll explain.

1:46:56So every week, their winter months are their Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then they have their summer months, and then Monday comes along again and they're back in winter. They literally have winter and summer every week. The resort has winter and summer once a year, and it's totally normal and understood that their prices are vastly different during the winter to the summer. If they kept their prices the same in winter, just no one would go. But they don't. They decrease it. They try and make it worth it. They try and give you something that's of value during that time. And they try to have product market fit at the time.

1:47:30So the restaurant has one price all week, even though technically some of those days are winter because less people want to drink, less people want to go out and party. They have less disposable income at those times. But then I would argue a restaurant has summer and winter every day because you've got 4 to 6 p.m. where no one really wants to dine. Mate, your ability to make things so lucidly simple is genius. And I think it's – but if you go – I know we briefly talked about your old man and, you know, sort of lessons he was teaching you. But what were you like as a kid? When did you sort of develop this thing of just looking at things and simplifying?

1:48:13Could you guys pinpoint that where that came from? What was it like at school? I've been pretty curious the whole time. I was the kid that was interested in sitting at the adult table and hearing what people were talking about. Yes. It's funny. I told you the story about Dad about how his general mindset would be that everything's done and there's no way he could think of something that was groundbreaking that no one had done before. That's just his mentality. I should point out as well, my dad was born on a small island in Greece. He was a shepherd until he was 11 years old. He came to Australia as an 11-year-old who had known nothing but really been in the mountains with a flock of sheep with his dad and brothers.

1:48:57That was his life. And then he comes to Australia. So what was he doing? What made him go to Australia? It was part of the big migration waves out of southern Europe. Greece was 50s and 60s, a lot of Greeks left for multiple reasons. My dad particularly was very much economic reasons. They were on a small island with not a whole lot of opportunity. And so they came, their family came to Australia, which is a very common story. I think Melbourne is the third largest Greek city, including the cities in Greece. Wow. Big Greek population there. We settled in Adelaide, which is another big Greek population as well.

1:49:37But he was, I tell you that my dad, although that first story is very much part of his personality, he was always interested in how things worked as well. I think being a mechanical fitter, being someone that's always working out machinery and pulling things apart and pulling them back together, if I was walking on the street with him with a kid, he'd always just point to something to the point where he still does it a bit now and it's annoying as an older person. But as a kid, I was fascinated by like, oh, what? Like, do you know what that is? Do you know where that comes from? What does that stand for?

1:50:11Yeah, there's lots of that sort of stuff that I think I grew up with. He's a bit of a facts guy and I think I've become a bit of a facts guy because of him. I also think as well with the U.S., the U.S. is ultimately like, well was was built on a built as a nation of a load of mad fuckers who were like right i'm curious i'm going to explore and see what's better and out there yeah and i think that's why they are such as much as you were talking about some internally they're quite backwards all their external exports are so um forward thinking it's because it is a culture of just an amalgamation of all these different people who cross the water and we're like let's see what's happening here i think if your old man's a shepherd and then at 11 and then goes to australia that's pretty wild so that's probably baked in you as well, which is this ability just to be endlessly curious.

1:50:55Totally. And it might be a little bit of the sort of, you know, the migrant pressures wearing off as well. You kind of, you know, you want to do something better than what your parents were faced with, essentially. That's like, you know, a pretty common story, I think. But I mean, I didn't have that, like, you know, we were a very, very normal family in Adelaide. You'd call it probably like a lower middle class family, I would say. But it was never like, we never went wanting for things. I wouldn't at all talk about having a hard migrant life like what my parents' generation would have had when they first got to Australia.

1:51:29It would have been pretty full on. But yeah, it's certainly... I actually was speaking on a different podcast in Australia a little while ago now and I got asked a similar question and I thought I really should have thought about that before the podcast. And now I've gone a couple of weeks and I still haven't thought about it. I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it's been there from a very, very young age. Yeah, yeah. Mate, final thing, and we'll wrap this up. I've absolutely loved this. It's kind of just as a sort of a buffet of curiosity for all my favorite things like behavioral economics, marketing, tech, growth, restaurants, hospitality, chefs.

1:52:08But where are you trying to take this? What's the end goal? When does, yeah. Look, we want to keep developing the technology and we want to keep building more products that help effectively implement this idea of dynamic pricing more broadly within the hospitality space. We've got a lot of ideas that are coming out soon to take more of the guesswork out of when you should and shouldn't have offers on the platform and that's going to be some really exciting stuff. And then it's just about growing. We think this is a platform that one day will be one of the things that a restaurant ticks off when they're opening up their venue.

1:52:44I've got to get a booking system implemented. I've got to get my pods ready. I need to think about what dynamic pricing solution I'm going to use to make sure that I've got as many tables filled as much as I can. And this is, you know, and I think this has been clear, but we didn't invent doing deals and offers in the hospitality space. It's been done before, but I think we've taken the idea and properly molded it to hospitality, and we want to continue doing that. We're pretty determined to continue evolving it so it becomes something as necessary to run your business and not the sort of thing that you don't want to do but you feel you have to do.

1:53:25It's something that really makes sense from the economic standpoint. It really, yeah, it just really helps you run your business. Pan, that's been an absolute pleasure, mate. I fucking love that. Good to chat, mate. It was so much fun, man. Yeah, it was just a really, really fun conversation. I think we just touched upon so many notes and kind of skied into all sorts of places. But yeah, my brain's buzzing. I can't wait to see what you can do with this. I appreciate it, mate. Like the line of questioning. Very good. Awesome. Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it.

1:53:59If you liked that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars. Subscribe. Tell all your friends, families, foes, next door but one, cat, dog, whatever. Please tell everyone about this podcast. It means the world to me. and I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of Challenger food and drink brands. Please do hit me up on LinkedIn, search Dan Pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of Challenger food and drink brands. Thank you so much.