2465 - Blending Hospitality and Technology to Create Unforgettable Events with Snapbar's Sam Eitzen

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, it's Sam Eitsen. Sam, you are the co-founder and CEO of Snap Bar. You're found on the web at snapbar.com. Sam, it's great to have you. Yeah, thanks, Josh. Good to be here. Yes. Hey, before we get going talking about your superpowers and the work you do, this really cool technology, I'll just say right now to our friend that's listening, you're probably going to want to see visually what we're talking about. So again, the website snapbar.com. So just to our friend that's listening, get ready.

1:24You're probably going to want to hold that up. But before we do, Sam, I always love hearing what high-level leaders are kind of geeking out on from time to time. And I understand that, well, I understand you're currently into mixology, which I just, I love a really artsy, herbalicious. You got all the senses going, craft cocktail. I don't drink a lot, but when I do, it's got to be really good. And I'm not, I don't like wine. So hence cocktails are kind of my only thing. And I don't like craft beer either, which is some people are like aghast right now, but I love a good, I love a really great well-made cocktail.

2:08And I know that that's what you've been geeking out on. Tell me more. I not very good cook. Okay. So, and my wife is. So what do I bring to the table? I make the drinks she makes the food and that is how we host together we love hosting so I geeked out about it I think like a lot of people during the pandemic and then it never really faded away I kind of went deep and I started fat washing gins and infusing whiskeys and all sorts of interesting stuff so I really like to nerd out more than just like making a good old-fashioned and a groany or something like that I really try to like almost make it um I don't know experimental weird interesting something that you haven't that's what i love is new experiences oh i've never tasted this before or you know it's complex to the level where there's like kind of four different things that you can identify in it oh can you taste this yeah i can taste it that's really great um what what are your do you have a couple of favorites right now yeah i do i'm a big fan of the negroni right so that so the the traditional negroni is equal parts gin, Campari, and vermouth.

3:13But then I love to create riffs off of that. So I'm really a big fan to start of like the Kingston Negroni. So it's like a rum-based Negroni instead of gin. And you can swap out the red bitters and the vermouth as well. And then you can start infusing some of those things. So like a coffee-infused Kingston Negroni, when you're like infusing some of the vermouth with like coffee beans, it's just like it gets into some really interesting, weird, almost like tropical territory, but not really. yeah so negronis and the riffs off the negroni are kind of currently what i'm nerding out about so if you're doing the infusing so that means that you're prepping all of these things in advance then and then so you you have a lot of just things going um in in in your drink fridge fridge or wherever yeah absolutely yeah so like you'll put like let's say you want to infuse something with coffee there's a bunch of ways to do it but an easy way is to throw a few coffee beans into a bottle of vermouth and let it sit for a while and then taste it as it goes and make sure that it doesn't get too like overpowering and then you strain it when it's ready and let's say you want to fat wash the the rum right so you might like think that with rum i'd say probably coconut oil is pretty good right so you can fat wash coconut or coconut fat wash like a rum and it's gonna now make the negroni a little bit more like viscous in its like texture it's gonna taste a little interesting like a little difference it's going to be smoother stuff like that so like one and then once you have those things pre-made well then it's then it's really fast then you just make an integroni like you would a regular cocktail right but it's the prep oftentimes that that matters so yeah very cool are there are there any for someone that were like how did you get into i don't know if you just started watching youtubers um i'm trying to think of like the happy instagram one yeah yeah he's great there's the other guy that always like smiles when he's shaking he's like an Aussie I forget his name yeah but there's some really good YouTubers that you know get they're very good YouTubers and my favorite book for someone that's getting into it I think something that's kind of cool and really helps you understand the world of cocktails is called the cocktail codex oh yes yes it's great by the company but or but it created by a team that has created a really great bar brand called death and company and um it's really great because it basically helps you understand that like all cocktails kind of come from maybe like six grandfather cocktails if you is that term right or the and the specs generally break down and it just helps people understand like oh interesting like an old-fashioned is kind of everyone has an idea of what an old-fashioned is but you can make a rum old-fashioned like so many people just think that like an old-fashioned is whiskey but you can make all you can make a gin old-fashioned like literally like right like because the old-fashioned is really a spec or like a like a type of cocktail like an archetype of cocktail, not, and it also happens to be the name of a very specific whiskey-based cocktail.

6:03So that book is great because it helps you understand that all the really creative cocktails come from these kind of like core, I don't know what term they use in the book, but these kind of like core recipes or makeups, I guess. Yeah. We have that same book. I have not gotten into it as much as you have. But I could not agree more. The name of that book was Cocktail Codex. And it's and if you just if you search around and look for people talking about it, you'll you'll read a lot of praise for this. What's just a great gonna get you one on one's your Bible to your cocktail Bible. Yeah, exactly.

6:42Yeah. Well, Sam, tell me about your your tell me about Snap Bar. yeah we it's been around for 14 years uh my co-founder is my brother so it's been fun to be in business with him and we have had kind of three life cycles as a company over the 14 years we had to pivot pretty hardcore because we were in events so we started as a photo booth company like the kind that you'd see at a wedding right or a conference like a physical we're there gear everything and then over the pandemic we had to pivot pretty drastically into a completely different business to survive for about a year. We started a gift box company, like a care package company effectively.

7:21And then we switched into software in 2020. We built a first piece of software and ever since have been working in the software space. And we have two software platforms still related to kind of the photo industry that we were in 14 years ago, but quite different in nature. And so that's like SnapArt over 14 years. Today, our two platforms, one is for professional headshots. So you have to take 10 ,000 headshots of your staff, for example, or 500, but they're distributed. Maybe you work remote, maybe you have multiple office locations, you can go the traditional route and do, you know, photographers at those locations, or we could use our platform to get people to submit from home and use AI to upscale them, turn them, put them onto the same backgrounds, basically like an automated Canva type process.

8:07So you can have headshots ready to go for badging website, et cetera. And then the other platform is for the world of events, which we have been in. It's kind of like our, I don't know, we were born into the world of events. My brother and I, that's like kind of what we did with our traditional photo booth company back in the day. And that is all about marketing content. So we create like these products that help brands get marketing content at events. So let's say that you're doing the world's cup and you're a fan and you want to do something interesting and cool. And you're going to try to turn yourself into like your, like a soccer player from your home country.

8:42And it's some ticket master activation because they're trying, you know, whatever, like we would create that type of experience for them, the software that powers it all, whether they're doing it in person or scanning a QR code to participate on their phone. And so they love it because they get to get their cool output. The brand loves it because they get the lead data and everyone's happy, hopefully at the end of the day. Yeah. And obviously AI has really up-leveled the kind of stuff that you could do. Tell me about some of that. And do you mind maybe just being pretty specific about, you know, the different applications here of what you're doing, either live events, and then I see you've got other, you know, brand activations and because like mobile first, you know, that sort of thing, you know.

9:24Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So basically, if you think about the world of events, you know, there's like traditional events that everyone thinks of in the business world, like conferences and trade shows. But I mean, a music festival is an event, right? and an employee appreciation week in the business world is considered an event. There's like special things that are doing. So no matter the event that's taking or a sporting event, obviously. So when a brand or company wants to engage or somehow interact with their audience, whether that be internal employees, you as a soccer fan, you at Coachella Music Festival, whatever it might be, there's usually a reason they want to engage with you and create some type of interactive moment.

10:04and so what will they do? I mean, Red Bull gives away Red Bull drinks, right? I mean, you'll get swag at trade shows. You get cool experiences and VIP sections. I mean, brands generally are trying to do anything they can to get someone to feel like they're part of said experience in a special way, right? The general term for all of this is like experiential marketing. So instead of just like me advertising at you and throwing an ad on Instagram, hoping that you click, I am trying to like bring Josh in. And now that I know that you love cocktails, by the way, right? Like if I was a really, really good experiential marketer, I might be able to drag you into some VIP section advertising some really cool branded, you know, whatever, stuff like this.

10:46Well, that's kind of what we do, but on the photo side. So we specifically specialize in photo content, video content. So users like photo content oftentimes because people are kind of obsessed with selfies and AI has allowed you to visualize yourself in all sorts of crazy ways. brands love branded content because they want you to share it promote their brand that's right and in that in that exchange they're usually trying to get your name or your email or your zip code or something of that nature so that they can maybe put you on a marketing list or just add to their data set who knows and that that experience that exchange is kind of where we live so a lot of what we do is trade shows and conferences but we're doing a lot of sports right now because the world cup and we're doing and so that's kind of where that lives um if that makes sense hopefully i mean it's a very niche industry in a sense of kind of who we serve but that's generally the the kind of business transaction that's happening where you might think of putting a photo experience of some sort and um i can list uh some of the uh companies that you've worked with but to suffice to say you've basically worked with the biggest brands out there as well as ones that are not enormous.

11:59Do you mind maybe just talking a little bit? Congratulations, by the way, on the impact over the years that you've had and just the footprint that you've got. This is very, very cool. And by the way, again, your user interface is gorgeous. So you've got really great concept or great products. And then the output that you create is just very professional and again, designed to get that lift you know, from delighted attendees and participants? Well, you know, one of the things I love about events generally is that it is kind of like a niche industry in a sense. Like, and when you go even deeper, if you get like within a specific service side of events, so photography or video, we, I mean, we have a lot of competition, but it's not like infinite.

12:44It doesn't feel like we're competing against like an infinite number of people sometimes. It is just a niche within the niche. And so we work with incredible brands because the stuff that we specialize in, photo, video, content, this kind of UGC exchange for experiential marketing, all these buzzwords. I mean, you can do it. We have competitors, but there's not millions of them. I don't know. And so, yeah, I mean, we've worked with some incredible brands on some really incredible projects, on some really big events, and it's really special. I mean, if you do a good job and you show up consistently in the world of events and you are trustworthy and 14 years in, we have some really great relationships and we have stayed trustworthy in the minds of many of our customers.

13:29They will continue to work with us, even though we don't show up in person anymore like we used to. We used to be a physical, you know, staff, gear, cameras, lights. And over the pandemic, we switched into only software. But a lot of those clients are still the same. Now, instead of our team going to facilitate it, we create the software and they facilitate it themselves. Yeah. Like I said, your work is really fun to browse. I want to make sure that our friend that's listening, you know, like who I guess at what level does it make sense to engage you? And what does that typically look like? Yeah, so we are usually working with two groups of people, event planners and producers at companies that are probably 200 employees plus on average.

14:21Not always, but that's like we usually work with mid to large size businesses and agencies who just tend to be the people that are hired to produce the events for the really big companies. So we have worked with, for example, Microsoft directly. We've also worked with a number of agencies that Microsoft contracts to indirectly. Right. Like, and so those are the people that we sell to and they usually have a very specific thing that they're looking for, which is actually maybe the most common one is trade shows. That is the easiest one to pick on because so many people have been to a trade show.

14:53They know what a business trade show is and what it feels like. So when you're at a trade show and you have a 10 by 10 or 10 by 20 booth, you are trying to stand out amongst, I don't know, what, like 50, 60, 70 other trade show booths in that sense and other competitors. And so what do you do to stand out? And how do you get people to kind of come by the experience or your section of a trade show floor and engage with you? That is a challenge that our type of product can help solve. and so we do a lot of trade show events for example all right the website is snapbar.com to our friend that's listening sam what do they do where do they go yep so snapbar.com is just the landing page you can go through there anytime you want to get in touch with us you would just click on like get a quote or contact us and they'd be in touch with our sales team that would and you know they'd they'd go from there that we they would basically ask them like hey what's your event what are you trying to do?

15:53What are your goals? Who are you trying to reach? And those things help us fit you into the type of product that might most suit the people you're trying to reach. Yeah. Snapbar.com, Sam Eidson. Again, you're the co-founder and CEO. Thank you so much, Sam, for joining us. Thank you.

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