Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
This is the RestaurantTechnology Guides podcast,
helping you run your restaurantbetter.
Jeremy Julian (00:14):
In this episode of the show, I am joined by, uh,
the team from House of Giants.
They continue to push the limitsof what web front end interfaces
can look like for the restaurantbusiness.
As we all know, the website andreally kind of how you interact
digitally with customerscontinues to expand people's
desires and use cases, continueto, um, want to push the limits
(00:39):
of what it is that customers arelooking for.
I tease, um, oftentimes torestaurant.
Restaurant operators that peopleare always looking for the
Amazon effect where they canorder and control their entire
experience.
The team over at House of Giantshas been doing this for quite
some time and has an amazingopportunity to help restaurants
on the digital side for thosethat need to do a refresh or
(00:59):
have never really gotten intothe digital game.
If you don't know me, my name isJeremy.
Julian.
I am the Chief Revenue Officerfor CBS North Star.
We sell the North Star point ofsale solution for multi-units.
Please check us out at.
CBS north star.com and now ontothe episode.
Welcome back to the RestaurantTechnology Guys podcast.
I thank everyone out there forjoining us.
(01:20):
As I say, each and every time,you guys have got lots of
choices.
So thank you guys for hangingout.
this week.
Today is a fun topic becauseeverybody's got problems as it
relates to what the, this coupleis gonna deal with.
And so I know we're gonna getsuper deep into why it's a
challenge and why restaurantsneed to be.
evaluating it.
I happen to be recording thisthe week of Metech.
Just got back talking to a lotof people that are in the
(01:41):
restaurant space and we know somany more things are going
digital, which is why thedigital experience is such a
critical part.
And so I'm joined by thefounders of House of Giants, but
I'm gonna let, I'm gonna letJeremiah introduce himself
first.
Why don't you give a little bitof a background.
Where did you come from?
How did you get into this stuff?
you've been coding since youwere 12 in your garage kind of
thing.
But, tell everybody a little bitof that story and then, you can
(02:02):
introduce your business partnerand we can talk a little bit
about why it's so critical.
Jeremiah Landi (02:05):
Yeah, I normally say I'm probably not the most
important out of the two of us,but.
What I would say is, so we gotstarted a while ago.
I got into coding, when I wasyounger because I really enjoyed
problem solving and it was likethe language to do at the time.
And then worked my way through alot of different platforms and a
lot of different CMSs and Domand I worked at a company before
we, we didn't necessarily like,and I'll let him speak so it's
(02:28):
not my words, but didn'tnecessarily like the approach.
And when House of Giants wasformed, it was a very, how do we
diverge from this?
How do we solve problems thatneed to be solved in ways that.
impact or change.
So I don't know, Dom, if you gota better way to describe it.
Dominic Magnifico (02:42):
Good.
No, that's that's absolutelyright.
I'm.
I'm Dominic.
I've also been coding, for quitea long time.
got my start in more of thecreative coding, kind of world.
A lot of front end like designy,interesting stuff like that.
and yeah, like Jeremiah wassaying, we definitely got our
start, working at a lot ofagencies and seeing.
The things that we know didn'twork right.
we wanted to approach, theagency partner relationship, a
(03:04):
little bit differently, muchmore collaboratively, and using
much more data to drive ourdecisions rather than just,
checking a box.
that was the impetus forstarting House of Giants.
Jeremy Julian (03:14):
and I'm gonna, I'm gonna let our audience know
that we're not gonna get supernerdy.
We promised before we hit gothat we're not gonna get into
the weeds of, of any of the bitsand bites of things.
But, talk to me a little bitabout what.
your guys' premise behind theHouse of Giants.
You guys talked about a littlebit about your background, but
talk to me about why restaurantsand why do you, what is it
specifically that you guys aredoing for restaurant brands?
(03:34):
Don, why don't you take that tostart.
What is it that your kind ofgo-to market that says, Hey, we
really want to help restaurantsdo x.
Dominic Magnifico (03:42):
For sure it, when we entered the space, we
really recognized this like thedisparate amounts of data,
right?
you've got your, point of salesystems, you've got your loyalty
programs, you've got data inmany different places, and there
are very few.
all in one solutions that arereally pulling in all of that
data in a unified kind of way,for a single experience, right?
(04:05):
we're very much into, buildingthe custom front ends, making
things look nice and all of thattype of stuff, especially for
your brands and everything likethat.
But what has really become moreimportant it seems in the
landscape.
is that unified experience, nothaving to go to two or three
different places to check out,to order to, to do all of that.
So that's the, that was theopportunity that we saw,
(04:27):
entering the space was gettingthat unified data and then.
To put on top of that thepotential that there is for when
you do have a CDP, like yourcustomer data profile, the
opportunity for the use of ai,LLMs, all of that type of stuff,
to parse that data and makerecommendations and suggestions
is invaluable, especially inthis day and age.
Jeremy Julian (04:49):
I think that's so great that you guys are doing
that.
'cause as I said earlier, I'mcoming off the heels of leaving
the Metech conference and I.
Just got to listen to lots ofrestaurant leaders stand on
stage and talk about the factthat these systems are
disparate, the fact that they'rehaving a hard time getting to
those customers, restaurants andretail really for that matter.
and restaurants more so thaneven retail, are one of the only
(05:11):
offline commerce engines thatyou don't have the customer data
at your fingertips.
When I go on Amazon, you knowwho I am.
When I go on gap.com, you knowwho I am.
When you go on walmart.com, youknow who I am.
When I go into the store, they,it's a slower transaction
volume, so you can do that.
But in restaurants it's astruggle to figure out how
people are doing that.
And then the second thing that Iheard you say, Dom, that I think
(05:32):
is great is the unifyingcommerce idea has been something
that people have been trying tofigure out for quite some time,
but.
Oftentimes within the business,it starts at foundation.
So Jeremiah, we were talking alittle bit about where you guys
are finding, as you guys areengaging with different brands,
that they struggle and I equateit oftentimes to the
(05:52):
architecture side of things.
they often will start to buildbefore they even know what their
end goal is.
Can you dig in a little bit onwhy you think that is and why?
Having somebody like House ofGiants can help them to walk
through that business process tohelp them understand how
architecting it properly makes aB much better foundation to grow
into the future.
Jeremiah Landi (06:13):
I think I was just having this conversation
this morning.
I had a two hour conversationabout integrating AI into
platforms and the strugglepeople are having because of the
architecture.
I.
Think it's a mixed bag of nutswhen you talk.
So I think the reason why a lotof people start with the
architecture decision is becausea lot of people don't know what
data they have, or it's anafterthought.
And that's where a lot ofengineering companies also
(06:34):
start, if that makes sense.
So typically when you approach atraditional engineering company,
they will go, okay, show us thedata, and they'll build up from
there.
I don't think a lot of peoplereally start.
The other way.
So it's always a question oflike chicken and egg.
So I could either get your dataarchitectured or structured or
unified, and spend all this timebringing in together through
different pipelines and anyother technical routes.
(06:57):
Or I could spend time on thefront understanding what data I
need and then just getting thatdata out there.
I think the big discussion thismorning was.
To flip it on its head.
A lot of executives want changenow.
They wanna see movement, butthen a lot of technical people
are mired in the details, A lotof the discussion that I was
having this morning was focusedaround what if we just started
with a clean slate and reallyreversing, the discussion.
(07:20):
So instead of saying Hey, let'sbring in bureaucracy.
It's what if we started with aclean slate?
What are we trying to do here?
What are we trying to build?
Getting a really goodunderstanding of that and then
building the data in to supportthat, or even migrating the data
if it's too heavy.
I know that some restaurants.
have been around for quite along time.
We've worked with some, out inthe San Francisco area and when
you take over projects, it'sjust a lot of baggage you have
(07:43):
and that could really weigh downwhere you're looking to go or
what you're looking to do.
And so I think it's reallyimportant to do that.
Flip to your point, and thenback in the architecture from
there.
I think if you start too earlyon that you just end up with
probably a product that isn'tideal for what you have and a
lot of budget that goessomewhere where you're not a
hundred percent sure where.
Jeremy Julian (08:02):
and I always use the Stephen Covey start with the
end in mind.
And if you know where you'retrying to get to, it's easier to
back into it.
And then you oftentimes willhave data and then you might be
missing some pieces of data.
And so it's like, how do we fillthat gap?
But in the interim, and I seepeople do that all the time
where they'll just go, we needto look like Starbucks.
And so they, they want to justchase Starbucks and their CEO
(08:23):
comes into this IT guy's deskand throws something down and
says.
Starbucks is doing this, I wannafigure out how to do it.
And ultimately they're stuckholding the bag because they
don't have, they don't have thepieces that go through that.
Help me understand how you guyswalk these people through this
because it's a combination.
I say this also on the showoften, I.
It is involved in a hundredpercent of the restaurant
projects.
Now they have to be involved inevery piece of it from an LTO
(08:46):
that's going out to new POS tonew music that's going in the
store.
Across the board, it is involvedin all projects, and so their
budget, their time is oftentimesstretched.
Help educate some of our ITlisteners out there.
How do you guys help them to goback to the business and point
these things out that says, Iappreciate that you want to get
to Starbucks, but we need to laythe foundation so that we can
(09:08):
get there because it will beaccelerated.
With the advent of AI and such,how do you guys coach them
through that process?
Dominic Magnifico (09:14):
Yeah, it really starts it, it really
starts with the discoveryprocess, your initial
discussion.
with everybody, right?
it's one of the things that alltoo often, especially in
agencies that we've worked at inthe past, it just gets breezed
over where it's okay, cool.
We think we have anunderstanding of what you need.
We're just gonna go ahead andbuild what we think you need.
The approach that we foundthat's just vastly more
effective is we ask probably waytoo many questions.
(09:38):
trying to really like, dig intothe true reasoning behind the
problems that our partners areseeing, right?
So partner will come to us witha problem, they'll say, oh,
we're not, we're not convertingor we're not seeing as much
traffic as we want to, orsomething like that.
And we.
We drill down to try to findwhat the actual solution is or
what the actual underlyingproblem, is.
(09:59):
in, in terms of talking to likewith IT folks and stuff, it's
really like it's data-drivendecisions.
It's, we've.
Very often had to basically sellour expertise to, the C-level
executives and stuff like that,where it's like, Hey, trust us.
We've been doing this for, overa decade.
here's the data to support thedecisions that we're making and
(10:19):
based on our experience andexpertise, here are the user
experience changes you need.
You're losing people becausethey're, transferring to a third
party site and maybe sometimesthat redirects not working
properly, or that experience isslow.
using that data and it's alittle frustrating sometimes,
but selling yourself and saying,Hey, here's the value that we're
bringing to the table, and hereare the numbers that support it.
(10:40):
So it all starts at the verybeginning of that, documenting
that, having thoseconversations, with the IT
people in the room becausethey're the ones that understand
the systems.
Jeremy Julian (10:49):
and I think, sorry, I don't mean to kick off
your mind, but I think ingeneral.
We never had these elements ofbeing able to capture this data
to be able to present that backto'em.
And at the end of the day, Ithink we all know, data is just
a tool to drive a decision.
Most decisions are made withemotions and then the data backs
it up.
But if you can show thosethings, you can change their
emotions and back into it.
And I had an experience.
(11:10):
I was sitting with a customerat, I literally was sitting at
this conference and it's a brandthat I like to eat at, and I had
a bad digital experience and I'mlike, you realize that I went to
a different brand because ofthis?
and they were baffled.
I said, go look at the data.
How many times do people havethat item in their cart and they
go to order and it doesn't gothrough?
What are you doing about it?
(11:30):
And so you guys talked a lotabout, and I promise not to get
in the weeds, but you guystalked about kind of front end
and CMS and different ways.
Practically Jeremiah tell, whatis that?
I know what it is, but for ourlisteners that, that may not
understand what the front end isor this front end development,
it like practical, like CEOdoesn't know anything about it.
What exactly does that mean?
Jeremiah Landi (11:50):
So I think it all depends on where you're
coming from and where yourorganization is.
So like we were talking to Olothe other day and they dropped
the term CFE all the time, orcustom front end.
So it's, what it really comesdown to is normally different
restaurants or differentorganizations have a backend
that they already choose orsomebody that they're working
with that they like, or maybethey're working with a loyalty
(12:12):
program.
So it's.
Putting something in the frontof the customer that doesn't
necessarily always have toentail all the backend or all
the baggage that comes with it.
So reworking what the customersees or what a user sees.
a very good example is thatStarbucks app, right?
So I was part of that wholelaunch when they first came out
with the loyalty program, thestars, if you've seen those.
(12:35):
And so a lot of that discussionis just re-skinning the back
end.
So they didn't do a lot ofrebuilding.
A lot of it was just to say.
Okay, what are our users doing?
How do we, in that case, gamifyit.
Because to your point, for ashopping cart, how do we remind
customers?
Do you do a cart wiggle?
There's a million different waysto drive people to use the
different variations, especiallyin current day when video's
(12:56):
becoming heavy in a lot ofrestaurants where users wanna
see maybe food move or see thesteam coming off of'em.
It's a way for us to present thefood or the menus or the
offerings, whether it's drinks,in a way that appetizers
customers, engages customers andallows them to, for the business
side.
This will make me sound a littleconsumers, but buy more because
(13:18):
ultimately that is what you'relooking for.
The ROI is you're not justlooking to have a pretty
website.
It's.
How do we get these users to doit?
And oftentimes it'sincorporating some of the CDP
data, so the customer dataprofile to say, Hey look, we've
seen this customer has done thisbefore.
And pull it up to the front endlike you're saying, so that a
customer doesn't know you'redoing all this complicated
stuff, but it runs reallysmooth.
Jeremy Julian (13:38):
Yeah.
And I think that, I guess youguys wrap for a little bit
internally about the problemsthat you guys see when you guys
go into brands before they'veengaged with you guys.
'cause I think it's, I think itback to the data points, I think
all too often I.
You'll hear from people and Domyou said it earlier, we gotta go
sell our services and be like,trust us.
But at the end of the day, Ithink all too often I have a
(14:00):
good friend who used to do thisin the consumer space, consumer,
good space.
He's you have no idea how manysales you're losing because you
don't convert.
And so help me, help ourlisteners to understand so that
they can go back to their ITteam so they can go back to
their marketing team so thatthey can go back to their agency
team.
What are some of the commonthings that you guys are seeing
that people are or are notdoing, that are hurting their
(14:22):
brand and hurting theirperception out there?
And really at the end of theday, to your point, Jeremiah
hurting their top line sales.
Dominic Magnifico (14:28):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we.
See often is this it feels likea, like an everything or nothing
approach, right?
Where especially when you'retalking about like data
collection, and how to use thatdata and stuff like that, what
Jeremiah was talking aboutearlier, where it's like backing
into the problem is going togenerally yield a better result
for you.
So let's actually drill down,figure out what it is that you
(14:48):
really need.
In order to effectively,effectively move your customers
through your entire experience,end to end, whether they're in
the restaurant, physicallyordering online, all of that
type of stuff.
So the biggest problem I thinkright now that we've faced is
just, it is just theoverwhelming amount of data that
there is and how to effectivelyuse it.
(15:10):
People just.
People just wanna useeverything.
And if you're prioritizingeverything, you're prioritizing
nothing.
So figuring out how
Jeremy Julian (15:17):
a true developer,
Dominic Magnifico (15:18):
actually listen.
Jeremy Julian (15:19):
developer.
gimme a priority list, man.
and I love it.
I tease that.
I tell customers that all thetime.
You can't have 10 priorities.
You can have one priority andthen that one gets done and you
go to the next one.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut youoff, but I have to tell people
this all the time.
You need to give me a four ranklist.
Gimme the top five.
Man.
I can't get, so sorry.
I'll let you keep going.
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Dominic Magnifico (16:14):
No, you're absolutely right.
Jeremiah Landi (16:15):
I'm gonna cut you off now too, but I think
also to, to dog pile on this,you also can't gauge success
like when you're changingeverything at once.
'cause that's a lot of what ithits on is they're like, oh
yeah, we wanna show movement orwe wanna show our eye.
And when you're making all thesechanges at once, it's really
hard to gauge Okay, what'sactually working, what's not.
And then, very on point.
sorry.
(16:35):
Okay, Dom,
Dominic Magnifico (16:36):
no, that's you're hitting the nail on the
head.
I think.
between the prioritization.
So doing too much at once.
So you're trying to completelyrefactor your loyalty,
completely refactor your frontend, the user experience, the
design, all of that stuff atonce.
It tends to become cumbersomeand then you're again,
prioritizing everything andprioritizing nothing all at the
same time.
(16:57):
but within that, one of thethings that it, we've definitely
noticed that is a little bittougher of a conversation to
have with folks, especially likefrom it to the executive level
and stuff like that, is thevalue of the user experience and
the.
Like I said, the ends to endin-house, out of house, online.
the experience tailored to thecustomer in a way that they can
(17:20):
expect.
and are familiar with, even ifthey've used your app one time,
is massively important.
And it's one of the things thatwe have countless conversations
with folks where it's like theinitial investment of doing the
user research, doing interviewswith the users, trying to
understand how people areinteracting with your brand and,
moving through your space andall of that type of stuff is
(17:41):
sometimes a hard sell.
people generally, because you'renot getting that immediate
return.
Out of those types of things,it's hard to sell people on.
so yeah, between theprioritization of the, the
efforts that you're trying todo, the development efforts, the
branding efforts, and then theselling of the user experience
are the things that we arechallenged by, quite frequently.
Jeremy Julian (18:00):
and it's funny because I think that especially
generationally, people see itand they can tell a disconnect
between my online experience andmy in-store experience.
And if the, there are certainbrands that the experience in
store is better than it isdigitally, and there's some that
are the opposite.
And so they're gonna drive someof that behavior, but not
understanding to your guys'point, start with the end in
(18:21):
mind and map that whole journeyfrom start to finish has to be
consistent.
'cause if it's not.
You get some disunity in thebrand, and I love it when I go.
there's some brands that arejust awful and I don't wanna
pick on any names I'm gonna talkabout here in just a second.
I hate, I'm never gonna talknames of people that do it
poorly, the ones that have trulyput an effort in to creating
this experience versus not as itrelates to that experience.
(18:45):
Jeremiah, talk to me about howyou guys think through.
Creating an experience that'smemorable, but also serves their
purposes.
I'm a father of four.
Sometimes me getting on, I wantto order fast, have it in the
app, have it paid, and move on.
Whereas other times, I wantdiscovery and I wanna work
through those things.
And that's a hard thing tobalance because again, whether
(19:08):
the online experience is, or akiosk experience, or the full
browser experience, all of thosethings, depending upon how I'm
interacting with a brand.
you have to be cognizant of it.
How do you guys think aboutthose different things?
Because to your point, Dom, youguys have to walk through the
customer journey, both in storeand away, and not doing it in a
way that resonates.
You ultimately could bounce themto your competitor and
(19:30):
ultimately lose that sale forthat time and potentially
forever.
Jeremiah Landi (19:32):
I think it's, what, when you say that, it's
always the excessive amount ofpopups when I go through.
So I'm always in a rush, but forsome reason I.
There's just a lot of popups.
So I think it's really dialingin what our customers are doing
and, when I say we, it's therestaurant or the brand,
understanding what the customersare doing and why they're
engaging with us and providing'em pathways through I know I
(19:53):
just referenced popups, but it'sa lazy way to deal with Hey, we
don't know what they wanna do,so why don't we just throw a
bunch of popups, or we try toupsell them.
I know a co a lot of gasstations tend towards, in their,
towards their, User menus, theyhave a lot of popups to try to
sell you things.
So you go to checkout, they'relike, what about a cookie?
What about a drink?
You're like, nah.
This isn't how to do it.
So I think a lot of what we'vedone in the past is a ver a lot
(20:15):
of variation of different waysto user test.
So what we like to do is lead inwith and understand what a
user's going to do, why they'redoing it.
And then we also like to dothings like.
Do heat mapping, do eyetracking, which we've done in
the past.
And so really understand likewhat's a user doing when they're
engaging with a kiosk or whenthey're eng engaging with a
website.
(20:36):
Like really dive down.
And then also look at how farwe're willing to go.
Because to your point, not allcustomers are our customer too.
So it's a good understanding tosay, did that guy balance
because it was price, whichwe've seen before where some
restaurants are trying to chaseprice and you're like, look,
those aren't what the.
The metrics say, yes, we can getthem, but we're be much better
off making a better userexperience for people that are
(20:58):
maybe adding a lot of items totheir cart.
Or maybe they're largerfamilies, to your point, or
they're doing partying.
So maybe the focus is oncatering rather than on this.
And I think really drilling downand understanding that front,
because I think not every badthing is an emergency, right?
So not everything's a hurricane.
Sometimes you just go look like,yeah, we lost a couple people,
(21:20):
but that was to be expected.
I think it's.
As we said before, it's reallydriving at understanding what
you're doing and why you'redoing it.
I think that there was a goodphrasing that was explained to
me earlier that a lot of peopledon't really understand the why
or the how.
They understand the what.
So really when you look at yourtarget, you have, I think I.
Alex Simmick said it where youhave the Y on the inside and
(21:43):
most people don't make it pastthe w the why, the how, or the
what, So they hit that, what?
And they go, okay, this iswhat's going on.
And they don't really dig down.
So
Jeremy Julian (21:53):
Yeah.
and it's funny'cause I had acustomer call me a while back
'cause they were fighting a lotof abandoned carts on catering.
And I said to them, have youconsidered the fact that they're
a pharmaceutical rep and they'reconsidering catering, but they
realize that your product is tooexpensive?
And they were really trying toredirect them to a customer
service person while they werein the middle of that cart
experience to say, Hey, we haveother options that might not be
(22:14):
on this website.
If you tell me your budget's$500for this meal, I can get you
something.
And so it was an interestingexperience that he had.
He was trying to figure out thatthe bad customer.
Service story that I was justabout to share, which goes back
to your guys' data comments.
I just got an email four hoursago to order lunch from a brand
and it, in the email it talkedabout ordering lunch from this
(22:36):
brand and this brand, and itgave me the store name, which is
my local store, which is in myCDP, which is in my.
The store's been closed for 30days.
I don't know why it's closed,but the store was closed, so now
I craved this product, but now Ican't get it because they did
the right thing.
They got into my inbox, they gotmy attention, they got me to go
click.
I clicked it.
(22:56):
I'm like,'cause.
On the local Facebook page thatsaid that they're gonna open up
some time in March.
And so we're recording this inMarch and I'm like, okay,
hopefully they're ready.
'cause I've been craving it.
The next closest store is 15miles away.
I'm not gonna drive 15 or 20minutes to go get this food, but
right here in town, I mightdrive the 10 minutes or seven
minutes to go get it.
But now this comes back to yourguys' data comment.
Talk to me a little bit abouthow you guys consider the data
(23:19):
elements, because thatexperience for me as a customer
was not great.
I got an email, I now gotcraveable product and now I
can't get it.
So now it turned into a, I'mgonna start to ignore their
emails because they're notrelevant to me and now they can,
are gonna have a harder timegetting my attention.
When the store does reopen herein town, and again, I don't even
know why it's closed, it's anational chain, but they just
(23:39):
happen to have this store that'sclose to me closed.
Talk to me a little bit abouthow you guys even consider that
data.
'cause that.
To me was a fail on theirmarketing's part, telling me,
come to this store in your townto get this product and then
it's not there.
Dominic Magnifico (23:52):
Yeah, there's no question that having near
real time.
Time data at your disposal isvaluable, right?
Because in that exact scenario,if instead of a, an email
advertising like, Hey, go toyour local store to get this.
They could instead have sent youan email saying Hey, this store
has been closed, but we'rereopening in March.
Here's a coupon for like yourfirst time back, like after,
(24:15):
something like that.
Using that
Jeremy Julian (24:17):
DoorDash from the store that's 15 miles away to
get the food to me, freedelivery for that store.
And I'm sorry, I'm just, but I'mgiving these guys suggestions
that says this would have gottenme to order a fricking pizza
this morning.
I promise you had it happened.
So sorry.
I'll let you keep going.
Dominic Magnifico (24:30):
No, that's, it's exactly right.
It's truly, it.
It's truly just using accuratedata to speak to your clientele.
There has to be some in that CDPprofile, there has to be some
sort of, radius of a range, likehere are all of the stores in
Jeremy's area.
Like how do we direct him to anew.
Store to get food.
(24:50):
So in any case, I to play on theprevious conversation too, it,
it's almost like anaccessibility problem.
It because even, the father offour single mom carrying two
kids and not knowing how to likequickly reorder her last order,
is a very common issue.
So like.
Developing and designing theseexperiences with basically, not
(25:13):
necessarily like worst casescenario in mind, but all kinds
of different use cases.
a lot of applications, it seemsespecially like their mobile
ordering experience and stuffhave moved towards a quick
reorder.
Type of thing.
So in your case, you're superbusy, you don't wanna see all
the popups.
You can see your last two orthree orders on your phone and
be like, yeah, I know exactlywhat I want to get from this.
(25:33):
this Indian food place that I goto all the time.
I'd like to just reorder thatsuper quickly so I don't have to
think about it.
And then other times, using it,it's hard to use contextual data
like that to know when someoneis in a, state of, immediacy.
but there are indicators thatyou can use within your data to
figure out, what the right timeto pop up a message is.
(25:55):
so it is truly assessing thedata that you have access to and
trying to understand whatactions you can help make easier
for the users through that data.
So it's taking an inventory ofwhat you have and really
assessing how to use itproperly.
Jeremiah Landi (26:11):
I would also say it's how you're approaching
sales too.
So I think that was a huge letdown for marketing.
I think to your point, Dom.
You could have all the data inthe world, but you gotta really
ask how and why we're doing it,right?
So I think a lot of times whenwe do it, because we do a lot of
different integrations withdifferent CRMs, so customer
relationship tools, and a lot ofour questions come into why are
(26:32):
we doing this?
Why are we engaging with this?
What are we using this data for?
So like we said, the abandonedcart stuff, when do you stop
emailing somebody on theabandoned cart?
it's just as critical as whenyou do.
And I think to your point, it'sunderstanding how is my
marketing team.
Going to be engaged with thedata that we're collecting and
where are we sending this stuffso that we get a cohesive
(26:54):
message?
Because you also don't wannabecome the brand that's
desperate for sales, right?
So we've seen those before wherethey take ads out everywhere, or
you get a million emails aboutlike discounts and that stuff,
and you're like, the food wasmediocre and now I'm getting hit
a million times.
Like I, I don't want to go backto my how many times.
you end up in the spam box,which nobody really likes
because then you're definitelyforgotten about.
Jeremy Julian (27:16):
Or you only engaged with the brand when you
get a discount.
bed Bath and Beyond went out ofbusiness because they hit the
20% coupons that you're like,no, I'm not going with this 10%
coupon.
I'm not going with 15%.
I need that 20% to get my newpillows for my wife for the
couch.
'cause we don't have seven othersets of pillows that are already
on the couch.
yeah, my wife is not here today,so she's not gonna come holler
at me.
one other thing that you guystalked about early on, Jeremiah
(27:38):
is sending people to other thirdparty sites and kind of the
efficacy of that and reallydriving that behavior.
Talk to me and especially inkind of some of these new
privacy laws that we have aroundtracking customers in a digital
way.
Talk to me about how you guyshelp solve that to really,
whether I'm going out to aDoorDash site or I'm going out
to one of the larger onlineordering sites, so I'm on the
(27:58):
main site and how do you workwith your clients to embed that
experience in so that you don'thave to let them leave?
And or if you do, you trackthat, that, that backfill.
because I think it's.
All too often, oh, it's there.
It's on the site.
I used it this morning.
It's working fine.
But you don't realize whatultimately happened from that.
Jeremiah Landi (28:17):
I think Tom said it best that we don't develop a
lot of mobile apps.
I think what it really comes inwith is being conscious on why
and what you're doing.
With data collection, we alwayssay you don't want to collect
too much, but you don't wannacollect too little because at
the end of the day, once youstart talking about Europe or
wherever you're going, It couldbe very problematic with data,
forgetting and removing and thentracking and then sometimes you
(28:39):
don't need all the data so itjust becomes messy.
Like you could ask the NSA aboutthat.
but I think a lot of it is beingvery conscious of when you're
sending people out to anotherapp or integrating it, right?
So I think we hear that a lotwith people that are doing
different type of.
like integrations with differentbuying, oh, it's totally
blanking me now, but in storepurchase options.
So they have a menu in storethat they want, they keep all
(29:00):
their inventory in there, butthey also want it replicated on
the website, so they could trackthrough one purchaser.
And so I think a lot of it comesdown to making sure that.
When you're sending by somebodyoff to an app, it's a deliberate
choice, right?
So somebody's not going toDoorDash because you don't have
an experience.
Somebody's going to DoorDashbecause you want them to have
that experience.
(29:20):
I think that's a lot of theissues that we see with Yelp,
with reviews, right?
So a lot of people don't reallycommand or control the brand or
the story that's being told, sothey let it occur off their
platform and then you're dealingwith that.
So I think it, it comes down to.
How big you are because itdoesn't always make sense for
you to manage your own.
(29:40):
So if you're a small mom and poppizza shop, yes, you could have
the insurance, you could havethe drivers, you could have all
that infrastructure orpotentially you could offload
it.
But I think it, it comes to abusiness decision on
understanding.
What money you're trying to keepin the house, right?
And then what's the RO on that?
So if we did do something like aprogressive web app so that you
(30:01):
could purchase, which we've donein the past instead of a native
app, you get the best of bothworlds, but you still have to
have somebody that manages that.
You have to have integrations onthe back end.
So I think.
It really comes down to thebrand, doing a deliberate choice
and choosing, as a business,what you're partnering with.
There's also a lot of localdelivery that we've told
customers about, especially whenyou're in places like New York,
(30:23):
because that's also a brandstory you could tell, where it's
look, we're not choosing to gowith DoorDash.
We're choosing to go with us,local guy who will take orders,
for us, and
Jeremy Julian (30:32):
and now even DoorDash and they've been on the
show and Uber Eats, they bothhave the ability to dispatch
their own drivers from your own.
So you can take the first partydelivery, but then dispatch
their team so you don't have todo all of the insurance.
But I think all to all tooseldom do brands think about,
Hey, I just sent them toDoorDash.
And you know what?
There was 400 clicks on theDoorDash button, but I only got
(30:52):
150 orders.
What happened to that other 250customers?
Where did they go and why did Inot get them?
That goes back to your commentabout, about, top line revenue
and ensuring that you're keepingthem in your, sphere of
influence as long as possible tobe able to drive that behavior
to get that sale so that you'renot the guy.
That went to go order pizzatoday and the store closed and
you don't wanna drive 15minutes, obviously, I'm teasing.
(31:14):
I'm not gonna say the brandname, but, let me tell you,
there might be a time in, thenext couple of days that I'm
gonna be in that, that, 15minutes away store area that I
might have to, might have to gocheck it out.
last question that I want to godown.
You guys talked a little bitabout ai, and AI has been, a
huge topic.
As programmers and as peoplethat have been in the tech space
for a long time.
Ironically, it's just now it'sbecome mainstream.
(31:37):
A lot of what we've been doingfor logarithms and these stories
have been, but I think they've,I don't wanna say normalized,
but they've gotten'em to,democratized, I guess is the
phrase I used.
They've democratized the abilityto get to this data, whereas
before you'd have to send it toa data scientist to go do all of
this stuff, and then they'd spitback out data.
How is that gonna impact?
All of these things becausewithout asking it the right
questions, you're not gonna getthe right answers.
(31:58):
But how do you guys see thatimpacting the digital experience
for marketing people, forexecutives, for finance people,
for operators and technologists?
how do you guys see that notonly accelerating, but quite
frankly harming?
'cause I think there's a lot ofharm to be done if you don't do
it properly.
Jeremiah Landi (32:13):
I think it's, I think it's choosing to be
deliberate.
I think that's, I think the moreI say that, that's more of a
story of a lot of ourengagements.
So right now we've seen a lot ofpeople doing the AI integration
onto the website.
So while you're navigating, itpops up and it says, Hey look, I
know you're looking at this.
So I think that's a verydeliberate use.
It helps.
Get in front of the person.
We know the time to buy is verycritical, especially when
(32:35):
somebody's hungry, they'relooking to get now.
So if you put too many stops inthe way, they'll tend to avoid.
And so it's providing enough ofthe data to engage with an
individual.
If that individual is, alreadypart of your CDP, you're able to
pull that back and say, Hey,look, I've seen you buy this in
the past.
Is this what you're looking for?
Really engage.
I think on the other area andaspects of it, AI is used as a
(32:58):
blanket term, so it could helpwith.
Jeremy Julian (33:00):
Sorry, I hear that all the time.
It's you know what, no, AI isnot just chat GPT.
That's not the only thing that'sout there.
So I apologize.
I'll let you keep
Jeremiah Landi (33:07):
No, it is very much especially when you say
marketing, people think Dahlia,think about some of the big
people to just generate images.
But I think.
When it comes to ai, it's alsothings like your data
interpolation, right?
So when you're pushing databetween systems, so ai, I had a
conversation with today wherethey had no developers in their
marketing department, so theyallowed their marketing team,
(33:27):
they educated them on how torapidly develop websites in.
Different AI programs that thenthey could take to developers.
'cause it helped them definebetter what they're after.
It define them to rapidlyiterate, and then when they're
going to corporate, they're not,they don't have to be faced
with, Hey, I need this manypeople for this long.
And a budget, it allowsexperimentations, but on the
(33:49):
back end it allows you to do alot more to augment the
development, to augment themarketing, to augment a lot of
that stuff because you could.
With the proper promptengineering and, mitigation of
hallucinations, you could reallydrive it to, to do things that a
lot of people don't expect.
Dominic Magnifico (34:06):
the one thing that I'd add to that too is
like.
Yeah.
Being a developer and being inthis space for as long as we
have, there's been like 10different events where it's oh
boy, this thing is going to takeeverybody's job.
you're going to become obsoletenow because X, Y, or z, is now
so prominent.
And it's happened with AI acouple of times.
We've gone through a couple ofcycles, of that.
(34:26):
And the thing that remains true,especially like with these
buzzword type of technologies orprocesses and practices, is
really just like.
Trusting or partnering withpeople who know how to leverage
that tool in a way that is not.
Only that tool you, youbasically understanding how to
(34:48):
use it in an effective manner asa supplement to what you're
already doing is far better thana partner that would come to you
and say, oh, we'll just throw AIinto everything that you're
doing and your sales will go up,traffic will go up, that type of
thing.
it's a surgical implementationat the right times.
is the best way to put it, Ithink.
Jeremy Julian (35:08):
Yeah, and I think you've gotta figure out how to
prompt it and you gotta figureout how to get it in there
because you know what?
Without the prompting andwithout the capabilities, none
of it matters.
It's like it will spit out somuch.
But if you're not, a tacticianof that tool to be able to
massage it and really, it doesaccelerate.
I know it does accelerate thecapability to create some of
this stuff, but then you'vegotta have the discipline to
(35:30):
test it and test it again andsee where it goes and see what
happens with it.
And I think I.
Across the board.
That's one of the things that Isee too many people doing.
I'm sure you guys get'em all thetime.
I get how many LinkedIn andblind app messages do you get
that says, I see that you fromthese three things on your
profile, I want to talk to youto sell you something.
It's stop.
I can tell it's AI and it turnsme away almost instantly versus
(35:53):
a genuine, I had somebody that,that, that went through and I
could tell he was genuinelylooking at what we were doing
and it.
it, you can tell there's a careand deliberate, I guess
extension of who that brand is.
And that goes back to some ofour earlier conversations.
Dominic Magnifico (36:08):
Absolutely.
Jeremiah Landi (36:09):
I think what we've also been, I'll throw this
out there too.
What we've also been seeing AIused more of in the prompt
engineering real realm isseeing, dialers.
So when somebody calls into arestaurant, like instead of
having to go through like Panerawhere you have to dial through
restaurants and all that stuff,instead of doing that, it will.
Use a prompt, on the backendwhere you'll call in, we'll grab
(36:31):
the data, you'll pass it overthere, and then I can get you
to, not saying this is whatPanera does, but a Panera that's
local to your area.
So I think there's also a lot ofways that we've been seeing or
working with AI that's nottraditional.
A lot of people just think it'sweb only.
It can also be used in admindashboards.
one of the big discussions wehave is, making data.
(36:52):
More human.
So what we always say is thatprogramming is you learning to
speak like a computer.
So it's how do you programeither an LLM or something
locally as well that couldaccess your data to allow people
to understand the sentiments,right?
Or pull things out.
So maybe you had.
A lot of people callingfranchisees or whatever aren't
(37:12):
complaining.
Like you could have that AI goin there and pull out sentiments
from calls, things like that, ora lot of different items.
So I think when people say ai,they also just think it's not
really in all its facets.
It's more of just saying, Hey,this is a website, or, Hey, I'm
typing something in.
there's a lot of different wayswe've been seeing it done.
Jeremy Julian (37:30):
Yeah, and I think harnessing the power of people
like yourselves, that house ofGiants who have been there, done
that they know what it's gonnatake to not only do the core
basics of what you guys havedone for years, but also how can
you incorporate AI to acceleratethat and put the.
put the tools in the hands ofthe users so that they can
continue to accelerate theirsuccess.
I think that's a good shot, goodspot To wrap up, how would
people learn more about youguys?
(37:51):
again.
I could sit here and wrap allday long because I love ui, ux,
the use of data.
I, I hate that old adage, halfof marketing doesn't work.
We just don't know what halfnowadays, there's so much more
that we can do with the data tobe able to get to these things.
There's tokens from creditcards, there's, the, just so
many different ways that we canknow who our guests are and how
(38:11):
to engage with them, not only tobuild sales, but to build a
loyal customer that wants tocome back again and again.
And if we screw it up.
Use the data to be able to gomake it right for those people.
'cause that's, at the end of theday, what most people want is
they want you to say sorry andthen make it right.
And so across the board.
I love that.
So how would people learn moreabout House of Giants?
how would people engage and whatwould that look like?
Dominic Magnifico (38:32):
Yeah, definitely.
You can just, visit our website.
It's just house of giants.com.
that's where you'll find themost information we're on,
LinkedIn, Instagram, all thesocial media is just House of
Giants, yeah, that'd be the bestplace.
Jeremy Julian (38:42):
Awesome.
thank you guys for, sharing someof your guys' expertise.
I love,'cause there's so manypractical things that you guys
shared that.
Even if they don't engage withyou guys, which I hope they do,
and I know that you guys willget some people that'll engage,
but they're gonna get, maketheir brand better and
ultimately deliver a best,better customer experience.
'cause if they're not, I promiseyou, some of the other people
that are in your neighborhoodare doing it.
And so they're gonna get thatsale if they don't do it.
(39:02):
And so to our listeners, guys,like I said at the onset, I know
you guys got lots of choices.
So thank you guys for hangingout with us.
If you haven't already done so,please go give us a, a subscribe
on your favorite podcast playeror on YouTube and, to our
listeners, make it a great day.
Thanks for listening to TheRestaurant Technology Guys
podcast.
Visit restaurant technologyguys.com for tips, industry
(39:24):
insights, and more to help yourun your restaurant better.
This is the RestaurantTechnology Guides podcast,
helping you run your restaurantbetter.
Jeremy Julian (00:14):
In this episode of the show, I am joined by, uh,
the team from House of Giants.
They continue to push the limitsof what web front end interfaces
can look like for the restaurantbusiness.
As we all know, the website andreally kind of how you interact
digitally with customerscontinues to expand people's
desires and use cases, continueto, um, want to push the limits
(00:39):
of what it is that customers arelooking for.
I tease, um, oftentimes torestaurant.
Restaurant operators that peopleare always looking for the
Amazon effect where they canorder and control their entire
experience.
The team over at House of Giantshas been doing this for quite
some time and has an amazingopportunity to help restaurants
on the digital side for thosethat need to do a refresh or
(00:59):
have never really gotten intothe digital game.
If you don't know me, my name isJeremy.
Julian.
I am the Chief Revenue Officerfor CBS North Star.
We sell the North Star point ofsale solution for multi-units.
Please check us out at.
CBS north star.com and now ontothe episode.
Welcome back to the RestaurantTechnology Guys podcast.
I thank everyone out there forjoining us.
(01:20):
As I say, each and every time,you guys have got lots of
choices.
So thank you guys for hangingout.
this week.
Today is a fun topic becauseeverybody's got problems as it
relates to what the, this coupleis gonna deal with.
And so I know we're gonna getsuper deep into why it's a
challenge and why restaurantsneed to be.
evaluating it.
I happen to be recording thisthe week of Metech.
Just got back talking to a lotof people that are in the
(01:41):
restaurant space and we know somany more things are going
digital, which is why thedigital experience is such a
critical part.
And so I'm joined by thefounders of House of Giants, but
I'm gonna let, I'm gonna letJeremiah introduce himself
first.
Why don't you give a little bitof a background.
Where did you come from?
How did you get into this stuff?
you've been coding since youwere 12 in your garage kind of
thing.
But, tell everybody a little bitof that story and then, you can
(02:02):
introduce your business partnerand we can talk a little bit
about why it's so critical.
Jeremiah Landi (02:05):
Yeah, I normally say I'm probably not the most
important out of the two of us,but.
What I would say is, so we gotstarted a while ago.
I got into coding, when I wasyounger because I really enjoyed
problem solving and it was likethe language to do at the time.
And then worked my way through alot of different platforms and a
lot of different CMSs and Domand I worked at a company before
we, we didn't necessarily like,and I'll let him speak so it's
(02:28):
not my words, but didn'tnecessarily like the approach.
And when House of Giants wasformed, it was a very, how do we
diverge from this?
How do we solve problems thatneed to be solved in ways that.
impact or change.
So I don't know, Dom, if you gota better way to describe it.
Dominic Magnifico (02:42):
Good.
No, that's that's absolutelyright.
I'm.
I'm Dominic.
I've also been coding, for quitea long time.
got my start in more of thecreative coding, kind of world.
A lot of front end like designy,interesting stuff like that.
and yeah, like Jeremiah wassaying, we definitely got our
start, working at a lot ofagencies and seeing.
The things that we know didn'twork right.
we wanted to approach, theagency partner relationship, a
(03:04):
little bit differently, muchmore collaboratively, and using
much more data to drive ourdecisions rather than just,
checking a box.
that was the impetus forstarting House of Giants.
Jeremy Julian (03:14):
and I'm gonna, I'm gonna let our audience know
that we're not gonna get supernerdy.
We promised before we hit gothat we're not gonna get into
the weeds of, of any of the bitsand bites of things.
But, talk to me a little bitabout what.
your guys' premise behind theHouse of Giants.
You guys talked about a littlebit about your background, but
talk to me about why restaurantsand why do you, what is it
specifically that you guys aredoing for restaurant brands?
(03:34):
Don, why don't you take that tostart.
What is it that your kind ofgo-to market that says, Hey, we
really want to help restaurantsdo x.
Dominic Magnifico (03:42):
For sure it, when we entered the space, we
really recognized this like thedisparate amounts of data,
right?
you've got your, point of salesystems, you've got your loyalty
programs, you've got data inmany different places, and there
are very few.
all in one solutions that arereally pulling in all of that
data in a unified kind of way,for a single experience, right?
(04:05):
we're very much into, buildingthe custom front ends, making
things look nice and all of thattype of stuff, especially for
your brands and everything likethat.
But what has really become moreimportant it seems in the
landscape.
is that unified experience, nothaving to go to two or three
different places to check out,to order to, to do all of that.
So that's the, that was theopportunity that we saw,
(04:27):
entering the space was gettingthat unified data and then.
To put on top of that thepotential that there is for when
you do have a CDP, like yourcustomer data profile, the
opportunity for the use of ai,LLMs, all of that type of stuff,
to parse that data and makerecommendations and suggestions
is invaluable, especially inthis day and age.
Jeremy Julian (04:49):
I think that's so great that you guys are doing
that.
'cause as I said earlier, I'mcoming off the heels of leaving
the Metech conference and I.
Just got to listen to lots ofrestaurant leaders stand on
stage and talk about the factthat these systems are
disparate, the fact that they'rehaving a hard time getting to
those customers, restaurants andretail really for that matter.
and restaurants more so thaneven retail, are one of the only
(05:11):
offline commerce engines thatyou don't have the customer data
at your fingertips.
When I go on Amazon, you knowwho I am.
When I go on gap.com, you knowwho I am.
When you go on walmart.com, youknow who I am.
When I go into the store, they,it's a slower transaction
volume, so you can do that.
But in restaurants it's astruggle to figure out how
people are doing that.
And then the second thing that Iheard you say, Dom, that I think
(05:32):
is great is the unifyingcommerce idea has been something
that people have been trying tofigure out for quite some time,
but.
Oftentimes within the business,it starts at foundation.
So Jeremiah, we were talking alittle bit about where you guys
are finding, as you guys areengaging with different brands,
that they struggle and I equateit oftentimes to the
(05:52):
architecture side of things.
they often will start to buildbefore they even know what their
end goal is.
Can you dig in a little bit onwhy you think that is and why?
Having somebody like House ofGiants can help them to walk
through that business process tohelp them understand how
architecting it properly makes aB much better foundation to grow
into the future.
Jeremiah Landi (06:13):
I think I was just having this conversation
this morning.
I had a two hour conversationabout integrating AI into
platforms and the strugglepeople are having because of the
architecture.
I.
Think it's a mixed bag of nutswhen you talk.
So I think the reason why a lotof people start with the
architecture decision is becausea lot of people don't know what
data they have, or it's anafterthought.
And that's where a lot ofengineering companies also
(06:34):
start, if that makes sense.
So typically when you approach atraditional engineering company,
they will go, okay, show us thedata, and they'll build up from
there.
I don't think a lot of peoplereally start.
The other way.
So it's always a question oflike chicken and egg.
So I could either get your dataarchitectured or structured or
unified, and spend all this timebringing in together through
different pipelines and anyother technical routes.
(06:57):
Or I could spend time on thefront understanding what data I
need and then just getting thatdata out there.
I think the big discussion thismorning was.
To flip it on its head.
A lot of executives want changenow.
They wanna see movement, butthen a lot of technical people
are mired in the details, A lotof the discussion that I was
having this morning was focusedaround what if we just started
with a clean slate and reallyreversing, the discussion.
(07:20):
So instead of saying Hey, let'sbring in bureaucracy.
It's what if we started with aclean slate?
What are we trying to do here?
What are we trying to build?
Getting a really goodunderstanding of that and then
building the data in to supportthat, or even migrating the data
if it's too heavy.
I know that some restaurants.
have been around for quite along time.
We've worked with some, out inthe San Francisco area and when
you take over projects, it'sjust a lot of baggage you have
(07:43):
and that could really weigh downwhere you're looking to go or
what you're looking to do.
And so I think it's reallyimportant to do that.
Flip to your point, and thenback in the architecture from
there.
I think if you start too earlyon that you just end up with
probably a product that isn'tideal for what you have and a
lot of budget that goessomewhere where you're not a
hundred percent sure where.
Jeremy Julian (08:02):
and I always use the Stephen Covey start with the
end in mind.
And if you know where you'retrying to get to, it's easier to
back into it.
And then you oftentimes willhave data and then you might be
missing some pieces of data.
And so it's like, how do we fillthat gap?
But in the interim, and I seepeople do that all the time
where they'll just go, we needto look like Starbucks.
And so they, they want to justchase Starbucks and their CEO
(08:23):
comes into this IT guy's deskand throws something down and
says.
Starbucks is doing this, I wannafigure out how to do it.
And ultimately they're stuckholding the bag because they
don't have, they don't have thepieces that go through that.
Help me understand how you guyswalk these people through this
because it's a combination.
I say this also on the showoften, I.
It is involved in a hundredpercent of the restaurant
projects.
Now they have to be involved inevery piece of it from an LTO
(08:46):
that's going out to new POS tonew music that's going in the
store.
Across the board, it is involvedin all projects, and so their
budget, their time is oftentimesstretched.
Help educate some of our ITlisteners out there.
How do you guys help them to goback to the business and point
these things out that says, Iappreciate that you want to get
to Starbucks, but we need to laythe foundation so that we can
(09:08):
get there because it will beaccelerated.
With the advent of AI and such,how do you guys coach them
through that process?
Dominic Magnifico (09:14):
Yeah, it really starts it, it really
starts with the discoveryprocess, your initial
discussion.
with everybody, right?
it's one of the things that alltoo often, especially in
agencies that we've worked at inthe past, it just gets breezed
over where it's okay, cool.
We think we have anunderstanding of what you need.
We're just gonna go ahead andbuild what we think you need.
The approach that we foundthat's just vastly more
effective is we ask probably waytoo many questions.
(09:38):
trying to really like, dig intothe true reasoning behind the
problems that our partners areseeing, right?
So partner will come to us witha problem, they'll say, oh,
we're not, we're not convertingor we're not seeing as much
traffic as we want to, orsomething like that.
And we.
We drill down to try to findwhat the actual solution is or
what the actual underlyingproblem, is.
(09:59):
in, in terms of talking to likewith IT folks and stuff, it's
really like it's data-drivendecisions.
It's, we've.
Very often had to basically sellour expertise to, the C-level
executives and stuff like that,where it's like, Hey, trust us.
We've been doing this for, overa decade.
here's the data to support thedecisions that we're making and
(10:19):
based on our experience andexpertise, here are the user
experience changes you need.
You're losing people becausethey're, transferring to a third
party site and maybe sometimesthat redirects not working
properly, or that experience isslow.
using that data and it's alittle frustrating sometimes,
but selling yourself and saying,Hey, here's the value that we're
bringing to the table, and hereare the numbers that support it.
(10:40):
So it all starts at the verybeginning of that, documenting
that, having thoseconversations, with the IT
people in the room becausethey're the ones that understand
the systems.
Jeremy Julian (10:49):
and I think, sorry, I don't mean to kick off
your mind, but I think ingeneral.
We never had these elements ofbeing able to capture this data
to be able to present that backto'em.
And at the end of the day, Ithink we all know, data is just
a tool to drive a decision.
Most decisions are made withemotions and then the data backs
it up.
But if you can show thosethings, you can change their
emotions and back into it.
And I had an experience.
(11:10):
I was sitting with a customerat, I literally was sitting at
this conference and it's a brandthat I like to eat at, and I had
a bad digital experience and I'mlike, you realize that I went to
a different brand because ofthis?
and they were baffled.
I said, go look at the data.
How many times do people havethat item in their cart and they
go to order and it doesn't gothrough?
What are you doing about it?
(11:30):
And so you guys talked a lotabout, and I promise not to get
in the weeds, but you guystalked about kind of front end
and CMS and different ways.
Practically Jeremiah tell, whatis that?
I know what it is, but for ourlisteners that, that may not
understand what the front end isor this front end development,
it like practical, like CEOdoesn't know anything about it.
What exactly does that mean?
Jeremiah Landi (11:50):
So I think it all depends on where you're
coming from and where yourorganization is.
So like we were talking to Olothe other day and they dropped
the term CFE all the time, orcustom front end.
So it's, what it really comesdown to is normally different
restaurants or differentorganizations have a backend
that they already choose orsomebody that they're working
with that they like, or maybethey're working with a loyalty
(12:12):
program.
So it's.
Putting something in the frontof the customer that doesn't
necessarily always have toentail all the backend or all
the baggage that comes with it.
So reworking what the customersees or what a user sees.
a very good example is thatStarbucks app, right?
So I was part of that wholelaunch when they first came out
with the loyalty program, thestars, if you've seen those.
(12:35):
And so a lot of that discussionis just re-skinning the back
end.
So they didn't do a lot ofrebuilding.
A lot of it was just to say.
Okay, what are our users doing?
How do we, in that case, gamifyit.
Because to your point, for ashopping cart, how do we remind
customers?
Do you do a cart wiggle?
There's a million different waysto drive people to use the
different variations, especiallyin current day when video's
(12:56):
becoming heavy in a lot ofrestaurants where users wanna
see maybe food move or see thesteam coming off of'em.
It's a way for us to present thefood or the menus or the
offerings, whether it's drinks,in a way that appetizers
customers, engages customers andallows them to, for the business
side.
This will make me sound a littleconsumers, but buy more because
(13:18):
ultimately that is what you'relooking for.
The ROI is you're not justlooking to have a pretty
website.
It's.
How do we get these users to doit?
And oftentimes it'sincorporating some of the CDP
data, so the customer dataprofile to say, Hey look, we've
seen this customer has done thisbefore.
And pull it up to the front endlike you're saying, so that a
customer doesn't know you'redoing all this complicated
stuff, but it runs reallysmooth.
Jeremy Julian (13:38):
Yeah.
And I think that, I guess youguys wrap for a little bit
internally about the problemsthat you guys see when you guys
go into brands before they'veengaged with you guys.
'cause I think it's, I think itback to the data points, I think
all too often I.
You'll hear from people and Domyou said it earlier, we gotta go
sell our services and be like,trust us.
But at the end of the day, Ithink all too often I have a
(14:00):
good friend who used to do thisin the consumer space, consumer,
good space.
He's you have no idea how manysales you're losing because you
don't convert.
And so help me, help ourlisteners to understand so that
they can go back to their ITteam so they can go back to
their marketing team so thatthey can go back to their agency
team.
What are some of the commonthings that you guys are seeing
that people are or are notdoing, that are hurting their
(14:22):
brand and hurting theirperception out there?
And really at the end of theday, to your point, Jeremiah
hurting their top line sales.
Dominic Magnifico (14:28):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we.
See often is this it feels likea, like an everything or nothing
approach, right?
Where especially when you'retalking about like data
collection, and how to use thatdata and stuff like that, what
Jeremiah was talking aboutearlier, where it's like backing
into the problem is going togenerally yield a better result
for you.
So let's actually drill down,figure out what it is that you
(14:48):
really need.
In order to effectively,effectively move your customers
through your entire experience,end to end, whether they're in
the restaurant, physicallyordering online, all of that
type of stuff.
So the biggest problem I thinkright now that we've faced is
just, it is just theoverwhelming amount of data that
there is and how to effectivelyuse it.
(15:10):
People just.
People just wanna useeverything.
And if you're prioritizingeverything, you're prioritizing
nothing.
So figuring out how
Jeremy Julian (15:17):
a true developer,
Dominic Magnifico (15:18):
actually listen.
Jeremy Julian (15:19):
developer.
gimme a priority list, man.
and I love it.
I tease that.
I tell customers that all thetime.
You can't have 10 priorities.
You can have one priority andthen that one gets done and you
go to the next one.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut youoff, but I have to tell people
this all the time.
You need to give me a four ranklist.
Gimme the top five.
Man.
I can't get, so sorry.
I'll let you keep going.
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Dominic Magnifico (16:14):
No, you're absolutely right.
Jeremiah Landi (16:15):
I'm gonna cut you off now too, but I think
also to, to dog pile on this,you also can't gauge success
like when you're changingeverything at once.
'cause that's a lot of what ithits on is they're like, oh
yeah, we wanna show movement orwe wanna show our eye.
And when you're making all thesechanges at once, it's really
hard to gauge Okay, what'sactually working, what's not.
And then, very on point.
sorry.
(16:35):
Okay, Dom,
Dominic Magnifico (16:36):
no, that's you're hitting the nail on the
head.
I think.
between the prioritization.
So doing too much at once.
So you're trying to completelyrefactor your loyalty,
completely refactor your frontend, the user experience, the
design, all of that stuff atonce.
It tends to become cumbersomeand then you're again,
prioritizing everything andprioritizing nothing all at the
same time.
(16:57):
but within that, one of thethings that it, we've definitely
noticed that is a little bittougher of a conversation to
have with folks, especially likefrom it to the executive level
and stuff like that, is thevalue of the user experience and
the.
Like I said, the ends to endin-house, out of house, online.
the experience tailored to thecustomer in a way that they can
(17:20):
expect.
and are familiar with, even ifthey've used your app one time,
is massively important.
And it's one of the things thatwe have countless conversations
with folks where it's like theinitial investment of doing the
user research, doing interviewswith the users, trying to
understand how people areinteracting with your brand and,
moving through your space andall of that type of stuff is
(17:41):
sometimes a hard sell.
people generally, because you'renot getting that immediate
return.
Out of those types of things,it's hard to sell people on.
so yeah, between theprioritization of the, the
efforts that you're trying todo, the development efforts, the
branding efforts, and then theselling of the user experience
are the things that we arechallenged by, quite frequently.
Jeremy Julian (18:00):
and it's funny because I think that especially
generationally, people see itand they can tell a disconnect
between my online experience andmy in-store experience.
And if the, there are certainbrands that the experience in
store is better than it isdigitally, and there's some that
are the opposite.
And so they're gonna drive someof that behavior, but not
understanding to your guys'point, start with the end in
(18:21):
mind and map that whole journeyfrom start to finish has to be
consistent.
'cause if it's not.
You get some disunity in thebrand, and I love it when I go.
there's some brands that arejust awful and I don't wanna
pick on any names I'm gonna talkabout here in just a second.
I hate, I'm never gonna talknames of people that do it
poorly, the ones that have trulyput an effort in to creating
this experience versus not as itrelates to that experience.
(18:45):
Jeremiah, talk to me about howyou guys think through.
Creating an experience that'smemorable, but also serves their
purposes.
I'm a father of four.
Sometimes me getting on, I wantto order fast, have it in the
app, have it paid, and move on.
Whereas other times, I wantdiscovery and I wanna work
through those things.
And that's a hard thing tobalance because again, whether
(19:08):
the online experience is, or akiosk experience, or the full
browser experience, all of thosethings, depending upon how I'm
interacting with a brand.
you have to be cognizant of it.
How do you guys think aboutthose different things?
Because to your point, Dom, youguys have to walk through the
customer journey, both in storeand away, and not doing it in a
way that resonates.
You ultimately could bounce themto your competitor and
(19:30):
ultimately lose that sale forthat time and potentially
forever.
Jeremiah Landi (19:32):
I think it's, what, when you say that, it's
always the excessive amount ofpopups when I go through.
So I'm always in a rush, but forsome reason I.
There's just a lot of popups.
So I think it's really dialingin what our customers are doing
and, when I say we, it's therestaurant or the brand,
understanding what the customersare doing and why they're
engaging with us and providing'em pathways through I know I
(19:53):
just referenced popups, but it'sa lazy way to deal with Hey, we
don't know what they wanna do,so why don't we just throw a
bunch of popups, or we try toupsell them.
I know a co a lot of gasstations tend towards, in their,
towards their, User menus, theyhave a lot of popups to try to
sell you things.
So you go to checkout, they'relike, what about a cookie?
What about a drink?
You're like, nah.
This isn't how to do it.
So I think a lot of what we'vedone in the past is a ver a lot
(20:15):
of variation of different waysto user test.
So what we like to do is lead inwith and understand what a
user's going to do, why they'redoing it.
And then we also like to dothings like.
Do heat mapping, do eyetracking, which we've done in
the past.
And so really understand likewhat's a user doing when they're
engaging with a kiosk or whenthey're eng engaging with a
website.
(20:36):
Like really dive down.
And then also look at how farwe're willing to go.
Because to your point, not allcustomers are our customer too.
So it's a good understanding tosay, did that guy balance
because it was price, whichwe've seen before where some
restaurants are trying to chaseprice and you're like, look,
those aren't what the.
The metrics say, yes, we can getthem, but we're be much better
off making a better userexperience for people that are
(20:58):
maybe adding a lot of items totheir cart.
Or maybe they're largerfamilies, to your point, or
they're doing partying.
So maybe the focus is oncatering rather than on this.
And I think really drilling downand understanding that front,
because I think not every badthing is an emergency, right?
So not everything's a hurricane.
Sometimes you just go look like,yeah, we lost a couple people,
(21:20):
but that was to be expected.
I think it's.
As we said before, it's reallydriving at understanding what
you're doing and why you'redoing it.
I think that there was a goodphrasing that was explained to
me earlier that a lot of peopledon't really understand the why
or the how.
They understand the what.
So really when you look at yourtarget, you have, I think I.
Alex Simmick said it where youhave the Y on the inside and
(21:43):
most people don't make it pastthe w the why, the how, or the
what, So they hit that, what?
And they go, okay, this iswhat's going on.
And they don't really dig down.
So
Jeremy Julian (21:53):
Yeah.
and it's funny'cause I had acustomer call me a while back
'cause they were fighting a lotof abandoned carts on catering.
And I said to them, have youconsidered the fact that they're
a pharmaceutical rep and they'reconsidering catering, but they
realize that your product is tooexpensive?
And they were really trying toredirect them to a customer
service person while they werein the middle of that cart
experience to say, Hey, we haveother options that might not be
(22:14):
on this website.
If you tell me your budget's$500for this meal, I can get you
something.
And so it was an interestingexperience that he had.
He was trying to figure out thatthe bad customer.
Service story that I was justabout to share, which goes back
to your guys' data comments.
I just got an email four hoursago to order lunch from a brand
and it, in the email it talkedabout ordering lunch from this
(22:36):
brand and this brand, and itgave me the store name, which is
my local store, which is in myCDP, which is in my.
The store's been closed for 30days.
I don't know why it's closed,but the store was closed, so now
I craved this product, but now Ican't get it because they did
the right thing.
They got into my inbox, they gotmy attention, they got me to go
click.
I clicked it.
(22:56):
I'm like,'cause.
On the local Facebook page thatsaid that they're gonna open up
some time in March.
And so we're recording this inMarch and I'm like, okay,
hopefully they're ready.
'cause I've been craving it.
The next closest store is 15miles away.
I'm not gonna drive 15 or 20minutes to go get this food, but
right here in town, I mightdrive the 10 minutes or seven
minutes to go get it.
But now this comes back to yourguys' data comment.
Talk to me a little bit abouthow you guys consider the data
(23:19):
elements, because thatexperience for me as a customer
was not great.
I got an email, I now gotcraveable product and now I
can't get it.
So now it turned into a, I'mgonna start to ignore their
emails because they're notrelevant to me and now they can,
are gonna have a harder timegetting my attention.
When the store does reopen herein town, and again, I don't even
know why it's closed, it's anational chain, but they just
(23:39):
happen to have this store that'sclose to me closed.
Talk to me a little bit abouthow you guys even consider that
data.
'cause that.
To me was a fail on theirmarketing's part, telling me,
come to this store in your townto get this product and then
it's not there.
Dominic Magnifico (23:52):
Yeah, there's no question that having near
real time.
Time data at your disposal isvaluable, right?
Because in that exact scenario,if instead of a, an email
advertising like, Hey, go toyour local store to get this.
They could instead have sent youan email saying Hey, this store
has been closed, but we'rereopening in March.
Here's a coupon for like yourfirst time back, like after,
(24:15):
something like that.
Using that
Jeremy Julian (24:17):
DoorDash from the store that's 15 miles away to
get the food to me, freedelivery for that store.
And I'm sorry, I'm just, but I'mgiving these guys suggestions
that says this would have gottenme to order a fricking pizza
this morning.
I promise you had it happened.
So sorry.
I'll let you keep going.
Dominic Magnifico (24:30):
No, that's, it's exactly right.
It's truly, it.
It's truly just using accuratedata to speak to your clientele.
There has to be some in that CDPprofile, there has to be some
sort of, radius of a range, likehere are all of the stores in
Jeremy's area.
Like how do we direct him to anew.
Store to get food.
(24:50):
So in any case, I to play on theprevious conversation too, it,
it's almost like anaccessibility problem.
It because even, the father offour single mom carrying two
kids and not knowing how to likequickly reorder her last order,
is a very common issue.
So like.
Developing and designing theseexperiences with basically, not
(25:13):
necessarily like worst casescenario in mind, but all kinds
of different use cases.
a lot of applications, it seemsespecially like their mobile
ordering experience and stuffhave moved towards a quick
reorder.
Type of thing.
So in your case, you're superbusy, you don't wanna see all
the popups.
You can see your last two orthree orders on your phone and
be like, yeah, I know exactlywhat I want to get from this.
(25:33):
this Indian food place that I goto all the time.
I'd like to just reorder thatsuper quickly so I don't have to
think about it.
And then other times, using it,it's hard to use contextual data
like that to know when someoneis in a, state of, immediacy.
but there are indicators thatyou can use within your data to
figure out, what the right timeto pop up a message is.
(25:55):
so it is truly assessing thedata that you have access to and
trying to understand whatactions you can help make easier
for the users through that data.
So it's taking an inventory ofwhat you have and really
assessing how to use itproperly.
Jeremiah Landi (26:11):
I would also say it's how you're approaching
sales too.
So I think that was a huge letdown for marketing.
I think to your point, Dom.
You could have all the data inthe world, but you gotta really
ask how and why we're doing it,right?
So I think a lot of times whenwe do it, because we do a lot of
different integrations withdifferent CRMs, so customer
relationship tools, and a lot ofour questions come into why are
(26:32):
we doing this?
Why are we engaging with this?
What are we using this data for?
So like we said, the abandonedcart stuff, when do you stop
emailing somebody on theabandoned cart?
it's just as critical as whenyou do.
And I think to your point, it'sunderstanding how is my
marketing team.
Going to be engaged with thedata that we're collecting and
where are we sending this stuffso that we get a cohesive
(26:54):
message?
Because you also don't wannabecome the brand that's
desperate for sales, right?
So we've seen those before wherethey take ads out everywhere, or
you get a million emails aboutlike discounts and that stuff,
and you're like, the food wasmediocre and now I'm getting hit
a million times.
Like I, I don't want to go backto my how many times.
you end up in the spam box,which nobody really likes
because then you're definitelyforgotten about.
Jeremy Julian (27:16):
Or you only engaged with the brand when you
get a discount.
bed Bath and Beyond went out ofbusiness because they hit the
20% coupons that you're like,no, I'm not going with this 10%
coupon.
I'm not going with 15%.
I need that 20% to get my newpillows for my wife for the
couch.
'cause we don't have seven othersets of pillows that are already
on the couch.
yeah, my wife is not here today,so she's not gonna come holler
at me.
one other thing that you guystalked about early on, Jeremiah
(27:38):
is sending people to other thirdparty sites and kind of the
efficacy of that and reallydriving that behavior.
Talk to me and especially inkind of some of these new
privacy laws that we have aroundtracking customers in a digital
way.
Talk to me about how you guyshelp solve that to really,
whether I'm going out to aDoorDash site or I'm going out
to one of the larger onlineordering sites, so I'm on the
(27:58):
main site and how do you workwith your clients to embed that
experience in so that you don'thave to let them leave?
And or if you do, you trackthat, that, that backfill.
because I think it's.
All too often, oh, it's there.
It's on the site.
I used it this morning.
It's working fine.
But you don't realize whatultimately happened from that.
Jeremiah Landi (28:17):
I think Tom said it best that we don't develop a
lot of mobile apps.
I think what it really comes inwith is being conscious on why
and what you're doing.
With data collection, we alwayssay you don't want to collect
too much, but you don't wannacollect too little because at
the end of the day, once youstart talking about Europe or
wherever you're going, It couldbe very problematic with data,
forgetting and removing and thentracking and then sometimes you
(28:39):
don't need all the data so itjust becomes messy.
Like you could ask the NSA aboutthat.
but I think a lot of it is beingvery conscious of when you're
sending people out to anotherapp or integrating it, right?
So I think we hear that a lotwith people that are doing
different type of.
like integrations with differentbuying, oh, it's totally
blanking me now, but in storepurchase options.
So they have a menu in storethat they want, they keep all
(29:00):
their inventory in there, butthey also want it replicated on
the website, so they could trackthrough one purchaser.
And so I think a lot of it comesdown to making sure that.
When you're sending by somebodyoff to an app, it's a deliberate
choice, right?
So somebody's not going toDoorDash because you don't have
an experience.
Somebody's going to DoorDashbecause you want them to have
that experience.
(29:20):
I think that's a lot of theissues that we see with Yelp,
with reviews, right?
So a lot of people don't reallycommand or control the brand or
the story that's being told, sothey let it occur off their
platform and then you're dealingwith that.
So I think it, it comes down to.
How big you are because itdoesn't always make sense for
you to manage your own.
(29:40):
So if you're a small mom and poppizza shop, yes, you could have
the insurance, you could havethe drivers, you could have all
that infrastructure orpotentially you could offload
it.
But I think it, it comes to abusiness decision on
understanding.
What money you're trying to keepin the house, right?
And then what's the RO on that?
So if we did do something like aprogressive web app so that you
(30:01):
could purchase, which we've donein the past instead of a native
app, you get the best of bothworlds, but you still have to
have somebody that manages that.
You have to have integrations onthe back end.
So I think.
It really comes down to thebrand, doing a deliberate choice
and choosing, as a business,what you're partnering with.
There's also a lot of localdelivery that we've told
customers about, especially whenyou're in places like New York,
(30:23):
because that's also a brandstory you could tell, where it's
look, we're not choosing to gowith DoorDash.
We're choosing to go with us,local guy who will take orders,
for us, and
Jeremy Julian (30:32):
and now even DoorDash and they've been on the
show and Uber Eats, they bothhave the ability to dispatch
their own drivers from your own.
So you can take the first partydelivery, but then dispatch
their team so you don't have todo all of the insurance.
But I think all to all tooseldom do brands think about,
Hey, I just sent them toDoorDash.
And you know what?
There was 400 clicks on theDoorDash button, but I only got
(30:52):
150 orders.
What happened to that other 250customers?
Where did they go and why did Inot get them?
That goes back to your commentabout, about, top line revenue
and ensuring that you're keepingthem in your, sphere of
influence as long as possible tobe able to drive that behavior
to get that sale so that you'renot the guy.
That went to go order pizzatoday and the store closed and
you don't wanna drive 15minutes, obviously, I'm teasing.
(31:14):
I'm not gonna say the brandname, but, let me tell you,
there might be a time in, thenext couple of days that I'm
gonna be in that, that, 15minutes away store area that I
might have to, might have to gocheck it out.
last question that I want to godown.
You guys talked a little bitabout ai, and AI has been, a
huge topic.
As programmers and as peoplethat have been in the tech space
for a long time.
Ironically, it's just now it'sbecome mainstream.
(31:37):
A lot of what we've been doingfor logarithms and these stories
have been, but I think they've,I don't wanna say normalized,
but they've gotten'em to,democratized, I guess is the
phrase I used.
They've democratized the abilityto get to this data, whereas
before you'd have to send it toa data scientist to go do all of
this stuff, and then they'd spitback out data.
How is that gonna impact?
All of these things becausewithout asking it the right
questions, you're not gonna getthe right answers.
(31:58):
But how do you guys see thatimpacting the digital experience
for marketing people, forexecutives, for finance people,
for operators and technologists?
how do you guys see that notonly accelerating, but quite
frankly harming?
'cause I think there's a lot ofharm to be done if you don't do
it properly.
Jeremiah Landi (32:13):
I think it's, I think it's choosing to be
deliberate.
I think that's, I think the moreI say that, that's more of a
story of a lot of ourengagements.
So right now we've seen a lot ofpeople doing the AI integration
onto the website.
So while you're navigating, itpops up and it says, Hey look, I
know you're looking at this.
So I think that's a verydeliberate use.
It helps.
Get in front of the person.
We know the time to buy is verycritical, especially when
(32:35):
somebody's hungry, they'relooking to get now.
So if you put too many stops inthe way, they'll tend to avoid.
And so it's providing enough ofthe data to engage with an
individual.
If that individual is, alreadypart of your CDP, you're able to
pull that back and say, Hey,look, I've seen you buy this in
the past.
Is this what you're looking for?
Really engage.
I think on the other area andaspects of it, AI is used as a
(32:58):
blanket term, so it could helpwith.
Jeremy Julian (33:00):
Sorry, I hear that all the time.
It's you know what, no, AI isnot just chat GPT.
That's not the only thing that'sout there.
So I apologize.
I'll let you keep
Jeremiah Landi (33:07):
No, it is very much especially when you say
marketing, people think Dahlia,think about some of the big
people to just generate images.
But I think.
When it comes to ai, it's alsothings like your data
interpolation, right?
So when you're pushing databetween systems, so ai, I had a
conversation with today wherethey had no developers in their
marketing department, so theyallowed their marketing team,
(33:27):
they educated them on how torapidly develop websites in.
Different AI programs that thenthey could take to developers.
'cause it helped them definebetter what they're after.
It define them to rapidlyiterate, and then when they're
going to corporate, they're not,they don't have to be faced
with, Hey, I need this manypeople for this long.
And a budget, it allowsexperimentations, but on the
(33:49):
back end it allows you to do alot more to augment the
development, to augment themarketing, to augment a lot of
that stuff because you could.
With the proper promptengineering and, mitigation of
hallucinations, you could reallydrive it to, to do things that a
lot of people don't expect.
Dominic Magnifico (34:06):
the one thing that I'd add to that too is
like.
Yeah.
Being a developer and being inthis space for as long as we
have, there's been like 10different events where it's oh
boy, this thing is going to takeeverybody's job.
you're going to become obsoletenow because X, Y, or z, is now
so prominent.
And it's happened with AI acouple of times.
We've gone through a couple ofcycles, of that.
(34:26):
And the thing that remains true,especially like with these
buzzword type of technologies orprocesses and practices, is
really just like.
Trusting or partnering withpeople who know how to leverage
that tool in a way that is not.
Only that tool you, youbasically understanding how to
(34:48):
use it in an effective manner asa supplement to what you're
already doing is far better thana partner that would come to you
and say, oh, we'll just throw AIinto everything that you're
doing and your sales will go up,traffic will go up, that type of
thing.
it's a surgical implementationat the right times.
is the best way to put it, Ithink.
Jeremy Julian (35:08):
Yeah, and I think you've gotta figure out how to
prompt it and you gotta figureout how to get it in there
because you know what?
Without the prompting andwithout the capabilities, none
of it matters.
It's like it will spit out somuch.
But if you're not, a tacticianof that tool to be able to
massage it and really, it doesaccelerate.
I know it does accelerate thecapability to create some of
this stuff, but then you'vegotta have the discipline to
(35:30):
test it and test it again andsee where it goes and see what
happens with it.
And I think I.
Across the board.
That's one of the things that Isee too many people doing.
I'm sure you guys get'em all thetime.
I get how many LinkedIn andblind app messages do you get
that says, I see that you fromthese three things on your
profile, I want to talk to youto sell you something.
It's stop.
I can tell it's AI and it turnsme away almost instantly versus
(35:53):
a genuine, I had somebody that,that, that went through and I
could tell he was genuinelylooking at what we were doing
and it.
it, you can tell there's a careand deliberate, I guess
extension of who that brand is.
And that goes back to some ofour earlier conversations.
Dominic Magnifico (36:08):
Absolutely.
Jeremiah Landi (36:09):
I think what we've also been, I'll throw this
out there too.
What we've also been seeing AIused more of in the prompt
engineering real realm isseeing, dialers.
So when somebody calls into arestaurant, like instead of
having to go through like Panerawhere you have to dial through
restaurants and all that stuff,instead of doing that, it will.
Use a prompt, on the backendwhere you'll call in, we'll grab
(36:31):
the data, you'll pass it overthere, and then I can get you
to, not saying this is whatPanera does, but a Panera that's
local to your area.
So I think there's also a lot ofways that we've been seeing or
working with AI that's nottraditional.
A lot of people just think it'sweb only.
It can also be used in admindashboards.
one of the big discussions wehave is, making data.
(36:52):
More human.
So what we always say is thatprogramming is you learning to
speak like a computer.
So it's how do you programeither an LLM or something
locally as well that couldaccess your data to allow people
to understand the sentiments,right?
Or pull things out.
So maybe you had.
A lot of people callingfranchisees or whatever aren't
(37:12):
complaining.
Like you could have that AI goin there and pull out sentiments
from calls, things like that, ora lot of different items.
So I think when people say ai,they also just think it's not
really in all its facets.
It's more of just saying, Hey,this is a website, or, Hey, I'm
typing something in.
there's a lot of different wayswe've been seeing it done.
Jeremy Julian (37:30):
Yeah, and I think harnessing the power of people
like yourselves, that house ofGiants who have been there, done
that they know what it's gonnatake to not only do the core
basics of what you guys havedone for years, but also how can
you incorporate AI to acceleratethat and put the.
put the tools in the hands ofthe users so that they can
continue to accelerate theirsuccess.
I think that's a good shot, goodspot To wrap up, how would
people learn more about youguys?
(37:51):
again.
I could sit here and wrap allday long because I love ui, ux,
the use of data.
I, I hate that old adage, halfof marketing doesn't work.
We just don't know what halfnowadays, there's so much more
that we can do with the data tobe able to get to these things.
There's tokens from creditcards, there's, the, just so
many different ways that we canknow who our guests are and how
(38:11):
to engage with them, not only tobuild sales, but to build a
loyal customer that wants tocome back again and again.
And if we screw it up.
Use the data to be able to gomake it right for those people.
'cause that's, at the end of theday, what most people want is
they want you to say sorry andthen make it right.
And so across the board.
I love that.
So how would people learn moreabout House of Giants?
how would people engage and whatwould that look like?
Dominic Magnifico (38:32):
Yeah, definitely.
You can just, visit our website.
It's just house of giants.com.
that's where you'll find themost information we're on,
LinkedIn, Instagram, all thesocial media is just House of
Giants, yeah, that'd be the bestplace.
Jeremy Julian (38:42):
Awesome.
thank you guys for, sharing someof your guys' expertise.
I love,'cause there's so manypractical things that you guys
shared that.
Even if they don't engage withyou guys, which I hope they do,
and I know that you guys willget some people that'll engage,
but they're gonna get, maketheir brand better and
ultimately deliver a best,better customer experience.
'cause if they're not, I promiseyou, some of the other people
that are in your neighborhoodare doing it.
And so they're gonna get thatsale if they don't do it.
(39:02):
And so to our listeners, guys,like I said at the onset, I know
you guys got lots of choices.
So thank you guys for hangingout with us.
If you haven't already done so,please go give us a, a subscribe
on your favorite podcast playeror on YouTube and, to our
listeners, make it a great day.
Thanks for listening to TheRestaurant Technology Guys
podcast.
Visit restaurant technologyguys.com for tips, industry
(39:24):
insights, and more to help yourun your restaurant better.
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