In this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts, Michael Attias sits down with Chris Heffernan, CEO of dlivrd—a last-mile logistics company disrupting the gig delivery space with a focus on transparency, driver empowerment, and AI-driven matchmaking.
Chris shares his vision for a delivery ecosystem where restaurant operators and drivers both win. You’ll hear how dlivrd’s platform is custom-built for catering—not just another gig app. Think: delivery driver profiles, matching based on capacity and equipment (not just location), and AI that “swipes right” on the perfect driver for every order.
Michael and Chris dive into:
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The flaws of traditional delivery apps for catering orders
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How AI and driver profiling create better outcomes for large orders
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Why culture and community matter, even in the gig economy
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Practical ways caterers can leverage AI, from chatbot customer service to automated menu recommendations
Whether you’re running five catering deliveries a week or fifty, this episode will change how you think about delivery logistics.
Restaurant Catering Smarts is powered by CaterZen Catering Software, the all-in-one platform helping restaurants grow catering sales and streamline operations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Okay, so I was just asking you about the keeping the culture.
What do you do to keep the culture delivered?
Yeah, I think a big piece of it, especially working with the drivers who, you know, theyaren't necessarily employees, it's important to keep communication open.
So we're always transparent with them from, you know, from that earnings perspective, fromwhat we're doing.
(00:25):
We're very social media centric with them.
So we work to make sure that they're involved in different videos.
So most of the videos that we put out are of drivers making content for other drivers.
We'll go to a city and host an
Engagement event we pick like Dave and Buster's drivers come they bring their family.
There's food They get to play video games.
(00:47):
We give them little play cards So just those little things that like the big apps don'tnecessarily do and then honestly those higher earnings, right?
The drivers like that and they don't want to do anything to mess those up So you just takesome common-sense things like things that you should do because it's good You know, it's
just easy to be a good business person and then some of that sprinkle on some of thatlittle extra and bam
(01:09):
There you go, you got some buy-in from some drivers.
Very cool.
know, AI is all anyone talks about.
I'm sort of obsessed with it and we could go down that rabbit hole in so many differenttrajectories, but how are you using AI in your business?
And how do you think restaurants that cater can use AI to improve what they're doing?
(01:30):
Either from an operations or a sales perspective.
Yeah, there's so many different ways.
The way that we use it that's the most impactful for our business is most...
Delivery apps or most gig apps in general when you're looking for demand it pairs you witha driver That's the closest so it's closest and fastest is the rule for most apps Well,
(01:51):
that doesn't work in a catering world, right?
The $2,000 order the closest driver has a Mini Cooper.
That's not gonna fit in there So when an order hits our system we build a profile for itbased upon the brand the subtotal The delivery notes like say it says there's a service
elevator
we're going to need a cart for that order.
So we build all these different requirements to successfully complete that delivery.
(02:16):
And then we have a driver profile.
What kind of car they have, how many catering bags, if they have a cart, how often arethey on time to orders in this area?
How often are they on time to orders in the delivery area?
Are they available right now?
Do they, uh you know, do they have all the equipment they need?
And then in like a Tinder moment, the AI matches those two drivers.
(02:38):
So we're not going for quickest, fastest.
We're going for the best match.
And then if the driver matches with the order and they want to take it,
they swipe right just like on Tinder.
And now that's the driver for that order.
So that's the way that we probably best use AI.
For restaurants in the catering world, think a lot of it is you can't answer everyquestion about your catering menu all day, every day.
(03:02):
I think the biggest piece would be training a chat bot on your website to be able to say,I have a guest that has the dietary constraints of X, Y, and Z.
And that chat bot can answer that at 3 a.m.
versus like calling the
restaurant getting the person who runs the register, they don't know, let me get amanager, you know, because if you can answer those questions and convert them into an
(03:25):
online order, then before the store even opens, that customer might have ordered.
having, you know, AI there to assist in the customer order, and it's not necessarilyreplacing anybody, it's just, you know, helping get information into the hands of the
customer.
Yeah, I can see a time where there's like an AI avatar.
(03:45):
So you feel like you're talking to a real person as opposed to a chat and there's moreinteraction and they can point on the screen.
Like here, you want to look, you know, here and it clicks.
It actually clicks for you and opens up desserts or, and scrolls and say, Hey, this iswhat I recommend, you know, more interactive.
(04:05):
So, um, go ahead.
And I'd say more educational too, right?
I think a lot of what people are using resources for is like, let me answer the customer'squestion.
But in the scenarios, use AI to guide them how to answer their own questions.
Like, don't tell them what items have the dietary restrictions.
Hey, let me show you on the screen.
(04:26):
If you click here and here, this is how you can see what it is.
So when they revisit next time, they're more comfortable with it.
They're more into it.
Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy how quickly it's, you know, so I've got a place down inCosta Rica.
Have you been to Costa Rica?
Well, come visit if the house is empty, come hang out.
So uh it's exciting because it's very chill, great people, but it's also the Wild West.
(04:51):
And what I mean by that is you don't know if the guy who's doing work for you does goodwork or not.
You know, it's.
So, and it's very tropical rain, know, this rainy season is like, it's almost monsoon,right?
Like the rain will come down and you feel like it's somebody just dumped an 18 wheeler of,of water on your roof all at once.
(05:12):
So I've had a lot of water issues and drainage issues and.
what have you and just dealing with this roof.
just, I trusted the guy who did a lot of construction work fixing up the house.
He let me put a new roof.
He put tin foil on there and I'm not joking.
It's maybe double-plied tin foil.
So I spent all this fricking money and then I, I,
(05:33):
I was able to get some better recommendations and two guys said the same thing, butliterally I put in the roof dimensions, the pitch dimensions, asked about the thickness of
material, the quality of material, how much rain based on a heavy rainfall in my city inCosta Rica, would the gutters have to be able to hold in the downspouts and it sizes
(05:56):
everything, right?
Like things like.
You would have just had to trust the roofer to say, Hey, this is the shingles you need,and this is the gutters you need.
And now you can put in this rough stuff and it's telling you.
Stuff that you would have never known.
Right.
And I'm sure it's anything that you would want done.
And the same thing in your business, right?
There's just so many things, even just day to day operational.
(06:20):
You want to create a training manual, let AI give you a shortcut.
SOPs.
uh
responses to clients, know, maybe I'm not really happy and I need to send a response andit at least can tone it down and put in a professional and make it sound a little bit
better than me saying, listen here, schmuck, you know, kind of thing.
(06:43):
So, yeah, it's just gonna get crazier, I guess, till we're all out of work and then we'llfigure something else out.
And a lot of people think you have to like swing for the fences.
If I want to adopt AI, that means it's answering my phone calls.
It's flipping my burgers.
You know, it's doing all these things and you can use it for like a crawl before you walk,right?
(07:06):
Like you could take a sales report from one day in your restaurant, upload it into Geminior chat GPT and say, how like
How did I do yesterday?
What could I do to improve these margins?
How many cheeseburgers did I sell?
If I asked every customer, would you like fries with that?
And one out of every five answered yes.
(07:26):
What would that impact my bottom line with?
And just start doing little things like that.
It doesn't need to be a full replacement, but you can use it for these little insights.
And what do think AI is going to do?
you know, obviously you have Waymo and then, you know, Uber's trying to make everythingself-driving.
How's that going to affect your business?
(07:46):
I mean, I would imagine from a vehicle standpoint, autonomous, but you need somebody whocan lift those boxes and set them up.
you know, do you see a day where there's a robot that can deliver to set it up or that'sso far down the road or, know, what are you seeing down that way?
something I'm keeping an eye on.
mean, if you would ask me when I had my food cab business back in 2011, like Will Uber andDoorDash move out of the city?
(08:11):
Nah, they're fine downtown.
They don't want to mess with the suburban markets.
And then they did.
And in our business, in catering delivery, right?
know, everything in delivery is the last mile.
For catering delivery, it's really that last hundred yards, that last hundred feet.
Anybody can deliver to the door, FedEx, UPS, DoorDash, Roadie, Instacart, insert anybusiness here.
(08:33):
I've been delivering to doors forever and do it at a big scale.
But getting from that front door to that conference room, to that break room, setting thefood up, looking presentable, not cursing out the customer, like those are the pieces
that, you know, like a logistics company like us handle.
And an autonomous car can't replace that piece unless there's an autonomous robot in thatautonomous car, um you know, facilitating that.
(09:01):
think the more likely in my mind would be an autonomous car gets loaded up at therestaurant and goes to a downtown building.
A catering professional meets that car, goes upstairs and sets it up.
What would allow them to scale faster is they leave that downtown building, go threeblocks over.
And in a couple of minutes, another autonomous car from another restaurant meets thatcatering professional.
(09:26):
And then they go and set that order up.
A density in the catering reception is huge.
You look at a market like Philadelphia, most of those orders are going downtown.
Where's the scale lost in leaving that downtown area to go get food and come back?
But if the catering professionals are staying in that bubble and being met by the cars,then handling that last hundred feet.
(09:50):
And you might have that these high rise buildings say, Hey, it comes with a cateringconcierge.
You know, you know, the food gets delivered.
Our guys will set it up, deliver it for you.
And, know, you don't have to worry.
And then from a restaurant standpoint or your standpoint, it's like, Hey, we have thevehicle.
You put the hot food in the hot section, the cold food in the cold section.
And the guys, you know, they have the pick list that says, grab everything that has a reddot on it.
(10:14):
It's yours.
And you got three cold red dot pans and two hot red.
And you know in a bag, I mean who knows where it's going to be.
It's absolutely crazy.
Yeah, in a post-COVID world, like the feeding of people at the workplace has constantlychanged.
What was once a perk of, we got a pizza party because we hit quota last month, to nowlike, hey, you all got to come back to the office, we're going to feed you every day, has
(10:40):
become a huge change to the point that even some buildings are not.
rebuilding their cafeterias or they never brought workers back or didn't entertain theircafeteria contract.
And they're just having like three different restaurants catering orders come in and youjust go down and you order your food in the morning and they come and they pick your food
(11:00):
up from the station where we've seen brands that are like, hey, we need you to staffsomebody at these places.
And it's the old cafeterias.
So now there's a gig worker in there receiving the orders from other gig workers.
putting them out on shelves or putting them in different places or delivering them todifferent floors, all because there's no more cafeteria.
So we're gonna keep seeing improvements and changes, not just in the AI space, but how thecustomers work with the brands.
(11:28):
Are y'all providing those gig workers for staffing the cafeterias?
Yeah, yeah, we ran a pilot in New York with a few clients and it worked out really welland we're now expanding it to others.
Cool.
Yeah, it's like, what is it they say?
You don't, I think I've heard on Shark Tank first, you don't back the horse, you back thejockey.
(11:49):
Because you never know, a good jockey, you know, they can adjust to the track conditions,right?
You know, when you started, this was, this is what the track was.
Now all of a sudden they've changed the track or you say, hey, here's an opportunity inanother track.
So now I'm gonna...
put another horse on this track and ride this horse on this track, you know, you know, my,my path has definitely not been a straight line and the things we're, working on.
(12:14):
I mean, we, it never ends, you know, until, until I guess AI kills us all or, know, yougotta go live off the grid.
Um, that's sort of a plan B, I guess, live off the grid and cause
I think you're gonna have to have a purpose in life if AI is doing everything one day andit could be 20 years 30 years from now right?
What are you going to do to have purpose?
(12:35):
know?
um
So the restaurants that are trying to grow their sales, because I'm sure you deal with allsorts of brands, Mature brands, emerging brands.
What do you see the difference between the winner, what I call the winners and losers, theones that are going out there crushing it, know, racking up the sales and the guys that
(13:02):
are just like, we get an easy cater order every now and then and you know.
Yeah, so I have a...
Pretty solid school of thought on this.
There's in my mind two types of operators out there.
The type that offer catering and the type that do catering.
The offering catering are the ones that have a window sticker or have on their menu with alittle bubble and like the stars around it.
(13:26):
Like we offer catering or order catering but have no online ordering system to facilitateit.
Don't have, uh I'll call them like a SME, a subject matter expert, whether that's acatering manager or just one of the
team members either in management or just in general in the brand that is like catering istheir main piece or at least their expert part.
(13:51):
And they're not doing any like marketing outside of relying on those third party vendors.
Those are the people that offer catering.
The people that do it have invested in it.
They've looked at different packaging.
They've streamlined their menu.
They have an online ordering process.
They're working different marketing angles outside of the marketplaces.
They're using their leads from third parties and from in-store dining to cultivate newcatering business.
(14:17):
It seems stupid, but a fishbowl on a counter that says drop your business card to win anoffice for your lunch.
That's a great tactic that takes no money, some scotch tape and I don't know, a fishbowlfrom Amazon, but it generates leads.
That's the first part.
And that's what the people that are, you know, doing catering are out there, you know,doing that.
(14:39):
When brands come to
and they're like, I want to work with delivered.
need somebody to scale my delivery.
And it's like, what are you doing now?
we don't, you know, we don't do a lot now.
How do you get orders?
Oh, like I can call in and we can do managers.
And I'm like, you guys don't need us yet.
You don't need a delivery partner.
If you're just offering catering, the owner, the manager, somebody that's me, that'ssubject matter expert, they should be handling that one, two orders that you get from easy
(15:06):
cater or from wherever because they need to gain the customer experience
experience, check the packaging, see how it travels.
When you start getting three, four, five orders a day, 20 orders a week, that's when youneed to look out for somebody like us at Delivered to help you scale that piece out.
But we're not going to give you that insight.
We're not going to give you the customer reaction.
(15:27):
You're not going to see that the mac and cheese, when it gets uncovered, is soggy, right?
Or that the french fries don't travel well, or maybe you shouldn't do the souffle dish.
You know, I don't know.
You learn that through practice.
Yeah.
is recognizing do you offer or do you do catering?
And if just offer, start doing the things to make you do it.
(15:49):
Yeah, for sure.
I did a million a year in catering out of my 104 seat restaurant before I sold out and wedid a million things.
It's funny you talk about the fishbowl.
We did that but instead of a business card, we had qualifying questions on a form.
So we knew which ones to target.
We're actually building that into our software.
So we have lead gen forms and we'll have a QR code.
(16:09):
So now it'll just be a sign.
And then you have the mobile interface and you can register and then you can cherry pickwho to market to and put them in a sequence.
So just a lot of things that we're trying to automate because you know, most people aren'tnatural salespeople.
They don't have a sales background, more of a food background.
So, you know, you're one of our partners.
(16:31):
Like we integrated with Burke, which is a third party marketplace for delivery services.
And, you know, the reason we went for that at cater zen is we didn't want to have tointegrate with three, four or five
six providers.
you know, integration is very costly and pain in the butt.
And what we found is there's different levels of integrations.
(16:53):
uh And we've spent probably a good part of nine months fine tuning the problems that wesee in delivery.
you know, last minute, just putting tight rails to prevent issues, right?
Because again, they're going to come to us and say, well, delivered screwed this up or,know, whoever screwed it up, but it has more to do with the systems you set up.
(17:20):
So you're set up for delivery and you know, you're not getting a request 15 minutesbefore, Hey, why didn't somebody come pick this up?
Right?
That kind of stuff.
Um, so I know, you know, y'all are very well known.
in the catering delivery space, what do you do that sets you apart?
So if somebody's thinking about, you know, that last mile, really, it's the last inch,right?
(17:43):
Because you're putting the brownies on the table and then you're walking out, right?
It's really delivery meets catering setup.
So it's far more than delivery.
um What sets you apart?
Yeah, there's a few things.
Like I mentioned before, that matching, I think that's a huge differentiator, right?
Like we are actually building profiles and matching drivers with that.
(18:05):
So the idea is that you get the best optimal outcome for your business, for your brand.
Because at the end of the day, like you said there, the customer isn't going to say, like,delivered did bad.
They don't know who delivered is.
They ordered from Joe's Barbecue.
The Google review that's negative or the complaint email is going to say, your driver did
(18:26):
didn't do this, even though it wasn't their driver, right?
It was a driver that got matched through Cater's End that went to Burke, that came toDelivered, you know, who did that delivery.
So making sure that we represent the brand well is huge, and I think driver matching playsa huge part into that.
Communication, we have a support team with a restaurant hotline, so there is a great placethere to connect with a live customer service team and answer any questions pre, during,
(18:54):
or post order.
And our technology is pretty sweet.
I'm biased, but we just rolled out an order management app, delivery management app, sobrands can have full insight right in the palm of their hand to be able to enter orders,
track orders, view reports, all that fun stuff as well.
And then just a company that's rooted in delivery, Like and catering delivery in specific.
(19:20):
There's other couriers out there.
There's other delivery fleets, but 90 % of what we delivered is pre-scheduled large formatorders.
So we have that expertise and you know, we have a bunch of different partners.
So if someone comes to us and they're, you know, they're one of those people that offerand don't do, here's a list of resources of things you can check out.
Check out Cater Zen.
(19:41):
you need packaging?
Check out Sew and
so an insert packaging company here that's made some good stuff.
You need marketing and social media stuff.
We have a great company we work with that can help you with that.
we want to be able to help consult in a sense because the more order that brands get, themore orders we get to deliver, the more money we make.
it's the circle of life like the Lion King just with catering.
(20:05):
Yeah, that's for sure.
I mean, I forgot who told me this all time.
All all rising tides lift all ships, rising tides lift all ships.
And, know, what's good for one is good for the other.
And, know, the better job you do, the restaurant does well.
And it's one of those things I would say delivery is probably the most critical point inthe whole.
(20:31):
It's the weakest link.
It could be the strongest or the weakest link.
And you you find a lot of people want to nickel and dime.
That's not a place to nickel and dime, you know, charge your customers a fair price andjust explain like, it's not getting a pizza delivered where here's a box.
Have a good day.
We're setting it up.
We're, you know, making sure that, you know, it's done the right way.
(20:53):
It's not just dropping food in a box of door and saying goodbye.
If that was the case, it'd be cheaper, right?
Because it's like, here's your food.
Good luck.
Yeah, and it's exactly that.
It's, you you want a premium experience and a lot of people don't want to pay that premiumprice, but it is the last touch point for that customer journey.
(21:13):
You could have the sexiest online ordering.
You could have the most delicious food, but if that customer, if that driver leaves it onthe floor at the front door on the sidewalk or curses out the customer or drops it off at
the wrong address or insert any litany of problems that we see.
this?
They show up in pajama pants and smell like marijuana.
(21:34):
I mean, you know that you've just
You know, I don't think people really think about the lifetime value of a customer, right?
It's not a $300 order.
It could be a $30,000 customer.
It could be a hundred thousand because of referrals and this person works here, but theirhusbands on the church committee for this big picnic and it's a thousand person event.
You just never know what connect.
(21:56):
mean, you, you know, you've been in this business long enough.
One thing leads to another leads to another.
So, um, how can people get hold of you if they're interested in learning more about you?
Yeah, absolutely.
Delivered, D-L-I-V-R-D, like .io is our website.
You can jump right over there.
LinkedIn, LinkedIn slash delivered.
(22:16):
And then all of our social media is Delivered Tech.
You can find that there.
Me and Specific, same thing.
You can find me on LinkedIn or any social media.
It's all under uh the HEF 215.
Everybody calls me the HEF.
My last name's Heffernan and 215 is the Philadelphia uh phone code, area code.
Very cool.
(22:36):
Well, I appreciate you being on today.
No, appreciate you having me.
Thanks so much.
It was a great time talking about Michelin, talking about travel, talking about catering,all the fun stuff that I love.
Food.
You know, it's all about I've loved food since I was born.
same.
Okay, so I was just asking you about the keeping the culture.
What do you do to keep the culture delivered?
Yeah, I think a big piece of it, especially working with the drivers who, you know, theyaren't necessarily employees, it's important to keep communication open.
So we're always transparent with them from, you know, from that earnings perspective, fromwhat we're doing.
(00:25):
We're very social media centric with them.
So we work to make sure that they're involved in different videos.
So most of the videos that we put out are of drivers making content for other drivers.
We'll go to a city and host an
Engagement event we pick like Dave and Buster's drivers come they bring their family.
There's food They get to play video games.
(00:47):
We give them little play cards So just those little things that like the big apps don'tnecessarily do and then honestly those higher earnings, right?
The drivers like that and they don't want to do anything to mess those up So you just takesome common-sense things like things that you should do because it's good You know, it's
just easy to be a good business person and then some of that sprinkle on some of thatlittle extra and bam
(01:09):
There you go, you got some buy-in from some drivers.
Very cool.
know, AI is all anyone talks about.
I'm sort of obsessed with it and we could go down that rabbit hole in so many differenttrajectories, but how are you using AI in your business?
And how do you think restaurants that cater can use AI to improve what they're doing?
(01:30):
Either from an operations or a sales perspective.
Yeah, there's so many different ways.
The way that we use it that's the most impactful for our business is most...
Delivery apps or most gig apps in general when you're looking for demand it pairs you witha driver That's the closest so it's closest and fastest is the rule for most apps Well,
(01:51):
that doesn't work in a catering world, right?
The $2,000 order the closest driver has a Mini Cooper.
That's not gonna fit in there So when an order hits our system we build a profile for itbased upon the brand the subtotal The delivery notes like say it says there's a service
elevator
we're going to need a cart for that order.
So we build all these different requirements to successfully complete that delivery.
(02:16):
And then we have a driver profile.
What kind of car they have, how many catering bags, if they have a cart, how often arethey on time to orders in this area?
How often are they on time to orders in the delivery area?
Are they available right now?
Do they, uh you know, do they have all the equipment they need?
And then in like a Tinder moment, the AI matches those two drivers.
(02:38):
So we're not going for quickest, fastest.
We're going for the best match.
And then if the driver matches with the order and they want to take it,
they swipe right just like on Tinder.
And now that's the driver for that order.
So that's the way that we probably best use AI.
For restaurants in the catering world, think a lot of it is you can't answer everyquestion about your catering menu all day, every day.
(03:02):
I think the biggest piece would be training a chat bot on your website to be able to say,I have a guest that has the dietary constraints of X, Y, and Z.
And that chat bot can answer that at 3 a.m.
versus like calling the
restaurant getting the person who runs the register, they don't know, let me get amanager, you know, because if you can answer those questions and convert them into an
(03:25):
online order, then before the store even opens, that customer might have ordered.
having, you know, AI there to assist in the customer order, and it's not necessarilyreplacing anybody, it's just, you know, helping get information into the hands of the
customer.
Yeah, I can see a time where there's like an AI avatar.
(03:45):
So you feel like you're talking to a real person as opposed to a chat and there's moreinteraction and they can point on the screen.
Like here, you want to look, you know, here and it clicks.
It actually clicks for you and opens up desserts or, and scrolls and say, Hey, this iswhat I recommend, you know, more interactive.
(04:05):
So, um, go ahead.
And I'd say more educational too, right?
I think a lot of what people are using resources for is like, let me answer the customer'squestion.
But in the scenarios, use AI to guide them how to answer their own questions.
Like, don't tell them what items have the dietary restrictions.
Hey, let me show you on the screen.
(04:26):
If you click here and here, this is how you can see what it is.
So when they revisit next time, they're more comfortable with it.
They're more into it.
Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy how quickly it's, you know, so I've got a place down inCosta Rica.
Have you been to Costa Rica?
Well, come visit if the house is empty, come hang out.
So uh it's exciting because it's very chill, great people, but it's also the Wild West.
(04:51):
And what I mean by that is you don't know if the guy who's doing work for you does goodwork or not.
You know, it's.
So, and it's very tropical rain, know, this rainy season is like, it's almost monsoon,right?
Like the rain will come down and you feel like it's somebody just dumped an 18 wheeler of,of water on your roof all at once.
(05:12):
So I've had a lot of water issues and drainage issues and.
what have you and just dealing with this roof.
just, I trusted the guy who did a lot of construction work fixing up the house.
He let me put a new roof.
He put tin foil on there and I'm not joking.
It's maybe double-plied tin foil.
So I spent all this fricking money and then I, I,
(05:33):
I was able to get some better recommendations and two guys said the same thing, butliterally I put in the roof dimensions, the pitch dimensions, asked about the thickness of
material, the quality of material, how much rain based on a heavy rainfall in my city inCosta Rica, would the gutters have to be able to hold in the downspouts and it sizes
(05:56):
everything, right?
Like things like.
You would have just had to trust the roofer to say, Hey, this is the shingles you need,and this is the gutters you need.
And now you can put in this rough stuff and it's telling you.
Stuff that you would have never known.
Right.
And I'm sure it's anything that you would want done.
And the same thing in your business, right?
There's just so many things, even just day to day operational.
(06:20):
You want to create a training manual, let AI give you a shortcut.
SOPs.
uh
responses to clients, know, maybe I'm not really happy and I need to send a response andit at least can tone it down and put in a professional and make it sound a little bit
better than me saying, listen here, schmuck, you know, kind of thing.
(06:43):
So, yeah, it's just gonna get crazier, I guess, till we're all out of work and then we'llfigure something else out.
And a lot of people think you have to like swing for the fences.
If I want to adopt AI, that means it's answering my phone calls.
It's flipping my burgers.
You know, it's doing all these things and you can use it for like a crawl before you walk,right?
(07:06):
Like you could take a sales report from one day in your restaurant, upload it into Geminior chat GPT and say, how like
How did I do yesterday?
What could I do to improve these margins?
How many cheeseburgers did I sell?
If I asked every customer, would you like fries with that?
And one out of every five answered yes.
(07:26):
What would that impact my bottom line with?
And just start doing little things like that.
It doesn't need to be a full replacement, but you can use it for these little insights.
And what do think AI is going to do?
you know, obviously you have Waymo and then, you know, Uber's trying to make everythingself-driving.
How's that going to affect your business?
(07:46):
I mean, I would imagine from a vehicle standpoint, autonomous, but you need somebody whocan lift those boxes and set them up.
you know, do you see a day where there's a robot that can deliver to set it up or that'sso far down the road or, know, what are you seeing down that way?
something I'm keeping an eye on.
mean, if you would ask me when I had my food cab business back in 2011, like Will Uber andDoorDash move out of the city?
(08:11):
Nah, they're fine downtown.
They don't want to mess with the suburban markets.
And then they did.
And in our business, in catering delivery, right?
know, everything in delivery is the last mile.
For catering delivery, it's really that last hundred yards, that last hundred feet.
Anybody can deliver to the door, FedEx, UPS, DoorDash, Roadie, Instacart, insert anybusiness here.
(08:33):
I've been delivering to doors forever and do it at a big scale.
But getting from that front door to that conference room, to that break room, setting thefood up, looking presentable, not cursing out the customer, like those are the pieces
that, you know, like a logistics company like us handle.
And an autonomous car can't replace that piece unless there's an autonomous robot in thatautonomous car, um you know, facilitating that.
(09:01):
think the more likely in my mind would be an autonomous car gets loaded up at therestaurant and goes to a downtown building.
A catering professional meets that car, goes upstairs and sets it up.
What would allow them to scale faster is they leave that downtown building, go threeblocks over.
And in a couple of minutes, another autonomous car from another restaurant meets thatcatering professional.
(09:26):
And then they go and set that order up.
A density in the catering reception is huge.
You look at a market like Philadelphia, most of those orders are going downtown.
Where's the scale lost in leaving that downtown area to go get food and come back?
But if the catering professionals are staying in that bubble and being met by the cars,then handling that last hundred feet.
(09:50):
And you might have that these high rise buildings say, Hey, it comes with a cateringconcierge.
You know, you know, the food gets delivered.
Our guys will set it up, deliver it for you.
And, know, you don't have to worry.
And then from a restaurant standpoint or your standpoint, it's like, Hey, we have thevehicle.
You put the hot food in the hot section, the cold food in the cold section.
And the guys, you know, they have the pick list that says, grab everything that has a reddot on it.
(10:14):
It's yours.
And you got three cold red dot pans and two hot red.
And you know in a bag, I mean who knows where it's going to be.
It's absolutely crazy.
Yeah, in a post-COVID world, like the feeding of people at the workplace has constantlychanged.
What was once a perk of, we got a pizza party because we hit quota last month, to nowlike, hey, you all got to come back to the office, we're going to feed you every day, has
(10:40):
become a huge change to the point that even some buildings are not.
rebuilding their cafeterias or they never brought workers back or didn't entertain theircafeteria contract.
And they're just having like three different restaurants catering orders come in and youjust go down and you order your food in the morning and they come and they pick your food
(11:00):
up from the station where we've seen brands that are like, hey, we need you to staffsomebody at these places.
And it's the old cafeterias.
So now there's a gig worker in there receiving the orders from other gig workers.
putting them out on shelves or putting them in different places or delivering them todifferent floors, all because there's no more cafeteria.
So we're gonna keep seeing improvements and changes, not just in the AI space, but how thecustomers work with the brands.
(11:28):
Are y'all providing those gig workers for staffing the cafeterias?
Yeah, yeah, we ran a pilot in New York with a few clients and it worked out really welland we're now expanding it to others.
Cool.
Yeah, it's like, what is it they say?
You don't, I think I've heard on Shark Tank first, you don't back the horse, you back thejockey.
(11:49):
Because you never know, a good jockey, you know, they can adjust to the track conditions,right?
You know, when you started, this was, this is what the track was.
Now all of a sudden they've changed the track or you say, hey, here's an opportunity inanother track.
So now I'm gonna...
put another horse on this track and ride this horse on this track, you know, you know, my,my path has definitely not been a straight line and the things we're, working on.
(12:14):
I mean, we, it never ends, you know, until, until I guess AI kills us all or, know, yougotta go live off the grid.
Um, that's sort of a plan B, I guess, live off the grid and cause
I think you're gonna have to have a purpose in life if AI is doing everything one day andit could be 20 years 30 years from now right?
What are you going to do to have purpose?
(12:35):
know?
um
So the restaurants that are trying to grow their sales, because I'm sure you deal with allsorts of brands, Mature brands, emerging brands.
What do you see the difference between the winner, what I call the winners and losers, theones that are going out there crushing it, know, racking up the sales and the guys that
(13:02):
are just like, we get an easy cater order every now and then and you know.
Yeah, so I have a...
Pretty solid school of thought on this.
There's in my mind two types of operators out there.
The type that offer catering and the type that do catering.
The offering catering are the ones that have a window sticker or have on their menu with alittle bubble and like the stars around it.
(13:26):
Like we offer catering or order catering but have no online ordering system to facilitateit.
Don't have, uh I'll call them like a SME, a subject matter expert, whether that's acatering manager or just one of the
team members either in management or just in general in the brand that is like catering istheir main piece or at least their expert part.
(13:51):
And they're not doing any like marketing outside of relying on those third party vendors.
Those are the people that offer catering.
The people that do it have invested in it.
They've looked at different packaging.
They've streamlined their menu.
They have an online ordering process.
They're working different marketing angles outside of the marketplaces.
They're using their leads from third parties and from in-store dining to cultivate newcatering business.
(14:17):
It seems stupid, but a fishbowl on a counter that says drop your business card to win anoffice for your lunch.
That's a great tactic that takes no money, some scotch tape and I don't know, a fishbowlfrom Amazon, but it generates leads.
That's the first part.
And that's what the people that are, you know, doing catering are out there, you know,doing that.
(14:39):
When brands come to
and they're like, I want to work with delivered.
need somebody to scale my delivery.
And it's like, what are you doing now?
we don't, you know, we don't do a lot now.
How do you get orders?
Oh, like I can call in and we can do managers.
And I'm like, you guys don't need us yet.
You don't need a delivery partner.
If you're just offering catering, the owner, the manager, somebody that's me, that'ssubject matter expert, they should be handling that one, two orders that you get from easy
(15:06):
cater or from wherever because they need to gain the customer experience
experience, check the packaging, see how it travels.
When you start getting three, four, five orders a day, 20 orders a week, that's when youneed to look out for somebody like us at Delivered to help you scale that piece out.
But we're not going to give you that insight.
We're not going to give you the customer reaction.
(15:27):
You're not going to see that the mac and cheese, when it gets uncovered, is soggy, right?
Or that the french fries don't travel well, or maybe you shouldn't do the souffle dish.
You know, I don't know.
You learn that through practice.
Yeah.
is recognizing do you offer or do you do catering?
And if just offer, start doing the things to make you do it.
(15:49):
Yeah, for sure.
I did a million a year in catering out of my 104 seat restaurant before I sold out and wedid a million things.
It's funny you talk about the fishbowl.
We did that but instead of a business card, we had qualifying questions on a form.
So we knew which ones to target.
We're actually building that into our software.
So we have lead gen forms and we'll have a QR code.
(16:09):
So now it'll just be a sign.
And then you have the mobile interface and you can register and then you can cherry pickwho to market to and put them in a sequence.
So just a lot of things that we're trying to automate because you know, most people aren'tnatural salespeople.
They don't have a sales background, more of a food background.
So, you know, you're one of our partners.
(16:31):
Like we integrated with Burke, which is a third party marketplace for delivery services.
And, you know, the reason we went for that at cater zen is we didn't want to have tointegrate with three, four or five
six providers.
you know, integration is very costly and pain in the butt.
And what we found is there's different levels of integrations.
(16:53):
uh And we've spent probably a good part of nine months fine tuning the problems that wesee in delivery.
you know, last minute, just putting tight rails to prevent issues, right?
Because again, they're going to come to us and say, well, delivered screwed this up or,know, whoever screwed it up, but it has more to do with the systems you set up.
(17:20):
So you're set up for delivery and you know, you're not getting a request 15 minutesbefore, Hey, why didn't somebody come pick this up?
Right?
That kind of stuff.
Um, so I know, you know, y'all are very well known.
in the catering delivery space, what do you do that sets you apart?
So if somebody's thinking about, you know, that last mile, really, it's the last inch,right?
(17:43):
Because you're putting the brownies on the table and then you're walking out, right?
It's really delivery meets catering setup.
So it's far more than delivery.
um What sets you apart?
Yeah, there's a few things.
Like I mentioned before, that matching, I think that's a huge differentiator, right?
Like we are actually building profiles and matching drivers with that.
(18:05):
So the idea is that you get the best optimal outcome for your business, for your brand.
Because at the end of the day, like you said there, the customer isn't going to say, like,delivered did bad.
They don't know who delivered is.
They ordered from Joe's Barbecue.
The Google review that's negative or the complaint email is going to say, your driver did
(18:26):
didn't do this, even though it wasn't their driver, right?
It was a driver that got matched through Cater's End that went to Burke, that came toDelivered, you know, who did that delivery.
So making sure that we represent the brand well is huge, and I think driver matching playsa huge part into that.
Communication, we have a support team with a restaurant hotline, so there is a great placethere to connect with a live customer service team and answer any questions pre, during,
(18:54):
or post order.
And our technology is pretty sweet.
I'm biased, but we just rolled out an order management app, delivery management app, sobrands can have full insight right in the palm of their hand to be able to enter orders,
track orders, view reports, all that fun stuff as well.
And then just a company that's rooted in delivery, Like and catering delivery in specific.
(19:20):
There's other couriers out there.
There's other delivery fleets, but 90 % of what we delivered is pre-scheduled large formatorders.
So we have that expertise and you know, we have a bunch of different partners.
So if someone comes to us and they're, you know, they're one of those people that offerand don't do, here's a list of resources of things you can check out.
Check out Cater Zen.
(19:41):
you need packaging?
Check out Sew and
so an insert packaging company here that's made some good stuff.
You need marketing and social media stuff.
We have a great company we work with that can help you with that.
we want to be able to help consult in a sense because the more order that brands get, themore orders we get to deliver, the more money we make.
it's the circle of life like the Lion King just with catering.
(20:05):
Yeah, that's for sure.
I mean, I forgot who told me this all time.
All all rising tides lift all ships, rising tides lift all ships.
And, know, what's good for one is good for the other.
And, know, the better job you do, the restaurant does well.
And it's one of those things I would say delivery is probably the most critical point inthe whole.
(20:31):
It's the weakest link.
It could be the strongest or the weakest link.
And you you find a lot of people want to nickel and dime.
That's not a place to nickel and dime, you know, charge your customers a fair price andjust explain like, it's not getting a pizza delivered where here's a box.
Have a good day.
We're setting it up.
We're, you know, making sure that, you know, it's done the right way.
(20:53):
It's not just dropping food in a box of door and saying goodbye.
If that was the case, it'd be cheaper, right?
Because it's like, here's your food.
Good luck.
Yeah, and it's exactly that.
It's, you you want a premium experience and a lot of people don't want to pay that premiumprice, but it is the last touch point for that customer journey.
(21:13):
You could have the sexiest online ordering.
You could have the most delicious food, but if that customer, if that driver leaves it onthe floor at the front door on the sidewalk or curses out the customer or drops it off at
the wrong address or insert any litany of problems that we see.
this?
They show up in pajama pants and smell like marijuana.
(21:34):
I mean, you know that you've just
You know, I don't think people really think about the lifetime value of a customer, right?
It's not a $300 order.
It could be a $30,000 customer.
It could be a hundred thousand because of referrals and this person works here, but theirhusbands on the church committee for this big picnic and it's a thousand person event.
You just never know what connect.
(21:56):
mean, you, you know, you've been in this business long enough.
One thing leads to another leads to another.
So, um, how can people get hold of you if they're interested in learning more about you?
Yeah, absolutely.
Delivered, D-L-I-V-R-D, like .io is our website.
You can jump right over there.
LinkedIn, LinkedIn slash delivered.
(22:16):
And then all of our social media is Delivered Tech.
You can find that there.
Me and Specific, same thing.
You can find me on LinkedIn or any social media.
It's all under uh the HEF 215.
Everybody calls me the HEF.
My last name's Heffernan and 215 is the Philadelphia uh phone code, area code.
Very cool.
(22:36):
Well, I appreciate you being on today.
No, appreciate you having me.
Thanks so much.
It was a great time talking about Michelin, talking about travel, talking about catering,all the fun stuff that I love.
Food.
You know, it's all about I've loved food since I was born.
same.
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