In this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts, Michael Attias welcomes Christian Hilty, VP of Partnerships at DeliverThat, a delivery logistics platform built specifically for catering.
Christian shares how DeliverThat carved out a niche in the catering world by offering scheduled, white-glove delivery services tailored for large catering orders—a game-changer for restaurants tired of the headaches from third-party delivery apps. You’ll hear how DeliverThat helps restaurants boost order accuracy, improve customer satisfaction, and increase repeat business by solving that last-mile logistics problem most operators struggle with.
Michael and Christian dive into:
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Why scheduled delivery beats on-demand for catering
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How DeliverThat integrates with systems like CaterZen to streamline operations
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Real-world use cases and ROI for restaurant partners
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What’s next for technology in catering delivery
Whether you’re drowning in delivery issues or just looking to level up your catering game, this episode is packed with golden nuggets from someone in the trenches of catering logistics every day.
Restaurant Catering Smarts is sponsored by CaterZen Catering Software, the all-in-one solution for managing and growing your catering business.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:28):
Hello again, I am Michael Attias, your host of Restaurant Catering Smart, and today'sguest is Christian Hilty, VP of Partnerships at Deliver That.
Christian has been with Deliver That since its early days, playing a key role in itspivoting, pivot into catering.
He's passionate about helping restaurants take control of their operations and boost theirbottom line through first party, off-premise strategies and platforms.
(00:52):
With a background in leadership and growth in the startup world, Christian thrives onbuilding scalable solutions and meaningful relationships.
Outside of work, he's a proud dad of three and an avid basketball, golf and softballplayer.
And we're excited to have him on the show today.
But before we get started, let's take a minute to recognize our sponsor, CaterZen CateringSoftware.
They help restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
(01:14):
Discover why restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase sales.
Go to caterzen.com and sign up for a walkthrough of the software.
Now let's dive into this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts.
Welcome, Christian.
How are you doing today?
Doing great.
Thank you for having me on, man.
Yeah, yeah.
feel like we talk all the time, to have a face, I think I've seen you on a Zoom callbefore.
(01:36):
um I definitely have a face for radio.
yeah, that's okay.
You gotta keep the pretty boys uh employed.
Okay, uh question.
Give me a number between one and 300.
Nine.
going low.
(01:57):
If I had to give up some modern convenience like TV, car, toilet, telephone, lighting, Iwould select what?
Give up modern convenience.
Um...
I think phone would be a good one.
I feel like that would be so liberating.
(02:18):
could you could live your whole life without your phone.
Well couldn't do my work without my phone, but I think on the...
Ugh.
Alright, I would give up my car and switch to motorcycle.
Only my wife could drive the car.
Interesting.
That's not a bad one.
Yeah, give up the car and I'd be on like an electric scooter or motorcycle all the time.
(02:40):
You probably need a sidecar for the three kids.
That would be fun.
There's, know, hey, your wife would prefer a sidecar than a side chick.
So that's probably a good, good move.
You know, there's this guy that used to come in at the Starbucks when I lived in anotherpart of town and he had like a not a what do they call it?
(03:02):
A scooter with a sidecar and he had three golden retrievers and they were doggles.
The doggles.
Yeah!
this guy was like every time he rolled up everybody was just wanting to hang with thedogs.
I feel like golden retriever owners are like a breed of their own.
Those golden retrievers will go anywhere with them.
Dude, I've thought about, I mean, this isn't a dating podcast, but I've thought a goodservice would be wing pup.
(03:29):
You've run a dog for the day because I can tell you, if I'm, if I'm in, if I'm walkingdown the street and there could be a girl that is like butt ugly, but if she's got a
golden retriever, I would consider marrying her.
Like seriously.
Yeah.
And if it was a puppy, like we're headed to Jenison's diamonds and we're picking outstones.
(03:50):
Yeah, I love it.
I have three dogs at home.
So on top of the three kids, I have three dogs and a cat.
ah It's a full house.
They're not helping me pick up chicks these days.
They're just uh keeping me on my toes.
Yeah, you definitely don't need to be thinking of that with three kids.
I don't even want to know how the cat got in the mix, but you know, that's a whole nother.
(04:13):
oh If you have farmland and you want snakes and rodents taken care of, you need a cat.
otherwise.
OK, so let's reel this back in.
um How how did you get in the do you have a restaurant background or how did you get inthis business?
No, I mean, in college, so went to Ohio State.
(04:37):
In college, I was a bar back and I worked at Panera Bread until football season.
They tried to get me to work every football game except you're allowed to take one off.
So I quit Panera Bread day before the first football game at Ohio State.
But that would be the extent of my restaurant background.
I actually signed up while I was in college to be a driver on the platform.
(04:59):
I was working those.
side jobs at bars and stuff like that and signed up for really just a side hustle.
I end up on my ride along at the time it was ride along was how we onboarded drivers yougo learn how to set up sternos set up a catering order in general and the person taking me
on my ride along was Aaron Hoffman one of our co-founders so yeah they had just made thepivot to catering they had just sparked up with easy cater doing some easy dispatch stuff
(05:27):
and I was like
This sounds really cool.
I now have your cell phone number.
So I just pestered him until I graduated college and joined the team.
So this is my first job, my first real job ever out of college.
Yeah.
mine, mine lasted.
I start off as a dishwasher and so I was in the business forever.
My first job was archive storage sales.
(05:47):
Do know what that is?
Bankers boxes of files that nobody wants.
So they storm in a warehouse like law firms, CPA firms.
I would rather sell.
I would rather watch paint dry.
It was terrible.
And after two years, my boss.
comes in, and like he and the guy who is, you know, the guy who owned part of the companyand then my direct boss, you know, they bled records, like they geeked out over records.
(06:17):
I'm like, I don't get it.
Like it's records, like nothing exciting.
So he comes into my office.
I just got married, just bought a house and he goes, you know, Michael, you're just nothitting your numbers lately.
oh You think you need another month to make your numbers?
I go, no, Russ, you should probably just fire me today.
em
oh So he gave me a month severance, which you know at the time a month severance that wasa lot of money and I took everything in a banker's box and I went in my car and I cried
(06:46):
tears of joy.
It was more relief of the stress and then I went back to Corky's and the rest is history Iguess.
So it's interesting how people get started.
It is, yeah.
It feels like the luckiest thing in the world looking back at it, because I was doingPostmates, Uber Eats, all the little side gigs, and somebody was like, have you heard of
(07:08):
Deliver That?
Well, of course not.
ah It was just getting started.
So next thing I know, I'm sitting in a car with Aaron.
You never know where it's going to be.
Like literally things, you know, if it wasn't for me ending up at Corky's, I had the ideafor the software when I was waiting tables, rolling silverware and the women on the phone
were taking catering orders.
(07:29):
It's like, why are you asking these people the same information every day?
If you, if you had a database and if I knew how to program, I could have built them asimple system for production and planning or whatever.
So the idea sat on a shelf for 20 years.
And then when I got divorced,
I bootstrapped it for 30K and yeah, so I'm unemployable.
yeah, exactly.
(07:50):
uh It's funny when you're doing service jobs like that, like when I was doing the barbacking stuff, just the random thoughts you have while you're doing monotonous work,
right?
Just cleaning tables, cleaning dishes.
You just have so many ideas running through your head.
It's cool to see that you took action on.
Well, what's crazy is, you know, the guy has passed his son and I grew up in the sameneighborhood, but we weren't like big buddies.
(08:12):
Now he lives down in Florida where I've got a place.
So I hang out with him some and he's great family.
You know, the kids, kids worked hard in the business.
They weren't handed anything, you know, they weren't entitled.
And uh I literally, my brain does not shut off with ideas and I would, I would chase himdown the rest of, Hey Don, what if we did this?
Hey Don, what if we did this?
And we had the general manager, Robbie, she didn't want to change anything.
(08:36):
You know, she was not a fun person.
um And I think he just started hiding from me and they were all good ideas.
She went out of town once and I redesigned the drive through window to make it quicker.
And then just in spite, she moved it back.
Like I sped up the times.
It's like, F you like whatever.
So then I had to get your own.
(08:56):
You have to get your own gig because you're not employable.
It's very difficult.
um
in their ways.
It's tough.
Most people are stuck in their ways and they can't, you I'm always breaking things,looking to make things better.
It just doesn't, it's just the way I'm wired, which is, which I guess, I guess it's good.
(09:17):
Okay.
So do y'all do anything besides catering?
Do y'all do other things as well?
so we've gotten into alcohol delivery.
We have done um pretty significant grocery deliveries now um with our partnership withWegmans.
So one specific partner that we're doing some grocery stuff with.
But yeah, we've we've dabbled in floral alcohol deliveries.
(09:39):
We've done route based deliveries in the past.
So individual meals go into people.
That was very big at the height of the pandemic.
So, yeah, we've dabbled in other things.
I think alcohol is probably the most.
prominent right now.
We're certified in like three or four states where we're doing some alcohol work.
uh yeah, I think we're at a different place as a company, but uh where we're willing totake on more opportunities outside of just catering.
(10:06):
really the whole thing started with our CEO, Darian, and our leadership team maybe five orsix years ago at this point read the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.
We picked our hedgehog concept, right?
What can you be the best in the world at?
What are you passionate about?
And it was catering.
So we went all in on that and said, listen, we're never going to be the largest DSP.
(10:28):
We're never going to outshine DoorDash or have that kind of the money that they are Uberhave right now.
But we could be the best in the world at buffet style catering setups as a third party.
So we've just very narrowly focused in on that.
I do believe, you know, there are riches and niches and if you don't have the money of aCoke or Nike, you do need to pick a lane and dominate it for sure.
(10:54):
when we were starting, was like such an overlooked niche itself, right?
Like people absolutely needed help with catering.
They were spinning their tires, trying to hire their own drivers.
And we've seen it come full circle from, will never, same brands, we will never outsourceour catering to, we have to sell all of these vans and stop hiring our own staff to do
(11:17):
catering delivery.
So yeah, we picked the right concept for sure.
You know, it's interesting when I had my restaurant and again, I modeled off the Corkiesin Memphis.
put one in Nashville.
They had a courier service that would take food.
Most courier services didn't want to touch food because as you know, it's very timedependent.
You know, if I need you to deliver a document to a law firm, who gives a shit if it'sthere two, three, four, you know, you want flowers for your wife or Valentine's day.
(11:42):
You don't care if it shows up at 8 a.m.
or 8 p.m.
just get the damn flowers there the day, right?
So there's a lot of forgiveness.
There's no forgiveness in food.
They're eating at 12.
You know, so it's almost like a, you know, a masochist business.
So we, we looked all over and I don't know if this guy came into us or we found him.
(12:04):
His name was Chuck Hargrove and the dude was a hustler.
He worked out of his house.
He had a Miata delivering that food out of a Miata, right?
Um,
And he had a bunch of gig, he had gig employees before they were called gig employees,right?
So Nashville, a lot of musicians.
So he had musicians when they weren't on the road touring, they would drive, you know,school teachers, retirees, stay at home moms.
(12:31):
And, um, those guys became almost like our family.
Like the deal we made with them, like if they had to pick up a delivery, it's like, Hey,come early, free coffee, free drinks.
And back then there was a lot of corporate checks, right?
It wasn't all credit card and house charges.
Hey, if you bring the check back today, we'll give you a sandwich, right?
Kind of thing.
(12:52):
And they call us up and go, Hey, I'm having a family reunion.
Could you cut us a deal?
So even though they technically were 10 99 to courtesy courier, they were like part of ourteam, right?
It was a very unique standpoint and they were so good.
They would all stock their
(13:12):
And we gave them a ton of business.
You know, we'd have two, three grand on the registers before we unlocked the door.
A lot of days they would keep plates, silverware, barbecue sauce packs, silverwareutensils all in the back because we're their primary, you know, that was really the only
food account they had.
So, you know, and if there was a problem, they would, you know, come back, make it right.
(13:34):
Now we would pay them and take care of them.
And so it's funny.
It's the gig economy before the gig economy.
You somebody said, are you nervous doing a podcast interview?
How many have you done?
said, well, technically I think I'm up to 10, 11, 12, but in a previous life I had anewsletter and I would do audio newsletter.
(13:54):
I would do an audio newsletter.
So as opposed to us being on a zoom call for practice, you know, whatever I would call youup.
I would have a telephone recording device and I'd interview you for an hour and I'd burnit on.
I'd edit it.
Burn it on CD and mail it out with a hard copy.
So before there was a podcast, I was mailing CDs.
(14:18):
Yeah.
10 years, I've got 120 episodes.
So I'm going to, I'm going to tell him myself.
I have like light narcolepsy.
Like I don't sleep well at night.
The joke is, is if Michael gets in a car, he'll be asleep before he backs out of thedriveway.
Do it on planes and everything was terrible in college.
(14:38):
Like,
One time I was going to the national barbecue association and my, operating partner wasdriving and he had one of those front wheel drive cars.
So the whole front is open.
Like your feet could hit the gas pedals.
I fall asleep and literally I pin his foot down with my left foot.
(14:59):
I mean, there there's a time my buddy and I went to Alabama on a Saturday night to partyand we're driving home at three in the morning.
He goes, man, can you just drive?
I swear the car went 15 yards and I stopped.
mean, it was, yeah.
So back to this, there were times I was so tired doing interviews, I'd fall asleep in themiddle of the interview and the let, cause people could keep talking and talking and
(15:24):
talking.
Are you there?
No.
now there was no, they're there because if you give somebody open road, they're just, theycould talk for, you know, as my daughter says, when she calls my dad, I could put the
phone down and come back an hour later and he's still yapping.
Right.
Yeah.
So you could, you could definitely do that.
So what, made y'all decide to pivot into, to catering?
(15:47):
Was there anything specific?
Yeah, think it was really just the landscape at the time that it happened.
So really earliest days of Deliver That, it started as OU delivery, and it was at OhioUniversity.
John and Aaron were roommates, were college best friends, ah had gone to the same highschool.
So they had the idea of, let's deliver stuff here on campus.
(16:11):
This is like door dashes and at Ohio University, Uber Eats, Postmates, they're not there.
ah
So almost overnight they had a tweet and a Twitter account go viral, get a couple thousandpeople from OU following the account.
They were using their cell phones, just getting text messages left and right to go pick uptextbooks, Chipotle, whatever it is, right?
(16:33):
Little stuff on campus.
Fast forward, it becomes campus delivery and they try to duplicate that business model ata few other universities.
Then they graduate college, come back here to Canton where they're from.
Door-to-door trying to sell this and realizing okay door dash is very prominent in majorcities at this point Postmates is pretty big at the time uber um So they went into it was
(16:58):
a ruby Tuesdays around here I don't I don't think they're in business anymore, but theywent into a ruby Tuesdays and We're pitching their service and the guy was like no.
I don't I don't need you to take my one-off meals at all uh But he had three cateringorders laid out on the table and needed them delivered that day didn't have drivers to do
it he was like
I'll give you $30 cash for each one of these that you two guys can go take right now.
(17:23):
And I think that was the light bulb moment that was like, whoa, that is way more than the$2 we're charging.
We could pay drivers better.
We could do so much more with a business model if there were fewer deliveries with highermargin to them.
So I think that was the moment.
then it honestly just, it kind of stuck in the timing was right where Easy Cater startedEasy Dispatch and that was
(17:47):
exactly as they're making that pivot so they went all in on it.
You know, you can't beat luck, you know?
was lucky I was in the car with Aaron.
It was lucky they walked into that Ruby Tuesdays.
Yep.
you just can't, you know.
And obviously, what do they say?
Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity.
(18:08):
But just sometimes you're you're in, you know, Ray Kroc just happened to be selling milkmilkshake machines to the McDonald's brother.
I mean, you just you know, I don't have that kind of luck.
mean, I'm not I do OK luck, but I don't have like, you know, billion dollar with a B luck.
I just have thousand
with the tea luck.
(18:32):
So, you know, I'm sure you see a lot of operators, you know, and you come across all sortsof situations.
What do you see?
And we could talk on a high level from their catering plat the way they run their cateringbusiness to delivery packaging, whatever.
What do you see are some of the big mistakes that operators are making?
(18:53):
Like if you were king for a day or consultants say, hey, here's three things that we seeall the time that need to be fixed.
What are those things?
Yeah, if we're talking about things that specifically need to be fixed, I think it'salignment inside of an organization for what their off-premise strategy is, right?
(19:15):
And how much they value it.
Because the most frustrating thing from my seat is to see a catering sales manager ormaybe they manage marketing for the team or whatever it is.
It seems like
There can be different roles that are assigned to manage catering, manage all thingsoff-premise.
See them super passionate about what they're doing, but not having buy-in from the rest ofthe organization.
(19:39):
Almost like you're the redhead stepchild of the organization, right?
Like, yeah, this catering thing, but your ops team's not behind it.
Your leadership team's not behind it.
You're not getting the resources you need.
So I think if I could just wave a wand, it would be.
Whatever level you want to prioritize off-premise, do it as a collective, do it as agroup.
(20:00):
When you walk away from the table, agree this is a priority or it's not a priority.
Because we could talk about technology, packaging, all of the things.
It has to start with, are we aligned that this is going to be an investment or not?
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that.
um I had a conversation with somebody about, you know, we do some work around culture andwhat I call it is everybody drinking the Kool-Aid.
(20:27):
You know, I need everybody drinking my Kool-Aid.
If you're not drinking the Kool-Aid, like you don't have to be the sharpest, you know, youknow, you could be a seven and you're drinking the Kool-Aid.
But if you're a 10 and you're all about yourself and you're not a team player and youdon't buy into what we're doing, I don't need you on my team.
Right.
And where I see that especially is in the franchise world, because we've worked with a lotof franchise brands.
(20:53):
Right.
And I'm not going to, you know, let's take one that we worked with in the early days withmost Southwest Grill.
That's part of their culture.
You buy a territory, you're going to have a catering sales rep, you're going to pushcatering and you're going to sell the hell out of catering.
Right.
Other brands, it's like, here it is.
Here's the packaging.
Here's the marketing.
If you want to sell it and it's, it's the 1 % or the 80 20, not even 80 20, though guysthat get it say, man, I'm just eking out a living out of my sandwich shop.
(21:25):
But if I sell catering, I can make a lot of money.
And, and I've done a lot of consulting back in the day.
I consulted for like Domino's pizza and
Spoke at all the trade shows like I have a whole nother all these things people talk aboutlike I was doing 20 years ago like you know, and it's documented so I'm not you know, you
(21:47):
know trying to steal anything from anybody else but um I told these franchiseorganizations I said you're not going to listen to me, but if you were going to listen to
me go sell franchises to people who used to do B2B corporate sales a farmer rap.
That guy that got laid off from his job, he's got a 401k, he's got a severance package,his wife works, they can afford it.
(22:12):
He knows how to sell.
He doesn't need to make sandwiches.
You can hire the sandwich maker.
You can hire the guy to supervise operation, but he can get out there and bring in acouple hundred thousand dollars in sale.
And now of a sudden, instead of making a $50,000 job, he's making a buck 50 out of thatstore.
Yep.
Yep.
(22:32):
I love how you, I love how you led with, you're not going to listen to me, but if youwere, here's what you'd do.
That's my favorite part of the whole thing.
Yeah, but I mean, it's like, you know, you'll find out how old are your kids?
You have 12, 2, and 8 months.
Damn.
Yeah, we gotta spread.
Wow, same baby mama?
(22:54):
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, were you like in a coma for 10 years, dude?
I mean, that's a long list read.
Yeah, yeah, we restarted, that's for sure.
And then we did it in bulk, back to back like that.
Yeah.
were knocked out.
um And what you're find is you're never your kids will never think you're smart until theyget older.
(23:18):
And sometimes your employees or your team members won't think you're smart until they failand then they look backwards.
You know, I remember my son, you know, he's very, very smart.
Went to Vanderbilt.
I Vanderbilt wouldn't even hire me to wash dishes.
I wouldn't even pass the entrance exam to work in the
in the dish hole.
(23:39):
he went to Vanderbilt, super smart kid.
I mean, very accomplished.
I'm so smart that he didn't even go to the, what is it?
Beta society, some honor society he got inducted to.
He didn't even go to the inaugural.
And he goes, I said, I found out you got in, you know, what end of this, why didn't youinvite me?
it's no big deal.
(24:00):
Dude, like I didn't get anything but an invite to the principal's office and you're likedoing shit that, you know,
I want to take pride in and I remember when he was younger, I said, look, you want to goto a good school.
It's not about the education you can, you know, I've gotten a great education, justself-taught.
It's about the connections because you know, the guy you, you go to school with hisfather's CEO of this company or can open this door and he goes, no, no, if you're smart
(24:25):
enough, you know, he was like, you know, 10 years old or whatever.
Like, okay.
First job he got, I pick up the phone, like literally 60 seconds.
I got him a job, right?
So he's starting to believe.
Then, do you know what cut code knives are?
no, I don't think so.
Cutco knives, the gig is they have college students sell them in the summer and you canmake a lot of money.
(24:50):
And you learn basically referral based sales and you go to someone's kitchen and you demothe knives.
They're very expensive but they're really good.
I still have a set from 1986.
wow, well you sold me on him.
Yeah.
go get a cutco.
Sometimes they're at Costco, the college kids.
So I told my kids, I said, if you go sell cutco knives for the summer before you go tocollege, I'll match you dollar for dollar.
(25:17):
you know, up to three grand.
I'm going to go in reverse order.
My daughter's youngest.
lasted 10 days.
I was like, okay, you can't deal with pressure.
My son, he would call me up cussing bitching, but he did it.
And he made over three grand that summer and I matched them three grand.
So six grand for a summer job.
That's pretty good.
But what you learn from that is phenomenal.
(25:39):
But let me bring the point home.
It's the fact that I could pick up my Rolodex and set him up with people I knew.
That's why he sold, right?
Like my parents friends, you know, they could afforded the handle.
my friends can afford, you know, the whole $3,000 block set, you know, with the steakknife.
(26:00):
So I think you learned a valuable lesson about the value of your Rolodex and connection.
I feel like looking back myself, that was something I wish I had embraced more going intoschool.
I think I was more along the lines of where your son's head was at, which is like, let mejust dominate college and let me pave my own path rather than going out and talking to
(26:25):
people.
And then you come full circle, I'm in the partnership world and I'm realizing more andmore everything is just people.
Everything's just people.
You know, all companies kind of have the same issues that they're going through.
There are different opportunities at each and there's different structure to each, buteverything's just people.
Without a doubt.
(26:45):
It's definitely there have been a lot of things in my life that the right person openedthe door and literally I could have knocked on that door.
What is it?
It's not the person.
It's not the door you knock on.
It's the person inside that opens it for you.
That's I think I heard that it's amazing Instagram.
(27:07):
How do people survive with all those great quotes?
um
Oh, let's see leadership growth.
So talk about.
You know, you work on partnerships, right?
So tell me a little bit about the type of partnerships you're looking for and what'simportant, you know, and what you do for the organization.
(27:37):
You know, I think probably operations is the toughest, right?
Because, you know, it's like an air traffic controller, but in partnerships.
What?
What do you do specifically and you know, what makes a good partner for y'all?
Yeah, think the thing I'll tell people even when we're getting started is like, you wantto work with a DSP and absolutely never talk to them, we're not the platform for you.
(28:04):
So there are partners that will come on, send us deliveries.
There's not a heightened need to talk to us, right?
It doesn't have to be a regular cadence.
ah But we're looking for people who
have a North Star, have the alignment that I'm talking about when it comes to theiroff-premise.
So much easier to work with somebody if they know where they're headed and you're not, asa delivery service, trying to drag them along or get clear answers that they can't provide
(28:31):
to you.
And then we're looking for people who are in it for the long haul in terms of apartnership, right?
So tomorrow, any brand could turn us off, turn another DSP on and get things rocking.
uh That being said,
what we're committed to is getting better with our partners, right?
So a lot of the milestones that we've achieved as a company are a result of the feedbackthat we get from restaurants, right?
(28:57):
We wanna build tech tools, we want to educate our drivers, all geared towards supportingrestaurants' growth.
I know you said it early in the intro, but how can we help restaurants make money?
And from our perspective and the landscape of things right now, that's growing.
their first party catering, right?
So can our drivers help market for you?
(29:18):
Are you giving them the right materials to do so?
Give them feedback about the technology that they're using.
doing marketing for your partners?
Yeah, so I mean, even even people who sign up and aren't at the time doing anything as faras like catering menu drop off things like that.
It's a part of every onboarding call.
Like what collateral are you giving drivers right now to drop off at a drop off?
(29:42):
If you're not giving them any, you should start yesterday, right?
So our driver, I mean, it's not we're not going like what do they call it when you go doorto door almost and like drop off next to it?
the doors the door thing.
Yeah.
so we're not doing like, knock on the neighbor's door and drop off kind of thing, butwe're doing the full buffet style setup.
What I'm always encouraging people is menus, QR codes, things that direct them back toorder specifically from you, whatever that setup is right now, should be given to our
(30:11):
drivers every time so they can set it out and present it correctly.
So here's a question, because I always think about crazy ideas, right?
I'm a driver and I'm going to make 40 bucks for this delivery, right?
Which is a lot, because I don't want to have to deliver 20 ham sandwiches one at a time,right?
Is there an opportunity for a door hanger program with your partners and say, okay, you'redoing Michael's barbecue and I'm delivering to this office and you know, one to the left,
(30:40):
one to the right, two across whatever four or five doors in an office building.
And you know, whether you walk in, you put a door hanger and say, Hey, we were justdelivering at and you handwrite.
you know, ABC orthodontics.
If you decide you want to give us a try, you know, free brownies on your first order, andthen there's a code and it's dash, you know, the driver number, right?
(31:05):
And then they order, right?
And then the driver gets a $25 spiff.
Yeah, no, 100%.
I think, um...
about that?
Is that something that's been banded around?
We have, I think it's something that we haven't made any investment in, right?
So we're not out buying the door hangers or things like that.
And even the scale that we're at right now, it would be selecting a subset of our drivers,right?
(31:30):
Getting them qualified to that point, getting them close enough with the partners.
But no, I don't think we've pursued it hard enough with the right partners to getsomething like that off the ground.
But it has been kicked around.
And right now it's very much like.
we'll drop off where we're at.
I feel like we have drivers that would love to do what you're describing.
(31:52):
And you know, maybe what you say is it's an extra five bucks on the delivery, right?
And the driver gets the five bucks and then you split the commission or there's somethingwhere there's an incentive for the guy goes like, because you know, you're, you're not
delivering.
It's not like you're rushing back to do another catering.
You you're going to do one or two, you know, you're going to do an early drop and a late.
So I got 30 minutes and like, what the hell I'm in the building.
(32:14):
I'm on the floor to either knock on four doors or even just put a door hanger on fourdoors is like.
It's like a it's nothing right.
And you know point of differentiation.
What do you think you know y'all definitely have you know there's a couple of y'all thathave really good reputations in the the catering space.
(32:35):
What do you think makes you special makes you stand out because you know everybody talksabout door dash it's like you know somebody can show up in pajama pants and you know kind
of thing.
What makes y'all different special.
And why would somebody want to pay you a premium versus, dude, I could save five bucks or10 bucks and go to DoorDash.
(32:57):
Yeah, I think it's the expectations and the education we give drivers on the front end,right?
So ah I would be lying.
Any DSP would be lying to say that if you're using gig gig workers and they are in thefood delivery space, we're all pulling from the same pool, right?
Drivers on our platform drive for DoorDash.
(33:19):
They drive for Uber Eats.
They drive for these other platforms.
And that's the same across the board.
Like if somebody picks that line of work.
It is very challenging to get them committed to one platform.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen and we have some drivers who make enough money on ourplatform that they don't need to do like meal time gig work.
But we're all pulling from the same pool.
(33:40):
So we know that and we have to set different standards.
Right.
If they log into the Blue Deliver That app, they have to know going into it, there's adifferent standard that's going to be upheld.
A lot of that is us being offensive, right.
Giving that education up front.
But there's also a big defensive component to it, right?
You have to track your drivers.
You have to really closely be in tune with their performance so that they know, hey, I'mon the right track and I can earn more money with this platform, or I'm going down a bad
(34:09):
path and very quickly my account is gonna be at risk with this platform if I'm not settingup the food, if I'm not dressed the part and restaurants are giving feedback.
So yeah, I think it's the emphasis we put on the driver education.
And then back to the type of partners that we're looking to work with.
We're easy to get a hold of.
(34:30):
We're easy to schedule calls with.
If something goes wrong, we're going to be accountable.
You're speaking to somebody who understands the value of catering.
And if we don't get it right this time, we'll get it right the next time.
We'll put an action plan in place to make sure things are going smoothly.
So I think it's those two things.
You don't want to be calling into a general.
(34:50):
support line to try to talk about your catering orders.
You want a relationship with somebody who's doing this stuff.
And our drivers really know that catering is different.
Yeah.
So you talked about on a high level, everybody should be the same level of commitment tocatering.
But let's talk on a tactical level.
You know, when the driver rolls up, what are the things and it could be even before theyroll up.
(35:15):
What are some mistakes you see these brands making that either hurting themselves in themarketplace or is making it difficult for your driver to do their job properly?
Yeah, a big one is packaging.
um Packaging and operations, right?
If the food's not ready when the driver gets there, our platform's gonna compensate andtry to keep that same driver committed, right?
(35:39):
Other platform, you may have six drivers show up if you have a 25 minute delay on a largecatering order, right?
So timing is gonna make sure the food is fresh, make sure your driver stays on site.
But the other one is just treating deliveries when they're going out with a third partyDSP.
like you would a catering pickup order, right?
So you're going over that order in detail with your customer.
(36:02):
You may be giving them a diagram for how it should be laid out.
If an office admin comes in to do the pickup and they know they're gonna go back and setup for their team, you're giving them a diagram that shows how your boxes should be
folded, how things should be set up at the drop-off.
So yeah, I think being on time and committed to operational excellence, everything startsthere.
(36:23):
But then it's really packaging and how you treat things at the pickup.
So some brands, the boxes are fantastic.
Our drivers don't even need their bags.
Some brands do the drop and go bags where it's like customers are getting branded bags.
And I think that level of detail is needed if you're gonna lead the pack.
(36:44):
I'm not saying that every brand can afford or has to do drop and go bags or have theperfect boxes.
ah You kind of build your way to that but the fundamentals are are crucial
Yeah, definitely packaging and you know, one of the things we figured out really quickly,if you're going to put beans, you better tape it up with duct tape to keep them from
(37:06):
sloshing out and you know.
pans of gravy before too, like Thanksgiving time and it can turn south in a heartbeat.
yeah, so there's definitely that part of it.
I would say a part that people don't realize just in life in general is being veryappreciative of the people who serve you.
(37:28):
You know, and for us, it's like, you know, hey, you want to coke, you want to drink, youwant to go sit in our private party room and do the crossword puzzles.
You know, you want to make them feel valuable.
A friend of mine.
Um laughs because i'll be on the phone with them and i'll say hey I appreciate you like Ido appreciate You know as the grocery store damn straight.
(37:48):
I appreciate you.
I don't want to slice my own damn deli meat You know, so I do appreciate the people and sothey need to be appreciative I mean Literally everybody not just your customers your third
party your vendors the cisco guy.
It's that air of appreciation
And it sort of transmits in everything you do.
(38:09):
It's like, I'm not an airy fairy, it's the vibe, it's the energy.
It's like, hey, these people, know, that's their attitude.
It shows.
And if you have a shitty attitude, it shows because it shows that the employees, it showsin how things were packaged.
It's all part of
I don't think we'll just deem it like uh bad cultures or how you would run a restaurant.
(38:33):
I don't think they always think about the ripple effect, right?
If a driver has a fantastic experience at the handoff and they feel like they're a part ofyour team, that translates to the drop off with the customer more than a restaurant
operator could ever know.
And the same is true on the flip side, right?
If you're...
disrespectful to a driver or you're blaming them for things that are out of their control,ah very quickly that can turn into a negative experience with the customer.
(38:59):
And nobody wants to do a favor for an asshole.
If you're, if you're cool and, know, something goes out, I'll wait a little longer becauseit's like, you're always cool to me.
You know, the other thing is, again, my brain doesn't shut down.
You know, when you, when you go to the drive-through window at the bank and they have adog biscuit for your dog, maybe keep some snacks for the driver.
(39:21):
Like, Hey, grab a cookie.
Hey, we've got cookies for the driver or grab a piece of pie or something where.
You know, they're going to be appreciative and they're going to go that little extra mileto make sure everything's just perfect.
And if it's not, they'll do that.
But if you're a fucking schmuck, they're going to be like, screw you.
don't care.
Yep, we had to start setting, ah my wife is a big Amazon Prime fan, so we had to startsetting snacks outside of our house, because I was like, it's the same guy all the time,
(39:50):
we gotta hook him up, yeah.
So, I mean, even stuff like that, and that's not applicable to our platform ah as much,but if you're a frequent user of the Dash Pass or Amazon Prime, even just setting some
snacks outside your house, more often than not, it's the same people repeating back toyou.
ah
And people will go the extra mile.
(40:11):
You you think about somebody's shopping for your groceries and going to deliver those.
Are they just going to cancel an item or are going to reach out to you when they're out ofstock of this one but maybe there's another option?
ah You never know how things come full circle.
It's just treating people right.
dude, I'm never in town.
And when I get home, I've got seven Amazon boxes on my front porch.
(40:32):
And I'm like, I don't even know what I ordered till I open.
It's like Christmas.
It's like.
Actually, I'll tell you a funny story.
So I was in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks.
I came home and I had like four or five Amazon boxes.
I knew some of the things I was expecting.
And there is this picture hanging kit.
And it's I don't know if you've seen it.
(40:52):
It's like a two headed nail.
Two-prong nail and so you've got this special mallet you you you you nail the The nailinto the wood frame and then there's another nail sticking out
And now you you know, you could put 10 around the frame and then you put it exactly whereyou want and then you press it into the sheetrock And it's perfect.
(41:14):
It doesn't move.
It's perfect, right?
And i'm like which clown at amazon packed the wrong I didn't order this shit.
Did I pay for something else and gave me the wrong thing?
So my buddy comes over yesterday for lunch.
We're gonna go grab lunch and He's helping me move something I threw the thing away like Ididn't order this
(41:35):
He fished it out of chest.
goes, what'd do with this?
I bought this for you as a present.
I'm like, I'm like, do you think you should have told me and what the hell is it?
And I said, he goes, are you going to use it?
I go, no, I'm not going to use it, but you know, I appreciate it.
It's like, it's just, it was the, it's the weirdest, weirdest thing.
(41:58):
I love that he found it in the trash.
I, I don't know how he found in the trash.
Um, okay.
As we sort of wind down looking forward, where do you think AI I'm sure you're using AI onsome respect, but where do you think AI is going to take what you're doing?
(42:21):
Like, where do see the improvements?
Yeah, I think a lot of what we're committed to is great communication with our restaurantpartners, right?
If a driver's running more than five minutes late, we want to give you a heads up.
Hey, here's the ETA, any downstream effects that we would predict from this.
ah So a lot of that is outbound dials, right?
(42:43):
And I have seen very cool stuff and I haven't dove too deep on this more on the op sideand just things I get to experience with them.
But
I've seen a lot of cool stuff when it comes to conversations and actual phone calls comingout of AI.
I do think, especially with catering being a high ticket thing, communication is crucial.
(43:06):
You don't want to, we're never gonna wanna be in a place where we just remove all of ourhuman beings from our call center.
But a lot of the outbound activity that's like, hey, drivers five minutes late, they're ontheir way type of thing.
I think in the very near future will help us a lot.
And then when we talk about, there's a lot of technology around this already, but realtime optimizing for driver routes, I think have endless potential um to continue
(43:36):
improving.
And we have a massive fleet of drivers at this point.
Catering lead times are getting lower and lower.
There are a lot of platforms that do delivery recovery where we'll get a delivery into oursystem.
It's already 10 minutes overdue for pickup.
but it's been sent to three different DSPs, hey, who can get on site the fastest?
um Yeah, I think routing and everything that we're doing customer support side of thingswhen it comes to a specifically outbound alert communication.
(44:06):
Yeah.
I mean, what'll probably happen.
I don't think it'll happen soon.
One day you're just going to have robots, right?
You're going to have a fleet of robots.
Um, and I, know, and I don't know, I was talking with someone, whether there will besomething in an office building.
Like I got a high rise and I got a catering robot that does all these things.
And then the food just rolls up in a Tesla with a hot and cold box attached.
(44:32):
You know, the restaurant just puts it in and it's all coded and then the robot knows whereto pull it out and how to set it up.
And it totally nuts.
do y'all have it?
catering specific table, right?
Entrees are getting shifted here, the sides are getting shifted here, but our meals arealways served on this table, yeah.
Question.
uh You talked about the setup sheet and the first thing that came to mind and you saidsomething about QR codes.
(44:57):
Does anybody have a QR code that leads to videos on how to set up?
They do.
The brand I think I posted this, I think it was Candado ah that does this almost betterthan anybody.
But you talk about treating it like a customer is picking up the food rather than a thirdparty driver.
I mean, any driver can just scan the code that they're given and 30 second clip.
(45:20):
Here's how to set up our boxes.
Here's a demo of doing it.
And I think in that 30 to 60 second clip, they show their two most popular variations.
So it's like, here's a build your own bar.
here's a pre-made taco bar.
So yeah, there are people doing that and it couldn't be more obvious to me that that is aworthy investment.
(45:40):
can you do me a favor?
Like this is the shit I geek out on because I'm already three steps down the road.
Do you have a link to that video that you can shoot me?
Because what I'm thinking of in our platform, when you send, give somebody the cateringticket, it's got a QR code for setup and the driver says here, scan this.
And then we build it in our system and we can even host the videos in our online orderingplatform as another tab, like how to set up your catering.
(46:07):
But it'll take them there.
and it'll be a really cool value add for the customer.
Yep.
And anybody that we work with directly, right, we're building out articles on theircuisine.
And sometimes they'll provide us videos.
Sometimes Ben, our content team will go out and actually do the videos ourselves.
(46:29):
But yeah, it's been crucial for us to give drivers that information.
having the platform that you have and partnering closely with these restaurants, it's a nobrainer to build that type of material for all of it, right?
It really, it almost prevents or limits the liability of, we're going to use a differentDSP today, tomorrow, customers are going to pick it up today, right?
(46:52):
Everybody knows here's how the food's set up.
We've standardized it.
So yeah, I'll definitely shoot that over too.
Yeah, that's very cool.
Okay.
How can people get hold of you if they want to talk to you about working with yourplatform?
And by the way, we're integrated with y'all um as well.
We're you know, the challenge we've had as we've built out this integration is we keepgetting feedback from our customer and we keep putting rails on it to prevent problems,
(47:23):
right?
um
So and I think we've solved just about all of them because at the end of the dayeverything has to be seamless, right?
We can't have something fall through the cracks, you know
Well, and I loved your whole approach to it because as we we led up and you were gettingintegration set up, but it's like, OK, what if this happens?
What if this happens?
(47:43):
What if this happens more than most people?
You're very meticulous about, hey, here are all the potential outliers.
Granted, this might happen 1 % of the time, 0.5 % of the time, but it will happen.
What's our plan here?
And is everyone on the same page, right?
Well, I think that's the difference when you buy tech from somebody who was in the spaceor a guy that just went to MIT, right?
(48:09):
There's a lot of really sharp tech people in the world.
Like, I don't know, I can barely open up a spreadsheet.
But having spent my whole life in the restaurant business and sold catering and set upcatering and dealt with like I've forgotten more about catering than most people will know
just over that.
So you've got to be thinking about
You know, all these little permutations, because at the end of the day, that's the weakestlink.
(48:34):
That's the delivery.
You know, there's a story.
were very new on, you know, I delivered, we, had the courier was supposed to deliver afarmer rep order.
Let's say it was 200 back in the day, 200 bucks, right?
The courier, I don't know.
They got lost.
They smoked pot.
I don't know what the hell they did.
Right.
So the, the farm rep, where's the order, where's the order, where's the order.
(48:57):
And I'm like, well, shit.
Um, okay.
I'm going to make a whole new order and we'll bring it out.
Luckily barbecue, you can get out quickly.
So I show up and remember this is a farmer rep.
You know, you got to look at the lifetime value of a customer.
Also the lifetime value of referrals.
So I told her, said, look, you're not paying for this order and your next order is free.
(49:18):
You know, I'm very embarrassed.
So I bit the food, a bit the cost on the food in the courier's car.
I bit.
the cost of the food in my car.
And then I bet the cost on the food in the next one.
So really I had zero.
I was in the hole, basically the cost of one catering, right?
(49:40):
So I'm in the hole for 200 bucks, hard cost, right?
But what ended up happening, I proved every, it's not that you're going to make a mistake.
It's how do you recover when you make a mistake?
So I recovered and then she turned me on to the middle Tennessee.
(50:02):
Cut.
I'm still on here.
I can't see him.
called Riverside?
(50:26):
Is it just like zoom as far as like joining in and?
Do we use this?
What do we use?
(50:50):
having it, yeah.
Is it expensive?
We just slide into maxes.
I just use yours.
(51:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Didn't know that existed.
Now it's just me on the screen.
(51:33):
half of it went away.
So I don't know.
I'll check myself, see if he's gone.
(51:55):
Still recording though.
(52:41):
You ditched me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You just went black on our side.
(53:59):
They look at the cost in such a different lens.
Even a flat fee monthly, they look at it as a scary thing to engage in.
And I think there's a huge opportunity.
(55:01):
it's, from my perspective, it's just being absorbed.
I want to say it's three or seven percent on these, which is not insignificant.
(55:49):
to use the software.
It's described as a service fee.
It could very well be the other option, but I think it's to use the service and it'sspecific to catering.
(56:19):
Thank
(56:39):
So we just onboarded yesterday.
I want to say they have 11 locations right now.
It's called Swarm of Press.
And they're using EasyCators Direct Online Ordering.
And right off the rip, I was like, why are you
(57:01):
and they didn't understand the cost of using the online ordering.
So I asked them, like, hey, what are they charging you?
They're like, oh, I think it's free.
And I was like, it's absolutely not free.
I knew it was 7%.
So I told them, I think it's 7%.
And then all that data is going back to Easy Care so they can market to your customersagain.
The guy was appalled.
(57:22):
He was like, I thought it was free.
I thought it was free.
And the way you're saying it makes sense.
So I mean, they would be an easy person to start with.
(58:19):
I mean, even my parents would fall in the demographic that's on LinkedIn.
I know our saleswoman uses premium LinkedIn and attacks people that way.
What we recently started using and have seen success with is called Breezo Food Metrics.
Have you heard of it?
So yeah, it's called Breezo.
I can introduce you to at least the guy that got us started.
(58:40):
oh I want to say it's like five grand for a
But it's like you go in and you can look at a map view, but what they're doing is scrapingeverything that's on the internet out of business.
And we've been able to narrow it down and select franchise, Moe Southwest Grill, and thenyou can select the level of individual that you want.
(59:06):
So you can go in there and say, hey, I only want to see leadership.
OK, show me mid-level management.
I only want to see leadership.
(01:00:26):
So obviously.
something like that to pull leads.
But I also think, I mean, it's people like our team and just having a deep connectionthere.
Okay, us, Delivered, whoever else, you know, tech-wise that you're working with, havingjust...
(01:02:01):
you
(01:02:58):
Yeah.
That's my parents too.
I'm like, mom, stay off Facebook.
The algorithm is your news source.
Stay off.
I said, that's my mom too.
She falls in that same demographic where it's
(01:03:24):
Yeah, it's all of you.
Yep.
Yep, agreed.
Well, yeah, I love that concept.
But I'm going to try, I'll email and introduce you to, I think it's the owner and thedirector of Ops for Swarmer Press that I met yesterday.
And I'm going to try to cue up what you just said and then give me any feedback.
(01:03:48):
Or if you want to even write me something that's like a.
a guidebook for me to make these introductions, I'll start cleaning up with you.
Yeah, I like that.
And I'll just let you know, hey, this one makes sense.
They're using Easy Care in this way.
Let's get on with the show.
(01:04:48):
you guys, it's just figuring out the...
You just have to do the work to start passing it.
(01:07:15):
guess we're done with the pop.
I how he's gonna edit that up and wrap it up.
What I was gonna say is we can record his last question.
was like, where can people find you to sign up?
We can record you answering that question.
We can send it to him.
(01:07:39):
Or we can just say fuck it and do what he wants to do.
(01:09:04):
So I...
(01:10:03):
Always stuff to do.
(01:10:46):
A what?
Party planning committee, dude.
cute!
oh
(01:11:19):
Yeah, I don't see why not is when do you actually need it?
So we want to get it approved by the entire PPC team.
(01:11:40):
Yeah, no, that's fine.
We'll get it done.
Yeah, send the details.
Put us like all three in a message.
OK, you guys.
uh
Hello again, I am Michael Attias, your host of Restaurant Catering Smart, and today'sguest is Christian Hilty, VP of Partnerships at Deliver That.
Christian has been with Deliver That since its early days, playing a key role in itspivoting, pivot into catering.
He's passionate about helping restaurants take control of their operations and boost theirbottom line through first party, off-premise strategies and platforms.
(00:52):
With a background in leadership and growth in the startup world, Christian thrives onbuilding scalable solutions and meaningful relationships.
Outside of work, he's a proud dad of three and an avid basketball, golf and softballplayer.
And we're excited to have him on the show today.
But before we get started, let's take a minute to recognize our sponsor, CaterZen CateringSoftware.
They help restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
(01:14):
Discover why restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase sales.
Go to caterzen.com and sign up for a walkthrough of the software.
Now let's dive into this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts.
Welcome, Christian.
How are you doing today?
Doing great.
Thank you for having me on, man.
Yeah, yeah.
feel like we talk all the time, to have a face, I think I've seen you on a Zoom callbefore.
(01:36):
um I definitely have a face for radio.
yeah, that's okay.
You gotta keep the pretty boys uh employed.
Okay, uh question.
Give me a number between one and 300.
Nine.
going low.
(01:57):
If I had to give up some modern convenience like TV, car, toilet, telephone, lighting, Iwould select what?
Give up modern convenience.
Um...
I think phone would be a good one.
I feel like that would be so liberating.
(02:18):
could you could live your whole life without your phone.
Well couldn't do my work without my phone, but I think on the...
Ugh.
Alright, I would give up my car and switch to motorcycle.
Only my wife could drive the car.
Interesting.
That's not a bad one.
Yeah, give up the car and I'd be on like an electric scooter or motorcycle all the time.
(02:40):
You probably need a sidecar for the three kids.
That would be fun.
There's, know, hey, your wife would prefer a sidecar than a side chick.
So that's probably a good, good move.
You know, there's this guy that used to come in at the Starbucks when I lived in anotherpart of town and he had like a not a what do they call it?
(03:02):
A scooter with a sidecar and he had three golden retrievers and they were doggles.
The doggles.
Yeah!
this guy was like every time he rolled up everybody was just wanting to hang with thedogs.
I feel like golden retriever owners are like a breed of their own.
Those golden retrievers will go anywhere with them.
Dude, I've thought about, I mean, this isn't a dating podcast, but I've thought a goodservice would be wing pup.
(03:29):
You've run a dog for the day because I can tell you, if I'm, if I'm in, if I'm walkingdown the street and there could be a girl that is like butt ugly, but if she's got a
golden retriever, I would consider marrying her.
Like seriously.
Yeah.
And if it was a puppy, like we're headed to Jenison's diamonds and we're picking outstones.
(03:50):
Yeah, I love it.
I have three dogs at home.
So on top of the three kids, I have three dogs and a cat.
ah It's a full house.
They're not helping me pick up chicks these days.
They're just uh keeping me on my toes.
Yeah, you definitely don't need to be thinking of that with three kids.
I don't even want to know how the cat got in the mix, but you know, that's a whole nother.
(04:13):
oh If you have farmland and you want snakes and rodents taken care of, you need a cat.
otherwise.
OK, so let's reel this back in.
um How how did you get in the do you have a restaurant background or how did you get inthis business?
No, I mean, in college, so went to Ohio State.
(04:37):
In college, I was a bar back and I worked at Panera Bread until football season.
They tried to get me to work every football game except you're allowed to take one off.
So I quit Panera Bread day before the first football game at Ohio State.
But that would be the extent of my restaurant background.
I actually signed up while I was in college to be a driver on the platform.
(04:59):
I was working those.
side jobs at bars and stuff like that and signed up for really just a side hustle.
I end up on my ride along at the time it was ride along was how we onboarded drivers yougo learn how to set up sternos set up a catering order in general and the person taking me
on my ride along was Aaron Hoffman one of our co-founders so yeah they had just made thepivot to catering they had just sparked up with easy cater doing some easy dispatch stuff
(05:27):
and I was like
This sounds really cool.
I now have your cell phone number.
So I just pestered him until I graduated college and joined the team.
So this is my first job, my first real job ever out of college.
Yeah.
mine, mine lasted.
I start off as a dishwasher and so I was in the business forever.
My first job was archive storage sales.
(05:47):
Do know what that is?
Bankers boxes of files that nobody wants.
So they storm in a warehouse like law firms, CPA firms.
I would rather sell.
I would rather watch paint dry.
It was terrible.
And after two years, my boss.
comes in, and like he and the guy who is, you know, the guy who owned part of the companyand then my direct boss, you know, they bled records, like they geeked out over records.
(06:17):
I'm like, I don't get it.
Like it's records, like nothing exciting.
So he comes into my office.
I just got married, just bought a house and he goes, you know, Michael, you're just nothitting your numbers lately.
oh You think you need another month to make your numbers?
I go, no, Russ, you should probably just fire me today.
em
oh So he gave me a month severance, which you know at the time a month severance that wasa lot of money and I took everything in a banker's box and I went in my car and I cried
(06:46):
tears of joy.
It was more relief of the stress and then I went back to Corky's and the rest is history Iguess.
So it's interesting how people get started.
It is, yeah.
It feels like the luckiest thing in the world looking back at it, because I was doingPostmates, Uber Eats, all the little side gigs, and somebody was like, have you heard of
(07:08):
Deliver That?
Well, of course not.
ah It was just getting started.
So next thing I know, I'm sitting in a car with Aaron.
You never know where it's going to be.
Like literally things, you know, if it wasn't for me ending up at Corky's, I had the ideafor the software when I was waiting tables, rolling silverware and the women on the phone
were taking catering orders.
(07:29):
It's like, why are you asking these people the same information every day?
If you, if you had a database and if I knew how to program, I could have built them asimple system for production and planning or whatever.
So the idea sat on a shelf for 20 years.
And then when I got divorced,
I bootstrapped it for 30K and yeah, so I'm unemployable.
yeah, exactly.
(07:50):
uh It's funny when you're doing service jobs like that, like when I was doing the barbacking stuff, just the random thoughts you have while you're doing monotonous work,
right?
Just cleaning tables, cleaning dishes.
You just have so many ideas running through your head.
It's cool to see that you took action on.
Well, what's crazy is, you know, the guy has passed his son and I grew up in the sameneighborhood, but we weren't like big buddies.
(08:12):
Now he lives down in Florida where I've got a place.
So I hang out with him some and he's great family.
You know, the kids, kids worked hard in the business.
They weren't handed anything, you know, they weren't entitled.
And uh I literally, my brain does not shut off with ideas and I would, I would chase himdown the rest of, Hey Don, what if we did this?
Hey Don, what if we did this?
And we had the general manager, Robbie, she didn't want to change anything.
(08:36):
You know, she was not a fun person.
um And I think he just started hiding from me and they were all good ideas.
She went out of town once and I redesigned the drive through window to make it quicker.
And then just in spite, she moved it back.
Like I sped up the times.
It's like, F you like whatever.
So then I had to get your own.
(08:56):
You have to get your own gig because you're not employable.
It's very difficult.
um
in their ways.
It's tough.
Most people are stuck in their ways and they can't, you I'm always breaking things,looking to make things better.
It just doesn't, it's just the way I'm wired, which is, which I guess, I guess it's good.
(09:17):
Okay.
So do y'all do anything besides catering?
Do y'all do other things as well?
so we've gotten into alcohol delivery.
We have done um pretty significant grocery deliveries now um with our partnership withWegmans.
So one specific partner that we're doing some grocery stuff with.
But yeah, we've we've dabbled in floral alcohol deliveries.
(09:39):
We've done route based deliveries in the past.
So individual meals go into people.
That was very big at the height of the pandemic.
So, yeah, we've dabbled in other things.
I think alcohol is probably the most.
prominent right now.
We're certified in like three or four states where we're doing some alcohol work.
uh yeah, I think we're at a different place as a company, but uh where we're willing totake on more opportunities outside of just catering.
(10:06):
really the whole thing started with our CEO, Darian, and our leadership team maybe five orsix years ago at this point read the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.
We picked our hedgehog concept, right?
What can you be the best in the world at?
What are you passionate about?
And it was catering.
So we went all in on that and said, listen, we're never going to be the largest DSP.
(10:28):
We're never going to outshine DoorDash or have that kind of the money that they are Uberhave right now.
But we could be the best in the world at buffet style catering setups as a third party.
So we've just very narrowly focused in on that.
I do believe, you know, there are riches and niches and if you don't have the money of aCoke or Nike, you do need to pick a lane and dominate it for sure.
(10:54):
when we were starting, was like such an overlooked niche itself, right?
Like people absolutely needed help with catering.
They were spinning their tires, trying to hire their own drivers.
And we've seen it come full circle from, will never, same brands, we will never outsourceour catering to, we have to sell all of these vans and stop hiring our own staff to do
(11:17):
catering delivery.
So yeah, we picked the right concept for sure.
You know, it's interesting when I had my restaurant and again, I modeled off the Corkiesin Memphis.
put one in Nashville.
They had a courier service that would take food.
Most courier services didn't want to touch food because as you know, it's very timedependent.
You know, if I need you to deliver a document to a law firm, who gives a shit if it'sthere two, three, four, you know, you want flowers for your wife or Valentine's day.
(11:42):
You don't care if it shows up at 8 a.m.
or 8 p.m.
just get the damn flowers there the day, right?
So there's a lot of forgiveness.
There's no forgiveness in food.
They're eating at 12.
You know, so it's almost like a, you know, a masochist business.
So we, we looked all over and I don't know if this guy came into us or we found him.
(12:04):
His name was Chuck Hargrove and the dude was a hustler.
He worked out of his house.
He had a Miata delivering that food out of a Miata, right?
Um,
And he had a bunch of gig, he had gig employees before they were called gig employees,right?
So Nashville, a lot of musicians.
So he had musicians when they weren't on the road touring, they would drive, you know,school teachers, retirees, stay at home moms.
(12:31):
And, um, those guys became almost like our family.
Like the deal we made with them, like if they had to pick up a delivery, it's like, Hey,come early, free coffee, free drinks.
And back then there was a lot of corporate checks, right?
It wasn't all credit card and house charges.
Hey, if you bring the check back today, we'll give you a sandwich, right?
Kind of thing.
(12:52):
And they call us up and go, Hey, I'm having a family reunion.
Could you cut us a deal?
So even though they technically were 10 99 to courtesy courier, they were like part of ourteam, right?
It was a very unique standpoint and they were so good.
They would all stock their
(13:12):
And we gave them a ton of business.
You know, we'd have two, three grand on the registers before we unlocked the door.
A lot of days they would keep plates, silverware, barbecue sauce packs, silverwareutensils all in the back because we're their primary, you know, that was really the only
food account they had.
So, you know, and if there was a problem, they would, you know, come back, make it right.
(13:34):
Now we would pay them and take care of them.
And so it's funny.
It's the gig economy before the gig economy.
You somebody said, are you nervous doing a podcast interview?
How many have you done?
said, well, technically I think I'm up to 10, 11, 12, but in a previous life I had anewsletter and I would do audio newsletter.
(13:54):
I would do an audio newsletter.
So as opposed to us being on a zoom call for practice, you know, whatever I would call youup.
I would have a telephone recording device and I'd interview you for an hour and I'd burnit on.
I'd edit it.
Burn it on CD and mail it out with a hard copy.
So before there was a podcast, I was mailing CDs.
(14:18):
Yeah.
10 years, I've got 120 episodes.
So I'm going to, I'm going to tell him myself.
I have like light narcolepsy.
Like I don't sleep well at night.
The joke is, is if Michael gets in a car, he'll be asleep before he backs out of thedriveway.
Do it on planes and everything was terrible in college.
(14:38):
Like,
One time I was going to the national barbecue association and my, operating partner wasdriving and he had one of those front wheel drive cars.
So the whole front is open.
Like your feet could hit the gas pedals.
I fall asleep and literally I pin his foot down with my left foot.
(14:59):
I mean, there there's a time my buddy and I went to Alabama on a Saturday night to partyand we're driving home at three in the morning.
He goes, man, can you just drive?
I swear the car went 15 yards and I stopped.
mean, it was, yeah.
So back to this, there were times I was so tired doing interviews, I'd fall asleep in themiddle of the interview and the let, cause people could keep talking and talking and
(15:24):
talking.
Are you there?
No.
now there was no, they're there because if you give somebody open road, they're just, theycould talk for, you know, as my daughter says, when she calls my dad, I could put the
phone down and come back an hour later and he's still yapping.
Right.
Yeah.
So you could, you could definitely do that.
So what, made y'all decide to pivot into, to catering?
(15:47):
Was there anything specific?
Yeah, think it was really just the landscape at the time that it happened.
So really earliest days of Deliver That, it started as OU delivery, and it was at OhioUniversity.
John and Aaron were roommates, were college best friends, ah had gone to the same highschool.
So they had the idea of, let's deliver stuff here on campus.
(16:11):
This is like door dashes and at Ohio University, Uber Eats, Postmates, they're not there.
ah
So almost overnight they had a tweet and a Twitter account go viral, get a couple thousandpeople from OU following the account.
They were using their cell phones, just getting text messages left and right to go pick uptextbooks, Chipotle, whatever it is, right?
(16:33):
Little stuff on campus.
Fast forward, it becomes campus delivery and they try to duplicate that business model ata few other universities.
Then they graduate college, come back here to Canton where they're from.
Door-to-door trying to sell this and realizing okay door dash is very prominent in majorcities at this point Postmates is pretty big at the time uber um So they went into it was
(16:58):
a ruby Tuesdays around here I don't I don't think they're in business anymore, but theywent into a ruby Tuesdays and We're pitching their service and the guy was like no.
I don't I don't need you to take my one-off meals at all uh But he had three cateringorders laid out on the table and needed them delivered that day didn't have drivers to do
it he was like
I'll give you $30 cash for each one of these that you two guys can go take right now.
(17:23):
And I think that was the light bulb moment that was like, whoa, that is way more than the$2 we're charging.
We could pay drivers better.
We could do so much more with a business model if there were fewer deliveries with highermargin to them.
So I think that was the moment.
then it honestly just, it kind of stuck in the timing was right where Easy Cater startedEasy Dispatch and that was
(17:47):
exactly as they're making that pivot so they went all in on it.
You know, you can't beat luck, you know?
was lucky I was in the car with Aaron.
It was lucky they walked into that Ruby Tuesdays.
Yep.
you just can't, you know.
And obviously, what do they say?
Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity.
(18:08):
But just sometimes you're you're in, you know, Ray Kroc just happened to be selling milkmilkshake machines to the McDonald's brother.
I mean, you just you know, I don't have that kind of luck.
mean, I'm not I do OK luck, but I don't have like, you know, billion dollar with a B luck.
I just have thousand
with the tea luck.
(18:32):
So, you know, I'm sure you see a lot of operators, you know, and you come across all sortsof situations.
What do you see?
And we could talk on a high level from their catering plat the way they run their cateringbusiness to delivery packaging, whatever.
What do you see are some of the big mistakes that operators are making?
(18:53):
Like if you were king for a day or consultants say, hey, here's three things that we seeall the time that need to be fixed.
What are those things?
Yeah, if we're talking about things that specifically need to be fixed, I think it'salignment inside of an organization for what their off-premise strategy is, right?
(19:15):
And how much they value it.
Because the most frustrating thing from my seat is to see a catering sales manager ormaybe they manage marketing for the team or whatever it is.
It seems like
There can be different roles that are assigned to manage catering, manage all thingsoff-premise.
See them super passionate about what they're doing, but not having buy-in from the rest ofthe organization.
(19:39):
Almost like you're the redhead stepchild of the organization, right?
Like, yeah, this catering thing, but your ops team's not behind it.
Your leadership team's not behind it.
You're not getting the resources you need.
So I think if I could just wave a wand, it would be.
Whatever level you want to prioritize off-premise, do it as a collective, do it as agroup.
(20:00):
When you walk away from the table, agree this is a priority or it's not a priority.
Because we could talk about technology, packaging, all of the things.
It has to start with, are we aligned that this is going to be an investment or not?
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that.
um I had a conversation with somebody about, you know, we do some work around culture andwhat I call it is everybody drinking the Kool-Aid.
(20:27):
You know, I need everybody drinking my Kool-Aid.
If you're not drinking the Kool-Aid, like you don't have to be the sharpest, you know, youknow, you could be a seven and you're drinking the Kool-Aid.
But if you're a 10 and you're all about yourself and you're not a team player and youdon't buy into what we're doing, I don't need you on my team.
Right.
And where I see that especially is in the franchise world, because we've worked with a lotof franchise brands.
(20:53):
Right.
And I'm not going to, you know, let's take one that we worked with in the early days withmost Southwest Grill.
That's part of their culture.
You buy a territory, you're going to have a catering sales rep, you're going to pushcatering and you're going to sell the hell out of catering.
Right.
Other brands, it's like, here it is.
Here's the packaging.
Here's the marketing.
If you want to sell it and it's, it's the 1 % or the 80 20, not even 80 20, though guysthat get it say, man, I'm just eking out a living out of my sandwich shop.
(21:25):
But if I sell catering, I can make a lot of money.
And, and I've done a lot of consulting back in the day.
I consulted for like Domino's pizza and
Spoke at all the trade shows like I have a whole nother all these things people talk aboutlike I was doing 20 years ago like you know, and it's documented so I'm not you know, you
(21:47):
know trying to steal anything from anybody else but um I told these franchiseorganizations I said you're not going to listen to me, but if you were going to listen to
me go sell franchises to people who used to do B2B corporate sales a farmer rap.
That guy that got laid off from his job, he's got a 401k, he's got a severance package,his wife works, they can afford it.
(22:12):
He knows how to sell.
He doesn't need to make sandwiches.
You can hire the sandwich maker.
You can hire the guy to supervise operation, but he can get out there and bring in acouple hundred thousand dollars in sale.
And now of a sudden, instead of making a $50,000 job, he's making a buck 50 out of thatstore.
Yep.
Yep.
(22:32):
I love how you, I love how you led with, you're not going to listen to me, but if youwere, here's what you'd do.
That's my favorite part of the whole thing.
Yeah, but I mean, it's like, you know, you'll find out how old are your kids?
You have 12, 2, and 8 months.
Damn.
Yeah, we gotta spread.
Wow, same baby mama?
(22:54):
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, were you like in a coma for 10 years, dude?
I mean, that's a long list read.
Yeah, yeah, we restarted, that's for sure.
And then we did it in bulk, back to back like that.
Yeah.
were knocked out.
um And what you're find is you're never your kids will never think you're smart until theyget older.
(23:18):
And sometimes your employees or your team members won't think you're smart until they failand then they look backwards.
You know, I remember my son, you know, he's very, very smart.
Went to Vanderbilt.
I Vanderbilt wouldn't even hire me to wash dishes.
I wouldn't even pass the entrance exam to work in the
in the dish hole.
(23:39):
he went to Vanderbilt, super smart kid.
I mean, very accomplished.
I'm so smart that he didn't even go to the, what is it?
Beta society, some honor society he got inducted to.
He didn't even go to the inaugural.
And he goes, I said, I found out you got in, you know, what end of this, why didn't youinvite me?
it's no big deal.
(24:00):
Dude, like I didn't get anything but an invite to the principal's office and you're likedoing shit that, you know,
I want to take pride in and I remember when he was younger, I said, look, you want to goto a good school.
It's not about the education you can, you know, I've gotten a great education, justself-taught.
It's about the connections because you know, the guy you, you go to school with hisfather's CEO of this company or can open this door and he goes, no, no, if you're smart
(24:25):
enough, you know, he was like, you know, 10 years old or whatever.
Like, okay.
First job he got, I pick up the phone, like literally 60 seconds.
I got him a job, right?
So he's starting to believe.
Then, do you know what cut code knives are?
no, I don't think so.
Cutco knives, the gig is they have college students sell them in the summer and you canmake a lot of money.
(24:50):
And you learn basically referral based sales and you go to someone's kitchen and you demothe knives.
They're very expensive but they're really good.
I still have a set from 1986.
wow, well you sold me on him.
Yeah.
go get a cutco.
Sometimes they're at Costco, the college kids.
So I told my kids, I said, if you go sell cutco knives for the summer before you go tocollege, I'll match you dollar for dollar.
(25:17):
you know, up to three grand.
I'm going to go in reverse order.
My daughter's youngest.
lasted 10 days.
I was like, okay, you can't deal with pressure.
My son, he would call me up cussing bitching, but he did it.
And he made over three grand that summer and I matched them three grand.
So six grand for a summer job.
That's pretty good.
But what you learn from that is phenomenal.
(25:39):
But let me bring the point home.
It's the fact that I could pick up my Rolodex and set him up with people I knew.
That's why he sold, right?
Like my parents friends, you know, they could afforded the handle.
my friends can afford, you know, the whole $3,000 block set, you know, with the steakknife.
(26:00):
So I think you learned a valuable lesson about the value of your Rolodex and connection.
I feel like looking back myself, that was something I wish I had embraced more going intoschool.
I think I was more along the lines of where your son's head was at, which is like, let mejust dominate college and let me pave my own path rather than going out and talking to
(26:25):
people.
And then you come full circle, I'm in the partnership world and I'm realizing more andmore everything is just people.
Everything's just people.
You know, all companies kind of have the same issues that they're going through.
There are different opportunities at each and there's different structure to each, buteverything's just people.
Without a doubt.
(26:45):
It's definitely there have been a lot of things in my life that the right person openedthe door and literally I could have knocked on that door.
What is it?
It's not the person.
It's not the door you knock on.
It's the person inside that opens it for you.
That's I think I heard that it's amazing Instagram.
(27:07):
How do people survive with all those great quotes?
um
Oh, let's see leadership growth.
So talk about.
You know, you work on partnerships, right?
So tell me a little bit about the type of partnerships you're looking for and what'simportant, you know, and what you do for the organization.
(27:37):
You know, I think probably operations is the toughest, right?
Because, you know, it's like an air traffic controller, but in partnerships.
What?
What do you do specifically and you know, what makes a good partner for y'all?
Yeah, think the thing I'll tell people even when we're getting started is like, you wantto work with a DSP and absolutely never talk to them, we're not the platform for you.
(28:04):
So there are partners that will come on, send us deliveries.
There's not a heightened need to talk to us, right?
It doesn't have to be a regular cadence.
ah But we're looking for people who
have a North Star, have the alignment that I'm talking about when it comes to theiroff-premise.
So much easier to work with somebody if they know where they're headed and you're not, asa delivery service, trying to drag them along or get clear answers that they can't provide
(28:31):
to you.
And then we're looking for people who are in it for the long haul in terms of apartnership, right?
So tomorrow, any brand could turn us off, turn another DSP on and get things rocking.
uh That being said,
what we're committed to is getting better with our partners, right?
So a lot of the milestones that we've achieved as a company are a result of the feedbackthat we get from restaurants, right?
(28:57):
We wanna build tech tools, we want to educate our drivers, all geared towards supportingrestaurants' growth.
I know you said it early in the intro, but how can we help restaurants make money?
And from our perspective and the landscape of things right now, that's growing.
their first party catering, right?
So can our drivers help market for you?
(29:18):
Are you giving them the right materials to do so?
Give them feedback about the technology that they're using.
doing marketing for your partners?
Yeah, so I mean, even even people who sign up and aren't at the time doing anything as faras like catering menu drop off things like that.
It's a part of every onboarding call.
Like what collateral are you giving drivers right now to drop off at a drop off?
(29:42):
If you're not giving them any, you should start yesterday, right?
So our driver, I mean, it's not we're not going like what do they call it when you go doorto door almost and like drop off next to it?
the doors the door thing.
Yeah.
so we're not doing like, knock on the neighbor's door and drop off kind of thing, butwe're doing the full buffet style setup.
What I'm always encouraging people is menus, QR codes, things that direct them back toorder specifically from you, whatever that setup is right now, should be given to our
(30:11):
drivers every time so they can set it out and present it correctly.
So here's a question, because I always think about crazy ideas, right?
I'm a driver and I'm going to make 40 bucks for this delivery, right?
Which is a lot, because I don't want to have to deliver 20 ham sandwiches one at a time,right?
Is there an opportunity for a door hanger program with your partners and say, okay, you'redoing Michael's barbecue and I'm delivering to this office and you know, one to the left,
(30:40):
one to the right, two across whatever four or five doors in an office building.
And you know, whether you walk in, you put a door hanger and say, Hey, we were justdelivering at and you handwrite.
you know, ABC orthodontics.
If you decide you want to give us a try, you know, free brownies on your first order, andthen there's a code and it's dash, you know, the driver number, right?
(31:05):
And then they order, right?
And then the driver gets a $25 spiff.
Yeah, no, 100%.
I think, um...
about that?
Is that something that's been banded around?
We have, I think it's something that we haven't made any investment in, right?
So we're not out buying the door hangers or things like that.
And even the scale that we're at right now, it would be selecting a subset of our drivers,right?
(31:30):
Getting them qualified to that point, getting them close enough with the partners.
But no, I don't think we've pursued it hard enough with the right partners to getsomething like that off the ground.
But it has been kicked around.
And right now it's very much like.
we'll drop off where we're at.
I feel like we have drivers that would love to do what you're describing.
(31:52):
And you know, maybe what you say is it's an extra five bucks on the delivery, right?
And the driver gets the five bucks and then you split the commission or there's somethingwhere there's an incentive for the guy goes like, because you know, you're, you're not
delivering.
It's not like you're rushing back to do another catering.
You you're going to do one or two, you know, you're going to do an early drop and a late.
So I got 30 minutes and like, what the hell I'm in the building.
(32:14):
I'm on the floor to either knock on four doors or even just put a door hanger on fourdoors is like.
It's like a it's nothing right.
And you know point of differentiation.
What do you think you know y'all definitely have you know there's a couple of y'all thathave really good reputations in the the catering space.
(32:35):
What do you think makes you special makes you stand out because you know everybody talksabout door dash it's like you know somebody can show up in pajama pants and you know kind
of thing.
What makes y'all different special.
And why would somebody want to pay you a premium versus, dude, I could save five bucks or10 bucks and go to DoorDash.
(32:57):
Yeah, I think it's the expectations and the education we give drivers on the front end,right?
So ah I would be lying.
Any DSP would be lying to say that if you're using gig gig workers and they are in thefood delivery space, we're all pulling from the same pool, right?
Drivers on our platform drive for DoorDash.
(33:19):
They drive for Uber Eats.
They drive for these other platforms.
And that's the same across the board.
Like if somebody picks that line of work.
It is very challenging to get them committed to one platform.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen and we have some drivers who make enough money on ourplatform that they don't need to do like meal time gig work.
But we're all pulling from the same pool.
(33:40):
So we know that and we have to set different standards.
Right.
If they log into the Blue Deliver That app, they have to know going into it, there's adifferent standard that's going to be upheld.
A lot of that is us being offensive, right.
Giving that education up front.
But there's also a big defensive component to it, right?
You have to track your drivers.
You have to really closely be in tune with their performance so that they know, hey, I'mon the right track and I can earn more money with this platform, or I'm going down a bad
(34:09):
path and very quickly my account is gonna be at risk with this platform if I'm not settingup the food, if I'm not dressed the part and restaurants are giving feedback.
So yeah, I think it's the emphasis we put on the driver education.
And then back to the type of partners that we're looking to work with.
We're easy to get a hold of.
(34:30):
We're easy to schedule calls with.
If something goes wrong, we're going to be accountable.
You're speaking to somebody who understands the value of catering.
And if we don't get it right this time, we'll get it right the next time.
We'll put an action plan in place to make sure things are going smoothly.
So I think it's those two things.
You don't want to be calling into a general.
(34:50):
support line to try to talk about your catering orders.
You want a relationship with somebody who's doing this stuff.
And our drivers really know that catering is different.
Yeah.
So you talked about on a high level, everybody should be the same level of commitment tocatering.
But let's talk on a tactical level.
You know, when the driver rolls up, what are the things and it could be even before theyroll up.
(35:15):
What are some mistakes you see these brands making that either hurting themselves in themarketplace or is making it difficult for your driver to do their job properly?
Yeah, a big one is packaging.
um Packaging and operations, right?
If the food's not ready when the driver gets there, our platform's gonna compensate andtry to keep that same driver committed, right?
(35:39):
Other platform, you may have six drivers show up if you have a 25 minute delay on a largecatering order, right?
So timing is gonna make sure the food is fresh, make sure your driver stays on site.
But the other one is just treating deliveries when they're going out with a third partyDSP.
like you would a catering pickup order, right?
So you're going over that order in detail with your customer.
(36:02):
You may be giving them a diagram for how it should be laid out.
If an office admin comes in to do the pickup and they know they're gonna go back and setup for their team, you're giving them a diagram that shows how your boxes should be
folded, how things should be set up at the drop-off.
So yeah, I think being on time and committed to operational excellence, everything startsthere.
(36:23):
But then it's really packaging and how you treat things at the pickup.
So some brands, the boxes are fantastic.
Our drivers don't even need their bags.
Some brands do the drop and go bags where it's like customers are getting branded bags.
And I think that level of detail is needed if you're gonna lead the pack.
(36:44):
I'm not saying that every brand can afford or has to do drop and go bags or have theperfect boxes.
ah You kind of build your way to that but the fundamentals are are crucial
Yeah, definitely packaging and you know, one of the things we figured out really quickly,if you're going to put beans, you better tape it up with duct tape to keep them from
(37:06):
sloshing out and you know.
pans of gravy before too, like Thanksgiving time and it can turn south in a heartbeat.
yeah, so there's definitely that part of it.
I would say a part that people don't realize just in life in general is being veryappreciative of the people who serve you.
(37:28):
You know, and for us, it's like, you know, hey, you want to coke, you want to drink, youwant to go sit in our private party room and do the crossword puzzles.
You know, you want to make them feel valuable.
A friend of mine.
Um laughs because i'll be on the phone with them and i'll say hey I appreciate you like Ido appreciate You know as the grocery store damn straight.
(37:48):
I appreciate you.
I don't want to slice my own damn deli meat You know, so I do appreciate the people and sothey need to be appreciative I mean Literally everybody not just your customers your third
party your vendors the cisco guy.
It's that air of appreciation
And it sort of transmits in everything you do.
(38:09):
It's like, I'm not an airy fairy, it's the vibe, it's the energy.
It's like, hey, these people, know, that's their attitude.
It shows.
And if you have a shitty attitude, it shows because it shows that the employees, it showsin how things were packaged.
It's all part of
I don't think we'll just deem it like uh bad cultures or how you would run a restaurant.
(38:33):
I don't think they always think about the ripple effect, right?
If a driver has a fantastic experience at the handoff and they feel like they're a part ofyour team, that translates to the drop off with the customer more than a restaurant
operator could ever know.
And the same is true on the flip side, right?
If you're...
disrespectful to a driver or you're blaming them for things that are out of their control,ah very quickly that can turn into a negative experience with the customer.
(38:59):
And nobody wants to do a favor for an asshole.
If you're, if you're cool and, know, something goes out, I'll wait a little longer becauseit's like, you're always cool to me.
You know, the other thing is, again, my brain doesn't shut down.
You know, when you, when you go to the drive-through window at the bank and they have adog biscuit for your dog, maybe keep some snacks for the driver.
(39:21):
Like, Hey, grab a cookie.
Hey, we've got cookies for the driver or grab a piece of pie or something where.
You know, they're going to be appreciative and they're going to go that little extra mileto make sure everything's just perfect.
And if it's not, they'll do that.
But if you're a fucking schmuck, they're going to be like, screw you.
don't care.
Yep, we had to start setting, ah my wife is a big Amazon Prime fan, so we had to startsetting snacks outside of our house, because I was like, it's the same guy all the time,
(39:50):
we gotta hook him up, yeah.
So, I mean, even stuff like that, and that's not applicable to our platform ah as much,but if you're a frequent user of the Dash Pass or Amazon Prime, even just setting some
snacks outside your house, more often than not, it's the same people repeating back toyou.
ah
And people will go the extra mile.
(40:11):
You you think about somebody's shopping for your groceries and going to deliver those.
Are they just going to cancel an item or are going to reach out to you when they're out ofstock of this one but maybe there's another option?
ah You never know how things come full circle.
It's just treating people right.
dude, I'm never in town.
And when I get home, I've got seven Amazon boxes on my front porch.
(40:32):
And I'm like, I don't even know what I ordered till I open.
It's like Christmas.
It's like.
Actually, I'll tell you a funny story.
So I was in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks.
I came home and I had like four or five Amazon boxes.
I knew some of the things I was expecting.
And there is this picture hanging kit.
And it's I don't know if you've seen it.
(40:52):
It's like a two headed nail.
Two-prong nail and so you've got this special mallet you you you you nail the The nailinto the wood frame and then there's another nail sticking out
And now you you know, you could put 10 around the frame and then you put it exactly whereyou want and then you press it into the sheetrock And it's perfect.
(41:14):
It doesn't move.
It's perfect, right?
And i'm like which clown at amazon packed the wrong I didn't order this shit.
Did I pay for something else and gave me the wrong thing?
So my buddy comes over yesterday for lunch.
We're gonna go grab lunch and He's helping me move something I threw the thing away like Ididn't order this
(41:35):
He fished it out of chest.
goes, what'd do with this?
I bought this for you as a present.
I'm like, I'm like, do you think you should have told me and what the hell is it?
And I said, he goes, are you going to use it?
I go, no, I'm not going to use it, but you know, I appreciate it.
It's like, it's just, it was the, it's the weirdest, weirdest thing.
(41:58):
I love that he found it in the trash.
I, I don't know how he found in the trash.
Um, okay.
As we sort of wind down looking forward, where do you think AI I'm sure you're using AI onsome respect, but where do you think AI is going to take what you're doing?
(42:21):
Like, where do see the improvements?
Yeah, I think a lot of what we're committed to is great communication with our restaurantpartners, right?
If a driver's running more than five minutes late, we want to give you a heads up.
Hey, here's the ETA, any downstream effects that we would predict from this.
ah So a lot of that is outbound dials, right?
(42:43):
And I have seen very cool stuff and I haven't dove too deep on this more on the op sideand just things I get to experience with them.
But
I've seen a lot of cool stuff when it comes to conversations and actual phone calls comingout of AI.
I do think, especially with catering being a high ticket thing, communication is crucial.
(43:06):
You don't want to, we're never gonna wanna be in a place where we just remove all of ourhuman beings from our call center.
But a lot of the outbound activity that's like, hey, drivers five minutes late, they're ontheir way type of thing.
I think in the very near future will help us a lot.
And then when we talk about, there's a lot of technology around this already, but realtime optimizing for driver routes, I think have endless potential um to continue
(43:36):
improving.
And we have a massive fleet of drivers at this point.
Catering lead times are getting lower and lower.
There are a lot of platforms that do delivery recovery where we'll get a delivery into oursystem.
It's already 10 minutes overdue for pickup.
but it's been sent to three different DSPs, hey, who can get on site the fastest?
um Yeah, I think routing and everything that we're doing customer support side of thingswhen it comes to a specifically outbound alert communication.
(44:06):
Yeah.
I mean, what'll probably happen.
I don't think it'll happen soon.
One day you're just going to have robots, right?
You're going to have a fleet of robots.
Um, and I, know, and I don't know, I was talking with someone, whether there will besomething in an office building.
Like I got a high rise and I got a catering robot that does all these things.
And then the food just rolls up in a Tesla with a hot and cold box attached.
(44:32):
You know, the restaurant just puts it in and it's all coded and then the robot knows whereto pull it out and how to set it up.
And it totally nuts.
do y'all have it?
catering specific table, right?
Entrees are getting shifted here, the sides are getting shifted here, but our meals arealways served on this table, yeah.
Question.
uh You talked about the setup sheet and the first thing that came to mind and you saidsomething about QR codes.
(44:57):
Does anybody have a QR code that leads to videos on how to set up?
They do.
The brand I think I posted this, I think it was Candado ah that does this almost betterthan anybody.
But you talk about treating it like a customer is picking up the food rather than a thirdparty driver.
I mean, any driver can just scan the code that they're given and 30 second clip.
(45:20):
Here's how to set up our boxes.
Here's a demo of doing it.
And I think in that 30 to 60 second clip, they show their two most popular variations.
So it's like, here's a build your own bar.
here's a pre-made taco bar.
So yeah, there are people doing that and it couldn't be more obvious to me that that is aworthy investment.
(45:40):
can you do me a favor?
Like this is the shit I geek out on because I'm already three steps down the road.
Do you have a link to that video that you can shoot me?
Because what I'm thinking of in our platform, when you send, give somebody the cateringticket, it's got a QR code for setup and the driver says here, scan this.
And then we build it in our system and we can even host the videos in our online orderingplatform as another tab, like how to set up your catering.
(46:07):
But it'll take them there.
and it'll be a really cool value add for the customer.
Yep.
And anybody that we work with directly, right, we're building out articles on theircuisine.
And sometimes they'll provide us videos.
Sometimes Ben, our content team will go out and actually do the videos ourselves.
(46:29):
But yeah, it's been crucial for us to give drivers that information.
having the platform that you have and partnering closely with these restaurants, it's a nobrainer to build that type of material for all of it, right?
It really, it almost prevents or limits the liability of, we're going to use a differentDSP today, tomorrow, customers are going to pick it up today, right?
(46:52):
Everybody knows here's how the food's set up.
We've standardized it.
So yeah, I'll definitely shoot that over too.
Yeah, that's very cool.
Okay.
How can people get hold of you if they want to talk to you about working with yourplatform?
And by the way, we're integrated with y'all um as well.
We're you know, the challenge we've had as we've built out this integration is we keepgetting feedback from our customer and we keep putting rails on it to prevent problems,
(47:23):
right?
um
So and I think we've solved just about all of them because at the end of the dayeverything has to be seamless, right?
We can't have something fall through the cracks, you know
Well, and I loved your whole approach to it because as we we led up and you were gettingintegration set up, but it's like, OK, what if this happens?
What if this happens?
(47:43):
What if this happens more than most people?
You're very meticulous about, hey, here are all the potential outliers.
Granted, this might happen 1 % of the time, 0.5 % of the time, but it will happen.
What's our plan here?
And is everyone on the same page, right?
Well, I think that's the difference when you buy tech from somebody who was in the spaceor a guy that just went to MIT, right?
(48:09):
There's a lot of really sharp tech people in the world.
Like, I don't know, I can barely open up a spreadsheet.
But having spent my whole life in the restaurant business and sold catering and set upcatering and dealt with like I've forgotten more about catering than most people will know
just over that.
So you've got to be thinking about
You know, all these little permutations, because at the end of the day, that's the weakestlink.
(48:34):
That's the delivery.
You know, there's a story.
were very new on, you know, I delivered, we, had the courier was supposed to deliver afarmer rep order.
Let's say it was 200 back in the day, 200 bucks, right?
The courier, I don't know.
They got lost.
They smoked pot.
I don't know what the hell they did.
Right.
So the, the farm rep, where's the order, where's the order, where's the order.
(48:57):
And I'm like, well, shit.
Um, okay.
I'm going to make a whole new order and we'll bring it out.
Luckily barbecue, you can get out quickly.
So I show up and remember this is a farmer rep.
You know, you got to look at the lifetime value of a customer.
Also the lifetime value of referrals.
So I told her, said, look, you're not paying for this order and your next order is free.
(49:18):
You know, I'm very embarrassed.
So I bit the food, a bit the cost on the food in the courier's car.
I bit.
the cost of the food in my car.
And then I bet the cost on the food in the next one.
So really I had zero.
I was in the hole, basically the cost of one catering, right?
(49:40):
So I'm in the hole for 200 bucks, hard cost, right?
But what ended up happening, I proved every, it's not that you're going to make a mistake.
It's how do you recover when you make a mistake?
So I recovered and then she turned me on to the middle Tennessee.
(50:02):
Cut.
I'm still on here.
I can't see him.
called Riverside?
(50:26):
Is it just like zoom as far as like joining in and?
Do we use this?
What do we use?
(50:50):
having it, yeah.
Is it expensive?
We just slide into maxes.
I just use yours.
(51:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Didn't know that existed.
Now it's just me on the screen.
(51:33):
half of it went away.
So I don't know.
I'll check myself, see if he's gone.
(51:55):
Still recording though.
(52:41):
You ditched me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You just went black on our side.
(53:59):
They look at the cost in such a different lens.
Even a flat fee monthly, they look at it as a scary thing to engage in.
And I think there's a huge opportunity.
(55:01):
it's, from my perspective, it's just being absorbed.
I want to say it's three or seven percent on these, which is not insignificant.
(55:49):
to use the software.
It's described as a service fee.
It could very well be the other option, but I think it's to use the service and it'sspecific to catering.
(56:19):
Thank
(56:39):
So we just onboarded yesterday.
I want to say they have 11 locations right now.
It's called Swarm of Press.
And they're using EasyCators Direct Online Ordering.
And right off the rip, I was like, why are you
(57:01):
and they didn't understand the cost of using the online ordering.
So I asked them, like, hey, what are they charging you?
They're like, oh, I think it's free.
And I was like, it's absolutely not free.
I knew it was 7%.
So I told them, I think it's 7%.
And then all that data is going back to Easy Care so they can market to your customersagain.
The guy was appalled.
(57:22):
He was like, I thought it was free.
I thought it was free.
And the way you're saying it makes sense.
So I mean, they would be an easy person to start with.
(58:19):
I mean, even my parents would fall in the demographic that's on LinkedIn.
I know our saleswoman uses premium LinkedIn and attacks people that way.
What we recently started using and have seen success with is called Breezo Food Metrics.
Have you heard of it?
So yeah, it's called Breezo.
I can introduce you to at least the guy that got us started.
(58:40):
oh I want to say it's like five grand for a
But it's like you go in and you can look at a map view, but what they're doing is scrapingeverything that's on the internet out of business.
And we've been able to narrow it down and select franchise, Moe Southwest Grill, and thenyou can select the level of individual that you want.
(59:06):
So you can go in there and say, hey, I only want to see leadership.
OK, show me mid-level management.
I only want to see leadership.
(01:00:26):
So obviously.
something like that to pull leads.
But I also think, I mean, it's people like our team and just having a deep connectionthere.
Okay, us, Delivered, whoever else, you know, tech-wise that you're working with, havingjust...
(01:02:01):
you
(01:02:58):
Yeah.
That's my parents too.
I'm like, mom, stay off Facebook.
The algorithm is your news source.
Stay off.
I said, that's my mom too.
She falls in that same demographic where it's
(01:03:24):
Yeah, it's all of you.
Yep.
Yep, agreed.
Well, yeah, I love that concept.
But I'm going to try, I'll email and introduce you to, I think it's the owner and thedirector of Ops for Swarmer Press that I met yesterday.
And I'm going to try to cue up what you just said and then give me any feedback.
(01:03:48):
Or if you want to even write me something that's like a.
a guidebook for me to make these introductions, I'll start cleaning up with you.
Yeah, I like that.
And I'll just let you know, hey, this one makes sense.
They're using Easy Care in this way.
Let's get on with the show.
(01:04:48):
you guys, it's just figuring out the...
You just have to do the work to start passing it.
(01:07:15):
guess we're done with the pop.
I how he's gonna edit that up and wrap it up.
What I was gonna say is we can record his last question.
was like, where can people find you to sign up?
We can record you answering that question.
We can send it to him.
(01:07:39):
Or we can just say fuck it and do what he wants to do.
(01:09:04):
So I...
(01:10:03):
Always stuff to do.
(01:10:46):
A what?
Party planning committee, dude.
cute!
oh
(01:11:19):
Yeah, I don't see why not is when do you actually need it?
So we want to get it approved by the entire PPC team.
(01:11:40):
Yeah, no, that's fine.
We'll get it done.
Yeah, send the details.
Put us like all three in a message.
OK, you guys.
uh
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