September 23, 2025 • 18 mins
In this episode of the Tech on Toast Podcast, Chris Fletcher sits down with Sean Trevaskis, co-founder of Growdash, to explore how restaurants can turn delivery data into powerful marketing strategies.
Sean shares his journey from working at Talabat and Deliveroo to launching Growdash, a restaurant growth platform that integrates with aggregators like Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat. Together, they discuss:
Why restaurants often struggle with overwhelming delivery data
How Growdash helps operators measure incrementality vs. cannibalisation
The role of AI agent Aisha in becoming “the analyst in your pocket”
Key marketing metrics every operator should track
Differences between the Middle East and UK restaurant markets
The future of AI in restaurant marketing
If you’re a marketer or operator navigating the complexities of delivery platforms, this episode is packed with insights to help you optimise campaigns, grow sales, and take control of your data.
👉 Learn more about Growdash at mygrowdash.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Welcome to the Tech and Toast podcast.
We are the home of hostile to tech.
The Tech and Toast podcast is brought to you today by our
friends at Lightspeed. The holidays are here and your
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The festive season is make or break time for many restaurants
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while saving time, reducing errors and keeping guests coming
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back for more. This season, let your tech do
the work for you. Close the year strong with
Lightspeed Restaurant. Welcome to my new studio with a
little green glow. Very.
Fancy me and my Co founder actually we met working together
at Taliban, which is like the just eat of the Middle East.
You know if you've got 40 sites you want to execute a discount
strategy, you can just do it with three clicks.
It's just all sites. Yeah, we decided maybe think
about how we could solve that problem.
(01:06):
We we saw really high levels of user engagement very quickly
from there, mainly around peoplecoming back and having at least
two to three conversations with.Screams that actually people
want more help, they've got the data, but they just want more
advice. Exact key value properties for
us now. Bring all that data together.
Bring the Omni channel experience.
We went to Google and typed in names with AI.
Be great. When if you look at a campaign
and look what it did to food cost labor, my son calls me the
(01:27):
richest poor man he knows. Welcome to the next technos
podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined
by Sean Javasquez, cofounder of growth.
Sean, how are you? I'm.
Good. Thank you.
Thanks for having me. Welcome to my new studio with a
little green glow. Very fancy.
I just said all the gear. My son calls me the richest poor
man. He knows because I tend to like
hang around all these swanky places but have no money.
(01:47):
He just thinks I have no money. Before we get into it, I've just
uncovered your the the background of your name.
Trevaskis, I guess. Right on.
Where? Where is it?
From It's from Cornwall. It's from Cornwall, yeah.
Because there's a place called Trevalis Bay or something like
that, yeah. Yeah, we went down there when I
was a kid once and we looked at the cricket team on the on the
outside, the post office and every single one was a
Trevaskis, really. So yeah, welcome to Cornwall my
(02:08):
friend, where your brother is your sister.
Sorry Trevor, in the call for offending you.
Look welcome mate. And how are you here for long
'cause you here for the week? You're not based in London.
Are you? No, no, based in Dubai.
So that's where we started. Growdash we built out of there.
And then early this year we started working with some nice
brands to help us localise for the UK.
And yeah, now it's all about ramping up the UK.
It's the big opportunity. Very cool mate, and tell us a
(02:29):
little bit about you before we get into growdash.
What's your background? So me and my Co founder actually
we met working together at Taliban, which is like the just
eat of the Middle East. And our job there was to build
all the advertising tech, the discount tech, the vendor
portals where you go in and see the data and how you're
performing on those channels. And then I moved over to
delivery in the UK after COVID for a couple of years, worked
specifically in the northwest ofEngland.
(02:51):
Commercial strategies, that's. Where I'm from, I'm from the
from the Wirral. Nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my cities.
Oh really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was that was the Wirral. And yeah, back back then, we
just kind of because we kept being involved in the ad tech
process and helping restaurants acquire the use of it.
We were seeing that, you know, there was a certain level of
retention within the metrics that you could see on the
aggregator side. So that restaurants are
(03:11):
sometimes coming in not not making good money from their
investments and then kind of backing out of using them again,
getting a little bit scared. So yeah, we decided to maybe
think about how we could solve that problem, and that's where
we started. And hence Grodash, so right,
Yeah. So, so you're filling a
particular gap in the market here, I think, but tell us if
especially you can your best pitch for grow Dash so no one's
ever heard of you. What does it?
Do nice. So we're a restaurant growth
(03:32):
software. So essentially what we do is we
integrate with all the aggregators, so the the the
deliveries, the just eats, the Uber Eats and for a restaurant
marketing function, not the operational functions, more the
marketing side of the business. We'll then put in on a daily
basis their performance data across their general performance
campaigns, discount strategies. And then we also have push APIs,
so you can actually execute these campaigns and optimize
(03:52):
them from our platform too. And then beyond that, we've now
started really evolving into kind of how do we become the
analyst in your pocket? So we launched something called
Aisha, which is an AI agent thatcan read all that data, build
out strategies, reports and answer complex questions pretty
quickly. And is that, and is that the ICP
then? So is it marketers?
Is that they're the, they're thepeople you're focused on selling
to. Yeah, Yeah.
(04:13):
They're, they're the kind of stakeholders that we mostly
engage with. I mean smaller brands, you know,
the more tail into the market SMVS, you tend to see some owner
operators also using the platform.
But yeah, they're kind of in market.
Enterprise accounts tend to be the marketing or delivery
functions. That and what leads them to you,
I suppose you, you kind of alluded to a bit there.
They've kind of had a go with delivery or just eat or someone
and they kind of step back a little bit.
And I think that that that kind of why we built initially to
(04:36):
what what the value propositionstoday is slightly changing.
So restaurants are becoming moretech savvy.
They are starting to adopt thesethese strategies on these
platforms and they're engaging with them much more aggressively
than they ever were before because consumer habits have
changed. The best way to acquire a
customer now, unfortunately or fortunately, which the way you
look at it is, is through these platforms.
So, yeah, that just means that now the challenges become, OK,
(04:57):
we want to dive into the data, We want to understand what's
going on so we can be more strategic in how we think about
deploying our investments, discounts or advertising,
whatever that may be and which channel to grow on where and
why. And so that becomes the key
value property for us now, bringall that data together, creating
the Omni channel experience and then having that AIH, you'll be
able to be the analyst with you.And the second part of that is,
you know, if you want to take control of your campaigns, it
(05:19):
can be quite frustrating to go through silos.
So going to one platform than the other platform, store by
store by store. So some of that bulk
functionality. So all of that is in in one
place on your on your. Exactly.
On growdash. Exactly.
So if you want to execute, you know, if you've got 40 sites you
want to execute a discount strategy, you can just do it
with three clicks. It's just all sites.
I I already see the use case there, isn't it?
I'm guessing actually with the data you talked about the data
(05:40):
gathering and how much the reason you beat the built the
data analyst is that actually the guys are probably struggling
a bit with data at the moment asin the so much because of as you
mentioned everything's changing.Do you think they struggle a
little bit with the amount of data they haven't to actually
analyse it? Yeah, definitely.
There are more and more metrics becoming available for you to
kind of monitor and measure whenit comes to any campaign that
you're running or any strategy you're running on these channels
(06:02):
now. So that just compounds that
problem because before you know,there is still a challenge
around collecting clean and curating the data.
But then at on top of it, there's so many more layers of
data that I can now explore. You just make the whole the
whole process a little more kindof time consuming or expertise
driven for the majority of restaurant groups to kind of be
able to adopt quickly because there's some practice and
principles to how you think about these numbers and how they
(06:23):
stitch together. So be able to do that, provide
that kind of plug in solution tosay, hey, here you go.
And now you can just engage withthis platform and, and get all
that insight into your pocket, into your hands.
Is, is what we're seeing is the biggest use case there ISA chat
that we launched where you can now engage like a ChatGPT
environment where we saw really high levels of user engagement
very quickly from there, mainly around people coming back and
having at least 2-3 conversations with.
(06:44):
Screams that actually people want more help, they've got the
data, but they just want more advice.
Exactly. With the dashboards, people
logging in three times a week because they're seeing the
numbers OK and then going away and thinking about and then
coming back. But now it's coming to see them
engaging and actually having conversations and putting out
insights. And for us, that just allows us
to keep training our. Models, weirdly, I put a post
out this morning, I was talking about learning and development.
Actually, I was talking about how there's a, there's a bit of
(07:05):
a myth around Gen. Z and Gen.
Alpha that the way they learned that actually they don't like
learning. They haven't got time for it.
But actually it's the absolute opposite.
They want they're much more driven in terms of understanding
what's behind the theory. And their frustration is they
can't get to that because a lot of the platforms are sticky and
old and whatever, all the legacyand the integrations don't work,
whatever. So I think that's where you're
finding that adoption going quick, isn't?
It yeah, We see that particularly with really
(07:27):
experienced marketing teams in restaurant groups, because
they've been adopting social media for a long time.
There's lots of metrics, lots ofplatforms they can use to make
their life easier with that kindof activity.
But when it comes to the delivery side of the business,
that's still something that's still maturing.
You know, we really want to kindof fill that void and and and
connect. Those dots and what are the key,
what are what are the key metrics, I suppose that a a
marketer should be looking at when they're doing this because
(07:48):
I have no idea. Yeah.
So there's, when it comes to advertising, there's, there's
obviously the core 1, which is return advertising spend or
ROAS. But then there's obviously
other, other metrics beyond thatthat you should look at when
you're assessing a complete campaign.
So most people just look at the ROAS.
What's my, for every £1.00 I'm spending, how many pounds in
revenue will it will this campaign generate?
So that's 2X it's, you know, 2 lbs.
But beyond that, you want to look at your customer
acquisition costs. How many customers am I
(08:10):
acquiring from these campaigns as well?
Because that's incremental growth and not just, you know,
taking orders from people that would have potentially order
from you or have orders from youbefore and potentially would
have ordered you with you from not advertising with them.
You know, so you think about that cannibalization and then
also the conversion rate of campaigns because the conversion
rate is heavily linked to, you know, what is that consumer
seeing on the other side? So you know, what does the menu
(08:30):
look like? What's my delivery times look
like, my ratings, my reviews, those things matter in terms of
your campaign conversion rate. So those are the core metrics
I'd say for CPC cost per click campaign.
And then when it comes to discounting, definitely look at
the discount spend and the average discount per basket just
to get a sense of am I over indexing here?
Am I making this completely unprofitable because?
It's it's really interesting. Yeah, you should think about the
(08:52):
profitability, you know, when itcomes to discounting
particularly because you are giving away.
Some of your yeah, because I imagine the urge is yeah,
because of the digitalization ofthe of this area that actually
the ability to go and do stuff quickly is there right You can
just check out campaigns for fun, right.
But actually knowing that they've landed and I guess
that's the question, they're boardroom for these people that
when they go in there prior to grow Dash, they're probably
scraping around a bit for some really serious data to show even
(09:14):
making. Questions like incrementality
versus cannibalization, Yeah. Has this campaign an incremental
effect, or has it just actually cannibalized from the people
that would have ordered from you?
Anyway, and there's nothing wrong with that, right?
There's nothing wrong with knowing that answer.
At least you know. Yeah.
Yeah. For sure, for sure.
Particularly if that's somethingwhere you want to bring in new
customers, for example, a new customer targeted discount.
(09:35):
It's still a very good thing to do right if it's going to drive
incrementality and it's going toquite a new.
Yeah, 100%. That's a great thing.
And and what about because you've built obviously, is it
Ayesha? Yes, your AI bot.
We went to Google and typed in names begin with AI.
Most of them are Irish and I couldn't pronounce.
Those I love this fact. Most people think they've spent
they've spent thousands on a marketing agency working out
that no, no, he went on Google and just did it really quick.
(09:57):
I probably asked ChatGPT right, but how when you're building,
how are you? How is Ayesha?
She's taking data straight from the panel from your platform.
Sorry. Yeah.
So, yeah, previously in tech business, they used to really
think about the back end and thefront end.
But now what we're seeing with the use of AI case is
particularly AI agents, which we've built is something called
(10:17):
a prompt layer that sits betweenthe back end and the front end.
So essentially that's what the Aisha playground is.
So we didn't just put a ChatGPT wrapper out there.
We've got the ability to build their own almost identical.
Yeah. So there's lots of agents
basically behind one main agent you're seeing on the product and
behind there lots of agents thattrain specifically do certain
tasks. So trend analysis, discount
campaign, that's for categorization analysis and
those kind of things. And it will dive into different
(10:39):
LLMS to be able to achieve that.So we also built the APIs with
all the DLMS that are available.So Deep Sea Grot, Clawed and all
those ChatGPT Gemini. And we use them in different
ways. So Gemini, for example, when
you're looking on our product and seeing the typing coming out
and actually the text, that's Gemini.
And then when you're seeing things like trained analysis
coming through in that data and what, why?
So why did you use different ones?
(11:00):
Was it Was There are some other strengths?
Yeah, exactly. Some are very much more
generalists and can create, can achieve tasks better and others
are very good at like the math side of things and plugging out
complicated formulas to come up with like quick key insights for
us. And then obviously I should
leverage all of those things andtry and give you most accurate
response to the question of the command that you've given.
Her and what feedback are you getting because I'm guessing you
(11:21):
you how early are you in becausehow long you been going?
So we've been there for about 3 years.
We worked about 5000 restaurantsin Middle East and obviously
we're scaling here. We've got some really good
partners that hopefully we can start announcing very soon.
Now they're on board and and using the product and we've seen
some good case studies are in the UK.
But from the AI perspective, that's really the start of this
year. We launched that 2024, we built
it all the infrastructure because we were seeing our
(11:41):
customers coming to our our account managers in our business
to say, hey, any advice or tips and tricks And yeah, they are
qualified to do that. They're, you know, XX account
managers of the aggregators or the X market.
You don't want that. You don't want.
As a business scale and provide value to all the customers, it
was quite difficult to do that from a human perspective.
So that's where we start training the models out, I
share, and being able to servicethat at scale.
(12:02):
And, and, and what's the I got asked what the difference
between the markets in the Middle East to the UK?
Are there obvious differences oris it?
Definitely. Yeah, definitely.
I think average order value, funnily enough, is much higher
here really in the Middle East. Yeah, Middle East has a very
much a convenience kind of way of looking at food delivery.
So everything's quick. There's lots of discount driven
campaigns and all those types ofthings as well.
(12:22):
The other thing that's very different between here and the
Middle East is that the rider's supply isn't a gig economy, it's
a employed economy. So your rider supply is very,
very big. So your deliveries can be done
really fast, really efficiently.And obviously the city's is
built upwards, not out, so. Fulfilment in.
It's really fast, yeah. Like groceries, 15 minutes, you
know, is long. You know, 10 to 15 is pretty
(12:43):
much bang on every single time. And delivery of normal food is
20-30 minutes. And I guess there's a larger
coverage. Yeah.
Well, the the population's dense.
So it's, it's, it's there's moreselection within an area as well
because all the restaurants are on top of each other, very
competitive in that scenario. But then obviously in the UK,
the opportunity here, what we'reseeing is that the total
addressable market for us, particularly with a number of
(13:03):
restaurants that here the size of the average group is five to
six times bigger than the GCC for us, you know, QA and UA
together. So it's interesting to see how
the different markets give us different opportunities and.
Is there plans to go into different markets after this one
after or you're going to get UK sorted first?
I don't want to Before you run, before you can walk.
Yeah, as I. Said I want to run before you
can walk. So we'll just focus on the UK
for now and I think 2026 will stay that way.
(13:25):
We'll obviously assess other markets to see where there's
maybe more organic demand. You know, if we're working with
restaurants here that also operate in Europe, perhaps
that's the way for us to think about those markets.
But we are integrated with, you know Glovo and those guys as
well. So we can theoretically go into
places like France and and Western Europe right now and.
What's the biggest mistake? One, is there a biggest mistake
you see restaurateurs or marketers making when kind of
(13:47):
dealing with their campaigns andtheir advertising?
Yeah. I think the most common one, it
still comes back down to data and being able to really think
about a lot of a lot of restaurants because of the the,
the the issues of collecting andplaying with that data.
We tend to look from a delivery model at the top line to how
many orders and how much revenue.
And, you know, a lot of teams then are struggling to go beyond
that point and say, actually, you know, what are my costs?
(14:10):
Where's, where's my most profitable orders coming from a
branch level? For example, if I'm getting a
revenue distribution, most will look at the the channel
distribution. So, you know, X channel has 25%
of my order volume, another one has 75%.
That's great. But when they're, when they look
at branch level, they might say,actually it's the other way
around. Yeah.
Because that app is specificallyin a certain part of town where
the coverage from the one of theaggregators is not.
Yeah. I mean, I remember Bristol, Uber
(14:31):
was huge in Bristol, all all theway around.
I can't remember delivery, but Iremember Prime Minister when I
was there, we had different behaved very differently than
per city. Yeah.
So you've been able to go to those level of insights is is
really tough. I think that just leads to a lot
of frustration, I think. And that's something, if we can,
if we can really change that, I think it'd be powerful for
restaurants and. What about the future then?
(14:52):
Are we looking down the road a little bit?
Were you guys for grow dash? Are you going to grow more?
Scuse the pun, yeah. Well, hope to we'll, we'll
obviously focus on on the UK solely for 2026.
And then, you know, beyond that,you know, is there Western
Europe that we try and think about or do we go, you know, to
the US maybe and think about how, how that benefits the scale
of our business. And then absolutely when it more
focused, you know, focused on products, we're, you know, do we
(15:15):
become the the marketing operating system and start
thinking about maybe the social media campaigns coming into that
or building CRMS and those typesof things or is there lots of
partners that we can I think? There's a real potential need
for that. I sit in a WhatsApp group.
I don't know if you're in it in the UK, I'll have to get you
into it, but it's, it's about 800 marketers in there, right?
And they're talking all the timeabout the problems you've been
talking about often talking about campaign LED.
(15:36):
That's why I was asking about the metrics.
I think people struggle, especially new marketers coming
through. Maybe they haven't had the
education around it and people over promoted quickly now
because of the state of the industry, blah, blah, blah.
So I, I think there's a real thirst for that wrap around
service in marketing to support these people because they're the
creative, right? You can't replace them.
They're great. It's so difficult.
Yeah, their ideas and what they do and their knowledge of their
(15:57):
brand is fantastic, but helping them execute it's a it's a real
issue. Yeah, I.
Think yeah, we'll look at the from a product perspective, you
know the marketing operating, operating system.
Do we do that or do we even lookat, you know, the prompt layer,
the I share element of it becoming more stretched across
different data sets. So how do we access, you know,
ERP data, imagery and imagery and costing data and be able to
bring, you know, even more insights and reports to the
(16:18):
forefront for that that'd. Be great when you if you could
look at a campaign and look whatit did to food cost, labour
costs. Yeah, you could take the POS as
well. I can also you know maybe look
at the offline sales versus the online sales and things like
that as well. So I think there's a definitely
a debate in turn that'd. Be a nightmare in your product.
Yeah, build that build. That build that what, what do
you focus on with the resources that we've got?
But I think what we've always made sure that we do is we're
pretty much customer LED. So we want to speak to the
(16:40):
industry experts. We want to speak to people like
you and those with stakeholders in the industry that are trying
to manage this problem and say what what's next?
Should we prioritize for you? You know, that's the the way
we've built so far. It's really exciting and and
what's your plan? So you're so you're did you come
over a week because you're a Reggie from Cornwood or not or
your name is just Cornwood? In Guildford, I'm sorry.
OK, Not far from here. I.
Think Gracie's from you, From Guildford.
(17:00):
Yeah. There you go.
Yeah, there you go. And so, yeah, I, I left, I left
the, I left for the Middle East when I was about 2022.
How was that then? I mean just interested to
understand how that culture changed.
Yeah, I just went to get away. I was working at Foxtons early
in my career in London and decided that it wasn't for me.
I wasn't in for real estate, so I just went to the Middle East
and started from scratch and dida few different things.
(17:21):
I started off in recruitment andthen moved into more commercial
roles and then I finally got into talk about and just
everything can be changed in. Terms.
And I get you. You know the guys at Group Tech,
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know MO fairly well and the
guys incredible. Founders there, yeah.
For the Middle East, for founders like me that building
out the Middle East, particularly in restaurant tech,
those guys are like the North Star.
(17:42):
Are they really right? OK, yeah, they're they're good
guys. That is insane.
Yeah, they're really nice guys. Look, how do people get hold of
you? So if they want to kind of have
a look at growdash, grab a demo.LinkedIn Sean Trevaskis is a
hard one to spell, but it's on. Ask me if you need it, I can do.
Spotify thing as well, so don't worry and and then or or just
e-mail sean@mygrowdash.com. Feel free to reach out and yeah,
(18:02):
have a chat. We really want to, you know,
connect as much as we can across.
Lovely. The UK, well, I think the
marketing, as I said, there's that WhatsApp group run.
We know a lot of other people who you need to meet.
Victoria sell the people like that who she runs a company
called Data Hawks, which which, but she's very heavily into
e-mail marketing actually aroundthat.
So you guys should definitely have a chat.
But yeah, we'll do some instructions and we'll go from
there. But thank you for coming into
(18:22):
our greenlit studio. Looks like Halloween, but it's
not. That was Sean.
Everybody from Ground Dash, everyone say bye and we'll see
you next. Week.
Thank you. Cheers.
Bye bye. Cheers.
Welcome to the Tech and Toast podcast.
We are the home of hostile to tech.
The Tech and Toast podcast is brought to you today by our
friends at Lightspeed. The holidays are here and your
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The festive season is make or break time for many restaurants
filled with non-stop tableside service, kitchen chaos and
complex reservations. But what if you had a secret
weapon? Well, Lightspeed is that weapon
(00:25):
is the ultimate point of sale and payments platform that helps
your team deliver seamless service and incredible
experiences. Imagine your staff taking orders
and payments right to the table with tableside or having your
front and backer house perfectlyIn Sync during peak hours.
Wouldn't that be nice? Lightspeed gives you the tools
to not only survive the holidays, but truly shy, all
while saving time, reducing errors and keeping guests coming
(00:45):
back for more. This season, let your tech do
the work for you. Close the year strong with
Lightspeed Restaurant. Welcome to my new studio with a
little green glow. Very.
Fancy me and my Co founder actually we met working together
at Taliban, which is like the just eat of the Middle East.
You know if you've got 40 sites you want to execute a discount
strategy, you can just do it with three clicks.
It's just all sites. Yeah, we decided maybe think
about how we could solve that problem.
(01:06):
We we saw really high levels of user engagement very quickly
from there, mainly around peoplecoming back and having at least
two to three conversations with.Screams that actually people
want more help, they've got the data, but they just want more
advice. Exact key value properties for
us now. Bring all that data together.
Bring the Omni channel experience.
We went to Google and typed in names with AI.
Be great. When if you look at a campaign
and look what it did to food cost labor, my son calls me the
(01:27):
richest poor man he knows. Welcome to the next technos
podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined
by Sean Javasquez, cofounder of growth.
Sean, how are you? I'm.
Good. Thank you.
Thanks for having me. Welcome to my new studio with a
little green glow. Very fancy.
I just said all the gear. My son calls me the richest poor
man. He knows because I tend to like
hang around all these swanky places but have no money.
(01:47):
He just thinks I have no money. Before we get into it, I've just
uncovered your the the background of your name.
Trevaskis, I guess. Right on.
Where? Where is it?
From It's from Cornwall. It's from Cornwall, yeah.
Because there's a place called Trevalis Bay or something like
that, yeah. Yeah, we went down there when I
was a kid once and we looked at the cricket team on the on the
outside, the post office and every single one was a
Trevaskis, really. So yeah, welcome to Cornwall my
(02:08):
friend, where your brother is your sister.
Sorry Trevor, in the call for offending you.
Look welcome mate. And how are you here for long
'cause you here for the week? You're not based in London.
Are you? No, no, based in Dubai.
So that's where we started. Growdash we built out of there.
And then early this year we started working with some nice
brands to help us localise for the UK.
And yeah, now it's all about ramping up the UK.
It's the big opportunity. Very cool mate, and tell us a
(02:29):
little bit about you before we get into growdash.
What's your background? So me and my Co founder actually
we met working together at Taliban, which is like the just
eat of the Middle East. And our job there was to build
all the advertising tech, the discount tech, the vendor
portals where you go in and see the data and how you're
performing on those channels. And then I moved over to
delivery in the UK after COVID for a couple of years, worked
specifically in the northwest ofEngland.
(02:51):
Commercial strategies, that's. Where I'm from, I'm from the
from the Wirral. Nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my cities.
Oh really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was that was the Wirral. And yeah, back back then, we
just kind of because we kept being involved in the ad tech
process and helping restaurants acquire the use of it.
We were seeing that, you know, there was a certain level of
retention within the metrics that you could see on the
aggregator side. So that restaurants are
(03:11):
sometimes coming in not not making good money from their
investments and then kind of backing out of using them again,
getting a little bit scared. So yeah, we decided to maybe
think about how we could solve that problem, and that's where
we started. And hence Grodash, so right,
Yeah. So, so you're filling a
particular gap in the market here, I think, but tell us if
especially you can your best pitch for grow Dash so no one's
ever heard of you. What does it?
Do nice. So we're a restaurant growth
(03:32):
software. So essentially what we do is we
integrate with all the aggregators, so the the the
deliveries, the just eats, the Uber Eats and for a restaurant
marketing function, not the operational functions, more the
marketing side of the business. We'll then put in on a daily
basis their performance data across their general performance
campaigns, discount strategies. And then we also have push APIs,
so you can actually execute these campaigns and optimize
(03:52):
them from our platform too. And then beyond that, we've now
started really evolving into kind of how do we become the
analyst in your pocket? So we launched something called
Aisha, which is an AI agent thatcan read all that data, build
out strategies, reports and answer complex questions pretty
quickly. And is that, and is that the ICP
then? So is it marketers?
Is that they're the, they're thepeople you're focused on selling
to. Yeah, Yeah.
(04:13):
They're, they're the kind of stakeholders that we mostly
engage with. I mean smaller brands, you know,
the more tail into the market SMVS, you tend to see some owner
operators also using the platform.
But yeah, they're kind of in market.
Enterprise accounts tend to be the marketing or delivery
functions. That and what leads them to you,
I suppose you, you kind of alluded to a bit there.
They've kind of had a go with delivery or just eat or someone
and they kind of step back a little bit.
And I think that that that kind of why we built initially to
(04:36):
what what the value propositionstoday is slightly changing.
So restaurants are becoming moretech savvy.
They are starting to adopt thesethese strategies on these
platforms and they're engaging with them much more aggressively
than they ever were before because consumer habits have
changed. The best way to acquire a
customer now, unfortunately or fortunately, which the way you
look at it is, is through these platforms.
So, yeah, that just means that now the challenges become, OK,
(04:57):
we want to dive into the data, We want to understand what's
going on so we can be more strategic in how we think about
deploying our investments, discounts or advertising,
whatever that may be and which channel to grow on where and
why. And so that becomes the key
value property for us now, bringall that data together, creating
the Omni channel experience and then having that AIH, you'll be
able to be the analyst with you.And the second part of that is,
you know, if you want to take control of your campaigns, it
(05:19):
can be quite frustrating to go through silos.
So going to one platform than the other platform, store by
store by store. So some of that bulk
functionality. So all of that is in in one
place on your on your. Exactly.
On growdash. Exactly.
So if you want to execute, you know, if you've got 40 sites you
want to execute a discount strategy, you can just do it
with three clicks. It's just all sites.
I I already see the use case there, isn't it?
I'm guessing actually with the data you talked about the data
(05:40):
gathering and how much the reason you beat the built the
data analyst is that actually the guys are probably struggling
a bit with data at the moment asin the so much because of as you
mentioned everything's changing.Do you think they struggle a
little bit with the amount of data they haven't to actually
analyse it? Yeah, definitely.
There are more and more metrics becoming available for you to
kind of monitor and measure whenit comes to any campaign that
you're running or any strategy you're running on these channels
(06:02):
now. So that just compounds that
problem because before you know,there is still a challenge
around collecting clean and curating the data.
But then at on top of it, there's so many more layers of
data that I can now explore. You just make the whole the
whole process a little more kindof time consuming or expertise
driven for the majority of restaurant groups to kind of be
able to adopt quickly because there's some practice and
principles to how you think about these numbers and how they
(06:23):
stitch together. So be able to do that, provide
that kind of plug in solution tosay, hey, here you go.
And now you can just engage withthis platform and, and get all
that insight into your pocket, into your hands.
Is, is what we're seeing is the biggest use case there ISA chat
that we launched where you can now engage like a ChatGPT
environment where we saw really high levels of user engagement
very quickly from there, mainly around people coming back and
having at least 2-3 conversations with.
(06:44):
Screams that actually people want more help, they've got the
data, but they just want more advice.
Exactly. With the dashboards, people
logging in three times a week because they're seeing the
numbers OK and then going away and thinking about and then
coming back. But now it's coming to see them
engaging and actually having conversations and putting out
insights. And for us, that just allows us
to keep training our. Models, weirdly, I put a post
out this morning, I was talking about learning and development.
Actually, I was talking about how there's a, there's a bit of
(07:05):
a myth around Gen. Z and Gen.
Alpha that the way they learned that actually they don't like
learning. They haven't got time for it.
But actually it's the absolute opposite.
They want they're much more driven in terms of understanding
what's behind the theory. And their frustration is they
can't get to that because a lot of the platforms are sticky and
old and whatever, all the legacyand the integrations don't work,
whatever. So I think that's where you're
finding that adoption going quick, isn't?
It yeah, We see that particularly with really
(07:27):
experienced marketing teams in restaurant groups, because
they've been adopting social media for a long time.
There's lots of metrics, lots ofplatforms they can use to make
their life easier with that kindof activity.
But when it comes to the delivery side of the business,
that's still something that's still maturing.
You know, we really want to kindof fill that void and and and
connect. Those dots and what are the key,
what are what are the key metrics, I suppose that a a
marketer should be looking at when they're doing this because
(07:48):
I have no idea. Yeah.
So there's, when it comes to advertising, there's, there's
obviously the core 1, which is return advertising spend or
ROAS. But then there's obviously
other, other metrics beyond thatthat you should look at when
you're assessing a complete campaign.
So most people just look at the ROAS.
What's my, for every £1.00 I'm spending, how many pounds in
revenue will it will this campaign generate?
So that's 2X it's, you know, 2 lbs.
But beyond that, you want to look at your customer
acquisition costs. How many customers am I
(08:10):
acquiring from these campaigns as well?
Because that's incremental growth and not just, you know,
taking orders from people that would have potentially order
from you or have orders from youbefore and potentially would
have ordered you with you from not advertising with them.
You know, so you think about that cannibalization and then
also the conversion rate of campaigns because the conversion
rate is heavily linked to, you know, what is that consumer
seeing on the other side? So you know, what does the menu
(08:30):
look like? What's my delivery times look
like, my ratings, my reviews, those things matter in terms of
your campaign conversion rate. So those are the core metrics
I'd say for CPC cost per click campaign.
And then when it comes to discounting, definitely look at
the discount spend and the average discount per basket just
to get a sense of am I over indexing here?
Am I making this completely unprofitable because?
It's it's really interesting. Yeah, you should think about the
(08:52):
profitability, you know, when itcomes to discounting
particularly because you are giving away.
Some of your yeah, because I imagine the urge is yeah,
because of the digitalization ofthe of this area that actually
the ability to go and do stuff quickly is there right You can
just check out campaigns for fun, right.
But actually knowing that they've landed and I guess
that's the question, they're boardroom for these people that
when they go in there prior to grow Dash, they're probably
scraping around a bit for some really serious data to show even
(09:14):
making. Questions like incrementality
versus cannibalization, Yeah. Has this campaign an incremental
effect, or has it just actually cannibalized from the people
that would have ordered from you?
Anyway, and there's nothing wrong with that, right?
There's nothing wrong with knowing that answer.
At least you know. Yeah.
Yeah. For sure, for sure.
Particularly if that's somethingwhere you want to bring in new
customers, for example, a new customer targeted discount.
(09:35):
It's still a very good thing to do right if it's going to drive
incrementality and it's going toquite a new.
Yeah, 100%. That's a great thing.
And and what about because you've built obviously, is it
Ayesha? Yes, your AI bot.
We went to Google and typed in names begin with AI.
Most of them are Irish and I couldn't pronounce.
Those I love this fact. Most people think they've spent
they've spent thousands on a marketing agency working out
that no, no, he went on Google and just did it really quick.
(09:57):
I probably asked ChatGPT right, but how when you're building,
how are you? How is Ayesha?
She's taking data straight from the panel from your platform.
Sorry. Yeah.
So, yeah, previously in tech business, they used to really
think about the back end and thefront end.
But now what we're seeing with the use of AI case is
particularly AI agents, which we've built is something called
(10:17):
a prompt layer that sits betweenthe back end and the front end.
So essentially that's what the Aisha playground is.
So we didn't just put a ChatGPT wrapper out there.
We've got the ability to build their own almost identical.
Yeah. So there's lots of agents
basically behind one main agent you're seeing on the product and
behind there lots of agents thattrain specifically do certain
tasks. So trend analysis, discount
campaign, that's for categorization analysis and
those kind of things. And it will dive into different
(10:39):
LLMS to be able to achieve that.So we also built the APIs with
all the DLMS that are available.So Deep Sea Grot, Clawed and all
those ChatGPT Gemini. And we use them in different
ways. So Gemini, for example, when
you're looking on our product and seeing the typing coming out
and actually the text, that's Gemini.
And then when you're seeing things like trained analysis
coming through in that data and what, why?
So why did you use different ones?
(11:00):
Was it Was There are some other strengths?
Yeah, exactly. Some are very much more
generalists and can create, can achieve tasks better and others
are very good at like the math side of things and plugging out
complicated formulas to come up with like quick key insights for
us. And then obviously I should
leverage all of those things andtry and give you most accurate
response to the question of the command that you've given.
Her and what feedback are you getting because I'm guessing you
(11:21):
you how early are you in becausehow long you been going?
So we've been there for about 3 years.
We worked about 5000 restaurantsin Middle East and obviously
we're scaling here. We've got some really good
partners that hopefully we can start announcing very soon.
Now they're on board and and using the product and we've seen
some good case studies are in the UK.
But from the AI perspective, that's really the start of this
year. We launched that 2024, we built
it all the infrastructure because we were seeing our
(11:41):
customers coming to our our account managers in our business
to say, hey, any advice or tips and tricks And yeah, they are
qualified to do that. They're, you know, XX account
managers of the aggregators or the X market.
You don't want that. You don't want.
As a business scale and provide value to all the customers, it
was quite difficult to do that from a human perspective.
So that's where we start training the models out, I
share, and being able to servicethat at scale.
(12:02):
And, and, and what's the I got asked what the difference
between the markets in the Middle East to the UK?
Are there obvious differences oris it?
Definitely. Yeah, definitely.
I think average order value, funnily enough, is much higher
here really in the Middle East. Yeah, Middle East has a very
much a convenience kind of way of looking at food delivery.
So everything's quick. There's lots of discount driven
campaigns and all those types ofthings as well.
(12:22):
The other thing that's very different between here and the
Middle East is that the rider's supply isn't a gig economy, it's
a employed economy. So your rider supply is very,
very big. So your deliveries can be done
really fast, really efficiently.And obviously the city's is
built upwards, not out, so. Fulfilment in.
It's really fast, yeah. Like groceries, 15 minutes, you
know, is long. You know, 10 to 15 is pretty
(12:43):
much bang on every single time. And delivery of normal food is
20-30 minutes. And I guess there's a larger
coverage. Yeah.
Well, the the population's dense.
So it's, it's, it's there's moreselection within an area as well
because all the restaurants are on top of each other, very
competitive in that scenario. But then obviously in the UK,
the opportunity here, what we'reseeing is that the total
addressable market for us, particularly with a number of
(13:03):
restaurants that here the size of the average group is five to
six times bigger than the GCC for us, you know, QA and UA
together. So it's interesting to see how
the different markets give us different opportunities and.
Is there plans to go into different markets after this one
after or you're going to get UK sorted first?
I don't want to Before you run, before you can walk.
Yeah, as I. Said I want to run before you
can walk. So we'll just focus on the UK
for now and I think 2026 will stay that way.
(13:25):
We'll obviously assess other markets to see where there's
maybe more organic demand. You know, if we're working with
restaurants here that also operate in Europe, perhaps
that's the way for us to think about those markets.
But we are integrated with, you know Glovo and those guys as
well. So we can theoretically go into
places like France and and Western Europe right now and.
What's the biggest mistake? One, is there a biggest mistake
you see restaurateurs or marketers making when kind of
(13:47):
dealing with their campaigns andtheir advertising?
Yeah. I think the most common one, it
still comes back down to data and being able to really think
about a lot of a lot of restaurants because of the the,
the the issues of collecting andplaying with that data.
We tend to look from a delivery model at the top line to how
many orders and how much revenue.
And, you know, a lot of teams then are struggling to go beyond
that point and say, actually, you know, what are my costs?
(14:10):
Where's, where's my most profitable orders coming from a
branch level? For example, if I'm getting a
revenue distribution, most will look at the the channel
distribution. So, you know, X channel has 25%
of my order volume, another one has 75%.
That's great. But when they're, when they look
at branch level, they might say,actually it's the other way
around. Yeah.
Because that app is specificallyin a certain part of town where
the coverage from the one of theaggregators is not.
Yeah. I mean, I remember Bristol, Uber
(14:31):
was huge in Bristol, all all theway around.
I can't remember delivery, but Iremember Prime Minister when I
was there, we had different behaved very differently than
per city. Yeah.
So you've been able to go to those level of insights is is
really tough. I think that just leads to a lot
of frustration, I think. And that's something, if we can,
if we can really change that, I think it'd be powerful for
restaurants and. What about the future then?
(14:52):
Are we looking down the road a little bit?
Were you guys for grow dash? Are you going to grow more?
Scuse the pun, yeah. Well, hope to we'll, we'll
obviously focus on on the UK solely for 2026.
And then, you know, beyond that,you know, is there Western
Europe that we try and think about or do we go, you know, to
the US maybe and think about how, how that benefits the scale
of our business. And then absolutely when it more
focused, you know, focused on products, we're, you know, do we
(15:15):
become the the marketing operating system and start
thinking about maybe the social media campaigns coming into that
or building CRMS and those typesof things or is there lots of
partners that we can I think? There's a real potential need
for that. I sit in a WhatsApp group.
I don't know if you're in it in the UK, I'll have to get you
into it, but it's, it's about 800 marketers in there, right?
And they're talking all the timeabout the problems you've been
talking about often talking about campaign LED.
(15:36):
That's why I was asking about the metrics.
I think people struggle, especially new marketers coming
through. Maybe they haven't had the
education around it and people over promoted quickly now
because of the state of the industry, blah, blah, blah.
So I, I think there's a real thirst for that wrap around
service in marketing to support these people because they're the
creative, right? You can't replace them.
They're great. It's so difficult.
Yeah, their ideas and what they do and their knowledge of their
(15:57):
brand is fantastic, but helping them execute it's a it's a real
issue. Yeah, I.
Think yeah, we'll look at the from a product perspective, you
know the marketing operating, operating system.
Do we do that or do we even lookat, you know, the prompt layer,
the I share element of it becoming more stretched across
different data sets. So how do we access, you know,
ERP data, imagery and imagery and costing data and be able to
bring, you know, even more insights and reports to the
(16:18):
forefront for that that'd. Be great when you if you could
look at a campaign and look whatit did to food cost, labour
costs. Yeah, you could take the POS as
well. I can also you know maybe look
at the offline sales versus the online sales and things like
that as well. So I think there's a definitely
a debate in turn that'd. Be a nightmare in your product.
Yeah, build that build. That build that what, what do
you focus on with the resources that we've got?
But I think what we've always made sure that we do is we're
pretty much customer LED. So we want to speak to the
(16:40):
industry experts. We want to speak to people like
you and those with stakeholders in the industry that are trying
to manage this problem and say what what's next?
Should we prioritize for you? You know, that's the the way
we've built so far. It's really exciting and and
what's your plan? So you're so you're did you come
over a week because you're a Reggie from Cornwood or not or
your name is just Cornwood? In Guildford, I'm sorry.
OK, Not far from here. I.
Think Gracie's from you, From Guildford.
(17:00):
Yeah. There you go.
Yeah, there you go. And so, yeah, I, I left, I left
the, I left for the Middle East when I was about 2022.
How was that then? I mean just interested to
understand how that culture changed.
Yeah, I just went to get away. I was working at Foxtons early
in my career in London and decided that it wasn't for me.
I wasn't in for real estate, so I just went to the Middle East
and started from scratch and dida few different things.
(17:21):
I started off in recruitment andthen moved into more commercial
roles and then I finally got into talk about and just
everything can be changed in. Terms.
And I get you. You know the guys at Group Tech,
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know MO fairly well and the
guys incredible. Founders there, yeah.
For the Middle East, for founders like me that building
out the Middle East, particularly in restaurant tech,
those guys are like the North Star.
(17:42):
Are they really right? OK, yeah, they're they're good
guys. That is insane.
Yeah, they're really nice guys. Look, how do people get hold of
you? So if they want to kind of have
a look at growdash, grab a demo.LinkedIn Sean Trevaskis is a
hard one to spell, but it's on. Ask me if you need it, I can do.
Spotify thing as well, so don't worry and and then or or just
e-mail sean@mygrowdash.com. Feel free to reach out and yeah,
(18:02):
have a chat. We really want to, you know,
connect as much as we can across.
Lovely. The UK, well, I think the
marketing, as I said, there's that WhatsApp group run.
We know a lot of other people who you need to meet.
Victoria sell the people like that who she runs a company
called Data Hawks, which which, but she's very heavily into
e-mail marketing actually aroundthat.
So you guys should definitely have a chat.
But yeah, we'll do some instructions and we'll go from
there. But thank you for coming into
(18:22):
our greenlit studio. Looks like Halloween, but it's
not. That was Sean.
Everybody from Ground Dash, everyone say bye and we'll see
you next. Week.
Thank you. Cheers.
Bye bye. Cheers.
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