June 10, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode of the Tech on Toast Podcast, Chris Fletcher sits down with Jonny McKenzie, co-founder and CEO of Bustle, the cafe management platform built by operators for operators. Jonny flew all the way from Auckland, New Zealand, for this conversation—and it shows in the insights shared.Jonny’s story is anything but ordinary. From launching cocktail bars in his early 20s to running a full-service cinema and now building Bustle, he’s lived every shift, every challenge, and every spreadsheet that independent hospitality operators face.☕ What’s in your cup this episode? • Why Jonny left IT to shake cocktails—and how that shaped his tech career • The pain of running multiple venues without visibility—and how Bustle fixes that • Bustle’s “88% Rule” for building features that work for real operators • The myth of rapid transformation: why real clarity takes time • Emotional loyalty vs points-based systems—what real recognition feels like • Why Bustle celebrates when their customers outgrow them • Why most POS systems fail creatives—and what Bustle is doing differently • The rise of bakery as the new coffee shop culture • How price confidence, not just cost control, can help operators sleep at night👀 Who should listen?This one’s for independent owner-operators, hospitality creatives, and anyone who wants to use tech without losing the soul of service.📍Want to meet the Bustle team?Find them at heybustle.com, or pop by their stand at London Coffee Festival (just follow the treasure hunt 👀).💡 “We’re not trying to replace the human behind the counter—we’re just helping them stay in business.”⸻Brought to you by Lightspeed, the EPOS and payments platform trusted by hospitality leaders like Big Mamma, Mallow, Mildred’s and more. Check out lightspeed.co.uk/techontoast to book a free demo—real-time insights and slick service await.🎧 Follow us for more fresh takes on hospitality + tech.#TechOnToast #HospitalityTech #POS #CafeLife #Bustle #HospitalityCommunity
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello and welcome to the Tech and Toast Podcast.
My name is Chris Fletcher and this is season 12.
Tech and Toast Podcast is serving up fresh chats with the
sharpest minds in hostility and tech.
If you're looking to level up your up, streamline your
service, or just sprinkle a little tech magic into your
business, you've come to the right place.
And guess what? Our partners like to be the back
this season to look after us. They're the epos and payments
platform helping over 165,000 businesses.
(00:26):
Businesses such as Big Mama, Mildred Mallow and Cuba House,
they'll help you scale it. You guessed it, the speed of
light. See what I did there?
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integrations with people like OpenTable 0 News, and many more
Light speeds, Unified Platform is built to boost your
performance and turn your tablesquicker than you can say flat
white extra hot. So if you need fast funding,
(00:48):
check out Lightspeed Capital. No hidden fees, no interest
charges, just smart support whenyou need it.
If you're curious about all of this, just head over to
lightspeed.co.uk/tech on Toast and book yourself a free demo.
You won't regret it. Now enough of that, ready for
the next episode? Let's go.
(01:09):
Welcome to the next episode of Tech and Toast podcast.
And today I'm delighted to be joined by Johnny McKenzie and
some fans. I will say in the corner here
that you can't see on camera. Yeah, there you go.
You can hear them Co founder andCEO of Bustle.
Johnny, how are you? I'm very well, thanks for having
me. I'm all right.
Welcome to sunny London. It is beautiful.
We were just discussing how rarethat might be.
A little bit more rare from the the other times I've been here,
(01:31):
but this is this is definitely atreat.
And I think we have to put this out there that Johnny's just
travelled 28 hours just for the Tech and Toast podcast, which I
really appreciate Johnny. For this here in time, yeah.
Where have you come from today? I came from Auckland, New
Zealand. Wow, it's a beautiful place.
I was just saying. A good friend of ours and a
fellow podcaster, John Mason, who owns Sideways, also from
that neck of the woods. So hopefully you 2 will meet
(01:53):
each other at some point. He is in London this week.
I'll try and do an intro. Oh, is he?
Yeah, yeah, he's here for another week, so.
That's easier, yeah. This is a pre context.
This conversation depends on listening, right?
Got it. So before we start joining, tell
me a little bit about your background because I'd love to
know more about you before we get onto bustle.
Yeah, sure. So background is where does it
start basically. Go back to school if you want, I
mean. Yeah, one day.
(02:15):
No, I mean I did the old classic, you know when you try
and get a a sort of day job? Well I was doing my IT degree
when I went to university thinking it was a place where I
could possibly make some money and pivoted to cocktail
bartendering because it's far more lucrative.
Much more fun, but yeah. Was it lucrative?
I mean, it actually was for a while, no?
It was for a while, yeah. So let's say I opened my first
cocktail bar when I was 20 when with my brother.
(02:37):
Wow. And it's still going today,
which is great. He's over back home, back home.
So he's still got it. In that time, I sort of opened
three cocktail bars in a cinema,which was an interesting pivot
as well. I don't recommend doing that one
and then off the back of that the the opportunity to sort of
get back into text. So it's like a big loop round.
And so really loved hospital, loved everything about it, and
(02:57):
then realized it was just not. If you can't do the hard job, I
always say the best product comes out the back of someone
actually experiencing, right. And Nori, I was a Nori thing
this morning. They were asking me to talk
about what advice I would give them.
And I said, look, you need to understand the industry you're
selling into. It's just not like anything
else. It's a bit emotive.
We're very community driven. If you do something bad,
everybody knows really quick, very good, same thing.
(03:18):
So, yeah, so I think it is. Did that experience really help
you kind of build what you're into now?
Yeah, I mean, it's the experience was at the time
because I had the three bars in the cinema.
The cinema was like I was takingup all my life.
I didn't realize, you know, you kick off.
I didn't know how they. Assumed there's a wet LED
version in the cinema, right? Was there bars in the cinema or
not? You had a full restaurant and a
(03:38):
cafe and a little cocktail bar upstairs, hence why I was
involved. But what I didn't truly
understand about a cinema is youcouldn't just choose what movies
you wanted to play. You have to sort of get into a
contract and you have to show a number.
And you're gonna, you're gonna debunk the whole thing about.
The whole thing, Yeah, I'm goingunder the Mass.
Yeah. So you had to.
So like we had to start playing movies at 8:00 AM knowing no one
(04:00):
would turn up because you have acontract where you got to show
it four times a day. And if you do got a three hour
movie because The Lord of the Rings came along and suddenly
every movie became 3 hours for whatever reason.
Because we had nothing bad to dobefore the pandemic, you see,
life was. Boring.
Yeah, I just wanted to hang out in the cinema.
And so we have, we have Basically I had to be there from
sort of seven in the morning to open up and then you wouldn't
finish till 1:00 by the time it's.
(04:22):
So insane, isn't it? Making making a business do
that, or making it behave that way and then wondering why it
might go West. Wonder.
Yeah. And then they had to.
Obviously Netflix came along. I was like, where's the little
going to go this way? So I got out.
But still going though. Really.
Yeah, yeah. The movie, the cinema is it's
beautiful. There's an art Deco old sort of
a redone. Yeah, in my mind, I can kind of,
(04:42):
I can kind of picture it. I kind of see, yeah, that cool
vibe. I was pretty lucky.
My business partners were, we'rethe digital and we're the
workshop like the creators. So it was very well fitted out.
Wow, amazingly fitted out and. I have to ask straight away
before we get into it, what's the the hostility scene over in
Auckland? Very different.
I mean, obviously there's a different difference in scale,
(05:03):
but similar Evergreen type problems over there to what we
experienced here or different. No, pretty similar there's
they're definitely going throughthe challenges of wages have
been going up over the last fouryears sort of increasing.
Obviously the cost of goods havedefinitely skyrocketed pretty
heavily. And what they haven't had is
like the sort of I guess the operational cost, the sort of
(05:24):
your power and water hasn't moved too much.
But the challenge of course is that the work from home balance,
we still haven't really had thatpull back into CBD.
So the CBDS are really struggling.
You're seeing a lot of Wellington's, probably the worst
I've seen it since really alive so.
That's a shame. It sucks, doesn't it?
It really does like it'll bounceback because hospitality does,
(05:46):
but it's definitely. Yeah, yeah, well, we're anything
and nothing but resilient, right.
So it it does change. And when you built Bustle, how
did that come about? Was that with is your is Co
founders not your brother in Bustle?
Then no. No, no.
You said that? No, no.
Definitely not. No, it's it was a funny story.
Went to a one of these weird things.
It was a breakfast club and the guest of honor was my mother.
(06:08):
And they got my three brothers or my two brothers myself to be
the guest speakers to talk aboutmy mother and some guys in the
in the office or in the room, sort of like, can we talk to you
about making a coffee ordering app?
And I was like, sure, we'll go for a coffee, let's have a chat.
And they were like, true to their form developers who just
didn't want to talk to the people when they ordered their
coffee. They're like, is there any way
(06:29):
we can do this through our phones so we just don't have to
communicate? Associate with any humans, yeah.
No touching, yeah, no indicate engagements.
And I was like yeah, absolutely.How does that work with the
point of sale? And they're like, what's the
point of sale? And I was like, this is going to
be a good conversation The. Conversation just got longer.
Yeah. So they had talked to Vaughan
from Bend. So at the time there's another
(06:49):
POS company coming out of New Zealand.
I flew up and met Vaughan and said is there any way we can add
a, make a variation for hospitality that works with
Vend? And he was like, actually that'd
be great because that's one of our problem children is
hospitality. And so I was like great because
I was about to use your product,but I can't use it because it's
not made for me. So here we go.
And that became the weekend job on top of the other weekend
(07:11):
hospitality job. The day job, yeah.
And before and what does bustle do?
I mean, for anybody who's not seen you, not heard of you, what
I mean, we've kind of alluded toalready, but what does the
product do? So the baseline product is point
of sale or util system, but whatwe've moved more to is the CAFE
management software. So probably the uniqueness is
that like cost of goods and wagecostings and operational costs
(07:34):
that come into it. So not just about the point of
sale, that of the capturing the data through the tool, but
really trying to give the operators a bit more
understanding how the operation's going, what money,
what profits they're making, what money they're making.
So overview, it's like, I suppose I keep thinking of the
name of this product like a central OPS product where it
would basically food cost, labour cost, revenue, basically
it covers all three and gives you that kind of ability to own
(07:56):
and manage what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which I think is, is huge, right?
And do you guys, I know originally you focused on the
smaller businesses, but are you looking further up the lane?
Nope. Nope.
No staying in your lane staying.Quite.
Impressive. Yeah.
Most people I asked really struggle at that.
They want to say no, but they all want to go.
They all want to go mid market. I never was like you.
You touched on it like where I've come from.
(08:17):
So we're building a product for who I was, which was a guy who
had four businesses. They were spread across the
city. And my problem was I had no idea
how they were all going. So I just wanted to know through
my phone how everything was going and how could I help them.
So that's where it all came from, and that's where I'm
sticking because that's my people.
It's very interesting. When we talked to, we talked to
some bigger groups through the network we have and it's very
(08:41):
much a meeting, a lot of time spent with people and picking
problems what not. But the smaller guys is a
transaction. A lot of the time it's kind of
like we've got or we haven't gotanything.
We need something or they've gothalf of it and they kind of need
the completion bit. How quickly do they see kind of,
I suppose improvements once theyput, once they have something
like bustling, I mean, not improvements, but how quickly do
(09:01):
they get clarity, I suppose overwhat they're doing around their
business? Slowly, yeah, because I mean,
and I fully respect that the target audience we're going for,
we call them creatives, right? They're there because they love
making. They still care right?
They've not been over invested yet or have been ruined by a VC.
They don't have to do financial returns ahead of margins, etc.
(09:22):
They're there for the love of it.
So one of our challenges is trying to make it so easy for
them that they can actually do it.
Just little Nuggets every week. Just try and increase this, get
this recipe in there, get these wages in there.
Just start to build it and get afull understanding how your
business is going. But it's not going to happen
overnight because they don't have time.
Like the fridge will break or the plumbing breaks or
something. Yeah, and they're on right all
the time. They're always on.
(09:42):
I find it's actually really unique market to sell to because
they're time poor, obviously. I mean everyone says hostile to
people, time poor. For these people particularly,
probably not time poor, but theyinvest their time, like you say,
in the stuff they love. The reason they built this
business. This is because they're obsessed
with coffee or bakery or whatever it is they might be
doing and they probably care less for tech.
Would that be fair and saying that or not?
Less for tech, but less in the way of like that bit's the bit I
(10:03):
don't want to do a. 100% yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's the
numbers, yeah. Like no one really wants.
To see their accounts, no. No, so like our mission is like
5% profit. Like that's our ultimate goal is
all our customers make 5% minimum.
Like that's what we want to drive everyone towards.
And it's because, you know, if you hit 5%, you've got a, you're
paying yourself. It's probably one of the biggest
(10:25):
rare things in these games that make people like, yeah, yeah, I
made money. That's like, did you pay
yourself? They're like, I paid myself out
of the money I made and said, well, that's not, but you did
the 60 hours or 70 hours, 80 hours.
So so it's about trying to sort of game a fire.
So they're like, OK, so if I just do this or I just get that
extra coffee sold on a continuous basis or I just get
nice to the £50 through the till, I could start to actually
(10:48):
sleep better because I'm actually going to be able to pay
my bills next. Week and I guess a lot of these
guys aren't looking for growth in terms of multiple locations.
They're looking for, they may belooking for security or growth
in their business, but that might happen, right.
Obviously if you're successful, if you're doing your 5% and you
suddenly start to grow that there's a potential that you
guys turn into a multi site operator in that sense and the
(11:08):
fact that you might grow with them.
Well, we, to be honest, one of the things we've got is like, so
we look after the customers. We've got up to like 10 or 15
places. Yeah, personally, I'm actually
quite excited when they go. We're too big for you.
I'd send them a cake. I'm like, awesome, you did it.
You did it literally. You broke the chances of
actually making it. So like for you go forward,
you're gonna have way more challenges.
(11:29):
God this is refreshing. Sorry anyway, just no, because
it's very rare that someone sticks to what they're doing and
I and I understand why people get over invested and have to
deliver for you know when you get big customers, often they
want big things, right? I do.
But I love the fact that you're purely obsessing with what you
set out to do. Yeah.
I mean once you get that size, there's we start touching this
(11:51):
just outside. I mean, the, the style of
business you start running, you want to do some more, way more
add-ons. Your loyalty gets a little bit
more hectic because you're now trying to do bucket systems that
you can go buy a voucher here, go all over the show and do all
these things you're doing, doingsome sort of cross promotional
advertising at all your sites, trying to get them to drive in.
Basically you've got an administration team.
(12:11):
Like without a doubt, once you hit 10 sites, there's probably
an office. It's no longer fun, is it?
It's a different type of fun, well put and and for me it's.
Equals not fun. Equals yeah, so I think for us
it's that's just not our people and we won't be able to service
them probably just straight up because our characters will be.
We want to help you when you're trying to deal with that.
(12:33):
Like, yeah, but like, literally the toilet's just broken.
Is there any way you guys can help me solve how my online
media? I can't say how quickly you
drawn into this because it's quite an emotive world you live
in, right? Because a lot of these guys as
you say, obsessed with their business, really care about it.
Are you, is it quite hard not tobe drawn into the emotional side
of these guys who are independent owner operators who
are kind of living their dream and you're part of it now it.
(12:54):
Did it's really. Yeah, it's hard.
It's, I mean, I sort of like every probably species these
last three years, the number of cancellations because the doors
are closing. We obviously see that and that
has been pretty hard to tell. That means so much more that
without being rude chains who were listening, it means so much
more for an individual operator to close than it does to
closing. Cardiff, as you know, as amongst
(13:16):
of 100 sites as it would be not no offend.
I've got, I'm trying not to offend people, but it's much
more because that family's directly connected to that
closure, you know? You know, and I've got friends
who run businesses like that allover the country who are all the
kind of similar pit in Wales particularly.
We have a lot of friends who areindependent owner operators.
And it's, yeah, it's emotional. They are, they're seven days a
week. That's it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they're part of the
(13:37):
community. Like everyone knows that that
place is shut down and that's a real, you just know it's gonna,
it's gonna be a break and there's gonna be a bit of time
where that healing process has come through and we'll see it.
But that sucks. And if I'm a, an independent
owner operator and I wanna and Ibuy a bus, how quickly can I
like so because part of the resistance sometimes is the
switch on. So even, I mean the big guys,
obviously they're petrified of it.
(13:59):
But for the little guys still, because they're like kind of in
their day-to-day, how how quickly can they kind of plug in
and go? I mean, the fastest we've had
someone live is in two hours, but it's quite good.
It's understanding that that's knowing that First off, you just
need buttons. You can build the buttons pretty
quickly and just duplicate and roll it out and help you get
that going. Then you get into the costing
(14:19):
analysis, etcetera. That takes a bit more time.
But when you've got the the old my tool just broke.
We had this a lot more with the legacy tools that are out there,
the big black ones when naturally because the servers
were down by the coffee machine grinds and they just got you
know, so some of it was like we got a lot of sales at Christmas
because that's when the overheating what happened back
in New Zealand. So all the tills are just break
and they'll be like, what can wedo?
(14:40):
We're like, buy an iPad, We'll have you up and running by
tomorrow morning and they're good to.
Go. What does the product look like
then? Is it?
Is it that? Is it a tablet?
Yeah, it goes on iPads, right? OK.
Yep, We learnt that from from our good friends at Vint.
So when I met Vaughn, he was theoriginal sort of founder of it.
We had these, we went into the office and he was like, Yep,
there's my sales team, there's two of them, there's my support
team, There's ten of them. Because we support all devices.
(15:04):
Like, yeah, we'll just do iPads.That sounds like.
Yeah, I find it remarkable how people move into different forms
of hardware, the cost involved. The we're about to actually,
we'll talk about this off air afterwards, but we're about to
do a deal with Green King. I can talk about this openly now
for their tented pubs, which is so not the thousand estate of
(15:24):
the managed ones. These are for the guys who
literally what you're talking about, run their own businesses.
They were 892. I know for sure all across the
UK and we're helping them kind of come out of some real they'd
be get, they get door stepped a lot by tech providers who will
go in. I visited one site, they had a
kiosk in it. It's a pub.
Yeah. I was kind of wondering how the
(15:44):
hell did you buy that? So yeah, because the, you know,
someone's gone in and done a good sales pitch where it might
be. But we're really trying to help
them unlock a lot of the tech stuff.
They do not need anything complicated.
They need it really simple, really quick and something that
because they've got no, they've got razor thin margins and they
need to see that number one, to understand where they're at,
whether it's good or bad, unfortunately.
And then number 2, they need some of this really easy to
carry on with. Yeah.
And so we'll we'll have a chat afterwards.
(16:06):
But I think that that's a reallysuitable route to market those
kind of people. We're doing that kind of deal.
We're doing franchise tech stacks where we work with
individual people who run their businesses to help them by tech.
And we've got a deemed, we've got a demystify, I suppose,
almost make it really simple because they end up buying, and
this is not being rude to some of the legacy pods, but buying
big, bulky, it's a product whichthey just don't need.
(16:28):
They don't need 52 features for,you know, you know, all the
other stuff that goes with it. So yeah, we're really working on
trying to find the right people for the right product.
And why I think it's the clarityI'm getting from you.
It was particularly around that real obsession with working with
the single people. It's really impressive because
actually everybody who starts there end up going, oh, we're
going to mid market, we're goingto this, we're going to that,
(16:48):
all build out their products. So yeah, kudos to you guys.
I think that's pretty cool. Anyway, I'm happy with that.
And what does the future look like for Bustle?
What how do you take it for fromwhere you are?
Is are you expanding into territories?
What's the what's the plan? Yes, the current focus is
Australia, New Zealand and UK. So big, big effort over in the
UK. So against London Coffee
festival coming up, we're excited about hitting that one.
(17:10):
But really for us it's, I think if we can establish those three
markets. There was also this thing called
time zone. So if I can get UK and New
Zealand of literally now a 24/7 and because hospitality is a
24/7 business with. You'll never go into bed.
I don't yeah, sleeps another day.
That was the concept. And then once we do those, we
can start to take on different markets around which which
(17:32):
actually suit what we need to do.
But it's also understanding the markets that need us.
I mean it's, you know, we because we're very focused on
this like own operators in the in the especially coffee market
that's actually quite rare when you try and find, yeah, it
really is an audience of that indifferent markets.
Like UK seems to have really adopted coffee massively.
South Africa has got some reallyinteresting movements going on
(17:53):
to it and so is Brazil. So there've been two markets we
looked into as well and Vietnam has got some really great tick
going on and over there. So I saw a TikTok.
Obviously I'm a regular TikTok you, as you can tell by my age,
but there's a TikTok about, I think there are a couple of
Australian guys going around every coffee shop in Australia
and they're playing music at every, I don't know if you've
seen it. It's it's viral, so you can go
(18:14):
and check it out. But but it but they, they are
literally your customers and it's very, it's all about
community. They've done it really cleverly.
They're all about community. They actually go and work in the
coffee shop with the owners. They do a bit of social bit of
content with them. But yeah, there's like, I think
they, I can't remember they saidlike 2 1/2 thousand independent
coffee retailers in a certain space.
But yeah, it was mental. But I, I think there's the niche
(18:35):
markets are really underrepresented in technology.
They're kind of put into buckets.
So a lot of our partners will work with people.
Yeah, we do this, that, that, that, that.
And I actually think the niche markets aren't so bakery.
Would there be another one I'd include in that?
Is that do you service those guys as well?
We do have bakeries on board, but I understand even they've
got their niche that I can't solve for.
And it comes down to recipe building and the whole, the use
(18:57):
of the dough and the flour and the water measurements, et
cetera, and temperature controls.
And when they do recipe building, it's a whole they
need. They need a scientist.
Like equations running around your head.
Like if I put some an animation on.
It is a little bit in like the wastage movements are, you know,
they're just very different. So in most bakeries we come
across of also doing a wholesaleoperation off the back of it.
So they're also trying to figureout how they supply on top of
(19:19):
this, their own internal support.
So we we do support the ones whodo themselves and we're actually
picking up more and more of them.
But it's, yeah, it's probably one of my deep dives of
understanding the recipe building.
Yeah. Because they're telling me the
bakery is the new coffee shop, right?
That's what they're saying to me.
Yeah. So that it's a place for
community. And we work with Cornish Bakery,
who have got 70 sites now acrossthe UK, but started off very
(19:40):
much in tourist locations, just kind of moving through,
servicing the community, like. And they didn't have a
particular brand. They kind of used to mold into
the background. So they changed the color to fit
whatever community they're in and just did it really nicely.
And in the radar. Now he has 17.
He's about to sell it. I think so.
But I think those communities are really under representing
technology. And I think that I've really
(20:01):
misunderstood what Bustle did. I'll be really honest.
Got you. Yeah, because my guys run a lot
of the stuff internally and there's a huge market for you
here. And I think, and I think a lot
of these guys are crying are ending up on, I can't say the
name of the providers, but they're ending up another pause,
which I don't think it's probably the right way.
So yeah, we should definitely we'll have a chat after it's not
there, but it's our job is to dothat for people to make sure
(20:24):
that they're represented properly.
So that's great. That's very cool.
Sorry, I'm not even answering myquestions here.
I'm just interested And how doesit equate to in the coffee
world? Is it really simple?
In fact, what they're looking for, like you mentioned at the
start, is it the fact they're just looking for that access to
data and access to seamless kindof technology that helps them
run their shift? Or are they looking for, is
(20:46):
there a bit more in the background?
I've never run a coffee shop. I've been involved mostly in
casual dining myself, but I've never been involved in that
space. Is there something particular
that gives them that initial, that nuance that you guys can
serve? I think that's the thing we're
trying to dive deeper into and really to unlock.
So we've been working with the roasteries at the moment to make
sure that the pricing equivalent.
So one of the biggest challengesthat we've sort of hearing from
(21:08):
the roasteries is giving their customers the confidence to
raise the price, right, everyone, everyone, right, It's
a hot topic. What should a flat wire be
costing it? And I guess by being a sort of
cloud base, we can do that sort of benchmark understanding of
what is everyone's average pricing based on Mark, based on
the area. And that we in New Zealand,
we've been able to do that really well and give people
confidence to bring it up by $0.50 or a dollar in some cases.
(21:29):
And it's helped the suppliers belike, it's not just us, everyone
needs to. Yeah.
And I think that's really interesting, right.
So almost like on the flip side of that saying you've had a bad
day, Yep. But what is a bad day in terms
of context of the other coffee chain coffee servers around you,
right. Because if they've also had a
bad day, then you necessarily haven't had a bad day, right?
It's just been a poor day period.
And I think understanding that on pricing as well, not dynamic
(21:51):
pricing and such, but knowing that XYZ charge this and we can
charge this, you actually feel more confidence to be aggressive
or confident around your pricing.
So yeah, it was discussed last night.
Actually, the thing I was at last night was quite a topic
conversation around how do we automate that kind of wandering
around the street looking at your competitors going, what do
they do? Why are they better than us?
And what how can AI play a part in that to kind of help kind of
(22:13):
connect these people? So you don't have to do the
corner checking anymore in case a lot of people don't have the
time, right to go and sit in a coffee shop and kind of test
their competitors. I don't know.
It's, it's AI had a few guys have done this, especially in
the, in the food court environments.
And they obviously they go and do price analysis against what,
who's doing the better movement.And everyone kind of forgets
it's not about price, but you forgot about hospitality, which
(22:36):
is actually about the quality and actually the customer
experience. And so it's like you can price
yourself up as much as you want,but if the person serving looks
grumpy and doesn't say hi, you're probably going to do
worse. So maybe just remember the
hospitality, yes? You and John are going to get on
very well. He has a very similar ethos and
brings me back down to earth regularly doing that.
But no, it's, it's totally true,obviously.
(22:58):
But that that, that ability to understand what's going on in
your area or your geography, I think it's pretty cool and I
think it's coming. So it is coming.
It is. For sure.
OK, very cool. I was nearly there.
And what about because you were saying every venue is unique?
I've got a question here. And one-size-fits-all rarely
works in hospitality. Do you think you've achieved
that with the niche that you're working with?
(23:19):
I'm presumably going to say yes,but and how much more, How much
more work do you need to do to get that to almost perfect?
We have an internal saying called 88%.
We'll never get to 100. There's always like a little bit
of elements. But if we can keep on sort of
targeting 88% of every single feature we build out, that just
improves the baseline. And so in this case, right now,
(23:41):
it's all about loyalty and the old Tin Trip coffee card and the
love hate relationship that was around the industry.
How you gonna? So I'm really interested because
that again came up last night. We talked, we we talked about
surprise and delight and all this kind of stuff around
loyalty and how and how people move from kind of the stamp card
to doing that. You mean entitlement?
Yeah, Yeah. The different elements of like,
yeah. I've spent so my 5th, my fifth
(24:02):
visit. I went to Hawks Marchley with my
Mrs. a while ago and we walked in and they took us for an
impromptu wine tasting downstairs in the wine cellar
and we just thought we were justlucky.
But it was because it was that time last year we'd gone for my
for celebration with some of thefamily and they just had it.
It'd been earmarked so they knewit, but we didn't feel it at
all. It just felt natural.
(24:22):
But being able to do that in a high volume environment where
you've got obviously lots of coffee transactions going
through. Very hard, yeah.
Yeah, the issue is called the handshake.
In my mind the problem is the handshake.
So in your situation you would have made a booking, which means
you gave the personal details and now we.
Can track, Yeah, yeah. Right.
Whereas if you walk in order a flat white, you didn't do
anything apart from walk into the room.
(24:43):
So how do we identify you without using card details?
So put in the card detail requires you to use the same
card and kind of gets into the transaction game and they were
wondering what the bucket is andetcetera, etcetera.
So yeah, now it's all about how do you make an emotional, loyal
loyalty experience where it's not actually about rewards just
because of the dollar spend, butit's about, you know, you're
actually a regular of mine. Like, how can I take care of you
(25:04):
Because you're a Yeah. Like the chairs mentality,
right? So when you walk in, they slide
the beer down the bar. You're like, you know?
Yeah, yeah. How you recreate that in the
coffee world, I think is incredible.
Well, you're never, as I think, as you correctly said, right.
You're not going to replace thathuman behind the counter all the
way. They make people feel when they
walk in and how good the productis.
But there must be. Well, I'm sure we'll find a way
of bridging that gap to be able to reward people for their
(25:26):
loyalty. Yeah.
Hopefully that's what we're working on next Fridays.
Yeah, yeah. Should be done by Thursday.
No, I think it's AI think we what got tested a lot and this
probably was the thing we didn'treally, really acknowledge at
the time. But when we all closed down for
2020, no one realized in our customer base.
(25:47):
They didn't actually know their customers.
They know them, but they didn't have any way of contacting them,
no way of telling them if they're going to be open or
closed tomorrow, no way of telling them what without going
through. So they just hoped that they
were following them on Instagramor on Facebook, right?
Which is a bit of a hit and misson that side of things.
So I think it's not that the customers didn't want to be
engaged, they just had no way ofbeing engaged.
(26:08):
At the same time, our creative customers who are time poor
didn't have a way of capturing that information easily without
it becoming an, you know, sort of a cumbersome experience.
And also, of course, you got data integrity, making sure
you're not keeping people's wrong, etcetera, God forbid.
So yeah, that's, that's we're now sort of like, well, how do
(26:29):
you do this? And a nice, I guess sort of a
handshake way where it feels natural.
But at the same time, there's some bonuses going on.
And we're very much now about the emotional experience rather
than just the feature or the functionality.
So loyalty for now has been quite a functional aspect.
You know, you do this, you get that.
That's basically it. We're seeing people doing a lot
(26:50):
better job of actually making itmore of a human interaction.
But again, come back to hospitality.
Like if you're in hospitality, how do we make a hospitality
Loyalty? Yeah.
Because you react to bodies, right, You react to body
language. Someone comes in looking sad,
you say, hey, what's wrong? Maybe you throw him a sling him
a coffee, right, or you sling him something in to say have a
great day kind of thing. So it's very hard to replicate
in technology as in, you know, I'm sure AI is great, but I
(27:12):
don't think it's that good. Hallucinates a lot as well.
That's. It Yeah.
I do, I do on a day-to-day basis, so it's probably not too
bad. And, and what is your, I mean,
I'd love to know your opinion onwhat the industry's like, I
suppose to work to of you workedin it and now you're serving it
and you're in different regions.What's your opinion on what
you're seeing out there is, I mean, obviously we talked about
(27:33):
some the sad side of things, some closures and what not going
on and there's more of that happening that we'd like to see.
But what's your overall opinion of it?
My overall opinion is I think that we're going through, I'd
call it a steep learning curve for the industry.
So specifically, I can only talkto my, my audience.
(27:53):
I focus on, and I think it's, I had this wonderful conversation
with this amazing sort of own operator in Melbourne one day
and she was like, it used to be fun and now it's numbers units.
And when I heard that, I was like, okay, I could resonate
with that. As the example, I opened a
cocktail bar because it was fun.Yeah, you don't open a cocktail.
Bar most people have they're good at cooking dinner, they go,
(28:15):
let's open a restaurant. Yeah, and let's.
Go crazy. That's wrong.
Yeah. What do you mean I have to cost
out? And so I think what, what's
going, what we're going through now is we're going through what
we call is like is the costings part Lily and analytics.
And it's never been, that's never been that much fun.
But once everyone gets an understanding of that and
actually starts sort of we're seeing a major increase in
actually people building recipesand actually putting costs in
(28:36):
and actually analyzing it and actually spending half an hour a
week, just looking at your numbers like it was quite only
1/2 an hour. That's all you need and you can
actually get a much better performance.
So once they've done that, then they can start having fun again
because they're starting to feelmore on top of numbers.
Yeah, in control as well. Way more in control, but I think
right now everyone's still trying to play.
We're still going through that curve of like, I just don't have
(28:57):
enough time. So therefore I'm always just
feeling panicky and it's like that's, that's.
Kind of it's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy, right?
The less time you have, the lesstime you have to control your
business. Your business becomes out of
control. It's like I'm drawing the circle
thinking, 'cause it's just goingto go down and down and down.
So you end up and you disappear.So yeah, I totally agree.
I think that that there's a hugelearning curve across all.
There's a bit of an educational piece around what can be done
(29:19):
for your business and understanding how you account
for it and how you control it. But also just not forgetting why
they originally set out, which is I think it's extremely
difficult when you're faced withthese.
I mean, the energy crisis here alone was horrific.
And that's still hanging around,you know, so it's not quite
easy. And I think the headwinds that
we faced the last, I think five years, I've been insane.
I've been in it all my life and it's never been like this.
(29:40):
I think, I think it's extremely tough, but with never wasted
crisis, right? So, and I think there's some
it's great to hear like actuallyproducts like you who are out
there trying to fix these problems for these guys and
actually just sit alongside them, not take over.
You know, you don't have to be atech genius, right?
To work with bustle? No.
Maybe to build it, but to work with it.
Ideally no. I mean, it's a, if anything, we
(30:03):
expect you not to touch us very often, right?
Like that's the hard part. So how can we make sure the
times that you do engage, can weget the most out of you?
So it needs to be fun and it needs to be intuitive and all
this sort of classic sort of tech words.
At the end of the day, it needs to actually give you a number
that you care about. So we're really worried about
that actually being a useful number one that makes you
(30:23):
actually either go, Oh yeah, I'mgood with that, or I need to do
something. Folks, a reaction.
Yeah, let's get into it and don't be afraid.
I think one of the big challenges on like doing, you
know, customer support is being superhuman on customer support.
So like, you know, the whole team's all worked in
hospitality, so ask us anything type thing and we've had some
pretty weird conversations. Definitely not about pause or
(30:44):
anything. That we, I would imagine that's
why I'm saying I think it might be quite good fun being in your
wealth because you're not working with CTOS, right?
You're not working with these people who are kind of running
100 sites going, oh, we need to talk about integration.
I mean, God, kill me now, right?So it's yeah, yeah, no, but for
you guys, it's totally differentbecause they're going to just be
emotional and talk about what they care about.
Like literally, do you know a plumber just like why?
(31:06):
Because you were asked, can I help?
Because I'm in New Zealand, so everyone knows everybody so.
Everyone's a plumber, right? Yeah, everyone's.
Old Ted across the road who can look here now there's definitely
AI think that that's about sort of what it used to be, which is,
you know, the sort of suppliers were always about who your
contacts are. So coffee companies do a great
job of when you open a cafe, they're like, right, I can
(31:29):
supply you the coffee, but I'll also help you find your machine.
I'll get the installers of. I'll tell you who's your
architecture should be and who your designer should be or some
recommendations. So I think we are sort of sort
of taking that same mentality which is like.
That's a really good point. Yeah.
And I think that's totally true of those guys that actually they
don't just come with one. They come with like an army,
don't they? They don't.
It's kind of like it takes what's coming with the phrase
(31:49):
now, something to build a village.
But anyway, look, really interesting.
I mean, we have, we're meant to have like an hour with you guys,
but I only get half an hour these days.
But how do we get hold of you? Because I think obviously we
have your team in the corner here.
Yeah, you can wait. You're not on the camera.
I think it's. Can I put you on the camera
quickly? I've got multiple cameras.
Does it work? No, doesn't you'd have to jump
in his camera. It's not going to work.
(32:10):
But anyway, we've got your team here.
How do people get hold of you guys and kind of find out more
about bustling what you guys aredoing in the UK, particularly
these guys, the creatives that you talk about.
I think that's and we have an audience there that we can go
and go after and talk to actually, because I think they'd
be really interested to meet you.
Might be an avalanche, but but because they're not represented,
as I said, I don't think in the way you're trying to do it.
(32:31):
So it's super interesting how toget hold of you.
I mean, we're a simple go to thewebsite.
Hey, Bustle. I've really built that up.
It's, you know, really up there,but I think that the probably
the big point of difference is we when we say that we want to
have a call, we call it a 15 minute chat.
And it's like being the maturitywelcoming you in to find out
what you, you know, how's your not going to be and do you want
to go downstairs for a wine tasting?
The thing for us is that 15 minute call is like, are we good
(32:54):
for you? And if we're not, we'll
recommend who you should go to. So you know, if one of these big
groups gave me a call, I would tell them 100% where they're
going to go to because at the end of the day, we have been
there. So we want you to have a
solution that actually solves the problem.
So we use that cause more of an opportunity to actually engage,
like what do you need and how can we be of service?
And so all these people, that's why we like call us if you need
(33:17):
a plumber, we'll help you with the plumber and just figure out
if you need to pause at the sametime.
But it's really the end of the day.
Just give us a chat because we're there to help.
Very cool. And what what is the website
address so they don't tell us off in the corner?
Hey, bustle.com. Hey, bustle.com, perfect look.
That was Tech on Toast podcast guys.
That was the team Bustle over here.
You can give yourself a round ofapplause.
There you go. And how long in the UK for?
(33:39):
Seven days. Wow, it's a spin.
What are you doing then? Are you going to the coffee?
The coffee? It's Coffee Festival, is it?
London Coffee Festival. Oh, I know.
London, yeah. Is it down in?
Truman's Truman's Brewery. Yes.
Down there for a few days and then yeah.
That thing's grown massively thelast few years.
It's. Huge.
Yeah, it's what? Are you doing?
Are you involved? Are you just going for a wander
or are you? Are you?
No, we've got a, we've got a stand.
(34:00):
We're going you've. Purchased this, yes.
So is it interesting in the event space?
The Big Blue stand. He cameras he cameras the lovely
team have figured out we're doing a treasure hunt so you can
come down to a treasure hunt go and meet all our partners and
get some little gifts when you fill out the treasure okay and
doing a pub quiz as well becausewe do everything it's not
really. I can genuinely say we had a guy
(34:23):
from who runs a company called Quiz bit guy called Mark Walsh
and he built this quiz company. He's a brilliant guy and he did
a quiz with me on the podcast while we were on air and
quizzing. I don't know if it's a very
British thing. I don't know if it travels
overseas, but it's still it is the best thing to do.
Even if you're not interested, you don't want to play and
someone's playing next to you. Like hang on, I know that one
and you just dive in kind of theyou've picked the right thing.
(34:44):
2:00 every day the team jumps online, does the the quiz in New
Zealand. Yeah, really.
Yeah, we did the the the quiz from the newspaper.
That's just how we get together.Everyone is very they look.
Really excited about that. 03 AM.
Oh yeah, yeah, I know you're 24/7, you don't care.
But these guys, they're in bed. They wake up, they just jump
(35:06):
online, Yeah. No, you told me that I would
have come and done a quiz at theend, but I haven't got the
mental capacity now, are you? Have you?
Yeah. You're not on the mics.
You can't control this. Anyway, nothing bad.
Little bit of background noise on the pod.
Look, really, really, really enjoyed meeting you all
actually. And I think anyone listening to
this, particularly you guys who are sitting in that creative
(35:27):
net, give Bustle a shout. Let's have a chat.
So if you can't get them throughdirectly, come to us at Tech on
Toast and we'll help you and we'll get Abby.
We'll set Abby on you and then she can help you meet them.
Have you met Abby yet? Yeah, She's a force.
Yeah. So thank you very much, guys.
Enjoy your week in London, mate,And good luck on your 28.
Is it always 28 hours? I know that sounds stupid, but
is it a layover or you'd like todo some kind of?
(35:48):
Yeah. So you always do like a two or
three hour layover somewhere unless you go through Vancouver,
which is great because you have like a six hour, like 6 hours
and you can go down to gas town and have lunch.
I. Feel like I want to hurt people
after 20 hours on the plane. I've been choosing violence by
the end of that. That just says more about me
properly. Anyway, thanks very much guys,
We'll see you next week. Cheers.
Thanks buddy.
Hello and welcome to the Tech and Toast Podcast.
My name is Chris Fletcher and this is season 12.
Tech and Toast Podcast is serving up fresh chats with the
sharpest minds in hostility and tech.
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service, or just sprinkle a little tech magic into your
business, you've come to the right place.
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If you're curious about all of this, just head over to
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You won't regret it. Now enough of that, ready for
the next episode? Let's go.
(01:09):
Welcome to the next episode of Tech and Toast podcast.
And today I'm delighted to be joined by Johnny McKenzie and
some fans. I will say in the corner here
that you can't see on camera. Yeah, there you go.
You can hear them Co founder andCEO of Bustle.
Johnny, how are you? I'm very well, thanks for having
me. I'm all right.
Welcome to sunny London. It is beautiful.
We were just discussing how rarethat might be.
A little bit more rare from the the other times I've been here,
(01:31):
but this is this is definitely atreat.
And I think we have to put this out there that Johnny's just
travelled 28 hours just for the Tech and Toast podcast, which I
really appreciate Johnny. For this here in time, yeah.
Where have you come from today? I came from Auckland, New
Zealand. Wow, it's a beautiful place.
I was just saying. A good friend of ours and a
fellow podcaster, John Mason, who owns Sideways, also from
that neck of the woods. So hopefully you 2 will meet
(01:53):
each other at some point. He is in London this week.
I'll try and do an intro. Oh, is he?
Yeah, yeah, he's here for another week, so.
That's easier, yeah. This is a pre context.
This conversation depends on listening, right?
Got it. So before we start joining, tell
me a little bit about your background because I'd love to
know more about you before we get onto bustle.
Yeah, sure. So background is where does it
start basically. Go back to school if you want, I
mean. Yeah, one day.
(02:15):
No, I mean I did the old classic, you know when you try
and get a a sort of day job? Well I was doing my IT degree
when I went to university thinking it was a place where I
could possibly make some money and pivoted to cocktail
bartendering because it's far more lucrative.
Much more fun, but yeah. Was it lucrative?
I mean, it actually was for a while, no?
It was for a while, yeah. So let's say I opened my first
cocktail bar when I was 20 when with my brother.
(02:37):
Wow. And it's still going today,
which is great. He's over back home, back home.
So he's still got it. In that time, I sort of opened
three cocktail bars in a cinema,which was an interesting pivot
as well. I don't recommend doing that one
and then off the back of that the the opportunity to sort of
get back into text. So it's like a big loop round.
And so really loved hospital, loved everything about it, and
(02:57):
then realized it was just not. If you can't do the hard job, I
always say the best product comes out the back of someone
actually experiencing, right. And Nori, I was a Nori thing
this morning. They were asking me to talk
about what advice I would give them.
And I said, look, you need to understand the industry you're
selling into. It's just not like anything
else. It's a bit emotive.
We're very community driven. If you do something bad,
everybody knows really quick, very good, same thing.
(03:18):
So, yeah, so I think it is. Did that experience really help
you kind of build what you're into now?
Yeah, I mean, it's the experience was at the time
because I had the three bars in the cinema.
The cinema was like I was takingup all my life.
I didn't realize, you know, you kick off.
I didn't know how they. Assumed there's a wet LED
version in the cinema, right? Was there bars in the cinema or
not? You had a full restaurant and a
(03:38):
cafe and a little cocktail bar upstairs, hence why I was
involved. But what I didn't truly
understand about a cinema is youcouldn't just choose what movies
you wanted to play. You have to sort of get into a
contract and you have to show a number.
And you're gonna, you're gonna debunk the whole thing about.
The whole thing, Yeah, I'm goingunder the Mass.
Yeah. So you had to.
So like we had to start playing movies at 8:00 AM knowing no one
(04:00):
would turn up because you have acontract where you got to show
it four times a day. And if you do got a three hour
movie because The Lord of the Rings came along and suddenly
every movie became 3 hours for whatever reason.
Because we had nothing bad to dobefore the pandemic, you see,
life was. Boring.
Yeah, I just wanted to hang out in the cinema.
And so we have, we have Basically I had to be there from
sort of seven in the morning to open up and then you wouldn't
finish till 1:00 by the time it's.
(04:22):
So insane, isn't it? Making making a business do
that, or making it behave that way and then wondering why it
might go West. Wonder.
Yeah. And then they had to.
Obviously Netflix came along. I was like, where's the little
going to go this way? So I got out.
But still going though. Really.
Yeah, yeah. The movie, the cinema is it's
beautiful. There's an art Deco old sort of
a redone. Yeah, in my mind, I can kind of,
(04:42):
I can kind of picture it. I kind of see, yeah, that cool
vibe. I was pretty lucky.
My business partners were, we'rethe digital and we're the
workshop like the creators. So it was very well fitted out.
Wow, amazingly fitted out and. I have to ask straight away
before we get into it, what's the the hostility scene over in
Auckland? Very different.
I mean, obviously there's a different difference in scale,
(05:03):
but similar Evergreen type problems over there to what we
experienced here or different. No, pretty similar there's
they're definitely going throughthe challenges of wages have
been going up over the last fouryears sort of increasing.
Obviously the cost of goods havedefinitely skyrocketed pretty
heavily. And what they haven't had is
like the sort of I guess the operational cost, the sort of
(05:24):
your power and water hasn't moved too much.
But the challenge of course is that the work from home balance,
we still haven't really had thatpull back into CBD.
So the CBDS are really struggling.
You're seeing a lot of Wellington's, probably the worst
I've seen it since really alive so.
That's a shame. It sucks, doesn't it?
It really does like it'll bounceback because hospitality does,
(05:46):
but it's definitely. Yeah, yeah, well, we're anything
and nothing but resilient, right.
So it it does change. And when you built Bustle, how
did that come about? Was that with is your is Co
founders not your brother in Bustle?
Then no. No, no.
You said that? No, no.
Definitely not. No, it's it was a funny story.
Went to a one of these weird things.
It was a breakfast club and the guest of honor was my mother.
(06:08):
And they got my three brothers or my two brothers myself to be
the guest speakers to talk aboutmy mother and some guys in the
in the office or in the room, sort of like, can we talk to you
about making a coffee ordering app?
And I was like, sure, we'll go for a coffee, let's have a chat.
And they were like, true to their form developers who just
didn't want to talk to the people when they ordered their
coffee. They're like, is there any way
(06:29):
we can do this through our phones so we just don't have to
communicate? Associate with any humans, yeah.
No touching, yeah, no indicate engagements.
And I was like yeah, absolutely.How does that work with the
point of sale? And they're like, what's the
point of sale? And I was like, this is going to
be a good conversation The. Conversation just got longer.
Yeah. So they had talked to Vaughan
from Bend. So at the time there's another
(06:49):
POS company coming out of New Zealand.
I flew up and met Vaughan and said is there any way we can add
a, make a variation for hospitality that works with
Vend? And he was like, actually that'd
be great because that's one of our problem children is
hospitality. And so I was like great because
I was about to use your product,but I can't use it because it's
not made for me. So here we go.
And that became the weekend job on top of the other weekend
(07:11):
hospitality job. The day job, yeah.
And before and what does bustle do?
I mean, for anybody who's not seen you, not heard of you, what
I mean, we've kind of alluded toalready, but what does the
product do? So the baseline product is point
of sale or util system, but whatwe've moved more to is the CAFE
management software. So probably the uniqueness is
that like cost of goods and wagecostings and operational costs
(07:34):
that come into it. So not just about the point of
sale, that of the capturing the data through the tool, but
really trying to give the operators a bit more
understanding how the operation's going, what money,
what profits they're making, what money they're making.
So overview, it's like, I suppose I keep thinking of the
name of this product like a central OPS product where it
would basically food cost, labour cost, revenue, basically
it covers all three and gives you that kind of ability to own
(07:56):
and manage what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which I think is, is huge, right?
And do you guys, I know originally you focused on the
smaller businesses, but are you looking further up the lane?
Nope. Nope.
No staying in your lane staying.Quite.
Impressive. Yeah.
Most people I asked really struggle at that.
They want to say no, but they all want to go.
They all want to go mid market. I never was like you.
You touched on it like where I've come from.
(08:17):
So we're building a product for who I was, which was a guy who
had four businesses. They were spread across the
city. And my problem was I had no idea
how they were all going. So I just wanted to know through
my phone how everything was going and how could I help them.
So that's where it all came from, and that's where I'm
sticking because that's my people.
It's very interesting. When we talked to, we talked to
some bigger groups through the network we have and it's very
(08:41):
much a meeting, a lot of time spent with people and picking
problems what not. But the smaller guys is a
transaction. A lot of the time it's kind of
like we've got or we haven't gotanything.
We need something or they've gothalf of it and they kind of need
the completion bit. How quickly do they see kind of,
I suppose improvements once theyput, once they have something
like bustling, I mean, not improvements, but how quickly do
(09:01):
they get clarity, I suppose overwhat they're doing around their
business? Slowly, yeah, because I mean,
and I fully respect that the target audience we're going for,
we call them creatives, right? They're there because they love
making. They still care right?
They've not been over invested yet or have been ruined by a VC.
They don't have to do financial returns ahead of margins, etc.
(09:22):
They're there for the love of it.
So one of our challenges is trying to make it so easy for
them that they can actually do it.
Just little Nuggets every week. Just try and increase this, get
this recipe in there, get these wages in there.
Just start to build it and get afull understanding how your
business is going. But it's not going to happen
overnight because they don't have time.
Like the fridge will break or the plumbing breaks or
something. Yeah, and they're on right all
the time. They're always on.
(09:42):
I find it's actually really unique market to sell to because
they're time poor, obviously. I mean everyone says hostile to
people, time poor. For these people particularly,
probably not time poor, but theyinvest their time, like you say,
in the stuff they love. The reason they built this
business. This is because they're obsessed
with coffee or bakery or whatever it is they might be
doing and they probably care less for tech.
Would that be fair and saying that or not?
Less for tech, but less in the way of like that bit's the bit I
(10:03):
don't want to do a. 100% yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's the
numbers, yeah. Like no one really wants.
To see their accounts, no. No, so like our mission is like
5% profit. Like that's our ultimate goal is
all our customers make 5% minimum.
Like that's what we want to drive everyone towards.
And it's because, you know, if you hit 5%, you've got a, you're
paying yourself. It's probably one of the biggest
(10:25):
rare things in these games that make people like, yeah, yeah, I
made money. That's like, did you pay
yourself? They're like, I paid myself out
of the money I made and said, well, that's not, but you did
the 60 hours or 70 hours, 80 hours.
So so it's about trying to sort of game a fire.
So they're like, OK, so if I just do this or I just get that
extra coffee sold on a continuous basis or I just get
nice to the £50 through the till, I could start to actually
(10:48):
sleep better because I'm actually going to be able to pay
my bills next. Week and I guess a lot of these
guys aren't looking for growth in terms of multiple locations.
They're looking for, they may belooking for security or growth
in their business, but that might happen, right.
Obviously if you're successful, if you're doing your 5% and you
suddenly start to grow that there's a potential that you
guys turn into a multi site operator in that sense and the
(11:08):
fact that you might grow with them.
Well, we, to be honest, one of the things we've got is like, so
we look after the customers. We've got up to like 10 or 15
places. Yeah, personally, I'm actually
quite excited when they go. We're too big for you.
I'd send them a cake. I'm like, awesome, you did it.
You did it literally. You broke the chances of
actually making it. So like for you go forward,
you're gonna have way more challenges.
(11:29):
God this is refreshing. Sorry anyway, just no, because
it's very rare that someone sticks to what they're doing and
I and I understand why people get over invested and have to
deliver for you know when you get big customers, often they
want big things, right? I do.
But I love the fact that you're purely obsessing with what you
set out to do. Yeah.
I mean once you get that size, there's we start touching this
(11:51):
just outside. I mean, the, the style of
business you start running, you want to do some more, way more
add-ons. Your loyalty gets a little bit
more hectic because you're now trying to do bucket systems that
you can go buy a voucher here, go all over the show and do all
these things you're doing, doingsome sort of cross promotional
advertising at all your sites, trying to get them to drive in.
Basically you've got an administration team.
(12:11):
Like without a doubt, once you hit 10 sites, there's probably
an office. It's no longer fun, is it?
It's a different type of fun, well put and and for me it's.
Equals not fun. Equals yeah, so I think for us
it's that's just not our people and we won't be able to service
them probably just straight up because our characters will be.
We want to help you when you're trying to deal with that.
(12:33):
Like, yeah, but like, literally the toilet's just broken.
Is there any way you guys can help me solve how my online
media? I can't say how quickly you
drawn into this because it's quite an emotive world you live
in, right? Because a lot of these guys as
you say, obsessed with their business, really care about it.
Are you, is it quite hard not tobe drawn into the emotional side
of these guys who are independent owner operators who
are kind of living their dream and you're part of it now it.
(12:54):
Did it's really. Yeah, it's hard.
It's, I mean, I sort of like every probably species these
last three years, the number of cancellations because the doors
are closing. We obviously see that and that
has been pretty hard to tell. That means so much more that
without being rude chains who were listening, it means so much
more for an individual operator to close than it does to
closing. Cardiff, as you know, as amongst
(13:16):
of 100 sites as it would be not no offend.
I've got, I'm trying not to offend people, but it's much
more because that family's directly connected to that
closure, you know? You know, and I've got friends
who run businesses like that allover the country who are all the
kind of similar pit in Wales particularly.
We have a lot of friends who areindependent owner operators.
And it's, yeah, it's emotional. They are, they're seven days a
week. That's it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they're part of the
(13:37):
community. Like everyone knows that that
place is shut down and that's a real, you just know it's gonna,
it's gonna be a break and there's gonna be a bit of time
where that healing process has come through and we'll see it.
But that sucks. And if I'm a, an independent
owner operator and I wanna and Ibuy a bus, how quickly can I
like so because part of the resistance sometimes is the
switch on. So even, I mean the big guys,
obviously they're petrified of it.
(13:59):
But for the little guys still, because they're like kind of in
their day-to-day, how how quickly can they kind of plug in
and go? I mean, the fastest we've had
someone live is in two hours, but it's quite good.
It's understanding that that's knowing that First off, you just
need buttons. You can build the buttons pretty
quickly and just duplicate and roll it out and help you get
that going. Then you get into the costing
(14:19):
analysis, etcetera. That takes a bit more time.
But when you've got the the old my tool just broke.
We had this a lot more with the legacy tools that are out there,
the big black ones when naturally because the servers
were down by the coffee machine grinds and they just got you
know, so some of it was like we got a lot of sales at Christmas
because that's when the overheating what happened back
in New Zealand. So all the tills are just break
and they'll be like, what can wedo?
(14:40):
We're like, buy an iPad, We'll have you up and running by
tomorrow morning and they're good to.
Go. What does the product look like
then? Is it?
Is it that? Is it a tablet?
Yeah, it goes on iPads, right? OK.
Yep, We learnt that from from our good friends at Vint.
So when I met Vaughn, he was theoriginal sort of founder of it.
We had these, we went into the office and he was like, Yep,
there's my sales team, there's two of them, there's my support
team, There's ten of them. Because we support all devices.
(15:04):
Like, yeah, we'll just do iPads.That sounds like.
Yeah, I find it remarkable how people move into different forms
of hardware, the cost involved. The we're about to actually,
we'll talk about this off air afterwards, but we're about to
do a deal with Green King. I can talk about this openly now
for their tented pubs, which is so not the thousand estate of
(15:24):
the managed ones. These are for the guys who
literally what you're talking about, run their own businesses.
They were 892. I know for sure all across the
UK and we're helping them kind of come out of some real they'd
be get, they get door stepped a lot by tech providers who will
go in. I visited one site, they had a
kiosk in it. It's a pub.
Yeah. I was kind of wondering how the
(15:44):
hell did you buy that? So yeah, because the, you know,
someone's gone in and done a good sales pitch where it might
be. But we're really trying to help
them unlock a lot of the tech stuff.
They do not need anything complicated.
They need it really simple, really quick and something that
because they've got no, they've got razor thin margins and they
need to see that number one, to understand where they're at,
whether it's good or bad, unfortunately.
And then number 2, they need some of this really easy to
carry on with. Yeah.
And so we'll we'll have a chat afterwards.
(16:06):
But I think that that's a reallysuitable route to market those
kind of people. We're doing that kind of deal.
We're doing franchise tech stacks where we work with
individual people who run their businesses to help them by tech.
And we've got a deemed, we've got a demystify, I suppose,
almost make it really simple because they end up buying, and
this is not being rude to some of the legacy pods, but buying
big, bulky, it's a product whichthey just don't need.
(16:28):
They don't need 52 features for,you know, you know, all the
other stuff that goes with it. So yeah, we're really working on
trying to find the right people for the right product.
And why I think it's the clarityI'm getting from you.
It was particularly around that real obsession with working with
the single people. It's really impressive because
actually everybody who starts there end up going, oh, we're
going to mid market, we're goingto this, we're going to that,
(16:48):
all build out their products. So yeah, kudos to you guys.
I think that's pretty cool. Anyway, I'm happy with that.
And what does the future look like for Bustle?
What how do you take it for fromwhere you are?
Is are you expanding into territories?
What's the what's the plan? Yes, the current focus is
Australia, New Zealand and UK. So big, big effort over in the
UK. So against London Coffee
festival coming up, we're excited about hitting that one.
(17:10):
But really for us it's, I think if we can establish those three
markets. There was also this thing called
time zone. So if I can get UK and New
Zealand of literally now a 24/7 and because hospitality is a
24/7 business with. You'll never go into bed.
I don't yeah, sleeps another day.
That was the concept. And then once we do those, we
can start to take on different markets around which which
(17:32):
actually suit what we need to do.
But it's also understanding the markets that need us.
I mean it's, you know, we because we're very focused on
this like own operators in the in the especially coffee market
that's actually quite rare when you try and find, yeah, it
really is an audience of that indifferent markets.
Like UK seems to have really adopted coffee massively.
South Africa has got some reallyinteresting movements going on
(17:53):
to it and so is Brazil. So there've been two markets we
looked into as well and Vietnam has got some really great tick
going on and over there. So I saw a TikTok.
Obviously I'm a regular TikTok you, as you can tell by my age,
but there's a TikTok about, I think there are a couple of
Australian guys going around every coffee shop in Australia
and they're playing music at every, I don't know if you've
seen it. It's it's viral, so you can go
(18:14):
and check it out. But but it but they, they are
literally your customers and it's very, it's all about
community. They've done it really cleverly.
They're all about community. They actually go and work in the
coffee shop with the owners. They do a bit of social bit of
content with them. But yeah, there's like, I think
they, I can't remember they saidlike 2 1/2 thousand independent
coffee retailers in a certain space.
But yeah, it was mental. But I, I think there's the niche
(18:35):
markets are really underrepresented in technology.
They're kind of put into buckets.
So a lot of our partners will work with people.
Yeah, we do this, that, that, that, that.
And I actually think the niche markets aren't so bakery.
Would there be another one I'd include in that?
Is that do you service those guys as well?
We do have bakeries on board, but I understand even they've
got their niche that I can't solve for.
And it comes down to recipe building and the whole, the use
(18:57):
of the dough and the flour and the water measurements, et
cetera, and temperature controls.
And when they do recipe building, it's a whole they
need. They need a scientist.
Like equations running around your head.
Like if I put some an animation on.
It is a little bit in like the wastage movements are, you know,
they're just very different. So in most bakeries we come
across of also doing a wholesaleoperation off the back of it.
So they're also trying to figureout how they supply on top of
(19:19):
this, their own internal support.
So we we do support the ones whodo themselves and we're actually
picking up more and more of them.
But it's, yeah, it's probably one of my deep dives of
understanding the recipe building.
Yeah. Because they're telling me the
bakery is the new coffee shop, right?
That's what they're saying to me.
Yeah. So that it's a place for
community. And we work with Cornish Bakery,
who have got 70 sites now acrossthe UK, but started off very
(19:40):
much in tourist locations, just kind of moving through,
servicing the community, like. And they didn't have a
particular brand. They kind of used to mold into
the background. So they changed the color to fit
whatever community they're in and just did it really nicely.
And in the radar. Now he has 17.
He's about to sell it. I think so.
But I think those communities are really under representing
technology. And I think that I've really
(20:01):
misunderstood what Bustle did. I'll be really honest.
Got you. Yeah, because my guys run a lot
of the stuff internally and there's a huge market for you
here. And I think, and I think a lot
of these guys are crying are ending up on, I can't say the
name of the providers, but they're ending up another pause,
which I don't think it's probably the right way.
So yeah, we should definitely we'll have a chat after it's not
there, but it's our job is to dothat for people to make sure
(20:24):
that they're represented properly.
So that's great. That's very cool.
Sorry, I'm not even answering myquestions here.
I'm just interested And how doesit equate to in the coffee
world? Is it really simple?
In fact, what they're looking for, like you mentioned at the
start, is it the fact they're just looking for that access to
data and access to seamless kindof technology that helps them
run their shift? Or are they looking for, is
(20:46):
there a bit more in the background?
I've never run a coffee shop. I've been involved mostly in
casual dining myself, but I've never been involved in that
space. Is there something particular
that gives them that initial, that nuance that you guys can
serve? I think that's the thing we're
trying to dive deeper into and really to unlock.
So we've been working with the roasteries at the moment to make
sure that the pricing equivalent.
So one of the biggest challengesthat we've sort of hearing from
(21:08):
the roasteries is giving their customers the confidence to
raise the price, right, everyone, everyone, right, It's
a hot topic. What should a flat wire be
costing it? And I guess by being a sort of
cloud base, we can do that sort of benchmark understanding of
what is everyone's average pricing based on Mark, based on
the area. And that we in New Zealand,
we've been able to do that really well and give people
confidence to bring it up by $0.50 or a dollar in some cases.
(21:29):
And it's helped the suppliers belike, it's not just us, everyone
needs to. Yeah.
And I think that's really interesting, right.
So almost like on the flip side of that saying you've had a bad
day, Yep. But what is a bad day in terms
of context of the other coffee chain coffee servers around you,
right. Because if they've also had a
bad day, then you necessarily haven't had a bad day, right?
It's just been a poor day period.
And I think understanding that on pricing as well, not dynamic
(21:51):
pricing and such, but knowing that XYZ charge this and we can
charge this, you actually feel more confidence to be aggressive
or confident around your pricing.
So yeah, it was discussed last night.
Actually, the thing I was at last night was quite a topic
conversation around how do we automate that kind of wandering
around the street looking at your competitors going, what do
they do? Why are they better than us?
And what how can AI play a part in that to kind of help kind of
(22:13):
connect these people? So you don't have to do the
corner checking anymore in case a lot of people don't have the
time, right to go and sit in a coffee shop and kind of test
their competitors. I don't know.
It's, it's AI had a few guys have done this, especially in
the, in the food court environments.
And they obviously they go and do price analysis against what,
who's doing the better movement.And everyone kind of forgets
it's not about price, but you forgot about hospitality, which
(22:36):
is actually about the quality and actually the customer
experience. And so it's like you can price
yourself up as much as you want,but if the person serving looks
grumpy and doesn't say hi, you're probably going to do
worse. So maybe just remember the
hospitality, yes? You and John are going to get on
very well. He has a very similar ethos and
brings me back down to earth regularly doing that.
But no, it's, it's totally true,obviously.
(22:58):
But that that, that ability to understand what's going on in
your area or your geography, I think it's pretty cool and I
think it's coming. So it is coming.
It is. For sure.
OK, very cool. I was nearly there.
And what about because you were saying every venue is unique?
I've got a question here. And one-size-fits-all rarely
works in hospitality. Do you think you've achieved
that with the niche that you're working with?
(23:19):
I'm presumably going to say yes,but and how much more, How much
more work do you need to do to get that to almost perfect?
We have an internal saying called 88%.
We'll never get to 100. There's always like a little bit
of elements. But if we can keep on sort of
targeting 88% of every single feature we build out, that just
improves the baseline. And so in this case, right now,
(23:41):
it's all about loyalty and the old Tin Trip coffee card and the
love hate relationship that was around the industry.
How you gonna? So I'm really interested because
that again came up last night. We talked, we we talked about
surprise and delight and all this kind of stuff around
loyalty and how and how people move from kind of the stamp card
to doing that. You mean entitlement?
Yeah, Yeah. The different elements of like,
yeah. I've spent so my 5th, my fifth
(24:02):
visit. I went to Hawks Marchley with my
Mrs. a while ago and we walked in and they took us for an
impromptu wine tasting downstairs in the wine cellar
and we just thought we were justlucky.
But it was because it was that time last year we'd gone for my
for celebration with some of thefamily and they just had it.
It'd been earmarked so they knewit, but we didn't feel it at
all. It just felt natural.
(24:22):
But being able to do that in a high volume environment where
you've got obviously lots of coffee transactions going
through. Very hard, yeah.
Yeah, the issue is called the handshake.
In my mind the problem is the handshake.
So in your situation you would have made a booking, which means
you gave the personal details and now we.
Can track, Yeah, yeah. Right.
Whereas if you walk in order a flat white, you didn't do
anything apart from walk into the room.
(24:43):
So how do we identify you without using card details?
So put in the card detail requires you to use the same
card and kind of gets into the transaction game and they were
wondering what the bucket is andetcetera, etcetera.
So yeah, now it's all about how do you make an emotional, loyal
loyalty experience where it's not actually about rewards just
because of the dollar spend, butit's about, you know, you're
actually a regular of mine. Like, how can I take care of you
(25:04):
Because you're a Yeah. Like the chairs mentality,
right? So when you walk in, they slide
the beer down the bar. You're like, you know?
Yeah, yeah. How you recreate that in the
coffee world, I think is incredible.
Well, you're never, as I think, as you correctly said, right.
You're not going to replace thathuman behind the counter all the
way. They make people feel when they
walk in and how good the productis.
But there must be. Well, I'm sure we'll find a way
of bridging that gap to be able to reward people for their
(25:26):
loyalty. Yeah.
Hopefully that's what we're working on next Fridays.
Yeah, yeah. Should be done by Thursday.
No, I think it's AI think we what got tested a lot and this
probably was the thing we didn'treally, really acknowledge at
the time. But when we all closed down for
2020, no one realized in our customer base.
(25:47):
They didn't actually know their customers.
They know them, but they didn't have any way of contacting them,
no way of telling them if they're going to be open or
closed tomorrow, no way of telling them what without going
through. So they just hoped that they
were following them on Instagramor on Facebook, right?
Which is a bit of a hit and misson that side of things.
So I think it's not that the customers didn't want to be
engaged, they just had no way ofbeing engaged.
(26:08):
At the same time, our creative customers who are time poor
didn't have a way of capturing that information easily without
it becoming an, you know, sort of a cumbersome experience.
And also, of course, you got data integrity, making sure
you're not keeping people's wrong, etcetera, God forbid.
So yeah, that's, that's we're now sort of like, well, how do
(26:29):
you do this? And a nice, I guess sort of a
handshake way where it feels natural.
But at the same time, there's some bonuses going on.
And we're very much now about the emotional experience rather
than just the feature or the functionality.
So loyalty for now has been quite a functional aspect.
You know, you do this, you get that.
That's basically it. We're seeing people doing a lot
(26:50):
better job of actually making itmore of a human interaction.
But again, come back to hospitality.
Like if you're in hospitality, how do we make a hospitality
Loyalty? Yeah.
Because you react to bodies, right, You react to body
language. Someone comes in looking sad,
you say, hey, what's wrong? Maybe you throw him a sling him
a coffee, right, or you sling him something in to say have a
great day kind of thing. So it's very hard to replicate
in technology as in, you know, I'm sure AI is great, but I
(27:12):
don't think it's that good. Hallucinates a lot as well.
That's. It Yeah.
I do, I do on a day-to-day basis, so it's probably not too
bad. And, and what is your, I mean,
I'd love to know your opinion onwhat the industry's like, I
suppose to work to of you workedin it and now you're serving it
and you're in different regions.What's your opinion on what
you're seeing out there is, I mean, obviously we talked about
(27:33):
some the sad side of things, some closures and what not going
on and there's more of that happening that we'd like to see.
But what's your overall opinion of it?
My overall opinion is I think that we're going through, I'd
call it a steep learning curve for the industry.
So specifically, I can only talkto my, my audience.
(27:53):
I focus on, and I think it's, I had this wonderful conversation
with this amazing sort of own operator in Melbourne one day
and she was like, it used to be fun and now it's numbers units.
And when I heard that, I was like, okay, I could resonate
with that. As the example, I opened a
cocktail bar because it was fun.Yeah, you don't open a cocktail.
Bar most people have they're good at cooking dinner, they go,
(28:15):
let's open a restaurant. Yeah, and let's.
Go crazy. That's wrong.
Yeah. What do you mean I have to cost
out? And so I think what, what's
going, what we're going through now is we're going through what
we call is like is the costings part Lily and analytics.
And it's never been, that's never been that much fun.
But once everyone gets an understanding of that and
actually starts sort of we're seeing a major increase in
actually people building recipesand actually putting costs in
(28:36):
and actually analyzing it and actually spending half an hour a
week, just looking at your numbers like it was quite only
1/2 an hour. That's all you need and you can
actually get a much better performance.
So once they've done that, then they can start having fun again
because they're starting to feelmore on top of numbers.
Yeah, in control as well. Way more in control, but I think
right now everyone's still trying to play.
We're still going through that curve of like, I just don't have
(28:57):
enough time. So therefore I'm always just
feeling panicky and it's like that's, that's.
Kind of it's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy, right?
The less time you have, the lesstime you have to control your
business. Your business becomes out of
control. It's like I'm drawing the circle
thinking, 'cause it's just goingto go down and down and down.
So you end up and you disappear.So yeah, I totally agree.
I think that that there's a hugelearning curve across all.
There's a bit of an educational piece around what can be done
(29:19):
for your business and understanding how you account
for it and how you control it. But also just not forgetting why
they originally set out, which is I think it's extremely
difficult when you're faced withthese.
I mean, the energy crisis here alone was horrific.
And that's still hanging around,you know, so it's not quite
easy. And I think the headwinds that
we faced the last, I think five years, I've been insane.
I've been in it all my life and it's never been like this.
(29:40):
I think, I think it's extremely tough, but with never wasted
crisis, right? So, and I think there's some
it's great to hear like actuallyproducts like you who are out
there trying to fix these problems for these guys and
actually just sit alongside them, not take over.
You know, you don't have to be atech genius, right?
To work with bustle? No.
Maybe to build it, but to work with it.
Ideally no. I mean, it's a, if anything, we
(30:03):
expect you not to touch us very often, right?
Like that's the hard part. So how can we make sure the
times that you do engage, can weget the most out of you?
So it needs to be fun and it needs to be intuitive and all
this sort of classic sort of tech words.
At the end of the day, it needs to actually give you a number
that you care about. So we're really worried about
that actually being a useful number one that makes you
(30:23):
actually either go, Oh yeah, I'mgood with that, or I need to do
something. Folks, a reaction.
Yeah, let's get into it and don't be afraid.
I think one of the big challenges on like doing, you
know, customer support is being superhuman on customer support.
So like, you know, the whole team's all worked in
hospitality, so ask us anything type thing and we've had some
pretty weird conversations. Definitely not about pause or
(30:44):
anything. That we, I would imagine that's
why I'm saying I think it might be quite good fun being in your
wealth because you're not working with CTOS, right?
You're not working with these people who are kind of running
100 sites going, oh, we need to talk about integration.
I mean, God, kill me now, right?So it's yeah, yeah, no, but for
you guys, it's totally differentbecause they're going to just be
emotional and talk about what they care about.
Like literally, do you know a plumber just like why?
(31:06):
Because you were asked, can I help?
Because I'm in New Zealand, so everyone knows everybody so.
Everyone's a plumber, right? Yeah, everyone's.
Old Ted across the road who can look here now there's definitely
AI think that that's about sort of what it used to be, which is,
you know, the sort of suppliers were always about who your
contacts are. So coffee companies do a great
job of when you open a cafe, they're like, right, I can
(31:29):
supply you the coffee, but I'll also help you find your machine.
I'll get the installers of. I'll tell you who's your
architecture should be and who your designer should be or some
recommendations. So I think we are sort of sort
of taking that same mentality which is like.
That's a really good point. Yeah.
And I think that's totally true of those guys that actually they
don't just come with one. They come with like an army,
don't they? They don't.
It's kind of like it takes what's coming with the phrase
(31:49):
now, something to build a village.
But anyway, look, really interesting.
I mean, we have, we're meant to have like an hour with you guys,
but I only get half an hour these days.
But how do we get hold of you? Because I think obviously we
have your team in the corner here.
Yeah, you can wait. You're not on the camera.
I think it's. Can I put you on the camera
quickly? I've got multiple cameras.
Does it work? No, doesn't you'd have to jump
in his camera. It's not going to work.
(32:10):
But anyway, we've got your team here.
How do people get hold of you guys and kind of find out more
about bustling what you guys aredoing in the UK, particularly
these guys, the creatives that you talk about.
I think that's and we have an audience there that we can go
and go after and talk to actually, because I think they'd
be really interested to meet you.
Might be an avalanche, but but because they're not represented,
as I said, I don't think in the way you're trying to do it.
(32:31):
So it's super interesting how toget hold of you.
I mean, we're a simple go to thewebsite.
Hey, Bustle. I've really built that up.
It's, you know, really up there,but I think that the probably
the big point of difference is we when we say that we want to
have a call, we call it a 15 minute chat.
And it's like being the maturitywelcoming you in to find out
what you, you know, how's your not going to be and do you want
to go downstairs for a wine tasting?
The thing for us is that 15 minute call is like, are we good
(32:54):
for you? And if we're not, we'll
recommend who you should go to. So you know, if one of these big
groups gave me a call, I would tell them 100% where they're
going to go to because at the end of the day, we have been
there. So we want you to have a
solution that actually solves the problem.
So we use that cause more of an opportunity to actually engage,
like what do you need and how can we be of service?
And so all these people, that's why we like call us if you need
(33:17):
a plumber, we'll help you with the plumber and just figure out
if you need to pause at the sametime.
But it's really the end of the day.
Just give us a chat because we're there to help.
Very cool. And what what is the website
address so they don't tell us off in the corner?
Hey, bustle.com. Hey, bustle.com, perfect look.
That was Tech on Toast podcast guys.
That was the team Bustle over here.
You can give yourself a round ofapplause.
There you go. And how long in the UK for?
(33:39):
Seven days. Wow, it's a spin.
What are you doing then? Are you going to the coffee?
The coffee? It's Coffee Festival, is it?
London Coffee Festival. Oh, I know.
London, yeah. Is it down in?
Truman's Truman's Brewery. Yes.
Down there for a few days and then yeah.
That thing's grown massively thelast few years.
It's. Huge.
Yeah, it's what? Are you doing?
Are you involved? Are you just going for a wander
or are you? Are you?
No, we've got a, we've got a stand.
(34:00):
We're going you've. Purchased this, yes.
So is it interesting in the event space?
The Big Blue stand. He cameras he cameras the lovely
team have figured out we're doing a treasure hunt so you can
come down to a treasure hunt go and meet all our partners and
get some little gifts when you fill out the treasure okay and
doing a pub quiz as well becausewe do everything it's not
really. I can genuinely say we had a guy
(34:23):
from who runs a company called Quiz bit guy called Mark Walsh
and he built this quiz company. He's a brilliant guy and he did
a quiz with me on the podcast while we were on air and
quizzing. I don't know if it's a very
British thing. I don't know if it travels
overseas, but it's still it is the best thing to do.
Even if you're not interested, you don't want to play and
someone's playing next to you. Like hang on, I know that one
and you just dive in kind of theyou've picked the right thing.
(34:44):
2:00 every day the team jumps online, does the the quiz in New
Zealand. Yeah, really.
Yeah, we did the the the quiz from the newspaper.
That's just how we get together.Everyone is very they look.
Really excited about that. 03 AM.
Oh yeah, yeah, I know you're 24/7, you don't care.
But these guys, they're in bed. They wake up, they just jump
(35:06):
online, Yeah. No, you told me that I would
have come and done a quiz at theend, but I haven't got the
mental capacity now, are you? Have you?
Yeah. You're not on the mics.
You can't control this. Anyway, nothing bad.
Little bit of background noise on the pod.
Look, really, really, really enjoyed meeting you all
actually. And I think anyone listening to
this, particularly you guys who are sitting in that creative
(35:27):
net, give Bustle a shout. Let's have a chat.
So if you can't get them throughdirectly, come to us at Tech on
Toast and we'll help you and we'll get Abby.
We'll set Abby on you and then she can help you meet them.
Have you met Abby yet? Yeah, She's a force.
Yeah. So thank you very much, guys.
Enjoy your week in London, mate,And good luck on your 28.
Is it always 28 hours? I know that sounds stupid, but
is it a layover or you'd like todo some kind of?
(35:48):
Yeah. So you always do like a two or
three hour layover somewhere unless you go through Vancouver,
which is great because you have like a six hour, like 6 hours
and you can go down to gas town and have lunch.
I. Feel like I want to hurt people
after 20 hours on the plane. I've been choosing violence by
the end of that. That just says more about me
properly. Anyway, thanks very much guys,
We'll see you next week. Cheers.
Thanks buddy.
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