June 17, 2025 • 41 mins
This week on the Tech on Toast Podcast, Chris sits down with the always-insightful Joe Heather, Regional General Manager for Northern Europe at Deliverect, the Order Management Platform powering thousands of digital orders across hospitality and retail.From deep dives into the ever-evolving world of kiosk tech, third-party logistics, and marketplace dominance, to spontaneous chats about dogs, golf, and growing teams across borders, this one is packed with both insights and energy.What we cover:🍕 Why Deliverect is more than an integration platform📦 The retail delivery boom, and how Deliveroo and co-op might just replace your corner shop🛍️ How customer expectations from Amazon and Uber Eats are shaping hospitality tech🧠 Joe’s take on operator loyalty, tech partnerships, and the psychology behind marketplace ordering📊 How Pulse and Dispatch are giving operators more control over downtime, data and delivery🐶 Why a Labrador named Mars might be the best career move Joe’s ever made, seriouslyTop Takeaways: • The mid-market restaurant squeeze is real, and QR, kiosk and speed are winning. • Operators aren’t just thinking about “tech stacks” anymore, they’re thinking about order flow. • Retail’s on-demand revolution is just beginning, and Deliverect is building the rails. • Consumer convenience to price point. And speed is becoming non-negotiable.💬 “If it’s an order, and it needs managing, we want to be the platform to control it.” Joe Heather🔗 Want to connect with Joe? He’s very available on LinkedIn: Joe Heather on LinkedIn🖥️ Learn more about Deliverect: www.deliverect.com🎧 Like what you heard? Hit follow and check out more from Season 12 of the Tech on Toast Podcast, proudly supported by our pals at Lightspeed. For a demo of their all-in-one EPOS, head to lightspeed.co.uk/techontoast
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Hello and welcome to the Tech and Tours Podcast.
My name's Chris Fletcher and this is season 12.
Tech and Tours Podcast is serving up fresh chats with the
sharpest minds in hostility and tech.
If you're looking to level up your OPS, 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, Lightspeed are
back this season to look after us.
They're the epos and payments platform helping over 165,000
(00:25):
businesses. Businesses such as Big Mama,
Mildred's, Mallow and Cubit House.
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(00:45):
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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 Techon Toast podcast.
And today I'm joined by my old mucker Joe Heather, RGM of
Northern Europe. What does RGM mean Joe?
Is it region? Region.
It makes you sound like an air reminder with 10 sites.
Regional general Manager. It's slightly bigger than that,
isn't it, Joe? Yeah.
It's slightly bigger than. What countries are you looking
after these days? Oh it's what?
(01:30):
Nordics Dak so Germany, Switzerland, Austria and and UK
and Ireland. Wow.
And Joe Joe's at Deliver. I don't know if I've mentioned
that before we get into anything, let's just kind of
pitch what Deliver Act is. For anyone who's been under the
rock, who, who doesn't know about it, tell us what Deliver
Act does and is. I think I've defined this
better. Can you do it in a line?
I can do it in one line order management platform.
(01:53):
Oh, OK. So let's go with that an OMP,
maybe we can play with that internally of the marketing
team. But yeah, digital orders, you
want to manage those, Deliverrex, the place for it.
If you want to have integrationsfrom channels into you, then
into your POS system on our operating system, that's what we
we do at our best. And it's been a journey, right?
I mean, we won't go through the whole background because we met
(02:14):
you, met you a while ago. But you yourself, how long have
you been at Deliverrex now? Three years, three years, 4th.
Of you now. So yeah, I think I but I, I
joined shortly after you. You came about 6.
Months. It was a whirlwind, my visit to
Deliverrex. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure what it was. Please be kind, Joe.
You turned up in entrepreneurialspirit.
And left in the same way and. Left in the same way and look,
(02:36):
look at now. Yeah, I know, and it was the
right thing to do, but yeah, no,I mean, I've got a big, big love
for the product because obviously I saw the internal
rings and I've known the the chap that own it for a while.
So yeah, they're great guys. And you're reporting until you
work closely with Jerome, then do you I've?
Worked very closely with Jerome.Actually, he's one line above.
Now we've got VPS in, we've got a.
(02:57):
They're slowly disappearing intothe ether.
They're. Still closely connected.
He said that with a clench fit there's.
This essence of like, are they going to remove themselves from
the decision making? Yeah, and if you don't know
deliberate have like The Beatles, they have 4 fog chaps
in in charge. Is that right?
There's four, yeah. Zong, Jerome, Yelter and Yan.
(03:18):
They're the four, kind of. We call them the big dogs.
I'm not sure that's the officialtitle, but they do run the show.
And they've got background obviously just for a bit of
history and deliberate. They've got a bit of back.
I mean Zhong and I think Yan wasit were behind or working with
or built Lightspeed up. Yeah, before it, yeah, they had
a POS company that got acquired by Lightspeed.
(03:39):
Right. That's right.
Yeah. So that was the the connection
there. And then I think Yalta worked on
integrations as a consultant foryeah with Lightspeed and Jerome
was the the GM for for the. He's the muscle.
That's why absolutely muscle, Jerome is the muscle.
And and it's been a year since we last spoke to you and you
were just showing me you've got a dog, which is a really good
idea with someone. How many kids have you got, Joe?
(04:00):
I have 5 kids 5. Kids and he goes and gets a
puppy. I mean this mind you.
You like the puppy though. The puppy's down.
My favorite child, black Labrador, seven months old,
called Mars. Very nice.
Oh well, Gianna like that because he's got a bit of an
obsession with the moon and space.
Isn't it? Yeah.
Does that sound like I've named it after?
That's really sad you've named it after your boss.
No, it was God of War I went for.
(04:21):
Ah, very good. Yeah.
So. Gosh.
Feels like your house is busy mate, but no.
And, and obviously you've moved up the ranks since over the last
3-4 years and deliver act and now you're kind of running
around Europe doing your thing and the product itself.
How much has that changed over the last?
I mean I I know tech constantly evolves and iterates, but how
much have you shifted your focusa lot from where you were
originally do you think? Yeah, massively.
(04:43):
We started off as you know, pureintegration platform, so
plugging in channels, pushing them through to to POS systems.
And I suppose fortunately, that gave us this incredible layer to
work off. I don't.
I don't know if it was planned or if it was.
These things are not, you know, well, maybe it was.
Maybe it was. It was like one of those stroker
geniuses back in 2018 to go and,you know, build this layer.
(05:05):
And because once you own that layer, you, you have then all
the power of all these channels and the connection to the POS
systems, you can start to leverage that for other things.
So, you know, a few years back we acquired Chatfood, which I
think you're aware of. So online ordering management
and that's moving very nicely now.
But in the last year we've had akiosk acquisition.
So we're quite a company called Tabesto, a fairly large kiosk
(05:28):
provider originated from France,I think working across you know
four or five countries already in Europe, but we're going to
internationalize that, which wasis quite nice.
Lots of things to work out still.
But you know, we're very close to AUK activation.
We released a number of different modules as well, one
called Pulse which is like analytics and all the
(05:50):
marketplaces we call the marketplaces and and store all
relevant information for operational marketing use.
And so, you know, it really helps you drive initiatives on
those delivery channels. So it's data-driven decision
making for the operators, right?Absolutely.
And and it's got some operational kind of warehouse as
well. So we can, you know, we can push
channels back online when they go offline.
(06:12):
So if you've got like a offline time of 94%, you know we can get
that closer to 99 and somewhere in those regions.
Which is money, right? Time is money well off offline
is money. It's an ROI, so it's a it's a
great one to go and propose out into the marketplace.
And can we dig a bit deeper on the kiosk?
So what what drove that decisionto go into to do that?
(06:32):
I feel like it was a natural next step.
Yeah. And there will be people
listening to this thinking, OK, well, you were the integration
platform, you know, and, and you've got kiosk providers who
are integrated, you've got online ordering providers who
are integrated. And our whole ethic is, look,
you can have best in class or the chosen solution that you
want, or there's going to be something provided by deliver
(06:53):
act. And when we look at comparable
competitors in the market space globally, so let's say you take
like an Olo, you know, their real fame and, and where they
were exceptional, that was online ordering.
They do kiosk as well. They do Rails and integration
and so it was a very much a natural next step for us.
And when we look at others in our same sphere, it's a, it's a
(07:16):
pretty aligned place look, I mean.
It is what it is, right? I mean, at all, I think you can
stay within your little bubble for as long as you want, but
everybody wants growth and you're an invested company and
people want and and I think thatthe actually the operator
journey is changing to match what deliver X doing right.
So the the need or the thirst for, for moving crowds through
(07:39):
quickly moving queues through quickly order injection in the
restaurants that they become quicker.
I just think that's where the industry is moving anyway.
And you can't. I don't know, I think it's very
difficult for a company like yours to sit along the sidelines
and watch. Partnerships in this company are
so difficult to manage. Yeah, and it really is true.
(07:59):
Most partnerships in, you know, especially in hospitality tech,
they're all competing at some elements.
It, it's, well, it's, I mean, weobviously we work with 130
providers, right? And it's getting to the point
where you're looking at what there's lots of crossover we do,
we do these tech audits for operators we're working with,
you know, and some big ones and we're working with them.
And when you're recommending it,it become, it comes down to
(08:22):
nuances. And I would say we were talking
to a very large wet lead chain the other day without dropping
their name. And they're with a provider that
they're not happy with in terms of their product.
They would love more feature rich product, they'd love
integrations to be better, all this kind of stuff.
But the relationship is so solidthat they can get one they want
when they click their fingers, which is this is a really
(08:42):
hospitality ISM that actually they'd rather stay there and
have that then move to a provider that might have a
better better functionality or abetter platform, which you can
say is counterproductive. But they really value these
relationships above it. And I suppose there's a tipping
point in scale where that can't happen anymore.
But I don't know what you think.This is one of those.
(09:04):
It's a painful, it's a painful conversation, but I'm gonna
let's bridge it. The operators have got all the
power. Yeah, You know, and if they're
already in with a tech supplier who could make a slight move in
their, you know, product road map, they're going to do it,
especially if it's sizable, you know, if it makes up, you know,
510% of revenues. Yeah.
Why wouldn't you of? Course you are, you know, we we
(09:24):
can think of loads of brands whohave landed on apos provider and
just grown with it. That organic growth has meant,
you know, other things from the tech stack have have been locked
in and it's just how far do you go before it starts to take a
detrimental effect on feature specialism?
And I, I feel we're at a point, and this is from our, our
(09:46):
incoming data we get and who we speak to.
That seems to be a very common choice that people want to
change at the moment or, or are looking at that next step.
I don't know if it's AI that's kind of pushed people into this.
They're all looking at ultimate and obviously all the costs that
are out, you know, the external costs.
But I think people are looking at changes now and that change
(10:07):
ready maybe is the word. I don't know compared to where
they were. I mean, I suppose there's been
so many headwinds that's been difficult to do anything.
But I do believe that they're they're in a space and that
you're looking like you don't believe me.
What are you thinking? Yeah, they're not, Chris.
There's a tech CEO out there. He's Irish.
He worked for an online orderingcompany.
(10:28):
OK, that's narrowing it down. Based up in Edinburgh, right?
OK. Yeah, yeah, I know that.
Yeah. Recently acquired yes, I spent
some time with this with this guy.
I won't say his name, but I'll I'll let everyone keep going.
And I remember him. I was with him in Scotland and
he drew out this axis. It was lovely actually on the
left hand side was products, youknow, tech stack and then under
(10:51):
it you had feature specialism and then on the bottom was
scale. So scalability and that could be
scale in terms of revenues, it could be scale in terms of
regional kind of growth, it could be national growth, it
could be international growth. And then he kind of in there
started plotting the tech providers.
So you might have like the holistic all in one providers
and he'd put them in a certain place in this graph and then
(11:12):
you'd have like the best in class tech solutions and then
those brands that were associated with those and where
they kind of sat within the scale and it really did
resonate. Then he drew another line of
this kind of fluctuation and he was like, look, this is, you
know, this is the economic situation.
And when you know the economic situation is up and consumer
spend is up, you're buying best in class because you're trying
(11:36):
to get absolutely. Everything.
Yeah, you're maximizing. Oh, for sure.
And then as soon as the economicsituation downturns, consumer
spend is down, you know, you have to look internally at your
operational expenditures, you end up then going more holistic,
you know, one throat to choke, one support line modular that's.
Lovely, lovely turn of phrase, that one throat to choke.
No, no, it's true. I was having a conversation
(11:57):
with, I mean, again, a large restaurant chain and they went
to market to look for analytics,data analytics BI and they got,
we did a lot of work for them, got all the quotes and all this
kind of stuff and did some legwork.
And then at the end they were just let you know what, we're
just going to stay with our current guys because they've
just dropped. They've just dropped down to
(12:17):
meet what we're going to do and they're going to make the change
that they wouldn't make before. And I suppose that's that's kind
of what you're talking about. They're in this place where
they're like, you know, we can go to market, ruffle some
feathers, have a look what's outthere, maybe find something
that's better, but for the emotional turmoil of undoing
something. I mean, not necessarily a data
lake, but the emotional door to changing a pause, for instance,
within a company is, is it worthit?
(12:39):
You know, you know how much benefit you're going to get on
the other side. So it's that that's where the
calculation seems to sit at the moment.
How can we do it without open heart surgery?
POS removing POS is a nightmare,full stop.
It really is. So I can't imagine what it's
like selling POS in the market space.
And how do the markets differ when you're out, because I know
we'll talk about retail in a minute, but you're out obviously
(13:00):
in different regions now doing your new job.
How, how are they differing to what you were seeing in the UK
or is the market quite similar? I know the restaurants are
different, more mom and pop style.
I'll pick some specific examplesactually, like the German market
is it it was dominated by an allin one platform called Oh God,
(13:20):
it's called sides simply simply delivery right and you've just
had this mass exodus like everyone's just leaving it.
They overextended themselves. They're doing pause kiosk app
where back a house, you know, HRmanagement, driver management,
all these whole hosts of different things.
The company needed to start making money, so they of course
(13:41):
made some cuts and those cuts were too deep and it's
ultimately affected their development and support and
everything around it. And then now you're seeing lots
of of these different German brands going back out there
shopping for best in class solutions and linking a polls
with an online ordering with a kiosk with an app.
And I just presume that's common, but it's probably not,
right. I suppose depending on the
region or the country you're in that it, I just presume that it
(14:04):
was like the UK that people would go shop about like that,
but maybe, maybe it's not. But first of all, we can be
really proud of UK tech and where it's at today.
So certainly from what I've seenin kind of continental Europe, I
think it's fair to say a few years back, you know, there's
significant brands still unintegrated for like order
(14:24):
management, typing in orders into tills and you're thinking,
Oh my word, I haven't come across this in the UK market for
2-3 years now. You know, you have to ask the
question, sorry, can you repeat that?
And we could be talking about significant brands, you know,
ones that we know of, they're famous and self delivery is
still big out there. So you you still have again
(14:47):
global brands with delivery fleets in house, again something
you don't see in in many other regions.
So it does vary. It really varies.
And, and the delivery scene itself that you guys are seeing
because obviously you're experiencing it from the others,
both sides of the coin. Cause you obviously you sit with
a lot of larger operators, you're talking to them about
their issues and the problems are trying to solve by using you
(15:09):
guys. But then you're also sitting on
the flip side on the tech side, looking at the impact that the
consumer is having on the industry.
Where do you see that? Where do you see kind of like
the road map of delivery right now?
Because you know, when we talkedwhen we first joined deliver
app, we were looking at drone delivery and all this crazy
stuff that was going on, you know, and, but but I think the
pandemic obviously changed a lot.
(15:29):
And then we came out and saw a bit of a drop off.
But am I right in thinking it's it's stronger than it ever was?
Or it's or it's becoming strong,or it's finding a different
path? You you see these self doubters
or these people who want to doubt the market because they
don't like it. It's an ugly space, logistics
and, you know, delivery fees. It's not experiential.
(15:49):
Yeah, exactly. It's, it's difficult to control
it. I I think it's going to come
from strength to strength. Look at the recent news.
Yeah, DoorDash acquisition for delivery, you know, bringing
this US powerhouse into the UK sphere.
You've got process who've just, you know, gone in for
acquisition on Just Eat processor.
You know, this massive South African business who have stake
(16:11):
in ifood, which is the the market leader in, in Brazil.
They've got delivery Hero steak,they've got Swiggy steak, which
is the largest in India, the Metowan in China, they I think
they're in part $0.10 as well, which is a behemoth business.
So you've now got Uber Eats, just eat the process and
potentially delivery with DoorDash.
It's a, you know, it's a lot of finance backing and that's, you
(16:33):
know, a lot of a lot of weight pushed into.
This a lot of money being bet on.
By the way, which is fantastic for the operators because
ultimately then there's going tobe an out and out war and it
really will be a war. And that's war of market share
grab. And market share grab is, you
know, voucher conce, you know, vouchers to consumers, which is
then great for the operators because then spend goes back up,
(16:55):
you know, it's exclusivity schemes that are pushed into
place, you know, to to try and come up with some kind of USP
it's. I liken it's a payments a little
bit that payments is going through in the UK.
I don't know if it's global, butin the UK, the way the payments
have suddenly become not a race to the bottom is a really unfair
thing to say, but that there's areal there's, you know,
obviously the integrated payments to lightspeed toast add
(17:15):
in and then you've got, you know, the dojos of the world
doing doing their thing And it it it feels like everyone's kind
of, you know, they're trying to win their part of the market and
there's definitely going to be AI think the customer is
benefiting at the moment. How long that goes on for, I
don't know, but it is it is it the same?
It's going to happen with the with the aggregators.
I mean, look at the the results you can get your hands on, let's
(17:36):
say like Q1 for Justine delivery, Deliveroo, I think it
was 7% year on year order growthin Q1, which is like on top of
the matured base. It's just phenomenal.
And then just the GMV was I think it was up 5%, I feel like
saying. So again, another on top of a
huge base of of order volume, they're in a healthy space
(17:59):
despite people with profitability.
You keep seeing Adjusted EBITDA,so you knock out a few
operational expenditures and andexperiments.
Sounds like my accounts. But I think they're getting
there because I remember my old boss at Just Eat saying, you
know, wait until the profit leavers come.
Those profit leavers sit in the basket that is applying the, the
service fee, the delivery chargeback to the consumer.
(18:21):
And that's where we're then going to start generating and
making money. That's certainly when I was
there and you, you see that now me as a consumer who orders a
lot from the apps, you know, you're hit with two, three, 4 LB
delivery charges. You kind of just let it be.
You're shopping for convenience and speed.
Convenience is the word I want it to go into.
Actually convenience is super interesting because and it's
been said a million times where the market is changing like the
(18:43):
older market or you know, whatever you want to call it.
We used to call it the purple pound.
We used to call it colleges likethe older guys, The Who were
college years mainstay of customers outside of London.
And the big difference now is that my kids watching my 18 year
old, the way he behaves around his handset, his phone is
everything like, you know, as infood thanking, you know,
(19:03):
everything and which sounds, I know obviously, of course, but
that that will be the whole generation to all of that
generation. The ones below them will be
using it that way. And and it's only going to shift
it further. And you only have to walk into a
restaurant that, you know, on a midweek night, unfortunately.
And yeah, and people are, peopleare kind of and they look at the
back door, There's more going out the back door and there is
the front door. So you know.
(19:24):
I've I've got a real good thing around psyche on this.
So you think about the addictionof social media.
Yeah, there's the constant scrolling.
You're, you're looking for something, you know, and people
always trying to contest against, you know, the delivery
platforms and their High Commission rates and, you know,
can we drive volume directly andfight against the tide?
And I think, you know, go back to human psyche.
People want to shop on an impulse.
(19:44):
Again, my own opinion, people and the majority of people want
to shop on impulse. It's why, you know, shopping
malls and high streets have beensuccessful, Lots of different
options available. So you hit your phone, you pick
up a marketplace, you scroll through the carousels, you know,
you scroll through that carouselon on discounts or a certain
category you like and you find that option and there's that,
(20:05):
you know, enticing image. And I think that's more powerful
than the pricing point. And then when you link that
within quick delivery. So when you're talking like, you
know, 10/15/20 minutes, which issuper quick, yeah, consumer
expectations are there. People don't want things and
now. I'm not sure.
I mean, maybe I don't want to speak out.
I'm not sure how much pricing comes into it once you're on the
(20:25):
marketplace. Like genuinely, I believe that
people like you say accept the charge, they accept there's
going to be delivery. They accept that they understand
now the food's robust. It's hot.
It's been, you know, 99% of the time being delivered in a great
way that actually that the earlydays of delivery when people
were getting, you know, it was just logistics were still
finding its feet. I, I think people questioned
(20:45):
those prices and they were obviously looking internally
looking at internal cost, thinking I can't afford to do
this and that, but that's over in my mind anyway.
I think it when I'm on those marketplaces myself and I'm not
rich by any means, I'm, I'm looking, I'm shopping with, you
know, I'm hungry, I'm shopping with my eyes.
I'm not doing it with my. You're hungry, your convenience,
you want speed and and suddenly saying 2-3 pounds, 4 lbs.
(21:07):
You waiver off because it's small.
Many transactions, but small. And yeah, I think it just gets
hidden up in that, that small basket spend.
I think it's incredibly clever. Yeah, it's really smart.
And again, like you said before,whether it's meant to be like
that, who will never know, but it it is super smart and that
the action around the basket or the checkout or that final
scroll when you're adding sides,whatever.
(21:28):
I mean, they're making it. They must be killing it there
because I'm I'm a victim of plusplus plus there, of course.
You'd like, hey, can I get it there quickest?
And then off you go and. The other thing is in, I mean, I
think because the advent of QR at table ordering as well,
people are doing it bloody sitting in the restaurant, doing
it now on their phone, let aloneyou know.
So it's almost like why are you bothering sitting there as in if
you're going to do it, I don't know.
(21:49):
I find it a bit odd to sit thereand order on your phone within
the. Restaurant or isn't that thing
of you know how much do you really want you know like a let
me stereotype here you. Know Joe's going to get in
trouble. I don't know, Let's go casual,
die someone who I can't rememberwhat the organization's called,
who sends you least, least employees, You'll probably know.
(22:11):
Oh. What, one of the like the
agencies? Yeah, well, you could.
There's a number. There's Stint.
Stint, that's it. You know, you can always tell a
stint employee hello, what do you want?
You know, like. Luckily stint on one of my
partners. You can blank that one out.
That's fine, That's fine. Don't keep it, Keep it.
You'll be sat in. I'm not going to know many
names, actually, in case they'recustomers and a stint worker
(22:33):
comes up, you know, what do you want?
They take an order. Actually, they might take more
time than you want to. Because if you're out with your
kids, right, and you have a few,it's a very different experience
to being out on your own with your missus or just you dining
out on business, right? Pizza Express QR code, you know,
it's all interlinked into their POS system.
I place that order. It's been done straight away.
(22:54):
It's in the kitchen. That food's coming when it's
ready. Yeah.
Like that for me is a perfect experience.
It's like, that's me personally,yeah.
No, no, but I'm in the same boatand I think a lot of people are.
And even when I'm on business and I'm on my own, I just, I
don't want to hang around too long in the restaurant.
I just want to kind of get it and go or I'm going to do it,
you know, eat my room kind of thing.
And do I need that conversation?Yeah, in realism.
I mean, I know this whole thing.Is this hospitality dying?
(23:17):
If you're going to go to a, you know, a full service restaurant
and you're going to spend a lot of money and you want someone to
come up and give you a wine recommendation and and and talk
you through some of the menu. Fantastic.
And I'm totally on board for that.
And that's what you're paying into.
I think when it's casual dining or quick service, let let it be
almost kind of human less. And that's from from my side.
(23:37):
God, Joe's bringing the Joe's bringing the joy.
No, but it's true. No, and I don't, I don't
disagree because I think the problem with that mid market is
that it's getting squeezed all the time.
When there's any, you know, likewe talked about the curly line
for the, the economy, whenever there's problems in the economy,
that middle market gets absolutely nailed because if
you're not great or if you're not QSR, what are you?
(23:58):
You're just floating in the middle and it becomes very, it's
very difficult to justify the spend, which is, which is, you
know, and justify the the fact that the person who doesn't
really want to be there is serving you potentially that
kind of world. So yeah, it is.
It is very tricky. And which brands do it well?
Yeah. And what you could, well, you
look at the Oaxacas and the pizza pilgrims and those guys
who've got that, but they're they're very much more a brand,
(24:19):
aren't they? Generally?
They're very much more clever, the way they kind of brand
themselves and market themselves, as well as being
good food. You sit in there and you can see
the wood oven just piling away and you can see the pizzas on
preparation. There's a bit of ambience in the
in the restaurant. It's a nice thing.
I'm definitely one of these consumers.
It's like I'll, I'll be sat at Pizza Express and I'll go there
(24:40):
as often as I'll order online aswell.
But I'll do both. Yeah.
And I think that's what you know, it's, it's crucial how you
cater for both and do it incredibly.
And that's the shift, right? And I think I wanted to get to
retail because these behaviours that we're now seeing in
delivery, in in in restaurants and off premise, on premise have
come from, or I think have come from retail or our behaviour
(25:02):
around Amazon. Obviously that when it and it
really took off and everyone kind of, you know, no one even
thinks about, you know, no one thinks about Amazon anymore.
It's just part of your routine, right?
It's, it's just, it's not even ashot or any kind of retail
shopping like that. We were joking last night
because my Mrs. was trying to order a top on a, on a HNR.
What's it called? A Zara or something?
Oh my God, it was my son was saying, Mum, you've got to sort
(25:24):
this out. It's like it's been a while.
You need to be able to shop online kind of thing.
We were just joking about last night.
But I actually think it's that influence now is fully in and
you guys are now really embracing retail, aren't you
amongst in deliver app was in a quite a big way.
Yeah. You think the world of on demand
delivery was in hospitality veryquickly.
Yeah, you know, it happened immediately.
(25:45):
There's, you know, phone calls. You place an order and then a
delivery. Card, that's the take away,
right? Yeah, the take away.
What we use back in the day. I think we see what 7 in 10
consumers now are, are on the applications and placing orders
and, and, and they arrive on demand.
And then the retail sphere, it'sonly three out of 10 consumers,
but they're the same consumers. They just haven't been educated
across yet. I had an example last week,
(26:08):
despite how much I know about this industry, both on the
hospitality and retail sphere, Iwas trying to order my kids some
Easter eggs. So three of my children with an
ex-wife and I was like, I've totally forgotten to order them
Easter eggs. I didn't send them anything and
I had a day and I could not findany Amazon, you know, Moon Pig
(26:30):
and all those type of things. I couldn't get a delivery slot.
I just thought how am I going todo this?
The, the, the answer was obvious.
I just went on to Deliveroo, went to, you know, one of the
local supermarkets, placed an order for three Easter eggs and
they arrived in 20 minutes. Yeah.
And so. But again, despite being in the
industry and knowing it so much,my, my psyche still wasn't there
(26:53):
to go and place those orders. I could have placed, you know,
for a card or, you know, a little small present or a gift
and you forget. I think that because I was in
the room, because every time I stay here, I use Uber and I was
in the room the other night and I was ordering and I just wanted
a drink. And because of where I stayed,
there's not really a, there's noroom service or anything.
(27:13):
You can shop to put in your flat, but you don't, you know,
there's no way you can, you'd have to go out and do it.
So I just went on an Uber and I just let's grow.
And I went, Oh yeah, I just, I just told you I did like a mini
food food shop into my flat in London, which I don't live at.
That's what, that's the whole thing, right?
I don't live there. I don't have any food or
anything. I have no, I just, but by 8:00 I
was stocked like I lived there. And you know, it's just, it's a
(27:34):
very different way of living. Yeah, and it, I mean, it just
makes sense like getting consumer expectations in that
hospitality. Well, right, I'm going to get
things in 1520 minutes, but yeah, you're going, I'm going to
order a shop for 2-3 days time and, and find a slot.
And of course consumers want things now and they're willing
to pay that premium for it. You know, if I want milk, cake,
(27:56):
bread and cheese and I know somebacon and I want to do
breakfast, I don't actually wantto order something, but I want
to make something at home. You can just order it straight
in. And that market size is huge.
You know, we're talking way over2X in terms of UK hospitality
just for convenience and grocery.
Yeah, because they're the cornerstores, right, that we used to
that we would walk to and get the bits.
(28:17):
Yeah, absolutely. And now they're petrol stations.
Well, now they're mini fulfilment centres, you know,
and you put them onto these behemoth marketplaces that have,
you know, 40 million active consumers with intent to
purchase. So you've got that already,
you've got the consumer there and then they own all the
logistics. And not just the logistics, the
premium logistics, because the premium logistics is the
(28:38):
quickest and they are the quickest.
You know, I, I, I had something the other day that I ordered and
it came in 10 minutes. I think it might even have been
like a Co-op order. It was.
I was just like what a service this is.
And again, when you're spending,because if you think about when
you move into retail a little bit, you're probably going to
let me spend again, right? Because it depends.
I bought a toothbrush, I think, or toothpick.
(28:58):
When I stayed, I forgot my toothbrush anyway, so I was
buying stuff like that. And again, the spend the basket
or the charge, is the charge thesame?
Is it a similar charge to what you pay?
Yeah. Depends on the channel.
Some channels will do a min and Max and some will then base it
on mileage. So it's difficult to answer
which is which. But if it's the same location
rather than a KFC and I'm getting my Co-op.
(29:21):
Exactly. Yeah, of course.
It just makes sense. Consumers are really tagging
onto it and it's moving fast andthat space is doubling quickly.
And who are you working? So what kind of customers are
you working with in that space? Where do you where do you guys
fit in? So far like our ideal customer
profile, I hate that ICP you know that that piece, but
typically. Because, you know, marketing of.
(29:42):
Course product I remember the first time it said to me I I
didn't actually know what it meant in.
About two years. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just used to shave my head. Oh, I see mate.
There's a lot of that going on, a lot of boardrooms.
That's not just about ICP, it's.The acronyms you always shed.
API, I mean a member of an API first when a very first bit of
content tech on toast did was a glossary.
(30:02):
So we did What does API mean? I had a CFO directly messed me
on LinkedIn never met him beforesaying thank God.
I now know that those I listen to our head of IT talk about
that every week. Just not like, Oh yeah, it's
very. Important.
I do learn the acronyms, yes, but I then forget that very
quickly and I'll like, you know,I'll get APK mixed up with SDK
and it'll be like, would you be SDK?
(30:24):
I thought it was a tape. That's an old tape.
No, exactly, I forgot where we got.
There you were talking, we talked about the types of
customers you were working with in, in terms of retail.
Yeah, Look, we've been fairly fortunate already to pick up
some of the the national players, which is which has been
nice. I think I can name that one stop
where we've got almost 1000 locations for those guys, which
is part of Tesco Group. Majestic Wines we rolled out
(30:46):
with personally with really nicebrand.
We've done some stuff with Spa AF Blakemore, which is one of
the big RDC platform acronyms. He's doing it regional
distribution centres. Thank you, Jack Sparks.
Because you've got RGM in your your job title, you feel like
you should trot them out. Yeah.
And we have a number of others and we've got lots of other
global players in place as well.And there's lots more to come
(31:07):
because it's a big space and they're just moving into that on
demand delivery and consumers want it and it's kind of new
incremental revenue for the retail space.
And and so there's eyes and earslooking at it as.
And and the product operates thesame way with a stupid question
probably, but operates the same way for a one stop than it would
for a restaurant in terms of you've got your menu management
(31:30):
and you've got your. We've built a whole new
infrastructure for it. OK.
So it deals with catalogs, inventory, stock?
Obviously SK use for all the different.
I'm doing it now. Perfectly SK use G tins PCs no.
One's listening now they've all switched off.
They go. No, but that, but so you know
you've had to reconfigure then to fit to kind of meet that need
(31:52):
that they have. Yeah, there's a larger capacity
for, for products. You know, you've got like 3 to
15 to 20,000 SKUs in place. So it's it's heavy.
They want it all automated. Of course they do.
You're not going to have like a menu manager that you're going
to scroll around the category and you know, it's, it's going
to be flat file CSV into ours and and then we're going to
(32:12):
process it from there. Wow.
But no. And and look and we've created a
new device called Quest. It's a singular picking device.
So you know on there you'll havedelivery.
It's just the UK market. Obviously it's different in in
other markets and we just emulate the same kind of feature
parity with with that. And it's again, it's a nice user
case. It's, I mean, and you think if
(32:35):
you Fast forward five years for the River Act, God knows what'll
happen in five years. There's a river act.
But do you think that the retailpiece, as you said before you,
you were saying could be twice the size of what hospitality
would be? How quickly do you think you'll
get there? Yeah, I look around the room and
I think, how many of these things could be delivered by a
by a Courier? Yeah, nearly all of them.
I mean, I I bought, I have most of this care at home and I
bought it all through. Yeah.
(32:56):
And if someone wants something at, you know, any time frame,
you know, it could be accessed, you know, it's all going to be
on demand delivery and we would see that as a place we want to
play. So anything that can go into a
car, a van, a biker, you know, amoped, we're going to be playing
in that space. And again, going back to my
starting piece, order managementplatform, if it's an order, you
(33:20):
know, managed, we want to be that platform to to ultimately
control that. I think it's a really unique way
of looking at what you guys do because you know, order
injection was always the, you know, the point of reference
when we first talked about deliver act and where the
order's going and where where it's going to end up to.
And I think that OMP, did you call it OMP?
Oh. Yeah, management.
Order management platform, No, but it's, it's, it's a great way
(33:41):
to kind of encapsulate what it'sgoing to do right or what it is
doing for people. Yeah.
And you think it's our best product.
So our core product in hospitality, it's taking that
and moving it into a larger and bigger vertical.
So it's a great place to be rather than trying to reinvent
the wheel with a new product that you don't know if the
adoption is going to be there ornot.
You're taking something that's tried and tested with global
(34:04):
brands, you know, all over the world and then dumping it into
this brand new vertical. It's it's it's an exciting space
to. Go.
I'm sure the product team appreciate the dumping.
Definitely not dumped it it it'staken.
Relocated, yeah. It's probably taken 2-3 years to
properly form this. Like it, it wasn't done in a a
few sprints. This is we've spent a lot of
(34:26):
time building it behind the scenes, putting a large team
into place and and now the execution is starting to happen,
which is really pleasing. And on the future, because I'm
trying to look where are we nearly there?
What are we, what are we lookingat?
Because products coming out a lot where where did you get to
on the rider side of things? Did you do?
Because I remember when I was there, we were looking at we're
(34:47):
building. I can't remember.
It's called now dispatch. Yeah.
Was it dispatch? Did that happen?
Dispatch happened and yeah, it'sa it's great products.
It looked great. Then it was Brian, I think.
Brian is still right. Brian just had a baby bother.
Congrats, Brian. Have you ever listened to this?
Not a chance. He's never listened to anything
I've ever done. In fact, it never responds to it
(35:09):
in my emails. We've got no hope, but no, no,
but that was that was super. What you guys were doing there
was was fascinating and and it'sout live working happening.
Yeah, like if you order from Burger King today on their
application, we're we're like powering that, which is quite
nice. One stop, we power for them.
We've got it in lots of different brands into
continental Europe. It's working nicely.
(35:30):
So let me talk about this. If you've got a first party
ordering platform, we will then connect that to a third party
logistics. So it gives you the chance to
own your own customer, be able to engage with them with loyalty
platforms. And am I saying this is like,
oh, fantastic, now I can move all my orders from one platform
in into my own direct. It doesn't work like that.
(35:51):
You know, you're going to spend a huge amount of money acquiring
that customer and then you're going to have to keep doing
spend on on your loyalty programs to to maintain that
customer in place and emulate a great experience.
And are you really simply going to make more money from that
than getting an order from a marketplace?
That question is still out thereto be answered.
(36:14):
My advice would definitely be invest in both.
You know, invest your marketing strategies on the platforms
because they're ultimately goingto derive you the largest
result. And then invest in, you know,
your own direct to consumer on the basis of you still want a
proportion of your customers coming actively to you.
So you can at least own that. You can own their e-mail, their,
their mobile number, their ordering patterns, the
(36:34):
frequency, the spend and all those other parts.
But do both together. Like, you know, there's brands
out there who are like, Oh, I can, I can redirect all these
customers from the marketplaces and, and get them direct, namely
anyone who's done that, like take Mac delivery, for example,
probably the most powerful engine out there in the I mean.
There there are nothing but drivers in my local McDonald's.
Not that I frequent it a lot, but I have to do a few times.
(36:56):
Turning up in Uber jackets just eat jackets over jackets and the
majority of orders are coming from those platforms.
An Uber 100% and what and you obviously the kiosk is here we
talked about that briefly, but is there anything out there are
any spin offs from there then? So once you've had the kiosk
market cornered, let's call thata year.
So is there any spin offs from there in the future?
What are there any of the products coming or are you going
(37:17):
to consolidate away you're at? Definitely consolidation.
I always see it as like this kind of quadrant where you've
got restaurant core, you've got retail core, which are two
similar products, you know, aggregating channels into
operating systems. And yeah, what we do there,
unified tablet, unified picking device, I think they're two very
strong pillars for us. And then dispatch and direct
(37:39):
direct for us is online orderingand kiosk combined.
So it's like our e-commerce offering and then dispatch then
allows you to push that direct channel to to 3rd party
logistics, those four things. And if we focus on them really
well, they're going to be prettypowerful.
And then there's things around the edges, you know, we've got
like some cameras that do dispute based.
(38:00):
For the refunds. Yeah, and some of that stuff is
really cool, but it all still features around the orders and
the order management. Yeah.
And I think that's a safe, not safe place, but it's the right
place to play, right? Because that's everything is
about that, everything about getting that right, optimizing
it, efficiencies, all, everything around it and the
spend and the cost of doing thatproperly is, if not managed, is
(38:20):
bloody expensive. Yeah.
And it makes sense for them to be on the peripherals and like
Pulse is an example like analytics product there on the
peripherals instead. You need a little map jam.
I'm visualizing it already. We must have it.
You must. Have it, we've got it and I can
send it if you want to Chuck it.Up.
Oh well, I'll put it out with the with the when we send it
out. Or you want me to put it on an
image on the video? You can see the ecosis.
There, Yeah, OK, I'm going to image pop up now.
(38:41):
Yeah, retail, restaurant, dispatch and direct, which is
kiosk and online ordering. And I think that's a really
strong place for us to play. Very cool.
Look, I love it. And I always half an hour is
never enough time with you because you could chat all day.
You're in. I think you're probably one of
my most favorite people to talk to.
Not many people know their subject as well as you.
(39:01):
No, no, I really mean that. I think.
And everybody says it about you as well behind your back in a
nice way. No, but I think you really know
your your what you know the the lane you drive in, there you go.
So you really know your stuff and if anyone wants to reach out
who are listening to you, actually any retail consumers or
people who are retail outlets are listening.
How do they get hold of you, Joe?
LinkedIn, I'm gonna obsess. LinkedIn, there's different ways
(39:25):
you can say I'm a LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn a lot.
Where my wife will be on Instagram and Facebook, I will
be on LinkedIn. Yeah, it's sad, isn't it?
I'm not sure which one's sadder.I'm not sure if I'm sadder.
Oh, my business. You're the same, I'm sure.
Oh yeah, I live on it, Yeah. And I, I, I think it's a
fantastic platform. It's really, I mean, it's great.
I mean, it's before when I was in operations, I had what I call
(39:47):
a proper job. I never went on it.
I only ever want to when I need a new job.
When I was looking, when I was, I had enough and I was looking
for a new job, I'd go on LinkedIn.
But yeah, now I'm on it. I mean, it's just embarrassing.
I'd hate to look at my usage. It reminds me of golf like until
you get into it. I'm a shit at that as well.
So am I. How could you?
You're a unit. You should be Dick.
You must have a decent drive on you.
(40:07):
I've. Always had this hit, but I
remember my old man saying nevertrust anyone who's good at golf,
because if they're good at golf,they're doing it all the time.
Yeah, that's true working. Yeah, any salespeople are good
at golf. Never hire someone with under 10
handicap. It's a really, really bad point.
It's a big watch out, yeah. But yeah, LinkedIn is like golf.
When you get into it, you get really into it and then suddenly
you're obsessed as but. I've got enough obsessive things
(40:28):
in my life. Well, thank you very much, Mr.
Heather. Lovely to see you.
No more dogs in the offering noware you done?
Oh, that wasn't a no. That's down to my wife.
She's, you know, every time we get things settled and life's
going a bit easier, she wants toChuck her nut.
That's another bomb. Come on, let's move out.
You just done that recently, didn't you?
Moved to last year, yeah. Overlooking some fields out in
(40:48):
Cambridgeshire. That's where we got the dog.
Now that makes sense, So. Go out there and walk him in the
mornings, evenings. All right, Well, good luck with
Mars, Hope. How old is he?
He's what, He's seven months now.
OK, yeah, Kerry literally said to me.
But then we're going to get intothe puppy because our old staff
he's getting, she's getting 15 now.
I love her, so it's time for herto ruin her life.
I bring some young thing that's going to jump on her head every
(41:10):
day. Genuinely the best thing you
could ever do I. Think it'll extend the old dog's
life? Genuinely, I think I said that
if we bring someone, it's like having a you know, you find
another even though you don't have the energy, you find it
from someone. I think it's the same for the
dog. If a puppy comes along, she'll
probably think I've got to better make an effort get.
You in this with fresh air? Yeah.
You know, you're walking twice aday.
And I think, I think it helps you amuse.
(41:30):
We since we got Bailey, when we got when Tegan was three, which
sort of we've had, as I said, 14years now.
And she is, yeah, every day, twice a day, we're out with her
up the mountain, wherever we are.
And, you know, in the winter, obviously you don't want to go,
but it's just by the time you get back, everyone's happy.
It's weird. Just sort your head out.
Oh. Of course it does.
It seems like it's. Hard.
There you go. The more of this podcast is get
a dog, get a dog, get a dog and then buy deliberate.
(41:53):
Thanks very much Joe. See you soon mate.
Cheers as well and be all movements.
Thank you mate, cheers.
Hello and welcome to the Tech and Tours Podcast.
My name's Chris Fletcher and this is season 12.
Tech and Tours Podcast is serving up fresh chats with the
sharpest minds in hostility and tech.
If you're looking to level up your OPS, 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, Lightspeed are
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(00:25):
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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 Techon Toast podcast.
And today I'm joined by my old mucker Joe Heather, RGM of
Northern Europe. What does RGM mean Joe?
Is it region? Region.
It makes you sound like an air reminder with 10 sites.
Regional general Manager. It's slightly bigger than that,
isn't it, Joe? Yeah.
It's slightly bigger than. What countries are you looking
after these days? Oh it's what?
(01:30):
Nordics Dak so Germany, Switzerland, Austria and and UK
and Ireland. Wow.
And Joe Joe's at Deliver. I don't know if I've mentioned
that before we get into anything, let's just kind of
pitch what Deliver Act is. For anyone who's been under the
rock, who, who doesn't know about it, tell us what Deliver
Act does and is. I think I've defined this
better. Can you do it in a line?
I can do it in one line order management platform.
(01:53):
Oh, OK. So let's go with that an OMP,
maybe we can play with that internally of the marketing
team. But yeah, digital orders, you
want to manage those, Deliverrex, the place for it.
If you want to have integrationsfrom channels into you, then
into your POS system on our operating system, that's what we
we do at our best. And it's been a journey, right?
I mean, we won't go through the whole background because we met
(02:14):
you, met you a while ago. But you yourself, how long have
you been at Deliverrex now? Three years, three years, 4th.
Of you now. So yeah, I think I but I, I
joined shortly after you. You came about 6.
Months. It was a whirlwind, my visit to
Deliverrex. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure what it was. Please be kind, Joe.
You turned up in entrepreneurialspirit.
And left in the same way and. Left in the same way and look,
(02:36):
look at now. Yeah, I know, and it was the
right thing to do, but yeah, no,I mean, I've got a big, big love
for the product because obviously I saw the internal
rings and I've known the the chap that own it for a while.
So yeah, they're great guys. And you're reporting until you
work closely with Jerome, then do you I've?
Worked very closely with Jerome.Actually, he's one line above.
Now we've got VPS in, we've got a.
(02:57):
They're slowly disappearing intothe ether.
They're. Still closely connected.
He said that with a clench fit there's.
This essence of like, are they going to remove themselves from
the decision making? Yeah, and if you don't know
deliberate have like The Beatles, they have 4 fog chaps
in in charge. Is that right?
There's four, yeah. Zong, Jerome, Yelter and Yan.
(03:18):
They're the four, kind of. We call them the big dogs.
I'm not sure that's the officialtitle, but they do run the show.
And they've got background obviously just for a bit of
history and deliberate. They've got a bit of back.
I mean Zhong and I think Yan wasit were behind or working with
or built Lightspeed up. Yeah, before it, yeah, they had
a POS company that got acquired by Lightspeed.
(03:39):
Right. That's right.
Yeah. So that was the the connection
there. And then I think Yalta worked on
integrations as a consultant foryeah with Lightspeed and Jerome
was the the GM for for the. He's the muscle.
That's why absolutely muscle, Jerome is the muscle.
And and it's been a year since we last spoke to you and you
were just showing me you've got a dog, which is a really good
idea with someone. How many kids have you got, Joe?
(04:00):
I have 5 kids 5. Kids and he goes and gets a
puppy. I mean this mind you.
You like the puppy though. The puppy's down.
My favorite child, black Labrador, seven months old,
called Mars. Very nice.
Oh well, Gianna like that because he's got a bit of an
obsession with the moon and space.
Isn't it? Yeah.
Does that sound like I've named it after?
That's really sad you've named it after your boss.
No, it was God of War I went for.
(04:21):
Ah, very good. Yeah.
So. Gosh.
Feels like your house is busy mate, but no.
And, and obviously you've moved up the ranks since over the last
3-4 years and deliver act and now you're kind of running
around Europe doing your thing and the product itself.
How much has that changed over the last?
I mean I I know tech constantly evolves and iterates, but how
much have you shifted your focusa lot from where you were
originally do you think? Yeah, massively.
(04:43):
We started off as you know, pureintegration platform, so
plugging in channels, pushing them through to to POS systems.
And I suppose fortunately, that gave us this incredible layer to
work off. I don't.
I don't know if it was planned or if it was.
These things are not, you know, well, maybe it was.
Maybe it was. It was like one of those stroker
geniuses back in 2018 to go and,you know, build this layer.
(05:05):
And because once you own that layer, you, you have then all
the power of all these channels and the connection to the POS
systems, you can start to leverage that for other things.
So, you know, a few years back we acquired Chatfood, which I
think you're aware of. So online ordering management
and that's moving very nicely now.
But in the last year we've had akiosk acquisition.
So we're quite a company called Tabesto, a fairly large kiosk
(05:28):
provider originated from France,I think working across you know
four or five countries already in Europe, but we're going to
internationalize that, which wasis quite nice.
Lots of things to work out still.
But you know, we're very close to AUK activation.
We released a number of different modules as well, one
called Pulse which is like analytics and all the
(05:50):
marketplaces we call the marketplaces and and store all
relevant information for operational marketing use.
And so, you know, it really helps you drive initiatives on
those delivery channels. So it's data-driven decision
making for the operators, right?Absolutely.
And and it's got some operational kind of warehouse as
well. So we can, you know, we can push
channels back online when they go offline.
(06:12):
So if you've got like a offline time of 94%, you know we can get
that closer to 99 and somewhere in those regions.
Which is money, right? Time is money well off offline
is money. It's an ROI, so it's a it's a
great one to go and propose out into the marketplace.
And can we dig a bit deeper on the kiosk?
So what what drove that decisionto go into to do that?
(06:32):
I feel like it was a natural next step.
Yeah. And there will be people
listening to this thinking, OK, well, you were the integration
platform, you know, and, and you've got kiosk providers who
are integrated, you've got online ordering providers who
are integrated. And our whole ethic is, look,
you can have best in class or the chosen solution that you
want, or there's going to be something provided by deliver
(06:53):
act. And when we look at comparable
competitors in the market space globally, so let's say you take
like an Olo, you know, their real fame and, and where they
were exceptional, that was online ordering.
They do kiosk as well. They do Rails and integration
and so it was a very much a natural next step for us.
And when we look at others in our same sphere, it's a, it's a
(07:16):
pretty aligned place look, I mean.
It is what it is, right? I mean, at all, I think you can
stay within your little bubble for as long as you want, but
everybody wants growth and you're an invested company and
people want and and I think thatthe actually the operator
journey is changing to match what deliver X doing right.
So the the need or the thirst for, for moving crowds through
(07:39):
quickly moving queues through quickly order injection in the
restaurants that they become quicker.
I just think that's where the industry is moving anyway.
And you can't. I don't know, I think it's very
difficult for a company like yours to sit along the sidelines
and watch. Partnerships in this company are
so difficult to manage. Yeah, and it really is true.
(07:59):
Most partnerships in, you know, especially in hospitality tech,
they're all competing at some elements.
It, it's, well, it's, I mean, weobviously we work with 130
providers, right? And it's getting to the point
where you're looking at what there's lots of crossover we do,
we do these tech audits for operators we're working with,
you know, and some big ones and we're working with them.
And when you're recommending it,it become, it comes down to
(08:22):
nuances. And I would say we were talking
to a very large wet lead chain the other day without dropping
their name. And they're with a provider that
they're not happy with in terms of their product.
They would love more feature rich product, they'd love
integrations to be better, all this kind of stuff.
But the relationship is so solidthat they can get one they want
when they click their fingers, which is this is a really
(08:42):
hospitality ISM that actually they'd rather stay there and
have that then move to a provider that might have a
better better functionality or abetter platform, which you can
say is counterproductive. But they really value these
relationships above it. And I suppose there's a tipping
point in scale where that can't happen anymore.
But I don't know what you think.This is one of those.
(09:04):
It's a painful, it's a painful conversation, but I'm gonna
let's bridge it. The operators have got all the
power. Yeah, You know, and if they're
already in with a tech supplier who could make a slight move in
their, you know, product road map, they're going to do it,
especially if it's sizable, you know, if it makes up, you know,
510% of revenues. Yeah.
Why wouldn't you of? Course you are, you know, we we
(09:24):
can think of loads of brands whohave landed on apos provider and
just grown with it. That organic growth has meant,
you know, other things from the tech stack have have been locked
in and it's just how far do you go before it starts to take a
detrimental effect on feature specialism?
And I, I feel we're at a point, and this is from our, our
(09:46):
incoming data we get and who we speak to.
That seems to be a very common choice that people want to
change at the moment or, or are looking at that next step.
I don't know if it's AI that's kind of pushed people into this.
They're all looking at ultimate and obviously all the costs that
are out, you know, the external costs.
But I think people are looking at changes now and that change
(10:07):
ready maybe is the word. I don't know compared to where
they were. I mean, I suppose there's been
so many headwinds that's been difficult to do anything.
But I do believe that they're they're in a space and that
you're looking like you don't believe me.
What are you thinking? Yeah, they're not, Chris.
There's a tech CEO out there. He's Irish.
He worked for an online orderingcompany.
(10:28):
OK, that's narrowing it down. Based up in Edinburgh, right?
OK. Yeah, yeah, I know that.
Yeah. Recently acquired yes, I spent
some time with this with this guy.
I won't say his name, but I'll I'll let everyone keep going.
And I remember him. I was with him in Scotland and
he drew out this axis. It was lovely actually on the
left hand side was products, youknow, tech stack and then under
(10:51):
it you had feature specialism and then on the bottom was
scale. So scalability and that could be
scale in terms of revenues, it could be scale in terms of
regional kind of growth, it could be national growth, it
could be international growth. And then he kind of in there
started plotting the tech providers.
So you might have like the holistic all in one providers
and he'd put them in a certain place in this graph and then
(11:12):
you'd have like the best in class tech solutions and then
those brands that were associated with those and where
they kind of sat within the scale and it really did
resonate. Then he drew another line of
this kind of fluctuation and he was like, look, this is, you
know, this is the economic situation.
And when you know the economic situation is up and consumer
spend is up, you're buying best in class because you're trying
(11:36):
to get absolutely. Everything.
Yeah, you're maximizing. Oh, for sure.
And then as soon as the economicsituation downturns, consumer
spend is down, you know, you have to look internally at your
operational expenditures, you end up then going more holistic,
you know, one throat to choke, one support line modular that's.
Lovely, lovely turn of phrase, that one throat to choke.
No, no, it's true. I was having a conversation
(11:57):
with, I mean, again, a large restaurant chain and they went
to market to look for analytics,data analytics BI and they got,
we did a lot of work for them, got all the quotes and all this
kind of stuff and did some legwork.
And then at the end they were just let you know what, we're
just going to stay with our current guys because they've
just dropped. They've just dropped down to
(12:17):
meet what we're going to do and they're going to make the change
that they wouldn't make before. And I suppose that's that's kind
of what you're talking about. They're in this place where
they're like, you know, we can go to market, ruffle some
feathers, have a look what's outthere, maybe find something
that's better, but for the emotional turmoil of undoing
something. I mean, not necessarily a data
lake, but the emotional door to changing a pause, for instance,
within a company is, is it worthit?
(12:39):
You know, you know how much benefit you're going to get on
the other side. So it's that that's where the
calculation seems to sit at the moment.
How can we do it without open heart surgery?
POS removing POS is a nightmare,full stop.
It really is. So I can't imagine what it's
like selling POS in the market space.
And how do the markets differ when you're out, because I know
we'll talk about retail in a minute, but you're out obviously
(13:00):
in different regions now doing your new job.
How, how are they differing to what you were seeing in the UK
or is the market quite similar? I know the restaurants are
different, more mom and pop style.
I'll pick some specific examplesactually, like the German market
is it it was dominated by an allin one platform called Oh God,
(13:20):
it's called sides simply simply delivery right and you've just
had this mass exodus like everyone's just leaving it.
They overextended themselves. They're doing pause kiosk app
where back a house, you know, HRmanagement, driver management,
all these whole hosts of different things.
The company needed to start making money, so they of course
(13:41):
made some cuts and those cuts were too deep and it's
ultimately affected their development and support and
everything around it. And then now you're seeing lots
of of these different German brands going back out there
shopping for best in class solutions and linking a polls
with an online ordering with a kiosk with an app.
And I just presume that's common, but it's probably not,
right. I suppose depending on the
region or the country you're in that it, I just presume that it
(14:04):
was like the UK that people would go shop about like that,
but maybe, maybe it's not. But first of all, we can be
really proud of UK tech and where it's at today.
So certainly from what I've seenin kind of continental Europe, I
think it's fair to say a few years back, you know, there's
significant brands still unintegrated for like order
(14:24):
management, typing in orders into tills and you're thinking,
Oh my word, I haven't come across this in the UK market for
2-3 years now. You know, you have to ask the
question, sorry, can you repeat that?
And we could be talking about significant brands, you know,
ones that we know of, they're famous and self delivery is
still big out there. So you you still have again
(14:47):
global brands with delivery fleets in house, again something
you don't see in in many other regions.
So it does vary. It really varies.
And, and the delivery scene itself that you guys are seeing
because obviously you're experiencing it from the others,
both sides of the coin. Cause you obviously you sit with
a lot of larger operators, you're talking to them about
their issues and the problems are trying to solve by using you
(15:09):
guys. But then you're also sitting on
the flip side on the tech side, looking at the impact that the
consumer is having on the industry.
Where do you see that? Where do you see kind of like
the road map of delivery right now?
Because you know, when we talkedwhen we first joined deliver
app, we were looking at drone delivery and all this crazy
stuff that was going on, you know, and, but but I think the
pandemic obviously changed a lot.
(15:29):
And then we came out and saw a bit of a drop off.
But am I right in thinking it's it's stronger than it ever was?
Or it's or it's becoming strong,or it's finding a different
path? You you see these self doubters
or these people who want to doubt the market because they
don't like it. It's an ugly space, logistics
and, you know, delivery fees. It's not experiential.
(15:49):
Yeah, exactly. It's, it's difficult to control
it. I I think it's going to come
from strength to strength. Look at the recent news.
Yeah, DoorDash acquisition for delivery, you know, bringing
this US powerhouse into the UK sphere.
You've got process who've just, you know, gone in for
acquisition on Just Eat processor.
You know, this massive South African business who have stake
(16:11):
in ifood, which is the the market leader in, in Brazil.
They've got delivery Hero steak,they've got Swiggy steak, which
is the largest in India, the Metowan in China, they I think
they're in part $0.10 as well, which is a behemoth business.
So you've now got Uber Eats, just eat the process and
potentially delivery with DoorDash.
It's a, you know, it's a lot of finance backing and that's, you
(16:33):
know, a lot of a lot of weight pushed into.
This a lot of money being bet on.
By the way, which is fantastic for the operators because
ultimately then there's going tobe an out and out war and it
really will be a war. And that's war of market share
grab. And market share grab is, you
know, voucher conce, you know, vouchers to consumers, which is
then great for the operators because then spend goes back up,
(16:55):
you know, it's exclusivity schemes that are pushed into
place, you know, to to try and come up with some kind of USP
it's. I liken it's a payments a little
bit that payments is going through in the UK.
I don't know if it's global, butin the UK, the way the payments
have suddenly become not a race to the bottom is a really unfair
thing to say, but that there's areal there's, you know,
obviously the integrated payments to lightspeed toast add
(17:15):
in and then you've got, you know, the dojos of the world
doing doing their thing And it it it feels like everyone's kind
of, you know, they're trying to win their part of the market and
there's definitely going to be AI think the customer is
benefiting at the moment. How long that goes on for, I
don't know, but it is it is it the same?
It's going to happen with the with the aggregators.
I mean, look at the the results you can get your hands on, let's
(17:36):
say like Q1 for Justine delivery, Deliveroo, I think it
was 7% year on year order growthin Q1, which is like on top of
the matured base. It's just phenomenal.
And then just the GMV was I think it was up 5%, I feel like
saying. So again, another on top of a
huge base of of order volume, they're in a healthy space
(17:59):
despite people with profitability.
You keep seeing Adjusted EBITDA,so you knock out a few
operational expenditures and andexperiments.
Sounds like my accounts. But I think they're getting
there because I remember my old boss at Just Eat saying, you
know, wait until the profit leavers come.
Those profit leavers sit in the basket that is applying the, the
service fee, the delivery chargeback to the consumer.
(18:21):
And that's where we're then going to start generating and
making money. That's certainly when I was
there and you, you see that now me as a consumer who orders a
lot from the apps, you know, you're hit with two, three, 4 LB
delivery charges. You kind of just let it be.
You're shopping for convenience and speed.
Convenience is the word I want it to go into.
Actually convenience is super interesting because and it's
been said a million times where the market is changing like the
(18:43):
older market or you know, whatever you want to call it.
We used to call it the purple pound.
We used to call it colleges likethe older guys, The Who were
college years mainstay of customers outside of London.
And the big difference now is that my kids watching my 18 year
old, the way he behaves around his handset, his phone is
everything like, you know, as infood thanking, you know,
(19:03):
everything and which sounds, I know obviously, of course, but
that that will be the whole generation to all of that
generation. The ones below them will be
using it that way. And and it's only going to shift
it further. And you only have to walk into a
restaurant that, you know, on a midweek night, unfortunately.
And yeah, and people are, peopleare kind of and they look at the
back door, There's more going out the back door and there is
the front door. So you know.
(19:24):
I've I've got a real good thing around psyche on this.
So you think about the addictionof social media.
Yeah, there's the constant scrolling.
You're, you're looking for something, you know, and people
always trying to contest against, you know, the delivery
platforms and their High Commission rates and, you know,
can we drive volume directly andfight against the tide?
And I think, you know, go back to human psyche.
People want to shop on an impulse.
(19:44):
Again, my own opinion, people and the majority of people want
to shop on impulse. It's why, you know, shopping
malls and high streets have beensuccessful, Lots of different
options available. So you hit your phone, you pick
up a marketplace, you scroll through the carousels, you know,
you scroll through that carouselon on discounts or a certain
category you like and you find that option and there's that,
(20:05):
you know, enticing image. And I think that's more powerful
than the pricing point. And then when you link that
within quick delivery. So when you're talking like, you
know, 10/15/20 minutes, which issuper quick, yeah, consumer
expectations are there. People don't want things and
now. I'm not sure.
I mean, maybe I don't want to speak out.
I'm not sure how much pricing comes into it once you're on the
(20:25):
marketplace. Like genuinely, I believe that
people like you say accept the charge, they accept there's
going to be delivery. They accept that they understand
now the food's robust. It's hot.
It's been, you know, 99% of the time being delivered in a great
way that actually that the earlydays of delivery when people
were getting, you know, it was just logistics were still
finding its feet. I, I think people questioned
(20:45):
those prices and they were obviously looking internally
looking at internal cost, thinking I can't afford to do
this and that, but that's over in my mind anyway.
I think it when I'm on those marketplaces myself and I'm not
rich by any means, I'm, I'm looking, I'm shopping with, you
know, I'm hungry, I'm shopping with my eyes.
I'm not doing it with my. You're hungry, your convenience,
you want speed and and suddenly saying 2-3 pounds, 4 lbs.
(21:07):
You waiver off because it's small.
Many transactions, but small. And yeah, I think it just gets
hidden up in that, that small basket spend.
I think it's incredibly clever. Yeah, it's really smart.
And again, like you said before,whether it's meant to be like
that, who will never know, but it it is super smart and that
the action around the basket or the checkout or that final
scroll when you're adding sides,whatever.
(21:28):
I mean, they're making it. They must be killing it there
because I'm I'm a victim of plusplus plus there, of course.
You'd like, hey, can I get it there quickest?
And then off you go and. The other thing is in, I mean, I
think because the advent of QR at table ordering as well,
people are doing it bloody sitting in the restaurant, doing
it now on their phone, let aloneyou know.
So it's almost like why are you bothering sitting there as in if
you're going to do it, I don't know.
(21:49):
I find it a bit odd to sit thereand order on your phone within
the. Restaurant or isn't that thing
of you know how much do you really want you know like a let
me stereotype here you. Know Joe's going to get in
trouble. I don't know, Let's go casual,
die someone who I can't rememberwhat the organization's called,
who sends you least, least employees, You'll probably know.
(22:11):
Oh. What, one of the like the
agencies? Yeah, well, you could.
There's a number. There's Stint.
Stint, that's it. You know, you can always tell a
stint employee hello, what do you want?
You know, like. Luckily stint on one of my
partners. You can blank that one out.
That's fine, That's fine. Don't keep it, Keep it.
You'll be sat in. I'm not going to know many
names, actually, in case they'recustomers and a stint worker
(22:33):
comes up, you know, what do you want?
They take an order. Actually, they might take more
time than you want to. Because if you're out with your
kids, right, and you have a few,it's a very different experience
to being out on your own with your missus or just you dining
out on business, right? Pizza Express QR code, you know,
it's all interlinked into their POS system.
I place that order. It's been done straight away.
(22:54):
It's in the kitchen. That food's coming when it's
ready. Yeah.
Like that for me is a perfect experience.
It's like, that's me personally,yeah.
No, no, but I'm in the same boatand I think a lot of people are.
And even when I'm on business and I'm on my own, I just, I
don't want to hang around too long in the restaurant.
I just want to kind of get it and go or I'm going to do it,
you know, eat my room kind of thing.
And do I need that conversation?Yeah, in realism.
I mean, I know this whole thing.Is this hospitality dying?
(23:17):
If you're going to go to a, you know, a full service restaurant
and you're going to spend a lot of money and you want someone to
come up and give you a wine recommendation and and and talk
you through some of the menu. Fantastic.
And I'm totally on board for that.
And that's what you're paying into.
I think when it's casual dining or quick service, let let it be
almost kind of human less. And that's from from my side.
(23:37):
God, Joe's bringing the Joe's bringing the joy.
No, but it's true. No, and I don't, I don't
disagree because I think the problem with that mid market is
that it's getting squeezed all the time.
When there's any, you know, likewe talked about the curly line
for the, the economy, whenever there's problems in the economy,
that middle market gets absolutely nailed because if
you're not great or if you're not QSR, what are you?
(23:58):
You're just floating in the middle and it becomes very, it's
very difficult to justify the spend, which is, which is, you
know, and justify the the fact that the person who doesn't
really want to be there is serving you potentially that
kind of world. So yeah, it is.
It is very tricky. And which brands do it well?
Yeah. And what you could, well, you
look at the Oaxacas and the pizza pilgrims and those guys
who've got that, but they're they're very much more a brand,
(24:19):
aren't they? Generally?
They're very much more clever, the way they kind of brand
themselves and market themselves, as well as being
good food. You sit in there and you can see
the wood oven just piling away and you can see the pizzas on
preparation. There's a bit of ambience in the
in the restaurant. It's a nice thing.
I'm definitely one of these consumers.
It's like I'll, I'll be sat at Pizza Express and I'll go there
(24:40):
as often as I'll order online aswell.
But I'll do both. Yeah.
And I think that's what you know, it's, it's crucial how you
cater for both and do it incredibly.
And that's the shift, right? And I think I wanted to get to
retail because these behaviours that we're now seeing in
delivery, in in in restaurants and off premise, on premise have
come from, or I think have come from retail or our behaviour
(25:02):
around Amazon. Obviously that when it and it
really took off and everyone kind of, you know, no one even
thinks about, you know, no one thinks about Amazon anymore.
It's just part of your routine, right?
It's, it's just, it's not even ashot or any kind of retail
shopping like that. We were joking last night
because my Mrs. was trying to order a top on a, on a HNR.
What's it called? A Zara or something?
Oh my God, it was my son was saying, Mum, you've got to sort
(25:24):
this out. It's like it's been a while.
You need to be able to shop online kind of thing.
We were just joking about last night.
But I actually think it's that influence now is fully in and
you guys are now really embracing retail, aren't you
amongst in deliver app was in a quite a big way.
Yeah. You think the world of on demand
delivery was in hospitality veryquickly.
Yeah, you know, it happened immediately.
(25:45):
There's, you know, phone calls. You place an order and then a
delivery. Card, that's the take away,
right? Yeah, the take away.
What we use back in the day. I think we see what 7 in 10
consumers now are, are on the applications and placing orders
and, and, and they arrive on demand.
And then the retail sphere, it'sonly three out of 10 consumers,
but they're the same consumers. They just haven't been educated
across yet. I had an example last week,
(26:08):
despite how much I know about this industry, both on the
hospitality and retail sphere, Iwas trying to order my kids some
Easter eggs. So three of my children with an
ex-wife and I was like, I've totally forgotten to order them
Easter eggs. I didn't send them anything and
I had a day and I could not findany Amazon, you know, Moon Pig
(26:30):
and all those type of things. I couldn't get a delivery slot.
I just thought how am I going todo this?
The, the, the answer was obvious.
I just went on to Deliveroo, went to, you know, one of the
local supermarkets, placed an order for three Easter eggs and
they arrived in 20 minutes. Yeah.
And so. But again, despite being in the
industry and knowing it so much,my, my psyche still wasn't there
(26:53):
to go and place those orders. I could have placed, you know,
for a card or, you know, a little small present or a gift
and you forget. I think that because I was in
the room, because every time I stay here, I use Uber and I was
in the room the other night and I was ordering and I just wanted
a drink. And because of where I stayed,
there's not really a, there's noroom service or anything.
(27:13):
You can shop to put in your flat, but you don't, you know,
there's no way you can, you'd have to go out and do it.
So I just went on an Uber and I just let's grow.
And I went, Oh yeah, I just, I just told you I did like a mini
food food shop into my flat in London, which I don't live at.
That's what, that's the whole thing, right?
I don't live there. I don't have any food or
anything. I have no, I just, but by 8:00 I
was stocked like I lived there. And you know, it's just, it's a
(27:34):
very different way of living. Yeah, and it, I mean, it just
makes sense like getting consumer expectations in that
hospitality. Well, right, I'm going to get
things in 1520 minutes, but yeah, you're going, I'm going to
order a shop for 2-3 days time and, and find a slot.
And of course consumers want things now and they're willing
to pay that premium for it. You know, if I want milk, cake,
(27:56):
bread and cheese and I know somebacon and I want to do
breakfast, I don't actually wantto order something, but I want
to make something at home. You can just order it straight
in. And that market size is huge.
You know, we're talking way over2X in terms of UK hospitality
just for convenience and grocery.
Yeah, because they're the cornerstores, right, that we used to
that we would walk to and get the bits.
(28:17):
Yeah, absolutely. And now they're petrol stations.
Well, now they're mini fulfilment centres, you know,
and you put them onto these behemoth marketplaces that have,
you know, 40 million active consumers with intent to
purchase. So you've got that already,
you've got the consumer there and then they own all the
logistics. And not just the logistics, the
premium logistics, because the premium logistics is the
(28:38):
quickest and they are the quickest.
You know, I, I, I had something the other day that I ordered and
it came in 10 minutes. I think it might even have been
like a Co-op order. It was.
I was just like what a service this is.
And again, when you're spending,because if you think about when
you move into retail a little bit, you're probably going to
let me spend again, right? Because it depends.
I bought a toothbrush, I think, or toothpick.
(28:58):
When I stayed, I forgot my toothbrush anyway, so I was
buying stuff like that. And again, the spend the basket
or the charge, is the charge thesame?
Is it a similar charge to what you pay?
Yeah. Depends on the channel.
Some channels will do a min and Max and some will then base it
on mileage. So it's difficult to answer
which is which. But if it's the same location
rather than a KFC and I'm getting my Co-op.
(29:21):
Exactly. Yeah, of course.
It just makes sense. Consumers are really tagging
onto it and it's moving fast andthat space is doubling quickly.
And who are you working? So what kind of customers are
you working with in that space? Where do you where do you guys
fit in? So far like our ideal customer
profile, I hate that ICP you know that that piece, but
typically. Because, you know, marketing of.
(29:42):
Course product I remember the first time it said to me I I
didn't actually know what it meant in.
About two years. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just used to shave my head. Oh, I see mate.
There's a lot of that going on, a lot of boardrooms.
That's not just about ICP, it's.The acronyms you always shed.
API, I mean a member of an API first when a very first bit of
content tech on toast did was a glossary.
(30:02):
So we did What does API mean? I had a CFO directly messed me
on LinkedIn never met him beforesaying thank God.
I now know that those I listen to our head of IT talk about
that every week. Just not like, Oh yeah, it's
very. Important.
I do learn the acronyms, yes, but I then forget that very
quickly and I'll like, you know,I'll get APK mixed up with SDK
and it'll be like, would you be SDK?
(30:24):
I thought it was a tape. That's an old tape.
No, exactly, I forgot where we got.
There you were talking, we talked about the types of
customers you were working with in, in terms of retail.
Yeah, Look, we've been fairly fortunate already to pick up
some of the the national players, which is which has been
nice. I think I can name that one stop
where we've got almost 1000 locations for those guys, which
is part of Tesco Group. Majestic Wines we rolled out
(30:46):
with personally with really nicebrand.
We've done some stuff with Spa AF Blakemore, which is one of
the big RDC platform acronyms. He's doing it regional
distribution centres. Thank you, Jack Sparks.
Because you've got RGM in your your job title, you feel like
you should trot them out. Yeah.
And we have a number of others and we've got lots of other
global players in place as well.And there's lots more to come
(31:07):
because it's a big space and they're just moving into that on
demand delivery and consumers want it and it's kind of new
incremental revenue for the retail space.
And and so there's eyes and earslooking at it as.
And and the product operates thesame way with a stupid question
probably, but operates the same way for a one stop than it would
for a restaurant in terms of you've got your menu management
(31:30):
and you've got your. We've built a whole new
infrastructure for it. OK.
So it deals with catalogs, inventory, stock?
Obviously SK use for all the different.
I'm doing it now. Perfectly SK use G tins PCs no.
One's listening now they've all switched off.
They go. No, but that, but so you know
you've had to reconfigure then to fit to kind of meet that need
(31:52):
that they have. Yeah, there's a larger capacity
for, for products. You know, you've got like 3 to
15 to 20,000 SKUs in place. So it's it's heavy.
They want it all automated. Of course they do.
You're not going to have like a menu manager that you're going
to scroll around the category and you know, it's, it's going
to be flat file CSV into ours and and then we're going to
(32:12):
process it from there. Wow.
But no. And and look and we've created a
new device called Quest. It's a singular picking device.
So you know on there you'll havedelivery.
It's just the UK market. Obviously it's different in in
other markets and we just emulate the same kind of feature
parity with with that. And it's again, it's a nice user
case. It's, I mean, and you think if
(32:35):
you Fast forward five years for the River Act, God knows what'll
happen in five years. There's a river act.
But do you think that the retailpiece, as you said before you,
you were saying could be twice the size of what hospitality
would be? How quickly do you think you'll
get there? Yeah, I look around the room and
I think, how many of these things could be delivered by a
by a Courier? Yeah, nearly all of them.
I mean, I I bought, I have most of this care at home and I
bought it all through. Yeah.
(32:56):
And if someone wants something at, you know, any time frame,
you know, it could be accessed, you know, it's all going to be
on demand delivery and we would see that as a place we want to
play. So anything that can go into a
car, a van, a biker, you know, amoped, we're going to be playing
in that space. And again, going back to my
starting piece, order managementplatform, if it's an order, you
(33:20):
know, managed, we want to be that platform to to ultimately
control that. I think it's a really unique way
of looking at what you guys do because you know, order
injection was always the, you know, the point of reference
when we first talked about deliver act and where the
order's going and where where it's going to end up to.
And I think that OMP, did you call it OMP?
Oh. Yeah, management.
Order management platform, No, but it's, it's, it's a great way
(33:41):
to kind of encapsulate what it'sgoing to do right or what it is
doing for people. Yeah.
And you think it's our best product.
So our core product in hospitality, it's taking that
and moving it into a larger and bigger vertical.
So it's a great place to be rather than trying to reinvent
the wheel with a new product that you don't know if the
adoption is going to be there ornot.
You're taking something that's tried and tested with global
(34:04):
brands, you know, all over the world and then dumping it into
this brand new vertical. It's it's it's an exciting space
to. Go.
I'm sure the product team appreciate the dumping.
Definitely not dumped it it it'staken.
Relocated, yeah. It's probably taken 2-3 years to
properly form this. Like it, it wasn't done in a a
few sprints. This is we've spent a lot of
(34:26):
time building it behind the scenes, putting a large team
into place and and now the execution is starting to happen,
which is really pleasing. And on the future, because I'm
trying to look where are we nearly there?
What are we, what are we lookingat?
Because products coming out a lot where where did you get to
on the rider side of things? Did you do?
Because I remember when I was there, we were looking at we're
(34:47):
building. I can't remember.
It's called now dispatch. Yeah.
Was it dispatch? Did that happen?
Dispatch happened and yeah, it'sa it's great products.
It looked great. Then it was Brian, I think.
Brian is still right. Brian just had a baby bother.
Congrats, Brian. Have you ever listened to this?
Not a chance. He's never listened to anything
I've ever done. In fact, it never responds to it
(35:09):
in my emails. We've got no hope, but no, no,
but that was that was super. What you guys were doing there
was was fascinating and and it'sout live working happening.
Yeah, like if you order from Burger King today on their
application, we're we're like powering that, which is quite
nice. One stop, we power for them.
We've got it in lots of different brands into
continental Europe. It's working nicely.
(35:30):
So let me talk about this. If you've got a first party
ordering platform, we will then connect that to a third party
logistics. So it gives you the chance to
own your own customer, be able to engage with them with loyalty
platforms. And am I saying this is like,
oh, fantastic, now I can move all my orders from one platform
in into my own direct. It doesn't work like that.
(35:51):
You know, you're going to spend a huge amount of money acquiring
that customer and then you're going to have to keep doing
spend on on your loyalty programs to to maintain that
customer in place and emulate a great experience.
And are you really simply going to make more money from that
than getting an order from a marketplace?
That question is still out thereto be answered.
(36:14):
My advice would definitely be invest in both.
You know, invest your marketing strategies on the platforms
because they're ultimately goingto derive you the largest
result. And then invest in, you know,
your own direct to consumer on the basis of you still want a
proportion of your customers coming actively to you.
So you can at least own that. You can own their e-mail, their,
their mobile number, their ordering patterns, the
(36:34):
frequency, the spend and all those other parts.
But do both together. Like, you know, there's brands
out there who are like, Oh, I can, I can redirect all these
customers from the marketplaces and, and get them direct, namely
anyone who's done that, like take Mac delivery, for example,
probably the most powerful engine out there in the I mean.
There there are nothing but drivers in my local McDonald's.
Not that I frequent it a lot, but I have to do a few times.
(36:56):
Turning up in Uber jackets just eat jackets over jackets and the
majority of orders are coming from those platforms.
An Uber 100% and what and you obviously the kiosk is here we
talked about that briefly, but is there anything out there are
any spin offs from there then? So once you've had the kiosk
market cornered, let's call thata year.
So is there any spin offs from there in the future?
What are there any of the products coming or are you going
(37:17):
to consolidate away you're at? Definitely consolidation.
I always see it as like this kind of quadrant where you've
got restaurant core, you've got retail core, which are two
similar products, you know, aggregating channels into
operating systems. And yeah, what we do there,
unified tablet, unified picking device, I think they're two very
strong pillars for us. And then dispatch and direct
(37:39):
direct for us is online orderingand kiosk combined.
So it's like our e-commerce offering and then dispatch then
allows you to push that direct channel to to 3rd party
logistics, those four things. And if we focus on them really
well, they're going to be prettypowerful.
And then there's things around the edges, you know, we've got
like some cameras that do dispute based.
(38:00):
For the refunds. Yeah, and some of that stuff is
really cool, but it all still features around the orders and
the order management. Yeah.
And I think that's a safe, not safe place, but it's the right
place to play, right? Because that's everything is
about that, everything about getting that right, optimizing
it, efficiencies, all, everything around it and the
spend and the cost of doing thatproperly is, if not managed, is
(38:20):
bloody expensive. Yeah.
And it makes sense for them to be on the peripherals and like
Pulse is an example like analytics product there on the
peripherals instead. You need a little map jam.
I'm visualizing it already. We must have it.
You must. Have it, we've got it and I can
send it if you want to Chuck it.Up.
Oh well, I'll put it out with the with the when we send it
out. Or you want me to put it on an
image on the video? You can see the ecosis.
There, Yeah, OK, I'm going to image pop up now.
(38:41):
Yeah, retail, restaurant, dispatch and direct, which is
kiosk and online ordering. And I think that's a really
strong place for us to play. Very cool.
Look, I love it. And I always half an hour is
never enough time with you because you could chat all day.
You're in. I think you're probably one of
my most favorite people to talk to.
Not many people know their subject as well as you.
(39:01):
No, no, I really mean that. I think.
And everybody says it about you as well behind your back in a
nice way. No, but I think you really know
your your what you know the the lane you drive in, there you go.
So you really know your stuff and if anyone wants to reach out
who are listening to you, actually any retail consumers or
people who are retail outlets are listening.
How do they get hold of you, Joe?
LinkedIn, I'm gonna obsess. LinkedIn, there's different ways
(39:25):
you can say I'm a LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn a lot.
Where my wife will be on Instagram and Facebook, I will
be on LinkedIn. Yeah, it's sad, isn't it?
I'm not sure which one's sadder.I'm not sure if I'm sadder.
Oh, my business. You're the same, I'm sure.
Oh yeah, I live on it, Yeah. And I, I, I think it's a
fantastic platform. It's really, I mean, it's great.
I mean, it's before when I was in operations, I had what I call
(39:47):
a proper job. I never went on it.
I only ever want to when I need a new job.
When I was looking, when I was, I had enough and I was looking
for a new job, I'd go on LinkedIn.
But yeah, now I'm on it. I mean, it's just embarrassing.
I'd hate to look at my usage. It reminds me of golf like until
you get into it. I'm a shit at that as well.
So am I. How could you?
You're a unit. You should be Dick.
You must have a decent drive on you.
(40:07):
I've. Always had this hit, but I
remember my old man saying nevertrust anyone who's good at golf,
because if they're good at golf,they're doing it all the time.
Yeah, that's true working. Yeah, any salespeople are good
at golf. Never hire someone with under 10
handicap. It's a really, really bad point.
It's a big watch out, yeah. But yeah, LinkedIn is like golf.
When you get into it, you get really into it and then suddenly
you're obsessed as but. I've got enough obsessive things
(40:28):
in my life. Well, thank you very much, Mr.
Heather. Lovely to see you.
No more dogs in the offering noware you done?
Oh, that wasn't a no. That's down to my wife.
She's, you know, every time we get things settled and life's
going a bit easier, she wants toChuck her nut.
That's another bomb. Come on, let's move out.
You just done that recently, didn't you?
Moved to last year, yeah. Overlooking some fields out in
(40:48):
Cambridgeshire. That's where we got the dog.
Now that makes sense, So. Go out there and walk him in the
mornings, evenings. All right, Well, good luck with
Mars, Hope. How old is he?
He's what, He's seven months now.
OK, yeah, Kerry literally said to me.
But then we're going to get intothe puppy because our old staff
he's getting, she's getting 15 now.
I love her, so it's time for herto ruin her life.
I bring some young thing that's going to jump on her head every
(41:10):
day. Genuinely the best thing you
could ever do I. Think it'll extend the old dog's
life? Genuinely, I think I said that
if we bring someone, it's like having a you know, you find
another even though you don't have the energy, you find it
from someone. I think it's the same for the
dog. If a puppy comes along, she'll
probably think I've got to better make an effort get.
You in this with fresh air? Yeah.
You know, you're walking twice aday.
And I think, I think it helps you amuse.
(41:30):
We since we got Bailey, when we got when Tegan was three, which
sort of we've had, as I said, 14years now.
And she is, yeah, every day, twice a day, we're out with her
up the mountain, wherever we are.
And, you know, in the winter, obviously you don't want to go,
but it's just by the time you get back, everyone's happy.
It's weird. Just sort your head out.
Oh. Of course it does.
It seems like it's. Hard.
There you go. The more of this podcast is get
a dog, get a dog, get a dog and then buy deliberate.
(41:53):
Thanks very much Joe. See you soon mate.
Cheers as well and be all movements.
Thank you mate, cheers.
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