September 30, 2025 • 27 mins
In this episode of the Tech on Toast Podcast, Chris Fletcher sits down with Joel Robinson, founder of Openr – a data orchestration platform transforming how enterprise hospitality brands manage their tech stacks.Joel shares his journey from Sainsbury’s digital transformation team to leading digital strategy at Azzurri Group, before building Openr to solve one of hospitality’s biggest headaches: fragmented data and disconnected systems.💡 What you’ll learn in this episode:Why mid-market operators (20–30+ sites) need dedicated digital leadership earlier than ever.How Openr creates a single source of truth for product, pricing, and menu data across POS, delivery, websites, kiosks, and more.The three big wins for operators: efficiency, agility, and accuracy.How Stonegate Group went from updating prices just 3–4 times a year to hundreds of changes with confidence.Why Joel prefers “agile pricing” over “dynamic pricing” in hospitality.How AI is helping automate event menus and unlock new revenue streams.The future vision for Openr: optimising profitability across sales, volume, and margin.🎶 Bonus: Joel reveals his surprising past as a classical singer, with appearances at Carols from King’s and even on stage with Dizzee Rascal!Chapters:00:00 – Intro & Lightspeed sponsor02:00 – Meet Joel Robinson, Founder of Openr06:30 – Lessons from Sainsbury’s digital transformation13:40 – Moving into hospitality tech at Azzurri Group19:25 – Why mid-market brands need digital leaders sooner24:50 – The birth of Openr: solving fragmented data32:15 – Efficiency, agility & accuracy – Openr’s three key outcomes39:10 – Stonegate case study: price changes at scale47:30 – Agile pricing vs. dynamic pricing53:50 – Integrations & sweating your tech stack1:02:00 – Practical AI use cases in menu management1:11:20 – ROI stories & customer success1:18:40 – Openr’s future vision1:23:00 – Joel’s unexpected singing career 🎤1:28:00 – Where to find Joel & OpenrLinks & Resources:🌐 Openr: https://www.weareopener.com🔗 Connect with Joel Robinson on LinkedIn: Joel Robinson
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Welcome to the Tech and Toast Podcast.
We are the home of Hostility tech.
The Tech and Toast podcast is brought to you today by our
friends at Lightspeed. The holidays are here and your
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(00:26):
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Lightspeed gives you the tools to not only survive the holidays
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and keeping guests coming back for more.
(00:46):
This season, let your tech do the work for you.
Close the year strong with Lightspeed Restaurant.
I don't believe in a hospitalitybusiness that technology should
lead. If you roll back ten years in
hospitality, most restaurants were kind of a box with the Till
Opener is a data orchestration platform that operates as a
(01:08):
single source of truth for enterprise hospitality
businesses. I mean, I'm an advocate for
change, right? Obviously what tech on toast do,
but at the same time sometimes you you can sit still and get
more out of what you've got. We're about enabling and
removing the limits around experimentation, not actually a
kind of technologist by design. Didn't study.
Accidentally landed there. Accidentally landed.
(01:28):
Can I say proper job? Is that what you say when you
when you become a founder? Maximize sales, maximize
volumes. Ultimately, maximize profit.
Welcome to the next episode, theTech and Sales podcast.
And today we're delighted to be joined by Joel Robinson, founder
of opener. Joel, How Are You?
Very well. Thank you.
Great to be here. Welcome to our green backlit
studio. We're very on brand, very, very
fast. This isn't it.
And before we get into Joel, we all know you.
I knew you from a previous role.So before we get into kind of
(01:51):
what you're doing now, tell us alittle bit about your background
and what kind of how have you ended up at this point being on
the podcast? So interesting story and my
background professionally. Started my career in grocery
retailing so joined Sainsbury's straight out of uni.
You worked my way through a whole number of different roles
at Sainsbury's before it ended up in technology, so I'm not
actually a kind of technologist by design.
(02:12):
Didn't start. Accidentally landed there
accidentally. Landed.
Yeah. So I joined Sainsbury's digital
team back in GOSH would have been 2011, so kind of pretty
early days of e-commerce in the grocery Wow world.
And then, you know, really enjoyed that and ended up kind
of working my way through technology teams at Sainsbury's.
And from my experience at Prime Minister, I did a bit of grocery
(02:34):
world and I, that was quite a boom time, wasn't it?
Or, or particularly on loyalty and e-commerce and all that kind
of stuff, particularly in that world.
I guess you learnt a lot throughthat little period of time.
Oh, it's, yeah, an amazing experience, particularly around,
you know, introducing new forms of platforms and new forms of
development. You know, we were the first, I
worked as part of the first teamthat introduced kind of agile
(02:55):
iterative Sprint based development where you were
shipping new features every two weeks, which was kind of this
big new thing because historically everything had been
a massive project, cost millionsof pounds and kind of took a
year to deliver any value. So that was kind of hugely
exciting and was then part of the leadership team that kind of
helped bring in in house engineering into Sainsbury's in
(03:16):
house product. In house design flipped to a
completely new operating model where digital became this
strategic advantage rather than just a cost center, a kind of,
you know, a cost of doing business.
It became a source of revenue, became a source of competitive
differentiation and just became a fundamental and critical part
of the business's strategy. And I guess transferring that
(03:37):
experience into the chaotic world of hospitality must have
been an interesting job. That was a transformation.
Yeah, so I left Saints after 10 years.
I had a great time there. I left to join the Azuri Group,
who, you know, operate ask Italian, Zizi Kokodamama, Dave
Sochick and Bhujian as their first digital and tech director.
And the brief from Steve, the CEO was almost exactly that,
(03:59):
which look, we're kind of looking at retail and see that
it's 1015 years ahead in terms of its adoption of technology,
how it's leveraged technology toimprove the customer experience
and drive growth. Can you kind of come and help us
pull a strategy together and build the capability and build
the team at the Azuri Group, which would mean that we can
leverage technology as a strategic advantage too?
(04:22):
There was no around the board table at that point.
That was kind of owning that conversation.
So my role was to come in and work alongside all of the brand
leaders, the marketing leaders, the finance leaders and the exec
team to ultimately craft that digital and IT strategy and
invest in technology in the group to make it a fundamental
source of strength and growth. It's very interesting that you
(04:44):
talk about that, that there wasn't a seat at the table at
that point for a digital person.And I still think we're starting
to see more CTO's heads of it's whatever CIOs can pop up.
But in the mid, it's in enterprise.
I get it, right, totally. But do you think there's a need
now for the mid market 20 to 30 and up sites actually to look at
these kind of roles? Because I, I'm interested
because we're starting to see more and more of a trend.
(05:05):
Obviously tech is playing a hugepart in the industry.
Do you think that's something it's going to change over time,
that actually that digital presence is going to sit amongst
that boardroom earlier on than an enterprise brand?
I think so, yeah. I think once you start to
approach 20 to 30 sites, you need to start to have someone
whose full time job is to think about how you take advantage of
technology. Whether you're going with an all
in one or best of breed, you know, what strategy should you
(05:28):
take? If it is best of breed, which
systems are you selecting and why?
How does that link and how does that enable the overall
strategy? So I don't believe in a
hospitality business that technology should lead the
conversation. But I think technology is an
absolutely critical enabler thatis vital to get the right road
(05:49):
map, the right systems, the right platforms at the right
cost that are ultimately going to enable delivery of the
strategy. Yeah, of the organization.
I think once you get to 20 to 30sites, that's about the right
time to start to think about this conversation.
Obviously the heads of departments of work in silos,
right, previously getting their own tech, buying their own tech
even, and then all of a sudden plugging it all in together or
trying to produce some back end reporting out of it all of a
(06:11):
sudden looks a bit messy, which is which It's a lovely caveat,
caveat Segway, a lovely Segway into what you're doing now.
So talk us a little bit about how you've gone from Missouri to
opener. Yeah.
So Opener is data orchestration platform that operates as a
single source of truth for enterprise hospitality
businesses. And we built it whilst I was at
(06:32):
the Azuri Group, not because we were bored, you know, thought
what tech business could we start this week, but because we
had a real need. So kind of to your point,
enterprise businesses and to be fair some smaller hospitality
business as well will typically have a whole variety of
different systems and platforms that they operate.
(06:54):
And the number of platforms thatrequire management has massively
grown over the last five to 10 years and will probably increase
and continue to to grow over thenext 5 to 10 years.
And if you roll back ten years in hospitality, most restaurants
were kind of a box with the tillin it.
So you. Described my career, but yes.
(07:16):
A lot of work to kind of get that point of sale programmed
and fit for trading. But as long as you had your
points down, your kind of payments technology, you were
kind of, you know, you were goodto go, good to go.
You know, it's relatively obvious now, but we live in such
a multi channel world with kiosks, digital menu boards,
delivery platforms, order and pay a table, apps, click and
(07:36):
collect, scheduling platforms, inventory management platforms.
It's exhaustive, isn't it? The list doesn't.
Yeah, it goes. On it is but as these kind of
ecosystem has grown up over time, what we felt at the Azuri
Group was kind of a lack of harmonisation and lack of
centralisation around something that's common to all of those
platforms, which is your core data.
You know your product data, yourmenu data, your pricing data and
(07:57):
your venue data. And what we were doing was
entering what is effectively thesame information kind of
multiple times across your pointof sale system, across your
delivery aggregators, across your border and pay a table app
across your website CMS into your printed menu solution.
So we actually kind of went out to market and said, well, where
is, you know, the product that can ultimately solve that
(08:18):
problem at that kind of fundamental base layer, which
was stuff that existed in my world in grocery retailing, all
kind of fed into the, the visionfor opener.
We couldn't find the product. And so we started to build, we
kind of built a rough kind of proof of concept with a little
bit of money from the boards kind of proved that we could do
this and it was an achievable goal.
(08:39):
We were successful in that. And then we effectively started
building out the the full product.
So that was about 3 years ago now that we've started on that
journey. So the platform's in use
throughout the Azuri group and we also signed up our first kind
of external customer who'd been live with us for just every year
now in the Stonegate group, but it's.
All sizeable groups. Yeah, to that, what I learned in
(09:02):
grocery, having that single platform which masters all your
product information, pushing it out everywhere to all of your
different platforms, going to hospitality, seeing this
fragmentation going well, where's the solution didn't
exist and so we started. To build it and and sometimes in
tech, I find it's really important to focus on that the
real pain point, right, because a lot of tech has been built AI
is driving that even faster now,but actually the reality is
(09:25):
focusing on real returns for theoperators, making sure you can
find something exactly that you're in a role you've got a
problem you you build something to fix it.
And I think that specific focus on on that key pain point is
huge. And I think what what are your
main, I suppose if you if you pulled Azorian Stonegate in the
group today, what would they saythe main pain point should fix?
You mentioned view them there interms of what you solve, but
(09:45):
what is it giving them back? Is it giving them time back or
is? It yeah, there's three things
really, Chris. So I mean, the first thing's
efficiency, which you've alreadytouched on in terms of time, you
know, typically these processes were taking hundred weeks to
harmonize all this data across all these different platforms.
So if you look at Stonegate for example, they were only changing
their prices 3 to 4 times per year, whereas now they can
change them hundreds of times. I'll come back to that because
(10:07):
that's really key, right? Through our platform.
So there's there's an efficiencypiece, there's also a piece
around agility. So sure, you're kind of doing
things more effectively, but what that means is it gives you
more opportunities to experiment.
So really what's exciting about our platform is the ability to
rapidly push out changes and test and learn whether that's
(10:29):
kind of AB testing around pricing or menu optimization.
And then the third one is accuracy.
So because our data platform kind of will sink in from your
recipe management platform, you've got all that ingredient
data, all that allergen data. And you can therefore be super
confident that on all your platforms, you've got accurate
allergen data, accurate calorie data, but it's also accurate
(10:52):
pricing data. What we find when we go into a
company and we implement our platform is there'll be all
sorts of errors across all of these platforms.
Because when you're relying on human process, when of course,
on spreadsheets that are being emailed to Infro, I mean,
there'll probably be several listeners of this podcast that
will kind of recognize sitting around a table doing the table
read of the menu for the 4th time and then suddenly they've
(11:13):
spotted a spelling mistake. Or even worse, it goes up to
print right which the. Price is completely wrong.
You know how how long does it take most operators post go live
of a new menu to correct all thepricing errors on point of
saying that some of our customers that we've spoken to
where the team's working on it until like 4:00 in the morning
on the day it goes live because that's they can't schedule it.
(11:34):
It has to be overnight and then effectively spending the next 48
to 72 hours fielding phone callsfrom all the managers in the
sites and the shift leaders going, yeah, the menu's at 795,
but on the till it's 820. Five, I think efficiency in the
industry and productivity, I suppose across the board.
We're so good at some stuff. We're so good at operating,
(11:58):
finding a way to win. The industry is so good at that,
but so bad at pinpointing the problems that you're talking
about there. The really day-to-day stuff that
we kind of just roll with and wejust get on with it and kind of
accept it. And I think that's why I find
open it very interesting becauseyou are addressing these points
that sit around the boardroom table, but also then eek out
into all the sites. So I would love to be in a
(12:19):
colleges and be able to say, right, Dorchester, Exeter, we're
going to test this menu pricing because I believe there's more
affluent customers down here than there is in, in Birmingham
and Manchester. So let's see what it looks like.
And the ability to do that without crashing the whole
system or killing my marketing person, it is brilliant.
And I'm guessing you're seeing that.
Are you seeing that kind of, it's an enabling tool, I suppose
in a way? As well.
Yeah, I think you that's the thespot on description of it is an
(12:41):
enabling tool and we're having exactly those conversations with
marketing teams that being askedby their MD's and by their kind
of exec teams to do more, but just can't because they're
collapsing under the weight of today's complexity.
So, you know, there's a probablya reason why most hospitality
businesses are only operating with like two or three price
(13:02):
bands, if that, and A1 price band, even if they've got
hundreds of locations, because the administration of anything
more sophisticated is just too like it's.
Just too much to. Bear, it's bad enough as it is,
you know, in terms of the stressthat that teams are put under.
And when we come in, we've got arelatively simple intuitive user
interface with a whole bunch of complexity around how you manage
(13:24):
price bands, how you manage channel pricing, how you can
automate all of that. You effectively take the
shackles off and you go, well, actually you can now follow
whatever pricing strategy you want, whatever menu strategy you
want. So we're about enabling and
removing the limits around experimentation, which
ultimately drives growth. Yeah, because you mentioned
(13:45):
Stonegate, we're doing it 4 * 3 four times a year in terms of
which is regular, right? So seasonal change on the menu,
but actually to have the abilityand it we're not far off from
dynamic pricing, right, In termsof I don't want to go down that
route too much. But in the fact that you can
look at your pricing and think what we want to kind of do
something in this part of the world, in this part of the
country because we feel like we've got opportunity of the
students arriving, whatever the driver might be.
(14:06):
But that ability to do it now ismust be a game changer.
Yeah. I think we want to support
operators with a better understanding of their customers
and then a better set of tools to set the right price at the
right time for those customers. So we would probably talk about
agile pricing rather than dynamic pricing because I think
when people talk about dynamic pricing, they think about kind
(14:28):
of airlines. Hotels, yeah.
Stacking the price up, what we typically find is that there's
maybe like, say, 2 price bands within a hospitality operator
across 200 sites. Well, pricing consultants might
tell them that actually they should have 16 price bands, and
some of those should be lower than what you're pricing at the
(14:49):
moment. Some of them should be higher at
the moment because it ultimatelydepends on who your customer is,
what their mission is, what their propensity to pay is.
And our solution, our product that we bring to market is to
sit in the middle of that and say, well, actually, you can now
do that. And you can do that at scale
through automation in a way thatdoesn't keep you up at night.
And that's what ultimately drives incredibly rapid return
(15:10):
on investment because it's ultimately about having the
right product at the right priceat the right place in the right
time. And and I think one of the
things that does keep people up at night is a changing pause
potentially or or looking at their epos to kind of work with
partners like you. How does integration work with
open because you are sitting, I suppose as you just mentioned,
then you sit within the stack. That's right.
And you can kind of connect how,how important is integration?
(15:31):
How are you kind of building that out as you grow?
Yeah. I mean, it's everything for us.
So our kind of value properties that we don't replace your
existing technology, we sit between your tech.
So we help you get loads more value out of your existing text
stack and we will work with point of sale providers from
across the spectrum. We work with delivery platforms,
(15:52):
we work with order and pay a table platforms, website
partners, print designers, etcetera.
So we ultimately come in and tryand stitch everything together
and make it more efficient and more effective because certainly
the conversations that we're having with our customers and
with our prospective customers is that they don't necessarily
want a two to three-year big transformation project.
(16:14):
You know, there's a lot of pressure on the P&L at the
moment and you know, taking thatkind of risk to do a huge re
platforming of whether it's yourpoint of sale or your labour
management platform and say whatwe do is we come and go, well,
we work with all of those different partners, but we help
you get more out of that existing platform.
So typically, if you take point of sale as an example, we will
(16:35):
build up what we call the product library, which is your
single source of truth. So we'll sink in your recipes
from your recipe management platform.
We'll sink in your prices if they come from a different
system or you master them in ourplatform.
We sink in your photography and all your digital assets if they
sit in a digital asset platform or you master them in our
platform and ultimately go to right, if this is our burger,
(16:56):
this is what it looks like, thisis how we describe it.
These are the ingredients, theseare the calories vary that for
each channel that I want becauseI want a different description
on delivery to the one I want onmy POS, to the one I want on my
website, to the one I want on myprinted menu.
And then we push that out everywhere.
So we push all of that information into a point of sale
system. So we effectively automate the
(17:18):
programming at the point of sale, but from the accurate base
data, which is a huge time save,but then you've obviously got
all the accurate data at scale across.
Your I think that's thing and there's a phrase I used to use
called sweat your tech. Yeah, it doesn't sound too
attractive, but but it's about you don't.
I mean, I'm an advocate for change, right?
Obviously what tech on toast do,but at the same time, but
sometimes you can sit still and get more out of what you've got.
(17:41):
It's like putting a new area manager in a, in a, in an area
with the same bunch of GMs as the old area manager, but
getting better results just because he's got a different way
or she's got a different way of reaching them and motivating
them. Same with what you're doing.
You've got, you've got a way of grabbing that data from all the
different partners and enable enabling the operators to see it
clearly and actually be more agile with it, which suddenly
takes away that argument a little bit to say, do you know
(18:02):
what? You don't necessarily need the
data is there. Yeah, just you're not getting it
in the way or you're not using it in the way that's actually
making you believe that it's powerful or you know, or
enabling you to go forward. So I think that's that's a
really interesting the integration part and for you
guys to kind of start sweating their tech for them.
Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, take point of sale
as an example, the point of saleproviders that are out there at
scale for enterprises, they're fundamentally really good.
(18:23):
Yeah, what they do, you know they're rock.
Solid. It's a cigarette.
Paper isn't there in between got.
Fantastic support services that will, you know, be out into a
restaurant within 24 hours fixing any issues.
The frustration lies kind of around that in terms of how can
I get data into that how do I get data out of that?
How do I connect? And they've made huge progress
over the last kind of decade or so around opening up, providing
(18:43):
APIs and import schemas, etc, Soyou can get data in and out of
these platforms. And again, this is relatively
typical in the grocery retailingworld.
So go back to my Sainsbury's days and point of sale takes all
of its data from an external platform.
Point of sale is still an absolutely crucial, probably the
most crucial piece of technologyin the stack.
(19:04):
It's processing all of the payments.
It's managing basket. It's the heartbeat, isn't it?
It's the everything around thereis automated to help elevate the
capability. No, I love that and and I can't
get through an episode when we're talking about AI and we I
think we already talked about before we started recording.
How does that influence what youguys are doing and what do you
think what I mean it's hard to say what impact it's going to
have wider on the industry, but where do you see it going I
(19:25):
suppose in the in the short space of time as we're in now?
Yeah. I mean, in terms of how we're
leveraging AI, it's very practical.
And I think any kind of usage ofAI and introduction of AI into a
platform needs to be rooted in practicality.
And so the types of things that we're doing is helping operators
automate things that they do already through AI.
(19:47):
So we're not building a scary black box that just spits out a
recommended price. And no one understands
including, you know, whoever you're using, whether it's
anthropic opener, no one understands exactly why it's
recommended that. We're working to take existing
processes like event menus, for example.
So the vast majority of operators will operate event
(20:09):
menus. So they'll have restaurants that
are located near Wembley Stadiumor the O2 or Twickenham or, you
know, City of Manchester Stadium, etcetera, that will
operate a slightly different menu at a slightly different
price point on the event day. So they can get throughput, they
can get efficiency, and they cancover the increased costs of
managing an event. What we'll do kind of using AI
(20:32):
is help automate that process. So what we typically find is
that the number of events that actually take place versus the
number of event menus that are actually deployed is quite
different. And that's because the process
to do it is manual because you're all normally relying on
AGM going, hey, there's an eventkind of in my area, send an
e-mail to the marketing team, goes through some kind of sign
(20:54):
off process, marketing team, then kind of send that to the IT
team. The IT team needs to remember to
reprogram the tools. Marketing team needs to make
sure they get the right printed menu sent out to the site.
It's quite new. Already exhausted.
And then the box turns up and props open the office door.
Whereas within our technology weconsume external event data.
You build your rule to say when an event of this type is taking
(21:15):
place within a radius of these sites, deploy the event menu.
It just happens. I mean, I'm smiling because I
live in Cardiff, right? And, and Cardiff is because the
stadium is literally in the citycentre, having run businesses
there and supported businesses there.
It drives everything. Yeah.
And still people get it wrong. Yeah, still people can't.
They drop, they drop the ball asin they lose money because they
could be more productive and I suppose efficient.
(21:38):
But it's just that planning, isn't it?
And all taking away that kind ofto thought or stuff that happens
prior and and I suppose do you see much what on the early days
of openness? Well, you're three years in, but
you've only. How long are you in?
As in external to you in? Terms of six months.
Now, so you're very early still into your your palm.
How's that going? But how what is what's is there
(21:58):
anything that surprised you in terms of successes from opener
that things you're thinking, Oh my God, I did not think we'd get
there that quick or any kind of results that are coming out of
your first customers that you'rethinking, wow.
Yeah. I mean, we've been staggered by
the return on investment from customers, just the ability to
change things quickly. Yeah, it's is that.
Also a wow moment for them then as well.
(22:18):
They're kind of going, OK, we didn't expect this quickly.
Yeah, I mean, if you kind of move from being able to change
your proposition 3 to 4 * a yearto infinite.
That's a big change. You can imagine if you move from
a world of three price bands to 17 price bands, some lower, some
higher, but ultimately delivering a better result in
aggregate, you can kind of imagine what some of those
(22:40):
returns are kind of pretty rapidly and that's pretty
exciting and. That's really hard to.
I think tech and ROI is often a difficult thing that gets put
together, particularly in polls and stuff like that, because
people like you have to have one, right?
But I think that having something quite measurable
beyond literally that example there where you can do it four
times and I can do as many timesas you like, all of a sudden
opens up the door to to ROI being proved pretty quick.
(23:02):
Yeah, that's right. And that's why it's important,
you know, as technologists we build stuff that is grounded in
tangible outcomes and solves real world problems, which is
why, you know, the event thing is a small example.
There's lots of other things within the platform, but it's
real. Yeah, because I understand.
Yeah, Yeah, straight. Away I do this already, but I
probably do it really inefficiently.
I can understand how if I had a platform that helped me do it,
(23:24):
it might get me 40 extra event days per year.
And I already know that every time there's an event we take an
extra 2 grand or 10 grand acrossthe state or whatever it is.
So I can go hmm 40 * 10 is 400 grand.
Fantastic. I mean, I'm in my head, I'm
thinking of use cases everywhere.
It's and it's crazy. And I think and and for you
(23:45):
going forward then, because you're only six months in really
into your personal journey, I suppose outside of a can I say
proper job? Is that what you say when you
when you become a founder? When does it become a proper
job? Is it proper?
It's proper job now, isn't it? Yeah, it's a proper job.
People are giving you money. It must be a proper job.
Yeah, you've got a little and everything these days.
So what is it like the future then?
So the vision of opener, I suppose.
I know you had your original vision, but I guess these things
(24:05):
evolve and adapt over time. What does it look like going
down the road? Yeah.
I mean, we ultimately want to bethe platform that helps
hospitality operators optimize their profitability.
Yeah. You know, so we're fundamentally
a plumbing product which you know, how do you get accurate
data quickly from A to B and we're spending loads of time
integrating into as many platforms as we can because
operators want us to be integrated from day one.
(24:27):
So we're adding point of sale systems, order and pay a table
platforms, website providers, digital print providers, we've
got Canva EX etcetera. So you can pump all that data
out. The second part of all of our
development and our long term vision is ultimately providing
tools within the platform to help our customers maximize that
margin opportunity, maximize sales, maximize volumes and
(24:48):
ultimately maximize profit. Which makes you a really
interesting product, right? Or exciting product because the
adoption is everything intact, right?
People actually using your product and finding benefit from
it. It sounds like you're already
there and going forward. And before I let you go and we
talk about how people get hold of you, I wanted to ask about
you mentioned singing at the start of the before before we
went on air. So it's handsome.
I can't remember why this had relevance, but yeah.
(25:09):
Tell us a little bit about your back, because you are you a
singer or you were? A singer sing part time just.
Are you still do it now though? Just for fun.
Yeah, once a month or something like that.
But in my younger years I spent a lot of time singing.
So I actually sang opera when I was 11, really 13, all over the
world and sang with Dizzee Rascal and I was.
(25:31):
I'm so glad I asked this question, but I was 20.
Because you're that's why we ask, because I was saying, oh,
welcome to your TV set. And you said, yeah, you were
former TV. You didn't say as a former TV
star, but. And what were you wanted?
What? What program you?
Want. Well, so if anyone sits down on
Christmas Eve and watches carolsfrom Kings, yeah.
Which is the choir at Cambridge that sings the Christmas carols
(25:51):
every Christmas Eve on Radio 4 and I'm BBC Two.
I was part of that for three years, OK.
That's going on with this great SO writing.
Around on YouTube there are somepretty scratchy videos of me
singing as part of that choir, wearing all my wearing all my
get up. The cooler thing that was on TV
was with Disney Rascal. We did a BBC Electric Prom.
That's very cool. House in Camden when I was God
(26:13):
21. Very cool.
So yeah, that would drop that where I go.
Well, you never know. Very.
Much my former life. But you see where our opening
goes, you just don't know. Do you look and if people want
to get hold of you or ask because I think what I loved
about tech on to start was talking to the founders.
I love it when you're at your early stage, when you're growing
and the ability to connect with the founder to understand your
principles and what you're doing.
(26:34):
Can people get hold of you? Is the LinkedIn the best way to
find you or? Yeah.
So I mean our website isweareopener.com, it's got all
the information about kind of who we are, our origin story,
kind of what we do. There's a little contact us form
on there as well as you can get in touch with me that way or you
can just connect with me on LinkedIn.
Joel Robinson. Lovely, and I presume we'll see
you on a stage soon somewhere. It's the busiest autumn.
(26:54):
Are you on stage? Yes, yeah, yeah, We're doing a
few conferences. I think we're doing the MCA.
Innovation. Oh, I'm there.
I'm talking to that one. We'll.
See you there? We're hosting a panel.
Oh yeah, me too, AI. I'm doing AI again.
I mean, I don't have ended up that guy, but yeah, anyway.
But lovely to see you, Joe. Good luck, mate.
I think it's fantastic what you're doing and we're enjoying
working with you as well. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for the pleasure. Bye.
Bye. Bye.
Welcome to the Tech and Toast Podcast.
We are the home of Hostility tech.
The Tech and Toast podcast is brought to you today by our
friends at Lightspeed. The holidays are here and your
restaurant is buzzing, but Are you ready?
For the rush. The festive season is make or
break time for many restaurants filled with non-stop tableside
service, kitchen chaos and complex reservations.
But what if you had a secret weapon?
Well, Lightspeed is That weapon is the ultimate point of sale
(00:26):
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Lightspeed gives you the tools to not only survive the holidays
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and keeping guests coming back for more.
(00:46):
This season, let your tech do the work for you.
Close the year strong with Lightspeed Restaurant.
I don't believe in a hospitalitybusiness that technology should
lead. If you roll back ten years in
hospitality, most restaurants were kind of a box with the Till
Opener is a data orchestration platform that operates as a
(01:08):
single source of truth for enterprise hospitality
businesses. I mean, I'm an advocate for
change, right? Obviously what tech on toast do,
but at the same time sometimes you you can sit still and get
more out of what you've got. We're about enabling and
removing the limits around experimentation, not actually a
kind of technologist by design. Didn't study.
Accidentally landed there. Accidentally landed.
(01:28):
Can I say proper job? Is that what you say when you
when you become a founder? Maximize sales, maximize
volumes. Ultimately, maximize profit.
Welcome to the next episode, theTech and Sales podcast.
And today we're delighted to be joined by Joel Robinson, founder
of opener. Joel, How Are You?
Very well. Thank you.
Great to be here. Welcome to our green backlit
studio. We're very on brand, very, very
fast. This isn't it.
And before we get into Joel, we all know you.
I knew you from a previous role.So before we get into kind of
(01:51):
what you're doing now, tell us alittle bit about your background
and what kind of how have you ended up at this point being on
the podcast? So interesting story and my
background professionally. Started my career in grocery
retailing so joined Sainsbury's straight out of uni.
You worked my way through a whole number of different roles
at Sainsbury's before it ended up in technology, so I'm not
actually a kind of technologist by design.
(02:12):
Didn't start. Accidentally landed there
accidentally. Landed.
Yeah. So I joined Sainsbury's digital
team back in GOSH would have been 2011, so kind of pretty
early days of e-commerce in the grocery Wow world.
And then, you know, really enjoyed that and ended up kind
of working my way through technology teams at Sainsbury's.
And from my experience at Prime Minister, I did a bit of grocery
(02:34):
world and I, that was quite a boom time, wasn't it?
Or, or particularly on loyalty and e-commerce and all that kind
of stuff, particularly in that world.
I guess you learnt a lot throughthat little period of time.
Oh, it's, yeah, an amazing experience, particularly around,
you know, introducing new forms of platforms and new forms of
development. You know, we were the first, I
worked as part of the first teamthat introduced kind of agile
(02:55):
iterative Sprint based development where you were
shipping new features every two weeks, which was kind of this
big new thing because historically everything had been
a massive project, cost millionsof pounds and kind of took a
year to deliver any value. So that was kind of hugely
exciting and was then part of the leadership team that kind of
helped bring in in house engineering into Sainsbury's in
(03:16):
house product. In house design flipped to a
completely new operating model where digital became this
strategic advantage rather than just a cost center, a kind of,
you know, a cost of doing business.
It became a source of revenue, became a source of competitive
differentiation and just became a fundamental and critical part
of the business's strategy. And I guess transferring that
(03:37):
experience into the chaotic world of hospitality must have
been an interesting job. That was a transformation.
Yeah, so I left Saints after 10 years.
I had a great time there. I left to join the Azuri Group,
who, you know, operate ask Italian, Zizi Kokodamama, Dave
Sochick and Bhujian as their first digital and tech director.
And the brief from Steve, the CEO was almost exactly that,
(03:59):
which look, we're kind of looking at retail and see that
it's 1015 years ahead in terms of its adoption of technology,
how it's leveraged technology toimprove the customer experience
and drive growth. Can you kind of come and help us
pull a strategy together and build the capability and build
the team at the Azuri Group, which would mean that we can
leverage technology as a strategic advantage too?
(04:22):
There was no around the board table at that point.
That was kind of owning that conversation.
So my role was to come in and work alongside all of the brand
leaders, the marketing leaders, the finance leaders and the exec
team to ultimately craft that digital and IT strategy and
invest in technology in the group to make it a fundamental
source of strength and growth. It's very interesting that you
(04:44):
talk about that, that there wasn't a seat at the table at
that point for a digital person.And I still think we're starting
to see more CTO's heads of it's whatever CIOs can pop up.
But in the mid, it's in enterprise.
I get it, right, totally. But do you think there's a need
now for the mid market 20 to 30 and up sites actually to look at
these kind of roles? Because I, I'm interested
because we're starting to see more and more of a trend.
(05:05):
Obviously tech is playing a hugepart in the industry.
Do you think that's something it's going to change over time,
that actually that digital presence is going to sit amongst
that boardroom earlier on than an enterprise brand?
I think so, yeah. I think once you start to
approach 20 to 30 sites, you need to start to have someone
whose full time job is to think about how you take advantage of
technology. Whether you're going with an all
in one or best of breed, you know, what strategy should you
(05:28):
take? If it is best of breed, which
systems are you selecting and why?
How does that link and how does that enable the overall
strategy? So I don't believe in a
hospitality business that technology should lead the
conversation. But I think technology is an
absolutely critical enabler thatis vital to get the right road
(05:49):
map, the right systems, the right platforms at the right
cost that are ultimately going to enable delivery of the
strategy. Yeah, of the organization.
I think once you get to 20 to 30sites, that's about the right
time to start to think about this conversation.
Obviously the heads of departments of work in silos,
right, previously getting their own tech, buying their own tech
even, and then all of a sudden plugging it all in together or
trying to produce some back end reporting out of it all of a
(06:11):
sudden looks a bit messy, which is which It's a lovely caveat,
caveat Segway, a lovely Segway into what you're doing now.
So talk us a little bit about how you've gone from Missouri to
opener. Yeah.
So Opener is data orchestration platform that operates as a
single source of truth for enterprise hospitality
businesses. And we built it whilst I was at
(06:32):
the Azuri Group, not because we were bored, you know, thought
what tech business could we start this week, but because we
had a real need. So kind of to your point,
enterprise businesses and to be fair some smaller hospitality
business as well will typically have a whole variety of
different systems and platforms that they operate.
(06:54):
And the number of platforms thatrequire management has massively
grown over the last five to 10 years and will probably increase
and continue to to grow over thenext 5 to 10 years.
And if you roll back ten years in hospitality, most restaurants
were kind of a box with the tillin it.
So you. Described my career, but yes.
(07:16):
A lot of work to kind of get that point of sale programmed
and fit for trading. But as long as you had your
points down, your kind of payments technology, you were
kind of, you know, you were goodto go, good to go.
You know, it's relatively obvious now, but we live in such
a multi channel world with kiosks, digital menu boards,
delivery platforms, order and pay a table, apps, click and
(07:36):
collect, scheduling platforms, inventory management platforms.
It's exhaustive, isn't it? The list doesn't.
Yeah, it goes. On it is but as these kind of
ecosystem has grown up over time, what we felt at the Azuri
Group was kind of a lack of harmonisation and lack of
centralisation around something that's common to all of those
platforms, which is your core data.
You know your product data, yourmenu data, your pricing data and
(07:57):
your venue data. And what we were doing was
entering what is effectively thesame information kind of
multiple times across your pointof sale system, across your
delivery aggregators, across your border and pay a table app
across your website CMS into your printed menu solution.
So we actually kind of went out to market and said, well, where
is, you know, the product that can ultimately solve that
(08:18):
problem at that kind of fundamental base layer, which
was stuff that existed in my world in grocery retailing, all
kind of fed into the, the visionfor opener.
We couldn't find the product. And so we started to build, we
kind of built a rough kind of proof of concept with a little
bit of money from the boards kind of proved that we could do
this and it was an achievable goal.
(08:39):
We were successful in that. And then we effectively started
building out the the full product.
So that was about 3 years ago now that we've started on that
journey. So the platform's in use
throughout the Azuri group and we also signed up our first kind
of external customer who'd been live with us for just every year
now in the Stonegate group, but it's.
All sizeable groups. Yeah, to that, what I learned in
(09:02):
grocery, having that single platform which masters all your
product information, pushing it out everywhere to all of your
different platforms, going to hospitality, seeing this
fragmentation going well, where's the solution didn't
exist and so we started. To build it and and sometimes in
tech, I find it's really important to focus on that the
real pain point, right, because a lot of tech has been built AI
is driving that even faster now,but actually the reality is
(09:25):
focusing on real returns for theoperators, making sure you can
find something exactly that you're in a role you've got a
problem you you build something to fix it.
And I think that specific focus on on that key pain point is
huge. And I think what what are your
main, I suppose if you if you pulled Azorian Stonegate in the
group today, what would they saythe main pain point should fix?
You mentioned view them there interms of what you solve, but
(09:45):
what is it giving them back? Is it giving them time back or
is? It yeah, there's three things
really, Chris. So I mean, the first thing's
efficiency, which you've alreadytouched on in terms of time, you
know, typically these processes were taking hundred weeks to
harmonize all this data across all these different platforms.
So if you look at Stonegate for example, they were only changing
their prices 3 to 4 times per year, whereas now they can
change them hundreds of times. I'll come back to that because
(10:07):
that's really key, right? Through our platform.
So there's there's an efficiencypiece, there's also a piece
around agility. So sure, you're kind of doing
things more effectively, but what that means is it gives you
more opportunities to experiment.
So really what's exciting about our platform is the ability to
rapidly push out changes and test and learn whether that's
(10:29):
kind of AB testing around pricing or menu optimization.
And then the third one is accuracy.
So because our data platform kind of will sink in from your
recipe management platform, you've got all that ingredient
data, all that allergen data. And you can therefore be super
confident that on all your platforms, you've got accurate
allergen data, accurate calorie data, but it's also accurate
(10:52):
pricing data. What we find when we go into a
company and we implement our platform is there'll be all
sorts of errors across all of these platforms.
Because when you're relying on human process, when of course,
on spreadsheets that are being emailed to Infro, I mean,
there'll probably be several listeners of this podcast that
will kind of recognize sitting around a table doing the table
read of the menu for the 4th time and then suddenly they've
(11:13):
spotted a spelling mistake. Or even worse, it goes up to
print right which the. Price is completely wrong.
You know how how long does it take most operators post go live
of a new menu to correct all thepricing errors on point of
saying that some of our customers that we've spoken to
where the team's working on it until like 4:00 in the morning
on the day it goes live because that's they can't schedule it.
(11:34):
It has to be overnight and then effectively spending the next 48
to 72 hours fielding phone callsfrom all the managers in the
sites and the shift leaders going, yeah, the menu's at 795,
but on the till it's 820. Five, I think efficiency in the
industry and productivity, I suppose across the board.
We're so good at some stuff. We're so good at operating,
(11:58):
finding a way to win. The industry is so good at that,
but so bad at pinpointing the problems that you're talking
about there. The really day-to-day stuff that
we kind of just roll with and wejust get on with it and kind of
accept it. And I think that's why I find
open it very interesting becauseyou are addressing these points
that sit around the boardroom table, but also then eek out
into all the sites. So I would love to be in a
(12:19):
colleges and be able to say, right, Dorchester, Exeter, we're
going to test this menu pricing because I believe there's more
affluent customers down here than there is in, in Birmingham
and Manchester. So let's see what it looks like.
And the ability to do that without crashing the whole
system or killing my marketing person, it is brilliant.
And I'm guessing you're seeing that.
Are you seeing that kind of, it's an enabling tool, I suppose
in a way? As well.
Yeah, I think you that's the thespot on description of it is an
(12:41):
enabling tool and we're having exactly those conversations with
marketing teams that being askedby their MD's and by their kind
of exec teams to do more, but just can't because they're
collapsing under the weight of today's complexity.
So, you know, there's a probablya reason why most hospitality
businesses are only operating with like two or three price
(13:02):
bands, if that, and A1 price band, even if they've got
hundreds of locations, because the administration of anything
more sophisticated is just too like it's.
Just too much to. Bear, it's bad enough as it is,
you know, in terms of the stressthat that teams are put under.
And when we come in, we've got arelatively simple intuitive user
interface with a whole bunch of complexity around how you manage
(13:24):
price bands, how you manage channel pricing, how you can
automate all of that. You effectively take the
shackles off and you go, well, actually you can now follow
whatever pricing strategy you want, whatever menu strategy you
want. So we're about enabling and
removing the limits around experimentation, which
ultimately drives growth. Yeah, because you mentioned
(13:45):
Stonegate, we're doing it 4 * 3 four times a year in terms of
which is regular, right? So seasonal change on the menu,
but actually to have the abilityand it we're not far off from
dynamic pricing, right, In termsof I don't want to go down that
route too much. But in the fact that you can
look at your pricing and think what we want to kind of do
something in this part of the world, in this part of the
country because we feel like we've got opportunity of the
students arriving, whatever the driver might be.
(14:06):
But that ability to do it now ismust be a game changer.
Yeah. I think we want to support
operators with a better understanding of their customers
and then a better set of tools to set the right price at the
right time for those customers. So we would probably talk about
agile pricing rather than dynamic pricing because I think
when people talk about dynamic pricing, they think about kind
(14:28):
of airlines. Hotels, yeah.
Stacking the price up, what we typically find is that there's
maybe like, say, 2 price bands within a hospitality operator
across 200 sites. Well, pricing consultants might
tell them that actually they should have 16 price bands, and
some of those should be lower than what you're pricing at the
(14:49):
moment. Some of them should be higher at
the moment because it ultimatelydepends on who your customer is,
what their mission is, what their propensity to pay is.
And our solution, our product that we bring to market is to
sit in the middle of that and say, well, actually, you can now
do that. And you can do that at scale
through automation in a way thatdoesn't keep you up at night.
And that's what ultimately drives incredibly rapid return
(15:10):
on investment because it's ultimately about having the
right product at the right priceat the right place in the right
time. And and I think one of the
things that does keep people up at night is a changing pause
potentially or or looking at their epos to kind of work with
partners like you. How does integration work with
open because you are sitting, I suppose as you just mentioned,
then you sit within the stack. That's right.
And you can kind of connect how,how important is integration?
(15:31):
How are you kind of building that out as you grow?
Yeah. I mean, it's everything for us.
So our kind of value properties that we don't replace your
existing technology, we sit between your tech.
So we help you get loads more value out of your existing text
stack and we will work with point of sale providers from
across the spectrum. We work with delivery platforms,
(15:52):
we work with order and pay a table platforms, website
partners, print designers, etcetera.
So we ultimately come in and tryand stitch everything together
and make it more efficient and more effective because certainly
the conversations that we're having with our customers and
with our prospective customers is that they don't necessarily
want a two to three-year big transformation project.
(16:14):
You know, there's a lot of pressure on the P&L at the
moment and you know, taking thatkind of risk to do a huge re
platforming of whether it's yourpoint of sale or your labour
management platform and say whatwe do is we come and go, well,
we work with all of those different partners, but we help
you get more out of that existing platform.
So typically, if you take point of sale as an example, we will
(16:35):
build up what we call the product library, which is your
single source of truth. So we'll sink in your recipes
from your recipe management platform.
We'll sink in your prices if they come from a different
system or you master them in ourplatform.
We sink in your photography and all your digital assets if they
sit in a digital asset platform or you master them in our
platform and ultimately go to right, if this is our burger,
(16:56):
this is what it looks like, thisis how we describe it.
These are the ingredients, theseare the calories vary that for
each channel that I want becauseI want a different description
on delivery to the one I want onmy POS, to the one I want on my
website, to the one I want on myprinted menu.
And then we push that out everywhere.
So we push all of that information into a point of sale
system. So we effectively automate the
(17:18):
programming at the point of sale, but from the accurate base
data, which is a huge time save,but then you've obviously got
all the accurate data at scale across.
Your I think that's thing and there's a phrase I used to use
called sweat your tech. Yeah, it doesn't sound too
attractive, but but it's about you don't.
I mean, I'm an advocate for change, right?
Obviously what tech on toast do,but at the same time, but
sometimes you can sit still and get more out of what you've got.
(17:41):
It's like putting a new area manager in a, in a, in an area
with the same bunch of GMs as the old area manager, but
getting better results just because he's got a different way
or she's got a different way of reaching them and motivating
them. Same with what you're doing.
You've got, you've got a way of grabbing that data from all the
different partners and enable enabling the operators to see it
clearly and actually be more agile with it, which suddenly
takes away that argument a little bit to say, do you know
(18:02):
what? You don't necessarily need the
data is there. Yeah, just you're not getting it
in the way or you're not using it in the way that's actually
making you believe that it's powerful or you know, or
enabling you to go forward. So I think that's that's a
really interesting the integration part and for you
guys to kind of start sweating their tech for them.
Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, take point of sale
as an example, the point of saleproviders that are out there at
scale for enterprises, they're fundamentally really good.
(18:23):
Yeah, what they do, you know they're rock.
Solid. It's a cigarette.
Paper isn't there in between got.
Fantastic support services that will, you know, be out into a
restaurant within 24 hours fixing any issues.
The frustration lies kind of around that in terms of how can
I get data into that how do I get data out of that?
How do I connect? And they've made huge progress
over the last kind of decade or so around opening up, providing
(18:43):
APIs and import schemas, etc, Soyou can get data in and out of
these platforms. And again, this is relatively
typical in the grocery retailingworld.
So go back to my Sainsbury's days and point of sale takes all
of its data from an external platform.
Point of sale is still an absolutely crucial, probably the
most crucial piece of technologyin the stack.
(19:04):
It's processing all of the payments.
It's managing basket. It's the heartbeat, isn't it?
It's the everything around thereis automated to help elevate the
capability. No, I love that and and I can't
get through an episode when we're talking about AI and we I
think we already talked about before we started recording.
How does that influence what youguys are doing and what do you
think what I mean it's hard to say what impact it's going to
have wider on the industry, but where do you see it going I
(19:25):
suppose in the in the short space of time as we're in now?
Yeah. I mean, in terms of how we're
leveraging AI, it's very practical.
And I think any kind of usage ofAI and introduction of AI into a
platform needs to be rooted in practicality.
And so the types of things that we're doing is helping operators
automate things that they do already through AI.
(19:47):
So we're not building a scary black box that just spits out a
recommended price. And no one understands
including, you know, whoever you're using, whether it's
anthropic opener, no one understands exactly why it's
recommended that. We're working to take existing
processes like event menus, for example.
So the vast majority of operators will operate event
(20:09):
menus. So they'll have restaurants that
are located near Wembley Stadiumor the O2 or Twickenham or, you
know, City of Manchester Stadium, etcetera, that will
operate a slightly different menu at a slightly different
price point on the event day. So they can get throughput, they
can get efficiency, and they cancover the increased costs of
managing an event. What we'll do kind of using AI
(20:32):
is help automate that process. So what we typically find is
that the number of events that actually take place versus the
number of event menus that are actually deployed is quite
different. And that's because the process
to do it is manual because you're all normally relying on
AGM going, hey, there's an eventkind of in my area, send an
e-mail to the marketing team, goes through some kind of sign
(20:54):
off process, marketing team, then kind of send that to the IT
team. The IT team needs to remember to
reprogram the tools. Marketing team needs to make
sure they get the right printed menu sent out to the site.
It's quite new. Already exhausted.
And then the box turns up and props open the office door.
Whereas within our technology weconsume external event data.
You build your rule to say when an event of this type is taking
(21:15):
place within a radius of these sites, deploy the event menu.
It just happens. I mean, I'm smiling because I
live in Cardiff, right? And, and Cardiff is because the
stadium is literally in the citycentre, having run businesses
there and supported businesses there.
It drives everything. Yeah.
And still people get it wrong. Yeah, still people can't.
They drop, they drop the ball asin they lose money because they
could be more productive and I suppose efficient.
(21:38):
But it's just that planning, isn't it?
And all taking away that kind ofto thought or stuff that happens
prior and and I suppose do you see much what on the early days
of openness? Well, you're three years in, but
you've only. How long are you in?
As in external to you in? Terms of six months.
Now, so you're very early still into your your palm.
How's that going? But how what is what's is there
(21:58):
anything that surprised you in terms of successes from opener
that things you're thinking, Oh my God, I did not think we'd get
there that quick or any kind of results that are coming out of
your first customers that you'rethinking, wow.
Yeah. I mean, we've been staggered by
the return on investment from customers, just the ability to
change things quickly. Yeah, it's is that.
Also a wow moment for them then as well.
(22:18):
They're kind of going, OK, we didn't expect this quickly.
Yeah, I mean, if you kind of move from being able to change
your proposition 3 to 4 * a yearto infinite.
That's a big change. You can imagine if you move from
a world of three price bands to 17 price bands, some lower, some
higher, but ultimately delivering a better result in
aggregate, you can kind of imagine what some of those
(22:40):
returns are kind of pretty rapidly and that's pretty
exciting and. That's really hard to.
I think tech and ROI is often a difficult thing that gets put
together, particularly in polls and stuff like that, because
people like you have to have one, right?
But I think that having something quite measurable
beyond literally that example there where you can do it four
times and I can do as many timesas you like, all of a sudden
opens up the door to to ROI being proved pretty quick.
(23:02):
Yeah, that's right. And that's why it's important,
you know, as technologists we build stuff that is grounded in
tangible outcomes and solves real world problems, which is
why, you know, the event thing is a small example.
There's lots of other things within the platform, but it's
real. Yeah, because I understand.
Yeah, Yeah, straight. Away I do this already, but I
probably do it really inefficiently.
I can understand how if I had a platform that helped me do it,
(23:24):
it might get me 40 extra event days per year.
And I already know that every time there's an event we take an
extra 2 grand or 10 grand acrossthe state or whatever it is.
So I can go hmm 40 * 10 is 400 grand.
Fantastic. I mean, I'm in my head, I'm
thinking of use cases everywhere.
It's and it's crazy. And I think and and for you
(23:45):
going forward then, because you're only six months in really
into your personal journey, I suppose outside of a can I say
proper job? Is that what you say when you
when you become a founder? When does it become a proper
job? Is it proper?
It's proper job now, isn't it? Yeah, it's a proper job.
People are giving you money. It must be a proper job.
Yeah, you've got a little and everything these days.
So what is it like the future then?
So the vision of opener, I suppose.
I know you had your original vision, but I guess these things
(24:05):
evolve and adapt over time. What does it look like going
down the road? Yeah.
I mean, we ultimately want to bethe platform that helps
hospitality operators optimize their profitability.
Yeah. You know, so we're fundamentally
a plumbing product which you know, how do you get accurate
data quickly from A to B and we're spending loads of time
integrating into as many platforms as we can because
operators want us to be integrated from day one.
(24:27):
So we're adding point of sale systems, order and pay a table
platforms, website providers, digital print providers, we've
got Canva EX etcetera. So you can pump all that data
out. The second part of all of our
development and our long term vision is ultimately providing
tools within the platform to help our customers maximize that
margin opportunity, maximize sales, maximize volumes and
(24:48):
ultimately maximize profit. Which makes you a really
interesting product, right? Or exciting product because the
adoption is everything intact, right?
People actually using your product and finding benefit from
it. It sounds like you're already
there and going forward. And before I let you go and we
talk about how people get hold of you, I wanted to ask about
you mentioned singing at the start of the before before we
went on air. So it's handsome.
I can't remember why this had relevance, but yeah.
(25:09):
Tell us a little bit about your back, because you are you a
singer or you were? A singer sing part time just.
Are you still do it now though? Just for fun.
Yeah, once a month or something like that.
But in my younger years I spent a lot of time singing.
So I actually sang opera when I was 11, really 13, all over the
world and sang with Dizzee Rascal and I was.
(25:31):
I'm so glad I asked this question, but I was 20.
Because you're that's why we ask, because I was saying, oh,
welcome to your TV set. And you said, yeah, you were
former TV. You didn't say as a former TV
star, but. And what were you wanted?
What? What program you?
Want. Well, so if anyone sits down on
Christmas Eve and watches carolsfrom Kings, yeah.
Which is the choir at Cambridge that sings the Christmas carols
(25:51):
every Christmas Eve on Radio 4 and I'm BBC Two.
I was part of that for three years, OK.
That's going on with this great SO writing.
Around on YouTube there are somepretty scratchy videos of me
singing as part of that choir, wearing all my wearing all my
get up. The cooler thing that was on TV
was with Disney Rascal. We did a BBC Electric Prom.
That's very cool. House in Camden when I was God
(26:13):
21. Very cool.
So yeah, that would drop that where I go.
Well, you never know. Very.
Much my former life. But you see where our opening
goes, you just don't know. Do you look and if people want
to get hold of you or ask because I think what I loved
about tech on to start was talking to the founders.
I love it when you're at your early stage, when you're growing
and the ability to connect with the founder to understand your
principles and what you're doing.
(26:34):
Can people get hold of you? Is the LinkedIn the best way to
find you or? Yeah.
So I mean our website isweareopener.com, it's got all
the information about kind of who we are, our origin story,
kind of what we do. There's a little contact us form
on there as well as you can get in touch with me that way or you
can just connect with me on LinkedIn.
Joel Robinson. Lovely, and I presume we'll see
you on a stage soon somewhere. It's the busiest autumn.
(26:54):
Are you on stage? Yes, yeah, yeah, We're doing a
few conferences. I think we're doing the MCA.
Innovation. Oh, I'm there.
I'm talking to that one. We'll.
See you there? We're hosting a panel.
Oh yeah, me too, AI. I'm doing AI again.
I mean, I don't have ended up that guy, but yeah, anyway.
But lovely to see you, Joe. Good luck, mate.
I think it's fantastic what you're doing and we're enjoying
working with you as well. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for the pleasure. Bye.
Bye. Bye.
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