December 16, 2024 • 39 mins
Discover how Ryan O'Neil's Curate is revolutionizing the catering industry with cutting-edge technology that transforms event management for restaurants. From AI-powered insights to flexible workflow solutions, this game-changing platform helps food service professionals unlock new revenue streams, streamline operations, and create unforgettable dining experiences. Learn how multi-unit restaurant operators can strategically expand into event catering without overwhelming their existing business model.
CateringTech #RestaurantInnovation #FoodServiceStrategy
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CateringTech #RestaurantInnovation #FoodServiceStrategy
🫶 Subscribe NOW - Unlock a world of knowledge, innovation, and growth from the largest podcast network in food service! - https://savorfm.substack.com/
📈 Learn More ~ Restaurant Power Index featuring the top 50 brands' performance in consumer sentiment based on 12 performance markers in food, service, and overall brand consumer sentiment. The RPI features historical and current sentiment analysis for key brands based on the overall market sentiment data. Subscribe for weekly reports on the top brands in the restaurant industry. https://www.savor.fm/restaurant-power-index
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Good morning everybody here from Wiserbersh, Columbia. Today we're on
the Catering Cage where we make your catering dreams come true.
And today we're very, very excited to have an amazing guest.
This gentleman name is Ryan O'Neill, and Ryan has been
everything from math teacher to assistant pastor in his career.
He started a special event company, Proximate, ten or eleven
(00:36):
years ago. He was going to tell us all about it,
and of course he's launched and pivoted into technology and
software specifically for event catering. And welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Ryan, Yeah, thanks so much. I'm excited. I'm excited to
be here. That's key, but you know, excited to be here.
Outside of that, you're making me jealous.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, you know, this time of year, I tend to
spend half my time up from Wiserbergh, Columbia. So I
do a little bit of work, a little bit of skiing,
and you'll come. We'll go snowboarding. Be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, I'd love to. I'm very good at packing snow
Oh awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You know, Ryan, I have a really tough question for
you before we get going here for any Okay, Okay, Ryan,
what's your dream car?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
You know, I am not a superich harp person, but
I probably am driving the one that I wanted to
for a long time, which is just a Tesla pretty
much pretty much any of the Tesla's. My favorite car
was probably my my ninety eight stick shift Jeep, this
whole hunter green thing. I paid two thousand bucks for
it ten years ago and drove it for ten years.
So that's that's my personality. It's like my works. It
(01:37):
was an initiation. Every time we got a new employee
in the initiation was they had they had they had
to drive in that jeep cherokey. So it was a
really really fun experience. But on my side, I'm in
a Tesla.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Now and I love it nice. Well, you know, I'm
a stick shift guy, so I do like I do
like an old stick although now you know you got
the power, you know, it's different, but for sure, which
is fun too, but you know, not like it, not
like it used to be when you used to have
to do that clutch and you know all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah. Well, I didn't even know how to buy the
stick shift when I initially got the car. I had
to when I bought the car. I had to have
somebody go with me to drive it back. But it
was just may that maybe that expresses my personality. We're
going to do this thing. I don't know how to
do it, We're going to.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Do it awesome. Well, you know, Ryan, you and I.
You and I recently met. It's been recent times, and
I think in my investigation of catering technology and software,
I stumbled upon Curate and you were kind enough to
participate in the Restaurant Catering Workshop in Denver in October,
And you know, I really want to dive into specifically,
(02:43):
you know, event and custom catering versus you know, what
is this drop off catering, And maybe we could just
dive into that conversation, talk a little bit about AI
and what's happening as well. You know, So tell us
about Curate, like how did you start, what is your
focus and you know, what's the key vision that you
have for it?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Like you and my wife and I we started an
event company in twenty thirteen. In that process, so all
these little pieces moving around, we did very custom events,
and we realized it's got to be a software to
automate all of those pieces. And we couldn't find anything,
nothing out of the box at least, and so we
started creating it. We had a heavier focus on the
(03:22):
custom side, specifically when you look at everything from design
the food, You've got all these elements, and we started
seeing so many caterers that would come to us saying, hey,
we want to automate more slow. You know, they had
very unique companies where they did the design work, they
did the food work, They had so many pieces that
(03:43):
they worked on a custom side, and they just weren't
tools out there that were built for that. And so
that's where it started. I'm kind of an accidental founder.
I'm not either a tech expert nor am I a
catering expert. It's for me. It was just there was
a very particular problem and we just started listening to customers.
And the big thing that we love the most about
(04:04):
it is for us, it's looking at that custom catering
side of things. You know, if you can create a
system and a flow for a standard expectation of what's
going to come through the gates every single day, that
makes it super efficient. But when you're starting to get
into ten band twenty thousand, forty thousand, dollars events. It's
(04:24):
a it's a whole new world about what people expect,
the amount of time that you need to be communicating
the nuance to those conversations. So a lot of those
are pieces for us that we get really excited about.
Specifically that I mean, we just I was just talking
to a an interne company today that they're coming from
another software and it really doesn't have a level of
(04:46):
flexibility to deal with really unique problems in their company.
And that's that's where that's where we drive at and
get most excited about.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, so let's dive in there a little bit, right
in terms of event catering, I mean custom catering, these
are emotionally charged events, I think, right mostly.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, oh yeah, First, well, it depends. I'll talk to
some companies that seventy percent is corporate work and they
just they want very specific things, but they're going to
deliver for it. And other people I talked to ninety
percent is weddings, which is very that very highly charged
personal events that they're doing.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, so let's talk about that, like the differences between
your B to B customers and your B two C customers.
Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening
in your world on that.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Generally, the type of customers we've worked with, you know,
whether you're be to B or B two B C,
they're going to be asking a lot of questions about
what the vision of the customer. We call them the
grand customer in this scheme, are our customers customer what
their grand customer is looking for a lot of times
they can be something that they're like, hey, we love
(05:48):
the menu last year, let's just do that same thing.
But many times these people are experimenting with new or
different offerings at a much higher pace than companies that
have standard standard catering sheets that they're like, well, the
order or or we only order off menu. You know,
when we will look specifically at the menu, we have
(06:10):
this selection of items. So what we find is like
even on the business side, there are a lot of
people that will want specifics. I'll say, hey, I want this,
but you make it this way, or I've got a
particular allergy, or I've got a particular adjustment that needs
to be made to it, and so they'll use our
platform really to manage all of those different nuances for
it and on. On the difference between the two. A
(06:34):
lot of times to your point, they're more emotionally involved
when it's when it's a wedding and it's somebody that's
spending a lot of money. You've got a lot of
people that might not be used to doing this on
a day to day basis, and so they want to
be very involved in the process versus when they're when
our customer is dealing with a business, that business a
(06:54):
lot of times already has trust with them, and it's
a lot easier to spend something up and salesperson is
able to say at uy and z, and that business
will trust the want it right.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Right. So, so Ryan, here's a question for you. I mean,
my career, the last thirty years I've spent you know,
my career has been based on catering out of restaurants,
and you know, sort of the narrative has always been
that event catering is a different business. Okay, So the
business primarily that I've been involved in and focused on
is you know, what does this corporate based drop off
(07:23):
business look like? Right? So typical you know, lunch focus, breakfasts,
might be some snacks, more deervs. The differences between drop
off catering in a B to B environment versus catering
event catering in a B to B environment, those are
completely different animals. And you know, what is your experience
like are you are you doing both through curate or
(07:44):
what are you seeing out there?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah? Yeah, great question. Generally people that have a mix
will will do both through curate. If people have a
complete focus on these special events, on custom catering, that
they also would utilize CURATE. If people have general like
the ticket size is an easy way to say, if
your average ticket sizes four dollars, that's generally not a
(08:06):
curate customer. At this point, we're always asking the question
of how do we take the flexibility we've built and
we introduce it into more higher volume experience. But you're
looking at two thousand on average two to three thousand
dollars ticket for projects that are coming to curate a
lot of moving pieces, someone three six months ahead of
(08:26):
time instead of two weeks ahead of time, and so
there very much is a different flow. But we do
work with both. But generally if someone's doing both, we're
a perfect fit. But if someone's average ticket sizes, you know,
beneath five hundred dollars for their catering segment, then that
that's something that might need more repetitiveness in a different
product than what we provide.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Right. But essentially, I think, like you know, in terms
of the subtleties that you manage, I mean, I think
you're you're managing proposals, right, So people do that, I
guess in the language of event catering bank with event orders,
you're generating contracts and all that.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
And everybody has their way. I tell them. Everybody has
their own opinion on what EEO is and every right too,
they're all right, and they all say something different. Well, no,
it needs this and it doesn't need that, and that's
one of the complexities that we have to deal with.
And how we solve that is we just give we
We like to use the example that our platforms more
like Legos as opposed book and built software. More like Legos.
(09:24):
We can give you the pieces, and you plug the
pieces together in a way that makes sense for your company,
and then you just duplicate every single time. You're just
repeating on that. So that's been the take on how
we solve that. Every person has a different expectation of
what's in a BEEO. You can figure it in our
system and then you're just reusing that configuration every time.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, So are you working with restaurants as well restaurants?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Oh yeah, We've got some great restaurants that are part
of our platform for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
And what is the use case? Like are they using
it for private dining or off premises events or what
are they doing?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So the ones who uses the most prominently are using
as for like off premise events. We have a couple
of different use case. We've got some who they'll maybe
have a license for each of their stores. We've got
others where they've got like a central catering hub. Like
one of the most important things. One of the coolest
moments in my career was there is a particular customer
(10:16):
in Oklahoma City. They're a barbecue chain, and I was
in Portland with a catering customer. I was supposed to
fly down, but my flight got canceled and so I
was like, oh, I'm not going to be able to
make it, but it really was the only chance for
me to get down to see them, and so I
took my first Red Eye. I've never taken a Red
Eye before, so I bought the Red Eye and made
it down I literally walked off the plane into an uber,
(10:39):
walked in to go start training the mountain this and
that moment that day, Within two hours, they were already
sending out proposals from their custom catering user in our software.
But had I not kind of like pulled the trigger
and said, you know what, red Eye, I'm going to
just do the uncomfortable thing. We wanted to have learned
about their flow and the process at that restaurant chain's
(11:00):
using for that specific off catering or offspre catering segment
that they were doing.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah. Yeah, So Ryan, let me ask some questions like
do you have like multi unit production? Does that? Does
that live inside your technology where you have like yep,
so I could have five production facilities, but I want
to centralize my ordering, take orders.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And only That's what the example that I just gave
where they would they would send multiple like anytime they
would have a catering order that would come in, they
would send those orders directly to a central a central
production or commissary.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Is it always? Is it always centralized production or sometimes distributed?
It's a For example, let me give an example, I've
got ten restaurants and I want to do catering out
of every restaurant, and but I want to take my
orders through a call center for example. Is that something
that you could facilitate this time.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So we we've got we've got ordering, We've got the
accounting portions, being able to manage deposits and receivables and
all that. Right, you've got all the paperwork to be
able to generate you know, contracts and CEOs and all
the fun stuff. And I'm assuming at that point you
go into production as well. Can we talk about that
a little bit. What are you doing to help the
kitchens themselves actually fulfill the event commitments?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, we have as for some people, as fortunately or
as unfortunately as you want. I just got off a
call with a catering customer and they're like, well, maybe
that's a bad thing because now we have to deal
with this whole set of problems of the depth of production.
And in the end they're excited about it, but then
they realize, all right, we've got to start tackling some
(12:32):
problems that we've been ignoring in our company for for
a while. So yeah, we have we we focus on proposals, production, profitability.
That's that's our big thing is you have these custom
caated events and so on the production side, we've got everything.
You know, you have your invoice items that you're sending
out beneath that you have with the with these events,
so many small pieces that a lot of times you
(12:54):
just know that, hey, I got a smart personling it,
but you don't have a system managing it. And so
that be anything like your chafing dishes, right like what's
the cutlery that's going? What do we have account of those?
Do we have a way to automate that count? Maybe
we aren't showing this to the customer because this has
just got to be included, but we need to know
exactly what we need to be packed and put this.
(13:15):
So we've got a pack list under every one of
our line items. You have the ability to have a
recipe and it doesn't just mean food. A recipe could
mean any kind of component. It could be it could
be the chaking dish, could it could actually be the food.
And when you're dealing with custom caterers who are doing
unique things, or with restaurant chains that have that ability.
(13:37):
There's one restaurant change in particularly that I was chatting
with and they let well, one of their salespeople that
we were working with, and I was like, hey, what's
you know, what's to deal with it? It was very
interested in the decision, and they said, we were trying
to start selling State and these people came in with
the two hundred dollars per person budget and this salesperson
(13:57):
went back to our core you know everybody knows for
us for which was in this case barbecue as well.
But it's like, that's that we can do that for sure,
but that's not what this person was wanting in their event.
And if you're going to say, hey, the difference between
a twenty dollars per person and a two hundred dollars
per person event, like we're going to find a way
to be able to meet that. So on the production side,
(14:18):
a lot of times cares or companies with their catering
segment that they're trying to really fulfill very specific needs
of the customers. They might have food data beneath that.
A lot of times they will use the wrong ingredients,
but many times also use things like prep items. So
I don't need all the ingredients of the steak or
(14:39):
the barbecue, but I need this many alces of it.
Have the prepared aounts for it. So that's kind of
that middle ground for people that want to get deeper
into production without going all the way down.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
To the salt got it, got it, and so production.
What about delivery? Are you doing anything on delivery at all?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
For most of the time, our customers managing their own delivery.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay, but do you have any functional within the context
of your solution on delivery?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, well, for sure, you've got the ability to have
different configurable prints, so that delivery team member, you can
have your own configurable prints to that delivery team. That
might not matter for anyone else, but there are details
around the location, things like that that you want to
create that print. We have one of our customers that
they'll use. We created a custom portal for every order,
(15:24):
so it's not just hey, we've got an e commerce site.
We were on the other side. We're on the sales
side of it, and one custom they actually have two contracts.
If one contract is the core contract customer signing, and
the other is the delivery contract. So when the delivery
driver there goes, he has an iPad, he pulled it out,
we deliver everything great, and they actual sign off on
that iPad with us. That's nice believe that a lot
(15:46):
of people are using it on the delivery side.
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Speaker 1 (16:20):
Let's talk a little bit about integration, Ryan, what are
you seeing in terms of integration with other technologies, like
what are you doing through APIs or you know, where
is it in the ecosystem?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, so, again, like I said, we like to focus
on the proposal, production, profitability. Integration is a very very
big topic for us for this next year. We've been
building for a couple of years and we're at the
point now that we're saying, all right, how do we
dive deeper into the flows that people have already created.
We've got integrations with some phenomenal industry tools like now
(16:49):
stuff which is a staffing management tool. It's a really
great tool for being able to expand your staffing base
and then make sure it's got some cool tools where
it will automatically send up body who's a potential weight
staff or whatever for you and alert and it like
you kind of a fear of missing out situation where
you know, if I want the gig, I got to
(17:09):
be the first persion. It's like, yes, I want it.
So it's a really cool tool. We've got something an
integration with a tool called Galley, which is one of
the food data tools out there.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Galli is a great product.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, they're doing a great job and everyone
is excited. We're the only native integration with Galley, and
so for us, we've seen a lot of progress from
that specific integration, especially when you're dealing with larger amounts
of food data, when you're needing to go beyond, when
maybe you do want to go to the salt and
that's something that we don't integrate with Cisco, but they do.
(17:43):
So we found what's common right now in the industry,
the parts and pieces approach where twenty years ago, thirty
years ago, this is the world. You're very familiar with.
It's like, we've got to do everything in one software. Right.
One's going to be accounting, it's going to be the
dog groomer, it's going to be everything for you. Where
we're seeing this shift, a dramatic shift where people are
(18:04):
comfortable saying, you know what, here's how these two pieces
connect together. We're going to use this for the thing
that it does well, and this other thing for the
thing that that does well.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah. Perfect. And what about AI, Brian, what are you
doing there? Anything you're seeing in the world of AI?
I have an impacts of end catering.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Oh my gosh, I think one of the benefits of
AI in this specific space. And I did an entire talk.
I was at a catering conference in Las Vegas a
couple of months ago. I did an entire talk on this.
The benefits of catering is that AI can replace a
lot a lot of things, but AI cannot at this
(18:40):
point replace human experiences. And so this is Ryan Wheel's
theory for whatever it's worth, I truly feel like that
departs our industries that are by grow and not be
disrupted by AI over the next ten fifteen years or
anytime you have humans getting together right, you have these
human experience. So I think that there's actually a huge
(19:02):
win in the catering segment here. But the thing is
because AI is not replacing this industry. I did an
interview with somebody that was a voiceover artist. It was
a full time voiceover artist, and anytime we interview a
potential employee, we always ask hey, why not, like what's
making you open to opportunities? And he said, Man, I've
been a full time voice for artists for several years
(19:23):
and the AI has completely disrupted this industry, Like, I'm
not it anymore, and I got to find I got
to find a job that's doing something that's not voiceover.
So we're seeing that in some industries, but the place
in catering that we're seeing is to compliment and to
give insights and ways that we haven't been able for.
So we just launched an AI tool within our platform
(19:44):
where any of your reporting, you can generate a report
or a data export from our system and you can
actually just ask open GPT open AI questions around that data,
like hey, what was our most profitable events? What kind
of things should we be considering if this is our
data from twenty twenty four, what kind of things should
we be considering for twenty twenty five? And it is
(20:04):
phenomenal the amount of insights that it can take just
by taking a little bit of data, handing it in,
letting it know about your company, and then handing back
some things you should be thinking about over county.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, super interesting. So using AI to querate the database
to get information more quickly to make better decisions, that's.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Prette, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, yeah, And what about workflows like sales workflows or
production workflows? Are you seeing it integrated there yet?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So I think that there's a play there. I for
sure think there's a play there. But what one of
their models that I've seen that I'm most interesting is
like what Hobspot's done with AI. Instead of it being like, hey,
the AI is going to do everything, the AI sets
up a configuration, it says hey, does this look right?
And then you, as as human you're looking through it's saying, yeah,
this looks right. And I'm sure over time there's going
(20:51):
to be a level of machine learning that will place that,
But right now, the most the most that I'm seeing
that's efficient is a model like that, So I can
see as taking a model like that at some point.
We already have automations our system, so you know, when
you're a week out from a payment being due, you know,
especially in these custom catering events, you've got two, three,
five payments, we can automate automatically send out emails so
(21:12):
that you don't have an eight and account's restivable team
member having to go send out this email or have
the salesperson, for goodness sake, like have to go manage
payments for a deal that they've already closed, like let
that sales sell. So we've got tools like that built in.
But from an AI perspective, what I'm seeing is really
it's more of a compliment to that flow more so
than a replacement to that flow.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah. Yeah, it makes total sense, Ran. So you know,
let me ask you a question. Let's pivot a little
bit into you know, let's talk about restaurants, and let's
talk about specifically multi unit restaurant operators. Can we do
that for a minute, Yeah, for sure. As you know,
primarily their businesses built around retail. You know, there's a
lot of pressure on the kitchens as it relates to
(21:56):
third party marketplaces, you know, door Dash, Uber Eats, grab
a houb and then there's of course first party ordering,
which they you know, coming direct to them, and they've
got channels, right, So the takeout channel is a channel
typically you know, small value orders. It's just you know,
people place it for now. You know that kind of dynamic, right.
And then different from that is you have the corporate
(22:18):
drop off business, which you know is a simpler business, right,
it's not event catering, but it's the ability to be
able to take in order, generate an invoice to the production,
do the assembly and packaging, drop it off, and of
course you have the sales teams, you're organizing, you have
some accounting in there, and then of course through the
APIs you're there. They're basically the ecosystem where multi unit
(22:40):
restaurant operators are inserting catering solutions is they're connecting into
the APIs, into the overall systems. Okay, So it sits
as a subsystem the way I see curated. It's another subsystem, okay,
and it's it's it's it's interesting because I think as
I look at your solution and I look at other solutions,
there's crossover, right, there's a lot of crossover. You and
(23:02):
I have talked a lot about this, right, which is
I think why you primarily took an interest in some
of what was going on in sort of in my world,
which is, can Curate take what it has and you know,
pivot just a little bit into this corporate drop off
business in a multiunit restaurant environment And that's a channel itself.
(23:22):
But the other part of that is what is the
opportunity for event catering within the context of multiunit restaurant companies?
And of course many of them have private dining and
they're using other solutions out there for it. But I
just wonder if you could speak to that, like are
you working with any large scale groups at all? And
if the answer is no, that's okay. I would like
to just understand your thinking around you know, what is
(23:44):
a chain that has fifty restaurants, for example, how do
they approach event catering and how can they use Curate
to help them with that as part of the subsystem.
And then the second part of that question is do
you see yourself moving into that corporate drop off business,
which essentially is where the crossover is. What do you
think about that?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, there's a lot baked in there. We absolutely have
some phenomenal restaurant groups that utilize our platform. Generally, they're
using us like we chatted about earlier, like in a
commissary type setup right where they're sending sales to a
central place versus utilizing us at each individual location. It's
(24:26):
that The thing that I get so excited about in
this area is what we have built. We've dealt with
the complex stuff already. We've already built the complex stuff,
and it's a lot easier as we are trying with
more of these restaurant chains to be able to configure
something that's already configurable and then taking something that's not
(24:47):
configurable and giving them that in depth. So, like I said,
as AI is growing, as we're seeing we're going to
see the industry shift, and we're going to see people
wanting better and deeper experiences for their customers, and they're
going to want to be a part of those better. Indeed,
if someone is a super fan of your brand and
they want you at their wedding, like absolutely, let's find
(25:08):
a way to be able to be involved in that.
And so what we found is that it's a lot
easier to be able to set restrictions and constraints on
the flexibility of what our tool can do. Then if
we had come in opposite perspective, which is like, oh great,
we're an e commerce solution and now us build deeper
into the workflows that exists. So you know, we at
(25:30):
this point have really focused on the customer catering when
you've got a salesperson personally working through the details of
these things versus that e commerce experience. But it's a
big thing that people ask for. I mean, already today
I've had two customers have been like, oh, that would
be phenomenal if you had this e commerce tool. Just
sign up with us, even though we don't have it,
because we solve such a big need in this custom
(25:52):
side of things. So that's the big thing for us
is we just listened to customers and as customers come
in giving us the feedback on that you understand ordering
systems that the big challenge for us has always been,
I'll just be super transparent. It's always been the depth
of customization that we offer underneath the invoice, but then
tying that to an e comm where it's like plus
(26:14):
a dollar for bacon, that's really hard. We have bacon
as the recipe but now you're actually making bacon a
line item at that point. It's their dynamic say that
we're still working through. But yeah, we're seeing the opportunity there.
This month has been not so I'm so glad I
had time to set up this meeting. I've already been
five six customercalls already this morning and now ten o'clock
(26:36):
this time. So it's been a really good time period
for us. But that these are the kind of ways
that we're approaching the problem and we absolutely love chatting
with these brands that are seeing the opportunity here.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Well, this is the season, Ryan, this is it. Man
just says like, you know, we're here, we it's it's
it's full steam ahead until what December twenty third, twenty fourth.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah, it's going to be crazy. And that's a hard
part though. You've got all these corporate dinner Christmas parties.
But people want to be ready for January. They want
to be able to watch something, implement something in January.
So this is when you have to make that decision,
even though it's your busiest time.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah. Yeah, something I want to talk about. Ryan just
kind of like and this is more sort of just
a direction maybe the word custom catering for multi restaurant
operators is very scary. Okay, So you know typically you know,
in those environments, I mean some of them are franchise systems,
menus are fixed. They actually don't want people going off
(27:36):
the menus because that's all control, right, that's all to
do with the reporting. It's all connected, right. So I
guess what I would want to understand and talk to
you about is are you seeing customers of yours who
are just not doing custom catering but in fact they're
just selling their packages? Are you seeing that?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Absolutely? And when you say custom catering, that's what custom
catering is to me.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Custom catering is like, hey, earl, you know, I'll take
your you know, roast beef dinner and it's amazing and
I love it off the menu and I know, you
know you've got baked potatoes, but actually I don't want
baked potatoes. What I want is I want mashed potatoes
and champagne glasses. That's custom, that's like for that client, Okay.
And my experience within a restaurant environment, especially especially in
(28:23):
a fast casual, especially casual dining, is that the sophistication
within the kitchen and the training of people isn't there,
and so it's very risky for them to go down
a custom catering process in those environments. And so, you know,
just as we think about it and custom catering, you know,
it works for the caterers because you know, they're one
(28:45):
of and that's what they do, and that's great. And
it might work for the odd restaurant here and there
that has one restaurant, or it might work for a
group of restaurants that has a central commissary and there's
event catering is separate. I think about like Wolfgang Puck
for example, right in the restaurant business, in the full
on manufacturing business, in the drop off catering business, in
the event catering business. I mean, it's all these different channels, right,
(29:09):
But you know, my primary interest lays within how do
you scale catering across these systems? And in my experience,
custom catering is a very challenging thing to do in
terms of controlling quality and cost, and it doesn't necessarily
work well for multiunit restaurant operators. And so the recommendation
I always make is say, look, when you look at
your catering business, you have to look at your subchannels. Right,
(29:31):
there's drop off catering. There might be like a setup
and retrieve type catering where it's basically like the same
as drop off, except I go in, I'm setting it up,
I'm standing there, I'm cleaning up, I'm taking everything away
after you know. And then of course you have a
full lot event catering, right, which is a different animal.
Those are the three things that I typically see within
the environments of catering, and you sit at the right
(29:53):
end of the spectrum. What I'm really interested in is
is do you see as part of the vision for
curate where you can backfill in the other direction, which
is to take some of the subtleties of your solution now,
which as you said, has some limitations within the context
of drop off caring and certainly within the ecosystem of
(30:14):
being able to connect into the other technology providers like
point of sales systems, loyalty systems, et cetera. Do you
see yourself ever, kind of migrating into that spot, because
I think there's a huge opportunity and in a massive
gap that has to get filled there.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, Well, whether we like it or not, it's happening. Yeah,
We've got customers who are coming in from different restaurant
groups who are saying, hey, we to your point, there's
there's it's not an answer, like what is customer care?
They like these there's like this variance between Every person
has their own interpretation. You know, maybe one restaurant can
(30:51):
be able to get away with the champagne glasses because
they've got a separate provider for this. It's not there
doing anything that's really for them. That custom catering experience
is about a salesperson who's going to help that client
and help vision even if the restaurant themselves aren't fulfilling
every piece of that, you know. So that's a big
piece of it. And for us, that's happening one way
(31:13):
or the other. We absolutely are are seeing customers request
more of that automated standard menu setup and a lot
of customers still use our software.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Here's so many restaurant groups that are coming to us
from things like Cateries or these other legacy tools that
give you a list of options that are on your
menu and you just stick with that versus going in
and then adjusting and adapting those. So that's I think
that first play on that is still having a flexible
tool that work just the same as like a cateries
(31:46):
has historically within that organization, you know. But then at
the same time you have that ability to select your
menu maybe just stay on menu. But then I think
that's that second step forward that you're describing for Press
at least is customer driven, where the customer is able
to set this up and do this, and we we
have that on a roadmap. We don't don't have the
(32:06):
time they are they associated with it, but it's something
that certainly is not our roadmap to do.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Awesome. That's great, great answer, Brian. So, so how big
is your team? How many people are working?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, we've got twenty twenty team members.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Nice, We've got.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
A phenomenal team. We've seen a lot of growth, especially
over the past few months. We've seen some really cool
opportunities that have come up in the market. And so
we're we're in the middle of strategizing about what what
twenty twenty five is going to look like.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Great and how is the Restaurant Catering Workshop in Denver?
How is it?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Oh? I really enjoyed it. There's so much that you
can learn from that a lot of a lot of
opinions on on the right fate for where does the
pos you know is the pos? What what rules them all?
The wondering to rule them all if you will, versus
like creating space for that. I really enjoyed getting connect
with so many, so many other of the restaurant and
(32:58):
other vendors that were there.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Sure, that's great, that's great. Well, Ryan, let's so, let
let me ask you a question around strategy just for
a moment. This is an operator strategy. So you know,
if you if you're you know, in a boardroom of
a restaurant company, multi unit restaurant, they're you know, they're
maximizing their off premises. They might have some private dining
and they don't currently do event catering, but they're thinking
about it. What is your recommendation, like what should they
(33:23):
do in your mind to be able to maximize the
opportunity and create you know, memorable opportunities for their customers.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, well you need to bring in somebody with experience.
It's got to other people.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
So leadership, So would you recommend a separate leader for
event catering?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
It depends on the strategy, you know, Like in that border.
If the strategy is, hey, we need to grow into
the millions, then then for for sure, like you need
to be able to have a specific key point a
lot of people. The thing is, if you're if you're
at let's just say a thirty restaurant chain, it's already happening.
You're already doing event catering is just in an unexpected way.
(34:02):
Probably you can find a store that has a large
segment of their business that due to the geography or
or that the demographics of the area are utilizing that
restaurant for this. So it's finding those places that this
is already happening and then seeing if we can get
structure that and be able to dive deeper into that
(34:24):
if that's something that is reproducible at scale. And part
of the key thing though is going to be able
to bring in leadership who has experienced both in the
restaurant space as well as in this event catering segment.
And you run into so many problems that could come,
but the key thing is really you want to start
at a lighter level of this, right, So so don't
(34:45):
don't go from where you're at to you know, full
on full staff. Two hundred thousand dollars weddings right away.
You want to be able to say, okay, like what
if what if we did weddings, you know, and then
what if it's still a setup provide a setup service
for this particular wedding and event. But that's that's the
extent that you know, we're et cetera, y'all. You're a
(35:05):
bit my wife and I we we we had a
minimum of a minimum spend of five thousand dollars. If
you wanted to work with us, our entire wedding costs
three thousand dollars. We would have been a perfect candle
for this segment of a restaurant saying let's create your
reception at more than you wouldn't barely.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Do right, right, And and you know a lot of
brands said that certainly that we work with have food trucks,
you know, and and I mean the food truck is
an interesting idea in the sense that, you know, if
somebody wants to bring a food truck on site and
feed five hundred people, for example, isn't that a vent catering?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Isn't that absolutely Because to that point, you're you're all
of your flow of preparation. It's not You're not a
food truck that's saying, hey, let's go out, let's see
what we can sell today.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, you already know what you're selling, what needs to
be packed, but needs to be produced. And so even
though it looks like a food truck, it's really an
event cator truck.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, yeah for sure. And and of course you know
floral and rentals, labor, all your solution helps to manage
all of that, right, Oh, absolutely amazing. Well, Ryan, it's
been amazing. Is there anything else you want to share?
Maybe where can people find you and maybe tell us
a little bit about like what's your vision for the
next five years?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
That's say, yeah, absolutely, well you can find it that
Curate that code. If you want to shoot me Anuil personally,
it's Brian Curate that co. Glad to answer there any
questions you have. Our big thing here. We've been around
for about ten years, but I built the first version
of the software and I'm not a programmer, so a
couple of years ago we started rebuilding from scratch. And
(36:39):
the response of what we've been able to build having
been in the industry, having found the solution, but been
able to start over and rebuild. Our product has been
absolutely phenomenal. We've been able to build things this in
for the last two years we've been in building mode.
Twenty twenty five for US twenty twenty six goes beyond. Hey,
we built the thing. You know. I was on a
(36:59):
call with a caterer the other day and I realized,
just as I was shuing this soft firm, like this
is this is what I personally have always dreamed of,
you know, like they're the core needs of this market.
Now it's saying, all right, we've got the core right,
We've got the foundation right, you know, where do we
want to go from there? And so our vision really
comes down to customers. We want to impact a lot
(37:21):
more customers, a lot more weddings and events, and so
that's that's the big thing that's going to be driving
our decision over the next couple of years is, Hey,
how how do we put ourselves through either an integration
path or through specifically focusing on particular niches. How do
we put ourselves in the hands of more customers? Because
because we really have created it, in my biased opinion,
(37:44):
the best tool in the industry for this specific problem
that we're trying to solve and so how do we
put ourselves in more hands of people that can actually
use the thing that built. But we've been very passionate
about that. We've got a full team just abplutely passionate
about One of our teams with there's there's a big
called wedding MBA, and one of our teams went there
and was talking with a caterer there and we were
(38:05):
a little bit short staffed on the sales site, so
he was a developer And this just tells you how
passionate our team is. And they were talking about, you know,
some very specific production related items of scaling up and
down recipes, and literally that night, instead of going out
and hanging out in Vegas, he went back to his
hotel room and built out the for this. It came
(38:28):
back the next day and I talked to one of
them on the on the Occult on Friday where they're like,
that was so amazing that he literally like went and
within how we build But he solved that problem. So
we got a team passionate about this, and I'm excited
to see what happens in the next couple of years
through it.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Amazing, Ryan, that's awesome. Well, folks, here you have it.
You heard from Ryan O'Neil. He's the CEO at Curate.
Curate this event management software and catering software, and if
you're thinking about a catering event, catering segment of your
catering operation, Ryan is the guy to calls. So Hey, Ryan,
thanks for being with us today. It's been a pleasure
and making some time for us. And good luck with
everything and we'll talk again soon.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
M H.
Good morning everybody here from Wiserbersh, Columbia. Today we're on
the Catering Cage where we make your catering dreams come true.
And today we're very, very excited to have an amazing guest.
This gentleman name is Ryan O'Neill, and Ryan has been
everything from math teacher to assistant pastor in his career.
He started a special event company, Proximate, ten or eleven
(00:36):
years ago. He was going to tell us all about it,
and of course he's launched and pivoted into technology and
software specifically for event catering. And welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Ryan, Yeah, thanks so much. I'm excited. I'm excited to
be here. That's key, but you know, excited to be here.
Outside of that, you're making me jealous.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, you know, this time of year, I tend to
spend half my time up from Wiserbergh, Columbia. So I
do a little bit of work, a little bit of skiing,
and you'll come. We'll go snowboarding. Be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, I'd love to. I'm very good at packing snow
Oh awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You know, Ryan, I have a really tough question for
you before we get going here for any Okay, Okay, Ryan,
what's your dream car?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
You know, I am not a superich harp person, but
I probably am driving the one that I wanted to
for a long time, which is just a Tesla pretty
much pretty much any of the Tesla's. My favorite car
was probably my my ninety eight stick shift Jeep, this
whole hunter green thing. I paid two thousand bucks for
it ten years ago and drove it for ten years.
So that's that's my personality. It's like my works. It
(01:37):
was an initiation. Every time we got a new employee
in the initiation was they had they had they had
to drive in that jeep cherokey. So it was a
really really fun experience. But on my side, I'm in
a Tesla.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Now and I love it nice. Well, you know, I'm
a stick shift guy, so I do like I do
like an old stick although now you know you got
the power, you know, it's different, but for sure, which
is fun too, but you know, not like it, not
like it used to be when you used to have
to do that clutch and you know all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah. Well, I didn't even know how to buy the
stick shift when I initially got the car. I had
to when I bought the car. I had to have
somebody go with me to drive it back. But it
was just may that maybe that expresses my personality. We're
going to do this thing. I don't know how to
do it, We're going to.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Do it awesome. Well, you know, Ryan, you and I.
You and I recently met. It's been recent times, and
I think in my investigation of catering technology and software,
I stumbled upon Curate and you were kind enough to
participate in the Restaurant Catering Workshop in Denver in October,
And you know, I really want to dive into specifically,
(02:43):
you know, event and custom catering versus you know, what
is this drop off catering, And maybe we could just
dive into that conversation, talk a little bit about AI
and what's happening as well. You know, So tell us
about Curate, like how did you start, what is your
focus and you know, what's the key vision that you
have for it?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Like you and my wife and I we started an
event company in twenty thirteen. In that process, so all
these little pieces moving around, we did very custom events,
and we realized it's got to be a software to
automate all of those pieces. And we couldn't find anything,
nothing out of the box at least, and so we
started creating it. We had a heavier focus on the
(03:22):
custom side, specifically when you look at everything from design
the food, You've got all these elements, and we started
seeing so many caterers that would come to us saying, hey,
we want to automate more slow. You know, they had
very unique companies where they did the design work, they
did the food work, They had so many pieces that
(03:43):
they worked on a custom side, and they just weren't
tools out there that were built for that. And so
that's where it started. I'm kind of an accidental founder.
I'm not either a tech expert nor am I a
catering expert. It's for me. It was just there was
a very particular problem and we just started listening to customers.
And the big thing that we love the most about
(04:04):
it is for us, it's looking at that custom catering
side of things. You know, if you can create a
system and a flow for a standard expectation of what's
going to come through the gates every single day, that
makes it super efficient. But when you're starting to get
into ten band twenty thousand, forty thousand, dollars events. It's
(04:24):
a it's a whole new world about what people expect,
the amount of time that you need to be communicating
the nuance to those conversations. So a lot of those
are pieces for us that we get really excited about.
Specifically that I mean, we just I was just talking
to a an interne company today that they're coming from
another software and it really doesn't have a level of
(04:46):
flexibility to deal with really unique problems in their company.
And that's that's where that's where we drive at and
get most excited about.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, so let's dive in there a little bit, right
in terms of event catering, I mean custom catering, these
are emotionally charged events, I think, right mostly.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, oh yeah, First, well, it depends. I'll talk to
some companies that seventy percent is corporate work and they
just they want very specific things, but they're going to
deliver for it. And other people I talked to ninety
percent is weddings, which is very that very highly charged
personal events that they're doing.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, so let's talk about that, like the differences between
your B to B customers and your B two C customers.
Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening
in your world on that.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Generally, the type of customers we've worked with, you know,
whether you're be to B or B two B C,
they're going to be asking a lot of questions about
what the vision of the customer. We call them the
grand customer in this scheme, are our customers customer what
their grand customer is looking for a lot of times
they can be something that they're like, hey, we love
(05:48):
the menu last year, let's just do that same thing.
But many times these people are experimenting with new or
different offerings at a much higher pace than companies that
have standard standard catering sheets that they're like, well, the
order or or we only order off menu. You know,
when we will look specifically at the menu, we have
(06:10):
this selection of items. So what we find is like
even on the business side, there are a lot of
people that will want specifics. I'll say, hey, I want this,
but you make it this way, or I've got a
particular allergy, or I've got a particular adjustment that needs
to be made to it, and so they'll use our
platform really to manage all of those different nuances for
it and on. On the difference between the two. A
(06:34):
lot of times to your point, they're more emotionally involved
when it's when it's a wedding and it's somebody that's
spending a lot of money. You've got a lot of
people that might not be used to doing this on
a day to day basis, and so they want to
be very involved in the process versus when they're when
our customer is dealing with a business, that business a
(06:54):
lot of times already has trust with them, and it's
a lot easier to spend something up and salesperson is
able to say at uy and z, and that business
will trust the want it right.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Right. So, so Ryan, here's a question for you. I mean,
my career, the last thirty years I've spent you know,
my career has been based on catering out of restaurants,
and you know, sort of the narrative has always been
that event catering is a different business. Okay, So the
business primarily that I've been involved in and focused on
is you know, what does this corporate based drop off
(07:23):
business look like? Right? So typical you know, lunch focus, breakfasts,
might be some snacks, more deervs. The differences between drop
off catering in a B to B environment versus catering
event catering in a B to B environment, those are
completely different animals. And you know, what is your experience
like are you are you doing both through curate or
(07:44):
what are you seeing out there?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah? Yeah, great question. Generally people that have a mix
will will do both through curate. If people have a
complete focus on these special events, on custom catering, that
they also would utilize CURATE. If people have general like
the ticket size is an easy way to say, if
your average ticket sizes four dollars, that's generally not a
(08:06):
curate customer. At this point, we're always asking the question
of how do we take the flexibility we've built and
we introduce it into more higher volume experience. But you're
looking at two thousand on average two to three thousand
dollars ticket for projects that are coming to curate a
lot of moving pieces, someone three six months ahead of
(08:26):
time instead of two weeks ahead of time, and so
there very much is a different flow. But we do
work with both. But generally if someone's doing both, we're
a perfect fit. But if someone's average ticket sizes, you know,
beneath five hundred dollars for their catering segment, then that
that's something that might need more repetitiveness in a different
product than what we provide.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Right. But essentially, I think, like you know, in terms
of the subtleties that you manage, I mean, I think
you're you're managing proposals, right, So people do that, I
guess in the language of event catering bank with event orders,
you're generating contracts and all that.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
And everybody has their way. I tell them. Everybody has
their own opinion on what EEO is and every right too,
they're all right, and they all say something different. Well, no,
it needs this and it doesn't need that, and that's
one of the complexities that we have to deal with.
And how we solve that is we just give we
We like to use the example that our platforms more
like Legos as opposed book and built software. More like Legos.
(09:24):
We can give you the pieces, and you plug the
pieces together in a way that makes sense for your company,
and then you just duplicate every single time. You're just
repeating on that. So that's been the take on how
we solve that. Every person has a different expectation of
what's in a BEEO. You can figure it in our
system and then you're just reusing that configuration every time.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, So are you working with restaurants as well restaurants?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Oh yeah, We've got some great restaurants that are part
of our platform for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
And what is the use case? Like are they using
it for private dining or off premises events or what
are they doing?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So the ones who uses the most prominently are using
as for like off premise events. We have a couple
of different use case. We've got some who they'll maybe
have a license for each of their stores. We've got
others where they've got like a central catering hub. Like
one of the most important things. One of the coolest
moments in my career was there is a particular customer
(10:16):
in Oklahoma City. They're a barbecue chain, and I was
in Portland with a catering customer. I was supposed to
fly down, but my flight got canceled and so I
was like, oh, I'm not going to be able to
make it, but it really was the only chance for
me to get down to see them, and so I
took my first Red Eye. I've never taken a Red
Eye before, so I bought the Red Eye and made
it down I literally walked off the plane into an uber,
(10:39):
walked in to go start training the mountain this and
that moment that day, Within two hours, they were already
sending out proposals from their custom catering user in our software.
But had I not kind of like pulled the trigger
and said, you know what, red Eye, I'm going to
just do the uncomfortable thing. We wanted to have learned
about their flow and the process at that restaurant chain's
(11:00):
using for that specific off catering or offspre catering segment
that they were doing.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah. Yeah, So Ryan, let me ask some questions like
do you have like multi unit production? Does that? Does
that live inside your technology where you have like yep,
so I could have five production facilities, but I want
to centralize my ordering, take orders.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And only That's what the example that I just gave
where they would they would send multiple like anytime they
would have a catering order that would come in, they
would send those orders directly to a central a central
production or commissary.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Is it always? Is it always centralized production or sometimes distributed?
It's a For example, let me give an example, I've
got ten restaurants and I want to do catering out
of every restaurant, and but I want to take my
orders through a call center for example. Is that something
that you could facilitate this time.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So we we've got we've got ordering, We've got the
accounting portions, being able to manage deposits and receivables and
all that. Right, you've got all the paperwork to be
able to generate you know, contracts and CEOs and all
the fun stuff. And I'm assuming at that point you
go into production as well. Can we talk about that
a little bit. What are you doing to help the
kitchens themselves actually fulfill the event commitments?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, we have as for some people, as fortunately or
as unfortunately as you want. I just got off a
call with a catering customer and they're like, well, maybe
that's a bad thing because now we have to deal
with this whole set of problems of the depth of production.
And in the end they're excited about it, but then
they realize, all right, we've got to start tackling some
(12:32):
problems that we've been ignoring in our company for for
a while. So yeah, we have we we focus on proposals, production, profitability.
That's that's our big thing is you have these custom
caated events and so on the production side, we've got everything.
You know, you have your invoice items that you're sending
out beneath that you have with the with these events,
so many small pieces that a lot of times you
(12:54):
just know that, hey, I got a smart personling it,
but you don't have a system managing it. And so
that be anything like your chafing dishes, right like what's
the cutlery that's going? What do we have account of those?
Do we have a way to automate that count? Maybe
we aren't showing this to the customer because this has
just got to be included, but we need to know
exactly what we need to be packed and put this.
(13:15):
So we've got a pack list under every one of
our line items. You have the ability to have a
recipe and it doesn't just mean food. A recipe could
mean any kind of component. It could be it could
be the chaking dish, could it could actually be the food.
And when you're dealing with custom caterers who are doing
unique things, or with restaurant chains that have that ability.
(13:37):
There's one restaurant change in particularly that I was chatting
with and they let well, one of their salespeople that
we were working with, and I was like, hey, what's
you know, what's to deal with it? It was very
interested in the decision, and they said, we were trying
to start selling State and these people came in with
the two hundred dollars per person budget and this salesperson
(13:57):
went back to our core you know everybody knows for
us for which was in this case barbecue as well.
But it's like, that's that we can do that for sure,
but that's not what this person was wanting in their event.
And if you're going to say, hey, the difference between
a twenty dollars per person and a two hundred dollars
per person event, like we're going to find a way
to be able to meet that. So on the production side,
(14:18):
a lot of times cares or companies with their catering
segment that they're trying to really fulfill very specific needs
of the customers. They might have food data beneath that.
A lot of times they will use the wrong ingredients,
but many times also use things like prep items. So
I don't need all the ingredients of the steak or
(14:39):
the barbecue, but I need this many alces of it.
Have the prepared aounts for it. So that's kind of
that middle ground for people that want to get deeper
into production without going all the way down.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
To the salt got it, got it, and so production.
What about delivery? Are you doing anything on delivery at all?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
For most of the time, our customers managing their own delivery.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay, but do you have any functional within the context
of your solution on delivery?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, well, for sure, you've got the ability to have
different configurable prints, so that delivery team member, you can
have your own configurable prints to that delivery team. That
might not matter for anyone else, but there are details
around the location, things like that that you want to
create that print. We have one of our customers that
they'll use. We created a custom portal for every order,
(15:24):
so it's not just hey, we've got an e commerce site.
We were on the other side. We're on the sales
side of it, and one custom they actually have two contracts.
If one contract is the core contract customer signing, and
the other is the delivery contract. So when the delivery
driver there goes, he has an iPad, he pulled it out,
we deliver everything great, and they actual sign off on
that iPad with us. That's nice believe that a lot
(15:46):
of people are using it on the delivery side.
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Speaker 1 (16:20):
Let's talk a little bit about integration, Ryan, what are
you seeing in terms of integration with other technologies, like
what are you doing through APIs or you know, where
is it in the ecosystem?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, so, again, like I said, we like to focus
on the proposal, production, profitability. Integration is a very very
big topic for us for this next year. We've been
building for a couple of years and we're at the
point now that we're saying, all right, how do we
dive deeper into the flows that people have already created.
We've got integrations with some phenomenal industry tools like now
(16:49):
stuff which is a staffing management tool. It's a really
great tool for being able to expand your staffing base
and then make sure it's got some cool tools where
it will automatically send up body who's a potential weight
staff or whatever for you and alert and it like
you kind of a fear of missing out situation where
you know, if I want the gig, I got to
(17:09):
be the first persion. It's like, yes, I want it.
So it's a really cool tool. We've got something an
integration with a tool called Galley, which is one of
the food data tools out there.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Galli is a great product.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, they're doing a great job and everyone
is excited. We're the only native integration with Galley, and
so for us, we've seen a lot of progress from
that specific integration, especially when you're dealing with larger amounts
of food data, when you're needing to go beyond, when
maybe you do want to go to the salt and
that's something that we don't integrate with Cisco, but they do.
(17:43):
So we found what's common right now in the industry,
the parts and pieces approach where twenty years ago, thirty
years ago, this is the world. You're very familiar with.
It's like, we've got to do everything in one software. Right.
One's going to be accounting, it's going to be the
dog groomer, it's going to be everything for you. Where
we're seeing this shift, a dramatic shift where people are
(18:04):
comfortable saying, you know what, here's how these two pieces
connect together. We're going to use this for the thing
that it does well, and this other thing for the
thing that that does well.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah. Perfect. And what about AI, Brian, what are you
doing there? Anything you're seeing in the world of AI?
I have an impacts of end catering.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Oh my gosh, I think one of the benefits of
AI in this specific space. And I did an entire talk.
I was at a catering conference in Las Vegas a
couple of months ago. I did an entire talk on this.
The benefits of catering is that AI can replace a
lot a lot of things, but AI cannot at this
(18:40):
point replace human experiences. And so this is Ryan Wheel's
theory for whatever it's worth, I truly feel like that
departs our industries that are by grow and not be
disrupted by AI over the next ten fifteen years or
anytime you have humans getting together right, you have these
human experience. So I think that there's actually a huge
(19:02):
win in the catering segment here. But the thing is
because AI is not replacing this industry. I did an
interview with somebody that was a voiceover artist. It was
a full time voiceover artist, and anytime we interview a
potential employee, we always ask hey, why not, like what's
making you open to opportunities? And he said, Man, I've
been a full time voice for artists for several years
(19:23):
and the AI has completely disrupted this industry, Like, I'm
not it anymore, and I got to find I got
to find a job that's doing something that's not voiceover.
So we're seeing that in some industries, but the place
in catering that we're seeing is to compliment and to
give insights and ways that we haven't been able for.
So we just launched an AI tool within our platform
(19:44):
where any of your reporting, you can generate a report
or a data export from our system and you can
actually just ask open GPT open AI questions around that data,
like hey, what was our most profitable events? What kind
of things should we be considering if this is our
data from twenty twenty four, what kind of things should
we be considering for twenty twenty five? And it is
(20:04):
phenomenal the amount of insights that it can take just
by taking a little bit of data, handing it in,
letting it know about your company, and then handing back
some things you should be thinking about over county.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, super interesting. So using AI to querate the database
to get information more quickly to make better decisions, that's.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Prette, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, yeah, And what about workflows like sales workflows or
production workflows? Are you seeing it integrated there yet?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So I think that there's a play there. I for
sure think there's a play there. But what one of
their models that I've seen that I'm most interesting is
like what Hobspot's done with AI. Instead of it being like, hey,
the AI is going to do everything, the AI sets
up a configuration, it says hey, does this look right?
And then you, as as human you're looking through it's saying, yeah,
this looks right. And I'm sure over time there's going
(20:51):
to be a level of machine learning that will place that,
But right now, the most the most that I'm seeing
that's efficient is a model like that, So I can
see as taking a model like that at some point.
We already have automations our system, so you know, when
you're a week out from a payment being due, you know,
especially in these custom catering events, you've got two, three,
five payments, we can automate automatically send out emails so
(21:12):
that you don't have an eight and account's restivable team
member having to go send out this email or have
the salesperson, for goodness sake, like have to go manage
payments for a deal that they've already closed, like let
that sales sell. So we've got tools like that built in.
But from an AI perspective, what I'm seeing is really
it's more of a compliment to that flow more so
than a replacement to that flow.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah. Yeah, it makes total sense, Ran. So you know,
let me ask you a question. Let's pivot a little
bit into you know, let's talk about restaurants, and let's
talk about specifically multi unit restaurant operators. Can we do
that for a minute, Yeah, for sure. As you know,
primarily their businesses built around retail. You know, there's a
lot of pressure on the kitchens as it relates to
(21:56):
third party marketplaces, you know, door Dash, Uber Eats, grab
a houb and then there's of course first party ordering,
which they you know, coming direct to them, and they've
got channels, right, So the takeout channel is a channel
typically you know, small value orders. It's just you know,
people place it for now. You know that kind of dynamic, right.
And then different from that is you have the corporate
(22:18):
drop off business, which you know is a simpler business, right,
it's not event catering, but it's the ability to be
able to take in order, generate an invoice to the production,
do the assembly and packaging, drop it off, and of
course you have the sales teams, you're organizing, you have
some accounting in there, and then of course through the
APIs you're there. They're basically the ecosystem where multi unit
(22:40):
restaurant operators are inserting catering solutions is they're connecting into
the APIs, into the overall systems. Okay, So it sits
as a subsystem the way I see curated. It's another subsystem, okay,
and it's it's it's it's interesting because I think as
I look at your solution and I look at other solutions,
there's crossover, right, there's a lot of crossover. You and
(23:02):
I have talked a lot about this, right, which is
I think why you primarily took an interest in some
of what was going on in sort of in my world,
which is, can Curate take what it has and you know,
pivot just a little bit into this corporate drop off
business in a multiunit restaurant environment And that's a channel itself.
(23:22):
But the other part of that is what is the
opportunity for event catering within the context of multiunit restaurant companies?
And of course many of them have private dining and
they're using other solutions out there for it. But I
just wonder if you could speak to that, like are
you working with any large scale groups at all? And
if the answer is no, that's okay. I would like
to just understand your thinking around you know, what is
(23:44):
a chain that has fifty restaurants, for example, how do
they approach event catering and how can they use Curate
to help them with that as part of the subsystem.
And then the second part of that question is do
you see yourself moving into that corporate drop off business,
which essentially is where the crossover is. What do you
think about that?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, there's a lot baked in there. We absolutely have
some phenomenal restaurant groups that utilize our platform. Generally, they're
using us like we chatted about earlier, like in a
commissary type setup right where they're sending sales to a
central place versus utilizing us at each individual location. It's
(24:26):
that The thing that I get so excited about in
this area is what we have built. We've dealt with
the complex stuff already. We've already built the complex stuff,
and it's a lot easier as we are trying with
more of these restaurant chains to be able to configure
something that's already configurable and then taking something that's not
(24:47):
configurable and giving them that in depth. So, like I said,
as AI is growing, as we're seeing we're going to
see the industry shift, and we're going to see people
wanting better and deeper experiences for their customers, and they're
going to want to be a part of those better. Indeed,
if someone is a super fan of your brand and
they want you at their wedding, like absolutely, let's find
(25:08):
a way to be able to be involved in that.
And so what we found is that it's a lot
easier to be able to set restrictions and constraints on
the flexibility of what our tool can do. Then if
we had come in opposite perspective, which is like, oh great,
we're an e commerce solution and now us build deeper
into the workflows that exists. So you know, we at
(25:30):
this point have really focused on the customer catering when
you've got a salesperson personally working through the details of
these things versus that e commerce experience. But it's a
big thing that people ask for. I mean, already today
I've had two customers have been like, oh, that would
be phenomenal if you had this e commerce tool. Just
sign up with us, even though we don't have it,
because we solve such a big need in this custom
(25:52):
side of things. So that's the big thing for us
is we just listened to customers and as customers come
in giving us the feedback on that you understand ordering
systems that the big challenge for us has always been,
I'll just be super transparent. It's always been the depth
of customization that we offer underneath the invoice, but then
tying that to an e comm where it's like plus
(26:14):
a dollar for bacon, that's really hard. We have bacon
as the recipe but now you're actually making bacon a
line item at that point. It's their dynamic say that
we're still working through. But yeah, we're seeing the opportunity there.
This month has been not so I'm so glad I
had time to set up this meeting. I've already been
five six customercalls already this morning and now ten o'clock
(26:36):
this time. So it's been a really good time period
for us. But that these are the kind of ways
that we're approaching the problem and we absolutely love chatting
with these brands that are seeing the opportunity here.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Well, this is the season, Ryan, this is it. Man
just says like, you know, we're here, we it's it's
it's full steam ahead until what December twenty third, twenty fourth.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah, it's going to be crazy. And that's a hard
part though. You've got all these corporate dinner Christmas parties.
But people want to be ready for January. They want
to be able to watch something, implement something in January.
So this is when you have to make that decision,
even though it's your busiest time.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah. Yeah, something I want to talk about. Ryan just
kind of like and this is more sort of just
a direction maybe the word custom catering for multi restaurant
operators is very scary. Okay, So you know typically you know,
in those environments, I mean some of them are franchise systems,
menus are fixed. They actually don't want people going off
(27:36):
the menus because that's all control, right, that's all to
do with the reporting. It's all connected, right. So I
guess what I would want to understand and talk to
you about is are you seeing customers of yours who
are just not doing custom catering but in fact they're
just selling their packages? Are you seeing that?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Absolutely? And when you say custom catering, that's what custom
catering is to me.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Custom catering is like, hey, earl, you know, I'll take
your you know, roast beef dinner and it's amazing and
I love it off the menu and I know, you
know you've got baked potatoes, but actually I don't want
baked potatoes. What I want is I want mashed potatoes
and champagne glasses. That's custom, that's like for that client, Okay.
And my experience within a restaurant environment, especially especially in
(28:23):
a fast casual, especially casual dining, is that the sophistication
within the kitchen and the training of people isn't there,
and so it's very risky for them to go down
a custom catering process in those environments. And so, you know,
just as we think about it and custom catering, you know,
it works for the caterers because you know, they're one
(28:45):
of and that's what they do, and that's great. And
it might work for the odd restaurant here and there
that has one restaurant, or it might work for a
group of restaurants that has a central commissary and there's
event catering is separate. I think about like Wolfgang Puck
for example, right in the restaurant business, in the full
on manufacturing business, in the drop off catering business, in
the event catering business. I mean, it's all these different channels, right,
(29:09):
But you know, my primary interest lays within how do
you scale catering across these systems? And in my experience,
custom catering is a very challenging thing to do in
terms of controlling quality and cost, and it doesn't necessarily
work well for multiunit restaurant operators. And so the recommendation
I always make is say, look, when you look at
your catering business, you have to look at your subchannels. Right,
(29:31):
there's drop off catering. There might be like a setup
and retrieve type catering where it's basically like the same
as drop off, except I go in, I'm setting it up,
I'm standing there, I'm cleaning up, I'm taking everything away
after you know. And then of course you have a
full lot event catering, right, which is a different animal.
Those are the three things that I typically see within
the environments of catering, and you sit at the right
(29:53):
end of the spectrum. What I'm really interested in is
is do you see as part of the vision for
curate where you can backfill in the other direction, which
is to take some of the subtleties of your solution now,
which as you said, has some limitations within the context
of drop off caring and certainly within the ecosystem of
(30:14):
being able to connect into the other technology providers like
point of sales systems, loyalty systems, et cetera. Do you
see yourself ever, kind of migrating into that spot, because
I think there's a huge opportunity and in a massive
gap that has to get filled there.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, Well, whether we like it or not, it's happening. Yeah,
We've got customers who are coming in from different restaurant
groups who are saying, hey, we to your point, there's
there's it's not an answer, like what is customer care?
They like these there's like this variance between Every person
has their own interpretation. You know, maybe one restaurant can
(30:51):
be able to get away with the champagne glasses because
they've got a separate provider for this. It's not there
doing anything that's really for them. That custom catering experience
is about a salesperson who's going to help that client
and help vision even if the restaurant themselves aren't fulfilling
every piece of that, you know. So that's a big
piece of it. And for us, that's happening one way
(31:13):
or the other. We absolutely are are seeing customers request
more of that automated standard menu setup and a lot
of customers still use our software.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Here's so many restaurant groups that are coming to us
from things like Cateries or these other legacy tools that
give you a list of options that are on your
menu and you just stick with that versus going in
and then adjusting and adapting those. So that's I think
that first play on that is still having a flexible
tool that work just the same as like a cateries
(31:46):
has historically within that organization, you know. But then at
the same time you have that ability to select your
menu maybe just stay on menu. But then I think
that's that second step forward that you're describing for Press
at least is customer driven, where the customer is able
to set this up and do this, and we we
have that on a roadmap. We don't don't have the
(32:06):
time they are they associated with it, but it's something
that certainly is not our roadmap to do.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Awesome. That's great, great answer, Brian. So, so how big
is your team? How many people are working?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, we've got twenty twenty team members.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Nice, We've got.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
A phenomenal team. We've seen a lot of growth, especially
over the past few months. We've seen some really cool
opportunities that have come up in the market. And so
we're we're in the middle of strategizing about what what
twenty twenty five is going to look like.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Great and how is the Restaurant Catering Workshop in Denver?
How is it?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Oh? I really enjoyed it. There's so much that you
can learn from that a lot of a lot of
opinions on on the right fate for where does the
pos you know is the pos? What what rules them all?
The wondering to rule them all if you will, versus
like creating space for that. I really enjoyed getting connect
with so many, so many other of the restaurant and
(32:58):
other vendors that were there.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Sure, that's great, that's great. Well, Ryan, let's so, let
let me ask you a question around strategy just for
a moment. This is an operator strategy. So you know,
if you if you're you know, in a boardroom of
a restaurant company, multi unit restaurant, they're you know, they're
maximizing their off premises. They might have some private dining
and they don't currently do event catering, but they're thinking
about it. What is your recommendation, like what should they
(33:23):
do in your mind to be able to maximize the
opportunity and create you know, memorable opportunities for their customers.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, well you need to bring in somebody with experience.
It's got to other people.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
So leadership, So would you recommend a separate leader for
event catering?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
It depends on the strategy, you know, Like in that border.
If the strategy is, hey, we need to grow into
the millions, then then for for sure, like you need
to be able to have a specific key point a
lot of people. The thing is, if you're if you're
at let's just say a thirty restaurant chain, it's already happening.
You're already doing event catering is just in an unexpected way.
(34:02):
Probably you can find a store that has a large
segment of their business that due to the geography or
or that the demographics of the area are utilizing that
restaurant for this. So it's finding those places that this
is already happening and then seeing if we can get
structure that and be able to dive deeper into that
(34:24):
if that's something that is reproducible at scale. And part
of the key thing though is going to be able
to bring in leadership who has experienced both in the
restaurant space as well as in this event catering segment.
And you run into so many problems that could come,
but the key thing is really you want to start
at a lighter level of this, right, So so don't
(34:45):
don't go from where you're at to you know, full
on full staff. Two hundred thousand dollars weddings right away.
You want to be able to say, okay, like what
if what if we did weddings, you know, and then
what if it's still a setup provide a setup service
for this particular wedding and event. But that's that's the
extent that you know, we're et cetera, y'all. You're a
(35:05):
bit my wife and I we we we had a
minimum of a minimum spend of five thousand dollars. If
you wanted to work with us, our entire wedding costs
three thousand dollars. We would have been a perfect candle
for this segment of a restaurant saying let's create your
reception at more than you wouldn't barely.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Do right, right, And and you know a lot of
brands said that certainly that we work with have food trucks,
you know, and and I mean the food truck is
an interesting idea in the sense that, you know, if
somebody wants to bring a food truck on site and
feed five hundred people, for example, isn't that a vent catering?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Isn't that absolutely Because to that point, you're you're all
of your flow of preparation. It's not You're not a
food truck that's saying, hey, let's go out, let's see
what we can sell today.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, you already know what you're selling, what needs to
be packed, but needs to be produced. And so even
though it looks like a food truck, it's really an
event cator truck.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, yeah for sure. And and of course you know
floral and rentals, labor, all your solution helps to manage
all of that, right, Oh, absolutely amazing. Well, Ryan, it's
been amazing. Is there anything else you want to share?
Maybe where can people find you and maybe tell us
a little bit about like what's your vision for the
next five years?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
That's say, yeah, absolutely, well you can find it that
Curate that code. If you want to shoot me Anuil personally,
it's Brian Curate that co. Glad to answer there any
questions you have. Our big thing here. We've been around
for about ten years, but I built the first version
of the software and I'm not a programmer, so a
couple of years ago we started rebuilding from scratch. And
(36:39):
the response of what we've been able to build having
been in the industry, having found the solution, but been
able to start over and rebuild. Our product has been
absolutely phenomenal. We've been able to build things this in
for the last two years we've been in building mode.
Twenty twenty five for US twenty twenty six goes beyond. Hey,
we built the thing. You know. I was on a
(36:59):
call with a caterer the other day and I realized,
just as I was shuing this soft firm, like this
is this is what I personally have always dreamed of,
you know, like they're the core needs of this market.
Now it's saying, all right, we've got the core right,
We've got the foundation right, you know, where do we
want to go from there? And so our vision really
comes down to customers. We want to impact a lot
(37:21):
more customers, a lot more weddings and events, and so
that's that's the big thing that's going to be driving
our decision over the next couple of years is, Hey,
how how do we put ourselves through either an integration
path or through specifically focusing on particular niches. How do
we put ourselves in the hands of more customers? Because
because we really have created it, in my biased opinion,
(37:44):
the best tool in the industry for this specific problem
that we're trying to solve and so how do we
put ourselves in more hands of people that can actually
use the thing that built. But we've been very passionate
about that. We've got a full team just abplutely passionate
about One of our teams with there's there's a big
called wedding MBA, and one of our teams went there
and was talking with a caterer there and we were
(38:05):
a little bit short staffed on the sales site, so
he was a developer And this just tells you how
passionate our team is. And they were talking about, you know,
some very specific production related items of scaling up and
down recipes, and literally that night, instead of going out
and hanging out in Vegas, he went back to his
hotel room and built out the for this. It came
(38:28):
back the next day and I talked to one of
them on the on the Occult on Friday where they're like,
that was so amazing that he literally like went and
within how we build But he solved that problem. So
we got a team passionate about this, and I'm excited
to see what happens in the next couple of years
through it.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Amazing, Ryan, that's awesome. Well, folks, here you have it.
You heard from Ryan O'Neil. He's the CEO at Curate.
Curate this event management software and catering software, and if
you're thinking about a catering event, catering segment of your
catering operation, Ryan is the guy to calls. So Hey, Ryan,
thanks for being with us today. It's been a pleasure
and making some time for us. And good luck with
everything and we'll talk again soon.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
M H.
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