Interview with Toast CEO and co-founder Aman Narang about their humble beginnings, maintaining a culture of scrappiness, and helping transform how restaurants do business
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Welcome to Restaurant Influencers.
00:13 My name is Sean Walchek, founder of Cali Barbecue Media.
00:17 This episode is an interview with Amanda Rang,
00:20 the newly appointed CEO and co-founder of Toast.
00:25 I am the Toast unboxing guy.
00:26 I am also on the Toast customer advisory board.
00:28 I'm a paid consultant as well as creator for Toast.
00:32 It was very important for me to get Amanda on the show
00:35 so that you could hear the origin story of Toast,
00:38 why we believe in the product,
00:40 why we believe in this show,
00:42 and why we believe in sharing more stories like this.
00:45 Enjoy the episode.
00:46 It's a very special day for me.
00:48 I have Amanda Rang, the new CEO,
00:50 but the co-founder of Toast.
00:52 This is a show presented by Toast on Entrepreneur.
00:56 We have a special relationship with Toast.
00:59 In 2020, our restaurant, Cali Barbecue,
01:02 unboxed and onboarded Toast after being 12 years
01:06 on a legacy point of sale system.
01:08 We told the powers that be, Will Eppert,
01:11 who was our sales rep at the time,
01:13 we told him that we are a barbecue media company
01:15 and that we are going to make content
01:17 about why we believe so much in Toast.
01:21 And he laughed and he said,
01:22 "A lot of restaurant owners tell us a lot of things."
01:25 And yet, here we are, sitting at the sales kickoff,
01:28 the start of 2024.
01:31 Not only have we done the Toast unboxing,
01:33 we were invited to the IPO.
01:35 I am on the customer advisory board
01:38 and I get the opportunity to sit down with Amanda
01:41 and share the Toast story, the origin story.
01:44 Amanda, welcome to the show.
01:45 - Yeah, first of all, it's nice to be here, Sean.
01:46 And I think you've proven Will wrong.
01:49 I think about how many people,
01:50 how many people at Toast do you think know you?
01:52 - I know a lot of people at Toast.
01:54 I'm connected to all, I might be,
01:56 on LinkedIn, I might be connected to more Toasters
01:58 than maybe, maybe you and Steve might have,
02:01 you, Steve, and John might have more connections.
02:03 - Maybe, maybe. - And Chris.
02:04 - I mean, Chris, yeah.
02:05 Yeah, yeah.
02:06 I mean, I think you might be one of the most,
02:09 maybe the most recognized customer
02:11 in the Toast community. - The loudest, the loudest.
02:13 - 'Cause to your point,
02:14 I've seen you on LinkedIn so much
02:15 and thank you for everything you've done for Toast
02:17 and for the brand.
02:18 - Well, I appreciate it.
02:19 Thank you, thank you for being here.
02:20 Let's start with our favorite random question on this show,
02:23 which is where in the world is your favorite stadium,
02:27 stage, or venue?
02:28 - I grew up in Rochester, New York.
02:30 I went to high school in upstate New York
02:32 and I moved to Boston for school.
02:34 And this is in 2000.
02:36 And this is when the Red Sox and Yankees rivalry
02:39 was pretty hot.
02:41 And I was a Yankees fan growing up in upstate New York.
02:45 And I remember going to some of these games in Fenway Park
02:47 and just was blown away by how much a part of my life
02:53 much a part of the game you felt at the park,
02:55 even though I had beer dumped on me at one of the games,
02:57 one of the playoff games by a Red Sox fan.
02:59 So I've always, I've just come to love Fenway Park
03:02 over the years.
03:03 And it's right next to our office.
03:04 - So Fenway Park, I actually printed something for you
03:08 and for our audience.
03:12 So for those of you that are watching on video,
03:18 I have two photos.
03:22 This is Burlington, Massachusetts.
03:24 - This is Toast Folklore.
03:26 And I'm going to take you to Fenway.
03:29 We're gonna pretend that it's a Spark event.
03:31 So one of the Toast Spark events,
03:33 we're gonna fill the stadium with restaurateurs,
03:36 hospitality professionals,
03:38 and I'm gonna bring you to the pitcher's mount.
03:40 And I'm gonna ask you, this is a show for entrepreneur,
03:42 and I'm gonna say, "Iman, please tell us,
03:45 "six months into the journey,
03:47 "you shared a story that you, Steve and John
03:50 "were sitting on the couch with your wives,
03:53 "wondering if you had made the right decision."
03:55 - Yeah.
03:56 So first off, starting Toast was really
03:58 about starting a company with Steve and John.
04:01 We had worked together at a company called Endeca.
04:04 It was our first job out of school.
04:06 And we spent six or seven years there working together.
04:08 In fact, Steve, my first day at Endeca,
04:11 I still remember, it's like our first job ever
04:13 in a corporate environment.
04:14 And he's out there, he started a few weeks before me,
04:15 and he had his feet up on the desk,
04:17 and he was out there coding.
04:19 And it's put me at ease, it's a very relaxed environment.
04:23 And we built up a friendship,
04:27 I think I've known him almost 20 years at this point.
04:29 And through the journey at Endeca,
04:31 we did a bunch of different things together.
04:33 And one of the things that we did was,
04:36 when the iPhone came out, we in fact almost left then
04:38 to build a business then, and ended up building
04:40 Endeca's mobile business, 'cause their core business
04:43 was e-commerce.
04:44 And had some good success there, I think towards the end,
04:46 that was a meaningful part of Endeca's revenue.
04:48 And so finally, when Oracle bought Endeca,
04:50 we were trying to figure out, okay, what's next?
04:51 And I always joke around that we were shamed
04:54 into starting a company, because we'd talked about
04:56 starting a company for so long,
04:57 that when Oracle bought Endeca, they're like,
04:58 if you're not leaving now, you were never serious.
05:00 And so, anyways, starting Toast was really about
05:03 working with Steve and John, they were some of the best
05:06 people I knew.
05:06 And when people ask me advice about starting a business,
05:09 one of the things I always go back to is,
05:11 one of the most important, the most important decision,
05:13 in fact, more than what business idea, or what sector,
05:15 or what you choose, is the people you partner with,
05:18 because it's like a marriage.
05:20 And with Steve and John, what I saw was two people
05:23 that not only were incredibly talented,
05:25 but also incredibly aligned with me on values.
05:28 And also, people that, even though they were so capable,
05:33 were incredibly humble, and just good people.
05:36 And so, starting Toast was really about
05:38 starting a company with them.
05:39 Now, you can imagine, unlike 2008, when the iPhone
05:42 was coming out, and there was all this opportunity,
05:44 this is now 2013, so the world has changed a bit,
05:47 even for software as a service, SaaS.
05:49 2013 is a little bit late, there's a lot of SaaS companies
05:52 that had grown up by then.
05:54 Think of Shopify, for example, and you think of
05:56 so many different verticals.
05:58 And we were trying to figure out what's next,
06:00 and we looked at a range of ideas, now we've quit our jobs,
06:03 we've got to go work on something.
06:04 And there's nothing worse than an entrepreneur
06:05 sitting on a couch trying to figure out what to work on,
06:09 because you just want to get going.
06:12 And we landed in restaurants, I'd say largely by chance.
06:16 We had seen, you know, we had seen, I think back then,
06:20 WeChat and Alipay had done in China,
06:22 and we had seen the Rise Groupon,
06:25 we had seen Square with their dongle,
06:26 this was before they had their registered product.
06:28 And we're trying to figure out what we could do
06:32 in restaurants, and the first thing we started with
06:34 was these QR codes, the things you see now, right?
06:36 The QR codes you can scan to pay at the table,
06:39 it was basically what we built in 2013.
06:42 You can imagine it's a little bit ahead of its time.
06:44 - Very ahead of its time, yes.
06:46 - And so now, and one of the learnings for me
06:49 was building a product in an environment like restaurants,
06:53 but there's such heavy usage.
06:55 Like a lot of the products we had built at Endeca,
06:58 you know, it just felt like the usage
07:01 from a lot of the brands,
07:02 and just the sheer volume was lower.
07:05 And so it took a long time to get the product out.
07:09 And now we're in, we had our first restaurant
07:11 it was Firebrand Saints right here
07:12 across the river in Cambridge,
07:14 and we had this party,
07:15 we're excited about getting this restaurant live,
07:16 and I think we had like five of our friends come,
07:19 and one of them was successful at paying with the app.
07:22 - Really?
07:23 - Yeah, we had some issues in terms of the experience.
07:25 - Only one was successful?
07:26 - I think so, one or two.
07:27 Maybe Steve can correct me if I'm wrong, but not too many.
07:30 And you know, we spent a bunch of time iterating on this,
07:32 and now we're like a year in, right?
07:35 And we've got one restaurant that's not really using it,
07:37 they're only using it because, as far as I could tell,
07:40 we were MIT people, and it was an MIT restaurant,
07:43 and the owner felt bad, Gary felt bad for us,
07:45 and so it was like, it was okay for us
07:47 to carry on at this restaurant,
07:49 even though it was a bit of a distraction for the staff.
07:51 And so I remember sitting at,
07:55 Steve I think used to live in Wheel in Massachusetts
07:56 at the time, and I just remember one day,
07:59 we're at dinner at his place,
08:00 and Nicole, my wife, and Heather, his wife,
08:03 and I forget if John was there or not,
08:05 was basically like, "So it's been like a year,
08:07 "like, are you guys gonna go get real jobs now?
08:09 "Like, what's the plan?
08:10 (laughing)
08:11 "You've been sitting on your couch,
08:12 "you've spent a year, and you've got,
08:13 "I don't know what you've got,
08:14 "what have you built so far?"
08:15 And so that was the moment, right,
08:17 where we thought long and hard,
08:20 this is the part of the Toast story
08:21 maybe that's not told, is like,
08:22 we thought long and hard about whether we should continue.
08:25 And one of the things we had,
08:28 Steve and I had both, and John had picked up on,
08:30 is a lot of the restaurants, when we go pitch,
08:32 'cause we'd go out there in Cambridge and Boston,
08:34 pitch this idea and try to get customers to use it,
08:36 we didn't get a lot of time a day from restaurants,
08:38 but when we talked about technology in general,
08:42 the one thing that came out was
08:44 that they were not happy with the technology in general.
08:49 Like, you'd hear things like,
08:50 "Hey, why isn't this simple like my smartphone?"
08:52 This is like 2013, 'cause the iPhones had,
08:54 smartphones had become a thing,
08:56 and it just felt like a lot of the technology
08:58 was really hard to use.
09:00 And so as we started to investigate,
09:02 what we all realized was this whole category,
09:06 you think of restaurants,
09:08 most people were using systems built on Windows
09:13 that were on-premise, that had a server in the back.
09:18 >> Yeah.
09:18 >> And if you think about a restaurateur
09:22 and what they value and why they get
09:24 into the business of restaurants,
09:26 managing technology and managing servers
09:28 is, I think, one of the last things they want to do.
09:30 In fact, the two leading providers at the time,
09:33 this is in 2013, 11 years ago at this point,
09:35 it's been 11 years, was Micros and NCR.
09:40 >> Yeah.
09:41 >> NCR Aloha, and those two providers were,
09:44 in fact, at least what I've heard is,
09:47 were the first two solutions to go to market
09:51 when Windows came out.
09:53 Because prior to that, all the solutions that existed
09:56 were actually not even based on a modern OS like Windows.
09:59 And so they allowed, Windows was a step change
10:01 in terms of communication in the kitchen
10:02 and all sorts of things, networking that you could do.
10:05 Databases, improvements there.
10:07 And then with, in the cloud, it was another step change.
10:12 And this, no one had built a modern solution.
10:16 And where we were feeling the pain was,
10:17 in this app that we were trying to build,
10:19 there was no APIs.
10:20 So to build the experience of ordering or paying,
10:23 it was not easy to get access to data.
10:24 We had to build custom software on top of the point of sale.
10:27 That, again, wasn't scalable,
10:30 because if you've built it in one restaurant,
10:31 how do you now scale it to multiple?
10:32 You've got to custom build it everywhere
10:33 and there's different versions of different software.
10:35 And so it was very hard to scale this business.
10:37 And so we asked the question,
10:39 how come in a category like restaurants,
10:41 and we talked about 800 billion in spend,
10:43 that cloud hasn't taken off?
10:46 And as we talked to VCs, we got everything from,
10:50 this is what you realize in people you know so much,
10:53 you hear everything from, well,
10:55 some people would say we categorically,
10:56 I hear statements like,
10:57 we categorically don't invest in restaurants.
11:00 So I was like, what does that mean?
11:00 It's like, well, they go out of business,
11:03 they don't buy online, they're not tech forward.
11:08 Others would say that the technical problem is too complex,
11:11 the breadth of what a point of sale done is too much.
11:13 You've got hardware, you've got software, you've got network.
11:16 I remember going to Harvard Square one night with Steve,
11:24 and we walked around, distinctly remember this,
11:26 we walked in like 20 restaurants that night,
11:29 and none of them were using a cloud solution.
11:32 And there was this talk of some startups at the time
11:34 that were trying to do this,
11:35 that had way more capital than we had.
11:38 And I just looked at him and said,
11:39 do you think we can build this?
11:40 He's like, yeah, we can build it.
11:41 Okay.
11:42 And it's like, none of these restaurants on the East Coast,
11:44 at least in Boston, are using it.
11:45 At a minimum in Boston, we can build a business.
11:47 And that was just, a lot of this is like,
11:50 as an entrepreneur, you don't know what you don't know.
11:52 And we just got into it.
11:53 And I remember some early investor pitches,
11:56 they were like, you're the last people we want to invest in
11:58 'cause you know nothing about restaurants.
12:00 But we figured it out.
12:01 We spent a lot of things we,
12:03 into this day, we value at Toast,
12:05 is this concept of customer obsession.
12:07 And a lot of that in the early days,
12:09 the reason we were able to build a platform
12:12 that was differentiated for restaurants
12:14 was because we lived and breathed restaurants,
12:16 even though we didn't come from restaurants.
12:18 We had some early employees that did, by the way,
12:19 but we would code at,
12:23 I remember one of the early restaurants that we had
12:24 was this place called Cook.
12:26 It was in Newton, Massachusetts,
12:27 and Paul was the guy, Paul Toronto, great guy.
12:30 First restaurant that I'd say had scale
12:33 that took a chance on us.
12:34 They had a wine list and probably $2 million plus restaurant
12:38 and high volume.
12:40 And we were launching for their soft opening.
12:43 - You did the install?
12:46 - Of course, yeah, we were doing everything at the time.
12:49 My phone was the 24/7 support line,
12:52 and that's what it was.
12:53 And I remember at this install,
12:56 they had an issue where they said,
12:58 the way our prep stations are configured,
13:01 it's not ideal.
13:02 It turns out we want to change a bunch of things,
13:03 and so we want to reconfigure the wines to go here
13:06 and the appetizers to go here.
13:09 And we'd always had menus that were like 20, 30, 40 items.
13:14 Somehow, and maybe it was the wine list,
13:16 but this list was over 1,000 items.
13:18 - Wow.
13:19 - And so I was looking,
13:20 it's going to take me how long to do 1,200 items
13:23 to change all these prep stations?
13:25 And so I looked at Tim,
13:26 I was one of the early developers,
13:29 and I said, "What do you think we can do here?"
13:31 He's like, "Well, we need a bulk editor
13:33 "to edit items like this."
13:34 And so I looked at Paul, I said, "We're working on it."
13:37 He's like, "It's a couple hours before opening.
13:39 "It comes by next hour, it comes by the next hour."
13:42 He's like, "Are we done yet?"
13:43 And it's like, "No, I'm not done yet,
13:44 "but it's your soft opening.
13:45 "We'll get there for the live opening.
13:47 "We're working on it."
13:48 And then he looks over at Tim's computer,
13:50 and Paul doesn't know anything about programming,
13:53 but he somehow connects the dots,
13:54 and he says, "Are you building the software
13:57 "that's gonna allow us to do this?"
13:59 He's like, "Yeah, we're actually gonna build
14:02 "the software right now."
14:03 - Wow.
14:04 - And there was so many stories like that.
14:06 I remember our first restaurant in Harvard Square,
14:10 this was a breakfast, and then lunch,
14:14 and then dessert at night.
14:15 And this was the first restaurant
14:18 where they had multiple units,
14:20 and they had a commissary,
14:21 and this is finale.
14:26 And Chris Kane, who took a shot on us as well early on,
14:30 and he was like very,
14:32 he was in the world,
14:33 we did a lot for them, point of sale,
14:34 online ordering, gift card, loyalty.
14:36 We built a lot of features.
14:37 That's where it really started to become a platform,
14:39 because it was the first restaurant
14:40 that was really into loyalty, and gift cards,
14:42 and CRM, and online ordering,
14:44 and our value prop there was,
14:46 we'll combine it all into a single solution.
14:48 And he was quite nervous about us doing all of this for him.
14:51 And we assured him that we have lots of background,
14:54 we'll do a great job.
14:55 We'll make sure that the solutions are tested.
14:58 And he was concerned about some of the things
15:01 in the peripherals,
15:01 like our gift cards have to work just right,
15:03 because they have a birthday program reward,
15:05 and very specific things.
15:07 And then they go live,
15:08 and they have this big party from Harvard.
15:11 And they open, and I still cannot forget this.
15:13 Within 20 minutes, the point of sale is completely down.
15:16 - No.
15:17 - You can't take orders, you can't take payments,
15:19 there's no communication with the kitchen.
15:21 And so, there's lots of people here,
15:23 what are we gonna do?
15:24 And so, we started like hand-write every order.
15:28 Take the order on hand, this is like 2013.
15:31 - Wow.
15:32 - We wrote down what the order was,
15:33 we wrote down the credit card numbers,
15:34 we then took the order to the kitchen, dropped it off,
15:38 and we were like manually busing the food.
15:40 And that night, I remember like--
15:41 - Where was the videos back then?
15:43 I need video of that.
15:44 - That experience at Finale,
15:48 I remember coming home,
15:51 it was myself and E,
15:52 who was one of the early product leaders.
15:54 We sat down with the engineering team and said like,
15:57 we need to build offline mode.
15:59 We need to have some capability that allows the system
16:02 to make sure that even if the network is down,
16:04 or toast is down, that you can operate the restaurant.
16:07 And so, a lot of learnings, and there's so many like this,
16:09 this came from working with restaurants, right?
16:11 Seeing what works, what doesn't work,
16:12 and seeing it the hardware.
16:14 Because in a restaurant environment,
16:16 this is such a, it's such a fast-paced environment,
16:19 and if things start to go wrong,
16:21 they can go really wrong.
16:22 Like, analogy I always use is,
16:24 imagine at 9 p.m. on a Friday night.
16:26 You've got a restaurant full of people.
16:30 If you can't take orders and payments,
16:33 like your business can grind to a halt.
16:36 And so, that's really where we realized the importance.
16:39 We've got this rule now, toast, called the rule of six,
16:41 which is these are the six things we must be able to do
16:43 in the platform at all times.
16:45 And that's like a core premise of the engineering team
16:47 that they work on, and they track it
16:49 to see what percentage of time we have against that.
16:51 And a lot of that came from the early days
16:53 where we got to see, or learnt the hard way, I guess,
16:57 at what works and what doesn't.
16:58 - When you look at these photos of where Toast has started,
17:02 and you think about how far you've come now,
17:05 now as the CEO, and you go back to the name,
17:10 - Yeah.
17:11 - And the brand, the logo.
17:13 - Yeah.
17:13 - Those are things that I'm guessing,
17:15 I'm assuming with an engineering background,
17:18 you didn't care too much about.
17:19 You cared about the product.
17:21 - Yes.
17:21 - Can you share a little bit of how the Toast name
17:24 came to be, the logo came to be, and what it means now?
17:28 - Yeah.
17:29 I hugely under, to your point, maybe an engineer,
17:31 or left brain, right brain, whatever it is,
17:33 I underappreciated, I was very focused on the products
17:37 and the value to the customer.
17:39 And I would always go back, this is B2B software,
17:41 we're selling software to restaurants,
17:43 they wanna make sure that it helps their business.
17:45 You know, this is not a consumer brand kind of thing.
17:47 So I would always put all my energy into,
17:50 what do the customers need?
17:51 What are the features they need?
17:53 What are the gaps?
17:54 How can we make it better?
17:54 How do we help their business?
17:55 Like, we talk about handhelds, improving speed of service.
17:59 And so a lot of the energy was there.
18:02 And I think one of the things, in fact,
18:03 when we first were launching, and we were launching the app,
18:06 to the app store, we built the product.
18:09 - What year was this?
18:10 - 2013.
18:11 - Okay.
18:11 - But one of the last things we had to do was,
18:13 we had to figure out, okay, well, like, what is,
18:16 we figured out the name Toast by then.
18:18 And that's a good story for Steve, if you ever interview him.
18:21 - I'll interview him.
18:22 - But we needed a logo.
18:25 And so we're trying to figure out, like,
18:27 what logo we're gonna use.
18:28 - So the company was live,
18:29 how long were you operating without a logo?
18:31 - I don't know if it was, I think we had built the product,
18:36 then we hadn't actually uploaded to the app store.
18:38 So I remember that was when we were trying to figure out
18:41 the brand, the logo, and maybe the name as well.
18:44 And so we're like, well, we need a logo for Toast.
18:47 You know, the marketing team did a great job,
18:49 obviously, over the years.
18:50 I think Julia Beebe made the outline that you see today.
18:54 And I think the thing that's,
18:56 I've come to appreciate now,
19:00 is you can walk into a restaurant anywhere in the country
19:05 with a Toast hat on, with the logo,
19:06 and that people know what that is.
19:08 It just shows the power of the brand, I think.
19:10 And what I've learned along the way is,
19:14 how much naming and branding matters,
19:20 because it can stand and represent what you stand for.
19:23 Like what your values are, who you are,
19:25 what your brand represents.
19:27 Sometimes it just comes together in a logo or in a name.
19:31 And so it's important.
19:32 Like I think even to the word Toast,
19:34 I remember, I think it was Steve who said,
19:38 it's really important that the name is short and memorable.
19:41 That was his criteria, which I thought was really,
19:43 at the time, I wasn't paying attention to it,
19:44 but it's a really good criteria,
19:45 because even though it's not obvious
19:50 that it's a restaurant point of sale,
19:53 it's one that you can very quickly,
19:55 once you've heard Toast,
19:57 and you've heard restaurant point of sale,
19:59 it's got something to do with restaurants,
20:00 you connect the dots.
20:01 I think it's turned out great.
20:05 - Do you remember your first
20:06 National Restaurant Association show?
20:08 - Yes, it was right here.
20:10 It was actually next door.
20:11 - Really?
20:12 - Yeah, it was at the convention.
20:13 It was the New England Food Show,
20:14 which I think is right here in Seaboard, yeah.
20:15 - Tell me about it.
20:16 Small booth?
20:19 - Well, we were, I don't even know how we signed up.
20:23 I didn't even approve this, as far as I remember.
20:26 But somehow we were going to a food show.
20:27 - Definitely didn't approve this.
20:29 - I don't remember approving this,
20:30 and I was running Go-To-Market at the time,
20:32 with a small team, but we're going to this food show.
20:35 I said, "Okay."
20:36 And of course, it's one thing to go to a food show.
20:41 It's another thing to be prepared,
20:42 as you all know, to do it well.
20:43 And instead we had, we were like,
20:45 "Well, we'll just show up with this one banner
20:47 "that we printed, with the word toast and the logo.
20:51 "It's basically what's on this card here."
20:53 And we showed up and we set up our hardware.
21:00 And one of the great things that we had at the show
21:05 was, even though it was a small booth,
21:08 a lot of people were curious about what this company was.
21:11 And if there's one thing we did well,
21:13 we were incredibly scrappy.
21:14 Like, we were, we were not sitting at the booth.
21:17 We were like, walking around the show,
21:18 trying to get people to come to our booth.
21:20 And the few customers that we had,
21:21 we told them, "Please show up and represent
21:23 "what we're doing."
21:24 And they brought people to the booth.
21:25 And so it was actually really productive for us,
21:27 in terms of the number of leads we got.
21:29 And in fact, even now, like, you know,
21:31 in these food shows, like, the amount of energy our team,
21:33 very scrappy to make sure that we're getting,
21:35 we're not just at the booth,
21:36 we're trying to get in the brand out there.
21:38 And I've seen more people come to our booth now,
21:40 because they know what it is.
21:41 But, but, but yeah, it was, it was right next door.
21:44 And it was, it turned out to be a great event for us.
21:46 - I think it's interesting when you look at, you know,
21:49 the National Restaurant Association show in Chicago,
21:52 toast presence at that show.
21:54 And you think of the brand and the logo and the energy.
21:58 What's impressive to me is how, as you've scaled,
22:02 at least as I've been a customer and watched it
22:05 and covered it, to see that scrappiness.
22:09 How do you maintain that scrappiness?
22:10 How do you teach that scrappiness as you grow?
22:13 - I think part of it's our culture.
22:16 I think, you know, if even today, like this,
22:18 this week, we're at the sales conference
22:20 where all the salespeople are here throughout the country.
22:22 And the one thing that you see is how many people,
22:26 I've talked to a bunch of sales reps and, you know,
22:28 managers and a lot of them have perspective and history
22:32 and context and experience in restaurants.
22:35 In fact, one of the stats we love to share is two
22:36 out of three people that work at toast have worked
22:38 in restaurants and have had not just like entry-level job,
22:40 but like, you know, have grown up in restaurants.
22:42 And so you, I think a lot of that energy comes
22:46 from just an appreciation for the work we're doing
22:50 because something we've all lived,
22:51 many of us have lived, not all of us.
22:53 And you realize like, you know, the work we're doing
22:58 matters, right?
23:00 Helping a small business owner improve speed of service,
23:03 helping a small business owner set up digital tools
23:04 that are great, helping a small business owner have
23:07 all in one platform that's integrated.
23:08 I mean, these things on the one hand on a slide,
23:10 what do they really mean?
23:11 When you see them, you know, in good ways,
23:13 impact restaurant, not always,
23:14 there's sometimes we take escalations and always perfect,
23:17 but when you see it work well, right?
23:19 And we of course aspire to get better and better.
23:22 You see the impact it can have.
23:26 And so, and people see it.
23:27 Like one of the best things about Toast, right?
23:28 Is all of us as employees can walk into a restaurant.
23:33 In fact, I always joke around that we're going to get
23:35 cab daily because you can,
23:37 customer advisory board daily
23:38 because you walk in a restaurant.
23:39 And I always do this.
23:40 I always ask every restaurant I go to.
23:41 - I haven't heard cab daily, I like that.
23:43 - I, you should ask my wife, she'll tell you.
23:45 - She'll tell you, that sounds fantastic.
23:47 - Every time we walk into restaurants,
23:50 I always ask two questions.
23:52 I ask the staff how it's, the terminals are,
23:54 you know, how it's worked,
23:55 how it feels to work with the software.
23:58 And I always ask the manager if I can get them,
24:00 or the owner, how is working with corporate,
24:02 like work support and you, you know,
24:05 you learn so much and you also get perspective
24:08 on like the impact we're having.
24:09 And so I think it's just, it's,
24:12 all that energy is infectious.
24:14 And I think a lot of the team, you know,
24:16 sees as a result the impact of their work.
24:19 And I think that's really the root of a lot of the energy
24:23 we have here and the culture we've been able to build
24:25 is because I think people know the work we do matters.
24:28 - When you go to those restaurants,
24:30 do you inform them who you are?
24:32 - No, no.
24:33 - Do they ask?
24:34 - I just say I work at Toast, I just say I work at Toast.
24:38 - That's perfect.
24:39 And now a quick break from restaurant influencers
24:41 to welcome our newest sponsor to the show.
24:44 It's Zach Oates, the founder of Ovation.
24:47 - Ovation is helping restaurants to improve operations
24:50 with the human touch.
24:51 We are a guest experience platform
24:53 for multi-unit restaurants like Friendly's,
24:55 Muya, PDQ, Taziki's, and even Cali Barbecue
24:59 with thousands of others that starts
25:00 with a two question survey and drives revenue,
25:04 location level improvement, and guest recovery.
25:06 So here's how it works.
25:07 The guest answers two questions.
25:09 The first one is how was your experience?
25:11 And then from there, happy guests are invited
25:13 to do things that are gonna drive revenue
25:15 and unhappy guests share privately what went wrong
25:18 so you and your team can resolve that concern in real time.
25:22 Our AI will even help you do that.
25:23 Then the magic happens.
25:24 We take all the public reviews.
25:27 We take all the Ovation feedback.
25:28 We categorize it using our AI
25:31 and give you detailed feedback
25:32 in 34 restaurant specific categories
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25:37 So we make sure that guests feel good, that you look good.
25:39 And if you're interested in learning more,
25:41 visit OvationUp.com/Sean
25:44 because any listener of Sean's is a friend of Ovation's.
25:47 (upbeat music)
25:50 (upbeat music)
25:52 - Let's talk about unboxing.
25:56 Do you remember when you first saw the unboxing video?
25:58 - I did, yes.
26:00 - What went through your mind?
26:01 - I very much underappreciated,
26:06 I think it goes back to my underappreciation,
26:08 I think, of brand in general, if I'm honest.
26:12 And in fact, I'll give you a backstory.
26:14 There was, I remember walking to the office
26:18 in Memorial in 401 Park.
26:20 This is our office that we're moving from now.
26:23 And this is maybe 2015 or '16.
26:28 And I see all this packaging.
26:29 And I'm sitting there going, what are these people doing?
26:34 - I didn't approve of this.
26:37 - Yeah.
26:38 And then I walk up to the team.
26:40 I'm like, what's going on here?
26:41 They're like, well, we're trying to make sure
26:43 that for our hardware, that we have packaging
26:48 that is beautiful.
26:50 And again, this is just how my brain works
26:52 at the time, at least.
26:53 So I said, is this because it's gonna make it more durable
26:55 so it doesn't break, right, when you ship it?
26:57 It's like, no, that's not what it's about.
26:59 The way we ship it today is fine,
27:01 but this is just gonna make it like the Apple experience
27:04 where you unbox it and it's done really beautifully.
27:08 And I remember going to Steve and saying,
27:13 is this a good use of company resources and time?
27:15 Like, what are we doing here?
27:17 And I then watched your video and I said,
27:20 and there's many moments like this where my instincts,
27:22 you gotta remember, your instincts are sometimes right,
27:23 they're not always right.
27:24 And that was one of those moments where I think
27:26 I underappreciated.
27:27 From a customer experience standpoint,
27:29 those things matter, right?
27:29 They're buying a new point of sale,
27:30 they're changing their experience.
27:32 And this is one of those delight moments
27:33 when they get it and they're like,
27:34 oh, this is really well done.
27:36 It kind of, the thing I realized was these little things
27:39 speak to the quality of the brand you're partnering with.
27:42 And that's what I think I took away
27:46 from the unboxing is like, it's a premium experience
27:49 that people actually care about.
27:52 - For you looking at your position now,
27:55 taking over for Chris, what have you learned from him?
27:59 - You know, I always say this, like Steve, Chris,
28:04 Steve, John and I, we grew up, you know,
28:08 like as product people, entrepreneurs, we, you know,
28:12 we, the thing that got us going was innovation.
28:17 At least for me, that was the thing that like,
28:19 was my calling card to start a business
28:22 was we saw the previous company we were at,
28:24 like how innovative companies can disrupt the status quo.
28:27 And that was exciting.
28:28 And you can build around that.
28:30 And I think one of the things that I very much
28:33 underappreciated is when you get to be a company
28:36 that's bigger, business is actually about people first.
28:41 And one of the things I've been telling everyone
28:42 is, you know, for us to build a company a decade from now,
28:47 five years from now, that is in line with our aspirations,
28:53 it starts with leadership team alignment,
28:56 urgency, teamwork, really teamwork is like so, so important
29:01 because it's like a marriage, right?
29:02 In any relationship, the ability to have,
29:05 the ability to have a foundation,
29:11 the foundation of trust, for example, is so fundamental.
29:14 And I think that's true of any company, any culture,
29:16 where if you don't have that, it is,
29:20 I don't think you can do your best work.
29:23 And that's one of the things from Chris,
29:24 I always saw how much he indexed on people.
29:26 In fact, I was listening to this Bezos,
29:28 Jeff Bezos podcast recently, I think that,
29:31 I forget it was a long podcast, by the way,
29:32 but there's a section in there that talks about,
29:36 talks about, you know, his experience at Amazon, right?
29:40 And building, you know, what that experience was like,
29:44 building that company.
29:45 And one of the things he talked about was,
29:46 in a lot of companies, decision-making,
29:50 you think of leadership teams,
29:52 they're taking all this energy and time
29:54 making good decisions,
29:55 but often, leadership teams aren't aligned.
29:57 And so the way decisions get made is,
29:59 you've got two or three execs,
30:01 and the decision gets made because two out of three execs
30:04 just got tired of debating and said,
30:07 you know, I don't want to deal with this.
30:07 And like the one exec who didn't
30:09 ultimately ends up making the call.
30:11 And it's like, that doesn't work,
30:13 because what ends up happening is those people
30:15 that got tired didn't disagree and commit.
30:17 >> Yeah. >> Right?
30:18 So they're not actually bought in.
30:19 They're not bought in to actually help you,
30:20 because what is disagree and commit about?
30:21 It's about making sure that even if you,
30:23 and sometimes, by the way, he said,
30:24 I as CEO disagree and commit.
30:25 It's not always about me being right,
30:28 but that moment of going through the exercise
30:29 to actually hash it out, to get on the same page,
30:31 and then saying, you know, even though I don't agree
30:33 with the decision, I'm going to support you,
30:34 is really, really important.
30:36 And I think a lot of that goes back
30:37 at the end of the day to teamwork.
30:39 >> Yeah.
30:39 >> And the ability for teams to work together at scale
30:42 is hard, like when you're smaller,
30:43 like you know, it's easier to have empathy and perspective,
30:48 because you're kind of, if you're a small company,
30:50 you can see what each person is doing,
30:51 because you know them, right?
30:52 Each department is doing.
30:53 The culture can be set in ways that's very much one to one.
30:57 But as you get, as you grow up, you know,
30:59 you then have to reinforce that with other mechanisms,
31:02 like values, for example, right?
31:03 That can communicate, you got to live them too,
31:05 but you got to communicate what you stand for and why.
31:08 And I think one of the things that Chris,
31:10 I think it's two things I'd say,
31:11 and Chris, that really stood out to me,
31:12 one was the true, like he really, really believed
31:15 in the teamwork and people, and like how much
31:18 he valued people, I think set the tone for the culture.
31:21 And then the second thing was just how much he,
31:24 it's so simple, I'll share a story about Chris in a second,
31:27 is just this customer obsession.
31:30 >> Yes.
31:31 >> Like personally, like sometimes, you know,
31:33 the amount of energy he would spend personally.
31:35 Like one thing I've learned from him
31:36 is every escalation I get, I respond immediately.
31:38 Because that's something he used to do.
31:40 And I used to actually do those sales calls back in the day.
31:42 Every opportunity I got, I would say,
31:44 "We don't want to wait, we got to follow up."
31:46 And I try to do as much as I can on both,
31:47 but I think more and more as these escalations,
31:51 it's important to set the tone the right way.
31:54 I remember when Chris joined, back to the story,
31:56 he, you know, we were talking through like,
32:00 you know, this good product market fit,
32:02 we're seeing demand, but we have all these challenges,
32:03 and so he was describing some challenges,
32:05 I was talking about some things.
32:06 And he asked us like, what the NPS was.
32:09 And I was like, what's NPS?
32:10 Like, some version of that.
32:12 And you know, of course we knew what the business was,
32:15 but we didn't, we hadn't instituted anything like NPS.
32:18 And--
32:19 >> Net promoter score.
32:19 >> Net promoter score.
32:21 >> For the audience, yes.
32:22 >> And so just building those foundations, I think,
32:25 to really orient the company on, you know,
32:29 working together, solving for the customer,
32:31 just do things that are very much takeaway.
32:35 >> What did you learn launching the ToastNow app?
32:37 >> What did we learn launching the ToastNow app?
32:42 I think one of the things that I take away
32:45 from the ToastNow experience is,
32:47 you really just, you know,
32:48 we should just listen to customers, right?
32:51 Because I remember talking to a restaurateur in 2014,
32:55 saying, you know, Aloha has this Pulse app,
32:58 and we should offer something similar.
33:00 And, you know, as over the years,
33:03 like, we've actually gotten use case after use case
33:06 of how we can differentiate what the experience is like
33:09 on the ToastNow app.
33:10 Whether it's in terms of, you know, download,
33:13 like the analogy someone once gave me,
33:14 I remember, was something like,
33:16 imagine if we had to use, what's an example?
33:19 Email, right?
33:23 And there wasn't an app on your phone.
33:25 You still go to the browser,
33:26 and if you could log in and use it, right?
33:28 Because you need to get your email.
33:29 And it was the same thing with Toast.
33:31 Like, we don't have an app,
33:32 but we'll still go to toastapp.com
33:34 because we need to see our sales reports.
33:36 And, but the app experience is so much better.
33:38 And so, just building out the app experience,
33:40 I think the first step is for restaurateurs.
33:41 I think it's such a value add
33:43 to have the app experience be native,
33:45 because you can see the data refreshed,
33:46 you can get notification when there's updates.
33:48 And it's not just about the data now,
33:50 because it's a communication channel.
33:51 You can start to do things like notify
33:53 and communicate with them.
33:54 That can be the channel for support.
33:55 That's an area that we're excited about long-term.
33:57 And really make it the one-stop shop
33:59 where if you want to, you know,
34:02 as a restaurateur, engage with Toast.
34:05 That's the one place that you can go.
34:07 That's the vision, right?
34:08 So it's everything from your sales reporting
34:10 to, you know, which products we're launching
34:12 to how your business is doing,
34:15 what could you consider doing differently,
34:17 your support tickets outstanding, all in one place.
34:21 And that's, I think, something,
34:23 especially restaurateurs, they're all on the go.
34:24 They're on the floor, right?
34:26 Sitting at, you know, they're not on their laptop, right?
34:30 Or desktop as often as an office worker like me,
34:33 like myself is.
34:35 And so it's really, really valuable for them, I think.
34:38 And we should have, you know,
34:39 I'm thrilled that the team has launched it.
34:41 And I think it's going to be so powerful for restaurants
34:43 if we continue to build on top of what we have so far.
34:46 - So I was having some conversations earlier today
34:48 with some of the sales team, some of the marketing team,
34:51 asking them about how they felt
34:52 about you taking the reins over as CEO.
34:55 And the predominant feedback,
34:59 which I don't think has anything to say about Chris,
35:01 but has to say about you,
35:03 which is that you're bringing this founders energy.
35:06 You have this relentless commitment of yourself,
35:10 but also of those around you to make things better,
35:13 this customer focus of making the best product,
35:16 making the best experience.
35:17 Where does that come from?
35:18 - I think it's really about, like,
35:22 I wouldn't make it too much about me.
35:24 At the end of the day, my job is to make sure
35:27 that we have the best team possible
35:28 working on our problems at the highest level.
35:31 And that's what my energy is on.
35:33 Like, I think I have always,
35:36 like, I'm here because I'm having fun.
35:38 - Yeah. - Right?
35:39 And I think, oh, what else I could be doing?
35:39 There's nothing better I can think of.
35:40 - Well, how many other founders go public
35:43 and are no longer part of the company?
35:45 You guys are all here. - Yeah.
35:46 - Like, not only here, but doing the hard work.
35:49 - Yeah, yeah.
35:50 - What's driving you to do that work?
35:52 - Yeah.
35:54 It's a good question.
35:55 Look, I think I,
35:57 it goes back to, you know,
36:02 I feel like we've been at this for a decade
36:04 and there's a lot that's not,
36:06 that's in a story, we're not done.
36:09 That's how it feels to me.
36:11 We're a decade in, I think there's a lot of opportunity
36:13 to make the products that we have better,
36:17 the experiences better for customers.
36:18 I think there's opportunity to scale
36:20 in different segments of the market.
36:22 I think the story and our culture internally,
36:24 I think there's a lot we can do.
36:25 And there's a lot to build on that's awesome.
36:28 The great foundation,
36:29 but I also think there's a lot we can do from here.
36:32 And as I look back and say, like, okay,
36:34 like, what are, whether it's me or frankly,
36:38 many members, it's not just about me,
36:39 many members of the leadership team,
36:40 right, they've all been here.
36:41 Many of them have been here a long time.
36:43 And I think for a lot of them, you know,
36:45 what gets us going is, I go back to what I said earlier,
36:48 it's the work we do matters.
36:50 It's tangible.
36:51 It's for our community.
36:52 You think of restaurateurs,
36:53 I have so much respect for restaurateurs
36:55 because it's a business where it's, you know,
36:59 always on, you just see how much energy
37:02 and effort it takes to build a great restaurant.
37:05 And you see as a result,
37:07 supporting them is meaningful work.
37:08 And that gets me up, you know,
37:10 it gets me out of bed every morning to say, okay,
37:12 that's actually meaningful work that we can do.
37:14 And I think of the team that we have here,
37:17 two thirds of them came from restaurants
37:19 and, you know, they're excited about the mission.
37:23 And so those are some of the things I'd say,
37:25 that keep me going.
37:26 - Restaurateurs, we care so deeply about our community.
37:30 We care about giving back to the village,
37:32 the communities, the cities that we take care of.
37:35 We're always looking for technology
37:38 to make fundraising easier.
37:40 Something I think I'll be critical
37:43 that I don't think Toast has done a good job
37:45 of sharing the charity work,
37:47 not only that Toast does,
37:49 but also the technology tools that you've developed
37:52 for restaurateurs like myself
37:54 to launch in my own local community
37:56 to pick the charitable organization
37:58 that I'd like to raise money for.
37:59 Can you talk a little bit about that work?
38:01 - Yeah, look, this is something that,
38:02 you know, John Grimm, my co-founder,
38:04 who was CTO, now is the CTO of Toast.org,
38:07 is very passionate about this work.
38:08 Chris was actually very passionate about this work
38:10 and is passionate about this work.
38:11 He's still on the Toast.org council.
38:13 And Steve and everyone on the leadership team.
38:16 And it's actually not very well known maybe,
38:18 but we committed,
38:21 I forget when this was,
38:24 a couple of years, maybe,
38:25 it's like a couple of years before the IPO,
38:26 a year before the IPO.
38:27 We committed to Toast.org the 1% pledge.
38:32 And there's a whole roadmap of things that they work on,
38:35 not only in terms of giving to specific causes
38:38 that are aligned with the restaurant community,
38:39 or, you know, we're thinking a lot about sustainability
38:43 as a cause that the team is focused on,
38:45 but also to build the products.
38:47 So it's 1% not just of our assets, but also of our time.
38:51 So 1% of our time is, as an example,
38:54 an engineering team works on Toast.org.
38:56 And so they've worked on product capabilities
38:58 that can enable everything from food insecurity
39:02 to charitable giving.
39:05 And it's something the team is really passionate about.
39:09 We talked about the Toast brand.
39:10 Toast.org has a brand at the company now,
39:11 these blue shirts, you see people wear them with pride.
39:15 Whether it's in Boston or Chennai in India
39:18 or Bangalore or Dublin, you see people get excited
39:21 about bringing meaning to the work.
39:26 And one of the things that I think everyone finds
39:27 really meaningful is to find ways to also give back.
39:32 And it's something that I think we've done
39:35 a really great job of over the past few years,
39:37 really bringing to life in the company.
39:39 - As the company grows, how do you maintain
39:43 taking care of the small restaurant
39:45 or the heart of where Toast started?
39:47 - Yeah, I think it's, for all of us,
39:53 it's a good question.
39:58 I thought you were going towards culture,
40:02 but when it comes to restaurants,
40:03 look, if you think about what restaurateurs want,
40:06 especially many small restaurateurs,
40:10 what I hear at least, and you can correct me,
40:13 what I hear is they get into this business
40:15 because they love hospitality, they love food,
40:18 they love serving their communities.
40:21 They want to build a good business,
40:22 but also those are things that get them
40:25 out of bed in the morning.
40:26 And they don't get into the business
40:29 because they want to figure out how to manage their books
40:33 or because-- - You don't say.
40:35 - Because they want to understand how to make sure
40:38 their point of sale experience, point of sale
40:41 is working well, or their apparel is working well,
40:43 or their scheduling is working well,
40:45 and they're tracking their cost of goods sold
40:49 and food and rent.
40:50 And so you think about what Toast can do
40:54 and platforms like Toast can do
40:55 is really enable the small business owner
40:59 to focus on what they love.
41:02 And that's not easy because the bar then
41:06 is you've got to build capabilities
41:07 that actually enables them.
41:10 And so what does that mean?
41:11 It means that the software
41:13 for the mission critical use cases works really well.
41:15 And it's getting increasingly complex.
41:17 And the point of sale back in the day was much simpler.
41:19 Today, the point of sale means everything
41:21 from taking orders and payments
41:22 to your orders from DoorDash and Uber
41:23 to your own first party ordering to so much more.
41:27 And it's going to get even more complex
41:29 because over the next decade,
41:31 I think if there's one trend you're going to see
41:32 is you're going to see more technology play a bigger role
41:37 in things like automation, things like AI, for example.
41:40 And so our opportunity, I think, is one,
41:42 to make sure the capabilities we offer are high quality,
41:46 they have great uptime, they work well, they're reliable.
41:50 It's something that restaurants can depend on
41:51 to run their business.
41:52 They've got great support because it's complex software.
41:56 They're going to have questions.
41:58 And then also to think about where the puck is headed.
42:02 Because we look at ourselves as,
42:06 it's our responsibility to think about
42:08 what are ways in which we can innovate
42:10 on behalf of the restaurant owner.
42:12 And I think some of that's experimentation.
42:15 We don't have, some things we'll learn and test
42:17 and it will not work out.
42:19 But there are ideas we have where we think
42:20 that we can really move the needle
42:23 in terms of helping small business owners
42:25 run better businesses.
42:26 In fact, one of the things that I always hear
42:29 is so many people think they've got great businesses
42:33 and people love their food, they've got a good Yelp rating.
42:36 And then underappreciate that actually
42:40 don't have a great business.
42:42 And it's because they don't have a good handle
42:45 on their finances, don't have a good handle
42:47 on how to price their menus and how to think about pricing
42:50 and just put energy into it.
42:52 And so one of the things our team thinks about
42:53 is for things like Toast Now,
42:54 how can we help them be smarter, right?
42:59 With all this data?
43:01 'Cause data is only so useful on its own.
43:03 But how can we leverage all this data
43:05 to help these small business owners be smarter
43:10 by giving them the right insights and the right time?
43:12 And there's many ideas like this, by the way,
43:15 but to me, the foundation of it all
43:17 is a product that works really well,
43:18 that's reliable with great support.
43:20 - What does Toast community mean?
43:23 I know you've done a lot of work.
43:25 We've talked about a lot of work on our shows,
43:27 Family Style, on this show, about a community of toasters.
43:32 Not just toasters, but also customers.
43:35 Customer advisory board.
43:36 How do you foster community?
43:38 - Yeah, it's a great question.
43:41 I think if you look at our values,
43:45 you think of leading with a hospitality mindset,
43:47 it's so focused on what restaurants are all about.
43:51 You think of restaurants, Danny Meyer,
43:53 championing things like, it's not about just great food,
43:56 but it's also about the service, how you make people feel.
43:59 And I think we internally in our culture,
44:03 even this week, spending time with a lot of the team
44:06 that's here, so 1,300 toasters here in person,
44:08 the one thing that just jumps off the page
44:13 that you hear on and on is how much people love our culture
44:18 and how much people love being part of this company.
44:20 And I was asking, what about the culture do you love?
44:23 And of course, a lot of the highest level
44:25 always goes back to the people.
44:27 But you hear from people that,
44:32 we are a culture where we value customers,
44:37 but we also value, back to what I talked about Chris earlier,
44:46 teamwork and our ability to work together.
44:49 And I think in our community, it starts there, right?
44:52 The foundation is like, hire great people,
44:55 set them up for the mission,
44:58 make sure that we have the right,
45:01 it's like not just the what,
45:02 but the how is really important,
45:04 something we talk a lot about.
45:05 And I think the other thing we talk a lot about
45:10 is just making sure that as we grow up and scale,
45:12 most companies can, these bigger companies,
45:14 I think as you get bigger,
45:15 some company, you can lose sight of what got you here,
45:20 which is things like, back to the stories
45:23 I talked about earlier, spending time at customer sites,
45:26 building software, it's not to say
45:28 that things scale the same way.
45:29 Obviously, Teletoast is a different company,
45:32 but still having a pulse on what's going on on the ground,
45:34 whether it's by doing things like the customer advisory board
45:37 or talking to sales reps or support agents
45:39 or restaurant success managers
45:41 and to understand what's going on on the ground, right?
45:44 And then what's going on in our culture,
45:45 what's working, what's not working,
45:46 you get so much from that.
45:47 And so the more our leadership team
45:49 can make sure that we keep our eyes and ears to the ground
45:53 to then reinforce our strategies and what we're working on.
45:57 Because if you think about where, how we set the tone
45:59 and what we're working on as a leadership team,
46:01 often those things come from the market maybe,
46:05 you get some perspective from competitor perspective,
46:08 you get perspective from trends like AI, whatever it may be.
46:13 But actually one of the most important trends
46:15 is simply what you're hearing from your customers
46:18 and what you're hearing from your teams.
46:21 And just making sure we don't lose that signal,
46:23 it's like, I think it's really, really important,
46:24 something we've done, I think, really well over the years.
46:26 - Is there any stories of anyone that you've met
46:29 along your way in this hospitality now technology career,
46:34 mentors that you've made an impact on you?
46:38 - Within hospitality, the names that jump out,
46:44 the customers are ours, are Danny Meyer and Jose Andres.
46:46 I mean, I think Danny, I think spoke at one of our kickoffs.
46:50 This was, I think, I forget, a few years back,
46:52 I need to RSI chat, I think with Chris.
46:55 And I got to meet him as part of that experience.
46:58 And I think the one thing that just really jumped out
47:03 was he brought to light, this is, you can imagine,
47:07 I don't know what it was when he was launching
47:08 his restaurants before Shake Shack and all that.
47:11 And he talked so much about,
47:15 I mentioned the what and the how,
47:17 he talked so much about that in a restaurant context,
47:19 which was, it's not just about the food,
47:23 but it's about the service experience
47:25 and how you make people feel.
47:26 I remember one story he told about how he,
47:31 there was some guests that were there,
47:35 and I think they, someone ordered some fish.
47:40 - The salmon.
47:42 - Yeah, the salmon.
47:43 I'm not gonna butcher the story, by the way,
47:44 so hopefully you remember it.
47:46 But it was something about,
47:48 the guest didn't eat much of it.
47:52 And instead of going in and saying,
47:54 hey, what's going on, can we get you something different?
47:58 The server decided to ask, I think,
48:00 if he can pack it up for you.
48:02 And it's like fish that this person's not enjoying.
48:06 And it just set the tone on,
48:09 what he was trying to teach there was
48:10 how important it is to really pay attention.
48:12 And he said none of this costs anything.
48:14 Like food actually costs something,
48:15 but paying attention to people
48:16 and treating them really well
48:17 and trying to be really clued into how they're feeling.
48:21 It's just a state of mind.
48:24 It's just how you show up.
48:25 And it's not easy all the time,
48:28 'cause we all have our pressures in life
48:30 and everything we're dealing with.
48:31 But I thought that was a good lesson,
48:33 in terms of how much that matters, even with us.
48:35 Our customers sometimes call us, they're hot.
48:37 They're frustrated about something sometimes.
48:39 And sometimes, they just want us to,
48:44 they just wanna feel heard,
48:46 to make sure that we understand where they're coming from.
48:48 And so just that, I think that's this
48:51 hospitality mindset value.
48:52 I think a lot of that embodies that.
48:55 And it's a really important value, I think.
48:57 You know, Jose Andres,
48:59 in terms of what we talked about, Toast.org,
49:00 all the things he's done to give back,
49:01 it's just incredible.
49:03 So those are two in the community
49:04 that I think come to mind.
49:06 - When you think of the memorable moments,
49:08 that salmon story, the Danny Meyer story,
49:11 I always ask, how does a story become a legend?
49:14 A story becomes a legend when it gets told
49:17 over and over, but by multiple people.
49:20 The salmon story is being told here,
49:22 and it's being told by people who've been around
49:25 for a long time, and it's being told by people
49:27 who've been around for a long time.
49:29 And it's being told by people who've been around
49:31 for a long time, and it's being told by people
49:33 who've been around for a long time.
49:35 And it's being told by people who've been around
49:37 for a long time, and it's being told by people
49:39 who've been around for a long time.
49:40 And it's being told by people who've been around
49:43 for a long time.
49:43 And it's being told by people who've been around
49:45 for a long time.
49:46 And it's being told by people who've been around
49:48 for a long time.
49:49 And it's being told by people who've been around
49:51 for a long time.
49:52 - Yeah, I think that's a really good,
49:54 we didn't really have a good perspective
49:56 on what it means to get into this business
49:57 and restaurants.
49:58 We were software people.
49:59 We knew how to build software apps.
50:00 That was our background when the iPhone came out.
50:03 And quickly realized that this business
50:05 has hardware, has networking, it has software,
50:08 it has restaurants calling you at 2 a.m. in the morning
50:11 when they were trying to close out.
50:13 And it was just a very jarring experience early on.
50:16 And so, this is like, maybe, I forget how many customers
50:20 we had, but we had a lot of customers.
50:22 And so, we had to improve our website
50:25 to better represent what we needed to stand for.
50:28 And one of the things I remember that we had done
50:30 was we said, we updated the website
50:32 to say that we had 24/7 support.
50:35 (laughing)
50:36 'Cause this was important.
50:37 And we got a meeting with one of the larger groups
50:42 in Boston.
50:43 They've got restaurants, but they've also got some clubs
50:46 that are open later.
50:47 And so, we got to the larger group,
50:50 and they asked me, tell me about the product,
50:55 and we talked about the handhelds, improving speed of service
50:57 and said, well, what about support?
50:59 It's, what's gonna happen?
51:04 We had some issues in the past when we can't do something
51:08 at two in the morning and we need to close out.
51:11 And I told him, I was like, look, we have 24/7 support.
51:15 (laughing)
51:16 And so, he's like, okay, what's your website?
51:19 And so, he went to our website, toasttab.com,
51:24 and he was smart.
51:25 He called the support number.
51:26 And what I hadn't told him at the time
51:30 was that the support number was actually
51:33 a Google voice number that rang on everyone's phone
51:36 in the company.
51:37 It was like 12 of us.
51:38 And at the time, no one really loved
51:44 picking up the support call,
51:45 so we'd wait for a couple of rings
51:46 to see if on the fourth ring,
51:47 someone has to pick it up at this point.
51:49 And so, the phone starts ringing in my pocket,
51:52 when I'm sitting next to this guy,
51:53 and his whole team, by the way.
51:55 And it's a true story.
51:56 So, the first thing I did was I turned off the ringer
52:00 in my pocket, and then on the fourth ring,
52:03 I actually basically took the phone out and hit talk,
52:06 and I said, I didn't pick it up, but I told him,
52:08 I was like, look, I told you we have 24/7 support.
52:10 I'm gonna pick up the call if we need to.
52:14 And, but I do think that, and he signed up,
52:17 and he's still a customer.
52:18 And I think one of the things that--
52:20 - That's awesome.
52:21 - That, the reason I think that story's been sold
52:23 a bunch of times is because it just speaks to,
52:25 on the one hand, we wanna grow up and scale.
52:26 On the other hand, there's this mindset
52:28 of this customer obsession.
52:29 Sometimes it means being scrappy and doing the right thing,
52:33 using good judgment, and probably mostly being scrappy,
52:38 I'd say, good judgment, I'm not sure.
52:39 But, and that's the story that's been told many times.
52:43 I could tell you hundreds of stories
52:44 about the history of T.E.S.T.
52:45 - That's amazing.
52:47 Well, we're grateful for your time.
52:48 We know how busy you are.
52:49 We're grateful for the opportunity to share these stories.
52:52 If you guys wanna connect with me,
52:53 it's @SeanPWalchef, S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
52:58 We wanna hear your T.E.S.T. story.
53:00 We would love to feature you on one of these shows,
53:03 on Family Style.
53:04 I have one question, last question.
53:07 Can I get you to co-host with me a Family Style episode?
53:10 - Absolutely, of course.
53:12 Of course we're gonna do that.
53:12 We did it here on camera.
53:14 That's a storytelling technique,
53:16 is you get him to say it on video,
53:18 and then he's committed.
53:20 Iman Narang, thank you so much.
53:22 We're grateful for your time.
53:23 Is there any parting words of wisdom
53:25 for any of the entrepreneurs,
53:26 the restaurant community out there
53:27 that's gonna listen to this or watch this?
53:30 - Oh, keep going, don't give up.
53:32 - Thank you, Iman.
53:33 That's perfect. - Thanks, John.
53:34 - Great job.
53:35 Thank you for listening to Restaurant Influencers.
53:38 If you want to get in touch with me,
53:40 I am weirdly available at Sean P. Walcheff,
53:43 S-H-A-W-N, P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
53:47 Cali Barbecue Media has other shows.
53:50 You can check out Digital Hospitality.
53:52 We've been doing that show since 2017.
53:55 We also just launched a show,
53:57 season two, Family Style, on YouTube with Toast.
54:01 And if you are a restaurant brand or a hospitality brand,
54:04 and you're looking to launch your own show,
54:06 Cali Barbecue Media can help you.
54:08 Recently, we just launched Room for Seconds
54:12 with Greg Majewski.
54:13 It is an incredible insight into leadership,
54:17 into hospitality, into enterprise restaurants
54:20 and franchise, franchisee relationships.
54:23 Take a look at Room for Seconds.
54:25 And if you're ready to start a show, reach out to us,
54:28 betheshow.media.
54:30 We can't wait to work with you.
54:31 (upbeat music)
54:34 you
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