Trust First: How Qu Builds Long-Term Brand Success Today

Niko Papademetriou [00:00:00]:

We care immensely about finding success for our brands. For the companies that choose to work with us, we're fortunate to have them, you know, give us their trust and we, we work to earn that over and over and over again. Because trust can be lost pretty easily, very easily. And so we really, we really talk and act a lot with our brands, with our customers. Okay. About, you know, value equation and about that sort of give and get on both sides of the equation. It can't just be us always chasing, being successful for our brands. It also has to be the brands that want to, you know, partner with us and work with us to sort of help move the industry forward and, and be good stewards together.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:00:49]:

So I think finding alignment there makes it almost easy.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:01:04]:

Welcome to another episode of WISKing It All. We're joined today by Niko Papademetriou. Hopefully I said that right. Co founder of yeah. Yes. I grew up with a lot of Greek friends. I think it helped a lot of Greek friends. I grew up in Montreal, so big Greek community.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:01:21]:

Love Montreal.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:01:23]:

But Niko, Niko is actually a co founder of Qu. Pos I was looking forward to this episode. I love what you guys do, but we'll get into that. I'm sure most people know because you're, you're not a small company, but we'll get into it. So first of all, Niko, thank you for joining the WISKing it all podcast and for being here today.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:01:40]:

It's my sincere pleasure to be here. Can't wait to, can't wait to go back and forth on some fun things.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:01:46]:

Yeah, 100%. You've had a pretty impressive careers from finance, tech, hospitality. I always like to start with what drew you toward hospitality technology.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:02:00]:

Oh gosh, I wish I could give you some incredibly cool answer. I saw where the puck was going to be 10 years before it got there. I had a relatively short lived career as an investment banker when I was a kid, you know, when I was just out of school and enjoyed it a lot. But you know, 2008 happened. That was three years in and so, and I wasn't sort of the cream of the crop of first to admit, like I wasn't, you know, the top 10% of young investment bankers in America at that time. I was good. I enjoyed it a lot. I worked really hard and learned a lot.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:02:36]:

So that career kind of evaporated in front of my eyes and I always thought that I'd open a restaurant when I was like in my 40s and wouldn't that be fun? And I love food and traveling and People and talking and learning from people. And those things are all so much better when you've got a great bite of food and a cocktail or something. Right. And so Instead I was 26 and I opened a restaurant and a nightclub in downtown Washington, D.C. with, with a few other people. And I'll just, I'll breeze through that.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:03:09]:

I'd love to know that these are the. Yeah, these are some of the fun stories, like, first restaurant, nightclub. How was that?

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Niko Papademetriou [00:03:15]:

Oh, my gosh. Well, it was. It was really hard. And somehow it was like the same amount of hours that I worked as an investment banker, but at 10:30 pay, very different setting and, you know, a different pay profile and a lot more risk and, you know, personal risk. Right. And. But I learned an immense amount and I got to work with authentic, normal people. And that doesn't mean that when I was in finance, I didn't love it too.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:03:45]:

I worked with, you know, brilliant numbers people and, and when I worked in the restaurant and I worked with brilliant people people, right? I mean, people who work in restaurants have to know people and, and how to interact with people. And I learned so much through that time frame, those four, four and a half years. I learned the pressures, internal and internal and external pressures of running a business. And, and I got a firsthand look at the challenges that restaurants face. And, and I had met, you know, some folks over the course of that time frame, especially toward the end. I'd met a couple of other guys that, you know, had an idea, right. You know, how it starts, right. They had an idea to make something better.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:04:33]:

Right. And that's really how it started. They. They needed somebody. They were looking for somebody that could sort of articulate a vision and understood and could speak restaurant, as I always say. Yeah, I was very intrigued. I've always been drawn to technology just, just intrinsically, I just find it to be interesting. And, and so, yeah, that's so neat.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:04:55]:

That's really how I got into this.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:04:57]:

That's cool. I'm always into it. I love that. And I'm curious to know, like, at that time, right, when, when, you know, you got approached about this piece of POS ID and we can make it better, what was, you know, things evolved, you know, a lot. But at that time, what was the, the main pain points that you were maybe seeing with, with pos that you're like, I like this. I want to. Let's. Let's do this thing right? Like, what was it about the idea, what problem was it solving at that time?

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Niko Papademetriou [00:05:24]:

Yeah, it was, it's it's sort of funny that it's not that different than today in some ways.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:05:32]:

Okay.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:05:33]:

It really had to do with data and how you can move around data. I mean, I'm making it really simple. But ultimately at that time, 95%, 90 + 95 + percent of restaurants were not yet in the cloud. A very legacy approach just by virtue of how point of sale systems and other on prem technologies were built. They were all built client server, which just means there's a lot of data siloing and that inherently integrations are more difficult. And for those reasons and a plethora of others, it was hard for restaurants to be more nimble because their technologies were not very nimble. They just weren't yet architected to be nimble. And all of what I'm talking about, like nimbleness with technology and with architecture still ultimately just has to do with data.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:06:29]:

Like how does data transact and how does transmission work between different technologies. So that was really the opportunity was how can we more seamlessly enrich and more performant way allow for data to move between parties so that restaurants could be more efficient and effective. And whatever they were trying to do, working on inventory, communicating with guests, understanding who their guests are, you know, understanding, you know, pricing methodologies and so on and so forth.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:07:00]:

That makes sense. It's funny because I remember like that transition when, when cloud POS is first started in general and it was like such a big shift because most restaurants especially I, I dealt with a lot of full service restaurants but had very expensive hardware setups and it was normal to spend 15, $20,000 on, on your POS setup. And all of a sudden I remember that moment where like, you know, tablet POS in general kind of started was, it was, it was super. I always joke around that restaurants are always like kind of like the last of the party, you know, but like that was an example of like, like a big tech moment in the, in the, in the restaurant space where it was like, wow, cloud, you know, like you said, going from on premise to kind of cloud. And obviously it's evolved quite a bit since then. But it's. Well, it's interesting.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:07:43]:

One of the things you said, Angelo, is, is, is funny. It actually reminds me of like a decade ago, right. Which is in the beginning there was a, I think a misnomer and it wasn't operator's fault. I would argue that it was technology vendors fault. It's nobody's fault. I guess the point is we weren't doing a good job of Teaching what cloud meant. And so you said a second ago, which is spot on that in that arc of about 10 to 15 years ago a lot of these tablet cloud solutions came about. Right? Tablet doesn't mean cloud and cloud doesn't mean tablet.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:08:25]:

In fact there aren't many tablet consumer grade tablet solutions around anymore. If you think about it, right. Toast started on tablets, they were called Toast Tab, they started on Samsung Galaxy Tab A's right. Like and, and, and it took them some years in the earlier years to get rid of all of those to actually get their first five or 10,000 restaurants off of those consumer grade tablets into a more purpose built, nothing too insane, nothing too too crazy, nothing way over engineered that was going to last for 15 years because that client server idea of buying a software license and buying a POS terminal hardware at the same time and letting them both last as long as they could possibly last, those days were over and cloud was what changed that. Right. But ultimately the detachment of cloud from tablet and vice versa was something that we had to educate the market on and other POS vendors and such. But that cloud didn't just mean cheap or free and cloud also didn't mean you'd have all of the resiliency and stability and mission critical nature of what restaurants need and have it in a $200 consumer grade.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:09:43]:

Right? That's yeah spot on. And I love to hear from you like in the early days, right. I like to always understand how the evolution, right. So today maybe to get people, I mean realistically I think Qu is so big that most of our listeners will know but depending where they're listening from, maybe they won't know Qu POS. But can you just talk a bit and then we'll dive deeper but talk a bit about where you guys are at today. I think you're at 300ish employees. You guys got some awesome brands like Dave's Hot Chicken and more like. So maybe just to set the stage so people listening in like you just to give, give you guys credit, Niko and his team credit.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:10:18]:

He's talking about you know, an idea 10ish years ago but it's, it's a very successful solution today. So maybe we'll just add, add a bit of context there.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:10:28]:

Well that's kind of you to say Angelo. And, and you know it is on the hard work of, of many people that, that not all of whom are, are still a part of the company. Right. You know, as companies grow, you know, you know people move on, they do different things but we have Worked really hard to be one of some partners to the industry. So a little bit about us. You know, we are a private company so we don't share all of the numbers and stats. Exactly. But you know we have many dozens of customers.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:11:06]:

We focus from a go to market perspective and you know about us, Well, I think probably some, a lot of operators do, but there are a lot that don't because we don't focus on that part of the market. So we have a relatively narrow focus in the restaurant space. We focus on 20 to multi thousand location fast casual and quick service chains. So the Dave's Hot Chicken of the world is a perfect example of fast casual and Jack in the Box for example as a perfect example of a traditional qsr. And so we focus on those operational models. We don't work in the full service space, we don't do casinos and cruise ships, we don't work in the hotel or broader hospitality sector. But yeah, we focus keenly on fast casual and QSR chains roughly in that 20 to multi thousand location size.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:12:01]:

Makes sense. That makes sense. I know because I'm thinking about Wisk right when we started small company. And then as the team grows, like you said, a lot of things change. But I'm curious, when you look back, was there a defining moment in the early days when you guys were call it a team of just five people that shaped how you approach things today. Cause I find sometimes, you know, there's certain things that shape you in the early days. I'm curious if there's anything that stands out to you in those, you know, five, five person days.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:12:30]:

The short answer is yes, there are. There are a few over the years, over the last, you know, almost dozen years.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:12:37]:

Right.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:12:37]:

There are certainly three or four times where I think it would have been easy to hang it up or to pivot hard. And you never know what those would have, how those would have manifested had you, you know, changed a path. Right. There's an old adage of like if you're leaving San Diego and you're flying to New York, you know, a 1% change in your flight path will put you in Nova Scotia versus Florida, but you're trying to get to New York. So like, so if that can happen, who knows what a hard pivot would have done 11 years ago.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:13:12]:

But that's a fair point.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:13:13]:

Yeah, I remember in the early days and this is, I don't know if it was right or wrong, but it's something we did course correct on later we were, it was probably 11 years ago and we were debating whether we had the opportunity to work with, with a very large hotel chain and, and we were just doing the food service outlets within the hotel chain. So we weren't like going into hotels, but we were doing food service outlets, very low touch food service outlets in a hotel chain or really a sub brand within a very large global hotel chain. And we were debating if the sort of gravitas. Right. Whether that could be a lighthouse for us. Right. Working with this brand was sort of worthwhile for our company and we determined that it would be good for us and we worked with that company for the next four years or so. Four years or so.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:14:08]:

Oh, wow.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:14:11]:

As one of a growing, you know, a growing group of brands we were working with. But it just became more and more evident every year that went by that we weren't working with other food service outlets within hotels. It ultimately wasn't going to be the right solution for us to really be a great partner to that customer. And so look, we worked with them very, very closely and we started having those discussions with them to say, hey, look, we'll support you for as long as it takes, gladly. But we want to help you move to a platform that's going to be, it's going to be better for you, it's going to be better suited to service your needs, better today and in the future. And so we made that hard decision. Now you could look at it and say, well, three or four years later you decided to move away from that. So it must have been a mistake.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:14:58]:

I don't know. I don't know that it was a mistake. You know, we didn't burn a bridge and we're here today. So maybe it was good. Maybe it helped us win some of those other, you know, brands along the way. Maybe it helped us in funding in the early days, you know, but. But yeah, I think that's an example of a decision we made when we were five or six people and then one that we went back and made when we were, you know, 30 or 50 people. And that's interesting.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:15:24]:

I never knew that. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And it's hard. I mean, listen, for people listening in, it's such a tough thing in the, I mean, any business world, but in the tech world, it's. Sometimes you get opportunities and it's hard. I mean, I think people get better over time. But to differentiate between, you know, a shiny gold object and like a real opportunity that you might miss, and it's a bit easier to connect the dots looking back and, oh, you know, I'm happy with the decision, but in the moment it's all as hard.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:15:50]:

Right. So I totally can relate. Fast forwards today, you, you know, small startup team has grown to. Like you said, I think 300 plus people, I know a big theme and it's something really hard to do is maintaining culture. I'd love to know how do you think through that? And I know, you know, being co founder, I know you do a lot of the sales up a lot of stuff, but in general, when you look at your company, how do you guys maintain, you know, culture alignment when you're scaling so quickly?

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Niko Papademetriou [00:16:19]:

It's a great question. I think part of it is that we have a really strong attachment to hiring for culture and fit as opposed to just hiring based on resume or what you've done in the past. We have the notion in our hiring process, I don't want to share too much, but we have somebody in our hiring process. We always bring somebody in that helps identify from an outsider's perspective, that person's ability to really work well with us, bring unique and different perspectives and help kind of push us forward, bring us forward as well as, you know, marrying in well with our culture. Right. And so I guess the short answer is we, we still hire for culture. And I hope that we can do that forever, whether we're 500 or 5,000 employees, you know, 20 years from now.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:17:13]:

Right.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:17:14]:

But. So I think that helps, but I don't think that's the silver bullet. I think that, you know, what we're trying to do here, the mission, if you will, is, is something that if it resonates with you, the culture almost makes itself. Right. It just, it organically happens. And people come here, they get in the mix, they tell us that, you know, they've worked at other companies, whatever, in our industry, out of our industry, it doesn't matter. And they haven't felt this sort of camaraderie. It doesn't mean we can't have bad days or bad weeks or great days and great weeks.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:17:50]:

But we have an openness, we challenge each other. We care immensely about finding success for our brands. For the companies that choose to work with us, we're fortunate to have them, you know, give us their trust. And we, we work to earn that over and over and over again. Because trust can be lost pretty easily, very easily. And so we really, we really talk and act a lot with our brands, with our customers. Okay. About, you know, value equation and about that sort of give and get on both sides of the equation.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:18:31]:

It can't just be us always chasing, being successful for our brands. And it also has to be the brands that want to, you know, partner with us and work with us to sort of help move the industry forward and be good stewards together. So, yeah, I think finding alignment there makes it almost easy.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:18:49]:

Yeah, no, it makes sense. And I think like we said about trust is spot on. We'll definitely clip that part because it's true. Trust is. Takes time to build. Time, effort, Right. It's longer to build, but it can be thrown off very quickly, you know, so it's. It's something to think about.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:19:11]:

One thing that came to mind was, you know, as you guys are growing, I know, big part of your responsibility, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's, you know, the sales and the whole, I guess, BD in general. Right. And so, sure, how do you make sure that your sales team is more than just a sales team? And when I say that, I mean, like, of course, quota numbers, all that good stuff. But how do you kind of ensure they're also building genuine customer value?

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Niko Papademetriou [00:19:38]:

Yeah, it's funny because I, like, like any human, was already answering your question before you'd even gotten the seventh word out in my head, right? And I was answering it with, well, it's more than just a sales team. Right? And the next words I came up was, clearly, it's more than just a sales team. But, I mean, but it almost is as simple as that, right? If you look at your team and the people that represent your company out at market as sort of transactional people, if you're hiring for that, if you're looking for people, if you're seeking people who've done it three times before and have the big fat Rolodex and just know all the tricks of the trade, you get in trouble. And you get in trouble because this market of ours is changing so incredibly rapidly. It is very different than it was 12 years ago, and it's different than it was 18 months ago. So you have to look for adaptable people who have a real sense of unearthing challenges and opportunities, who care immensely about building trust, about being able to see beyond, not myopically, but see the much bigger picture. To know that if they take a shortcut on this one deal or maybe two in a row, that ultimately, you know, that they might be burning their. The bridge or burning the opportunity for them to have a long, you know, very fulfilling and rewarding career as a part of this company, as a part of our industry.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:21:07]:

And so I think for all those reasons, we're really looking at people who, who want to be in this for the long run, who want to build trust with the industry as a whole and do that through quality interactions and quality engagements, whether through formal sales processes or just having respect for one another at conferences or trade shows, or genuinely caring about and finding interest, taking interest in what people are saying and people's opinions, I think those are the kinds of traits that we look for. And when we find those kinds of people and bring them into the organization and teach them a little bit more about us and sort of how we interact, it happens organically and we, and we just, we just find that we have much more of a customer obsessed organization than a sales team.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:22:00]:

That's awesome. No, well said. And you know, as I think of the industry, I always like to get, you know, veterans like yourself input or kind of a vision of what you see. And so one thing that, that I'd love to, to hear from, from your point of view is as you think about the, the industry, I guess as a whole, what's something exciting or most exciting or is exciting that's happening in quick service and, and fast casual? Because you see a lot, there's so much tech stuff happening. I'm curious what's standing out. It could be iq, it could be just in general, anything that you see that you want to kind of share again, I guess in the QSR slash fast casual industry, a lot of macroeconomic.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:22:43]:

Headwinds right now, specifically in the limited service realm, in the fast casual and QSR space. Right. There's been a lot of price taken in, especially in the QSR segment, but also in the fast casual segment. And there are some large brand leaders that are, that are saying publicly that they feel their target customer. Right. Their demo is losing the value exchange that they want to be bringing that they feel they're almost entrusted by bringing to their customer. Right. You know, McDonald's made a big, a big push two weeks ago now maybe three weeks ago that the price of the, they're bringing back the extra value meal and that it's going to be, you know, at 10 bucks idoli.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:23:28]:

And so because, because it got to a place where you could get, you know, a combo of some sort and next thing you know you're, you're paying 16 or 18 bucks and and then it's like, well, why am I eating here Chili's and get a plate of food this big. That by the way is like pretty good these days, right?

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Angelo Esposito  [00:23:47]:

Yeah.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:23:48]:

Casual dining chains have Made a big push, especially Chili's.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:23:51]:

Chili's been crushing it. I got it.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:23:53]:

I went to Chili's for my son's 12th birthday two Mondays ago and we had nine kids, two adults, and the whole meal. Nine kids, two adults, the whole meal was 200 bucks. Which that's not nothing but like nine.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:24:08]:

Yeah.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:24:08]:

For that, you know.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:24:09]:

Yeah.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:24:09]:

12 year old kids and two adults, you know, each of them ordered a soda or a tea or all this stuff and. Yeah, and we got, we got a bunch of fried mozzarella. So they were doing the cheese bowls and everything was like 200 bucks. That's awesome. It would have cost easily as much if we'd gone to, you know, Taco Bell.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:24:27]:

Yeah, easily. That's interesting.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:24:31]:

There's something to be said there. This is a long way of saying that. I think that a lot of the exciting and interesting stuff that's either happening or maybe about to happen or it's happened lately and it might just take off are ways where you can significantly impact the value equation for customers in the limited service world, in the fast casual QSR world. So how can we make not just some tiny incremental change in, in labor, for example, or in shrinkage like you know, food that goes bad or you know, overproduction that you have to get rid of because it's going past its holding point, things like that. How can you make big step changes in those areas? Right. And so obviously AI is the acronym du jour and certainly will be. But I'm increasingly excited by the ways that people are thinking about how to layer in AI and machinery and automation, both literal and figurative automation within the restaurant journey within the four walls of the restaurant to, to change the sort of gross margin reality of the restaurant space given today's macro and micro environment. So I'm not going to give you like the juicy oh, I just can't wait for voice is it or, or vision is it or this or that.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:25:50]:

Although I am pretty bullish on vision, I think like the next five years could do some really neat stuff around vision. But I guess I'm just excited to see how AI and machine learning and just different data scenarios and the way that you can make changes to a brand and how it engages its guests and its community are going to continue to reshape the restaurant landscape in the next three to five years.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:26:16]:

Yeah, totally agree. I mean, it's evolving so fast. It's. I finally get it when like, you know, I think about, let's say my parents with the Internet or like with Facebook. It's like. It's like I feel like I'm falling behind with AI Every week. I'm like, no, I'm becoming that parent. You know, I'm like, trying to keep up.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:26:34]:

And obviously, like, because. Because of WISK, I'm pretty up to date. But, man, it's just. Things are changing so fast.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:26:39]:

It's hard.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:26:40]:

Every week, new leaders, new things, new models. Like, there's so much going on that it's. It's hard, but. But at the same time, super grateful to be living in this era because it's also just super interesting.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:26:52]:

Um, but there's one thing, and I couldn't agree more, but there's one thing that we can't lose sight of. And as soon as you do, you're cooked. As my son would say. He's 12. It has to be real. Like, it has to be tangible. It has to deliver something real. Something tangible.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:27:13]:

You know, it has to save money or it has to drive revenue or it has to make an operator's life easier, which translates to direct results, like better guest experience or more accurate orders or hotter hot food or colder cold food. Like, yes, it just has to be real. Yeah, and. And that's what makes it hard, frankly. But if you're not out there disrupting and trying new things, you never make. If you can't take big swings, you don't make big changes. And the industry is asking for big changes. So I'm just glad there are so many, you know, disruptors and innovators out there trying to take big swings.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:27:55]:

Yeah, 100%. And, you know, it's funny, and I'm curious to get your take is restaurants. I feel like it's changed, especially now because of AI. People are, like, more open to tech. But generally speaking, the restaurant space has always been, like, the least, let's say, willing to adopt. Not the least. Maybe the last of the party. You know, it's like in every other industry.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:28:14]:

And then restaurants are like, oh, online reservations. And then it's like, you know, I mean, they're always kind of like, last to the party. I'm curious, what is it about restaurants, like, that you think make them so hesitant to, like, modernize their tech stack, you know, especially because you were in the restaurant space as well. Like, what do you think the reason is?

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Niko Papademetriou [00:28:32]:

The restaurant gets a bad rap for being laggards. From an innovation adoption or a technology adoption perspective.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:28:38]:

They also get hammered in their defense.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:28:41]:

I don't think. Exactly. I don't think it's fair to say. That I think one needs to understand the fact that when a thousand unit chain is talking about, you know, rolling out something that's going to touch each one of their employees, you're talking about retrain, retraining 15 to 40,000 people.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:28:57]:

Yeah, fair.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:28:59]:

There aren't a lot of industries where in order to make, you know, a change, you got to retrain 15 to 40,000 people. You got to retrain 15 to 40 thousand people in as broad and deep of a system of workflows as like things like kitchen display systems, POS systems, training customers around kiosks, you know, how like outside order tablets work, all those kinds of things. The world we live in.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:29:28]:

Right, yeah.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:29:29]:

And so it's not that restaurants don't want to, it's that it brings different challenges. And so what I think we have to do in our world is we have to understand restaurants desires and their constraints and do a good job of working internally to reduce the gap between those two things. Working with partners to help further reduce the gap between what they're looking for from an innovative perspective and what their practical realities are and make sure that it can be cost advantageous to adopting these things. And so it just means that we have to think through a different lens than like maybe other industries do, or maybe selling POS looked like 15 years ago where it was just kind of like replacing one black plastic box on the countertop for a different, cheaper black plastic box on the countertop.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:30:21]:

It's true.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:30:22]:

We don't look at what we do as being a black plastic box on the countertop. Right. The POS is one head, if you will, of a number of different order channels that live atop that foundational unified commerce platform, that foundational data creation layer.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:30:37]:

Yeah.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:30:38]:

And so we look at it differently, we look at the challenge differently and we navigate those waters with our customers or our brands differently.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:30:46]:

That makes sense. And I guess the other challenge, we see it at risk all the time. Right. We, we do help with our whole thing is just reducing beverage costs, reducing food costs, and just helping with, you know, overall shrinkage and all that. And one thing we all, you know, and I'm sure you guys see too, is just that seems more specific. The hospitality space, just staff turnover is just that much greater. Not to say there's not staff turnover in every industry, but it's just, it makes, like you said, you're training 40,000 people, but if they last six months, it's like you're training like that. That turnover adds to the formula of this, of pain, I guess where it's like now you got to retrain X amount.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:31:24]:

So it makes it a very interesting. But I love it. I love the industry because it is complicated. I don't know why. Sometimes I'm like, I should have picked it. But similar to you, I just love the people business. I love dealing with restaurants, with bars, with hotels. That's who we deal with.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:31:38]:

And I love people, people. But it comes with, I guess, a lot of specific, you know, challenges. I would say it does.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:31:46]:

And, and I appreciate that you brought up turnover because I'll throw two things back at that. One.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:31:53]:

Yeah, sure.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:31:54]:

Especially in the limited service world, right. Turnover is even higher than industry wide. But two things there, One, something I learned. Look, you know, like I learn every day. Just because I've been doing this for almost a dozen years doesn't mean I know everything by any means. I'm proven wrong daily. Don't you worry, Angelo. But same here.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:32:17]:

But something that I learned like a year or 18 months ago that an operator told me, duh, listen to the people that you're trying to build and service things for, right. Was that yes, maybe QSRs have a 175 to 250% industry wide annual turnover, but it's not really that every employee in the restaurant and when I say this, you're going to be like, oh, well, yeah, that duh. But it wasn't duh for me. Right? I didn't already know. It's not that every employee turns over 1.75 times per year or 2 times per year or 2.5 times per year. You actually have some employees in the QSR space that have worked at restaurants for the same brand or even the same location for five or 10 or 15 or 20 years. And then you have, and you have a couple, you have almost like a nucleus of some of these people that are really like the heart and the soul of that particular brick and mortar. And it might be one or five people and then you have the other five or 15 people that turn over maybe like three times per year.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:33:19]:

And so in some capacities the turnover rate industry wide is actually lower than it seems. And in other ways it's actually higher. When you think about it, it's like the 75% are actually turnover even more than the industry wide average.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:33:33]:

Right.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:33:33]:

And so that just makes it harder, just makes it harder to operate a business consistently and provide again, you know, the, the right guest experience day in and day out, daytime, nighttime, etc. And the other thing is that I've seen and this is my finger in the air, so don't quote me on it. But I'm pretty sure we'll start seeing if we can't already quote this. Actually a reduction in labor turnover in restaurants, I think it peaked so historically it was like again in limited service, like somewhere around 2x industry wide for limited service for a long, long time, somewhere between 150% and 200% and then in like 22, 3, like coming out of COVID for the first couple years, especially when like wage rates were really ballooning and inflation was, was really taking off from a US perspective at least I think, I bet that spiked at like 300% industry wide. I bet it probably did. And I'm sure Tech Nomomic or Nation's Restaurant News or the IFA or large great organizations that have these numbers, have this data, can corroborate something like that. But I think it's really, I think it's coming back down. I think it's been coming back down.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:34:45]:

I'm seeing in some of our chains a lot less turnover. I was talking with the president and, and COO of Dave's Hot Chicken, right, Jim Biddocks, who is a great partner to us and a good friend and just, just a couple of weeks ago in Florida and he was talking about how at Dave's they have under 100% annual turnover of employees. I think he may have said they had like closer to 50% at most maybe. And so he's seeing a lot less turnover in their brand that's cool. Than others. And sure they're a newer brand, kind of a hot brand. They're certainly on a streak and they've got an incredible product and people love it and you know, they're a great partner to Qu and hopefully we're a good partner to them. But like he's seeing a fraction of the industry average from a turnover perspective.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:35:36]:

And so I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see industry wide labor turnover come down a bit. And I think that's a lot because we're paying people more. And also hopefully technology is doing a better job of making them frontline operators having to be less in the weeds, like less on their heels all the time and coming from a place of already being behind. And hopefully technology's getting to a place where it's helping them and it's making their day to day easier. And so, you know, hopefully. And then things like, you know, operational stability and focusing more on guest experience and whatnot and training, like I said earlier, all these Things come together to create a better environment for frontline employees to work and to provide consistency to the brand's guests.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:36:23]:

Yeah, it's super interesting. I hope you're right about that trend heading in that direction. That's really exciting news. As, as we slowly come, come to, to the end of the show, there's a couple quick ones I got for you. One I'd love to know, you know, we have a lot of, most of our listeners, in fairness, are like restaurant operators, but we, you know, generally most are entrepreneurs. And so I'm curious to what advice would you give hospitality entrepreneurs who are maybe considering betting on, you know, a big new idea? Right. You've done it. You've been doing it for the last 12 years.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:36:56]:

I'm sure you learned a lot. Any advice or words of wisdom you could share for someone who is, you know, in their version of the nightclub you were in back then and have an idea and one wants to maybe.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:37:08]:

Take a stab at it, Accept help.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:37:11]:

Accept help.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:37:13]:

It's really like, I think it's really as simple as that. It's, it's an impossible mission.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:37:17]:

Don't do it alone. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that. And then I got one or two more that I'd love to just kind of obviously plug where people can find you and Qu and all that good stuff. But thinking just kind of ahead, I'd love to know what you can share because I know, like you said, Qu is still a private company, but can you share maybe what's next for Qu in the near future? If there's anything you could share or you're excited to share? If it's top secret, it's top secret. But I figured that'd be a nice, nice little way to slowly wrap up.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:37:49]:

No, I appreciate that and I think I can give it just, I can tease just well enough so it's valuable enough for me to say here. But it'll also, you know, have something neat coming just down the line, but awesome. So it's no secret that we've invested a lot in the edge, in bringing the edge and an edge architecture into the four walls of a restaurant. And we do that for resiliency, stability and speed. We do that for uptime and we do that for predictability of the on premises, on site technology working for restaurants. Okay. But we've always said that it's an area for innovation for us, not just clearly an area that we've been innovating at Market.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:38:33]:

Right.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:38:34]:

We brought edge into the four walls of a restaurant. Four years ago. So we're the first to bring it to market and the first to sort of reimagine what that can really look and feel like. But. But we've always said that it was a keen area of focus for our brand, for our company, and an area of focus for innovation. And so I will tell you that there's a great restaurant conference called FSTech Food service technology that's coming up just this upcoming week, right? It's Sunday.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:39:02]:

Yeah, It's a Sunday, right?

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Niko Papademetriou [00:39:03]:

Yeah, yeah, it's this Sunday through Tuesday. It's at the Gaylord in Kissimmee, Florida, which is actually Orlando, or I think it's like part of Orlando, on the fringe of Orlando. And we will have some exciting things coming out there which will, I think, have been in the past by the time this POD goes live.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:39:25]:

Weeks.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:39:26]:

But, yeah, we're doing some really cool stuff in areas where we're bringing tangible results, like I talked about earlier to the operator, both at, you know, a store operator or franchisee level, as well as at the corporate entity or the franchisor level, if there's a franchisor franchisee relationship and, and even beyond to a. To a level of innovation that. That we think is. Is very important to focus on and keep sort of keeping our foot on the gas from an innovation perspective. So I'll say that we think Edge is the future. It's the now and the future that's going to unlock different realities and capabilities for AI and for creating tangible value for restaurant operators.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:40:10]:

That's exciting. It's funny, I was actually just. I've never been to FSX specifically, but people in the industry keep telling me about it and I live in Miami, so it's not too far. So I'm still thinking of just coming. Coming to crash. I mean, obviously buying a ticket, but just coming to crash, because I. So many industry friends that I see on LinkedIn are going to be there, you're going to be there. So it'd be cool to meet you in person.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:40:30]:

I will. If you send me a note, I will connect you with the person that puts the show on and they will give you a ticket. I have no doubt. So if you'd like to go, I think you should. It's got a lot of terrific technology partners there and, you know, myself and all of our peers. It's a. It's a good day. A couple days of learning and interacting.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:40:54]:

Cool. Yeah. Honestly, I'd take you up on that because I've been getting kind of fomo And I'm like, man, I. I want to go. And it's. It's too close to say no. I'm like. And I could drive there three hours away.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:41:07]:

Okay, that's awesome. And then, last but not least, I always like to just connect people, so people might have really enjoyed this episode. Hey, this Niko guy sounds super cool. How can I connect with Niko? How can I learn more about Qu? So just anything you want to plug away? We'll put the links, but it's good to have it in audio.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:41:21]:

Of course. I'm hyper attentive to LinkedIn, so I literally respond to every single person that ever sends me a message on LinkedIn. Not always all of the AI generated prospecting ones, but certainly if anybody ever writes me a note. Good, bad, ugly, looking for a connection, wants to ask a question. I don't care if they want to learn about Qu or not or what have you. I respond to every single message that someone sends me. So if you're interested in saying hi, just send me a message on LinkedIn. You can also check out our website@qbeyond.com.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:41:53]:

that's qubeyond.com. there you go. Qbeyond.com and we're all there and you can contact us through that. But like I said, all of us are very approachable. Very. We love to connect with folks. So, you know, come check this out on LinkedIn. Check me out on LinkedIn.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:42:15]:

Come to Fstech, come say hello, or go to our website.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:42:19]:

Love that. Well, there you have it, guys. Niko, Papademetriou. I'll put his full name and LinkedIn profile so you guys don't have to worry about spelling that out so you can connect with Niko. Thank you for joining us on the WISKing all podcast. This is awesome.

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Niko Papademetriou [00:42:33]:

My pleasure, Angelo. Thank you so much.

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Angelo Esposito  [00:42:36]:

If you want to learn more about WISK, head to WISK AI and book a demo.

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