Jeremy Julian [00:00:00]:

I try always to go to their brand before a demo if at all possible. I try and walk the store, I try and eat there, I try and walk around the property just to get a feel for what is their culture, what does it feel like, what does it look like. And if I can't do it in person, I'll do it online. Where's there a virtual tour? Where's there a YouTube walkthrough so that I can start to get a feel for that brand? And I'm speaking their language, I'm talking like them.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:31]:

Welcome to another episode of WISKing It All. We're here today with Jeremy Julian, the CRO at Custom Business Solutions. Jeremy, thanks for joining us.

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Jeremy Julian [00:00:47]:

Thanks for having me. As I say, every time I'm on this side of the mic, it's always interesting because I've got my own show. So it's, it's always fun being interviewed versus being the interviewer.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:55]:

Yeah, agreed, agreed. I do a lot more interviewing than being interviewed, but the few times that I am interviewed, it's always, it's always fun to share your story. So hopefully you'll have fun today sharing yours.

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Jeremy Julian [00:01:05]:

Absolutely, I'm looking forward to it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:07]:

Awesome. Well, look, one of the things I like to always do is understand how people got to where they are today. Right. So first thing first, just for our audience, can you tell them what you know CBS is? So we have a starting point and then I want to kind of get into your, your, your professional journey.

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Jeremy Julian [00:01:21]:

Yeah. So CBS is a 30 year old startup. I call it a 30 year old startup. We, we started as a point of sale reseller and we're selling positive touch point of sale for since the 90s, sold it to a lot of of big brands that are using Positouch. Had worked with us in the past and still work with us, brands that you guys would recognize that are on the stock exchange and such. And so we sold a ton of Positouch and then about 10 years ago started writing our own point of sale on top of Positouch. We started writing, developing software to enhance Positouch to meet guest needs. And we've really been a reseller and now a point of sale provider.

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Jeremy Julian [00:01:57]:

We focus on multi units and philosophically we believe in the freedom of choice and ensuring that restaurants can operate the way restaurants need and want to operate and that all of the parts and pieces should play well together, including products like yours.

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Angelo Esposito [00:02:12]:

I love it. I always like to understand how people go into the space. So 30 years, obviously you you are no stranger to the hospitality industry, but given that you've been in the restaurant, you know, tech scene for most of your life, like, how did that journey begin?

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Jeremy Julian [00:02:27]:

So, family business. So my father started the business, bought a cash register business, and they sold cash registers to everyone. And so it was nightclub, restaurants, liquor stores, furniture stores. And so my dad had bought the business in the late 80s. I grew up. I've got a picture of me programming cacas register in the kitchen, five or six years old. And so I kind of came up in that world. And then in high school, I started working in restaurants.

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Jeremy Julian [00:02:54]:

So I worked sandwich shop. And then my first waiting tables job. Very exciting at Denny's. $99 Grand Slams. It was very hard, hard to make a lot of money on tips on $99 grand SL. But that'll tell you how long ago it was. And then all through college, I worked in restaurants. And then after college, I really wanted to.

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Jeremy Julian [00:03:15]:

I've been passionate about the restaurant space. I know you and I talked about this offline. I've been so passionate about the restaurant space. It's given me, my family, so many opportunities. And so I came back full time. And really at cbs, I started as a help desk employee. Like early, early days. They, you know, the rest of the staff used to beat the snot out of me.

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Jeremy Julian [00:03:32]:

I was. There was no help desk when I was, you know, because I was 20 years old, 21 years old. And so I take phone calls from angry restaurant tours and, you know, trying to get problems fixed and work my way up through the ranks. And I've kind of done just about everything, finance installs, you know, programming, even to, to a certain extent, and just kind of gone through the ranks. And now I get the privilege of, of talking to new customers.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:53]:

That's awesome. I imagine, right, like 30 years doing that, that you've learned a lot of lessons. So, you know, one of the goals of this podcast is to, you know, share lessons and learnings and all that good stuff. So I'd love to know, like, what were maybe some early lessons you learned while moving through, you know, I guess, stages at cbs.

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Jeremy Julian [00:04:14]:

So for me, well, I think, I think we all learned this lesson about how much we didn't know when we thought we knew it all in our 20s and 30s. I think that's a given. But the thing that I think has informed my career and really, even the way we go to market is every restaurant operates differently. What makes one restaurant unique from another might be the way that they purchase, might be the way that they run their environment. It might be the music, it might be the location, it might be the food. There's so many different ways. And so to try and apply a one size fits all to any brand is not appropriate in my mind. And so figuring out what is it that makes things tick and then how can we apply software and applications and other things to try and enhance what they already do and just accelerate it, add fuel to that fire that already makes them who they are.

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Jeremy Julian [00:05:06]:

If they're already really good at bringing guests in the door, probably don't need to go throw a whole bunch of money at marketing. But how do we keep those same people coming back if they're already really good? It, you know, have a fantastic beverage program. How do we just make it more efficient? How do we make it so that they can, they can do the beverage program and tell people about it? And so for me, it's really an inquisitive nature that I started with to understand what makes people tick and then how do we help them to accelerate their growth and success in those spaces?

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:36]:

I know, you know, a lot of our listeners are restaurant owners and operators. And so, you know, I always try to extract some advice and I know one of the first decisions restaurants make when they open is what POS they're going to use, right? WISK usually comes later. A couple of months in, they're like, am I making money? And then they're looking for an inventory management system. But we're kind of like second. We're important, but we're not first. Usually it's like, I need my pos. I see a lot of restauranters make mistakes when choosing a pos, right? It's not that some are amazing, some are shit, maybe, but like, you know, there's good and bad in all pos. But I'm curious, what's your take on it and any advice you could give to restauranteurs when choosing a pos? Because it's one of the first things they do when they open a new location.

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Jeremy Julian [00:06:20]:

The biggest fail. Well, there's two big failings that I see in all technology environments, and I think you probably would, would say this as well, is that they don't know what they want to begin with. They have not defined the requirements very well and so they see their friend that got it or they ask around amongst their groups and their friend says it. The, the restaurant industry has a lot of followers. They, you know, they don't want to go first because they've been burned by technology, but they don't Know what they, what they want or their need need is. And so because they've not defined that their selection criteria is oftentimes missing. So thinking back about kind of the uniquenesses of what make people go, you know, if I'm looking at a pos, I need to understand what is it that my business is looking for today and, and make sure that the core of what makes me go is done and ready.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:07]:

Yeah.

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Jeremy Julian [00:07:08]:

And the second thing I would say that people don't do is they don't resource the project appropriately. So they add it to somebody else's already existing list of things to do and they already have a full time job but now they got to put in a new POS and they don't want to pay for the developers to do it, the teams like ours. So they say here, general manager, you go into all of these items, but he's also trying to manage the linens guy and the suppliers for their liquor and getting their liquor license and the general contractor to finish up the construction. And so it ends up not getting resourced. Then they can't get what they want. Not only did they start without a real vision for the future of where they wanted to get to, but then, then they get frustrated with their technology providers because they're like, well, why is it not integrating properly? I the perfect example, I asked the question during the sales pitch, how are you going to manage your doubles menu in your bar? Is it going to be double the, the, you know, is it, are you going to do two ounce pours or one, you know, one and a half ounce pours? They're like what that even exists? And I'm like, you want a theoretical inventory but you can't even tell me whether you want one and a half or two ounce pours on your doubles. And are you going to charge double the price? Are you going to charge 70% more for the double? And they had no idea. And so it's things like that that they're used to going to the bar and ordering a double but they don't even know how that actually works.

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Jeremy Julian [00:08:28]:

And so that's just a simple example that I know probably hits your world pretty hard a lot.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:33]:

Yeah, the number of times we see the double thing and it's like they don't add it as a, I mean pay on the pos, but something was as a modifier, an upcharge or even more obvious is sometimes the, the upsells. Right. So you order an old Fashioned and depending whatever bourbon you choose the same price. It's like guys, you know, these are different costs. You know, the flip side of that is I tell them, you know, I'm going to come to your bar and I am now going to order the most expensive bourbon because I know you're not up charging. But yeah, they definitely make that mistake. And it's, it's the analogy I always tell them is like forget WISK. Like of course we need that so we can have your perpetual inventory and know, you know, know what to discount.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:12]:

Like you used X amount of this bottle or this bottle or this bottle. But even beyond that, I'm like, forget WISK. Let's say you're not using WISK. Don't you as an owner want to know how many old fashioned maker's mark you sold and how meal fashion, you know, Blanton's bourbon you sold? So it's like, yeah, I do. Well then you need a button to see it, right? So it's like you need to track it.

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Jeremy Julian [00:09:30]:

And so I think that that's often the problem. Again, the probably the most common thing that I also see is I want to do third party delivery, I want to do doordash, I want to do Uber eats, I want to do GrubHub. And so they go find these contracts with these different providers but then they don't think about both charging more. They don't, they don't think about how the product is going to, is going to transition. They don't think about even their liquor license. Are they allowed to sell that old fashioned to go because they're like, well, just publish my whole menu. And I'm like, well number one, does your pizza suck when it gets out there? Are you going to get a bunch of bad reviews? And can you even sell the liquor? You know, when they go, well, in Covid we could do it. I'm like, but I can enable you to do that.

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Jeremy Julian [00:10:09]:

But that might be a really foolish thing for you to consider. These are a lot of times the problems that I see for the restaurant operators as they choose pos because I'm in agreement with you. While I think we have fantastic technology not done properly, none of it matters. Not resourcing it properly, not having the right decisions, not ensuring that you're trying to get what you want. It's not going to be able to connect to a WISK so that you can get perpetual inventory if you don't set it up properly. And so that's the biggest mistake that I make. They just follow their friends because their friends are putting in toast so we got to put in toast and nothing wrong with toast. They also don't really understand.

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Jeremy Julian [00:10:45]:

I guess the third thing that I would say is they don't understand the idea of having open architecture gives you flexibility so you're not tied into your pos. If your POS stops supporting you properly, if they start increasing your prices in everywhere else in your restaurant business, if US Food sucks, then go to Cisco. If Cisco sucks, go to US Foods. From a broadliner perspective, if you're a liquor provider, but in the POS world, they realize how hard it is to make that change and so they can start to ratchet up the price. Ratchet up the price, Ratchet up the price. And if your loyalties with them and online orderings with them and third party deliveries with them and back offices with them, now you're kind of stuck. So sorry, I got on a little bit of a rant there, but that's a big one that people don't think about.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:25]:

Yeah, these are good points. I love this. This is the type of stuff we love to share with our listeners. Just like people who have lived it, you've lived it, you've seen it, right? Like a restaurant might have a bad POS experience once or twice because they switch it. Or you know, if they've been around 20 years, three times, right? But like you've seen it thousands of times, so you definitely can speak to it. And, and I think that's important just to echo this point because I tell people this. The first point you made, I definitely tell people, is people don't have their list. And I always tell them, they'll ask me, oh, what POS do you recommend? And I'm like, look, we have a lot of great POS partners, but I would be foolish to just say, ah, go with this or go with that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:59]:

My advice to them is always make a list of your like non negotiables and then make sure that the POS does those things because what ends up happening, Your point is they'll book like five demos, demo with company a posb, and then they get distracted with things that maybe weren't even important to them, like, oh, they might see loyalty and this and they get distracted. But if they had that list and I don't know, the most important thing was splitting the bill or something about kitchen display. Like they can focus on, okay, who does that the best and not get distracted. So to our listeners, remember, make your list top five, top ten, top eight, whatever it is, make that list of the non negotiables. That way when you're sitting in on the demo, you can rank those things and write them down.

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Jeremy Julian [00:12:36]:

Because a lot of times you have no idea how many times I show up and we sign the deal and they're like, well, you showed me this. And I'm like, that is impossible because we don't even have that feature that you're telling me we showed you because they saw 10 different POS products or five different POS products and their competitor had it and they, in their own head, they saw it all. And so. Or my other favorite is all POS is the same. Yeah, it's like, okay, you know, those people make those mistakes a lot. So, yeah, you know, what you use at McDonald's isn't what you use at Ruth Chris Steakhouse. I promise you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:06]:

Yeah, exactly. And that's a good point, because on. On that note, I always tell people, it's like there's a reason these different technologies exist, right? And yeah, okay, maybe some might be similar, but in general, there's a reason. And so if it was as simple as everything's the same. And especially like in the inventory world, on paper, we all sound the same. Because like, you need your inventory, you need your purchases, you need your so. But I tell people, like, just think about it logically. If we're all the same, why like everyone just go over the cheapest solution, right? Like I'm gonna say, oh, I found this free one, or I found this, but why don't they.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:38]:

Because we're not all the same. We do. We need to get the same data. Yes, I get it. It's like a pos. Right. And so sometimes people make that mistake to your point where it's like, look, POS needs to get transactions, you know, split bills, send things to the kitchen display, like, and you might have this over simplified list. But then the, the nuances are like, wait, how does it work? What happens if the Internet's down? How does.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:00]:

Can I serve at the table? Can I? You know what I mean? Like all. And that's where, like you have to really think about your specific operations because it's. Are you a full service? Are you a quick service? Are you fast casual?

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Jeremy Julian [00:14:09]:

Are you a presentation tomorrow with a super high end fine dining steakh? They have wine bin numbers, they have a thousand bottle wine list. That is a very different experience than almost anyone else. That's not fine dining. Yes, there might be a thousand fine dining restaurants in all of the US but can your POS provider solve that problem? The other one that I would Tell you. And again, this goes for your company as well. And I know you guys do this really well is test their support call. Call their support department. 2:00 on a Friday night.

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Jeremy Julian [00:14:41]:

I mean a Friday afternoon. Call it at 8 o'clock on a Friday. See do they answer the phone, send in a support ticket, see if they respond. Because you know what? I don't care what POS you have, you are going to have problems. I don't care what inventory product you have, you're going to have issues. Might be self induced, might be product induced, it doesn't matter. Pressure test that relationship because you're not buying it for the short term. You're looking at a 7 to 10 year cycle for this if done properly.

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Jeremy Julian [00:15:06]:

And so ensure that you're picking the right solution. So you only have to spend the money once.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:10]:

I love that. That was a good one. Great, great, great call on that one because I love it. These are just real things that'll help real restaurateurs who are listening in. So this is the type of stuff we love. So, so thank you for sharing that. One of the things, you know, I just kind of switching gears, I know you launched I believe the, the restaurant technology guys and restaurant geek and foodie. Is that, is that correct?

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Jeremy Julian [00:15:32]:

No, just restaurant technology.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:34]:

Okay, okay.

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Jeremy Julian [00:15:34]:

I, I think my LinkedIn says I'm a restaurant. That's what foodie and a restaurant geek.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:38]:

Okay, okay.

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Jeremy Julian [00:15:39]:

So that's where that came from. But the restaurant technology guys is the podcast and kind and all that. Yeah. Okay.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:44]:

Because restaurant technology guy, excuse me, I was lucky enough to, to be on so thank you for, for that invite but why don't you tell people listening in because again, as, as much as I'm happy that they're we got the WISKey and all listeners, it's like I, I just want to help restaurant first period. If they can get wisdom and knowledge from your podcast, why not. So tell people a bit about the rest Restaurant technology guys.

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Jeremy Julian [00:16:04]:

So it's, I mean it really is thought leadership. And as I said at the onset the, the restaurant industry has given me and my family such great opportunities to go meet some cool people. I've sat in the room with people that I'm like, I don't, I have no ide. I'm so privileged to be able to do it. And so how do I give back? I don't want people to make these same mistakes. And so sometimes that's with us and I want to pressure test our, even our own organization. But also it's ensuring That I can deliver that wisdom in a way. I used to go out to trade shows.

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Jeremy Julian [00:16:30]:

We were just talking about trade show season as we're recording this. We're in the middle of trade show season. It's like I go and I spend three days at a trade show and I come back with so much data and I would deliver it back to my team. But then I got tired of repeating it for three and four and five times. So I just, you know what, I'm just going to put a mic on and record it. And then when somebody says, hey, what are the best practices for inventory management? I can say, go listen to that call with Angelo and we'll talk about. Because you talk about those things using wisps, not using wisps, those best practices are there to be able to help them. And so that's point number one.

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Jeremy Julian [00:17:01]:

And then point number two is I get a lot of questions from restaurant operators, restaurant executives. I was just this weekend at a customer's event and we were talking about food quality. And so they've got some challenges with food quality. As everybody does. Food doesn't get made the way that it says it in the book. And so he's looking to implement technology to help with that food quality to ensure that it gets in the box properly. And so I then reached out to a couple people that I know that are doing computer vision and machine learning to take pictures of the pizza before it gets put in the box to ensure that it's right, even if it's just posthumous. But really the goal is to get to an alert based system.

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Jeremy Julian [00:17:41]:

So for me, I go out and do those research things and then I go find people like you that are already solving that problem so that I can marry up customers with people that are all already solving their inventory problems, their food quality problems, their, you know, delivery problems or whatever those things are. So those are the two reasons why I do it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:56]:

That's awesome. I love that. And then, you know, being in the industry so long, what are some common problems that you typically see? Because I love the advice you gave on, on pos. So I want to go deeper in a few, maybe a few other areas. So like, well, you know, let's, let's go beyond, let's say choosing the right pos. What's another common problem?

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Jeremy Julian [00:18:12]:

You see, I alluded to it earlier, but I think it's the idea that any one solution can do it all. And so to me, I think it's very short sighted to think that your POS provider can also be Your inventory provider can also be your purchasing provider, can also be your loyalty provider, it can also be your online ordering provider. While many of them will try and they might be able to get you by, if you truly want to have one of your prime costs managed well, you've got to get somebody that specializes in that. For us we've decided and so I think for me, making sure that people play nice with others is a really, really big piece of the equation. And for years, again even going back to our positouch days, that's what we did. We wanted to be able to ingest or send data to a WISK so that you guys can go know what that plant's double is and that's really 1.8 ounces of liquor for theoretical so that your actuals, you know, you can match them up and figure out where your, where your yields are and things like that. So making sure that you play nice with others and that it's contractual that it's not in there and they're oh yeah, we can do this. But no, we have access to our own data.

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Jeremy Julian [00:19:22]:

It's our data to be able to exploit because the pos, the systems like yours, it's ultimately the consumer's data to be able to make better business decisions. It's not up to the technology providers. And unfortunately, whether you're doordash or you're toast or some of these other guys, they want the data so much worse for themselves, for the stock market and for some of these other things more so than they want. And so they will do that and then they'll cut you off from being able to even connect to these other third parties. And now you have to go with their solution. Now they've got leverage. The last thing I would tell you is the financial technology sector has taken over our space. The amount of people that are the credit card world, almost every point of sale out there or one of the non credit card dependent point of sales out there force you to use their credit cards.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:10]:

Yes.

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Jeremy Julian [00:20:10]:

And since you have to use their credit cards, they can bleed you out paper cut at a time. And so I think ensuring that you have flexibility to negotiate down your SaaS, pricing flexibility to negotiate down your processing costs are really, really big things. And again, unfortunately in the technology world having that flexibility to even migrate, I run into problems all the time. People are like I'm going to sign up with a gift card provider, what's your out clause? If they stop doing it, I have a customer that's going to have to write a check for almost $200,000 to get their gift card numbers out of the old servicer to be able to port them to a new one. So you think about that. That's a huge decision that somebody just signed the contract because they wanted whatever the shiny object was, but they don't have the ability to port those gift card numbers. And so now what do you do do now you got to continue to, to work with a poor provider because you sign this contract or you have to write a check for 200 grand. What do you do there?

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Angelo Esposito [00:21:08]:

Yeah. That's insane. It's funny the analogy sometimes I use because I agree with you. It's all in one. Solutions are tough. They're tough. Why are they tough? Because it's like take WISK, take you right? You've been at it 30 years. WISK, we've been at it 10 plus years.

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Angelo Esposito [00:21:21]:

So it's like if all we do is cost of goods, you know, like inventory, invoicing, like obviously we're going to be better than someone that has that as a module. Right. So it's like. And the same for scheduling and the same for. It's like, you know, I, I can't be so naive to think that someone could do all those things amazingly well. Now where sometimes, you know, I have some empathy for restauranteurs or restauranteurs listening. I get it. You don't want to have 20 tools and it's annoying to have 20 subscriptions and you're like, what's happening? But I think there's kind of a.

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Angelo Esposito [00:21:50]:

A balance. So what I like to kind of somewhat preach is I say, listen, you don't want to have 20 tools because that's also tough. You don't want to be all in one. To your point because that, that's not great. But at least look at the important things. Like if like POS is important. Okay, cool. Obviously you're going to pick up.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:04]:

Yes. If labor is a big chunk of your business, right? Your prime cost. Labor, cost of goods. It's not insane to have a labor tool and a cost of goods. So it's like those start making sense. Okay, you got three tools, big deal. Obviously at some point you got to like figure out how they interact. So it is important.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:19]:

How do they interact? How do they connect? But I agree with you that generally you'll have more success when you have tools that are specialized versus generic. And that's what I've seen where people go with all in ones. It sounds good. It's nice to have one subscription that's you know, just a little more expensive. But what I often find is they end up coming to us later. I'm not really getting what I need and I'm not really getting my inventory and the way my recipes are being handled, it's not really accurate because I need to be able to do xy and it's like, all right, welcome, welcome, welcome home.

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Jeremy Julian [00:22:51]:

Well, and you and I talked about it when, when you recorded for our show. If the integration is done properly with modern tool sets, it actually makes it to where the operator might not even know that there's a difference because it's not going and connecting to some legacy system where it's creating an old dbase file that's in there and getting pushed up to a cloud service, to an FTP server that you guys have to go digest in some new modern cloud based pos. You may or may not even know that you're logging into multiple platforms to be able to get your data or even if you are logging into multiple platforms, it is so seamless that you don't know any better. But I think a lot of people have been burned in the old Micros and Aloha days where and I'm not picking on Microsoft Aloha because they make fantastic work in the industry but they got stuck in a situation where they were having to be beholden to the way that they exported data for places like WISK and now they're stuck and there's zero leverage if they were using Aloha Back office and Aloha Point of Sale and Aloha gift cards. And again they do fantastic work. So I'm not picking on them but zero leverage. If WISK stops working, I can go to, to one of your competitors.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:01]:

Exactly.

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Jeremy Julian [00:24:01]:

And I don't have to rip and replace all my entire tech stack and you know, hopefully you guys don't ever fail. But you know, at the end of the day there's, there's challenges out there and I think those things are going to those things. You have to have the flexibility to make those choices because if you don't now you got to make poor decisions and ultimately could lose your business because you can't manage those prime costs because you can't use the systems that they have.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:21]:

Yeah, no, well said. Really well said. And, and you know, I know you touched on payment processing. I just want to go a bit deeper there because that's obviously a super hot topic in the restaurant space. I see it sometimes where like someone will come to me and say like ah, is that really your best price, because this POS is including it at almost no cost. And I'm like, you know, they're making money on every transaction. How much do you make a year? 7 million in revenue. Okay.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:43]:

You know, they're making a percentage. That too. So I know they're only charging you $79 a month, but I would charge you that too if I took, you know, X percent of payment. So tell me a bit about like the payment side and what to look out for because, you know, I've seen restaurants sometimes get a little burns and I know some pos's, I don't know exactly how it works, so maybe you even dive deeper. But from my understanding, some POs is really force their own payment processing, so they make money off that and some kind of allow you to kind of bring in your own. But talk to me a bit more about the payment processing side, maybe things to look out for, because I see that's an area where, you know, it's a pretty hot topic when, when running a restaurant.

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Jeremy Julian [00:25:17]:

So I will use toast just because they're probably the most ubiquitous out there. As far as the newcomers.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:23]:

Yeah.

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Jeremy Julian [00:25:23]:

When you go look at their 10K earning statements from Q1 or, or Q4 of last year, Q4 of 2020, they're averaging $1,400 per month per restaurant in revenue.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:36]:

Okay.

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Jeremy Julian [00:25:37]:

So think about if that was all SaaS. If you were getting a $1,400 a month revenue, you would be flipping out. If that was just your, your pos fees.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:45]:

Yeah.

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Jeremy Julian [00:25:46]:

30% of that $1400 is point of sale fees. The other 60 plus percent, 70% is credit card fees.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:56]:

Okay, wow.

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Jeremy Julian [00:25:57]:

So you think about that. And this just says public data like I'm not go read their earning statement and they average $1400 per user. And again, maybe you got a killer deal and you're only spending $1,000 a month. But if you had to write a check for $1,000 a month for your POS, you'd be flipping out. But they're embedding it into your credit card fees so you don't see it because it just gets taken out of your deposit. And so your, your $6 million restaurant that's doing a half a million a month, you know, $6 million annual restaurant, they are probably not going to Notice an extra 500 bucks or $700 in credit card fees every month because it's coming out of that credit card fees.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:35]:

Right.

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Jeremy Julian [00:26:36]:

And it's such a nominal amount. And really at the end of the day and Square's the same way and Clover's the same way, and I can go through a lot of them. But almost everybody in the space has a preferred partner or forces you to use their credit cards for it. Shift 4 just bought Rebel and Shift 4 bought Rebel. And I heard through the grapevine, I don't know this factually, but they make so much of their money on credit cards that they started charging all of the Rebel customers that weren't processing with them them a monthly fee if you're not processing with them. So they just bought this piece of software and they say, you know what, you're either going to process with us or you're going to pay us a fee that's equivalent to what we would make on you on a monthly basis. And one of the brands that's a nationally recognized brand that you would know their logo was paying up to $300 a month in fees to Shift4 because they weren't compliant with the credit card stuff. And so again, these are stories that are out there, but that's how they make their money.

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Jeremy Julian [00:27:33]:

And then they're also in. In the transaction. So they're. They're also a bank because they're taking this money and holding onto it and might take two days before the deposit gets into your bank. And so they're investing that micro, investing that in other places as they build up that portfolio. And so those are big things that they're doing. And I think it's just. It's one of those things that people go, they say they're going to match my rates, but then they.

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Jeremy Julian [00:27:56]:

It's just like boiling the frog. You just 1 degree hotter, 1 degree hotter, 1 degree hotter. And they have it all down logarithmically with AI to just increase, you know, five basis points, you know, 0.5% of your sales, you know, increase every quarter or every six months. Well, just as those things continue for doing nothing more, they're not increasing the value. All they're doing is increasing the fees. And so I think it's just something to be aware of. I'm not suggesting that there's not a good path there. You just have to make sure that you know what you're getting into and understand that they have control of that.

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Jeremy Julian [00:28:30]:

And if you don't like it, you have to rip and replace all of it. And it just makes it really, really challenging.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:36]:

That's really well said. And do you. I know it's hard to say because it depends, you know, typically on volume and probably, you know, what state or region you're in or whatever. But what do you see from your experiences? Like the, a reasonable, let's say percentage because, you know, I hear everything and anything in between it. If you're doing 40 million a year versus obviously if you're doing 750,000 a year. But is there a range that you typically see like, like just to kind of maybe help our listeners on, like if you're paid more than this, maybe you should look around, you know.

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Jeremy Julian [00:29:06]:

So, I mean, 3% is kind of the. So the hard part is, is it depends on card type. If you were to open up your wallet right now. Yeah, and I've got a Chase Premier reserve card. You know, I've got the highest end Chase card in my wallet. I've also got the highest end American Express card in my wallet. Yeah, those. Every time I swipe my Chase card, it costs the restaurant more than when I use my Chase debit card card.

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Jeremy Julian [00:29:29]:

Because you know, what somebody's paying for my points to get to Hawaii. Right. And it ultimately is the retailer. It's the restaurant. So it depends on what type of clientele you're servicing as to where your values are going to be and what your guest check averages are. If you're going into Ruth Chris or you're going into Morton's, you're going to have a lot of business travelers, you're going to have a lot of Amex. Amex is the most expensive card for you to process, you know, and some of those super high end, super premium, you know, somebody's paying for those super bowl commercials. And ultimately it's the restaurant that's paying for, you know, Samuel, Samuel Jackson to get up on stage and, and, you know, do the Capital One card or whatever else.

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Jeremy Julian [00:30:03]:

So with that, those cards are more expensive, but I would say at an Average, you know, two and a half percent, 2, 3% is kind of a. Because interchange is the biggest portion of those costs. So interchange is the fact is the Money that Visa, MasterCard, American Express take off the top for those different versions of the cards.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:23]:

Right.

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Jeremy Julian [00:30:23]:

Debit cards being the most cheap, inexpensive prepaid gift cards, least expensive to the highest end premium. And there's 30 or so different, different interchange rates throughout that. And depending on what types of cards you have and what your check average is. So check average is if I'm 200 a ticket versus 50 bucks a ticket versus $12 a ticket. It, it will depend on how you, you need to do that. And so all of those things go into the equation and that's why they can tweak those things. The thing that, that a few people have gotten caught with, Angela, that I'll share with your listeners is they take that middle range Chase card, but evaluated as a high end Chase card and take the differential.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:04]:

Sneaky, sneaky.

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Jeremy Julian [00:31:05]:

Because when you take a thousand transactions in a day, who's going to really look through every single card to figure out did they use a Wells Fargo debit card or a Wells Fargo cashback card? Unfortunately, people have been got, have gotten caught and have gotten sued for it and they call it padding interchange. So they'll pad the interchange rates to make more money.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:24]:

Yeah, this is great. This is great. Have you on the show, right? I bring experts in every. You're definitely an expert in the, and I mean restaurants in general, but in the POS and payment space, you know. And you know, for our listeners, I also want to highlight some of what you do. So like North Star pos, you know, it's a big integral part of your tech stack. So maybe just to kind of share with our listeners, I know it might be hard to say everything that it does, but maybe like what makes it stand out? Right. Like we're talking about how the POS market's kind of crowded.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:52]:

Like where do you like to play? And. And to our listeners, like, like who is North Star POS good for?

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Jeremy Julian [00:31:59]:

So first and foremost, we're real people that'll create real solutions. Our average answer time on our Support desk is 35 seconds. You call our support center any time of the day. On average, you're going to get through to somebody in 35 seconds. Obviously there's times that that doesn't happen, but for the most part we're real people that really want to solve your problems. We are built from multi units, so we understand the plight of multi units with franchises and we're built for complex operations. I've got multiple types of brands. I've got parent company that owns 40 different restaurants, but all of them look different.

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Jeremy Julian [00:32:30]:

But you need to manage it from one location. We do all of that and then the last thing is we're open to integrate. We want to integrate with everybody. We don't want you to have to replace your existing tech stack because it takes a lot of energy to do that. And so multi units. Multi units could be three, could be 30, could be 300. And we'll manage any and all of that and we'll treat you differently depending upon on kind of what you, what your business needs are. And then we'll consult with you to say, hey, WISK is a great solution for inventory management or whatever else.

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Jeremy Julian [00:33:00]:

And so we'll work with you to understand what your business requirements are and then do a warm introduction to the partners that might be out there that can solve your challenges. And so that's a very long winded way to say that we're real people that really want to help multi unit operators to grow and excel for us. Don't want them focus, we want them focusing on making cheeseburgers, not worried about their pos. That's our job. You guys go make cheeseburgers, you guys go make pizza, you guys go make, you know, drinks and let us focus.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:27]:

On the tech that makes sense. And out of curiosity, like, is there any geographical market you focus in? Is it just all of us? Is it, you know, any.

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Jeremy Julian [00:33:38]:

It's primarily the us. It's primarily the us and it's primarily casual dining or table service. So for us, we do really, really well in table service, seat positions, routing, catego coursing, you know, all of those capabilities along with the integration to be able to do doordash and Uber eats and grubhub and all of those kind of things. We launched our product unfortunately in 2020 right at the, at the height of COVID and it was built for casual dining so nobody in casual dining was buying anything. And so for us that was a little bit of a challenge because nobody was buying anything. And so we did pivot understanding that other market and we built a whole drive through module and we built a whole kiosk module and all these different things to try and help help those different areas. But for the most part, if you were to ask me who are the clients that we do best with, it's casual dining restaurants that are high volume, that are looking to accelerate their, increase their sales, increase their guest satisfaction and drive that type of behavior to be able to drive top line without having to worry about the tech headaches that, that people have to worry about.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:40]:

No.

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Jeremy Julian [00:34:41]:

Super.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:42]:

Well said. And for people that want to learn more, maybe they're not happy with their pos, maybe they want to switch or maybe they're just opening up new restaurants. If they're a multi unit, if they're in the U.S. what's the best way to get in touch or what does the process look like?

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Jeremy Julian [00:34:58]:

Yeah, so CBS North Star.com there's a button up on the top, right that says get a demo. And again, we're not going to show up and throw up. I hate when my sales guys show up and throw up. We'll Do a discovery call. Right after this call, I get done with you. I've got a discovery call with the brand. It's got about 30 restaurants, European pub style brand. Help me understand what, tell me more about what makes your restaurant tick and then I'll customize a demo to match their needs.

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Jeremy Julian [00:35:20]:

And I say I, our team will customize the demo once we understand what you're looking for. Because you know what they told me they're, you know, from their online thing, they told me they're on Aloha. They told me they're trying to get off Aloha because Aloha is trying to push the payment side. Okay, help me understand that. We start talking to, with, with them and trying to understand is it a good fit? Because not everybody's the right fit for everybody.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:39]:

Yeah.

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Jeremy Julian [00:35:39]:

If it doesn't, you know, if it doesn't fit for you and if it doesn't fit for the customer, ultimately I'd rather tell them, go buy something else and help them down that path. And so for us, that's really what the process looks like. We do a discovery call, we do a presentation. If you're large enough, we'll put you in the lab. Then we put you into a pilot store. And then from pilot it goes to full rollout. If you're small or you're just opening up a new store and you're like, hey, let me test it at this new brand, we'll put it into your lab, get it up and running and then put it into that new store.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:07]:

Makes sense. And I'm a big fan of the discovery calls. We do that too in the past, like years, years ago, we used to go straight to the demo. Demo and we found is like yes, for, for a very small percentage of people that might work. But the truth was it's such a better experience when you have a discovery call. And it's, it's really to understand the customer. Right? Like not your typical, just like trying to qualify but like really like, hey, what are you looking for? What would make this a win for you? What are you doing now in that way? To your point, and we're the same way is like when you do the demo, I find a lot of companies, their demos are basically like PowerPoint presentations and pitches. It's like our demos.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:39]:

And it sounds like your demos are this way too. It's, it's like, okay, these are the notes with the client. They're using this pos, they're doing this, they're struggling with that. They're not too Worried about food, they want to focus on their liquor. So it's like, we know what to focus on the demo. And instead of spending an hour just walking through our product, we're like, here's a super hyper focused 15 minute live demo that you can answer questions and it's just that much better. So kudos, because I think you're doing it the right way properly.

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Jeremy Julian [00:37:02]:

Well, I mean, I'll tell you a really funny story at Mirtech and I, I'm embarrassed to say this, but I had somebody come up to me. I may have shared this with you earlier. Earlier, but somebody come up to me and I was standing in a, in a vendor's booth talking to them about their product and I had four people, five people come up walking up to me and I was like, oh, let me step out of the way. I'll let you see what this vendor has said. No, no, I'm looking to talk to you. Okay, what are you looking to talk to me about? Well, we run a, we run a chain of steakhouses. You know, want to understand what you guys do for. With Northstar.

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Jeremy Julian [00:37:31]:

Okay, no problem. Start talking with them. And, and when you say steakhouses, they're. There's Ruth Chris Morton's, Mastro's High High End, and then there's Texas Roadhouse and you know, and, and everywhere in between. And you know what? The way that Outback operates is different than Mastros, clearly.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:47]:

Yeah.

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Jeremy Julian [00:37:48]:

And I, so I say to the, to this group of five people, I says, is it more like Mastros or is it more like Outback? And then I look down and the guy's name badge is Jeff Mastro, the founder of Mastros. I'm like, I'm an idiot. But to me, if I showed up thinking I was demoing an Outback style presentation to a mast, they have front waiters and back waiters, and they have a different way of servicing than Outback does. Both of them are incredibly successful. But I'm not going to show up with the demo for Outback to the Mastros guy because he wants something different than the person at Outback. And I'm not saying that in a, in a disrespectful way, but I think all too many of our providers don't even think about that. Last one I'll share with you is I try always to go to their brand before a demo if at all possible. I try and walk the store, I try and eat there, I try and walk around the property just to get a feel for what is their culture, what does it feel like? What does it look like? And if I can't do it in person, I'll do it online.

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Jeremy Julian [00:38:45]:

Where's there a virtual tour? Where's there a YouTube walkthrough so that I can start to get a feel for that brand? And I'm speaking their language, I'm talking like them, not for any other reason than I understand their plate and what makes them tick. You know, we do business with, with Biscuit Phil. They're Southern food and they're very much about family and they make hot biscuits every 15 minutes. Do you think if I present that in the presentation, it tells the. Tells them that I have a level of care for who they are and what they do than if I just showed up and said, here's what our POS can do for you? Because they don't really care about the buttons. They care about what the results are that they're going to get from it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:21]:

Well said. Well said. And look, as we're kind of on time, I want to give people a chance to find you. You got a ton of knowledge to share. So to learn whether it's more just about your journey, about Northstar, booking a demo and finding your podcast. So please plug away. Where can people find you?

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Jeremy Julian [00:39:37]:

Website cbsnorthstar.com hit the demo site you want to get scheduled. Those all hit me for discovery. First I do the discovery call and then. And then I'll parse it off or work it directly. Restaurant Technology Guys.com, you can subscribe to the blog. Every week we post a show. If you have. If you're a restaurant operator and you want to be on the show, feel free to.

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Jeremy Julian [00:39:56]:

There's a, there's a Be a guest on the show. You can click that link and fill out a little bit of data. I'll send back to you. If you're a technology company that wants to be on the show, you guys will get to see Angela's. Angela show, I think is coming out in the next two weeks, talking about WISK. So love to connect there. So we have a newsletter for CBS Northstar. We also have a newsletter for restaurant technology guys.

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Jeremy Julian [00:40:15]:

So those are all. And then I'm incredibly active on LinkedIn and so I've got lots and lots of different people on LinkedIn. And so I share articles all the time. I share different, different bits and pieces, videos, interviews that I do in the field. Next week I'll be at rlc. I'm going to be doing a bunch of interviews and those will be going live over the rest of the year. So those are all the different ways that I would say, say, stay connected.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:35]:

Very cool. Well, Jeremy, thank you for joining us on the WISKing it all podcast. It was so great to have you here. And honestly, I think there's a lot of good, good knowledgeable things you shared, and I think our listeners will appreciate this episode. So thanks for being here.

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Jeremy Julian [00:40:48]:

Yeah, no, thanks for having me. It's been a privilege.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:51]:

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

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