Reimagining Restaurant Delivery: Insights from Meredith Sandland

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, the hosts welcome back Meredith Sandland, CEO of Empower Delivery. Meredith offers insights into the evolution of restaurant technology and the importance of efficient delivery systems. She discusses how her company, Empower Delivery, spun out from ClusterTruck, aims to streamline the delivery process for restaurants by offering an end-to-end order fulfillment system. The conversation delves into the challenges of third-party delivery services, the importance of first-party delivery to control guest experiences, and the concept of using gig workers as in-house delivery drivers. Meredith also shares her perspectives on the current state of delivery services and how restaurants can adapt to changing consumer behaviors and rising costs.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:26 Meeting Through the Book
01:30 Empower Delivery and ClusterTruck
04:52 First Party vs Third Party Delivery
06:47 Challenges and Solutions in Delivery
11:48 Current State of Delivery
18:34 Reflecting on Purposeful Actions
18:55 Three Types of Restaurants and Delivery Strategies
22:11 Challenges and Solutions in Delivery
25:05 The Role of Technology in Delivery Management
29:32 Consulting and Onboarding for Restaurants
33:57 Getting in Touch and Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:02

This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Helping you run your restaurant better.

Jeremy: 0:10

Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I think everyone out there for joining us for those watching on video. I'm sure that the face that, I'm talking to is very familiar. Cause, many of you guys have seen Meredith on, on the show before, as well as, out in the, out in the internet sphere, but for those that aren't familiar with who you are, Meredith, can you, can you give everybody a little insight as to how, one we met and what you get a privilege, get the privilege to do before we, we talk about the state of, the state of the world as it relates to your area of expertise.

Meredith Sandland: 0:36

Yeah, happy to. how did we meet? Gosh, I don't know. I think it was because of the book, right?

Jeremy: 0:40

I think so.

Meredith Sandland: 0:41

way back in the day, this book is now from 2021. It's getting pretty old. But, Carl Orsbourn, and I wrote this book on what was happening in restaurant technology and all the change that was occurring. And then we followed it up, of course, with This one that talks a little bit about how restaurants should actually go about doing this and the steps they need to go through. And we met to talk about those books and, it's the world that you're implementing. So we have a lot in common, I think.

Jeremy: 1:08

That we do. That we do. Half the time when we get on these things, most people don't know that I typically will spend 10 or 15 minutes, before we hit the record button, on these shows, but with Meredith and Carl, on the shows, it's like half the time I'm like, all right, we really got to get to recording. Cause we're not going to, we're going to run out of time. Cause we do end up enjoying talking about where things are at today and where,

Meredith Sandland: 1:26

Where they're headed.

Jeremy: 1:26

is going. Yeah.

Meredith Sandland: 1:28

Yeah, we have a lot to chat about. but who am I really? Okay. I did write these books, but that is not all I do. As I have an eight year old and a hypnotist husband and all kinds of interesting things going on that we talked about before the recording started. But I am the CEO of a company called Empower Delivery. We are a restaurant software company. We spun out of the largest and most profitable ghost kitchen or delivery kitchen in the US, which is called ClusterTruck. We are an end to end order to fulfillment system, and that is how I spend most of my time, working on that.

Jeremy: 2:02

I love it. So I guess talk me through. And again, many of the people probably that are listening today have heard the story of delivery through, 2020, 2021, and all of the different things that you've put out there and likely they follow you. But talk to me a little bit about kind of your passion for empowered delivery. And what is it that you guys are trying to do? Cause I think then it'll really lead into why you think this is such a critical piece for restaurants in, in 2024 and beyond.

Meredith Sandland: 2:25

Yeah. I would say the main reason that I joined the company is because I went to go see ClusterTruck in action and anyone who sees it, who has worked in restaurants cannot unsee it. It is amazing. they are putting out 800 to a thousand transactions a day, 100 percent first party ordering, 100 percent first party delivery. So that's amazing in and of itself. And then, Yeah. And then you think, that must be chaos, right? But no, the software has made it. So it is a finely tuned machine and everything just goes. And it is beautiful to behold. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And you think to yourself, wow, we got to get this to as many restaurants as possible. so that's how I ended up there. I am passionate about making restaurant technology Easier for restaurants. I think we've gone through what at YUM, my background previously, I was working for Taco Bell, but at YUM, we would call it the fuzzy front end of innovation. And that's like the part where you're all over the place. And, we've certainly been through that. Restaurants now have really complicated tech stacks trying to do really crazy things. And every problem or opportunity solved, leads to another problem or opportunity that needs to be solved. And so there's, just tons of different. Software out there that people need and that's confusing. It's complicated. It's hard to keep them all talking to each other. and so our system being an end to end order to fulfillment system solves that because it puts it all under one roof and coordinates the activities from one step to another in the order journey and the consumer journey. the other thing that our team is super, super passionate about is making the lives of drivers better. So again, I'll go back to a Yamism, Greg Creed always says that your customer experience will never exceed your team member experience. And I think the same is true in delivery. guest experience is never going to exceed your driver experience, and as long as gig working drivers are not having a great experience, which I don't think they are, in spite of the regulatory efforts, I think that's still pretty difficult, you're not going to have a good delivery experience, and I think we see that, right?

Jeremy: 4:41

Yeah. The data shows it with the sentiment. And you and I talked a little bit about that back, before we hit record, it's just that historically delivery ranks so much lower than, dine in experiences, or even first party takeout experiences where I'm coming in and picking up my food and leaving with it, so Meredith, just to define, because I do get these questions every once in a while. When you talk about first party delivery, what does that mean? First party ordering first party delivery? Because I, while I know what it is, and you and I live in this space every once in a while, I get people that are like, dude, you use these acronyms and you use all these things and I have no idea even what that means. So I'd love for you, for our listeners, just to make sure that we're all on the same page before we start to talk about how you guys are solving this and really the state of, of things. What exactly does that mean to

Meredith Sandland: 5:23

Yeah. So let's start with first party ordering. So that means that the consumer is ordering directly from the restaurant, whether that is happening. On their website or other app, it is the restaurant's own property, right? That order is coming directly to them. There's no middleman. I would contrast that with third party ordering or marketplace ordering where a consumer is going to a DoorDash or a Grubhub or an Uber or EasyCater or any number of places to place their order. And then the restaurant is receiving that order from a third party, for fulfillment. And then on the delivery side. It also needs to be broken into first versus third party. And I don't think that has been done as much in the industry. I think we've really focused on the front end because that's what the consumer sees, but what the consumer feels. Is the fulfillment and the backend, right? And that's where we get into the driver being such an important part of this whole chain. First party delivery is when the restaurant is doing in house delivery and fulfilling that order all the way to the consumer. Third party delivery, I might have taken an order in direct first party on my own website as a restaurant, but I might be fulfilling it via DoorDash Drive or Relay or Jolt or whoever, right? That is still a third party delivery. I am handing that order off to someone else and trusting. That all will go well from there out.

Jeremy: 6:53

Thank you for those definitions. And again, I think it's critical for people to understand that. Okay. And the next logical question, because I do get this from restaurant tours is you have the ability to do first party delivery. I'm not a pizza place that has full time drivers. Tell me what I have to do to control the guest experience. Cause part of why I hate this is I have to go to this third party marketplace to do these things. And I don't like it because I lose control. Talk me through what you're seeing people being able to do in that, because I think it's, it's pretty interesting. Some of the stuff that. Even I learned in yours and my pre talk.

Meredith Sandland: 7:24

Yeah. of course the guys who invented delivery and here we're talking about Chinese restaurants, Indian restaurants, pizza restaurants, they always had their own drivers and still many of them still have their own drivers, right? now they employed them in the old hourly employment model, which, I would argue has been fundamentally broken by these gig working platforms. Drivers just don't want to. Be scheduled, right? They want to turn on the gig ATM and drive when they need money or they want to drive and That's how they prefer to be employed. So we do know from the experience of Chinese and other Asian cuisines and From pizza that owned or in house delivery experience is better. And why is it better? It's better because it's more tightly coordinated. It's better because it's under the control of that person That, particular restaurant, it is better because they can make decisions themselves. Oh, this should be batched. This shouldn't be batched as opposed to having it happen to them. They can coordinate how the orders are going out the door as opposed to just the random popcorn of different third party drivers showing up. And I don't know if you've been to a place that's doing any significant volume, but they might have 20 packages waiting to be picked up. And also 20 third party drivers waiting for a package, but the two things are not related to each other, right? And so then you've got all these drivers standing around like picking up bags, looking at them. Is this one right? Is this one right? Because the restaurant doesn't want to staff somebody to help with that matching process. And that food is sitting there degrading. And then you wonder, why are the ratings of delivery so low? it probably has a lot to do with the food just sitting there, right?

Jeremy: 9:12

Yeah, no. and thank you for talking through that because I think a lot of restauranteurs that I talk with, they don't know another path. They see this as an avenue that they have to be in whether it's these third party marketplaces. And I know a lot of people, and we've talked, last couple of times on the shows is how do we get, how do we get them to come first party, even if I'm going to deliver via third party, how do I get them to come first party? So I know who they are and I can communicate with them, but more and more. I think more and more brands, as you said, are figuring out ways to do this gig work so that they can get the food delivered from a first party, staff member that can do that in a way that helps maintain the brand integrity, maintain the food integrity and such. And so I love that there's options out there and I think it's going to continue to evolve as we talked about pre show. orsbournorsbournorsbourn

Meredith Sandland: 9:55

Yeah, absolutely. And if you as a restaurant believe in delivery as a business and you want to take it seriously and you want to be good at it, and you know that the experience consumers are having with you via delivery is the experience they're having with your brand. If you believe those things, then you need to reimagine how you're executing delivery. You can't just invest in the front end and make a shiny pretty thing that gives all these promises to consumers that then fall down on the back end because Someone else is delivering it. It's out of your control, right? But then restaurants, I think are very wary of saying, Oh, I'm going to take on more employees. Like that sounds really hard and I don't think I can do it,

Jeremy: 10:39

I've had a hard enough time finding employees anyway.

Meredith Sandland: 10:42

Yeah. Yeah. Even Domino's says they can't get enough drivers. This seems like not a great idea, but what if there was a third way? What if there was a way to have your own dedicated in house drivers and have them be your 1099 contractors? Your gig workers, but have them be gig workers, stop trying to schedule them, have software that brings them in when they need to be brought in. that is what Empower Delivery does, right? one of the many things, as an end to end software, we're doing kind of everything, but that is a fundamentally different approach to doing delivery and in restaurant. Now it's happening already in retail. And as I have said, in many places, Carl and I are not brilliant Future seers, we just look at travel and retail and say, what happened there? And then we say, okay, how would that translate to restaurant? and Amazon has flex. Walmart has spark, right? They have gig working delivery programs already. These are not, this is not like a crazy concept. This is something that retailers are already doing. How do we port that over into restaurant so that they can eliminate the middleman, eliminate the complexity of a third party and drive efficiency in that delivery process to create a better consumer experience. That is also cheaper.

Jeremy: 11:58

Yep. And going to ultimately, which I think leads me down that next path, Meredith, that we were talking about when we were prepping for the show is talk to me about the state of current delivery. we were talking about the advertisement that you got yesterday, because I think that the consumer, as wallets have tightened, as people have gotten back to a normal, more normal state than it was two years ago or three years ago with COVID, where we're able to be out and about people's. Behaviors have changed. money has gotten tighter. Wallets have gotten tighter. So people are less apt to do those things. And so figuring out how to keep that consumer as a restaurant brand is critical. And if you can't do it through those third parties, you got to pivot. So talk me through what you're seeing holistically in the space, because I think it's critical for our restaurant operators that are listening and restaurant executives that are listening to go. If I don't see that, then I got, I got to figure it out because it's going to hurt me. Anybody that's ever run a restaurant knows the craziness that happens during a meal period in a rush. One of our partners, Restaurant Technologies, Total Oil Management Solution, is an end to end oil management system that delivers, filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking one of the jobs that none of your team wants to do, and takes it off your hands, allowing your team members to focus on their guests. Control the kitchen chaos with Total Uh, restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer while maximizing your staff's time. The solution can be provided at no upfront costs. If you want to learn more, please check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997.

Meredith Sandland: 13:32

Yeah, absolutely. obviously third party delivery massively grew and frankly, first party delivery, all forms of delivery massively grew, over the pandemic period. And those growth rates have started to decline. they haven't gone negative yet, but they've started to decline as we've come out of that period and consumers have much more freedom to go where they want. and In the UK, at Deliveroo, in the last quarter, they actually went negative, right? Order volumes started to go negative. Hasn't happened here in the US yet, but I believe it will. I think we're on the verge of it. And the, ad that you're referring to, DoorDash sent me an ad offering me, through YouTube, offering me 25 percent off my next two orders. And it said, for select customers only, I'm going to guess that I'm someone who hasn't been back in a while, right? Compared to other people. And it was platform wide. It wasn't A restaurant is funding this. It is DoorDash is funding this 25 percent off the whole platform trying to get me to come back and drive orders, which I've never seen before. I don't, I don't watch a ton of YouTube, but I get out

Jeremy: 14:39

they're throwing that out there, it means that their traffic is down and they're trying to get you back into the platform because it becomes habitual when you're doing those things. And if you get out of the loop, and in general, you talk about traffic through third party and the data that you're seeing through first party restaurants are seeing it across the board, traffic

Meredith Sandland: 14:56

yes, that's fair. Yeah, traffic is down. everywhere.

Jeremy: 14:59

historically, traffic is down in dine in, traffic is down in most brands are struggling with figuring out traffic. And much of that has to do with the fact that inflation has caused, many items within our space to go up. And whether that's groceries or it's restaurant food, people are not able to do that as often. So why is that so critical for restaurant executives to understand that and losing that third party delivery or first party delivery? All right. Benet. It's ultimately top line revenue that they're missing out on if they're not getting that. And so how can they do it cheaper without having to throw out? 25 percent off because ultimately that's gonna, that's only going to degrade the experience.

Meredith Sandland: 15:35

Yeah, there's a difference between price and cost, right? ideally, you'd like to be able to bring the cost of what you're doing down. And I think the way I would say it is, delivery has gotten so expensive. And it's gotten expensive on three dimensions, right? The first is underlying inflation made everything more expensive. All food has gotten more expensive, regardless of if you're in store or delivery. Then the restaurants all kind of unionized and said, wait a minute, The marketplaces can't get mad at us if we all increase our prices, right? And so I think the last Gordon Huskett research that came out said the average chain price premium, third party marketplace versus in store was 19%. Chipotle was the highest at 30%, right? So they all took price premium. on platform specifically. And then you saw Uber and DoorDash start to go, Ooh, we got to get profitable, right? The world has changed.

Jeremy: 16:27

Yeah. Money's not free anymore.

Meredith Sandland: 16:29

mine's not free anymore. They started to increase a lot of their fees. And, you see this in some cases, like they have a priority fee now. So they do, batching of orders. They'll put them together. I don't know if this has happened to you, but I'd literally had a driver Transcribed I was watching one on the map, drive right by my house, go to someone else's house, do that drop off, and then come back to me. And then the next time I ordered, I noticed, oh, there's this priority fee. I can pay an extra 2. 99 to guarantee that my order will be the first one delivered.

Jeremy: 16:59

Wow. Yeah.

Meredith Sandland: 17:01

And by the time all those fees get into place, whether they're caused by underwriting, underlying regulation, trying to push up the driver compensation, or whether they're just caused by the platforms themselves trying to get more profitable prices are up, right? And when you have a product that is that premium of a price, But then customers are telling you, it's that terrible of experience. You have this huge gap for disruption to just drive right through, right? Wow. that is a huge gap. And I believe that a restaurant that can figure out how to do this more efficiently and effectively, so make the experience better and the price lower. They're going to win, right? And that's what with ClusterTrack. They charge no menu markups. They charge no service fees. They charge no delivery fees. It's crazy, right? And it's a great experience. So they're doing well, people come, right? And the way that you're able to do that is by just having a more efficient system of how you get those items delivered.

Jeremy: 18:07

Yeah. So talk me through that Meredith. for those restauranteurs that are sitting out there and, really what you guys are helping people do at Empower Deliveries is you're helping people that have a vision for doing this, get to a place where it can be more profitable. It can be more efficient. It can be better for the restaurant. And better for the consumer. Cause at the end of the day, if it's not better for the consumer and it's not better for the restaurant, they shouldn't be doing it. And oftentimes they did these things, you and I talked about a lot of people jumped on third party delivery without really understanding what they were getting themselves into. They delivered a bad experience. Their ratings went down. They didn't get the uplift that they were hoping for and, got more complex and it really added costs to their business. And And we're at a place now where I think everybody's had a time to take a little bit of a deep breath and go, okay,

Meredith Sandland: 18:50

what? should I be doing on purpose? Yeah, totally.

Jeremy: 18:52

purpose? Not because my neighbor next door said you have to be doing this. What should I be doing on purpose? Which really to me is really the success story that you guys are really telling and Ultimately out there, just killing it in the space, talking about those things.

Meredith Sandland: 19:05

Totally. So I think there are three types of restaurants. I think there is a segment of restaurants that just shouldn't be doing delivery. It's distracting to their core business. It's not a great experience. They have to charge so much for it. It doesn't make sense. Just don't do it. And these tend to be. More fine dining, dine in type restaurants. Now, we have a customer who, fits that profile, doesn't do any delivery inside of his restaurants, but he has a delivery kitchen, and that's where he delivers out, his product from, across all of his fine dining restaurants. he's still in delivery, because it's a category, and it's growing, and people want his food, and they ask him for delivery all the time, but he doesn't do it out of his restaurants. First category. And I think a lot of restaurants are starting to realize maybe I'm in that first category and I've actually made my business more complex and I don't need to be doing this. The second category of restaurants is at the other end of the extreme. Delivery is a business that I take seriously. I want to be good at and I want to demonstrate that it can be an asset to 100, 200, 300 deliveries a day out of a single location. folks, Our system. Of dedicated on demand delivery is the best system. It is the only way to do this right? Because instead of having, probably 150 different DoorDash and Uber and Jolt and Relay and whoever drivers come to your location and try to figure out Which meal they belong to and all that stuff. You can just have a driver or a group of drivers. Come back, go out, come back, go out is so much more efficient. And then there are the people in the middle and I would call these our omni channel friends. this is going to be like fast food type people who, you know, they, maybe they do 10, 20 deliveries a day and they need to be in the category because their consumer demands it on some occasions. But they're, they're going to use technology to try to be as good as they possibly can at it. And they're going to use their chain power to negotiate great prices with the platforms and SLAs, right? And that's not most restaurants, right? It'll

Jeremy: 21:12

and many of those fast food restaurants, their product carries well. So even if it doesn't get delivered for 30 or 40 minutes, it's not going to, the quality is not going to be It's not going to have degraded night, not nearly as much as a ribeye steak that's cooked medium rare that by the time it gets there, 45 minutes later, it's going to be disgusting to eat thing.

Meredith Sandland: 21:30

portable and carried because most of the sales are happening. In the drive thru, and drive thru is what I will call self delivery. You're going, you're picking it up, you're taking it, usually you're eating it somewhere else.

Jeremy: 21:41

Yeah. and again, I think, one of the things I know we've talked about on the previous shows is Menu selection, the offering that you give your guests, it creates an opportunity for a really good experience or a really bad experience. Back to your Taco Bell experience. You know what, five layer burrito travels really well. I can eat a five layer burrito in the drive thru window, or I can eat it, 20 minutes later, and it's probably not going to taste all that different. And I think in general, unfortunately, People went to this path on accident, not on accident, but they signed up for these things, not really understanding what the guests are going to want and what the experience is going to be and ultimately it hurt them as much as it helped them, if they weren't able to deliver to that brand.

Meredith Sandland: 22:21

That's right. and, one of the challenges with delivery, of course, is once something goes out the door with a third party, If it's wrong, you can't do anything about it, right? So that's caused all these chargebacks from the delivery platforms to the restaurants. That's created a whole new genre of software. So you can argue effectively with Uber and DoorDash about the chargebacks. what if you had in house delivery and if your restaurant messed something up, you could just. Send it back out. That's revolutionary, right? And you can do that if you have dedicated on demand delivery. If you have in house delivery, you can actually engage in win back fix the customer's problem, which of course is their favorite thing, because it turns out if they ordered something with no onions, cause they're allergic to them and you put onions on it. If you give them a refund, you have not fixed their problem. They're still hungry. They still can't

Jeremy: 23:13

still didn't get the food and they're likely not gonna, there are brands that I don't order from delivery or even take out any longer because they've messed up my order so

Meredith Sandland: 23:21

They can't get it right.

Jeremy: 23:21

and it's funny that you say that I'm going to date myself a little bit here because one of my jobs in high school was delivering pizzas and I remember that, so I was a first party. Pizza delivery guy at just a local pizza chain in Tustin, California. And I remember delivering pizzas and getting the phone call that I delivered the wrong pizza and being able to go recover that gas and go get the pizza right to them and it was super efficient and I got to work three or four hours a night and I made a decent amount of money and it was after school and after soccer practice, I'd go in, go, deliver 10 or 15 pizzas and I'd make my money and I was in a good spot. Again, it was back in the days when I was doing hourly. So when it was slow, I did sit around and probably ate too And now a word from our sponsors. Growing your business can mean big time logistical questions like, how am I going to keep up with all of these local deliveries? Let UberDirect offer you a helping hand. With UberDirect, you can take orders directly from your website, app, or by phone. Then drivers who are part of Uber's courier network will deliver them to your customer's doorsteps. Sound too simple to be true? Check out uberdirect. com to learn more.

Meredith Sandland: 24:23

Old pizza boxes,

Jeremy: 24:25

he pulled pizza boxes and eat pizza that was dying in the window there. But at the end of the day, it was very real. and I had a vested interest in making sure that guest experience was as good as possible because I wanted them to come back. Whereas, whereas when I've, outsourced that to a third party, They don't really care because if they're delivering from McDonald's and Taco Bell and Burger King, they don't really care whether you order from McDonald's, Taco Bell or Burger King. They just want to get the delivery and get out of there as fast as they can. So

Meredith Sandland: 24:51

right. That's exactly right. And again, I think, the thing that scares people when they think of having in house delivery, they're like, Ooh, I want these outcomes that you're describing. Like I want to be able to control the guest experience. I want to engage in guest win back. I want it to be cheaper. That sounds great, but I'm. I'm afraid of hiring people. I'm afraid of scheduling people. I'm afraid of having to deal with payroll for now a whole bunch of drivers. And the great thing about a software solution, all that, and a gig working. Workforce is that the software determines how many drivers are needed and intelligently matches the order demand coming in with the driver supply that's available. The software is figuring out how to match those drivers to particular orders for maximum efficiency. The software is routing the drivers, the software is communicating order status to the consumer, and the software even Is paying those drivers out at the end of the day, just like they would get paid on DoorDash or Uber.

Jeremy: 25:54

yeah, so how do they do that? I realized it's all behind the black box that, that you guys have built, but I think it's, I'm sitting, I'm gonna put myself In the eyes of a restaurateur that's sitting here listening to this, and I've got five stores and I'm at 15 percent delivery, but I know I'm not growing it on purpose because it's not as profitable or it's creating too many, headaches for me, but I want what I want these same outcomes. So how is it that you guys do this? Because as you said, on the onset, the tech stack has gotten almost unruly, 10 years ago, we had, four or five integrations. Now we're. over double digits and close to 20 integrations into the point of sale in my world, my day to day job. It's it, people are working between 15 and 20 pieces of software day in and day out. And so you talk about reducing that complexity. how is it that you guys are doing that?

Meredith Sandland: 26:38

Yeah, there's two answers to that question. Let's start on the, let's start on the driver one and then go to the complexity one. we do have two different products, right? One is this end to end order to fulfillment system that really gets at your complexity question. And then we have a dispatch and driver management product that can work with whatever tech stack you already have, but allows you to have that gig working fleet, even with your existing. ordering. So let's start with the drivers because we've been talking about them. If you have a restaurant that is doing 15, 20 percent delivery, and that totals up to about a hundred deliveries a day. so whatever your AUVs are in your check, you can figure that out. So you're doing about a hundred deliveries a day and you imagine That means that you have a hundred different Uber, DoorDash, Relay, Jolt, whoever, drivers coming into your place. those could be third party orders, first party orders, catering orders, doesn't matter. That's a lot of chaos happening on site. That's a lot of people taking up your parking spots. That's a lot of people milling around looking for bags. That's a lot of bags sitting and waiting. What if, instead of those people being random, they were your people? And they were gig working people that you paid, your 1099 contractors who came in when there was something to be delivered. The software calls them in, and then they just go around back to the store, out to deliver, back to the store, out to deliver, right? So what that requires, first of all, is sufficient demand to keep the drivers engaged. you can't do it with, can't do it with 10 hours a day. Not gonna work. secondly, that requires that, You actually have to create a gig working pool, right? So you've got to go out and advertise this as a new gig. You've got to take them through a background check, which the software will do, get them all set up on boarded inside the software with their account numbers so that they can get paid all of those kinds of things. so there's some setup work to do. But then once it's set up, it just goes, it feels a little bit like DoorDash and Uber in terms of how easy it is, but it's less chaotic. Operationally, you're going to have no food sitting and waiting. You're going to have no drivers sitting and waiting. And therefore, it's not going to feel like just a perpetual, I don't know, slack in the system of everybody looking for the thing that they can't find.

Jeremy: 28:56

And like I said earlier, they have a vested interest in delivering the right product to the right guest at the right time, because they want more orders to come through so that they can stay busy when they want to be busy. Not just,

Meredith Sandland: 29:06

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. at ClusterTrack. Who of course has been delivering this way for seven, eight years. They've done 4 million orders this way, right? Like the drivers. Stick around because it's great gig. So they started with 30 drivers, 21 of them, eight years later, still driving for them.

Jeremy: 29:27

That's incredible.

Meredith Sandland: 29:28

the customers know them. They know the customers. it's amazing right now. They drive when they want to drive. They come in when they want. Many of them have another job or kids at home or students, whatever they happen to be doing. Yeah.

Jeremy: 29:41

Got ya. So the second piece that was part of my question right at this kind of complexity, so end to end obviously solves the complexity problem, but walk me through even your guys's onboarding process, because if I've got tech sprawl and I've got tablet hell, and I've got some of the stuff integrated and some of the stuff, not talk me through how you even consult with the end user, because they're going to be scared to death to start this. They don't know how you get, you walked us through how that looks. Now they've got to figure out what do I turn off? What, how do I slow this down to be able to increase this? Talk me through some of that, just cause I think it'd be great for those to hear how you guys have consulted with people because they want to know how to get there, not just that, Oh, we're going to paint this utopian picture that says we'll get you there, but help them help walk them through what that looks like to decouple yourself from the madness that you've been living with. For this whole time and into a paint, a better picture for them as to what that looks like. Yeah.

Meredith Sandland: 30:36

first I'm going to talk about why. because I think, You have to be sufficiently motivated to do it and the why is what's going to get you there and as much as I think everyone, I feel like all tech companies now are like, we're the all in one solution and it makes it crazy because they're like the all in one solution to just delivery management. Okay, that's not all in one or the all in one solution to. Yeah. I would say first, let's start with why. And the reason why is because in order to truly be a digitally native restaurant and unlock the power, and potential of e commerce in restaurants, you have to have all the data connected together.

Jeremy: 31:17

Yes.

Meredith Sandland: 31:18

And I think APIs are one of the biggest lies that's ever been told to restaurants. It, makes me so crazy. First of all, everyone's isn't there just no way an API? Can't I just, connect them? no, you can't just connect them. Because what if they have different? Data constructs. And so they can't pass the information to each other because they think about it differently, or even if they pass it to each other. What if something happens over here? This piece of software can't control this other person's software. They're not going to let that be right unless you build something specific in between and custom, which, like you probably spend a lot of time doing,

Jeremy: 31:53

do. We do.

Meredith Sandland: 31:54

you can't do it off the shelf, right? That's not helpful. How anything works, but if you have one holistic system that is architected with all that data and that smart brain in one central place, then it can control all the features. All the features just radiate out from that one central brain. And this is how, something like Amazon works or Shopify works, right? They have one central brain, right? It's more like an order management system, and it is, it has got everything in there. It's got customer behavioral data. It's got, inventory data. It's got, actual, process data, how utilized is this particular, in the case of a restaurant, station. How utilized are the drivers? When can we get it? It knows everything. And because it knows everything and because it's all in one place, it can control everything. So I would be wary, I think if I were a restaurant of, a company that says, Oh yeah, we have modules that do all those things because they probably were built separately over the years or actually acquired. And they are totally different pieces of software. And just because the same salesperson is selling you that software does not mean that those two things actually talk to each other and are integrated. so the motivation here is really getting toward true digital native, being able to do all the things that restaurants have been promised off the shelf because the data is all there. Now, how to actually make that happen. Certainly it's easier with a DeNovo restaurant who has not. Got into a bunch of these things, right? with, and we have examples of customers doing that where, they start up the restaurant, they start it on the software. It's like a way to skip, skip ahead to the next generation of software. That is much, much easier. for those who already have a significant tech stack in place. I think the best place to start is with that delivery management piece, that dispatch and driver management, start with that. And then we can work our way backwards into your tech stack. rather than trying to throw everything out because a lot of the investments that restaurants have made over the last five years have been really good ones.

Jeremy: 34:01

Yeah. Yeah. and they met the customer demand at that time and now the consumers are looking for more and that's where you guys come in. Meredith, how do people get in touch? How do people, again, you and I could sit and talk all day about this stuff. And I genuinely love it. And I know that, we were talking about it. Hopefully we can get, get a meal together soon just

Meredith Sandland: 34:18

I would love

Jeremy: 34:18

so much fun to sit and talk through this stuff, but how do people learn more? How do you know what's engagement look like with your team and what can they expect from your team? If this is something that they're like blown away, need to get on it. it's keeping me up at night trying to figure out how to solve this problem. And you guys have the silver bullet that can help them with it.

Meredith Sandland: 34:34

Absolutely. So our website is empowered. delivery. Node. com, just empower. delivery. So that is

Jeremy: 34:42

That's always fun.

Meredith Sandland: 34:43

easiest way to find us. Empower. delivery. you can request a demo there. if you want to email me directly, you are welcome to do Meredith at empower. delivery. And, you can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm, I tend to be there quite a bit. As you said, I'm all over the internet.

Jeremy: 34:59

Yes. You are very active on, you're very active in that channel. and, part of why I love, I love spending time with you. Cause quite frankly, I see the little snippets as you post things and I, I geek out on this kind of stuff. Cause I think it's really cool,

Meredith Sandland: 35:10

So interesting.

Jeremy: 35:11

Yeah, no, I love it. Meredith, I know I think, like we said, I think this is the third time you've been on the show and I'm sure there'll be more because, this world continues to change. And, so thank you for educating our listeners. Thank you for doing what you do, because I do think it's a huge win for restaurants that are in a place that need to solve this problem. So thank you for that. to our listeners out there, guys, thank you guys for spending some time with us today and, make it a great day.

35:33

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