Revolutionizing Restaurant Tech with Santi Cuellar: Network Insights and Innovations

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Podcast, host welcomes Santi Cuellar, Senior Manager of Product Marketing for Fusion Connect and co-host of the Tech Unmuted podcast. Santi shares insights into the evolving role of technology in the restaurant and retail sectors, particularly focusing on network infrastructure and its criticality. The discussion covers the shift in network needs driven by the pandemic, the importance of robust and secure Wi-Fi networks, and the significance of omni-channel customer experiences. Santi emphasizes the necessity for restaurants to innovate not just for customer satisfaction but also for staff efficiency. He also provides a deep dive into network elements like routers, switches, and Quality of Service (QoS), explaining their impacts on operations. The episode underscores the importance of partnering with experienced technology firms to ensure seamless, secure, and efficient operations in today's digital age.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:47 Fusion Connect and Restaurant Tech Synergies
01:26 Importance of Network in Restaurant Operations
03:50 Understanding Network Components
09:25 Omni-Channel Customer Experience
15:57 Staff Expectations and Technology
23:05 The Importance of Separate WiFi Networks
24:43 Guest WiFi Splash Page Benefits
27:29 Security Concerns with WiFi Networks
31:40 Best Practices for Network Security
37:03 Engaging with Network Security Providers
42:07 Connecting with Fusion Connect

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 podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. I love the opportunity to get on the air and talk about all things restaurant tech and today is no different I am joined by a technologist, but I'm gonna let him talk a little bit about, how we met and then really a little bit about what he gets to do for a living. So something you want to introduce yourself to our audience.

Santi Cuellar: 0:30

Sure. I'm Sante Cuellar. I am the senior manager of product marketing for Fusion Connect. Where it's we're a collaboration and communications company. I'm also the co host of the award winning key. I can say that now. Once you win an award, you can say you're award winning.

Jeremy: 0:50

it.

Santi Cuellar: 0:51

so I am co host of tech on muted. Which is a technology podcast.

Jeremy: 0:56

Love it.

Santi Cuellar: 0:57

you're right. How we met is, we were promoting our podcast, which has been running for about a year grassroots efforts. we did some corky. Videos to help drive subscriptions, like trying to predict the lottery with AI, that crazy stuff like that. But, we talk about technology and one of the things that we're passionate about and we've had success in is in the restaurant slash retail space.

Jeremy: 1:21

huh.

Santi Cuellar: 1:21

And then I'm just searching one day on LinkedIn came across your post, your profile came across your podcast. Then when I went to see your podcast, I'm like, man, there's a lot of synergies here. We should collaborate. And so that was that's how we ended up here, honestly,

Jeremy: 1:37

I love it. And I know you and I were talking about it pre show as we were prepping, the thing that we often talk about, because I live in kind of the POS world and all of the things that are related to POS and transactions and interfaces and all of those kinds of things, but so much of that rides on the network.

Santi Cuellar: 1:51

Oh, yeah,

Jeremy: 1:51

on the applications that you guys get the privilege and all too often. It's an afterthought for the restaurants. And so let's walk through what you guys do at Fusion Connect, at a broad stroke. And then we'll dig into where you guys are seeing not only success, but where you guys are even seeing opportunities within the restaurant vertical.

Santi Cuellar: 2:08

sure. You nailed it, right? It's like nowadays, the network. is now an essential part of the, it's a puzzle, right? It's a puzzle that foundational piece has to be the network where before, depending on the retail, it's about a, we at Fusion Connect, we bundle in one bucket. When we look at the market, we say restaurant retail because they are different, but they share so many of the same challenges. And they actually, draw from each other, but the distinctions between the two are actually very small. So when you hear me say restaurant slash retail, that's how we bucket ties it on our end. Cause that's how we see it. but in that space, the network was an afterthought, you nailed it. Why? Because it was seen as it's that thing we use at the end of the shift, when we have to send back the sales data to somebody, And it didn't matter if it was down and who cares, and that changed pretty quickly. And I think the pivotal moment for this particular vertical and all verticals, but this one in particular. Was the pandemic and it turned what used to be plain old boring. Yes, you got to have it, but who cares network to, Oh no, we got to have not only the network, we have to have the best network. We have to have the right bandwidth. We have to be able to prioritize traffic. We never talked about these things before. now we're talking about it. And yes, you're right. It's shifted. And I think the pandemic played a major role in that.

Jeremy: 3:48

and to our comments, both pre show and what you just said is people underestimate the quality of it. And when it's not working how badly it can impact your guest experience and your staff experience. And on the flip side, how much it can help when it's just rock solid. Walk me through the different elements of the network, because people say network and it's I tease my wife and kids because it's like the Wi Fi is not working. it's not really the Wi Fi that's not working. It's the internet that's not working in the house. And so there's lots of different elements and it is something hard. And I love to educate our listeners to all the different components because Wi Fi is very different than internet into the building and all of that. So I'd love to Have you, since you live in this world every day, educate our listeners on the different components of the network, because the router versus the switch versus the wifi, are all three different things. Talk me through just the basics from the outside of the walls to the inside of the walls, to the wireless and all of the different components, because then we can start to talk through how and why those things are impacting restaurant operations, retail operations and such.

Santi Cuellar: 4:44

sure. let's start with what's called. the wide area network and the largest wide area network that exists is the internet. the internet is that public wide area network, right? there's no boundaries to the internet, no logistical or physical, boundaries. so that internet connection has to come into your building. You need to have enough bandwidth suitable for the application. a lot of people think that when you say application, you're talking about a software piece. Yes, that's part of it. But we're talking about policies. We're talking about the intended use? Of the bandwidth. You got to take that into consideration. Are you going to be streaming? Are you going to be making calls? Are you going to be broadcasting? Once you're inside the walls, right? You have what's called a local area network. Typically that's created by what's called a switch. And what happens there is that's where all your computers and all your devices that require bandwidth connect to. So imagine you have all these things connecting inside the walls because they want to take advantage of that internet connection. you can do that through a hard wire, literally a physical connection. Or you can do that through a wireless component. We call it wifi, right? but guess what? That adds a layer of complexity. Because you got to have a strong wifi signal. Not only that, when you have something that's connected to a physical wire to the internet, you have what's called full duplex. That means that you can send and receive data at the same time.

Jeremy: 6:21

Okay.

Santi Cuellar: 6:21

is what's called half duplex. That means that you can only send or receive. You can't send and receive at the same time. This is why folks sometimes when they see that their Wi Fi connection is slow, They switched to a hard wire and they're like, wow, now they're flying. they, yeah, that's because one is full duplex. One is half duplex. So long as we understand that and we give you the right wifi equipment and bandwidth and speeds to handle the half duplex nature of wifi, then you're fine. So that means you got to have the right repeaters placed in the right locations. Make sure if you need to boost a signal,

Jeremy: 7:03

Yep.

Santi Cuellar: 7:10

You're going to want to prioritize what kind of traffic needs to go first because everything is competing for that one bandwidth if you're trying to make like a video call or voice call over the Internet. If you're not prioritizing that type of traffic, you're going to get a bad experience. And so that's where things like SD WAN, which is a technology, it stands for software defined wide area network, right? what it does is helps you shape. What your network, should look and perform right? and so that's how we're able to do that. And it would prioritize certain traffic. yeah, this is how, what am I thinking about when I'm trying to build the right network? Because you're right, network is just a broad statement. But what does it mean? these are the elements that we take into consideration and we try to right size for customers businesses.

Jeremy: 8:03

and I and so there's two. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. And I appreciate you taking time because oftentimes the restaurants are like, my POS sucks or my, my streaming TVs don't ever work or I can't get good voice calls into my building. And oftentimes it's because they haven't configured their network properly, which is why I wanted you to go through that. the, you talked about bandwidth real quick, and I like to use the analogy. You've got a hose and you can only get a certain amount of water through that hose. And the more bits of water that are going through it, the more things that are trying to, the traffic that's going through that or a freeway, you've got five lanes on the freeway. If you fill it up with cars, you're not going to be able to, push any more data through there. And the second piece that I heard you say that I think is critical again, for our listeners to think about is depending upon what you have in your network. And what its requirements are requires how you're going to configure these things. And so we've talked about a pre show. We've got a customer that's got 50 TVs, those 50 TVs. If they're all going to be streaming, you have to define what those things are. And oftentimes it's really hard because restaurants. Need to be agile. They need to be, you talked about the pandemic really and retailers, they need to be agile, but they also need to make sure that they're thinking through these things. And so talk me through a little bit more, Santia, about some of the areas of opportunity where you're hearing and seeing people struggle in the area of network design and network architecture, primarily wrapped around communication, voice, voice communication, chat, and all of that, because I think more and more people are struggling to figure those things out and need to define it.

Santi Cuellar: 9:36

So I'll tell you, probably the best way to approach this topic is share with you some of the shifts that I have seen specifically in the restaurant and retail, business, because it's going to touch on a lot of what you're honing in on what has happened is. we've seen this shift started during the pandemic, but it didn't go away. In other words, the changes they made and they adopted are now mainstays. They are not going anywhere. And if anything, they're expanding on it. The good news is we've gotten better. At streaming, meaning that like a network engineer will know how much bandwidth they're going to need for a good call, how much bandwidth they're going to need for a streaming device, how much so the good news is streaming and voice over IP and collaboration and video conferencing. Has gotten so good that it's actually a lot easier for a network engineer. Once they understand how many people you have, how many devices you have, they can actually tell you, how to right fit your bandwidth. thank goodness. Cause it, back in the day, it wasn't all standardized.

Jeremy: 10:47

it was not

Santi Cuellar: 10:48

different.

Jeremy: 10:48

the amount of grainy voice over IP calls you had, the amount of latency and all of that was a big deal. It fortunately, the tech has gotten better, but so have the requirements and the people that are

Santi Cuellar: 10:58

that's right.

Jeremy: 10:59

So it's a race.

Santi Cuellar: 11:01

But what I have seen is and as a company fusion connect, right? We focus mainly on collaboration and communications. We saw quickly and it was surprising. We saw quickly the adoption of what we call omni channel, meaning, meaning the omni channel customer experience. What does that mean? That means that a restaurant who their bread and butter was, no pun intended, was to open their doors and have people come and sit in the restaurants now find themselves saying, Oh, we can't open to the public. they had to reinvent themselves overnight. They had to now find ways, you probably remember this, they were taking calls and having curbside pickup,

Jeremy: 11:47

yes, I got PTSD thinking about it.

Santi Cuellar: 11:50

it happened overnight, right? And nobody knew how do we, what do we do? we don't have the infrastructure. How do we pull this off? and by the way, it was terrible because if we think about it, The person who's at the curbside trying to handle your food, you say, Oh, you guys got this order wrong. How are they going to communicate to the back kitchen that they need to fix something. Now they have, somebody needs to run back. There was no, they just didn't have a system in place to meet. The need at the time. And so one of the things they did to try and mitigate that is they started to look at omni channel options. What is an omni channel? An omni channel is a channel in the communication world or especially in the context of the world is a way of touching a customer. That's what it is. It's one Avenue, right? So if you walk in, if you physically come into my store, that's actually one channel, but if you text me on your phone, that's another channel. And if you're on let's say Facebook and also in your messaging, our company through Facebook, that's another, that is what Ami channel is. It is a way for us to touch customers where they find themselves. Some people were on the phone. Some people were on the website, trying to communicate. Omni channel helped alleviate that because they were able to meet customers where they were, but not only that, they were able to meet customers where they were, take their requests, take their orders, but through the same platform, they were able to communicate with each other. So if you had that scenario, Hey, you got my order wrong. They can send a message quickly to somebody in the back kitchen and say, Hey, we got to fix this order. And within 30 seconds, somebody is coming up with the correction. The next car comes up and it just keeps flowing. we thought that was going to be a bandaid or a temporary thing that they did. No, they've changed their business. And this is what, because if you want an omni channel customer experience, guess what you need. A solid network.

Jeremy: 13:58

And now a word from one of our sponsors. Every restaurant operator understands the chaos of a Restaurant kitchen during the meal rush restaurant technologies, oil, total oil management solutions, and end to end automated oil management system that delivers filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking the dirtiest jobs out of your kitchen and letting your employees focus on more important tasks. Control the kitchen chaos with restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer. No upfront costs to learn more, check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997. and you need technology to be able to enable that going back to being able to do voice, being able to do chat, being able to do all of these different ways. you said it early in the pandemic. Both consumers and staff members got to a place where They got used to certain things. And as humans, we're creatures of habit oftentimes. And so it's but then once we start doing these things, it's I don't want somebody to take it away from me. And so they have to keep those things going, whether that's the consumer interacting with the brand or the brand interacting in and amongst itself.

Santi Cuellar: 15:03

there was a study made that says that 66 percent of customers who shop both online And in person are more satisfied than those who only shop through one channel. That was what sold, the restaurant and retail business to consider keeping what they did. wait a minute. We started this whole omni channel thing to address an immediate need. But we're reaping benefits. Why are we changing this? No, let's keep it. how do we grow it? And that's a big number. the same study says that omni channel customers shop 1. 7 times more than single channel shoppers.

Jeremy: 15:42

No. and we said often on the show, everybody wants you to interact with them where they want to do business with you

Santi Cuellar: 15:49

where they want to the

Jeremy: 15:50

when they want to do business. Cause for me, when my wife was out of town with the kids, I interact with the brand differently than when I'm, when I'm home with the wife and kids. So across the board, the restaurants and say, coming up on the restaurants to enable that interaction. That guest experience and you can only do it through tech that enables you to do that. talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing from a staff perspective, because the staff also is starting to expect these things. We talked a little bit about a pre show. It's what is the staff expecting from there? it's hard enough to find people in retail and in restaurants. And then when you give them a crap piece of technology that doesn't work, Or doesn't allow they're getting screened out because the guests don't get what they want And they lose stock numbers because of it. Or they come in and say, what tech are you using? We're not coming here. Talk to me a little bit about what you guys are seeing with the places you guys are working on

Santi Cuellar: 16:38

a little deja vu because we have to, we always have to go back a little bit and see what happened to understand where, why we are, where we are today. but in 2022, from January to April, So do the math. That's just four months. Okay. From January to April in 2022. more than 2. 7 million retail workers quit their jobs. Okay. We remember this because we never thought that we would see the day where a McDonald's or a Burger King was offering a bonus

Jeremy: 17:14

to come work

Santi Cuellar: 17:14

to come. Two things happen. One millennials were now old enough. To have director, VP and C suite titles and mill. Remember millennials were born with technology in hand. By the way, I am gen X. We're the ones who brought you the internet. We brought you the smartphones. We brought you the technologies, so you're welcome.

Jeremy: 17:41

I was just teasing my sales staff this morning. I was like, I remember a day when there weren't kiosks at the airport. I remember a day where you had to walk up and now I don't ever talk to anybody at the airport when I got to fly somewhere. So very familiar with that as well.

Santi Cuellar: 17:53

I started in this industry in 1995 during the. com era. and but millennials who came after us were born into the stuff that Gen X created. and I say that kiddingly, but the reality is true. And so there was an expectation from millennials to have certain, technology and certain tools at hand. Like it was standard practice. guess what? Gen Z is entering the workspace. they have higher technical demands than the millennials did. And what we're finding is that hiring and retaining is becoming a challenge for companies who have not optimized and modernized. their traditional brick and mortar set

Jeremy: 18:39

Yep, absolutely.

Santi Cuellar: 18:41

because they're expecting to walk in and have the right tools, the right technologies so that they can be more effective. They know what it means to be productive because they're in that technology mix and when they walk into a an environment that is missing pieces. They'd rather go work for the next store or the next restaurant. That's when I pay them 2 less an hour, but they're going to get more done because they have less headaches and the employee experience now matters, right? we absolutely see, we saw that shift. We weren't expecting that, honestly. it just happened and we're like, wow, that's crazy. Very interesting, but I can see why, right?

Jeremy: 19:21

no. and again, restaurants by and large are struggling to get staff members across the globe. And with that, when they come in, and they're not only their attention to span, but they're okay with it not working at first, as long as you're trying. But if you're not trying, they have no patience for you. They're out. They won't show up for their second Growing your business can mean big time logistical questions like, how am I going to keep up with all these local deliveries? Let UberDirect offer you a helping hand. With UberDirect, you can take orders on your website, via app, or by phone. Then drivers who are part of the Uber courier network will pick them up from your store and deliver them to your customer's doorsteps. Sounds simple, right? Delivery just got better with UberDirect. Check out uberdirect. com to learn more.

Santi Cuellar: 20:04

is

Jeremy: 20:05

of thing,

Santi Cuellar: 20:05

This is true. Yeah. and that brings you to innovate. I mentioned innovating, right? that's another shift, right? I talked about how, if you're a traditional brick and mortar and you're not innovating, you're not going to attract. So we've seen some really cool, innovations. In the traditional brick and mortar space. smart checkout carts, or the self service, kiosks and, experience, which as a gen extra and a technologist, I actually have a hard time because I love the human interaction. I, when you spend five days a week. The entire day solving technology problems, thinking about the next big thing and everything else. When you actually log off, you don't want technology.

Jeremy: 20:47

you want to have a guest experience.

Santi Cuellar: 20:49

I really do. And so when I go into a restaurant and I see the kiosk, I'm like, Oh man, I really want to talk to somebody right now. But I understand the kiosk because the majority of people aren't like me. they want that quick and easy. They actually probably don't want to talk to somebody. we saw a lot of not just the kiosk and the whole smart card and the contactless payment. But think about this. If you walk into a Starbucks, you're expected to get wifi, but that was not the case before. When you walk to another restaurant, like restaurants didn't have guest wifi, but guess what? I now have a contactless payment system. I want my, guests to look at our online menu by scanning a QR code. Okay, what if you have bad cell signal and they can't read your menu? You have to provide guest Wi Fi. So we started seeing, honestly, just about every retail and restaurant chain taking guest Wi Fi as a, as an essential piece of the network because of these

Jeremy: 21:56

Yep. it's part of Yelp. It's part of Google reviews that say, do they have these things for me when I will go to different brands based on, I'm traveling on by myself, I'm cruising on the road and I need to go work for a couple hours. I make sure I find a place that has wifi. And so it's a driver for me, but not done well. I won't go back to that brand. If it's and this is part of where I wanted you to talk through people will say, Oh, I have guest Wi Fi. We were joking. Actually. I was at that same client. That's got 50 TVs yesterday Even publishing your guest wi fi and i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you to talk a little bit about qls And you know what the word qls means,

Santi Cuellar: 22:31

Yeah.

Jeremy: 22:31

help our listeners understand why it's so critical when you've got, one portion of bandwidth that might be on two channels might be on a single channel into your building, but then you want to prioritize the different quality of service voice POS transactions, televisions and guests oftentimes are on the back half of that. So talk to me even again about why that's so critical to think through those things, because just having wifi. It's table stakes, but having Wi Fi that works well is what's going to drive people to do that. And people will just throw it up and then there's also the security aspect of it. And we'll talk about that in just a second, but let's talk through QoS first, and then we'll talk through security and why that's so critical.

Santi Cuellar: 23:07

the bad practice. Is to have everybody on the same wifi network

Jeremy: 23:12

Sorry, I'm laughing. it happens way too often.

Santi Cuellar: 23:15

Correct. And that's why I brought up in the forefront, right? Because they're trying to cut corners or trying to save money. I get that. But there is inherent flaws with having one wifi network that's going to interface with your operations. And your guest experience, it should not be the same. They should be separate, right? the other thing is your prioritization, your quality of service really should live on your operational side, right? And you should be able to give your guests enough wifi bandwidth to where they won't notice any hiccups. So if they do want to make a video call, It's not like you have a hundred people making a video call, right? so the first thing is separate the two networks by the way, you can have enough internet bandwidth coming into the building, but the wi fi network should be separate. and there are different ways of doing the wi fi piece like you can have a pre shared key with guests the problem with that is you have to change it or What some folks are doing now is They have more of an enterprise grade, where on the operational side, it ties right into their network, into their active directory. Their users are able to log in. And on the guest side, they give them a splash page with a more, it's a more cleaner experience. There's no pre shared key. No, just come in. make sure that you understand what the, our policies are, and then we're going to give you good quality bandwidth because you're my guest go enjoy it. Oh, by the way, while you're on the splash page, I have 50 percent off the next thing.

Jeremy: 24:53

capture your email address to talk with you and again, talk about the splash page real quick, Santi, because I think, again, I find too many restaurants don't think about this and then they get caught because people are sitting there doing inappropriate things in their, in their dining room or whatever else. So what does the splash page do explain that a little bit? Because again, not done properly. It ends up hurting, hurting the brand, hurting the guest experience. All of it. Yep.

Santi Cuellar: 25:19

is the gate. That you put up before you release your guest into this guest wifi. And so it's a, it's like a gated factor and a splash page comes up. typically they put in their name, an email address. Sometimes they want to capture zip code. So they do that too. You can actually customize a splash space to capture whatever customer data you want. But less is more, like if you're going to have them fill out an entire form, they're probably not going to use your service, but if it's just an email address and maybe a zip code and they're fine, it'll do that all day long. but what's important about the splash page is two things. One, now you have a captive audience. Because in order for them to use your free guest wifi, they have to stop at the splash page. That is a good time for you to, advertise, to your customer, because, you want to, by the way, it's a channel.

Jeremy: 26:17

another way to communicate with your guests and

Santi Cuellar: 26:19

you're touching

Jeremy: 26:20

are and what your brand is, what you're looking for.

Santi Cuellar: 26:22

Yeah. And then of course, Embedded in this is the legal piece, right? the policy, the use policy, because you have to also empower the business to be able to take action on somebody who is misusing the guest wifi, which is being offered for free. if you're in a restaurant, you're at a Starbucks, You're sitting next to a family and they got little kids and you're pulling up inappropriate content. That's not cool.

Jeremy: 26:51

Hate content, porn, whatever, all of it, it's, you've got to have that as part of your policy.

Santi Cuellar: 26:55

and so now because somebody said, Hey, I want to use your internet, I'm checking off that. I agree. Now you've empowered your employee to say, Hey, sir, that's not something we accept here. And otherwise they won't have a legislation, but they can now enforce the policy that they agreed to. by the way, they can also shut off that user. So if they're not willing to say, I'm sorry, I was an accident. I won't do it again. You can actually shut that specific user from using your guest's wi fi and you want that because it's a liability Like, you're you could potentially be held liable for something that a guest is doing So it plays a major role and it's also a good way of touching customers and advertising. it's a good thing to have.

Jeremy: 27:38

Awesome. Talk to me a little bit about security. Cause again, we had a guest on, Todd Myers from go, I don't remember Todd's company thing. I'll put it in the show notes, but he does just manage wifi networks for people, But, He talks a little bit about how he'll go into a brand, jump on their guest Wi Fi, and then can see all of their POS devices, can see everything that's going on in the network because they've not configured it properly. Talk to me a little bit about how companies like yours and others that do it well, segment these things, not just for quality of service for the staff and all of that, but also to ensure that they're not, playing in the wrong sandbox that they shouldn't be in.

Santi Cuellar: 28:15

so the scenario that you just described is one scenario. There's another scenario that's similar, but different. It was happening during the same era, during the same time period where people were going to hotels because they just couldn't get work done at home because they weren't set up yet for that. And the hotels were being flexible, letting people come in and use wifi. here's what a hacker would do. A hacker would go and park nearby. and start to, promote a wifi network that sounded almost identical to the hotel's wifi network. And people, cause they were in a rush or they were on the phone, picked the wrong one. And now they have this hacker in their laptop. And by the way, that wasn't the hotel's fault because they actually, pro hotels are pretty good at separating. Operational wifi from guest wifi. So it wasn't that it was just, somebody said, Hey, I can use this. So security is a two way street. there is. The things that we have to do as corporations, as companies to make sure that our employees and our guests are safe. But there's also a human firewall element that a user has to learn. We live in a digital age. We can't blame the companies for everything that happens because guess what? You are the one who clicked on that link that you weren't supposed to. So that is, unfortunately, we live in a digital age. It is a two way street. Security is a partnership. It is the corporations trying to keep their employees and their guests safe from a data breach perspective, but it also requires that the people who are using the network have some basic. knowledge of, this is probably not something I want to click on. it's where we live. I will say that, it's a big deal. during that whole, timeframe, what we saw, there was a study done. It was done by the national retail federations. Actually, they did a study. and they said that 69. 4 percent of respondents report that the COVID 19 pandemic, that whole era resulted in an increase of fraud, crime, and overall risk for their company.

Jeremy: 30:27

can see that.

Santi Cuellar: 30:28

when something is happening in the world, bad people are going to take advantage of it. And we saw that. I gave you one example. The guy would park outside and. promote, an SSID. I'm sorry, a wifi MIDI now he was stealing all your information and you had no idea. Restaurant retail while they were concerned about security before it was not like front and center. it was almost like the network. It was like, it was an afterthought, but they also knew that they had to be careful because they seen others fail

Jeremy: 31:00

Yep.

Santi Cuellar: 31:01

the domino effects from that were devastating for that company. but let me tell you with all this omni channel

Jeremy: 31:08

that was really where I wanted to go. Yeah. That was really where I wanted to go. It says. So now, Sandy, talk to me about my last thread that I wanted to go through. It says constantly restaurant operators, restaurant owners, people are constantly looking to modify their environment to meet a guest requirement, whether that's a loyalty solution, whether that's a third party delivery solution, whether that's some other new thing, he asks, why is it so critical? You have to innovate to meet the guest needs and be able to meet your staff

Santi Cuellar: 31:36

you have

Jeremy: 31:38

Talk to me about some best practices that you would suggest restaurants consider as it relates to this, because you've got to be able to be innovative. You've got to be able to do things, but not done properly. You're ultimately going to hurt your brand, potentially hurt

Santi Cuellar: 31:50

a hundred

Jeremy: 31:50

of those things.

Santi Cuellar: 31:51

So let me just first start off by saying that securing a network has become easier from a technology standpoint. What I mean by that is back in the day, you needed to get a firewall, but then you also needed something for malware. And then you needed something to detect an intrusion. when you looked at a network topology for security, you had firewalls and appliances stacked up you had to make them redundant. So now you had a whole other set. It was a nightmare and you have to keep everything updated and antivirus, intrusion protection and intrusion detection. Sometimes they were separate. Sometimes they were together. so that world has also innovated.

Jeremy: 32:37

Okay.

Santi Cuellar: 32:37

And so where before you needed this complex topology, now you have everything, antivirus, anti malware, intrusion detection, protection, firewall rules, you name it one box. Okay. Which makes it easy from a topology, from a management perspective, from a planning perspective, from a budget perspective. And if you have to make that box redundant, which you should, now you just had a second box. The good news is that sector of technology has been catching up significantly. And now, with artificial intelligence, proactively looking at, anomalies in the network. And catching things that the humans would eventually catch.

Jeremy: 33:24

faster.

Santi Cuellar: 33:24

right. we know stories where people were hacked on a Friday and nobody knew till Monday. And so AI is starting to play a huge role of catching these things immediately and blocking them. And by the way, AI is starting to do it proactively, meaning they actually will block it and then tell you about it. Hey, guess what? I took care of it. So good news. Not only has the technology caught up, but the technology is available for small medium enterprise sized businesses there's something out there for everyone. So it has gotten better But they had to change they had to get caught up why because of everything we just talked about So if you're a restaurant today if you're a retail company today number one, you have to fortify Ready for this The protection of credit card and personal data. That's number one. You have to, you have to, by the way, did you, I saw something pop up on my phone yesterday. I haven't read up on it cause I've been so busy, but something popped up about, about, uh, 20s, 2. 7 billion social security numbers

Jeremy: 34:26

did. I saw that.

Santi Cuellar: 34:28

Like I said, I don't have the details, but. There you go.

Jeremy: 34:30

Yep. No, it was, yeah, it was a lot of social security numbers that got hacked. And so everybody's saying you got to go do, check your credit scores and all of that. Yep.

Santi Cuellar: 34:38

I just saw the headline and I'm like, I need when something like that happens, I need time to really absorb what happened, analyze it. That's just a technologist in me. So that's why I haven't really. Look at it. But the first thing I said is 0. 7 billion, but there's only 350 million people where we're all these social security. So I'm guessing that these are all the social securities have been assigned from the beginning of people who even passed away and everything. I don't know. It's crazy. The number is just nuts, right? But it happens. If you are living in the digital age, you will get hacked, period. All we can do is mitigate it, number one, and number two, how you respond to when it happens, that's the key. That's the key. That's speed, right? Speed, and accuracy, and transparency, because, it's going to ha it's just going to happen. X, X had a DDoS attack,

Jeremy: 35:36

denial of service is simply taking them down.

Santi Cuellar: 35:39

They took them down. So anybody who tells you I can secure your network, you will not be hacked run the other way. Because what we do as technologists is we do our darnest. To make it so hard for somebody to come into your network that we mitigate the risk But there is no way to say ever that we can 100 Secure a network there's and by the way, it's constantly evolving The hackers get smarter, by the way, just like we have ai that protects networks. We have ai that attack

Jeremy: 36:15

That's it.

Santi Cuellar: 36:15

So

Jeremy: 36:16

that's really where I wanted to end things. Santee for today, as it relates to technology is people need to be able to innovate and they need to be careful. They can't just take anybody that just started a company last week. Oh, let me get into your network and I'm going to go start seeing your POS data. I'm going to start inserting orders and you have no idea where they came from. You have no idea what they have access to. So be really careful. The second piece that I would say is if you aren't already working with companies like Santee's company, you have to, in today's day and age, because so many things touch the inside of that four walls that are really your lifeblood. They're the things that are making money. They're the things that are driving your family and your business and the lives of those people. You have to ensure that you do it properly because ultimately, if you don't, somebody is going to find you, some hacker's going to get in and they're going to harm your livelihood. And yes. You've got insurance and you've got all these other things, but ultimately it, we got hacked a couple of years ago. It was so painful. we took down servers. We were months of trying to figure it out. So how would people engage with a brand like yours? What should they look for in companies like what you guys do? Because there's lots of organizations out there that do a lot of what you guys do. Fantastic world. every geo in the country and in the world, there's people that are MSPs that focus on these types of things. You guys focus on retail and restaurant. great opportunity for you guys to talk to some of those listeners. How would they engage? What should they look for in different brands that you guys can meet with? And even when they're talking to your team.

Santi Cuellar: 37:41

It's a fantastic question. So the first thing to look for is their tenure. How long have they been doing this? Okay. we've been doing this for over 25 years. Not only have we been around for a long time, but our people. Our people have decades of experience themselves. And if you combine them, think about the amount of customers we touch. We have thousands of customers, right? And so our people get to see thousands of scenarios. And so when you think that, Hey, I have this problem that nobody can solve for me, wait a minute, we've probably seen it and we can help. So that's one thing is you have to look at the tenure of the company. The second thing to look at is their product. are they single threaded, right? Or do they have a broader stack because there's no such thing as, Hey, this one little box is going to meet. Every single customer's needs out there. Yeah, I know. And so for Infusion Connect, one thing that we're very good at and we take pride in is that we have not been afraid to expand our portfolio. we call it the full stack, right? Basically it is a very complete suite of. Products that when you put them together, end up being a solution, right? That's really what it is. and there's different pieces of the puzzle that we will bring in, depending on what is specific to that customer's pain, because there's no bandaid for everything. There's no one pill for, it

Jeremy: 39:04

on what they have. Like we were talking about with the network, you got streaming TVs versus Trek TV

Santi Cuellar: 39:08

Absolutely.

Jeremy: 39:08

very different environment. And because of it, your requirements are going to be different. And with that, you're going to need to design your architecture and your infrastructure. If you have somebody come to you and just say, here, we can fix everything the blue pill. You probably shouldn't be doing business with them because

Santi Cuellar: 39:23

that's correct. I would say this, to that, if they're focused on pitching a product, they're the wrong fit. They need to be focused on understanding your specific pain. By the way, even though we've been doing this for a long time and we have a vast portfolio of solutions to offer, we still can't fix everything and that's okay, but guess what else we have? We have an enormous network of partners that probably can. So that's the other thing to look at is not just look at the tenure and their product, but what network do they have as far as their contacts, their community, we have partners out there that do things, like ourselves, for example, right? Like you guys are very specific I don't do POSs, right? So if there's a gap, I can bring somebody in that I trust that I've worked with. I'll end with this because you're right. There's a lot of companies out there like fusion.

Jeremy: 40:17

Silence.

Santi Cuellar: 40:21

Fusion Connect specifically has, I would say the strongest guarantees, service guarantees I've ever seen. I've been doing this since 1995. For example, we talked about that SD WAN device that makes your network smart and secure and prioritize that quality of service. guess what? We have it in writing. It's in our contracts. We give you a 100%. Uptime SLA on our SD WAN solutions. nobody does that. everybody does nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. And they run out of nines. we do a hundred percent, not only do we do a hundred percent on that, but we do a hundred percent on our communication and collaboration solutions. So if there's UC involved. We're so confident in our infrastructure and in our redundancies that we put 100 percent on that. That's a lot. Listen, think about it. Communications, to your point, is the life blood of a company. We better get, get behind it. And so we do that. And the last guaranteed I'll mention, because I can tell you that nobody does this. we're so confident in what we do and how we architect our solutions that we have a customer satisfaction guarantee that says, guess what? You're not happy with what we solve for you. We'll let you off the hook. nobody's going to do that. Like they're going to tie you into a contract. You're going to end up in court. You're going to have to fight them. We're not going to fight you. we've been doing this a long time. We know we can help customers. We're confident in our engineering staff, right? And we're confident in our infrastructure and our support staff. We are so customer obsessed, literally and I know that word gets thrown around a lot, but we are to the point where we're willing to say, if you're not satisfied and it's in writing, we're gonna let you off the hook. So those are probably the things to look for.

Jeremy: 42:10

No, but that's

Santi Cuellar: 42:11

If I was looking for a company to solve my issues, those are the things I would look for. And so that's what we do. we provide that for you.

Jeremy: 42:17

I love that. So how do people get in touch? What's the best way to engage with Fusion Connect? What's the best way to, both subscribe to the podcast, because there's also that, because you guys sit and riff on all things technology, and it's fun to sit and listen. So give them the handles on how to get in touch with you guys at Fusion Connect, first and foremost,

Santi Cuellar: 42:34

Absolutely. So listen, fusion connect. com that's the website and you can connect with us right there. we have omni channel ways of connecting to somebody right away. on that website, you'll be able to see everything I'm talking about. our approach to the stack, our approach to solving customers problem, our customer obsession with our guarantees, you'll see all that there. Tech Unmuted. is the official podcast of Fusion Connect. we are actually available on your favorite podcast platform. You can pretty much find us on every platform. And for the video portion, we are on YouTube. just search for tech on muted and subscribe. We would love to have you guys Join us. We try to push episodes weekly I love to connect personally with people. I know you do too. honestly, LinkedIn, Santi Cuellar. I was the first Santi Cuellar to ever secure a LinkedIn account. That's how long ago this was. please, reach out, on LinkedIn. I love to connect with you. if you want to have a conversation, I promise I will provide the coffee. How's that?

Jeremy: 43:36

Love it. Santia, I honestly, one, thank you for the amount of value that you provided, whether they decide to move forward with you guys or not, all of the restauranteurs need to be thinking about this stuff and not just my I. T. guys got it, Or whatever else. So thank you for that. Thank you for reaching out, quite frankly, on LinkedIn. Cause that's how we met and, have built a relationship and it's gonna be fun at some point. I'll get on your show get to talk restaurant

Santi Cuellar: 43:59

I can't wait.

Jeremy: 44:00

that'll be a lot of fun. to our listeners, guys, if you guys haven't already subscribed, please do so on your favorite podcast player, same for restaurant technology guys, you can do that. Once a month, we send out a newsletter with all the shows and some show notes and those kinds of things. So if you haven't done that, go to restauranttechnologyguys. com. You can subscribe to the newsletter. Santi, thank you so much. And to our listeners, make it a great day.

44:22

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.