The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions

Revolutionizing Beverage Service: Rishabh's Game-Changing Beverage Dispensing System

Jeremy Julian

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast, host Jeremy Julian talks with Rishabh, a serial entrepreneur aiming to transform the beverage industry with his innovative startup, Sidework. The discussion delves into the current challenges faced by the beverage sector, especially in coffee shops and bars dealing with complex drink orders. Rishabh explains how Sidework's agnostic ingredient dispensing system simplifies and speeds up the preparation process, improves accuracy, and enhances both barista and customer experiences. The episode also explores the broader potential of this technology in various settings, including under-invested aspects of the restaurant industry and non-traditional locations. The conversation underscores the immense opportunity for beverage-focused technology to significantly boost margins and operational efficiency.

00:00 Sidework
00:56 Introduction and Episode Overview
01:19 Guest Introduction: Rishabh Background
02:48 Introducing Sidework: Revolutionizing Beverage Dispensing
04:14 Challenges and Opportunities in Restaurant Technology
11:27 The Evolution of Beverage Complexity
17:24 How Sidework Enhances Efficiency
22:39 Addressing Concerns About Automation
27:35 Expanding Beverage Menus and Non-Traditional Environments
36:20 Conclusion and Contact Information

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

Jeremy:

In today's episode, we are joined by a multiple time founder who is trying to change the game of beverages. He and I get into depth as to the problem that the beverage industry has created as well as how he and his co-founders are solving for it. I was blown away to the point that I was sharing it with my family and my kids that evening. And they were like, how do we go figure this out and support this piece of technology that I genuinely think. Is going to change the world of beverages. So if you've got a beverage program and want to enhance it, Keep listening to the episode. If you've always wanted to add beverages, whether that's alcohol, non-alcohol coffee. Check out the show. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I am the chief revenue officer for custom business solutions. We Sell the north star point of sale solution for multiple units. if you don't know who we are, check us www.Cbsnorthstar.com and now onto the episode. Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I think everyone out there for joining us today is going to be a fun episode because, I love, and you guys have heard this long time listeners have heard this, I love listening to entrepreneurs talk about, some problem that they found out in the space because, it's amazing how much new technology comes out in the restaurant space every day. And today we're going to get to expose another one of those new pieces of technology. Rishabh, why don't you introduce yourself a before we jump into kind of side work and what, What problem you're trying to solve in the space, but, where did you come from A little bit of background for our listeners, that may not be familiar with what it is that you guys have been doing.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Of course. Thanks for having me. First off. I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, and have always been a builder at heart. I've got a couple co founders that I've known since 5th or 6th grade. and we were like the classic kids in the back of the classroom. I remember Mrs Hoodman's class, 6th grade science class. We were working on. I think the project of the semester there was trying to turn the kinetic energy of oceans into potential energy. Turns out that doesn't work that well, but I've been pretty much building ever since. Went to school at the University of Michigan. graduated, went right into hospitality and hospitality technology at another startup, got addicted to both building companies and specifically building companies for the hospitality space. And it's been doing it for my entire career.

Jeremy:

I love that. and it's always fun when you can take those learnings from the different places that, that you had been, why don't you introduce your new project and where you guys are at today? Cause I think, honestly, I'm excited to get into the conversation cause I've been doing this close to 30 years in the restaurant tech space. And, there's not a whole lot of stuff like what you're building out there. And so I love, I. Every time I turn around, I'm like, there can't be another person that's doing something else in this space. It's gotta have all been figured out. But but at the end of the day, I think that you've got something that's pretty unique and I want our listeners to hear about it.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Appreciate that. Yeah. at Sidework, we built the world's first agnostic ingredient dispensing system. For highly complex beverages. That's a lot of words for a fairly simple concept. So if any of your listeners are Starbucks drinkers, you're Duncan drinkers, and they're getting an ice brown sugar, shaken espresso with a couple of pumps of this and almond milk, we take that drink and we make it in less than 10 seconds with a dispenser. and basically reduce the lift on baristas and drive top lines for beverages for all sorts of businesses.

Jeremy:

talk me through why that was where you guys went.'cause that seems like a very complex problem to solve. and I love that you guys are solving it. And again, I a hundred percent agree with you, and I think it's gonna be one of those things that. 30 years from now, we're going to be like, how did anybody stand there and really make these drinks, especially for some of those things. But talk me through even the ideation process of where this came from.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Yeah, it's one of those things. It's like a grassroots natural story. like I said, I started my career in hospitality technology at a company called gather. We were making event management software. So if you were restaurant, you want to book out your private room, managing the menus for that private event, all that stuff. And while we were there, we had an exit event. We sold to Vista equity partners. But a couple things. stuck with me first, I think you talked about earlier how people are constantly building for restaurants. I agree with that, but I also think that restaurants are very under invested in, especially when it comes to like top tier, high quality technology. And what I mean by that is. If you look at like the venture capital landscape or the general financial institutions, the going saying is restaurants are bad business, low margins, bad business, don't invest in restaurants unless you like, really love it. All of the cliches around restaurants is a business in general. And if you look at the data on investment in restaurants, especially as it relates to automation and high, Tech investments, they lag far behind industries like manufacturing, transportation, energy, so on and so forth. But they're like central to the social fabric of what we do. We celebrate our moments there. We do they are central to, to everything that we are. And so while I was at gather, I got a little bit addicted and a little bit of a chip of my shoulder being like, I don't think restaurants have to be bad business. I think if we invest in them and. Had the best technology talent. The technology is built, sending rocket ships space or like controlling Amazon warehouse. If we had that, we can make it better business and we can make the people who run those businesses happier, enjoy things more. And so that was the. The business white space that we saw the second part of the story is a little bit more natural while I was working in gather me and one of the co founders who I mentioned, one of the people I grew up with, one of the smartest people I know, we got bartending licenses. We started becoming bartenders. We got certificates and, One thing led to another and we started building a cocktail dispenser as a passion project and that snowballed into where we're at today, which is, delivering complex drinks across the country for a variety of brands,

Jeremy:

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. Why do you think that restaurants are so underinvested in? Is it, it's an interesting theory and I say it often on the show, restaurants are the second largest employer in the United States behind the government. And so more people work in restaurants, more people have gotten a startup in restaurants, more people have made their way into restaurants. And quite frankly, I think more youth should work in restaurants because they'd have to deal with the public more and they'd probably be better humans. But in general. There, there are a very large percentage of the population and there's so few of them that, that haven't figured out when you look at some of the other areas of our lives, medical, they've just gotten so much investment, but restaurants on the other hand are not, why do you think that is?

Rishabh Kewalramani:

I think it's one big reason at the unit level, the best restaurants or the best coffee shops are netting a 20 percent margin. If you compare that to software companies, I come from a technology world. So when it when a venture capitalist looking and making an investment, you're You are comparing it to things that you know, and when you look at software companies, and I think like the best example of this is the heyday of Google and Google Ads is an 80% margin product, easily scalable, not physical. And so like you can take that and if you don't look any deeper with any nuance, it could be 20% versus 80%. Why would I ever park my money in the 20%, proposition. But the reason I think that's wrong, and I think the reason why we've got. 12 million raised and more coming is because of what you just said. You've got to add best case scenario, 20 percent margin category. The average is hovering around eight to 13. There's a lot of upside there and making, like you said, second largest employer, 75 billion a month spent on beverage alone, making a five to 10 percent margin improvement by just investing in technology and building up the foundations of restaurants. That's a big deal. And it's a fairly uncrowded space. And so I think like, there's a level of nuance that's been lost in the conversation, which is can you be differentiated? And what is the opportunity for upside? And I think investors and builders are coming around to it now because of the things you mentioned. But to me, it's just if I can make restaurants 8 percent better, At the end of the day, that's a massive value add.

Jeremy:

Especially to a industry that is so instrumental to even the fabric of life in America, the other one that I like to throw out and I'm probably going to get a little bit of hate mail for this is there's a lot of people that have been doing restaurants the same way for a long time, and I think they're very averse to change some of that's because tech companies and people, that have great ideas. Aren't able to either get the funding or get execution. And so everybody is a bit gun shy about taking on some of this, it's the hospitality business after all, how do I keep it hospitable, but also continue to drive the margin stack, like you're talking about,

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Yeah. I think there's a couple of things that have happened. First off restaurant owners again, have to a certain extent been offered a bill of goods that hasn't come home. and it's, we mentioned in the pre show about going to trade shows. When I was at gather, I went to restaurant trade shows all the time and it's. 15 versions of the same point of sale system offering you a slightly better price or a feature that frankly doesn't add to the bottom line. And so I think there's been a lot of try shiny object here and shiny objects pretty good, but if you switch and I'll maybe get some hate mail for this, if you switch from toast to square, does your margin really improve? and that's where I think like the first part of this is there has been a lot of innovation and advancement, but are we really looking at the core margins in the restaurant industry? And that sort of leads me to what we're building, which is when you look at beverage, I think, Not a secret amongst restaurant folks. You get your margin out of beverages. the saying at full service restaurants always been making money on liquor break, even on the food. and I think the way we think about it is. If we make, if we run up the numbers in, in, in beverage, if we make that the highest margin category possible across the venues we work with, it allows you to make mistakes in other places. And it builds up like the, I talk about as like a foundation you start, you like your bottom line starts off at a higher place. And then the decisions you make from there, the menus and things like the menus, the decor, the ambiance, the service, you can bump up, but your bottom line is higher if you maximize out of beverage. And I think when you look at what we've built, which is effectively complex beverages in a box, it allows you to maximize that beverage profit and actually add to the bottom line.

Jeremy:

I'd love for you to, click in on that. What does it actually mean? talk me through the traditional process of building that, I know the coffee, I'm not a coffee drinker, but walk me through what a barista needs to do to make that, that, that cappuccino, that espresso that, those different drinks. And then let's talk about what life is different, when they work with side work and how does that path go? Because. I'm, I'm sitting here not as a coffee drinker and I know coffee is an area that you guys have done well. Talk me through, what does it look like today and where is life, transfer when you guys put your stuff in?

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Yeah, I'd actually like to expand on that a little bit too. I would like to talk about what's it, what it's like today, but also what it was like five years ago and why that makes a big difference. or 10 years ago, so let's 10 years ago or slightly earlier, and let's just use Starbucks as an example, because I think it's, So if you're looking 10 plus years ago, the most ordered drink at a Starbucks was a Pike Place drip coffee. Super easy to pour, barista grabs it, pours it, serves it, 30 seconds, the Starbucks in the third place, all of it, right? You fast forward to today and 70 percent of Starbucks drinks are cold and complex, and it's you're using the same baristas. You're the same. It's effectively the same store setups, but the drinks are just a lot harder to make. And so what I think one of the most popular drinks is an iced brown sugar shaken espresso, which you can customize your milk. Your number of pumps of syrup, all of that. So the, this, the make process and it's, on the cold complex strings, you're talking about a seven to 13 step make process on average. And that's get the first thing is how much mental effort you have to go through. You read the ticket and you have to understand what the modifiers mean. So this person's ordered with almond milk. They want light ice. They want two extra pumps of brown sugar syrup. What does that mean to the quantities? And that's after at Starbucks. A barista training is 41. 5 hours over 30 days. So you've got all of that knowledge in your head, and most of it is around how to make drinks. And that's just base recipes. And now you take the base recipes and customers can do whatever they want to those base recipes. And you're basically doing algorithms in your head now. Okay. White ice means I decrease, I increase the quantity by this. Adding those two pumps mean this. And now the new recipe is being computed in your head to a certain extent.

Jeremy:

huh.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

then the make process starts, then it's bend over, grab the right type of milk, fill it, go over to the syrup pump station. 1, of this, 1, 2 of that down to the espresso station, pour the espresso shot, put everything together. Mix it with ice, shake it, and serve it. And you have a drink. Now you do that 250 times a day.

Jeremy:

Yeah. and it's baffling to me. I'm going to, I'm going to. Asked to stop right here just because I'm baffled that you said, I don't know, 70%, 70 plus percent of beverages ads of, are modified. That is crazy talk. and the funny part is I have two women in my life that enjoy their Starbucks and they get the, they modify the crap out of what it is. Quite frankly, they're at a place now where they just order on the app because half the time when they tell the cashier, they don't get what they want. And so they order on the app. Because they realize that it's in there the way that they do it. I'm going to tell a quick story. we built a point of sale solution years ago where the guest, it was kiosk at the table well before kiosk was a thing. And so we were putting kiosks at the table and at a restaurant like a Chili's, it was less than 20 percent of the orders were modified and similar to the Starbucks example, they were getting to 70, 75 percent of those orders were modified because you know what? When I go to Chili's and I order a burger and I don't like tomatoes, I realize I tomatoes come on the side. I'm not going to worry about telling the server to don't put tomatoes on there. Whereas when I can do it on a kiosk, I can take the tomatoes off. And now it creates this level of complexity for both the expo, as well as the guy that's producing the food. It was, it, they changed the, it, they changed the world of how they were doing. That order of operation. So I think what you're saying is I guess just very eyeopening to me just cause again, I'm not a coffee drinker, so I didn't necessarily even know that was such a big piece of what it is that they do. 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.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

And I'm g we solve that in a second the nailed on the head th coffee, whether it's cock restaurants, beverages in demands are through the r The on premise is being driven by the off premise. The grocery isle of beverage has never looked better. Flavored sparkling waters, kombuchas, coffees, all in a can, all your favorite thing in most restaurants you go to. It's like a Coke and Diet Coke, still. And and the other thing you hit on the head is As soon as those apps started coming out, the order ahead apps and those options were there so clearly displayed the options that were always behind the screen somewhere on the point of sale system. This thing really took off. In fact, I was talking to a very senior executive at one of the larger, fastest growing coffee brands in the country. and in a moment of. weakness, he told me that they're all in a race to the death with Starbucks, but when it comes to complexity, they all have to do the order ahead of apps. They all have to let you choose the syrups, the milks it's the start with Starbucks has set that standard. The toothpaste is out of the tube and you have to do it now.

Jeremy:

but once you put it in the hands of the consumers, they are going to modify it because they never, my wife, again, she goes to, she goes and gets a margarita, you know what she says, I'll have a house margarita. With salt, with salt, not sugar or whatever. on the rocks with salt is her drink. But if she got a choice of 27 different tequilas, she might choose a different one each time, which to your point, because you're putting it in the hands of the consumers, they're going to modify it every time.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

And now with SideWork, you get this order, this cold, complicated order with whatever modifiers. We've built a layer of software intelligence. In an instant, it understands. Light ice means I increase the volume by this. Two extra pumps. The Starbucks rules for that is it's 0. 5 ounces each. If they've paid for it, if they want to split their pumps, they can split their pumps too. All of that's done in an instantaneous second. Every non espresso ingredient in that drink You take that cup to our machine, you press a button, you hit dispense. Everything's dispensed accurately to one 10th of an ounce in about 10 seconds. You add espresso and ice that drink and you serve and you're good to go. You took that seven to 13 step make process. You turn into three, a lot less physically intensive steps. And you took all of the processing power out of it. And I think that's, you know, we've a misnomer in the industry now, especially in fast casual and in cafes, we call them service industry employees. But at their peak hours, if you're a brace at Starbucks, you're not a service employee. It's a manufacturing job. Masquerading as a service job. You are there to make drinks, and the more the customer customizes, the more that ticket size goes up and the more ticket size, the more profits, and you make drinks. You make those drinks across eight hours and it's not a service job. There's no Hi. Hello. There's no, how's your day? I've got a TI 15 tickets waiting for me

Jeremy:

Yep. I might as well be on the Ford production line turning a wrench because it's about the same.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

And I tie that back to when we talk about investment and underinvestment. You know what's gotten a ton of investment? Manufacturing automation. And if we're going to turn these cafes into mini manufacturing plants, we might as well give people the tools to make their lives easier.

Jeremy:

Love that. so let's talk a little bit about how you do that. So you went through it pretty high level and I'd rather, I want to dig in a little bit deeper. So take these complex drinks. Let's talk about what, you talked about where it was 10 years ago. You talked about the modification and the ability for humans to When they customize, it makes the job more complex. Again, going back to, I remember Scion, which was a Toyota brand. You can only get it the way that they made it because it was very easy. They could just cookie cutter it any more. Now you've got 27 different options as it relates to that. And whether you charge for it, you don't charge for it. What is it that you're automating? Is it the flavors? Is it the coffee? Is it the, let's just stay on the coffee train and maybe we can pivot to, to mixed drinks at some point too. But, but I'd love to talk coffee first, just cause I know it's a pretty big area.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Yeah. Let's talk coffee first, but I do want to get to at some point is all the brands that don't have complex beverages on their menu and how they're leaving a lot of money on the table because of how operationally difficult it is. But sticking with coffee and how it works, we don't have, pictures in front of us. I'll try to walk you through it as, as best as I can. So imagine you've got a four foot wide, two foot deep machine. It's got two drawers. that's a fridge in those drawers. In the native containers, all these ingredients come in, you've got a bunch of ingredients plugged in upside down. You've got gallons of whole milk, cartons of oat milk. You've got liter bottles of Tehrani syrup and Monin syrup. Everything's plugged into the machine, 36 ingredients in the fridge, eight that you can pump in from external like bags and boxes of syrups, cold brew, anything that's shelf stable. You've all of those ingredients stocked that are those brands ingredients. And I think that is. A lot of our technological advancement is whatever the brand serving. We've got a small chain of restaurants in Arizona that does a homemade raspberry puree with seeds in it, your oat milk, like we don't demand anything out of your menu. We can dispense anything. So you've got all of this stocked up. You've got an order comes in. It goes through our software. Software understands the order, has our own intelligence built into it. It's, you've got your, let's go back to the brown sugar shake and espresso that we've talked to death about here. And so now our machine knows, okay, that's going to get, it's going to get whatever the milk is. It's my choice is almond milk. So it's going to get. It's a 16 ounce drink. That means the total volume is going to be eight ounces. It's going to get two ounces of espresso. That's going to tell the barista to add on the ticket. It's going to get four ounces of almond milk, two ounces, an ounce and a half of brown sugar syrup, an ounce and a half of simple syrup. The machine has all of that information now. And now you go to a proprietary and fairly Like complex system of sensors and pumps. They get that data. You pump all of that out, takes about 10 seconds. Everything mixes as it's coming out. So you're getting a better mixed beverage too, but in about 10 seconds, those pumps and sensors are done. And you've got a cup with all of the ingredients, you add espresso and you serve it.

Jeremy:

Wow, that's incredible. And so for those that are naysayers, and I do want to get to the point about, where's the opportunity for those that aren't anywhere close to this. for those that are the naysayers that say, how is a robot, how is a computer, how is this thing going to do it? As well as the barista that's been there for, for 10 years and knows my people and knows what I want to do. Cause we all know this we're technologists. I realized that a computer can do it more consistently and better than a human can. But for those that are going to say, wow, you're going to put somebody out of a job. They're not going to know how to do those things. give me some, some fodder to go back to those people. That says, no, you're crazy.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

That's first off. They're not crazy because like at first look, automation takes away jobs. I'm there too. I want to talk about this in two ways. Let's talk about it. Let's start with some numbers and let's talk about it with the general barista and guest experience. The numbers are this, it's getting really hard to run a coffee shop. So as you look today or any sort of restaurant, 50 percent of jobs in the hospitality industry remain unfilled. It's even worse. It's even worse in, in cafes. On average, 130 percent of restaurants are turning over their staff every year. Some of the coffee shops we work with, it's 100 percent a quarter. Since 2020. Ingredient costs are up 29%. All of that is on a backdrop of what we talked about earlier. 70 plus percent of Starbucks drinks are not cold and complex. So in a increasingly tightening macroeconomic like environment, consumers are demanding more and more. And by the way, their wallets have been hurt too over the past few years. So they're demanding at a cheaper point. And so my first question is what do you want the coffee shop owner to Do what do you want the manager to do that has to make their PNL like work at the end of the day? and at a broader level, like one of the missions that we have here is we want baristas, managers, owners, bartenders, managers, owners, staff members, managers, owners. We want them to be just as happy as the people dining at their place. And that isn't happening today. It's a really stressful job to, to manage or operate a Starbucks right now. And I think Like you've seen already, especially at the big chains, but even at the mom and pop level, I've seen it with our own customers closures over the past five years, a lot of closures. So let's have a little bit of a nuanced discussion, but it's not just labor jobs. Like we've got restaurants closing and margins thinning. Like we've all got to pull up our sleeves and get to work a little bit to, to make it a little bit more protected. But I think that the numbers tell a lot of that story. I think what's more important is the barista and guest experience. And we already talked about it with the Starbucks person. When the barista, when you go to get a job as a barista or a Starbucks, I don't think you expect the physicality and the mental stress you go through on a day to day basis.

Jeremy:

The grind. It's a grind, man. I've watched it. I watched it when I went with my daughter. I was like, this is insane. And the amount of patients that guests have for not having their coffee when they want it the way they want it, or if it shows up wrong, they just go ballistic on people and it's so silly.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

And so what I'd ask the people who are having this argument is like, are we, looping in the baristas? are the baristas saying no to tools and automation? Are they asking to make 250 drinks by hand, every day? are they asking to have to do math on an, on every order? is that, who's begging for that? And on top of that, I think there's some like what's really important to us as we think about growing this company or what are the lines between the person, the machine, the guests, all that stuff. And so we talked about the Starbucks order. We're not touching the pulling the espresso shot. that's coffee. We're dispensing the milks, the syrups, we're making sure everything's accurate, everything's happening quickly, you're still getting an espresso shot. You're still getting the finishes at the end that you're still. If you have a regular, you're still getting that conversation. Why are we so insistent on having people bend over, pick up milk and pour the right amount of milk 300 times a day? What, who is that proving? What is that proving to who?

Jeremy:

What is that going to get for you at the end of the day?

Rishabh Kewalramani:

why are we so insistent on protecting that? and that flows all the way through the guest experience. Like I think the best abstraction for our company, the way we think about it is if the barista's experience has improved. That means the shop is going to be more profitable and the guest experience is going to be better. and like I, we have it on our websites. I don't make any bones about it. I think like SideWorks does make baristas more effective in making drinks. It does about three times more effective as the studies show, but I, I think the ways in which we make them more effective, add to the experience and take away the physical and mental pain that go into being a barista. And I think there's a level of nuance that sometimes gets lost in the labor automation conversation that isn't happening in other industries, and it's hurting us industry wide.

Jeremy:

and at the end of the day, the guest is also going to get what they ordered more consistently in a way that they're going to be happier with the product. Before we jump into the opportunity to add this to a group that doesn't have it, how does this translate to a place that has a full bar that's doing mixed drinks? is it a very similar process? Because again, there's, you were a bartender, it's how you said, Hey, I got to go solve this problem. but. But in a very busy bar, it's not a whole lot different than a barista at a Starbucks. The amount of complexity and the amount of whiskeys you have and bourbons you have, and what you're mixing them with and all of what that looks like, is it the same idea?

Rishabh Kewalramani:

it is. I think this is actually a great transition to talk about like value props to different types of places. And I think it's like vertical wide. So you have your busy coffee shops and you're busy bars where it's the same idea. You're talking about speed, throughput, stress on labor, like just accuracy, all of those things. But there's a couple other doors we haven't explored yet. One is you are a busy bar. But your lunch shift isn't busy at all. And I being a bartender and talking to bartender, you know what the hardest lunch shift to staff is it's the bartending shift at a Buffalo Wild Wings on a Tuesday afternoon. Nobody is signing up for that shift. it's a lost leader in terms of revenue per labor hours that shift. And so I think, there's a there's an element to we solve for the busy times. We also solve for the dead times, because now. A waiter can get a cocktail from the machine. A waiter can get a complex beverage. And so that's like the second value prop. And then third, and I think this is the, like the big one that gets hidden behind all this. You have the people that have existing complex beverages. But then you also have large brands with little to no beverage menus. Sweetgreen, Kava, Insomnia Cookies, so on and so forth. Where the profit from beverage is zero. It's like you can get a bottle of Coke or a can of Spindrift. it isn't specialized. It isn't unique to the brand. Nobody's ordering it. And there's a large white space there. And I get the reasons, right? Beverage is an entirely different category. And if you want to go specialty, it's more labor, it's more training, it's more operational costs. and one of the things that we've done is we've enabled basically in a very low cost way, those brands to start getting margins and profits from beverage to, to boost their business. But we've also done that with the. The coffee shops and the bars and restaurants. I'll give you two examples. One with Gregory's coffee in New York city. One of the, one of the things that has been a common theme throughout this is consumers demanding more labor is sticky and they're getting fed up, right? and one of the things is menu, new menu categories. So Gregory's has been wanting to put refreshers on the menu for a long time, but the baristas didn't have to ban list to add an entire new make process menu category, all that stuff. After getting their machines, they added refreshers to their menu. Refreshers now make up 24 percent of their cold sales, a category that they didn't have last year. Similarly, we work with a restaurant chain in Arizona. Their coffee menu consisted, and they're on like a college campus. Their coffee menu. menu consisted of black coffee, iced coffee. Those were their like lunch brunch, coffee drinks. We, partnered with La Colonne coffee. we gave them a coffee menu. They had a machine for the cocktails already. So it was just adding a couple of recipes in 1, 500 more in profit per month. By having complex coffees on the menu.

Jeremy:

That's

Rishabh Kewalramani:

And now, and you, then you transfer that to the brands that have no like custom complex beverages, and you start to see how this snowballs, we're going to make existing brands a lot more profitable and efficient, but we're also going to bring the brands that don't have complex beverage menus that are custom to their brand. And I see this every day and I don't. For the life of me, don't understand it. You go through, you're like a sweet green, for example, you go through the painstaking process of having every detail thought of in your food menu, the flavors, the sourcing, and then you pair that with a can of Coke. or an Ollie pop, there is so much white space there to drive up profits and make the experience better for the guests. I call the, my like takeaway, take home message for this. I call people the double stoppers. and I was a double stopper. I used to work in Philly and I used to go to sweet green two to three times for a week for lunch and go to Starbucks right after, and why can't I get my coffee at sweet green? That matches my food and that I think is a digestible way to understand what the opportunity is for some of these other brands. And so whether you're a high volume place with complex beverages, a low volume place for complex beverages or a place without any complex beverages, we have a way to help the bottom line.

Jeremy:

and I was gonna ta tag on top of that, the fact that most times preventing people from doing it is the complexity is the training, is the onboarding, is the staffing, is the, menu creation and the menu management. So the fact that you guys are allowing people to do that. one last thing that I continue to hear about, and I'd love just your take on it, is non-traditional. We keep hearing more and more brands going non traditional, whether that's on a college campus, whether that's at the bottom of a high rise, whether that's in, in a hospital environment. Talk to me about how SideWork could help people with a non traditional environment to grow sales in those areas without having to have a full staff of, of baristas in that environment.

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Yeah, let's start broadly. You've got a lot of. Really good concepts at, I think what I call like the cusp of growth. Maybe they're starting their franchise program that just did their FDD. They're getting to their 20th or 30th store. They were regional, but now they're going nationwide or they're going non traditional. And I think the biggest risk in that sort of like valley of death of companies that want to start expanding nationwide, but at the get across the chasm is quality control, especially like a beverage brand. And I think. Day one, we were solved for that problem. We just did it with Gregory's from three states to 20 states. They don't have to be worried if they're New York city based, that the drinks in mission Viejo, California tastes different than the drinks that people might've tasted in Manhattan. Like we've got that consistency. Problem solved from day one. But as you talk specifically about non traditionals, that's where a lot of, like the growth comes from. Gregory's and mall kiosks. We've got a brand coffee Republic that we just started working with that's going in the bottom of high rises, doing a cafe during the day cocktails during the night concept. And I think there it's unique, but it's also non unique in this way. As you get further non traditional, further past traditional or as you expand further from your home base that the biggest challenge is the supply of specialized labor and also the quality of specialized labor and as you sort Reduce the need for like highly trained bartenders. For example, you can make it easier to go into those places. And that's not to say that you reduce the need for labor in general. One of the things I learned really early on, we had, is this a small mom and a pop shop and owner that's really forward thinking, he told me, I think three to four years ago, it's. When we used to hire bartenders, we're looking for people with the perfect pour, we're looking for this, we're looking for that. Now I can hire great personalities and just have them run the shop. and maybe I'm not allowed to say this in the podcast, but he said, when we had to hire that way, we were hiring a lot of asshole bartenders. but now I can hire good people, smart people, like great personalities. Maybe they don't have a ton of bartending experience, but the portioning of drinks is being done by your machine. And it just. in a lot of ways, whether it's going to nontraditional expanding nationwide, it makes that expansion a lot easier because it changes your hiring.

Jeremy:

it reminds me often of the fact that everybody has this fear factor of things that, you know, Oh, it's, I was teasing my kids the other day about the fact that I used to have to take a paper map and print it before I was going anywhere. Now, did those companies do that? suddenly go out of business. No, my life got better. And so now you give the barista three times more time back. You're going to have a happier person. That's going to spend more time with the guest telling them about how awesome the coffee is that they're serving them and not necessarily just being in this place where they're frustrated because they had to go get another gallon of milk out of the walk in, for the 10th time, because it dropped off the floor or whatever it might've been. So where do people learn more? Cause this, honestly, like I said at the onset. Yeah. I'm blown away with what you guys have built. I You know, I'm excited to see the growth because I do see it as a huge game changer for people that are in a place where quite frankly, it's a huge problem. And you guys are scratching an itch for people that it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of other options out there if there are any, so how do people learn more, what would the engagement look like if they were to connect with your team and learn more about, about how they could automate some of these pieces within their business?

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Yeah. first you can start our website, sidework. co. You can book a demo or a menu consultation. We're always happy to chat. We get the technologies new. We get that you probably haven't seen it before. we can walk you through it. You can follow us on our socials on Instagram and LinkedIn. And then more broadly, my email is rishabh at sidework. co. I'm always open to chat future of restaurant industry, how all this plays together. I think we've got, you've said this in your sign off. it's a huge itch and, we've got some problems to solve. I think we're making a fairly large investment at this company at bringing like high quality technology solutions to the largest problems. And I'm always happy to talk to anybody about that.

Jeremy:

Love that. And, one thing I'll just, I'll remind, our listeners, if this is something that you are trying to solve, you don't necessarily have to buy their solution to talk with them. Rishabh will help you through some of this process. And eventually I think you're going to need to figure it out. And as I say, oftentimes, if you're not doing it. Your neighbor's doing it and ultimately he's got a leg up on you if you haven't already checked it out So I know for our listeners that have been listening to the show for a long time Many of them have contacted me offline and said you know what? I'm, so glad you had so and so on the show because I wouldn't have been able to get to where I need to get you to grow My brand so rishabh. Thank you so much for not only being on the show but for creating something that ultimately is making people's lives better because I love entrepreneurs that go out and solve problems that That make the world a better place so that restaurants can thrive. So thank you for that

Rishabh Kewalramani:

Appreciate that. Jeremy, let's all try to make. our neighborhood restaurant manager just as happy as our neighborhood restaurant diner.

Jeremy:

Love it. And, for our listeners, guys, you guys have got lots of choices. So thank you guys for hanging out with us. If you haven't already subscribed to the show, please do so and make it a great day.

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.

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