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Revolutionizing Digital Signage with Eli Chmouni of Neon

• Erika Rivas

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In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, Jeremy Julian discusses the transformative journey of digital signage with Eli Chmouni, CEO of Neon. Eli shares his unique path to founding Neon, a company that simplifies digital signage for restaurants and retail with a plug-and-play approach. From his stint working at a Burger King drive-through for research to creating a solution that increases sales by up to 17%, Eli's dedication to solving customer problems is evident. The episode dives into the integration of Neon's software with POS systems, the benefits of digital signage in both customer-facing and employee-facing environments, and how Neon's ease of use and customer support set it apart in the market. Tune in to learn how digital signage can enhance operations and boost sales across various industries.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast

00:22 Meet Eli, CEO of Neon

00:36 The Birth of Neon

01:06 Neon's Impact on Digital Signage

01:28 Jeremy's Introduction and Disclaimer

02:07 Eli's Background and Early Ventures

02:59 Spotlight and the Digital Signage Problem

04:14 Creating Pixie and the Birth of Neon

05:05 Neon's Growth and Market Impact

10:43 The Importance of Convenience and Support

12:51 Eli's Burger King Experience

14:04 Neon's Drive-Through System

15:19 Challenges and Solutions in Digital Menu Boards

19:48 Flexibility and Efficiency of Digital Signage

21:02 Focusing on the Restaurant Space

21:26 Dynamic Menu Integration with POS Systems

22:24 Addressing Out-of-Stock Items

23:02 Maximizing Digital Signage Impact

23:54 Reliability of Digital Signage Systems

25:01 Handling Internet Outages

28:37 Drive-Through Innovations

33:19 Expanding Beyond Quick Service Restaurants

33:52 Innovations in Music and Loyalty Programs

37:28 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

39:02 Comprehensive Digital Solutions for Various Industries



Speaker:

This is the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Today's episode is one of those founding stories that's just too good to miss. I am joined by Eli, who is the CEO of Neon. I would love to say his last name, but I know I'm gonna screw it up and he and I tease about that all the time. A company that's really. Changing the way digital signage for restaurants, retail and beyond are delivered. He didn't set out to build a tech company, but uh, really he was solving some problems in the ad space and got frustrated with the way that, uh, software was deployed and the way it was supported, and he ended up creating it. Creating this software ultimately to scratch his own itch and to solve a problem that he had. He also worked in a drive-through at Burger King for two weeks just to understand the customer experience better. Like incredible, CEO just has tons of dedication to really helping solve customer's problem. We dive in in this episode on how Neon is making digital digital signage. Plug and play and how it truly increases sales by up to 17%. And why? Great support, great software and speed to market is a huge piece to solving today's digital signage challenges. Stick around till the end and subscribe to the episode. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy. Julian. I am the Chief Revenue Officer for CBS North Star. We wrote the North Star point of Sale solution for multi-units. Please check us out. CBS northstar.com. And now onto the episode. And real quick, a disclaimer on this episode. I have a little bit of issue with the initial recording. The first 30 seconds or so are a little bit wonky'cause we had to cut some stuff together, had some challenges with the uploads, so stick with us because it does get really juicy towards the middle when Eli talks about his, uh, burger King cat and how he still wears it around the office proudly to, uh, talk about, uh, all of the things that he had to learn to solve customer's problems.

Jeremy Julian:

I am joined by a founder that, these are some of my favorite stories'cause it's a founder that scratch and itch that he found in a totally different business. Totally different World. World, and came back and said, you know what? I can really make a difference here. And Eli, why don't you introduce yourself. Give a little bit about your background and then we'll get a chance to, to dig into neon.

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah. Hey Jeremy. Thanks for having me on the podcast. a little bit about me. I've started a couple companies in the past, primarily in the media tech space. I've had two exits and, for the past 15 years I've been also a faculty member at Arizona State University, really teaching students how to start companies, how to grow companies, and how to really go from that idea to, to a fully executed company. So a little background about Neon, it actually came completely out of nowhere. with a neon background. I wasn't like intending to start a digital signage company. I wasn't, planning to kinda really get into that space. I've always loved the ad space. I've always loved the billboard space. So I had a company called Spotlight. It was Spotlight. Really what we did is we partnered with Zu. Aquariums and we gave them, free TV scan all across the zoo. And we used those screens for advertising purposes where half the screen was showing advertising. The other half of the screen was showing, promotions for the zoo. So if you're familiar with what Clear channel or, Lamar, they do in airports, we basically decided to do the same thing with zoos and aquariums that have, attendance of more than a million guests. So we partnered with the Phoenix Zoo, we partnered with, Fort Worth Zoo. the problem though is I didn't wanna start a tech company. I just finished from a tech company. I wanted just to focus on ad and revenue making. So I started searching like, what sort of software currently exists in the market? And, decided to kinda use what's out. what I found online. So I think I tried opt ign. I tried, engage or whatever SPECT now, and I've tried, signage live. I tried a couple different providers just to kinda see really what works in terms of advertising and content promotion. And what happened is literally every two weeks for every one week I would get a ticket from the zoo. This is not showing, this is not working. and. After like being front for six months, I'm like, there has to be like an easier way to do this. It's literally we're putting two images on a screen and I can watch that. Yeah. It can't be that hard where I go. It can't be. It said every entrepreneur ever. It can't be that hard. It can't be that hard. So literally took like a, took a month, ended up designing like what I envisioned. This would be like super easy to use. And, got a couple of engineers together. My background is engineering, so I got a couple of engineers together, ended up building the first version. It was called Pixie back then, by the way, neon was not a thing. So it was called Pixie and it was supposed to be an internal tool for Spotlight. It was like for us to use, And I still remember this, we had a meeting with Discount Tire and the whole idea was to pitch Discount Tire, the same thing people are sitting in the lobby, so might as well put a screen there and show advertising and monetize, that model. And then he looked at me, he is forget about advertising. What's that software that you're using? I'm like, oh, this is just like an internal tool. He is no, we'll pay you for this software. How much would you charge? For us to use the software and at that time it was like$20 a month and he is yeah, deal. I was like, I should have said higher,

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, exactly. oh, that I certainly went too low.

Eli Chmouni:

yeah. Too low. that was a quick deal, but literally it kinda went from there to. Starting to kinda really talk to customers, understand the pain points, reading the reviews online of really what's the problem with digital signage and why is it a problem? And really what we found out is like there's a lot of companies that have been in the space for such a long time, like the dinosaurs in this space and just have not updated the tech stack. They have not like innovated and they focus on that recurring revenue from SaaS aspect really. hold some stage, to, to just using their software and we decided to kinda came in and ruffle some feathers and disrupt the space and just build a super powerful tool that could be used also by marketing team. Does not require an IT team, does not require like onsite servers or anything like that, so we made it super easy to use. I just remember one night I was meeting with one of my friends and he's what's your vision for this? And I'm like, I want it, like the old like neon signs, like on the door that says like open or like they would show like the sales or things like that. I was like, I kinda want like the TV screen. It's kinda like the new neon sign. I was like, hold on. Neon, is that name available? Like I searched it and that's how Neon was literally, it was like me chatting with my friend. Wow. and we ended up switching the name, to Neon, spun it off into its own company. And, fast forward to today, we have, over 20,000 screens that we power with huge brands across the world. And, it's super exciting and I think it literally started from me facing the problem, talking to other customers, understanding their pain point, and being where we're at today, four, four years later.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. No, and it's been amazing to watch your guys', your guys' growth.'cause quite honestly, obviously five years ago you didn't, the company didn't even exist. And now I feel like I can't go anywhere without seeing both the adoption of digital signs and then really you guys being a player that really did it a little bit differently. And so I guess when you look at the market as a whole, how many, offline brands, retail,'cause again. Part of the challenges, and we'll dig into this a little bit later, Elay, is that part of the challenge is you've got a disconnected network. You're not always visible to what's going on in the stores. It's a critical piece of what they're doing. the, but the cost has come down. Internet connectivity is, has gone up, from a li reliability perspective. So there's a lot of things that you guys have done to hit a sweet spot in the timing. But if you look at the market as a whole, how big is the market to get to digital signage and really digital menus versus where we're at today?

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah, I, look, I agree with you. I think, there's always like a little bit of luck when you're starting a company, but there's also a lot of good timing, and I believe we hit it on the timing part, right? Where a lot of the providers in the space are older and slower tech require, like very big investment upfront. And then You are, you are entering this phase. Now of post COVID restaurant era, where a lot of these restaurants want tech, they want to innovate, they wanna, provide great experiences for their customers just because the competition in the space is great, but they also don't want to invest, tens of thousands of dollars to really get there. so that was like a, that was a key point. When we started the company, we said, Hey, if you picked up a TV from Best Buy on a Black Friday, we want Neon to be able to work on it. we don't care if it's a convene or. Stream a great screen. You can sell Neon app on any of those screens. And I think that's really the key differentiator of what makes us different. we recently had a brand huge, over 200 locations and, and we have a common friend, actually, Brittany, Mercer at Cowboy Chicken. So it's funny, she was using ign, we got on a call and she's Hey, I'm not thinking about changing. I'm gimme a shot. And literally while we're in the. First demo. We didn't even show her the dashboard, wait, I'm starting, I'm staring on the TV and it's a smart tv. Can I just install the app right there? And I'm like, yeah, let's go ahead and try it. By the time she installed the app, I already had her menu all up and running. We did the, her entire store in five minutes. And that's really what restaurateurs are looking for right now and marketing managers are looking for is they want something that's super convenient for them to use. They want something. Something that's super easy to deploy, but they also want like that relationship aspect of don't just sell me software and circle back with me in three years when the contract is up for a mule. Like actually maintain that relationship and guide me through the process of how do I take advantage of those screens and make them even better.

Jeremy Julian:

and you said it like. The capital investment has always been a big piece of getting to digital science outside of the software side of things. And I want to dig into why you guys make it so easy and'cause I do think that's a huge differentiator between Neon and some of the others, is how easy you make it for everybody that has any form of graphical. Abilities to do it. But really, Eli, I the, another piece of the secret sauce is the fact that you guys made it accessible without having to have a player. I remember the first digital signage customer that we had, you had to get a specific kind of tv. You had to get the stupid ass player that sometimes worked, sometimes didn't. It would overheat and when it would overheat, it would stop working. it was a bad experience across the board. And that's not to mention. Digital menu boards that are out at the drive-through and the phoenix heat where you happen to reside. that's even a worse situation in the cold and, in, in the north of the country. All of those kind of things. But why did you guys get it to this accessible place that is because again, a. Brittany, we talked to you alluded to, I happen to have lunch with her the day that you installed. Ironically, she was there installing the day that I had lunch with her, and I'm like, she's oh yeah, Eli just did this. I'm like, yeah, they, that guy's awesome. but why did you guys go? I guess because it is a dilemma. Even, the phone that I have where, I happen to be an Apple, apple ecosystem guy, we're in a place where not all phones are gonna get. iOS 26, not all watches are gonna get, apple os. So it creates a give and take where you want to get it so accessible to be able to scale, but also sometimes there's limiting factors with the tech. So I'd love to get behind your thoughts in your brain Yep. As to why did you get to that place where the accessibility and the capital investment you knew was going to be a big piece.

Eli Chmouni:

look, I think everyone wants convenience, right? I put myself in, into, I grew up, my parents had a bakery, a been in the restaurant space like as a family member. My sister had a restaurant. And the amount of things that can go wrong for a restaurant on a day to day basis, it's just shocking, right? people are gonna call off your, your fries vendor is not gonna show up on time. That chair that you just, paid money for. Let's get a break. the hood's not gonna work. Internet's gonna, There's like a million things that can go wrong. I literally, from day one, I did not want digital science to be one of them on their list. I want it to be super easy, super convenient, and in case something does go wrong. they can call us and, we're available by phone support, by tech support, so we can resolve it from that aspect. But specifically to your question of like why the ease of use was a big deal, was honestly because technology has improved so much and from day one. Our focus was, we're a product led company, so our team is 70% engineers. We have two salespeople on the team versus like we have everyone that's engineering and in support tend to grow really from customers telling each other about how Cool Neon is and how easy it was. Just like Brittany told you, right? You guys didn't know that you both knew. I think that kind of drives a lot further. Where I don't have a, a sales deal that's gonna take a year to close is because guess what? That person was referred to by another trusted, trusted friend in the industry. So I think from day one, we've always been product led. I wanted the amount of hours that I spent on like designing the UI to be one click away and the simplicity of it to be like, Hey, whether you're a franchisee, that's a, that's an older franchisee's. Not familiar with tech or whether you're a 16-year-old that just doesn't care about being there and just wants something to just like work. Like we thought about it from that range. there's a funny story that, that, that my, my investors love and it's kinda a bit crazy, but. Initially when we started, we were building our digital signage for indoor, and then we were trying to figure out, okay, how do we do our drive through system to also be better and to, to operate faster and to run system on chip and to really speed up, the transaction time. and we couldn't like nail it specifically because none of us on the team have actually been in a drive through. So the funny story. Is I actually applied and I worked at Burger King for two weeks, and this is two and a half years ago. this is not like at the beginning of the company. This is like pretty recent, I would say. so when I was waiting in the drive through at Burger King, that order took six minutes to, for, I'm like, why is this taking so long? Like, how do we even make this? There was a QR code that says we're high. I scanned it while waiting for my order. I submitted the application. I said, I'm a college student. just trying to do like a night shift. So I would literally finish my entire shift here at Neon to five, 6:00 PM I would drive to this Burger King and I would work the window from 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM because I needed to know like how the POS system worked. what was. Holding them back. What was the issue with the headset? Why did this order take longer? and it was like the best two weeks of my life because at the end of it, I did qualify for assistant management training, by the way. just in case it's my Plan B, life goals, In case, yeah. In case if Neon doesn't work out, you got the assistant manager job, burger King, for sure. that's what I'm saying. I came back to the board. I asked for a raise, I said, look what I can do. but I learned so much from that experience in terms of What is the end user experiencing? And we came back and we built one of the best drive through systems. And that's why now we get picked up by Houston Hot Chicken, by super shakes, by all these new brands. Angie's, like all these brands that wanna drive through system. They're picking us and we're built, we're creating this entire system that we can source the hardware, ship it to their locations, install it, and have the software running on them all from one vendor that they don't have to deal with seven vendors to juggle it all. Just, they just work with neon. We handle the whole thing and typically we're like. 10% cheaper, but that's like cherry on top.

Jeremy Julian:

But even if it's not, one of the things that, that, I find remarkable is just even how you guys understand the voice of the customer and how making it easy is so critical. Not only the capital investment side of things that we just talked about. I love that you're so passionate about making it simple. I still, I'm still waiting for my picture of you in the, in the apron, the Burger King shirt with the, I

Eli Chmouni:

was gonna wear, I was gonna wear. Today.'cause I found the burger hat in my car. I was gonna wear it today. I'm gonna grab, I'm gonna grab it here in the second.

Jeremy Julian:

I love it. I love it. I know. when you and I were talking about it and you told me that story, I was like, dude, I need a picture of you to, I should go find some chat GPT things to I'm.

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah, I'll, I'll send you for the edits, my shift schedule. my, I was on the paper on the bulletin board there.

Jeremy Julian:

I love it. at least if ne doesn't work out, you have a, drive through fast food assistant manager job in, in those, those capabilities. Eli talk, let's flip around real quick because historically digital menu board companies, you talk about some of your competition, and I'm not looking to name names, but it is one of those things where you do need to understand the application. You've gotta be pretty deep in understanding. Color schemes and formats and videos and there's so many different kind of nuances to pieces of software. And I know you guys took a totally different approach, but why don't you talk our listeners through that might be on just static menu boards have never really looked and they go out and start looking, what are you traditionally gonna find? And then how does Neon differ from a ease of use perspective for getting menu updates, whether it be on the digital menu board in the drive through or in the store. And then let's talk a little bit about where you see the rest of things going.

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah, in terms of, in terms of the guidance that they need. Look, I think when people, when people are still having, when people still have static menu boards till today, there's two reasons for that. Number one is. They have been pitched before that the cost of switching to digital is astronomical. So they're already scared, Hey, this is gonna cost me a lot. This is probably not the best use of money. I'm not gonna spend$10,000 right now when I have other expenses that, that I need. the second reason for it is they believe that the. Aesthetic is very important, like a coffee shop or if you've been to, for example, to Sweet Paris, the aesthetic really matters. Like they want the chalkboard, they want it to match with the brand, and they really think the TV screen is gonna be like, too bright, too annoying, it's not really gonna fit within. Within that atmosphere. So typically what we do is for the first kind of persona, we literally have a table that we show them TV screens that they can buy from Best Buy or from Costco. They're like 200 bucks a screen. and they're like, really? that's it. I'm like, yep. I'm gonna give you the link. There's not an upcharge. You can just go on, you can go on, co use your Costco points or whatever it is. and then they, we just give them the links. We give them the table, we show them all the different brands, all the different sizes, and we're just very transparent in that. And we actually recommend certain screens to them that although they're consumer grade, that might last a bit longer, right? Like we want to Sway them away from some of the brands that we know are gonna have issues or become, turn pink in six months. so that's kinda like option number one is the transparency of showing them like, Hey, this is doable for you. You can actually, if you have a location that has three menu boards, you can convert them to digital for like less than$800 that they never thought that was actually possible. So I think that's step number one. Step number two is what we do with them is we actually take their static boards. And we digitize it for them based on our knowledge and our industry experience of what looks best on the boards. We recently worked with a brand called, imagine Movie Theaters. They're a big movie theater, up north. And the cool part about that is they showed us their menus and. And they already had a digital version of the menus, but we still told them like, Hey, based on our experience, we have a couple of ideas for you. are you guys open to that? We ended up redesigning their menus, taking advantage of the sidebar to show different LTOs depending on the time of the day or maybe depending on the day of the week. So just sometimes giving them those ideas and showing them how easy it is to implement some of these things and creating those templates inside of Neon shows them that we're not just a software company, we're really like a marketing extension. We're an extension of their marketing team. To really help them optimize what their screens look like. And then if you go to persona B where they're like, screens are too, we actually start showing the means or have the mat finish or how they can make screens, Matt finish or how maybe they can put a frame. Stream around the TV to make it look more like a poster rather than a screen. so with Sweet Paris, initially they were like completely against digital and then ended up creating this package for them. That takes advantage of the frame, that takes advantage of, of some of the matte finished screens. And it looks super beautiful. Now when someone comes up, it still looks bored. It's still because we designed. The background to look like chalk. We chose the font to look like, but guess what? Every 30 seconds, there is a little video that kind of plays to show the crepe for the month or the crepe for the week in order to cause an upsell of that specific product.

Jeremy Julian:

and I love that idea that you guys know that this is the objection that you're gonna get is I need it to fit my brand aesthetic. And then they go, oh, it can look just like what I have now. but give me the flexibility to enhance, to add exactly. To move to change.'cause. In a physical menu board perspective, you typically are sitting out at one, two months. I gotta get the menu board ordered, I gotta get it shipped, I gotta get it. I've been to stores in the past where they're physically changing the menu boards and even Corner bakery. And again, I'm not picking on Quarter Bakery or Panera. They've got some physical boards that they have to change even during meal periods. And so from that perspective, and then the other piece, Eli, talk a little bit about the flexibility once you go digital, because. In today's day and age, we just, went through when we're recording this, in August of 2025, but we had that huge egg thing where you, everybody had to deal with the egg crisis and the egg pricing changes in a physical menu board area. You get this ugly aesthetic. you talk about the chalkboard. people just scratching out the physical menu board and writing the new price or taking a sticker and sticking it over top of it. Whereas once you go digital. It's almost instantaneous. You can make a change if you need to be able to be in, in the world. I guess just be able to make those changes, whereas before it take months and months of planning, preparation, shipment, and then you have no way to even know did the store do what they were supposed to do, not do what they were supposed to do. So I'd love for you to talk through the flexibility and how that looks.

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah, going back to the first example I gave you with Discount Tire, one of the biggest problems that they were facing was, that 68% of their stores would put up those promotions in time because they were static. wow. So think about it, you're printing all these posters, right? You are spending the money on shipping them, and then you're sending them to all these locations and that, and just a little bit over half. actually getting them up in time. and sometimes maybe not even at all. So there's a couple things that was critical to us from day one, especially with our focus on the restaurant space. So initially when I started the company where we're serving a wide range of verticals and markets, now about 90% of our customer base is in that restaurant space, right? So we really start to understand that restaurant persona. And one of the biggest things was integration with the POS system. So we integrate with in different POS systems and. Because of those integrations, it really allowed that dynamic aspect of the menu that if a franchisee decides to change the price of an acai bowl from 10 99 to, 1149, they can do it directly on, in their POS without having to reach back to marketing to redesign the menu, to send them a new jpeg to update it that way, or to put a sticky note over the screen or any of those things. So the ability to change something in the POS and immediately showing on the. Screen that gives you a franchisee so much more perceived power in terms of what they can do in terms of controlling the environment that they're in. So that was kinda one of our, one of our key focuses, one of the only platforms in markets that have all these different POS integrations that were certified on all of them because we really invested in those integrations that we really cared about the importance of having all of those, the second. That I really have with signage, especially with drive-throughs, is when you see like a big, eight and a half by 11, it says out of stock or like no longer available. or things like that. and with our system, we're actually able to immediately track any 86 items in your menu and also update your menu to reflect that by showing out of stock or removing it directly from your menu screen. So not only it's about price updates, not only it's about, the, it's really about. Having your menus reflect the true state of operating your restaurants, whether it's price, whether it's inventory, and then honestly, I think the cherry on top is the ability to like dynamically show different products that you have. Because I think the worst thing that you can do is put a screen up, use digital signage, but just have one image, one jpeg Right there. That's not. Really the best use of digital side. We would advise our clients, hey, how maybe the first two are, typically like a jpeg connected to your, POS system. But maybe the third one should have an LTO that changes every day. Maybe you have the flavor of the week or the dish of the day or things like that. Just so when a customer kind of comes back, they see that there's something more exciting. And then we've had data over data, that shows if you are featuring an LTO on an LTO board. That product will have an increase of about 17% of being purchased compared to something else. And I think that's really how you start using digital signage to impact your, simplifying your operations, but also impact your revenue, your revenue growth as well.

Jeremy Julian:

yeah, I love that. And I love the story of the 17%.'cause that's huge. from a sales increase perspective, you pay for those screens. Almost immediately with just that sales increase, a hundred percent for those naysayers that say, it's too hard to manage these things, what happens when the internet goes down? What do I have to do when they're offline? happened to have had a sandwich a few months ago at a local store that had digital signage that was down the store's. Internet was down. The digital sign stopped working. I had to get a physical paper menu at a counter service, a place that was selling sandwiches, and I was like, I don't, and it wasn't a place that I frequented. I just happened to be on that side of town. I stopped, oh, I haven't had one of these sandwiches in a really long time. I go, and the menu board experience is awful. I have to go to this paper menu. Then they have, problems with their POS, not RPOS, not your digital science, but I'd love for you to share with our listeners that are like, it's gonna take too much to manage too much internet bandwidth. What happens when the store goes down? All of these kind of things. Talk us through the reliability and why. You guys design it in such a way,'cause I know from inside, conversations you and I have had that you took that in mind when you guys built your solution.

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah, a hundred percent. and I think this kinda goes back to like us experiencing these products. we even have nicknames for those two providers. We call'em Crappy Yo and Fatt because their screens never work and the screens are always faded and are. Off. so yeah, look, we had a client that currently at about 50 stores with us. And, they had an internet issue pop up. It was a corporate that affected all their stores, and all of a sudden, the next day all their menus were showing on top of it. and working with that brand, they're like, we wanna make sure like you guys' system doesn't do that. And then from day one, we've actually experienced it. Because guess what? Working at Zoos and Aquariums, they don't have the best wifi. you're, yes. These are very big, open areas. There's not like access points everywhere. So from day one, we actually developed our system. To create a local backup of all the content that you push over to the screen. So any content that's video or image, we create a local backup of it, not cached. We actually create a backup of it and on that TV storage or on that device that we use. and then that continues to play from that local storage. So we're not always streaming on your wifi, we're not dependent on your wifi. You can literally unplug our device. Plug it back in a year later and it'll still show your content, or have no internet for a whole year. And it'll still kinda show the content. So it will still show your content rather than having that blank screen. And the really cool part is because it's powered directly from the tv, every time you turn on and turn it off the tv, it automatically refreshes, it automatically restarts, directly from there. So I think those are like key components in terms of creating that backup to make sure that your screens are always, Working. We all kinda it's funny. One of our, one of our, sales strategy, it was one of our like lead gen strategies is us going through like Google files. Photos and then seeing which menu boards are showing us off. like we recently signed a partnership with, and literally if you search the great Greek, they always had one, the fifth screen that was not showing, any content. And they're like, and they're like, oh yeah, we have so many issues with our current provider. So they tested us for a whole month and one of the pilots and then they ended up picking us because we didn't have any of these issues. So I think. I think we've built every feature on the platform. The pain point of a customer or customer asked for it. I remember our first BOS integration was actually with Par. and, one of our clients was, with Super Chicks and I had a meeting with him and he's look, we're using app to signs. We're not gonna switch. we're good. And I'm like, can you just show me like how you do things? so he pulled up his dashboard and he had over 150 JPEGs, and then he had 30 Google sheets that was showing the prices. At every single one of the locations. I'm like, wait, so every time you have to do something, this is what you have to go through. I'm like, wait, but your prices are already in your POS system, so why doesn't it pull? And he is oh, it doesn't have, it doesn't pull from me. The POS system, if I can build this for you, if I can solve this problem for you, will you pick us? And he is sure. So literally we ended up taking three weeks, built this entire integration, came back now we took his entire content from 150 JPEGs down to five. And our system now dynamically pulls content from his POS updates, things dynamically, and just does it all on its own. And we went from working with them on 20 locations, now we're close to 40, 40. Five locations with them. we just did their first drive through and they're like one of our biggest ambassadors out there. They're like, every time we like, refer a customer to them, they're like, just stop looking around. Just use Neon. like Skyler is the best with all that kind of stuff. So it's that kind of relationship that we built with them where you just ask so you know, what is the problem that you're facing? And then we go ahead and fix it for them. And they're like, yeah, that's exactly what I need. So just, listening goes a long way. I feel like that's, every, couple's therapy, advice 1 0 1.

Jeremy Julian:

I love it. I love it. and at the end of the day, the other thing that you guys do is you guys are able to react because I think all too often, I think some of your competitors might know that these are problems, but aren't able to modify their business model because they've. either legacy code that they can't deal with or whatever their reason is, they might know it's a problem, but they don't have the means or the willpower to dig through it. And Eli, just'cause I've got two little threads that I'd love to talk through. Talk me through, drive-through real quick, because everybody's talking about drive-through COD really increased drive-through throughput and where things are at. You've got your traditional squawk box where it's got a speaker and it's just got a digital screen that kind of goes through things. And then you've got typically a static menu board. Ironically, one of my breakfast haunts on my way to work is a Burger King, and they just moved to digital, at the store here way. But

Eli Chmouni:

should I do that?

Jeremy Julian:

Oh, you got the hat. I like it. I got,

Eli Chmouni:

I like it. this is the OG hat you still have dust on.

Jeremy Julian:

That's funny. but in general, like probably 50% of the time when I drive through, fortunately I know what I'm getting because I go there on a regular basis. But, at the end of the day, drive through is another critical component. And all too often, whether it's an LTO, whether it's just even knowing where you're at in the queue, that, you've got the static boards and then the digital ones. And sometimes they're the same. Sometimes they aren't, these people will come out with these LTOs and then they, then you go to the menu board and you're all excited to order something and then they don't have it. So there's so many different ways in the digital. Menu board space as it relates to drive through that you guys have helped automate. So I'd love for you to talk through what's different from that and the three menu boards that you have in the store that, that you were talking about earlier.

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah. Yeah, I think there's two components for that, is we simplified how easy it's to launch a drive through. and by being a one vendor solution, we recently, as I mentioned to you, we were working with Houston Hot Chicken. They had four different vendors that they were dealing with. One for the speaker mic system, one for the canopy, one for this. We kinda came in as one vendor solution and we were able just to take all that project management off their hands and we were able to do it. Again, we're not manufacturing this hardware. It's a matter of creating the best kit for the client and being able to source it, deploy it, install it without the client having to like, juggle a million different things. So I think simplifying the deployment of digital drive-throughs, we've done. a terrific job at that, and I think that's kinda what's been really pushing us forward. I think the second part of it is understanding what to do with the drive-through, right? it's not a matter of just having the three screens or the preview board or things like that. It's a matter of understanding, like, how do you dynamically show the content? Like we all hate Yeah. When we're looking at the menu and then it switches, I'm like, I'm still reading. And then now I have to wait and then, my, my, my time in the drive through has been extended'cause I'm waiting for the other kind of image to pop back up and it's just like that annoying experience that's, it's not a good thing to put a slideshow on. so one of the main things that we did as part of our software is you're actually able to zone the menus into different components where you have like your standard menu. This is kinda like your core components. You can also have pieces where you're not changing your entire menu, but maybe you need 10% or 20% of the menu. as an extension to that, we've done a great job advising clients in terms of how to design the menu to match the drive-through, because sometimes, having a black background with white text indoor might be good, where you don't have a lot of glare, have a lot of sun and you, and the thoughts might be different. And then be giving that advice to the client where. Hey, in the drive-through a white background with black text is actually a better approach. not having dollar signs next to your prices is actually a better approach. And here's why. What we show them studies of Hey, this cause an increase in, in, in sales. That's how we do it. the ability to integrate order confirmation in order to reduce the errors in the orders to make sure that whatever people are hearing. is like even simple things like positioning the speaker post, near the car so that your workers are able to hear it better, and not hear like the car nearby or things like that. So I think all those different components come into play to really deliver that great drive-through experience. Drive-throughs are not going anywhere. They're gonna continue to grow. I think people want that convenience to be able to. Pull it in the car, can I do some and place that order? And I think it's up to the restaurant now to figure out, okay, how do we digitize that experience? But how do we also personalize it with some additional aspects where a loyalty number can pull up a custom menu based on your last orders. And those are some of the cool things that we're working on here at Neon to really go from. Three JPEGs. and then, no one likes three menu boards and then a bunch of static stuff all around it.'cause then it still creates that bad experience. Says How do you keep it clean? How do you keep it fresh? I'll show you some photos of some of the projects that we've done. And they just allow you to focus more on picking the product and moving through the line so you can have another car pull up and just that will just kinda speed up your order process and increase your overall revenue from drive-throughs.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. No, and I love that you guys, not only, you showed the Burger King hat for those that are watching this on YouTube, but just the fact that you dug in so deep to understand what does it look like and how do you make it better? And again, as somebody that partners with me on the one thing that has held consistently true is everybody on their team truly wants to hear the voice of the customer and how can they make their lives better? And so I love that. Last question, Eli. You guys do a lot. You guys have done a lot. You've already shared over the last 30 minutes, you guys do a ton in the way of digital menu boards. You talked a little bit about kind of your quadrants. I know you guys are doing some other unique things. I'd love for you to share a story or two of some different things that you've had some customers do that really enhance their business practice. They've already got the investment of the tech. They've already got your guys' solution, but now they're able to do some other things, in, in regards to digitizing other places that they might have been in utilizing your guys' platforms. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about that before we sign off.

Eli Chmouni:

yeah, a hundred percent. I think from the visual menu board perspective, we actually allow brands to, publish their menus on. Online. So for example, you can actually take in young and put it on your Google profile. So whatever's actually showing in the store will show to customers as they look at their profiles, you're gonna kinda keep that consistency. And then about seven months ago, actually more now, probably about 10 months ago, one of our. One of our clients came to us and they said, we, we love neon. You guys have helped us so much, but we really hate our music provider. And it's so old. It's expensive. you guys should fix music too. I'm like, challenge accepted. Yeah, exactly. How hard can it be, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like the dumbness sometimes. Yeah. The ignorance. The ignorance is bliss. You just go run after the problem. It's we can fix that. it's music. How hard could it be? But literally we spent five months working with, lawyers, entertainment lawyers, and we ended up getting, licensing rights from the different pros in the us, and Canada to allow us to resell and to license music. And we ended up building an entire music product that allows you to also control the music in the store. So just like now you can show, if you have a menu that's showing now, you can also show different types of music. You can play different types of music. depending on the time of the day, you can also create announcements. you can use our AI engine to actually type an announcement and it will create an announcement over the air. for example, Jeremy, if you're at Peter Piper Pizza and there's a, it's your birthday, and the manager there wants to say Happy Birthday, Jeremy, he can just type it up, in the system and it'll create an announcement over the air, directly there using the voice of the brand. So some of these like cool things where we. Then I just wanna wanna play music. It's like how do you make music actually synchronize with the screens? How do you make the music now? Maybe talk about the LTOs that you're also showing on the screen, where maybe someone, if they missed an LTO, now they get to hear about it. Or maybe they missed a a messaging that says, download our loyalty to hear about it while they're sitting there also enjoying it. So I think some of these like cool things, allowed us to take everything we learned and then literally we launched. We launched music about seven months. And out of the brands that we currently have, we had 2000 stores sign up. so immediately within seven months, we ramped up to about 2000 stores using, neon music product and we continue to kinda expand more and more, that product as its own category. and then people came back to us and said, we also wanna do better loyalty, like, how can you integrate, like, how can we collect better information? So we ended up launching the on wifi as the captive portal. and using the captive portal also, you can take the LTOs that you're showing on the screens and. Now you can show them on your phone or on the laptop, kinda just creating that ecosystem. So my vision for this is really, I think over the next three to five years is I'll be able to build an ecosystem of products, that, that allows marketing and operations teams to really work together from a single dashboard where you don't have to log into 12 different dashboards. Franchisees don't have to remember 12 different vendors. They don't have to call 12 different numbers of support. They can just call neon and we got it handled. this is where the whole idea is restaurants are creating amazing experiences and we wanna create that amazing experience to them. And it all begins with simplicity. so the ability to combine everything under one roof, keep it simple, keep it pricely, conveniently priced for, any of these brands, whether they're small or enterprise. and then just really focusing on that support. Aspect is really what allowed us over the last four years, we've had zero installation, zero churn, continuous growth, and we continue to build more and more products to really simplify, the life of a restaurateur.

Jeremy Julian:

That's amazing. and again, I think, I say this often in the long time, listeners all have heard it. Tech for tech's sake is dead. But tech that really is solving business problems is really what you guys are solving. And so I love that you do that. So Eli, you've only got a couple sales guys on the team. How do people get in touch? how do people learn? hopefully they don't get an engineer that starts talking to'em about bits and bites of how things work when they call in. But how would you, ask our listeners to engage if they wanted to learn more about what Neon can do for their business?

Eli Chmouni:

Yeah, absolutely. I would love to, connect with'em on LinkedIn. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn. Eli Chmouni, C-H-M-O-U-N-I. my email is eli@neonscreens.com and I am very friendly in giving my phone number away.(480) 707-1444. We recently expanded our sales team, so you guys would keep them busy if you call me and I'll get to kinda connect you with'em. And, we'll get to learn a bit more about your business, try to understand really your needs, and, figure out if we're the right fit for you and if we are, we'll definitely create some amazing experiences for you.

Jeremy Julian:

Awesome. One last question, Eli and I promise this is last. It, and then we'll wrap up. It's not just for quick serve. I want you to share this with people. It's for anywhere that you're serving food. It's casual dining, it's digital signs in your takeout area. It's so much more than just walking into a fast food place and having the three screens there. I guess I'd love for you to elaborate a little bit on that. You and I were talking. Via email the other day about a casual dining brand that's got some digital signs that they're starting to roll out and it's casual dining, a couple hundred stores. But it's like there's opportunities there to upsell, there's opportunities there to engage your guests. There's opportunities there to engage your team members. I'd love for you to just encourage our listeners, it's not just the fast food listeners and the fast casual listeners. It's those that are fine dining. It's all of it. I'd love for you to share a little bit of that before we. Before we sign off,

Eli Chmouni:

yeah, we work with anything from C stores and grocery stores. So if you've been to Sprouts, if you've been to Crispy, crunchy Chicken, any of those places where, again, it's not a typical QSR setup. we are the screens that you see over the deli area. We are the screens that you see over the bread area or. or over the smoothie station or anything like that. Then we go into the QSR, the fast casual category where you are showing up to aboard, you are ordering from a board and directly kinda looking at the menu author through a drive through. We also do a lot of full service restaurants where, for example, PF Chang's, where maybe the screen that you see behind the hostess that's promoting their loyalty app. and it's actually sharing some promotions right before you even enter. The restaurant, we're even in, in like Hooters, where you're basically sitting down and then they split the screen where a sidebar of the screen is actually showing promotions. As you're watching the game, you're able to actually engage with that. all the way to recently we have a huge expansion into the hotel category and the hotel dining category where there are screens that you basically see next to the elevator or in the lobby. Promoting their restaurants or promoting their onsite amenities, as well, as well as any of the services that they offer. So really any screen that you have, Ian can really work on it. as I mentioned, we work with a lot of brands like automotive. We work with healthcare like. honor health, where we do a lot of the screens and the infusion rooms. We work with a lot of schools through Aramark. So if you've been in a, K through 12 school or universities, we work through those. We're in University of Georgia. so a lot of these brands that it doesn't matter really. The type of service, really think about it from communication. there's a big expansion that's been happening, just Jeremy to extend on that a bit over the last six months in terms of employee communication. Yes. Especially back of the house employee communication. to put a$200 TV in the back of the house and to use that in terms of training, messaging, announcement, especially for the we announcement. Exactly like any of that, scheduling, any of that stuff that could now be shown digitally on a screen rather than having a manager. you have only one point of contact with a manager. The manager has to print everything and put it on the board. Now you can fully digitize that experience. you can. Send alerts to it. You can send updates to it. You can even, we work with a brand called The Joint where they actually have announcements before they open and after they close out a checklist that the staff has to complete over the air, right? Over music. So I think that creating that ecosystem, think about it really from a high level as messaging and communication that is both employee facing and customer facing. So wherever that you, you feel there's a need for that in your business, then this is where Neon can step in and can create that experience for you.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. And again, as we talked about the story with Brittany, it's, you guys do it so quickly and so easily. it's amazing. Eli, I can't thank you enough for truly solving so many problems within the space. So thank you for that. Thank you for showing up and sharing the story. cheering you guys on. I know we partner and, love to see you guys continue your growth. To our listeners, guys, if you guys haven't already subscribed, please do Check out Neon, connect with Eli online and make it a great day.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for listening to The Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit restaurant technology guys.com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.

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