Brandon Barton CEO of Bite

#44. Join host Josh Sharkey as he catches up with Brandon Barton, CEO of Bite, a software technology company revolutionizing kiosks in the hospitality industry- particularly in QSR and fast-casual restaurants. Brandon and Josh, former colleagues at Tabla under Chef Floyd Cardoz, delve into their shared experiences in the hospitality sector and the evolution of restaurant technology.

In this episode, Brandon shares insights into sales methodologies and customer-centric approaches, drawing from his extensive background in hospitality and sales. They discuss the future of kiosk technology, AI, and leadership- reflecting on how parenting influences professional growth and leadership styles.

From navigating the challenges of running a venture-backed startup to raising capital, Brandon and Josh share candid stories and valuable lessons learned along the way. Whether you're interested in Restaurant technology, hospitality, or leadership, this conversation offers a unique glimpse into the dynamic world of startups and the future of dining experiences.

Where to find Brandon Barton: 

• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Where to find host Josh Sharkey:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn

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In this episode, we cover:

(03:48) Brandon's start in the hospitality industry
(08:17) Cornell and Brandon's realization to transition out of Engineering
(15:58) Bite 101
(20:45) AI and facial recognition
(28:06) Hardware and its innovations
(31:01) Brandon's leadership style as CEO of Bite
(42:58) The parallels between parenting and leadership
(48:08) Venture backed startups and raising capital
(1:00:17) What Brandon is excited to see for the future of the industry

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh Sharkey: 

You're listening to season two of The meez Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals. On the show, we're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate and how they consistently execute at a high level.

[00:00:24] 

And I would really love it if you could drop us a five star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky. Anywhere works. But I really appreciate the support. And as always, I hope you enjoy the show. Alrighty, my guest today. is Brandon Barton and this was a bit of an ad hoc episode in that Brandon and I catch up pretty often maybe once every couple weeks or once a month.

[00:00:54] Josh Sharkey: 

And just chat about running food tech companies. Brandon is the CEO of a company called Bite. It's a software technology company focusing on kiosks, specifically in the hospitality space, and more specifically in QSR and fast casual restaurants. Uh, so if you walk up and you want to order something at one of those little kiosks, odds are very often you might be encountering his technology.

[00:01:16] 

Brandon and I got to know each other years ago. We both worked for Chef Floyd Cardoz by way of Danny Meyer at a restaurant called Tabla. And he went to Cornell and that's how he ended up, I think, meeting some of the folks that brought him to Tabla. But he's, you know, incredible hospitality professional and also an incredible salesperson.

[00:01:34] 

He's been a great advisor to me as we've grown as a company because we at meez is my company. We're not a sales driven organization. And Brandon is a bit of an expert as it comes to the methodologies and the ways in which you think about sales as it relates to just helping customers. And I'm sure he

[00:01:51] 

Deploys that into how he runs his company. So we spent a lot of time today talking about bite and future of kiosk technology, and of course, a little bit of AI and leadership. And Brandon is a parent of two children as am I. And so we talk about how parenting impacts. You as a leader, you as a person, you as a professional, and other things related to leadership.

[00:02:11] 

We share stories that we always do about what it's like running a startup, specifically a venture backed startup, raising capital and things like that. And generally speaking, just had a great time catching up as always. So I hope you enjoy what is typically a usual conversation for Brandon and I, but hopefully sharing some insights into the world of food technology and hospitality.

[00:02:30] 

So please enjoy. And if I haven't mentioned enough before, I would love it if you could share. A review, ideally a five star review, wherever you listen to this podcast. Have a nice day and enjoy the episode. Brandon Barton. Welcome to the show. 

[00:02:53] Brandon Barton: 

Thanks for having me, man. This is great. 

[00:02:55] Josh Sharkey: 

I’m very excited. I'm very excited. This was a little bit ad hoc, but we talk all the time. So we figured why not record our conversations this time. 

[00:03:01] Brandon Barton: 

Just like a normal Friday afternoon, except we're recording this one. So we can't say any of the juicy stuff.

[00:03:06] Josh Sharkey: 

We can. And also, you know. I find that if you drop an f bomb, I'm not gonna yell at you. We can edit out or not edit out. But I like to take this opportunity whenever I have my friends on the show as I get to ask Things that I didn't know about you that I wouldn't have normally asked because we don't have time.

[00:03:24] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, I was gonna say normally you're gonna ask me questions that could potentially end our friendship, but now that you're asking me in public, I can't, you know. 

[00:03:32] Josh Sharkey: 

No we've already gone through those things, and I think we got past them. So, but no, I know you, I know generally speaking you went to Cornell. I know you, some places you worked, but like, can you just give like, The 50,000 foot airplane level view of like your background, just so that maybe I wouldn't know.

[00:03:48] Brandon Barton: 

Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back to 14 years old, busting tables in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn for the best little burger joint that there ever is called Skinflints. I was doing this because, you know, I grew up pretty humbly and, and needed money to do anything in life, right? And, uh, so I found a job busting tables and that was my first love of restaurants.

[00:04:10] 

Um, did barbacking, bartending, probably when I was too young to be doing either of those things. And, and serving at this beautiful restaurant, Skinflints on 5th Avenue and 79th Street in Bay Ridge. And then went off to Cornell University, not as a hotel student, which would have made sense, but actually as an engineer.

[00:04:26] Josh Sharkey: 

Hold on one second. I know you're from Brooklyn. I didn't realize Bay Ridge. So this must have been like 1995 ish, because I know around your age. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. So what was the restaurant scene in Bay Ridge in 1995? 

[00:04:38] Brandon Barton: 

I mean, you know, if you wanted like, you know, red sauce and the potential to sit next to famous, you know, it's not famous, infamous people, I should say. And if you don't know what that means, then, you know, sure. Then the Bay Ridge was spot, I mean, but it's, you know, from a culinary perspective, I don't think that there were many James Beard award winnings restaurants in the world of Bay Ridge. This burger joint, although I would say pioneered the idea of the English muffin, kind of like smash burger, um, which is just a delicious way to eat a burger.

[00:05:12] Josh Sharkey: 

Thomas's? Thomas's? 

[00:05:14] Brandon Barton: 

100%. Had to. Hand cut fries every single day. I mean, skin food is still there. It's absolutely delicious.

[00:05:20] Josh Sharkey: 

Thomas is such a good English muffin, by the way. Like, I like the bays, you know, they're like a little bit fancier and like, but Thomas is like softer and it gets crunchier and it's more like, you know, I don't know, pliable is the right word.

[00:05:34] Brandon Barton: 

There are a few, like, food and condiment and such categories that I'm like straight down the middle on. There is no such thing as an English muffin outside of Thomas in my world. And, you know, just like if I need to put ketchup on something and it's not Heinz ketchup, it tastes weird to me. I agree with you there.

[00:05:52] Brandon Barton: 

Mayonnaise is delicious, but Hellmann's is exactly what I want on a sandwich. Sorry. 

[00:05:58] Josh Sharkey: 

No, I agree. I mean, I will say a good like more like home baked or artisan English muffin has its place, but not for most things. You know, but there are times when it's good. And I think a Basinger's muffin is actually really good for egg sandwich, but not not as good for a burger.

[00:06:12] 

Oh, really? But Heinz ketchup, 100%. Like when I see like someone made a homemade ketchup, I'm like, can you just also please have Heinz? Because that's what I'm putting on my on my fries.

[00:06:22] Brandon Barton: 

No disrespect to Sir Kensington's, which made a run. You know what I mean? Great job by them. But like, 

[00:06:28] Josh Sharkey: 

and there's a reason they discontinued it.

[00:06:30] Brandon Barton: 

I mean, it's because there's a there's a thing, you know, and even the folks who like make their own soda. That's also pretty cool, but Coca Cola is pretty distinct. It's pretty 

[00:06:39] Josh Sharkey: 

There are some, like, I mean, Maine Root, I think, is really good. Sure! There's a Fox and Park out of Connecticut, like around the New Haven area.

[00:06:47] Josh Sharkey: 

Oh, really? That's sort of really good too, but in terms of a Coke, like a Cola, yeah, there's nothing really better. I get mad when someone makes another Cola, because it's like, it's just never going to be 

[00:06:56] Brandon Barton: 

I go to the movie theater. I want a 32 ounce disgustingly sized, you know, Coca Cola. 

[00:07:03] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. And if you eat a Domino's pizza, by the way, you have.

[00:07:08] Brandon Barton: 

To have Coca Cola. It's the only pairing. That's the only pairing. 

[00:07:12] Josh Sharkey: 

And it just tastes so good together. Yeah, exactly. The grease and the fat. And then mayonnaise is actually a little bit like, so Hellmans is like King, I think, but Duke's is also really good for some things and. I only like a homemade mayonnaise if it's on something that's like, like, seafood, where it's like a really rich mayonnaise and I'm gonna whip it into crab or something like that, but like, for the most part, yeah, it's 

[00:07:35] Brandon Barton: 

just, well, I mean, look, you won't catch me, you won't catch me taking french fries and dipping them in in helmets. That's not what it's for for me. But like, if you want to make a sandwich with cheese and meat on it, It's it's kind of has to be helmets like I don't need it to be better than that. What's your take on Kewpie? Uh, it's delicious. Like, like, incredible. And like, again, fits fits in the right spot. So like Kewpie mayo, right?

[00:07:57] 

Isn't the majority if you're making like a spicy tuna roll, Kewpie mayo is what you're making. Yeah, 

[00:08:01] Josh Sharkey: 

Spicy mayo is pretty much all you need. And you can add. Right. So, so 

[00:08:05] Brandon Barton: 

like, I mean, again, taste profile, profile, sure. Perfect. And if I grew up in, you know, Roppongi instead of Bay Ridge, Kewpie would be number one.

[00:08:15] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah All right. Well, we diverge,

[00:08:17] Brandon Barton: 

So here I am. And, and look, I, I went, I went off to college, you know, to Cornell. I was fortunate enough to get in. I, I really wasn't even like looking at Cornell to go to, and I went in as an engineer, you know, found, yeah, well, no, no, no. Actually a civil engineer. I wanted to build building. I want to play with Legos for the rest of my life, like my son does now.

[00:08:36] Josh Sharkey: 

Why did you transfer to hospitality? 

[00:08:37] Brandon Barton: 

Well, here's the thing. I, I, I looked around the room about halfway through the semester and I was like, I don't want to work with these people for the rest of my life. You know, it's really unfortunate because I'm sure great people who are still volunteers.

[00:08:48] 

That's fine. But I probably should have walked across the, the quad to the software. Engineering side of things like might have been different as you know, you and I were graduating around the same time, 2003, 2004. Some companies like Facebook and Google were recruiting software engineers could have been fun.

[00:09:03] 

I don't know if I would have been as satiated with wine and food as my career took me, but I looked around and I said, Oh, my gosh, I can't really I can actually have a career in working in restaurants. I don't know if I ever put that together, something that I had worked for four years and I loved it and I moved over to the hotel school and it was where I fit.

[00:09:21] 

I was just very fortunate to be in the same place that had a hotel school that was arguably the best in the world and went through four years of that and then actually went to go work in actual restaurants, right? Not a lot of people from the hotel school at that time would go do that. Many work in real estate today and finance and all this sort of stuff.

[00:09:37] 

And my passion was working in restaurants. I went to go work for patina group at Rock Center Cafe. Seagrill and the ring bar and for anyone who knows what those are, those are the three restaurants that used to be surrounding the Rockefeller Center ice rink and the Christmas tree and you would count.

[00:09:54] 

It's almost like you would count a dog years. So if you were there one year, it was kind of like being there three seasons and so you'd really, it really counts as three years on your life because they're arguably at the time there is no busier restaurant in the world than Rockefeller Center.

[00:10:10] 

Restaurants during, I don't know, it's like November 20th to January 2nd, and we worked every single day of those eight, you know, six to eight weeks every year. You were in front of the house, right? 16 hours a day. Yeah, I was front of house. I also did. I actually worked in like the receiving department, too.

[00:10:26] 

So if you can imagine the amount of fish that would come in in the morning to that place, seagrass, especially, I learned things like salmon smells like cucumber, like really fresh salmon smells like cucumber clear eyes on the fish. You know, healthy gills and just really cool stuff. And then I have one season I worked.

[00:10:43] 

It's actually, it's a good lesson. I'll talk about this story. I worked in a restaurant called Cucina Company. More like a grab and go type of place. And I was in charge of the porters. And I learned one of the best lessons of my career doing this. First of all, I was humbled as anything because, you know, here I am, you know, I really grad gotta be doing great things.

[00:11:04] 

Let me go, you know, serving wine and stuff like that. And they had the foResyght to to say, Hey, this this guy needs perhaps to take a little chip off his shoulder and go work. So, you know, most of the people listening know what porters do, and they're some of the backbone of many restaurants, right?

[00:11:20] 

They're making sure that everything stays clean. And I remember getting into a situation where this is just a mess, and nobody wanted to do their jobs well, and nobody had pride in what they did. And we played a simple game every day. And, you know, it's kind of like giving a gold star, if you will, but at the end of the day, somebody's name went on to a board where below on the top of it, I had who's number one.

[00:11:45] 

And so every single day, a new person or maybe the same person would almost like the reverse of going into the doghouse, they would go as who's number one. So everyone's name was on the board and they would go to number one. And so all day, all we talked about, all we, you know, go to each other on was who's going to get number one today.

[00:12:02] 

And so everyone busted their ass. Everyone worked harder and figured out more efficiencies in like a crazy dish pit or like the timing of getting the floors cleaned or timing of restocking and things like that. Just to be number one and I in those moments, I've learned that taking pride in one's job is not just about how much money you make or how much responsibility you have, but just the recognition that you can give to people just simply by telling them that they've done a great job for that specific day and like, I'll never forget that team.

[00:12:36] 

It was just it was so fun to motivate folks who are probably getting least paid in the restaurant to excel at what they're doing. 

[00:12:43] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, it's so interesting when you said that, I was thinking that you were going to talk about the importance of incentives, 

[00:12:50] Brandon Barton: 

you know, like, well, it is, but, but not all incentives come with dollar signs.

[00:12:53] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, just the, the idea that you, you know, today I want to be number one and that drives me to, to work harder, to, to push harder because there's this, like, there's some sort of, you know, carrot, right. I thought that's where you're going. That's interesting. It's so funny. Like the, the lessons we learn in restaurants that have nothing to do with

[00:13:11] 

Or that have so much more to do with life and business than just, like, you know, every restaurant I ever worked in, there's like so many lessons I learned that I'm like. Oh yeah, this is, this is a life lesson, not, you know, I remember the first time I was working at Oceana, probably around the time that you were working at Seagrow, maybe, maybe a little earlier.

[00:13:30] 

Rick Moonen wanted to teach me how to make the, he needed us to make the crab cake mayo. And I'm like, oh yeah, he's going to show me how to make the crab cake mayo. And so he's like, all right, we're going to make it this morning at 10am. And so I walk on over at 10am, and I'm like, all right, let's make it.

[00:13:44] 

And he's like, Where the fuck's Mise en Place? I was like, I'll go get it. He's like, kid, you're not in school anymore. You want to learn, you do the work. That's basically all he said. And he walked away. He might've thrown something at me too. And I was like, oh yeah, we don't just get to learn. You know, you have to put an effort to learn

[00:14:01] 

You have to put an extra effort to learn. And it's not just going to be given to you, especially when you start to go in, you know, into any craft. And like from then on, I was like, oh yeah, if I'm going to learn, I gotta go like, I gotta go. above and beyond everyone else. Otherwise, you know, we're going to be the same playing field.

[00:14:18] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, I love that. There's such a sports analogy here too. You know, I mean, we could go into a little bit of this cause just, you know, I was an athlete in college, but like, but, um. Baseball, right? No, basketball, basketball. 

[00:14:27] Josh Sharkey: 

Basketball, that's right. You know me. That's right. I was actually cool with it. Tallest baseball player of all time. I was trying to find a picture of you. It Cornell basketball, I, there was something you came up for Brooklyn basketball, but I couldn't, and you came up for Cornell, but there was no picture of Brandon 20 years ago.

[00:14:44] Brandon Barton: 

Do you want me to just start pulling pictures of your past? No. So any, in any case, I was just going to say, you know, there's so many things that were done wrong back then from a management standpoint, you threw in the, and he probably threw something at me.

[00:14:55] 

Right. And you and I both know that. And those things are bad. And those things are really bad. We don't need probably you and I are not the ones to necessarily go and cover that. But I will say in some, in some disciplined styles of management that you do find in sports and that you do find in a kitchen, there are a lot of beautiful things that come of it.

[00:15:15] 

And, you know, look, I'm sure you and I would talk about this at some point during the pod, but our guy Floyd Cardoz was one of those chefs who was able to have incredible strong leadership. Without being a guy throwing pots and pans at people, at least from, from the perspective that I had, you know, in the trenches, Oh, he would, he was in the weeds with you, he would yell at you and then put his arm around you and tell you, this is why I just yelled at you, you know, you know, so there's a way there was a way to do it.

[00:15:42] 

I just, I, I, I actually do find myself as a leader now trying to think about the lessons that I was able to learn in those harder management scenarios. Because they really did forge me into having more Resylience in essence. 

[00:15:58] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, I want to definitely talk about like your leadership style as a CEO. But before we get into that, I also, of course, want to hear about Bite.

[00:16:05] 

Oh yeah, sure. You went to Cornell and I was talking about this with Kristen Barnett last season. And you know, when I was at Tabla, This swarm of people came in from Cornell all at once, Randy Garutti and Will Guidara and John Vandegrift and, and I'm like, who are these, who are these people and why are they all coming here and working at once?

[00:16:23] 

And then fast forward, they're like, what is it about Cornell that creates so many great hospitality professionals? 

[00:16:30] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I know the real, um, secret sauce here. Um, you know, to call the hotel program a trade school is wrong, but in one way, it's a really great way to understand the dynamic.

[00:16:41] 

It is attracting people who want to spend their lives doing something related to hospitality the same way that culinary school attracts people who want to be chefs, right? It's not a surprise that you're going to get great chefs. Out of the school. I think one of the things that that Cornell has done so well is to have incredible professors who are passionate about the industry and to put the focus not just on what goes on in the classroom, but to also have operational experience.

[00:17:08] 

And so there's a part of the program where you actually have to work in restaurants. That's great or not restaurants, but in hospitality, you could fulfill this by working in a hotel or working in restaurants. So it's mandated that you, one summer, you got to go and do an internship and it is lauded and the people, the students that are there understand who are the, who are the badass other students, right?

[00:17:30] Brandon Barton: 

The ones who have gone and worked and done internships for Union Square Hospitality Group or Shake Shack or gone and like, you know, staged at the French Laundry for the summer or something like that. At the time, right? You know, that'd be pretty cool now as well. And you strive for that. You strive to do that rather than go back to your hometown and work in Skinflints for the summer.

[00:17:48] 

That's not the point. You want to go work as front desk of the Four Seasons. And I think that the network is incredibly important. Hotel students and hotel is, as we call ourselves, always will open doors for other hotel-ys because of the shared experience that we've gone through. And so Immediately upon meeting a Randy Garutti, I didn't go to school with him, but we had, we had an instant connection because of Cornell.

[00:18:10] Brandon Barton: 

Same thing with Will Guidara, same thing with all those folks who have now gone on to like, I don't know, be the names that we all look up to in the hospitality industry. It's pretty cool.

[00:18:19] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. After a good time in the restaurants, you are, you moved on to tech, Resy, and the fourth employee at Resy, I think. And then, and now you're the CEO of Bite. So can you talk a little bit about what is Bite? Also why did you end up there? 

[00:18:35] Brandon Barton: 

So Bite is the leader of software for self service kiosks. So we're trying to solve the labor problem in the industry at the same time of Creating a path for hospitality to live in a digital world.

[00:18:48] 

So imagine you've walked into a McDonald's or a Taco Bell or a Blue Stone Lane, you know, or a Togo Is there any of these customers? Some of them are customers. Some of them are places that have built their own kiosks, walk in and order off a screen. And what's beautiful about it, in my mind, is that this is a necessity for the industry.

[00:19:07] 

As the pressures against the PNL continue to to be there, whether that's food costs, labor costs and so forth, my goal is to take some of the things that that I learned in the industry from patina group from Danny, working for Danny Meyer at Tabla, as we alluded to, and bring them into the digital experience when I think about going to a fast, casual or quick service restaurant, most of the time you're not going to be recognized.

[00:19:32] 

And I think that there are just ways that we can start using technology to recognize guests to give incentives to guests to come back to maybe even like speed up a transaction for them. And all these things are little little parts of the hospitality experience while allowing the people who work there.

[00:19:50] 

That the employees to not sit there and just take an order, which anyone can do, but actually adds the experience, refill a drink in the dining room, clean a table, pull out a chair for somebody. It's it's a beautiful thing when you start to put real hospitality, even at this lowest price point in our industry of food.

[00:20:08] 

So really proud of what we've done. We're a series A company. So thank you. We're along the way now and, um, we see a pretty bright future ahead.

[00:20:15] Josh Sharkey: 

So, you know, as it relates to kiosk, I have not heard you say that before, that we want to recognize the guests. And it's actually really poignant. Like, yeah, when you go to, when you go to, it doesn't matter who you are, if you go to a Shake Shack somewhere, no one knows who you are.

[00:20:28] 

Like, unless you are like uber famous, you know, no one's, no one's going to recognize you. Sure. You could be an incredibly well, you know, regarded, you know, hospitality professional that if you went into another restaurant. 

[00:20:40] Brandon Barton: 

You could be a five time a week regular and the staff turns over so much that maybe they don't recognize you as well.

[00:20:45] Josh Sharkey: 

True. So, so, so how do you, how do you do that? What are the, what are the mechanisms in place to recognize somebody?

[00:20:49] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, it's a, it's a great, it's a great question. So, uh, since the, since the beginning of Bite, we've always had facial recognition built into our platform, if a restaurant wants to use it. It's not a mandated thing, but you can utilize

[00:21:01] 

Uh, you know, very off the shelf cameras to recognize who the person is, who's coming up and maybe recall their last orders. The beauty of the way we do it is that we're not trying to take anybody's personal identifiable information or anything like that and tie it together. But just trying to say, Hey, this person came in last time.

[00:21:20] 

Here's the things they've ordered. Maybe they want this sandwich again without Mayo or without this without that. Another way is there's such an increasing call from the industry to have really dynamic loyalty programs. Okay, if you ask the most fast casual and QSR operators, a really important metric of the of the marketing team is how many people are part of our loyalty program.

[00:21:42] 

What percentage of our guests are loyalty orders? Usually there's like an 80/20 rule in there where that makes up the majority of their revenues. People that go often. And so even if it's not using biometrics or facial recognition and some of these other things, the idea to type in your phone number or type in or scan your phone or something like that to identify who that person is so that I could, as a software company, be.

[00:22:06] 

Perhaps look at your whole history of ordering and give you the best suggestions that you want that are personalized to you, give you a personalized experience, show the rewards that are available to you and give you that kind of recognition, so to speak, digitally, that's really powerful and the more that the industry moves towards, and this is not for fine dining, this is for, you know, the casual or the fast casual and QSRs.

[00:22:31] 

The more that we move towards 100 percent digital ordering, the more these magical experiences will be unlocked. I know that Shake Shack's a great example. It's a brand that you and I both love, right? I have ordered Shake Shack in a hundred different ways. In person, order ahead on their website, order ahead from their app.

[00:22:50] 

order ahead, you know, on maybe a DoorDash or delivery from DoorDash or any of the partners, or it used to be Caviar and any of the partners that they have. I know that it's very hard for a restaurant like Shake Shack to take all of those different things and tie it all to Brandon. But that's the goal.

[00:23:05] 

So that they know who I am. So they know that I don't really eat, you know, doubles anymore. I'm never, I'm never putting extra meat on my food anymore. And maybe even occasionally I'm You know, throwing in a Chicago dog or a bird dog to get the vegetarian side of things, right? So as my preferences have changed over the 20 years of being a Shake Shack fan since the first one, you know, digitally, they should be able to track that and give me suggestions based off of what I want.

[00:23:30] 

We're not there yet, but there's a lot of people that are, that are working on this particular problem to try to help. Utilize this digital-ness to make some really beautiful experiences out of it. 

[00:23:40] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, that's a huge challenge. We, we worked on that before meez when I was running Aurify. Just how do you unify the customer's data because they're using different credit cards or a credit card expires and they buy online, they buy in person, they, they pay cash. They, it's really difficult. There are some, some great CDP companies that are working on it right now. Do you partner with any of them right now to try to work on some of that yourself or? 

[00:24:01] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, the, uh, the truth is, is that we do partner with some, you know, others that we want to, like people like Vicky, you know, even wisely on the back end of Olo, uh, you know, they, they do all do great work.

[00:24:12] Brandon Barton: 

The truth is, is that we Bite’s connection is to the point of sale system, and then usually it's the point of sale system that's connecting to them, right? And so we got it. We're kind of the tip of the spear that has to get that information to go all the way back to where it belongs. What we're working on, you know, and maybe this is here we go breaking news.

[00:24:29] 

But what we're working on is getting information back from C.D.P.S. Because the return is what's important. I want to know in order to give Josh a personalized experience on the kiosk. I want to know what Josh has ordered when he was ordering online two weeks ago, right? And maybe put that same order up if you're doing meatless January.

[00:24:48] 

I just made that up. Is that a thing? Great meatless January. You know, I want to just put your order up from two weeks ago so that you could just click one thing and reorder one of the beauties of these third party delivery companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats is that. They have your order history. Sit right there.

[00:25:02] 

And if you're the type of person that orders the same Indian food on Thursday nights, and that's what the family wants, you know, it's pretty easy to do it. I'd want that same ease of experience, you know, on a kiosk. 

[00:25:13] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think about this. I live in Northern Westchester and there's Northern Westchester. If you're listening, there's nothing up here like, you know, there's not a lot of options, but what I'll say is when I go, you know, my, when my wife and I decide we're going to order something, you know, to get delivered, we go on DoorDash, I would love it if they were like, Hey, you've ordered this like 12 times.

[00:25:33] 

Do you want to try something different? Here's this, because you end up getting stuck in the same, you know, You know, and the same thing, and very likely there's probably something else. And, you know, humans are creatures of habit. And so we, that's part of what we, we like. But do you ever think about like, how can you create net new experiences for that customer? As opposed to just I 

[00:25:50] Brandon Barton: 

mean, it's like you're throwing the alley oop to me, man. So again, since the, since the beginning of the company, the, our CTO, Stas, co founder of the company, incredibly bright. And this is before it became a buzzword, but we've been using AI the whole time to make suggestions to people.

[00:26:06] 

And what's beautiful about the A.I. That we're using in the machine learning that we're using is it's not just about perhaps like item X. We also can see because we're telling the guest what's in the item, right? I'm telling you that a side paneer has spinach and paneer cheese and this and that. We might take some of those attributes and then that feeds into what the suggestions will make.

[00:26:27] 

So if the item is spicy and we see that you, you particular, particularly to like spicy items, we might suggest something that's spicy. And AI does a great job of this. AI does a really great job of taking. A bunch of things that don't need seemingly need have a connection and spit out something that could potentially have a connection to it item correlation, category correlation, all this stuff.

[00:26:49] 

So, yeah, I love the idea that we are making suggestions to people that of items that they may not have thought of, right? And to just double down on the point, I don't think this happens if you just have a static menu board, you walk into a restaurant, you see the menu board, you order the same thing you want.

[00:27:06] 

There's not an opportunity to show you other things that are available in a, you know, in a controlled and personalized way. Yeah, because if I could control where your eyes look, I'd say, Hey, Josh, look over there. 

[00:27:18] Josh Sharkey: 

You like cheeseburgers? You're almost personalizing a menu for every single person that comes in the door. 

[00:27:23] Brandon Barton: 

There's something special about it. There's something special about giving somebody recommendations that. Are not just any recommended. Do you want fries with that is the worst possible question, right? Maybe you already have fries. Why are you asking me that? And so there's a lot to learn here. You know, people over index on this, but a good friend of mine, Michael Kianov, also a Cornell guy.

[00:27:42] 

He's one of the leaders of data science and in the restaurant tech space. He has a new company that he's doing great. Great dude. He always talks about, like, just making it simple. You know, you don't have to have the data science do all the work, but you know, drinks. Sides are good compliments to entrees.

[00:27:58] 

You know, that if somebody has a drink aside and an entree dessert category works too, right? So make, make some hard to make some kind of harder rules in there too.

[00:28:06] Josh Sharkey:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Are there innovations happening on the hardware side as well? 

[00:28:11] Brandon Barton: 

We're fortunate that we are a software company and can work with a lot of different hardware partners. You know, that includes people like Elo, who do incredible touchscreens. Companies actually, they actually invented the touchscreen over 50 years ago. That's like, You know, the patents for the touchscreen they invented, not Apple, not somebody else. They invented the touchscreen, the company, so they kind of know what they're doing there.

[00:28:31] 

The innovations on the hardware side are coming in form factor, lighter, faster. Okay, that stuff, which everyone would expect from computers, but also on the payments and reading NFC, reading RFID. You know, RFIDs aren't going to go on food anytime soon, but there's all this, let's say, structural technology like NFCs, which everyone has on their phone, whether you know it or not.

[00:28:53] 

You have the ability to tap your phone to do things. When I think about personalization in the future, Josh, why not walk up to a screen and just tap it with my iPhone and it knows who I am. Why do I have to put in a phone number at CVS right to tell you my loyalty? It should know from this thing that's in my pocket.

[00:29:09] 

So, you know, I love when the hardware is starting to do things to connect the person to the experience. Another good example of this, by the way, is Amazon using the palm payment probably at a Whole Foods near you. I spoke to two people who are over 70 years old this weekend who said they love using it because they just like don't want to fumble around with their wallet and trying to get a credit card out.

[00:29:32] 

I think credit cards are pretty easy to use myself, but like, I love the idea that it's cross generational and, and like just using your palm is another way to take. Hardware and make it a part of a new part of this experience. 

[00:29:45] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, you know, it's funny. Like I, I mean, I don't think I've carried cash in like eight, nine years. But like that, it's a problem actually, cause I never have cash, but now I never even carry my credit card because I have a watch, I have a phone and 90 percent of the time I'm just paying by like putting my watch in front of something and that's how I pay and you know. What's the purpose of carrying around these little, and I imagine that's going to carry over to, you know, to these kiosks and things as well.

[00:30:11] 

Other things that we can do. I mean, and if it's retina scan and you know who I am, why do we even need a phone? Right? Exactly. 

[00:30:18] Brandon Barton: 

I mean, well, that's coming too. I mean, you haven't seen the lines at the airport for clear. Okay. That's retina scanning. That's thumbprints. That's all the things. I'm not scared of that. I actually, I actually somewhat appreciate the idea, even in some of the airlines that are now allowing you to board by scanning your face or even come into the country on global entry by scanning your face. Kind of appreciate the security level there, rather than an ID that I got faked when I was 16 years old, you know, by Jimmy down the street, right?

[00:30:47] 

So, some of these things, when done right, and that's not always the case, like, I can understand tech companies don't always do the right thing when it comes to protecting this information, but we do. And I think that there's a path for using this stuff in the future to make people happier. 

[00:31:01] Josh Sharkey: 

Cool, man. Well, I'd love to talk a little bit nuts and bolts about how you operate. Yeah, sure. So In terms of like being the CEO of a startup tech company. Yeah. I'd love to understand you talk, we're talking your leadership style, but like you're also an exceptional sales leader. So there's all these factors that sort of make you who you are as a leader, right? You have the hospitality experience, your restaurant experience.

[00:31:24] 

You're an incredible sales leader. You've helped me in tons of ways. You're also a parent, right? Which is, we can both, you know, speak for how much that impacts us as a leader, but like, who are you as a leader and how do those things play into, you know, how you lead your team? 

[00:31:37] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I'd love to think and this is perhaps I'm going to idealize. So if my team's listening to this, I'm sure there's going to, you could poke holes in this. I'm not a perfect leader. I know that. And I'm on the path to try to be, that's for sure. I'd like to think of myself as a servant leader, for sure. The idea that my job is to be in service to the team around me. To help them do their job better.

[00:32:00] 

I as a CEO, you have the most general role in the entire company. You basically oversee everything all at once. And so you might in certain areas be the only one with the purview to see how things are interconnected. And so my job is to put great leaders in the heads of their roles, help them to understand what to do and then help them to do it.

[00:32:25]

And so I hope I execute on that, and I know I try every day to do that. I also view myself as somebody who wants to think about my team first. It's really important that our customers are happy, but In a very Danny way, take care of your people and the team around me, if I don't take care of them, how could they take care of our customers correctly?

[00:32:48] Josh Sharkey: 

What do you do when someone makes a mistake? How do you handle it? 

[00:32:51] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, I mean, look, there's some old adages here. You know, I do my best not to, you know, I guess the adage is praise in public, you know, discipline in private. Okay. And so I'm, I'm number one to try to call out any behaviors that. I don't like seeing in public, but the first thing I do is try to understand why did somebody do that?

[00:33:09] 

You know, there might be a reason that I don't understand. I remember this is goes back to Tracy Wilson and Terry Coughlin, GMs of Tabla. Somebody shows up. Yeah, there you go. Shout out Tracy Wilson. First time I'm sure for the pod, right? But somebody shows up to the restaurant who works for you, a busboy or something or server shows up 20 minutes late.

[00:33:27] 

You don't ask them, you know, what happened. The first thing you say is, how are you? Is everything okay? You don't know if that person got in a car accident. Bike accident, got mugged on the way in, who knows? And I think the same thing applies when somebody makes a mistake. Hey, I noticed you did this this way, tell me why you did it that way, right?

[00:33:44] 

And say, okay, this is the way that I think it would be done better and here's why. And you owe that explanation to people as to why you think it could be done a different way. It's, it's so fun in my mind that we now have this like remote culture, you know, by the way, sales always has, I laugh at the remote culture stuff because when I was at Resy, I, I managed people, you know, all across the country and interacted with people all across the globe.

[00:34:08] 

We had a team member in Australia who I brought into Resy and, you know, I was on the phone with her weekly talking about sales strategies and stuff, right? So, but I, I love, you know, especially with the team at Bite. We have people that have come up with different personalities, and some people like direct feedback.

[00:34:22] 

Some people like, you know, to be a little bit more indirect with it or soft people who might like softer feedback when direct feedback comes with them feel like it's aggression, the people that, you know, then there's like passive aggressiveness, but potentially it's a really interesting dynamic to try to deal with.

[00:34:38] 

And man, I'm, you know, as a first time CEO, it's fun for me to try to figure this all out. And I don't do it alone, by the way. I mean, like I, I should give a shout out to, you know, the mentors that I've had along the way from, from people like Will Guidara, who I call in my time of crises to Jim tenor, who's on my, my independent on my board, but also a good friend of mine, Sam Jacobs, who runs The Pavilion Group.

[00:35:02] 

You and I have talked about that a bunch like he's The Pavilion Group and what they do in terms of crafting sales leaders, marketing leaders, and then they have this thing called CEO Pavilion, which has just been unbelievable for me to, to have access to reach out to people who are like series B series C bad ass three times CEOs.

[00:35:21] 

Who I can talk to and just say, Hey, I just, I, this is the issue that I'm coming up against. What can I do about it? You know? 

[00:35:30] Josh Sharkey: 

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[00:36:39] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, having those platforms are so helpful. I have a shout out here, there's a platform called Hampton. And yeah, it's similar and it's just a bunch of, of CEOs of, of different types of companies. You have to have a certain amount of revenue to get there, but it's, it's awesome. And Sampar and his team has put together this really like amazing platform and it's just so helpful to be able to ask questions.

[00:36:59] 

And in any of these, these cases, you know, there's a bit of an Island, you know, you feel like you're on an Island. It's like having, having that, that help is really, it's really great. I feel like this is going to be like a broken record because I. Yesterday, I was interviewing a really awesome chef named Evan Hennessy, and we were talking about the same exact thing.

[00:37:15] 

Oh, wow. And I had a, you know, the broken record here is that I said this yesterday, but whatever. I had a 360 review, and one of the things that was most clear was like, I don't ask why enough. I just jump right to the thing is how we're going to fix this. And, and it's funny because I have pretty like steadfast philosophy that like everything is my fault, right?

[00:37:33] 

So like if anything goes wrong in the company that somebody did, I either hired the wrong person. I didn't train them right. I didn't manage them the way that they're supposed to be managed, or I didn't motivate them the right way. And it's so funny how, how often when things go wrong, it's so difficult to remember that right in the moment.

[00:37:52] 

Like, wait a second, what's going on? What, why did this person do this? I wonder what's going on. Either personally or because of the frameworks that we've set up for making decisions, the environment that we've created that like could be better, like what was it that caused this mistake? Because it's not very often that someone is just not good or is a bad person.

[00:38:13] 

It's, they might be in the wrong role. But um, it's up to us to like create, you know, and, and learn every time one of these mistakes happen, we learn how we need to make it better. Not just them. And it's, that's one of the most fun parts about being a CEO is that. 

[00:38:26] Brandon Barton: 

The thing that I took from from what you just said that I wonder if it's a nugget you've ever thought about, you think that everything is like something that you've done wrong, right?

[00:38:33] 

But I wonder, I really wonder if your employees know that you're thinking that in the background, because if your actions to them with them. Had the context of like a sign above you that said, I was wrong about this and you were doing the same thing, they probably would react differently because but they don't know that it's sitting there and you're like, fuck, I did this wrong.

[00:38:54] 

And this is like, this is why I'm reacting so quick to it because I hate doing things wrong. Yeah, you know, there's like this, this context that other people don't have. By the way, I should say the thing. This is like the Richard Crane and or Tracy Wilson's line of ask the question before you say the thing.

[00:39:11] 

That's the most succinct way in my mind to say, how do you deal with problems? Make sure you ask the question first before you jump in with the solution, 

[00:39:20] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It has a huge, huge impact. You know, when something, something does go wrong that you didn't expect, right? Because it doesn't necessarily mean they did something wrong. It's just not the thing that you expected them to do. Just ask why? Because typically what ends up happening is you're like, Oh, Wow, I didn't even think about that you would go there or that that's the, you had these concerns and that's why you did this or you were trying to do this. Like no matter what, it's not necessarily, I think it's a little negative to say like I'm wrong in these situations, but it's my responsibility to create the environment where everyone is meeting expectations.

[00:39:54] 

And if they're not, it's not very often that it's because of them. No, 

[00:39:59] Brandon Barton: 

no, no, no. It's definitely, it's definitely not. And 99 percent of people that work with you and for you. want to do a job well. They want to do it great. If they're doing something, it's not because they're trying to screw something up.

[00:40:14] Josh Sharkey: 

They're trying to do it well. And that's why it really is like either, for me, it's either you hired the wrong person for the wrong job, didn't manage them well, didn't train them well, or didn't motivate them. And the first one is the hardest one, right? Because sometimes they are not meeting expectations.

[00:40:29] 

And it's not because it is that it's not right, right? Like they're, they're not doing the right thing. They're not, you know, executing the way that they need to execute, but might be because you just hired the wrong person. And that's the worst because that's the hardest one because it's still on you, but you have to, you know, handle that.

[00:40:48] 

Yeah. And it's not their fault typically, you know, unless, unless they sort of, you know, made it very clear and that this is something they're very good at. And there was a, it's very difficult to test that and you didn't test it ahead of time, you know, but even then it's, you can test most things anyways.

[00:41:05] 

So on leadership, the other thing that I'd love to, you and I talk about our kids a lot and it is not easy having two kids. It is not easy having two kids and having a job. It is not easy having two kids and being the CEO or an operator of any kind. I'm curious for you, what are the things that you've learned from being a parent that make you a different, I don't want to say better, but like that changed the way that you lead your team?

[00:41:31] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, for sure. My team is not my children. Right. Let's, let's say that flat out. And let's also just really clearly state I am not the CEO of my house. That belongs to my four year old, Jane Barton, who is unequivocally, she's probably co CEO with my wife of my home. That woman is a force of nature, and if you come across her in the future, you will be lucky.

[00:41:56] 

Because she has fire to give, man, it's, it's awesome. But I'm not the CEO of my house. What, what's great about kids is that they're, by nature, they're naive to the world, right? And so, even silly things. I said to my, uh, my, you know, it says snowing here in Connecticut and icy everywhere. And so my son goes to kindergarten and I said, did you play this game at break?

[00:42:19] 

You know, whatever they call it, recess, sure. And he said, No, we're not allowed to do that, that, that because there's ice on everything. And I said, Oh, there's ice on all the equipment. And then like, you know, we keep talking. And about three minutes later, he comes back. He goes, Dad, what's equipment? It's like, you know, this is the analogy extended to conversation.

[00:42:38]

My sales team was having with my product team today. We're talking about specific things within products that, you know, one team saying this word and using it this way, and the other team saying the same word. And they're both using it completely different ways that, that don't mean the same thing in, to each other, you know, being really clear about communication is one of those things.

[00:42:58] 

I'll just give you a second example with the kids that I like wholeheartedly understand now is my kids get really disappointed, especially my oldest, when he doesn't do the right thing. And what, you know, half the time that he may be accused of not doing the right thing, you know, it's because we didn't tell him what the right thing to do was.

[00:43:18] 

I didn't know what to do. Why are you yelling at me? I didn't know I was supposed to put my shoes right over there or not walk in the house with muddy shoes on or yeah. And he didn't because he's never done that before because he's never, he's never been on a train before. He didn't know you, you can't, you know, change seats or something.

[00:43:37] 

And so you got to tell people what their job is. You got to tell them, help them to understand how they do it. And, and then you can expect things of it, you know, you can't do that unless they know what to do and what their job is. 

[00:43:50] Josh Sharkey: 

That's so true. It's like, there's countless, the naivete is a big one, you know, because it helps you, at least for me, it helps you, it helps me separate the person from the problem with my team, because, you know, with the child, when they do something wrong, you love your child, you're never going to be like, what the, you know, like, what the heck, what, you know, you don't yell at them, you're like, hey, that's, Hey, man, that's, we don't do that.

[00:44:13] 

You know, we don't, we don't hit, I know it's okay to be angry, but it's not okay to hit. Right. And they're not a hitter. They are a person you love and they hit someone. And there's a reason why they have these feelings that they're trying to work at. It's the same thing with your team, right? Like if something happens, you know, they still are great.

[00:44:28] 

And it's something that they did, you know, is outside of, you know, them that we need to sort of, you know, explore. I think that is like, you know, it's huge. And the other one. There's a book I love, shout out to Adam Schafer, he's the one that, the Toyin Brothers, it's called The One Minute Manager, and, you know, go after compliments, right?

Like you need to, you know, find, who's the author? I forget the name of the author. Um, so, 

[00:44:50] Brandon Barton: 

okay, say the explanation, uh, you know

[00:44:52] Josh Sharkey: 

generally speaking, it's just like, you need to, you know, find every reason to, to find the good, to, you know, like you're, you really, basically you want to like compliment people often, right?

[00:45:01] 

And you see it so clearly in children that you never. Use negative motivation, right? It's like when they're starting to learn how to go bathroom, or they're learning how to read, you're just any little thing. You're like, great job, great effort, great effort. You're like, you're constantly doing that. And it's the same with people.

[00:45:18] 

You know, you have to, and it's something I struggle with because I didn't grow up with it. Like I grew up the opposite, but like, I try so hard to like, To as much as I can to do it. We have like this kudos channel in our in our slack, you know, that the whole team uses as well. And it's like that positive reinforcement.

[00:45:35]

I know it sounds silly, but it's so important. And you see it so clearly when you have children. 

[00:45:40] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, I agree so much. We have a shout out channel on slack. We did the same thing. It's Ken Blanchard and I'll tie two things back to our earlier part of our conversation. One is I did a one day seminar that was a one credit or one weekend, maybe seminar that was a one credit class at Cornell, Ken Blanchard teaching the one minute manager.

[00:45:57] 

So, you know, 20 years ago, how far ahead of the curve, like, why is Cornell great? It's, you know, they were, they were recognizing people like that back then to do those things. And, and I think that that one minute manager mentality, it's exactly the who's number one, who's number one today. You know, and nobody ever felt bad about being number two, but you know, but it was like, it was always like, Oh, great job doing that.

[00:46:20] 

Great job doing this. And you know that high paced, you know, everyone asks, I'm sure how many people have asked you, Oh, is it really like The Bear restaurants? And I'm like, kind of, you know, it can be, it's this high paced environment and startups are the same thing, like stop. Take that one minute. Say thank you.

[00:46:36] 

Say I appreciate you, you know, and obviously applies all the way to Children. And look, I'd be remiss not to not to think about, you know, you and I have spoken a little bit about this. My wife also somebody who works as a mother, and I totally recognize the incredible amounts of pressure that are put on mothers who work at the and mothers who don't, by the way, clearly.

[00:47:00] 

But Mothers who have jobs and mothers who work and have careers, that's even more than what the society puts on men to do this. So I don't want to sound at all like I'm complaining because, you know, when the school alert is only sent to the mothers and not to the fathers too, it's clearly society saying, you know, this is your responsibility, which is bull.

[00:47:22] 

But we have a long way to come before, you know, I know that the women that decide to have a family and work have the same level of equity in the workplace when it comes to levels of responsibility and the home life too. So 

[00:47:34] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. And even if they, if they don't work, I mean, right. Oh my gosh, it is just anyway, as kids notice, it's just harder for the mom, no matter what.

[00:47:44] 

 I mean, obviously, even after birth, which is, of course, all of that. But even as the kids grow, especially his first, like, you know, three, four or five years, they. Just gravitate to the mom so much more and the mom has so much more like put on her. It's just it's tough I mean.

[00:48:01] Brandon Barton: 

I really like feel in cisgender relationships inclusive of everybody, but there's always there's always a member of the family who will get it more.

[00:48:08] Josh Sharkey: 

Oh, yeah. Thank you for clarifying that I'm living in my bubble, but you're right. Okay, so Kind of moving on from leadership and parenting and how it relates to it. I want to talk about startups because you were talking about your series, A startup and a couple of things. One, let's talk a little bit about like what it's like to be a venture backed startup.

Sure. And then a little bit about like your experience. Raising capital. 

[00:48:32] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah, sure, sure. We'll talk a little bit about both. The venture back part is easier for me to understand because I've done that a couple of times. Raising capital. This is my first rodeo raising capital, so I don't claim to be an expert.

[00:48:43] 

We'll see. I think this is such self selection. Okay. Right. I actually think that everybody in their career should work in restaurants at some point. And I think. Also, everybody in their career should find doesn't necessarily need to be venture backed, but find a startup to go work in. I think working in an environment with 345 people only working on a big problem together is such a enriching experience to your life.

[00:49:11] 

People say, you know, throughout the word entrepreneur in a lot of different ways. If you do that, if you're one of the first two people, three people, five people, and you're an entrepreneur, there's no question about it. You have taken that, that journey, whether it's your name on the front door or not. And I think you can really find out a lot of things.

It might not be for everybody, but it's something to try. 

[00:49:31] Josh Sharkey: 

And hold on, that's, that's such a good point that I never thought about. And I don't even know if it's the first three, four or five, cause I have a small team. We're like 30 some odd people. Like, yeah, if you're in a startup, you are taking a leap and that's very entrepreneurial, like that's, I've never thought about it that way, but yes, they're all entrepreneurs because they are.

[00:49:51] 

Taking a leap. They're taking, you know, equity and, and, you know, having a vested interest in this company succeeding and, you know, taking a risk. Yeah, that's huge. I never, I never thought of it. That's so smart, man. I will disagree a little bit in that. Like, I actually don't think that everyone should, because there are a lot of people.

[00:50:06] 

That startups are just not right for you. Right? If you need a lot of structure, if you thrive on, well, on structure and not on autonomy, and you thrive on a very clear set of, a very clear roadmap of like, this is it, you might not be right for a startup. And that's okay. That's totally okay. We need those people as well.

[00:50:25] 

If you're in a startup, you have to be okay with the ambiguity. Because it doesn't, you know, you're just not going to, you know, be happy if you, if you don't. 

[00:50:32] Brandon Barton: 

What's your job description? I don't know. These three things this week, but who knows next week?

[00:50:35] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, the minute you start hearing early on in a startup from someone like, that's not my job, then you know, that's, that's not a, that doesn't mean that they're wrong or bad.

[00:50:46] 

It means that, you know, it just might not be the right time for them to be at this company. Yeah. 

[00:50:49] Brandon Barton: 

Well, look, I mean, I guess my point is simply. If you, if you've always loved structure and stayed in structure, how do you know if you'd like something that isn't, you know, go taste it, go try it for three months and, you know, again, maybe it's harder to get these jobs, but, you know, not dissimilar to to the world of restaurants, like having a small team, very entrepreneurial.

[00:51:10] 

All trying to achieve the same goal under, frankly, extreme pressure. And that's where the VC part of it comes in. Everyone, everyone lauds over the people who raise a lot of money. And I think it's just such the wrong metric to look at because raising a lot of money means that somebody in the company, usually the CEO.

[00:51:29] 

is really good at telling the story about why this can be a very big company. But every time you raise money, you're increasing the pressure on to the rest of the team. You're increasing the goals. You're moving the goalposts back. You're making it harder on the company to, to be successful. And that's fine if you have a rocket ship like, I don't know, Starlink and, and Tesla or something like that, right?

[00:51:53] 

Like a SpaceX. Sure. Great. And it doesn't fit every business, but when you have companies that are more venture backed and still trying to be, you know, 10X, maybe even 20X investments for these, the pressure is still there. And so operating under these restrictions that are saying you need to grow really fast, but not spend very high and be efficient in that growth.

[00:52:20] 

Gain customers while not losing customers because you're gaining them so fast that you're not paying attention to the ones that you have. It's like a beautiful juggling act. And, you know, I was fortunate enough at Resy to, to be there from, from the early days, you know, and then I left prior to the exit.

[00:52:36] 

It was really close to that time when, when the exit happened. And in those moments in those times when you do see an exit and the pieces of paper that say they have option that that you have options become actual money and liquidity, man, that is special. And those moments are just like they're worth it.

[00:52:53] 

They make all of the pressure and all that worth it. You know, it's just a wonderful kind of structure by which to learn how to run and be a business person

[00:53:03] Josh Sharkey: 

I mean, they are the exception, not the rule. Most of them don't, that doesn't happen. I, you know, I think the, the biggest, the biggest difference when you start to take venture capital is to your point is just an absolute expectation that there's an outsized return that there's an asymmetrical return on capital and.

[00:53:23] 

That it's not enough to build a great product and a great company. There has to be an outsized return. And you, you look at a company like Pitch. I don't know if you've heard recently this, it's a, we use it all the time. It's an incredible like app for creating presentations online and collaborating on them and sharing them.

[00:53:38] 

The, the founder and CEO is an incredible founder, incredible CEO. He was just ousted. And. They raised an insane amount of cash, I think it was like 100 million or something like that. And it's an incredible product, but they weren't growing fast enough. They had to, you know, downsize and it's still an incredible product.

[00:53:53] 

It's exactly what you're saying. Like you, you set yourself up for these big growth expectations and there's not that many companies that can grow at that level for that long and reach that, you know, that pinnacle. At least at that, you know, with that amount of like time constraint and resource constraint.

[00:54:12] Brandon Barton: 

Let me add to that. I mean, like there's this one thing that's kind of a. Maybe something not a lot of people talk about. I know that the, the, the group in Pavilion does often, which is like, are you a venture business? You know, great If you can, if you're not have a venture business and you run it like not a venture business, but when you try to run a not venture business like a venture business, you will fail often.

[00:54:31] 

Okay. And there's, there's nothing wrong with not being a venture business. And I'm not saying to be a lifestyle business either, but we live at a time when there are a variety of different swim lanes for for capital, okay, which include this new category that I've learned a lot about called growth equity, not private equity, not venture capital, but growth equity, these people that live in the middle and their investment profile is not I need one of these 10 companies to succeed 100X.

[00:55:04] 

Now, think about that. The person who is investing in you sometimes and, you know, shout out to all the VCs, love you guys, please send us money. Okay. I'll send you equity. It's cool. Some philosophies are, I want one of these 10 companies to be a hundred X. And the rest, I want them to either get to a hundred or die trying.

[00:55:23] Josh Sharkey: 

Right? It's not some, I mean, the, the power law is just part of the innately part of venture capital. And it's how the model works is they're putting a significant amount more capital than you would typically get. And the model works because. Of the power law because one of these 100 companies will have an incredibly outsized return that will, as they say, return the fund, right?

[00:55:45] 

Yes. So if you have a $500 million fund and you're gonna deploy that capital towards X amount of businesses, one of those businesses should return. You know, any one of those businesses is intended to return to $500 million. Which means that if they exit at 10% equity and it's a $500 million fund, then you know you need 5 billion.

[00:56:05] 

And your, your exit needs to be a $5 billion exit. So clearly, you know, if they make a hundred investments, they know, you know, not every one of those businesses is gonna come close to a billion dollars. So even a business that exits at a hundred million dollars if you have a $500 million fund, in theory, is not.

[00:56:22] 

necessarily a success. And so you can't also fault venture capital because the purpose of venture capital is to create an engine where like, well, I mean, yes, but I think if you, if you look at it more artistically, you know, the purpose of venture capital and aggregate in America at least is to fast track innovation.

[00:56:41] 

It's a vehicle of, of capital that keeps moving our economy forward because before it was. You could get an SBA loan, right? And you could try to get a loan from the bank. And that's how Nike did it, right? But like, for the most part, it's not easy to get that. And that is a business where you need to have a cash flow business.

[00:57:01] 

Or you need to grow very, very slow over 20 plus years. What venture capital has done is it's allowed us to sort of accelerate the innovation curve of an aggregate of the entire, you know, country. By deploying a lot more capital than you would typically get. And so that's just part of the game. So it is difficult.

[00:57:19] 

You know, I think the one thing that I would say now I haven't been through, you know, I've been in it for long enough is you should know that going into it. I didn't know what going into it. I learned as I went and I had some really great advisors that helped, but it does change someone, how you run your business to be very careful not to be running a business because.

[00:57:37] 

You're trying to just get to the next round, but it becomes a factor and it, you know, there's definitely good and bad to it. 

[00:57:44] Brandon Barton: 

Think about this like dichotomy, right? The partner who's made this investment in you knows the power law, right? And knows that this is the engine that they're trying. Yeah, look, I think it's very.

[00:57:53] 

You're taking a very altruistic view. I think, you know, a lot of people are in the world of venture capital to make money. And if the byproduct of that is that we push innovation in the country forward, that's great. But the real metric of their success would be how much return on invested capital for the fund, right?

[00:58:09] 

But like the advice that that partner is going to give you in a board meeting is to probably lead you more towards driving a hundred X. exit than it is to making sure that your team will continue to have jobs in 24 months. 

[00:58:25] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. And I, I think that's true. And by the way, I don't think that every venture capital firm, you know, is just in it because they want to drive innovation.

[00:58:33] 

The purpose of it is that is to drive innovation. And I think the, the great venture capital firms know that it is very difficult to make money. And if you got into it to make money off of one investment, then you're probably not in the right business, right? Because it takes an incredible amount of research and diligence and, and discipline to be a good, you know, investor of, of capital in the, in the venture capital world.

[00:58:57] 

It's like, it's a very, very hard job. The fact that there's so many of them. Is just, you know, credit to that. They, there's this idea that you can make a lot of money, but it actually is very difficult to make money. The same power law is true for venture capital firms, a very tiny percentage of the firms represent the majority of the returns of overall capital in the, you know, in the venture world.

[00:59:20] 

So again, I think you just, you just have to know what you're doing, getting into it. And I think most restaurants, by the way. The majority of them obviously are not there, you know, we're talking about private equity firms like an El Caterdin or work or something like that. And, and I think what you were saying about growth equity is there's a similar sense of like, Hey, we want to get to know your business more.

[00:59:38] 

And that means we probably have more control, but, you know, we're going to make sure that, you know, we have more, we're going to make sure that it stays alive. You know? 

[00:59:45] Brandon Barton: 

Yeah. Look, I, I mean, I, I love what VC affords. People who are entrepreneurial, like these paths to learn, you know, even if there isn't an exit at the end of the existence of that business, a lot of those people go on to do other great things because they learned such great stuff.

[01:00:00] 

I mean, not every team wins a championship at the end of the season. It doesn't mean it's not, it's not worthwhile. 

[01:00:04] Josh Sharkey: 

So, yeah. What do you see as like the biggest opportunities now with like the, let's just stick to just the restaurant hospitality industry. Like you've been in this for a while. You've seen a bunch of tech, you've seen a bunch of, you know, you've been in the, in the restaurants too.

[01:00:17] 

Like, what do you see over the next 10 years or the things that are like, that you're most excited about? Yeah. 

[01:00:22] Brandon Barton: 

I think the dumb answer here is AI. And I'm not going to say that because like AI is basically saying air. Okay. Like code. You know, AI is going to influence every single thing in our lives over the next 10 to 15 years, like the internet did when you and I were in high school and didn't have the internet, right?

[01:00:38] 

Or the internet was there and it was AOL and it was dial up and it was, you know, the whole thing, whatever. So AI is in the background. Okay. But what I, what I think is going to be driven off of that is automation. And I'm completely bullish on like voice, what it would be like voice automation, voice AI.

[01:00:56] 

Good friends with the CEO of a company Slang, they are doing voice AI for full service restaurants, taking a reservation, telling you hours of operations, having a conversation with a bot, which yes, that sounds perhaps to some a little bit like I don't want to do that, but what if it was great? What if it was what, you know, it can get great.

[01:01:16] 

So, I'm really bullish on, on, on voice AI to help restaurants do some things that should be automated. What else? 

[01:01:23] Josh Sharkey: 

What else do you think they could, other than reservations, what are some other things that voice AI could? Oh, gosh. 

[01:01:27] Brandon Barton: 

Drive thru. I mean, you know, you have somebody that's sitting there just taking an order.

[01:01:31] 

The drive thru is a big category for voice AI. My friends at SoundHound and Converse AI and a bunch of others who are trying to capitalize on that marketplace. You know, I think there are still places that take phone orders as well, right? Believe it or not. I don't know the statistics exactly, but I would say probably a third, 20 percent to a third of pizza orders in America are still taken over the phone.

[01:01:53] 

You know, I know what my local spot that's around the corner from me here, I call and I just have to come pick it up. They don't even take a credit card, you know, like how crazy is that? Because you know what? They'll probably sell that pizza if I don't show up. So it's fine. 

[01:02:05] Josh Sharkey: 

Does that then sort of carry over into kiosks as well then?

[01:02:09] Brandon Barton: 

Oh, so it’s interesting. I. I think that there is a little bit of a carryover. We are friendly with a number of the, the, the voice AI companies, because maybe one day that should be on a kiosk so I can walk up and talk to it. You know, there's some things right now that are limiting there, like ambient noise and uh, having a direct conversation with a, uh, a directional microphone and things like that, that might get in the way.

[01:02:29] 

Uh, but if you think about, let's say, going through a drive-through for a salad restaurant, okay? You say, Hey, I'd love the Caesar salad. Having a screen there along with the voice AI makes so much sense because. You can, the voice AI say back, Hey, what else would you like in your salad and put up 20 different options and you can go touch three of them or even say three of them, who knows whatever is the easier experience for you.

[01:02:53] 

So I think a combination of touch plus voice is what makes sense rather than saying you can put cashews, you can put almond slices, you can put. You know, walnuts, you know, okay, like, just put the options up in front of me and let me choose. So I'm bullish on voice AI. I had the opportunity to go see, uh, Steve L's new restaurant, Kernel, in Manhattan, 3rd and Park, 24th and Park.

[01:03:14] 

Pretty incredible where the world of robotics is going for the back of house. I think we're in the very early days of it. I was reflecting on that experience today. And it didn't, I'll tell you what, it didn't feel great to be in the restaurant, it was cool, it was really cool, but like, it didn't make me feel the warming fuzzies of being in a restaurant, which you can feel in a quick service restaurant or a fast casual restaurant, you don't have to be in Eleven Madison Park, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to make something You know, high end to make, make it feel special.

[01:03:48] 

And I think, I think Steve Ells will figure it out. God, that guy knows more about restaurants than I'll ever learn. Okay, as the founder of Chipotle and being wildly connected in the restaurant industry. His, you know, walking into that restaurant, it's pretty cool to see the machine and see the whole operation and see everything kind of made by a mechanical arm.

[01:04:09] 

And yet, it just doesn't have the warm and fuzzies yet. It'll get there. 

[01:04:12] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah. All right, man. Well, I'd love to know if there is anything else that you would like to share with this audience of chefs, restaurant operators, you know, you know, the audience. You know what? 

[01:04:24] Brandon Barton: 

Until this moment, I was going to say no, I don't have anything. But one thing that I, I think everybody should know, especially at this point, I know more about restaurant technology than I know about being in a restaurant. Okay. I've spent more years doing it. When you are in a restaurant and you're buying technology, there are two things I think you should absolutely do before buying technology.

[01:04:48] 

Number one, you should look at a technology company's glass door page and you should look at how people are treated in that company. I find if you look this up for some of the companies that are out there and we know the names, you'll really easily suss out who are the people who are running an organization that doesn't care about others and who is running an organization that does care about its people.

[01:05:14] 

And why is that important? Because it's important to you. Restaurateur. You care about your people. You care about your guests at the end of the day. That's who's going to end up being the recipient of either technology or technology products. And how could you put stuff in front of them that wasn't made by people who care about other people?

[01:05:31] 

That's one. Secondarily, there should be a really strong distinction between operators and CEOs and entrepreneurs. Like Josh and myself and others who have spent their life dedicated to making restaurants better, both from being in operations, being a chef in your case, to now doing technology companies versus the people who swoop in for five years, think that they're going to come in with some new fancy thing, make restaurants better and then swoop out in if you, if you don't know the difference, if you don't know their background, look up the LinkedIn of the founders of the company to see if they are people who are dedicated to this, because It's true.

[01:06:09] 

I see off so often people that are telling a great story about the about this and this is how you're going to make money, make things better and when it doesn't work, they just conjecture some other industry. They don't care people like Josh and I are going to be in this industry for the rest of our lives.

[01:06:26] 

God bless our souls, you know, and and the reality is, is that I have to be honest with you because my next company is going to be in this. My next company is going to be in this and I'm going to be in restaurants. I'm gonna be in this forever. And these other folks can say whatever they want because they don't care.

[01:06:41] 

They can burn the relationship with you. So I think those two things are more important than whether the product's great. Yeah, 

[01:06:46] Josh Sharkey: 

I love that man. Good advice. And also just always nice to catch up with you on a call. 

[01:06:53] Brandon Barton: 

You too, brother. I thank you so much for having me on. I've been listening to many of these and been jealous, so I got, I got my run. I love it, man. Thank you for having me.

[01:07:09] Josh Sharkey: 

Thanks for tuning into the me podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song art mirror by an old friend. Hip hop artist, fresh daily for show notes and more visit getmeez.com/slash podcast. That's G E T M E E Z. com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it. If you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts, keep innovating.

[01:07:33] 

Don't settle make today a little bit better than yesterday. And remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.