Author: Brandon Barton

Before Rob Edell was DoorDash’s head of DashPass, he was a restaurant tech founder building a business he eventually sold to Resy. Rob joined DoorDash years before it became the market leader it is today, and after almost a decade of the company, he’s had a front row seat to the evolving restaurant business. In this episode, we talk about DoorDash’s growth and evolution, how DashPass encourages loyalty, and what’s coming next. 

Ilir Sela has been helping local pizzerias with purpose-built tech for over a decade. Slice got its start as an online ordering platform for independent pizzerias and now offers much more: Point of sale, loyalty, delivery, and even supply chain support, printing custom pizza boxes and delivering them to customers. In this episode, we talk about first-party and third-party delivery, the newest crop of ovens, and (of course!) what makes really great pizza. 

In this pre-recorded summer special, Kristen and Brandon ask Fred to predict the future. Lucky for us, he’s good at it. In this episode, we talk about the current state of casual dining (tl;dr: Chili’s is killing it), all those restaurant bankruptcies, and the importance of making an emotional connection with diners. 

We’re deep in an (unintentional) point of sale system theme at The Simmer. This week, Toast’s chief marketer Kelly Esten joins us to talk enterprise restaurants, artificial intelligence, and maybe accidentally perpetuate a rumor that Brandon really wants to be true.

Brandon got stuck on a plane, so Kristen flies solo in this interview with Square’s top marketer, Lindsey Irivine. In this episode, we talk about big marketing initiatives and activations, and how Square sees itself as both a restaurant and consumer brand. Plus, Lindsey shares details of Square’s new San Francisco corner store, a consumer and small business play all in one. 

Fiserv recently unveiled a new point of sale system designed to serve “upper market restaurants,” or restaurants that do more than $1 million in processing volume annually, according to Fiserv head of restaurants, Krystle Mobayeni. Krystle, also the co-founder and CEO of BentoBox, a restaurant technology company acquired by Fiserv in 2021, joins The Simmer to talk reservations, point of sale systems, and what Fiserv’s brand-new POS, dubbed Clover Hospitality, offers restaurants. 

It’s our first emergency podcast! On Tuesday, the biggest day for the restaurant technology business in years, a string of major announcements had our heads spinning. But one piece of news stands out: DoorDash plans to acquire reservations and customer relationship management service SevenRooms for $1.2 billion. What does it mean? Listen as Brandon and Kristen work it out in real time.

Is the POS dying? What even is a modern point of sale? Can it shed its old image and become what it always wanted to be: the true hub of modern restaurant operations? Niko Papademetriou runs sales and business development at Qu, a point of sale system that’s thinking through what the true future for restaurants looks like. In this episode, we talk POS (a lot); restaurant work, and the tools operators can access now that were just a dream a decade ago.

Tammy Billings has worked in marketing and biz dev for decades and has plenty of experience with restaurant technology. In this far-ranging conversation, we talk about the past, present, and future of the industry. Plus: Want to get Kristen fired up? Talk about ethics in podcasting.

Topic Time Stamps:

1:20: Grubhub brings back Seamless in New York City

7:50: A little podcast housekeeping: we do not pay guests! Guests do not pay us!

9:30: Welcome, Tammy (and even more pay-for-play commentary)

16:26: We’re back on track! More on Tammy’s background, how she found her way to the hospitality business, and how she’s helped multiple companies get acquired.

28:48: Where are we now in the restaurant business? Is this time evocative of any other?

33:57: Who will keep winning? And will the big players start swallowing each other?

37:51: Why people who worked in restaurants make the best restaurant tech founders and employees

44:49: How (and why) private equity ownership makes for challenging restaurant dynamics

Suzie Tsai spent over a decade at restaurant powerhouse Brinker International, leading programs that included Chili’s white-hot beverage business, before landing the top role at Bonchon. In this episode, Suzie explains how a concept that launched (and then failed) in South Korea has found its footing in the US, growing over two decades. But this growth isn’t without challenges; Bonchon’s restaurants range from seated full service to kiosk-friendly fast casual, leading to tough choices about how to implement new technology.

Topic Time Stamps:

1:26: News: Wonder acquires media company Tastemade for a reported $90 million. Why?

3:00: Congrats to Brandon and Bite for landing on this year’s Fast Company Most Innovative Companies list!

5:45: Welcome Suzie Tsai, CEO of Bonchon

6:35: Suzie goes (very) deep on her background, explaining how the child of immigrants from South Korea ended up running a Korean fried chicken concept — and why that representation matters to the company’s franchisees.

23:08: The growing influence of Korean food in America’s restaurants

25:00: From full service to fast casual and everything in-between; how is Bonchon thinking about tech in its restaurants?

33:46: How digital ordering helps Bonchon introduce unfamiliar menu items to a growing audience

35:31: How Suzie thinks about the relationship with third-party delivery partners, which she says are actually media partners