spoon.tech featured on Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast!

spoon.tech got featured on Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast, one of the leading podcasts in the arena of restaurant technology information. Watch our founder and CEO Daniil Klubov speak with host Jeremy Julian about the story of spoon.tech and how we are leveraging AI to make learning and growth fun for restaurant employees. Watch the episode here:

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You can also listen to it on Apple Podcasts and the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast website.

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Thanks to Jeremy Julian, the founder of Restaurant Technology Guys, for inviting us. Do check out their website for more interesting conversations with restaurant technology providers and find out how they are revolutionizing the industry.

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If you want to find out how spoon.tech can help you make training fun for your restaurant employees, reach out to us by filling out our contact form. Alternatively, you can reach out to us via phone at (+43 670 655 56 82) or email us at hello@spoon.tech.

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Read the full transcript here:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

restaurant, people, processes, operators, shifts, duolingo, talk, learning, tool, austria, game, restaurant industry, product, business, problem, europe, employees, solution, point, kitchen

SPEAKERS

Daniil (73%), Jeremy (26%), Intro (1%)

I

Intro

0:02

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

JJ

Jeremy Julian

0:13

Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. We appreciate you guys joining. As I say at the onset of each of these, I know you guys have lots of choices as to where to spend your time and where to spend your energy. So we appreciate you guys coming in hanging out with us. Each and every week when we post one of these podcasts. It’s been fun to get to talk to different restaurant tours, as well as different restaurant technologists. And today, we are talking restaurant tech, with founder and CEO of spoon.tech Daniil, why don’t you introduce yourself to the audience. And then we’ll talk a little bit about what you guys are doing to help restaurants on on the technology side.

DK

Daniil Klubov

0:49

Sure. Hi. Hi, Jeremy. Thanks for having me. Hi, everyone. So I’m Daniil. I’m based in Vienna, Austria. And I plunged into the restaurant business around three years ago, when, after leaving McKinsey, so I was at McKinsey and Company working as a strategy consultant there. After leaving McKinsey, I decided to pursue my passion and try hospitality. And me and my co founder, we launched this restaurant concept called Tolstoy, which is, what we call the tech-driven restaurant franchise, right? So basically, we decided to build a restaurant, which is digitized through and through. And basically, in that way, being a fully transparent for us as managers, because as many from the audience probably know, a lot of problems in the restaurant industry come from the fact that oftentimes, you don’t see things as they're happening in real time, right? And so our idea was, okay, we’re gonna create a restaurant concept, we're gonna create a restaurant and a franchise, where every step of the value creation, every step of the of the value chain is kind of visually recorded. From, you know, talking about from, you know, self service kiosk to what to go into the kitchen to inventory management, and so on. And that’s how we started. And we opened our first restaurant in Vienna city center two and a half years ago. And we have been very successful with it. So it’s a small, it’s a small place, it’s around 25 seats, and we managed to generate 710,000 euros last year. In revenue. Yeah. So it’s doing very well. But yes, we’ve been, you know, sort of working through it and managing the restaurant, we discovered more and more about how it operates, right? And we basically recognized and found out for ourselves that the main problem in running a restaurant, at least for us, and this was confirmed by other restaurant operators we talked to, the main problem was people. How do you manage people? How do you make sure people know what they’re doing? How do you make sure that people want to do what you want them to do? And how do you make sure you retain people? Right? How do you make sure people don’t leave you? So that was a big revelation for us coming sort of from outside into the restaurant industry, me coming from consulting and my friend coming from software development, and that’s how we came to what we do now.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

3:51

Wonderful, I’m gonna I’m gonna make a statement that I think everybody that listens knows, when you’re outside the restaurant, and all you are is a consumer, it seems so simple, oh, they just made some, they make some food and they, they serve it to people. But at the end of the day, you’ve learned over the last two and a half years. And so I’m gonna dig in just a bit on your passion before I jump into the tech side of things and kind of what you guys are doing at Tolstoy. But have you always been one of those people that that wanted to open up a restaurant? You know, talk to me, you said you said you were following your passion after you left McKinsey. And I think I’d love to, I’d love to dig in a little bit to that so that our audience can get to know a little bit more about you.

DK

Daniil Klubov

4:30

It’s a very, it’s very untraditional story in non traditional trajectory, I would say. So, the essence of the matter was that you know, how the restaurant industry is not considered as something you know, for an employee, something to strive for. Like "I work in the restaurant industry", in many families, it’s not considered respectable. You go become a lawyer, you become a doctor, but you don’t go work in the restaurant, yeah?

JJ

Jeremy Julian

5:04

It's where you "end up" for a lot of people, unless it’s a family business, somewhere you end up, you can’t get a job as a doctor, you can’t get a job as a lawyer, you can’t finish school, engineering or whatever, then you go to the restaurant.

DK

Daniil Klubov

5:15

Exactly. So you drop out of university, whatever. I come from a family who is very driven and who is very ambitious. And, you know, in my family, it was always, "Oh, you know, you need to be in the best university, you need to do the best internships and you need to do all of this kind of things which are considered "respectable"". And that’s sort of what I was doing for the longest time. And that’s how I ended up in McKinsey, essentially. In the end, I spent four years there and I loved it also. So it was, it was really good experience. But at some point, I said, look, since I was a child, I was always fascinated by the by hospitality, I was always fascinated by restaurant industry, I really want to try it. I really want to, because if not now, then when? You know, the opportunity cost at some point becomes too big. And you just don’t want to, you know, leave everything and just go somewhere to start something. So, I decided, okay, I’m going to do it. And first thing I’ve done, actually, I went to work, I went to work in a restaurant. So I went to work in a high end restaurant, as like a kitchen help first for several months. And, you know, I was peeling potatoes and washing the dishes and all that and eventually started to make more complex things, like prep. And then after that, I’ve spent there several months and my desire to go into restaurant business got confirmed by that experience, because I honestly loved it, I loved the manual work, I loved the whole team spirit, you know, it was very different from everything I experienced before in my normal office job or consulting job, right? And then after that experience, I went to work for a fast food place also in the kitchen, it’s called Dodo Pizza is is actually is actually is a very innovative franchising company, which is based on this whole idea of digital franchising business. And that’s where the whole idea of my business crystallized. And then I launched Tolstoy.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

7:25

Love it, I love it. Thank you for that backstory. It's great. I always enjoy it. And there's a neighbor of mine who works for a big bank here in the US. But he used to be in the restaurant industry, and I've told him that I'm going to send our kids to go work in restaurants, because even if they don't end up in restaurants, there's a level of grit and determination and hard work that you have to go through when you're having to serve the public and you're having to make food with your hands. I don't think children get that in the US. And I personally grew up working in restaurants from the age of 15 through college, and then ultimately started in restaurant technology. So you talked about the backstory, where you came from, and I'd like to hear a little bit about what you guys are doing with your product, and why you're trying to get the word out. It sounds like you had a good reason for that. But can you tell me a little bit about what you're trying to do, what you're trying to solve for? You talked about needing employees, and employees being part of the solution to running a restaurant. But you guys have come up with some different ideas because of your digital-first mentality and the fact that your co-founder is such a techie.

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DK

Daniil Klubov

8:36

Yeah, essentially, going back to the basics, when you realize that you can create as many tools as you want in a restaurant, as many digital tools, as many buttons as you want, and think about optimization and automation and all of that. But essentially, if your employees don't understand why they need to do something, or they don't want to do something, then nothing's going to work. When we started into this business, I created all these fancy processes, you know, very McKinsey mindset, like optimization and numbers. And after we opened, I quickly realized that the most important thing is people. And that's when this whole idea started to crystallize slowly over time. Especially during COVID, when we opened in fall 2020 in Europe, during the second lockdown, when seating was prohibited. A lot of people who've been working in restaurants decided to change professions because it was very hard. You had to wear a mask in the kitchen, you had to test every day. It was horrible. So a lot of people changed professions, and we got a real staffing problem because people were leaving. And new people who were coming didn't have any experience. Usually because we didn't have any other people. And obviously, because of that, the quality went down, the cost went up, and the frustration went up in the team because how can you teach these people? And that’s when we said, aha! You know, that's when we had this aha moment, okay, you know, we are struggling with this, everyone is struggling with this. So maybe we can do something about it. This aha moment came from the realization that we wrote down all these processes, you know, we have these Word documents, endless protocols and rules, and hygiene rules and menu rules and closing and opening. Of course, we have all these documents, and of course, no one reads them. It’s a dormant knowledge. Yeah, we know it, we’ve compiled it, but it’s dormant, it’s just there, filed away. And then, and then we talked to many people around us, to many restaurant operators around us, and they had exactly the same problem. And to add to this problem, okay, so you have all these things, right? And what happens when you change things?  How do you -

JJ

Jeremy Julian

11:43

Update and keep people informed? Yep.

DK

Daniil Klubov

11:46

Exactly. So you usually do what? You send a message over messenger, right? And like half people read it and half people don’t read it. You don’t write an email, and you call, but if you have five restaurants and 100 people working for you, who do you call, right? You call managers, but they’re not always on the same shifts with everybody. So it’s very, it’s very difficult. And, and these things, I mean, it’s silly, but I’m sure every restaurant operator will know. I mean, I’ll give you an example. In our restaurant Tolstoy, we had, we have these winter specials, right? So it’s just winter drinks, like turmeric latte, fancy hipster drinks for the season. And it’s six of them. And we introduced them in October-November last year. And then just a couple of weeks ago. I’m reading in our messenger, that, "Hey, are we supposed to add coffee into turmeric latte or no? And then there’s a whole discussion. Oh, no, you’re not supposed to add, or you’re supposed to add it. And then even though all the processes are, you know, written there on the wall and dissected, but someone thought these are old processes, someone thought this is a whole new process, there was a complete confusion, even though it’s a process, which relatively established. So it’s just just an example, which I think a lot of people will recognize in terms of how difficult it is to establish processes, define processes, define rules. And then to make sure everyone knows them. Everyone knows what they’re doing. At all times. Yeah. Because essentially, oftentimes, it’s also like a game of Chinese whispers or a game of telephone. You say one thing, and then on the end of the line it's another thing. So yeah, so this is a big problem. It’s a big overarching problem, which we’re trying to solve.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

13:44

Yeah, no. And so, I mean, there’s so many different applications. It reminds me actually of the application that we wrote, as a business and many of our longtime listeners know, we wrote a product called recipe viewer, and it’s really a digital recipe book, because not a whole lot different than then your same story there. We put it in the kitchen, that you said they used to train rememorize the the recipe when it was on a paper book, because it was too hard. And I love the idea. You know, when again, when we were talking pre show about kind of the gamification, the other application that I know is a big deal is food safety. You know, if you don’t do the proper procedures, and you’ve got some issue, whether it’s co contamination of you know, beef and chicken or, or you’ve got just, you know, if you don’t follow the process, you can actually hurt somebody. And so, talk to me a little bit about how you guys delivered on that, you know, I love the story and I fully am embracing it and I know following the process and getting everybody on board is a very challenging task. And you guys are you know, are embarking on a journey to try and solve that.

DK

Daniil Klubov

14:50

Exactly. So, there are several elements to this. So you know, we tested different hypothesis and we said, "Okay, so how do you make sure everyone knows what they’re doing? And how do you transform all this dormant knowledge to something active that people have all the time?" And essentially, there are two pieces to this solution. One is that we think the knowledge needs to be continuous. So learning needs to be continuous. And then the second one is that the learning needs to be gamified. Yeah, that’s sort of the two things. Yeah. And then you have, you have, essentially, two questions. Okay. So if the learning is continuous and gamified, how do you do that? How do you achieve that? And if you think about this, what we’re trying to do, and what we’re now rolling out, in Austria, we’re rolling out our solution at the pilot clients, what we’re trying to do, if I can say shortly, it’s sort of a Duolingo for your business. Yeah. So it’s so it’s essentially,  it’s a tool, where on the one hand, you can sort of be Duolingo creator. So you can define the things, define the processes in your restaurant, in a very visual way. So going away from the text, but using some of the some of the things which we which we are offering, which are like, sequential visual processes, or infographics, or, or short videos, right? On the one hand, which we call explainers. Yeah. And then on the other hand, this is being automatically gamified. And as an output, you have a mobile app, which works sort of like Duolingo, which is very simple and competitive way to learn things.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

17:05

Yeah. So for those that don’t, or haven’t played around with Duolingo, it’s really just this, it’s a language learning tool, but to Daniil's point, it’s the idea of, you’re gonna get better, you’re gonna continually grow within the game. And then he talks about the gamification and everybody that’s ever run a restaurant knows that the servers want to compete with each other, whether it’s sell the most desserts, or to sell the most, sell the most this or sell to sell the most that, you know, within a shift or within a week, or within a month. And, and so, So you talked a little bit about the tech, talk to me about how you guys are delivering it as an all on mobile? How do you get around the whole idea of of, you know, when, again, I’ve heard this story, do you force the issue of them learning at home? Are they on shift? Do you have issues with staff members, you know, learning while they’re on shift, and guests are seeing it, talk to me a little bit about how you guys are delivering this tech to your staff members? Not only to keep growing them, but also what is the impact been, you know, as as you guys have continued to push this thing out?

DK

Daniil Klubov

18:10

Yeah. So essentially, the solution is delivered in two parts. One is a web app. So you just log in, on web, as a manager, yeah, so as a manager, or as a restaurant operator, where you can define all of your processes, or as I say, you know, transform this dormant knowledge into the active knowledge. And this can be because you already have a lot of materials. So what we do, we have an AI layer where you, you know, upload all your text. And solution essentially tells you okay, this could be, you know, sort of multiple choice games, this could be your sequence games out of this, you could make a video right so it kind of pre structures it for you when you upload it. Yeah, and kind of helps you with a simple tutorial. It helps you to find your way around the solution.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

19:04

So you take the existing manuals, these existing process manuals that you’re talking about, and you put them into the tool and it gives you based on this information, this is the best way to deliver it to your staff members.

DK

Daniil Klubov

19:14

Yes, it gives you options, a suggestion, yeah, it gives you a suggestion and some things that are already prefilled. For example, if there are some things like hygiene rules, where sometimes there is no visual way to show it and you know, "microorganisms die at this temperature", so it's just text. So it will just be prefilled for you with what we call guidance, so the text blocks of the game, and then it will produce multiple-choice questions for you. If there's something where the solution will think that, 'Okay, we can visualize that,' it will give you a recommendation, "This part of your knowledge, you can do that and this, and for this part of your knowledge, you can do video, for this part of your knowledge, you can do some kind of sequential games and so on. So yeah, the solution will give you a little bit of help in setting it up. Because obviously, a big problem for every restaurant owner or operator is a lack of time. And we know based on our own experience how busy you are when you're operating a restaurant, and how busy you are with a thousand topics all of the time. So we don't want to add up to this. But obviously, you will still need to spend some time setting this up. We were trying to make it as simple as possible. And then exactly, so that's on the manager's side. And then all of the things that you're putting in, they're being automatically gamified. And you can just adjust the games in the tool and see, 'Okay, you know, maybe there are some light adjustments that you think would work better for employees.' And then on the employee's side, you just have an app on your phone. So it's on Android and iOS. In terms of delivery in the restaurant, it works the following way. So we just actually, we just started at several restaurants, and also in our own restaurant, just a couple of weeks ago. And essentially what we've been doing is we said, 'Okay, you know, all the people who are coming new, you know, who we're onboarding as new hires, they need to, you know, they get assigned these quizzes, right? And they need to complete them before they actually start on their shift.' Yeah, so it's like homework because people are also, you know, in the beginning, as I think every operator also knows, people are very motivated to show that they want to learn, that they want to move new things. So they were very eager to do this before.

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JJ

Jeremy Julian

22:11

When they start, yep, no, for sure.

DK

Daniil Klubov

22:13

And this also, of course, saves a lot of headache, you know, in terms of the time and the onboarding cost. I cannot unfortunately yet say, I don’t have estimations or empirical data to confirm it. But that’s our hypothesis that it will save, it will shorten the cycle, essentially.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

22:33

Well, it also creates some retention, you talked about it earlier that, you know, everybody wants to grow, everybody wants to learn, everybody wants to do better. Yeah, just as human beings, that’s just a human factor that that happens. And, and so with that, the more you can allow them to continue to get better, whether it’s skills for that brand, or skills, you know, future in another brand, it’s going to help them because they realize that the brand is investing in them and teaching them.

DK

Daniil Klubov

22:58

Exactly. And this is, this is a very good thought, by the way. Yes, I forgot to mention that. It's one of the, you know, at least all the operators we talk to, we asked them "Okay, so what is the reason people are leaving most of the time?" And they say, you know, it’s frustration, it’s sort of depression, onset of depression, because you feel you’re getting stuck, you’re not developing anymore. Because why? Because you think you’ve learned everything. And this is interesting enough, it’s not always the case. Or it’s even often not the case, but they have an impression they know everything. But the restaurant has much more to offer them to learn, but it’s just only transparent that they don’t know that they can be developing further in their role, right?

JJ

Jeremy Julian

23:46

Well, I’m back to your manager, your owner, they don’t have enough time to invest in them. So investing in a tool like what you guys have put together is a mechanism for them to invest in the staff members without having to take the 40 staff members that they have and invest in them individually.

DK

Daniil Klubov

24:01

Correct. Yeah, correct. And this is, again, this is really good point. Because this, this reminds me I didn’t talk about about this. But essentially, in the web app, that’s what you do, you know, you define the learning cycle, you define the growth cycle. So you define all of your processes, then you define all of your roles, and you sort of can sort them as a sort of a ladder, right? So you go from from one to three, it’s like levels in the computer game, essentially. And then you assign all of this processes to these roles. And then basically you assign people to roles, right, and then the employee automatically when they’re starting. They know which role they are and sort of on what level they are and where they need to go to grow. And again, talking about the competitiveness, yeah, if we talk about the delivery for employees, there is obviously also a ranking right. So you see in your restaurant, you know, how do you perform You know, if you know everything and you don’t know, you don’t know everything, you know, you haven’t been you’ve been performing worse or better. And then also, very important thing is the communication. Once as a restaurant operator, you change something, you can change it directly in the tool, and then you know, your employees get notified, and they will be prompted to, you know, to play a game. So they say, "Oh, the, the process for assembling this pizza has changed, and you need to use different measurement cups." So, yeah, and then they need to play the game through to learn it right away. And so our hypothesis is that today, a lot of operators use great tools for scheduling the shifts, like 7shifts, for example, right? American company, which is creating great technology. And everyone is used to it now and you know, checking their notifications on the phone, and it’s completely normal. Even though just five years ago, it was Excel everywhere. At least in Europe, it was Excel all over the place. Yeah,

JJ

Jeremy Julian

26:15

Yep. Oh, it still is here. I mean, it still is here, even with tools like Hotschedules and 7shifts.

DK

Daniil Klubov

26:21

I didn’t know about in in Europe, in Europe or so. Yeah, that’s why I didn’t say but in Europe, a lot of people still use Excel. Yeah, absolutely. And you have the tools. But those those operators who used the tools like this, like 7shifts, they never go going back. Yeah.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

26:36

Oh, absolutely. That the staff members would revolt, they would be like, "I can’t go back to calling in and checking my schedule the week before." They would go crazy! To actually when I did my interview with with the CEO of 7shifts, he says it’s a selling point for restaurants to hire staff back to your point of figuring out the it’s going to make the communication of picking up shifts and trading shifts and things like that so much easier for the staff member and it creates a higher level of retention and a higher level of satisfaction for them.

DK

Daniil Klubov

27:05

Yeah, because it’s much of a stress, it’s just much stress. And it’s the same. It’s the same principle here where we said, you know, what 7shifts said, okay, you know, you have this, you have the spreadsheets, which are horrible. You know, how do we how do we go away from that and do something different? And and that’s the same question we ask, we said, you know, we have this Word documents, which are horrible, you know, and we have these messengers, which are horrible. How do we move away from that, and we create something, create a tool, which is easy to use, and everyone loves it, essentially. And that’s, what we’re trying to do. Essentially, everyone, you know, employees will have that app and old notification. So there’s something is changed. And it’s already there. Everyone knows it. So you have then consistency all over your operation.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

27:59

Yeah. So I’m gonna go back to something you mentioned earlier, and I want to talk through it with our audiences. You got McKinsey trained, you know how processes work, you can write processes in your sleep. But many operators don’t understand how to do that. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys are solving the process issue, I guess, because creating a process is not always easy. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes some knowledge of how to do that. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys are helping people to ensure that processes not only are there, before you gamify them and then put them in front of the staff.

DK

Daniil Klubov

28:35

Yeah. I think you’re absolutely right. I think that there are two cases. Yeah, there are two cases there are. So case one is one which I mentioned, is where there’s been an effort in an operation to codify the processes, right? So there’s been something written down and so on. And usually, these are operations where you have ambitions to grow, ambitions to scale. Oftentimes, and that’s why already, you know, because already when you want to open second restaurant, you need to write something down. There’s no, there’s no way around it. And then, and then obviously, there is also a big chunk of operators, where a lot of things are happening by - I wouldn’t say gut feeling - but by experience, right? So because a lot of things have just been there, people have been working there for a long time. And so, you know, you have Joe and Joe has been working here for nine years. He knows how to do it. So Joe will do it. And but the sad reality of things is, I think that especially after COVID, being in the second category became increasingly difficult because people are leaving. So since people are leaving you need to do something to codify things. Yeah. And what our tool essentially offers you is that when you log in, you know, in the manager view it gives you a simple tutorial over a different restaurant operation, which shows you  how another restaurant solved all of their process. Because essentially, okay, the restaurants are different. Every restaurant is a bit different, but also every restaurant would be the same. Yeah, you have, where you have the same problems, you have the same pains you have, you have the same things you kind of working through,

JJ

Jeremy Julian

30:40

You got to take raw products, you got to prep them, you got to make them, you got to serve them to customers in some way, whether it’s through a drive thru, or it’s in a dining room, or it’s through takeout. Yeah, no, absolutely.

DK

Daniil Klubov

30:50

Correct. So how we’re trying to solve it with just showing the examples inside of our tool where you say, okay, look, so there’s a pizza restaurant operator and there is a burger restaurant operator. And, you know, there’s, there’s this sort of a full non-fast food, non-quick service operator. And that’s how their, you know, service looks like, in our tool, you know, service processes. Yeah. And it’s like, sort of, these are the sequences for the service processes. And these are the videos for the service processes. And this, you know, and so on. So we’re just trying to take people by example, and I think it’s then easier of course, if you see those examples to come up with something of your own. Yeah?

JJ

Jeremy Julian

31:40

Yep, absolutely. Or you get 80% of it, 90% of it, and then tweak it for your own, you know, specific restaurant and how you guys might might run those things. So I love it. What have you seen, you know, you guys created this tech. I assume you still own the restaurant. You and your co-founder still own the restaurant. What have you seen even in your own staff? You guys, I’m guessing that they were the the the test cases, you guys were continuing to use your own staff members to test out this technology. What has been, you know, the the biggest positive that you’ve seen at your staff members, beyond they get to work with you and how awesome you are? And how awesome your co-founder is?

DK

Daniil Klubov

32:18

Yeah, no, it’s a good question, the best thing we have seen is the appreciation by people that they don’t need to repeat things to the newbies. Yeah, so what happened before historically, now restaurants that we had one guy, who was just, you know, he had it in him to teach people, he’s the teacher, right? And he had it in him to teach people. So he got a process Instructor role, and he was teaching and teaching. But then what happened every time when he was not on the shift. And then when you get on the shift, then it was a mess, because we didn’t have anyone else who liked it, yeah? And then people were frustrated that they had to, you know, explain things and repeat things, and so on. So, so the biggest, so it just, we’re just talking about the weeks now, because we rolled out the solution also just a few weeks ago, but it corresponded with the with the change in staff, we had three new staff members coming. And what happened is that the employee gave us feedback that, "hey, it was amazing, that people came and they already knew this basics, and they were already what we were talking about". So it was not completely, you know, there was, there was this frustration factor and the stress factor was out that you are on the shift, and it’s a busy Sunday, for example. And then you have this newbie, who just doesn’t know anything and you know, doesn’t know where to stand and where to look, and so on. So that was that was the biggest feedback so far from our own, from our own staff.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

34:06

And I’m guessing that it also allows you and your co-owner to not be in the restaurant nearly as often because, you know, the staff is, is understanding the processes. I don’t know of you’re quite there yet, because you guys just rolled it out. But you know, a lot of times people will open up a business for freedom, but then they lock themselves into the business that they’re there because they can’t get out of their own way.

DK

Daniil Klubov

34:27

No for sure it was, you know, for us it was from the beginning the goal to build the business in a way that you will not support that you are not there because otherwise it’s not the business. It’s you know, it’s it’s work, or it’s a job, it's occupation. So for sure the whole idea, because essentially what are we doing we’re trying to make out of this, we’re trying to make a well oiled machinery where you're trying to make maximum extent possible to simplify this operations, simplify them for people. So that there is no there’s, there’s always a human factor. Yeah, but there’s, there’s a reduced amount of human error, sort of.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

35:15

Yeah, no, I love it. So how do people get in touch with you? You know, which talk to me about your guys’s kind of plans rollout? I know when you and I talk pre show, you know the majority of the audience’s is in North America. But what we have been growing I know I sent you I think I sent you the, the it’s been fun to get some European influence in some European listeners as well as some some Asian listeners. You know, I mean, we have had all continents except for Antarctica, I think listen at some point but but still the regular viewership and listenership is North America. Talk to me a little bit about where you guys are going? How do people get in touch? How do people learn a little bit more is just going to translate to the US, Canada and Mexico? Is that where you kind of want to go? Talk to me a little bit about about where this is where this is taken?

DK

Daniil Klubov

36:03

Absolutely. So actually, US is our target market. That’s, that’s, that’s where we’re going. That’s, that’s our ambition to get established in the US. Why? Very simple reason. In the US, you have much more restaurants, which have growth plans, and which are not satisfied with just one joint, but want to do more than one joint. And that’s where we come in, because they say, you know, we talked before the moment when you want to open more than one restaurant, you need to codify things. Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s a big difference with Europe, because in Europe, there’s still a lot of single, you know, single shops. And the oftentimes, it’s, it’s a lifestyle. I mean, I’m sure in the America is also also the case for many operators, but here in Europe, specifically, you know, the QSR concept are not as strong as in the States. So, yes, we want to, we want to go to states, now we are in our pilot phase, right, so we just launched the product, we’re in the pilot phase, here locally in Europe, in Austria, we have several big clients. The names will not tell the audiences anything, but we have several big clients with with dozens of restaurants, basically, where we’re just rolling out the product right now and kind of testing and iteratively improving it. Yeah, we also at this point, we’re taking people into our Early Bird program, yeah. So sort of pilot program, where we, you know, talk to operators, we help them to set it up, and we get, you know, we listen to feedback and we try and to improve the product as we go. So, this phase now is is also free for three months, right? So we offer three months free product trial, right, which is which are very extended period. How you can find us, it’s very simple, you can go to spoon.tech, right, so www.spoon.tech, and there, there is a contact form. So you try for free, you can just enter your information there. And we will get in touch with you. And we will be delighted to work with American operators and we will, for sure work very hard to make sure that that, if we set up, you know, if we start working together, that it’s a success, because we obviously are in the process of of improving the product, building the product through iteration and would love to have American clients.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

38:47

I love it. I love it just something while you were talking about it that I guess I’m I’m intrigued about and I always half the time these questions really are just my own curiosity. Have you guys gotten to a place where you guys support multiple languages? Because I’m assuming in Austria, you’ve got to do trainings and you know, potentially in English and potentially in you know, just different languages. And in Europe yet, you know, there’s so many different languages spoken. Less so in the United States, but we do have a lot of people, you know, in our recipe viewer product, we now support, you know, six or eight languages because you’ve got cooks in the kitchen that might only speak Spanish or they’re gonna learn better in Spanish. They might speak English but they might read better in Spanish and and the like. Have you guys gotten to that hurdle yet? To be able to support multiple languages?

DK

Daniil Klubov

39:32

Yeah, because we you know, we come from Europe

JJ

Jeremy Julian

39:36

Yeah where everyone speaks multiple languages. It’s not like us silly Americans, huh?

DK

Daniil Klubov

39:40

No no, I’d say in Europe, it’s in our DNA to do multilingual. Whatever you roll out, it has to be multilingual. So yeah, at this point we have you know, we have German and English but we're planning to build it out. And so it’s for sure you know, our company also. We sit here in Austria, but we are from all over the world. It is a very, very, very international crowd. So yeah, multilingual is definitely in.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

40:06

Wonderful. Well, I love the story. It’s always fun to to see founders that, that created a product to scratch their own itch and something that they’re, they’re looking at. Because again, I’m still intrigued and I wrote down notes. You talked to me a little bit about Tolstoy. Are you guys growing it as well along with this learning product? Are you guys kind of settling in and just running the restaurant for now until you get this off the ground? And then you’re looking to grow the the restaurant brand as well?

DK

Daniil Klubov

40:39

Yeah, we are currently focusing on the tech project, so spoon.tech. Because we’re just, I have had, you know, once you do business, and I think a lot of the restaurant operators will relate, once you start doing business and then suddenly, you have a feeling you’re onto something or you discovered something, which is like a big problem. And, you know, you think you found the solution, you get the sense of urgency about it, then you want to solve it immediately.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

41:19

I love it. No, it’s great. It’s great. You know, and again, it wasn’t a slight it’s more just you know what, I love these kinds of stories and the fact that you guys were able to launch the the middle of COVID and that you guys are doing fantastic at the restaurant. Now you guys are building tech to help restaurants is awesome.

DK

Daniil Klubov

41:35

Yeah, exactly. No, but it’s, it’s, that’s why that’s why we focus our all energy on spoon.tech right now. And you know, Tolstoy is a concept it’s, you know, successful here in Vienna and we’re planning to let’s see, we’re in the in the final stages of negotiations now to launch our products also in the in the supermarket. So some of the some of the things like the salad dressings, and the ready meals like chili sin carne. And, you know, Olivier salad. It’s the is the Eastern European, Eastern European potato salad. Right? So it’s really loved here in Austria. So, yeah, we sort of just doing this things to build out the brand. And then we will see, I guess you know, we will see how spoon.tech is taken by the market. So far we have had tremendous feedback and the pilot customers love it. And, and yeah, then we will see how it goes.

JJ

Jeremy Julian

42:40

I love it. I love it now, and again, like I said earlier, the fact that you guys are scratching your own itch and, and solving a problem for people. And I think that you’re gonna find a lot of people don’t have solutions both to the process mapping, as well as to the gamification is, is fantastic. So we’ll thank you for taking your time to share a little bit about what you guys you know, the journey that you guys have been on over the last three years. It’s so much fun to to hear those things and to our listeners, guys, as I said on the onset, I know that you guys have lots of choices of who to go listen to so the fact that you guys spent 45 minutes or so with us today is fantastic. If you haven’t already gone out and subscribed to the newsletter, please do so. Please also go give us a rating on your favorite podcast player because it helps others to find you. While you’re online, go check out spoon.tech and figure out what Daniil and his co-founder are doing to help restaurants. To our listeners, make it a great day!

I

Intro

43:36

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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