Christine De Wendel

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. So excited to be back with a brand new episode. Today we're talking with Christine. She is with Sunday and Sunday is a really cool payment processing system. This episode is coming to you live from the Create Conference.

01:05So Informa, who does these big restaurant festivals, we just went to FS Tech in Orlando. They do the RLC, the Restaurant Leadership Conference. Typically, I think that's in Phoenix. And then they were hosting Create, which is an emerging restaurant concept event. And it was at the Omni downtown. And well, hell, it's in my backyard. I'm going to go. It is free to go to these things. So why not? I met with Christina, her team over at Sunday, and I thought what they did was really, really interesting. So I said, hey, I got my podcast stuff. You want to tell me about it? So that's what this episode is. And I was there because I wanted to see what cool companies were there, what the newest things were, what people were doing for emerging brands. And I was there for Maribel and Green Hills Grill. But you know what? I also was there for Nara and I wanted to learn so I could share this information with you guys, which is why we're here. And if you notice, some of these episodes these days are trending more towards operators and owners.

02:08That's really it's kind of shifting. Who is this podcast for? Now, if you're a guest or you're somebody who is in the media or you just like to learn about restaurants, great. Love to have you here. But really, we make this podcast for restaurant leadership and people who are making tough decisions inside of restaurants and want to grow their business, which is what Nara is about. The one big takeaway that I had from the Create Festival is that or the Create Conference is that nobody really cares about you. As a local independent operator, nobody, you know, every time you would meet a vendor and you'd say, how many restaurants do you have? And you go, two, they're different concepts, but we're here locally in Nashville. Oh, great. We love Nashville. Yeah, we really only work with restaurant concepts that have between five and a hundred locations. And you go, really, why? Well, there's just more money in it. And they're not coming to you. They're not coming to you to tell you about this stuff, which is why that this stuff is so important.

03:08And I want to find companies that want to work with you because I tell you, if you're a chain, there's a lot of cool AI stuff out there. I think the most interesting thing I saw was a company called Savvy, S-A-V-I. They take your camera system and they run your camera system like you can choose a time from five to seven. And it'll go through five to seven on your camera and it will tell you everything it sees. So if I want to know, agree, if I want to put a camera over a particular section in a restaurant, I want to know how long it takes to get a greet time or how long the average entrees are that they can do that. They can they can tell you everything the camera sees on a data analytical standpoint. I thought that was a little big brothery, but really interesting if you're somebody who wants to know that stuff, stuff that a manager could be looking for or watching. But these are stats that the camera will just tell you what's happening. What is my average greet time at a table? What is my average first drink time? What is my average time until they get their alcoholic beverage, appetizers, entrees, whatever it might be?

04:12You can even record what happens at the tables. You can know what is being said, which is, again, just really interesting to know that that technology is available. Another company we met with is called Fresh KDS. And I'm working on getting them on the podcast because I really like the data analytics that came out of the kitchen and the dashboard that it shows you to let you know every single thing about every dish. It's really fascinating stuff. But today we're talking Sunday and a couple of weeks ago, I had my last episode with Deborah Sunderland. She is the owner of Sunderland Coaching. And I host another podcast with her, Shut Up and Thrive. And we were talking the other day and she said, you know what I want to do? I want to do a conscious restaurant leadership retreat. And I said, OK, well, it's more of a monthly meeting. And let me tell you what it is. I wrote this little factoid here to kind of give it to you. Are you tired of the same old leadership grind in your restaurant?

05:13What if your team culture could shift from gossip, blame and burnout to trust, growth and clarity? Introducing the Conscious Restaurant Leadership, a powerful 12 month program designed exclusively for restaurant owners. Each month, a small group of just 10 operators will meet for two hours with transformational coach Deborah Sunderland to dive into the tools that change everything. Ending gossip, creating a learning culture, failing fast to learn fast and removing blame and shame from the way that we lead. If you're someone who finds yourself worrying about everything, you're laying up at night, you're worrying, there's so much uncertainty in this world. This group is for you. Deborah will teach you how to live in the present and focus on what you can actually control. And you won't just learn from her. I mean, this is you'll learn from each other. This is a true peer group of restaurant leaders growing together because let's face it, you're not, if you're not growing your business, your business isn't growing. If you're not growing you, like if you are not growing, your business isn't going to grow.

06:14And here's the best part of it all, guys, this is only $285 a month. This is a two hour meeting with other restaurant owners. 12 months, it's $285 a month. Her normal price is like $1,200 for that. And through NARA, if you're a NARA member, if you're somebody who's interested in NARA, this is something we're going to be offering to everybody out there. This is a huge opportunity to invest in yourself and your business. Spots are intentionally limited. So we want to keep these groups intimate and impactful. And you can, you can learn more at naranashville.com. You can find Sunderland coaching on there and you can message her. You can message Debra at Sunderland coaching and she will be able to get you set up. This is really cool. We're going to do two different classes, right? So if you're an owner, this is transformational stuff. You will learn a ton about yourself. This not only helps you in your restaurant, helps you in your personal relationships, helps you in the way that you see everything.

07:16We're going to be doing one for owners and one for general managers or chefs. So executive leadership and then the people who are leading the actual restaurant, so you guys can both work in concert with each other to understand this material. And she does some mini-gram stuff, but a lot of it is based around the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. We're all leading unconsciously every day. And this teaches you how to lead intentionally and consciously. And I highly, highly recommend that you do this. You can reach out to me too, Brandon at newlighthospitality.com and I can answer any questions that you have, or you can email Debra at Sunderland coaching.com and she can answer any questions she is willing. She will do a 30 minute conversation with you to learn about your business and learn if this is right for you. So this is an opportunity you really don't want to miss. Yes, Sunderland coaching. So this is this is a lot of fun. Let's jump in right now with Christine DeWendel. She is the CEO and co-founder of Sunday.

08:18You're listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Super excited to be back here at CREATE. We're in Nashville at the Omni Hotel and I'm joined with Christine DeWendel. Christine is the CEO and co-founder of Sunday. Then I met you at FS Tech in Orlando. Yes. Is it a month ago? Hell, it wasn't that long ago, was it? It was a month ago. About a month ago. Yeah. And we were in a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, You were in a, you're sitting next to me. You and Caroline were sitting next to me in a breakout and I was watching football. You were watching football. Yes. And we said this guy looks, this guy looks cool. So it was six weeks ago. It was the opening day of football. It was like the opening day of football. I was like, I gotta watch football. And it wasn't, I wasn't super excited about the whole thing, but you said, hey, we have Sunday. We work with Strategic here in Nashville. I go, what Sunday? And we've been, we've connected and I've learned about Sunday and I thought it was so cool.

09:20I wanted to share your story on the podcast. So let's start with kind of the origin story. How did Sunday begin? So first of all, thanks for having me. I'm excited to tell the Nashville restaurant scene more about Sunday. How did it start? So first of all, what are we? Sunday is a digital checkout solution. We do pay at table, order and pay, reordering at table, and we focus on full service restaurants today, but we have a full suite of products that goes from fast casual all the way to Michelin star restaurants. So how did we start? My co-founder, my co-founder is Victor Luger, a restaurant operator in Europe who started the Big Mama Group about 12 years ago. So some of you may have heard of the Big Mama Group. Hopefully many people listening have actually been to the Big Mama restaurants. Pink Mama is probably the hottest, most Instagrammable restaurant in Paris, lines out the door, lots of young women from around the world posting on Instagram.

10:29And our product was born five years ago in the Big Mama Group as a way to expedite and create a delightful payment experience. So think 2020, nobody likes to pay in restaurants, it's still the case today. Nobody likes to raise their hand, make eye contact with the server, nobody likes to scribble their signature, leave a tip, do the math. And so the idea was, okay, how can we use digital technology to accelerate and make a great payment experience? So it's not that nobody likes doing that. It's just kind of cumbersome. I want to leave, hey, where's our server? And you have the little thing where you do the hand, can I get my check? Can I get my check? And then it's like, sure, just a minute. And they have to go print it and then they bring it to you. I was ready to leave five minutes ago, but now I'm at the mercy of the, you just got a 12 top and I can see you're busy. I don't want to bother you, but it's just, it's just, it's not frictionless. It's definitely friction full.

11:30And I'll tell you what, we've done a ton of research. It takes 12 minutes on average to pay a check in the U.S. 12 minutes, 12 minutes. And so the truth is you've had a delightful dining experience. You're ready to go. You could have three kids rolling on the floor like I do. You could have a business meeting. You could have a football game to get to. You could have a train to catch, a plane to catch. Movie, whatever. You want to get out quickly and it's going to take you 12 minutes. And so the idea was, well, how do we eliminate that friction? So very simple idea. You take a QR code, you connect it to the point of sale system and you let your guest pay with the QR code. So that's 2020. For two weeks in the Big Mama restaurant group, 70% of guests were paying with it. And so the idea was, okay, this actually has legs. There's huge potential here. Why don't we spin it off and make a technology company out of it? When you're a European restaurant operator, the U.S. seems like the world of opportunity.

12:32And so we said, we're going to build this company in the U.S. Now, were you in Europe? How did you become a co-founder of this? So I had spent 20 years in Europe. I knew Victor, my co-founder today, from life in Paris. And I just moved back to Atlanta. So I was coming from tech. I had spent 15 years scaling two of Europe's most successful tech unicorns. And I was looking for a genius business idea, which is not that easy to do. Had just moved my three kids, my husband, to Atlanta because we wanted to change lifestyles, embrace the Southern living. So that's a really big change in lifestyle. It was definitely a big change in lifestyle. Paris to Atlanta. Paris to Atlanta. And Victor called me up and he said, Christine, I've got a $100 billion idea. We're going to change the way people pay in hospitality. And I said, all right, well, let's see what the story is. I'm not quite convinced, but let's see what we can do with this. And he's like, listen, we've got to try it. We're seeing the numbers in the Big Mama restaurants.

13:34They're insane. Let's put together a pitch story. Let's go see investors. Let's see if we can raise money. We raised $125 million in the next six months. We didn't have a lot of customers yet. We didn't quite have a business model yet, but we knew that there was enormous demand from customers for some sort of solution. Now be it restaurant operators or diners who wanted to make that payment experience frictionless. So fast forward four and a half years later, it's been an incredible ride. Today we're working with about 3,500 restaurant groups across the US, UK, and France. We are processing about $4 billion as we speak. So in terms of transaction volume, it's awesome. That's great. And we're getting tremendous traction with some of the best restaurant operators in the US. Super, super excited about the trajectory.

14:34And I think this is just the beginning. I think what we're seeing now is that diners understand the value of being able to pay quickly, to be in control of the payment experience. And restaurateurs see all the value. So it started with a super simple idea. And it looks like we're growing a massive business now, which is exciting. Do you have to... So, okay. So you integrate with POS systems? Yes. We're point of sale agnostic. We work with pretty much every major point of sale system. Our biggest partners in the US are NCR and Toast. Okay. Toast has this function, I believe, where you can... I mean, because we have a QR code on ours and we only have like 7%, maybe 7% of people use the QR code. How do you get to a 71% adoption rate? So that's an awesome question. On average, our adoption rate across the US is around 35%. So how do you get to 35%?

15:34Well, it requires tremendous ops effort. So every time we launch a restaurant, we send in an awesome ops team. You got to see some of my team members yesterday. Team members are amazing. They're so friendly and they're so knowledgeable, by the way. Thank you for telling me that. I love hearing it. So we send in the ops team every time we launch a restaurant and they're going to train the staff, they're going to delight the management team and they're going to explain all the value of Sunday. So what we found is, yes, this is a fintech, but if you don't get the servers on board and you don't get the management team on board, you won't be able to get a high adoption. What you see is that guests get it, love it. Once a guest is aware that they can pay with it, we have almost an 80% payment intent. The challenge is how do you get the server to actually suggest it to the guest? And that's where having an awesome ops team is important. I thought it was really cool because I wasn't on board. When I first heard about this, I was like, okay, that's not new.

16:36I see that. I do that right now. I'm not getting the traction I like to have, but it doesn't matter because it's included. It's not a thing I'm paying for. But what really got me was a couple different things. One was I really liked the idea that there's a little neat little glass, it's not glass, it's like a plastic QR code that you can, but it looks like it's something like one of those framed things. You can do a bunch of different versions of a QR code up on a table. It corresponds with that table. Let's just say it's table 101, right? So you have table 101, you set this thing, it can go on a wall, it can go anywhere right next to it. It could be really classy. It could be whatever you want. They have like wood chips, they're really neat. We could do anything a restaurant wants. But this QR code goes directly to toast. So I love the fact of when you go out to eat, if you need control, and I like control. There's restaurants I've gone to when I was a drinker where I was like, I couldn't get drunk here if I tried. I can't find the damn server. But with this, I was thinking if you're a server and you greet a table, welcome to ours, the Green Hills Grill.

17:37My name is Brandon. I'll be taking care of you. I'm going to get started with some drinks and we'll tell you about all our stuff. Hey, if you want to view your bill at any time, or if you'd like to add to it, just scan that QR code right there. You can also pay whenever you're done, right? So now it's not a everything's going to go exactly the same when I'm at your table. I'm going to be I'm here. I'm your server. But I'm going to give you some of the control. You don't have to wait for me for everything that I do. You can scan that QR code and you can add to it. Hey, we want to pay. We want to split the check. Great. There's a bunch of different options. Let's just say I'm with a couple of people, four or five people, and we have to go. You're all going to stay later. I can scan that QR code and split bill. I can pick out the things I had hit pay and I'm out. Brian, I'm going to hire you as a sales rep. It was so cool because that control piece of like we have a movie to get to. I need to go. Our server just got a 12 top. I don't want to bother them. We don't. I respect my server. I know you're busy.

18:38I know you have stuff going on. This takes control and gives it to the guest to say, hey, I'm kind of in a hurry. I'm just going to scan that and pay. We're good. Or hey, I really want to order dessert, but we're running out of time. We'll just scan that. Add your dessert. It'll be at your table in six minutes. I can order my to-go food for my son who's at home who asked me to bring him food. I have to wait. Hey, we ordered my to-go food. No, I can just add anything. It's like I still have a server. I still have that comfort level, but also I'm in complete control of everything that happens here and then there's the piece. What about credit card processing? I mean, I have to use credit card processing through Toast, but I understand when I go to it. So there's a small fee that people will pay when they pay through this. There's a small fee, but it also reduces your credit card processing fee. So also great point. How does it work? So when... Sorry, just my little tangent of things I thought was really cool. There was a differentiator for me for Sunday that I was like, this is great.

19:38All right. So clearly you got the sales pitch. You're fantastic, great summary. Here's what happens with processing. We take over the processing on the part that's running through Sunday. You may be familiar how the industry works is typically digital transactions are card not present transactions, which are usually half a percentage point higher than card present transactions. So when we work with restaurants, we say to them and we do it, we're going to make sure this is very attractive for you. So let's make sure we're matching your card present rates. And so what we could do is we can come in. It's part of our agreement with all the point of sale partners we work with is we say, let's make sure we're matching your processing rates. And we're using that small fee, which we're charging to the guest to offset the cost. It's like a dollar or two. I mean, it's not a lot. It's what we monitor really carefully.

20:41I mean, we're doing about 70 million transactions per year, and we're making sure that there's no pushback on that small digital fee. And so if you're having a meal and you have to pay a dollar, but you can split, you can go when you want, you're giving the guest the ultimate hospitality experience, which is you put control just as you said back in their hands. What we find is people don't mind paying that at all. And it's optional. It's the optionality. And they tip better, too. They absolutely tip better. So we're looking at 10 to 14 percent higher tips, depending on the point of sale. And it's because the user experience is great to 14 percent. Yes, 10 to 14 percent higher tips. So what does that mean? If you typically have a 20 percent tip rate, you're going up to 22 percent tip rate. And for servers, that's huge. I thought you were saying we went to 34 percent. That's 10 to 40. It's 30 to 34. That's a lot. I wish I wish it was 10 percent of 20 percent.

21:41Yes, 10 percent higher tips. That makes that makes so much more sense. I was like, holy shit, there's no way you're doing 30. How unless you're doing something deceptive, this doesn't make sense to me. No, but Brandon, think about it. If you're a server and you're bringing home 100 bucks a night, if suddenly you're bringing 110 bucks a night, that's actually pretty meaningful. I always tell my team I'm game for a 10 percent raise. So any time we like 10 percent raises, the crowd likes that, too. I love that. So I can save money on my credit card processing fees for the card not present being charged for a card that is present. People pay a small fee. But are there any other features and benefits? Because I really liked the analytics side of this. So when people pay via Sunday, I know everything about their meal, right?

22:42I can now look at a dashboard and this was something I thought was really cool. If you can get a really high adoption rate and you really focus on this and you make it part of the vernacular at the front greet, I like the I like the idea of talking about it at the greet. Hey, and there's a QR code. This is what this is. Every time you come here, you can be in control. I'm not going anywhere. This isn't a oh, well, you do it yourself. I'm still going to do everything I would normally do. But if you want to add a drink, I want to have another beer, boom, done, you got it. You can look at the end of the day, everybody that used that is I don't know, I don't remember. Is it just people who paid that way or is it anybody but you can see it's everyone who pays with Sunday. But you can start seeing tip percentages. Hey, here's all my staff. This is who's selling what but this is who gets the best tip and then it's going to ask for reviews. Is that a thing too? Absolutely. I love your prompts, Brandon. All right, I'm going to back up.

23:43Why are the analytics so good? So you I think everyone understands the general flow, the QR codes on the table. It's part of the guest experience. The server comes to you at the end of the meal and says, if you'd like to pay with our digital checkout solution, please do. Otherwise I can bring you the check. And there you're going to have 35%, 40%, 50%, 60% of your guests paying with it. They're going to go ahead and split the item, pay the full bill, whatever it is that they want to do. And then at the end of the payment experience, which takes 10 seconds, they're going to be prompted to leave a review. It's really similar to the Uber experience when you're asked to leave five star. It's now become second nature. It pops up. It's a super smooth flow. And you just click four or five stars. What happens if you leave a five star? Well then we're going to ask you if you want to go to Google. And if you leave a four star or less, we're also going to ask you if you want to go to Google. But first we're going to ask you a few follow up questions.

24:44And we will also let your staff, your front of house manager or your GM know if there's a bad review. And so it's super powerful. Is it immediate? It's immediate. So the second somebody's in my restaurant, they pay and they leave a three star. I'm going to get a message. I'm going to get like a text message or something that says, you're going to get a push notification on your restaurant manager app, which is going to ask you if you want to be notified. If it's three star, two star, one star, you customize that. And you can immediately go over to table 101 and you're not going to try to scare them. So you're not going to be creepy, but you're going to say, how was your experience? I hope you had a wonderful time. And then it's a perfect opening for them to say, you know, my burger was cold, my side was never. I can catch them before they leave. Exactly. And so not only can you change the sentiment and you really recover a poor experience and make it a great one. And you also avoid that they then go on Yelp or TripAdvisor or Google and leave an awful review.

25:46Because they've already gotten it out of their system. They've gotten it out of their system. And ideally, if you're at an Italian restaurant, maybe you've given them a free tiramisu because you want to make sure they become a loyal customer and a promoter. So restaurant groups that use our review system with their managers are seeing incredible transformation rates of people who used to be frustrated and they become absolute promoters. And so we mentioned earlier, you said, OK, you guys are getting so many more reviews. We're seeing between 5 and 10 times more Google reviews. We opened and talked a little bit about Nashville restaurants. So I'm going to give you an example. ABBA Nashville opened up four weeks ago. They're great Sunday users. Today they have about 400 Google reviews, a 4.9. And frankly, for a new restaurant, that's amazing. And it means we're just, you know, in the end, people are leaving the reviews they want.

26:46The restaurant has to provide a great experience. But we're amplifying reviews and we're giving restaurants faster access to larger review numbers. And that's super powerful. See, this isn't where we started at all. No. See, this is the thing that you said, oh, we help you pay for your bill. And it's like, well, that's not a problem. I mean, it's not how are we solving a solution here? Then we get into all this other stuff and you go, oh, I see where there's value. I see where you're now solving problems. And I'm just seeing at our restaurant, The Grill, I mean, I can see it at Maribor, too. Both the restaurants, how we can make this so seamless. And then after the fact and all of the reporting and the reviews. And I just, I like control. And I like control so much that I'm going to control this ad break. And I want to tell you about Adams Keegan. Adams Keegan is your all-in-one payroll and HR solution. And let me tell you, we're getting into the new year, where holidays are coming up in every year. I know you start the year off and you look back at your year.

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28:54His number is 863-409-9372. And I'm not kidding. He has taken over the city. And the reason why he's able to offer the best deals and the best service is because he writes so many policies. He gets preferred rates and nobody else can write the policies that Matthew Clements does. So give him a call right now. His number again, 863-409-9372. Final one here, guys. I want to talk about Sharpies Bakery. Sharpies Bakery has been a sponsor of this podcast for five years. They are amazing. When I first met Erin Mosso and we talked about what we were doing here on the podcast, she said, I want to support it. I wanted to help local restaurants. That's what we've done for 35 years. They're almost to 40 years now, folks. And I'm telling you, if you're buying frozen bread, it is time to find a fresh bakery like Sharpies Bakery. They're local. They've been delivering every single day to the back door of your restaurant's fresh baked bread.

29:54I use them at both of my restaurants and they are amazing. I get so many compliments about our burger buns, our bread for the table, our ciabatta. Everything is absolutely amazing. And you can go to their website today, sharpiesbakery.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S dot com. If you want to give them a call and you want to come tour their facility and see what they're doing, 615-356-0872. It is time to stop buying frozen bread. Get fresh. It is a better deal. There's no mess. There's no labor delivered to your back door daily. Sharpies Bakery. Well, we started with a B to C problem. We said, how can we make payment delightful in full service restaurants? And suddenly, when we realized we were owning the payment experience, it opens up a whole world of benefits that you can have for the restaurant. Faster table turns, higher reviews, server level data.

30:55You're opening up a new restaurant next week. You've got 20 new staff members. And suddenly, after week two, you know exactly who your top performing staff members are because you're getting statistically significant data on every one of them. It's amazing. And so for an operator, it's super powerful because of the data. And for a marketer, everyone who's paying with Sunday, you're getting their email address, their contact details. They can opt in for marketing. And so suddenly, you have a massive database of information. So those are all spillover benefits that we, frankly, if I'm perfectly transparent, we didn't have in mind when we launched Sunday. But they've become a corridor value prop. So they're helping us grow so quickly. What's next for Sunday? Do you have other things in the pipeline that you're looking to grow that you could spill the beans here? I can tell you what I'm most excited about. You already mentioned it a little bit, Brandon. But when we started, we were full pay at table. What we found is an increasing amount of our partners wanted to be able to reorder.

31:56So imagine you're very much in a full service restaurant. And you gave the scenario earlier. And you're wondering how you can create more upsell at the bar. So I'm having dinner with my husband. I just had a glass of red wine. My entree just arrived. I kind of want a second glass of red wine. But I can't get hold of my server. And so I'm actually going to end up just finishing my meal with that one glass. Now, if I had been able to reorder a second glass of wine, and as you mentioned, it would be back here at my table in less than six minutes, then that's going to increase my check size. Same thing with do I add a dessert? Do I add a coffee? And so a lot of our partners who started just with pay at table are now coming back to us and saying, listen, how do I increase my check size? Can you take it up by 10% by adding a few more items? And that's exactly what we're doing. So it's still a full service experience. But it allows you, the guests, to have more freedom, more choice, more control, and obviously the restaurant to increase revenue.

33:00I think it's like AI learns what you do. And if you're a guest and you scan that thing and it knows who you are, do you have the capability? So guests are going to learn. Guests are going to walk in after they do this experience one time. They're going to come in. They're going to see it. They're going to go, oh, no, this really cool thing they do at the Green Hills Grill is they have this thing where you can scan and you can order your own food or have a server that can sell. I think that the negative connotation behind a QR code is, hey, welcome to Johnny's Grill. There's a QR code. Do it yourself. That's not what we want. No, but I think that the idea of I'm here, I'm your server, I'm taking care of you the whole time, this is a really easy way for you to pay. But you can also view your bill whenever you want to. And you can add to it right there. I do that one time. The next time I come in, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to scan it right away, and I'm going to send my appetizer in if the server takes longer than 60 seconds to get there. I'm going to scan my drinks. I'm just going to start going. Because now I know, oh, this is really cool what they do here.

34:04So this is going to be a learned behavior that people are going to start coming in. So when I do that, when I come in and I just pull up my drinks, is it going to give me suggestions? Is the menu prompts going to say, hey, Brandon, last time you were here, you had a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay. Would you like another one? Do you want to try this one? Do you have a feature tonight? Do you want to try a dessert? Because servers forget to say, do you want Bombay Sapphire? Or do you want House Jen? Servers forget to say, would you like to start off with an appetizer? They just go, oh, what do you guys want to drink? Do you want a Coke product, or do you want water? You click water, does it say, do you want Pellegrino or Panna? What are the little things? Does it give you prompts like that? Can you set that up? Today, no, but you've nailed the vision, Brandon. There's so much you can do with smart menus, suggestions, customer profiles. Right now, we're so busy growing and managing the demand there is for this product in each of our key cities that we haven't yet invested in full capabilities to make the suggestions. But of course, it's on the roadmap, and we're getting more and more questions exactly like the ones you asked.

35:09So especially when you start having a lot of market share in a market, my favorite example is Chicago, where we're, if you're in the River North neighborhood, we're working with all the major restaurants in that neighborhood. Servers know us, guests know us. You can have brunch at a restaurant, drinks at a restaurant, and then breakfast the next day, and use Sunday three times. And so that's when you start having behavior where everyone knows that you like Bombay Sapphire, and you have a gluten allergy. And so suddenly, the offering and the menu is so personalized that you're having a great experience. So that's coming, and I think it's the future of real hospitality. But frankly, it requires enough penetration and enough market share to really take off. Gotcha. I'm just thinking it's so cool if you're using it in multiple different restaurants, and you walk in somewhere else that's based around what you've eaten at other places, here's three menu items we think you'd like. And be like, oh, well, this is easy.

36:10They're telling me, based on what I order at all the other restaurants with Sunday, and then it becomes an everywhere I go. Do you have Sunday? I want to be able to order through this way. And you go somewhere, and they'll hand you a menu, and you're like, what are we doing here? I'm just looking at this, and I'm going to order with you. And I think it completely changes the game. I think five years from now, it's not going to be if restaurants want to use this type of technology. It's when. And that's starting to happen right now. I see it. One thing I didn't tell you about, which is huge, and I think especially for larger restaurant groups, we're seeing how loyalty is growing. And so there's some awesome loyalty players out there. This is a great example. Here at Create, there's a bunch of the key loyalty players here. How do you firepower a loyalty program? How do you make sure that instead of getting 5%, 10%, 15% enrollment, you get 30%, 40%, 50% enrollment? Well, guess what? You connect your loyalty program to a pay-at-table solution.

37:10Suddenly, everyone who's scanning that QR code is seeing your loyalty program. And suddenly, enrollment for new customers is easier, because you're already on your phone. And earn and burn is easier, because guess what? You're getting points if you're paying, because you're already enrolled in the loyalty program. And even better, you're a regular, and it's your birthday night, and you want to use your points or take care of promo, it's ready on your phone. You're not pulling out a gift card. You're not looking for your loyalty number. It's fully seamless. And so that's what gets me super excited, is suddenly you have this whole guest journey ecosystem, which comes to life, because you have so much interaction and so much engagement. So I met you in Orlando. Yes. We're in Nashville. You live in New York now? New York, yes, from Atlanta. Atlanta and Paris. Yes. You've got all of these restaurants working on Sunday. Who do you have in Nashville?

38:12So Nashville, we're just getting started. Oh, so you're brand new here in Nashville. Nobody even knows about Sunday in Nashville. Some people know about us, but we're definitely just kicking it off, which is why I'm excited to be here with you today. Who have we been working with historically? Our first live restaurant in Nashville was Hampton Social Nashville. OK. Perfect use case. You've got groups of bachelorettes coming in, 18 people on the rooftop. They all want to split the bill. It's your server's worst nightmare. And guess what? Now they can use Sunday. They can split 18 ways. They can each pay for their items. Super smooth experience. So first restaurant to be live was Hampton Social. It was a smashing success. And then we've got some local favorites on board. So Pinewood Social, M Street has been a great partner. Some of our local Atlanta and Chicago brands, Castellucci with Iberian Pig uses us. I talked about ABBA earlier from Let Us Entertain You. They've just launched us. And so progressively, we're going to enter the market and grow.

39:15We're about to launch Titan's Press Box at the airport, which is going to be really fun. And you have a very strategic partner here in Nashville, too, right? Absolutely. Strategic has been a great partner and given us a lot of insights on the city. So we're just getting started here. But once it picks up, it's going to be super exciting for visitors to Nashville, but also for locals and for the restaurant community. I will tell you, I was in the meeting yesterday with Amelia and Caroline. And I had Christine, who's our marketing manager. And they're going through all of these things. And I literally texted Max Goldberg in the middle of our conversation. I said, hey, a meeting was Sunday right now. You guys use them at your places. What do you think? I said, what? Give me the real, like, what do you think? And he texted me back and he said, love them. Amazing. Exclamation point. That was his words. I love to hear that. Love them. Amazing. And then I said, I'm playing you in fantasy football this week. We need to make a bet. And he said, yes, we do. And I haven't followed up with him.

40:16So I'm going to go make my bet with him for, because the first game is tonight. Yes, tonight. It kicks off. I think Max is a great example, because we're coming from the restaurant space. We care what restaurants think about us. We try to think like restaurateurs. We consider ourselves restaurant technology by restaurateurs. The fact that we started in a restaurant group and then spun off into a technology company is super powerful in our story. I think that when you have people who I respect as much as Benjamin and Max Goldberg and Josh Hobbiger, and so many really smart restaurateurs are using this product because they see the value in it, it kind of makes me go, why am I not using that product too? Why do I think I'm smarter than them? They're the most successful people in this city. Why do I think that, oh, I don't need that. I've got something. Why would I not want to follow that?

41:18You're going to. There's something that this company really sold them that decided to do it at all their restaurants. Why would I think I know more? I'm not going to do that. Is it really expensive? No. Is it like $1,000 a month to do $10,000? What does it cost to do this thing? So I don't know what my sales team told you, but our classic price is $200 a month per location. And with that, you're getting the whole experience. You're getting the teams that are coming into the restaurant. You're getting all the data. And then the way we make money is, of course, that SAS fee on a monthly basis. And then we use that small digital fee that we're charging the guest to cover our costs. And so it means that we can invest in our tech. We've got 90 engineers now. And we're releasing new products on a weekly basis. Yeah, 90 engineers. What the hell do they do all day? Well, I'll tell you what. Maintaining all those great point-of-sale integrations, building partnerships with the best loyalty programs, the best gift card programs requires a lot of tech.

42:24And frankly, what I found after five years of doing this, if you want it to work well, it has to be impeccable. This product needs to work 99.99% of the time. And so in order to do that, you need phenomenal tech. I love it. So what I'm not hearing is any restaurants out in the suburbs. I'm not hearing East Nashville restaurants. I'm not hearing about local and independent restaurants because they don't know about you. So that's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you on the show today is because there's a lot of local restaurants out there that might not see the value, but also hopefully after this conversation, see that value. Because I would love to experience that when I go out to eat. I think that would be really nice for me. And hopefully, if you're a restaurant owner out there and you're listening to this, and you're like, well, I want to learn more about Sunday, who would I get a hold of? Do you have a website? What is your contact information? So of course, you can find us sundayapp.com.

43:26sundayapp.com. Yes, S-U-N-D-A-Y-A-P-P dot com. So very easy to find us. All the details are there. There's a click to get a visit. And otherwise, we have fantastic sales teams. Our headquarters is in Atlanta, so we have a real focus on the South. And we love working with brands in the South. That's part of our DNA. And you nailed it when you said, why haven't we started working with smaller independents further out of the city center? Well, frankly, growth has been so phenomenal that we haven't been able to keep up. And so we're starting with key cities. We're getting the best groups on board. And then from there, we start expanding. And so that's what we're doing in Atlanta. That's what we're doing in Chicago. And we just haven't hit the pavement yet in Nashville. Which totally makes sense. And I'm just saying, if you're a restaurant owner out there, why haven't you heard of it yet? Because they're not even launched here yet. There's just select people that do.

44:27It's not an indication of whether or not you haven't done your job. This is brand new. It's brand new. Brand new for everybody here in Nashville. And if you want to be one of the first people on this, there's a lot of early adopters out there who are like, hell, that's some pretty cool tech. I want to get involved in that. You could be one of the first. And when it comes to Nashville and this competition of who's got the cool tech, I think there's an idea of we have this really neat thing and people come in and they try this and they go, wow, that's really frictionless. And I really love that. And I love that term frictionless because that's what I think everything should be in a good dining experience. Yes, absolutely. No frictions, just frictionless. This is perfect. And you think about every point that you could create friction. I want to add this. I need another drink. I want whatever. And I'm waiting on a server. I think that this completely smooths all that over and it gives the power back to the guest. You said it. You said it, Brandon. I mean, it's 100% our vision. So I'm glad you've embraced it. And again, I think it's where every restaurant is going, whether it's a Michelin star restaurant or a fast casual or brewery.

45:33It's just a perfect, delightful guest experience. And that's where we start. And I think that the speeding of your restaurant that's on a wait all the time. Yes, of course. Your tables are turning faster. You're turning tables 12 minutes faster. And that adds revenue quickly into the bottom line. Okay, Christine, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for taking the time out of your experience here at Create. We did speed dating, speed networking earlier. And since I did a long networking with you yesterday, you get to do kind of, we did this little one-on-one thing and I like it. It's fun. One of the things we do on this show is we do the Gordon Food Service Final Thought. Okay. Okay. I like to surprise people with this, to put you completely on the spot. So what's gonna happen now is you're gonna take us out. Whatever you wanna say, whatever, as long as you wanna say it, you get the final word of this conversation. Go. All right, my final word is gonna be a question for you, Brandon.

46:33So I'm gonna put you on the spot. Are you ready? What is the best barbecue spot in Nashville that I can go to tonight? Damn, okay, well that changes things. That you can go to tonight? Tonight, yes. I was gonna say Shotgun Willie's. Okay. Shotgun Willie's, but they're only open during the daytime. Okay. So it's a lunch spot. All right, Shotgun Willie's is good to know. Shotgun Willie's is legit. Have you been to Peg Leg Porker? I have not. Or Bringle's Smokin' Oasis? Carey does a great job. And his spot there in the Gulch, it's close to here. He does Tennessee-style barbecue. Okay. So you're not gonna get brisket. And I'm a Georgia gal, so brisket is one of my favorites, but what's Tennessee-style? Tennessee-style is ribs, it's barbecue, it's pork butt, Memphis sushi. He has got a lot of really great things, but it's not a hole in the wall, but it's very, the vibe inside is fantastic.

47:33Whole hog barbecue with brisket, Martin's downtown is really easy to get to. And he does a great job too, but Martin's is kind of big and he's growing huge. And Carey has two locations. He has one in the nations, which is Bringle's Smokin' Oasis, where he does do brisket. Okay. But it's a big, if you wanna watch the football game, it's a big outdoor, really cool spot in the nations. I know exactly what my night's gonna look like. Yeah. So thank you. He's great there, and then like I said, if you wanna do lunch, Shotgun Willie's is like the best. And then I can fly back to New York tomorrow and say I've had the best Nashville barbecue. I also really love Honey Fire, but that's in Bellevue. Honey Fire is another local concept. Shane Nasby stars over here, and it's in Bellevue. There's actually a Honey Fire right in the assembly food hall, to tell you the truth. All right. So there is a Honey Fire downtown, nevermind. All right, I've got all of these. Honey Fire's really good too. Okay. There's some great barbecue here in Nashville. Thanks. And if I'm missing anybody, I'm so sorry. Well, you really gave me a good... Edleys is another one. Yes. There's a lot of barbecue. Yes. They're actually here at the event today.

48:35So that's a good thing. All right. Thank you. Nothing else you wanna say? No other final thought? I can't wait to start seeing Sunday all over the Nashville market. I'm excited. Yes. Neither can the crowd. The crowd is very active today. Do you see this? We have a whole gallery behind us right here. A total gallery. They see I got jokes. I really enjoyed this, Brandon. Thank you for having me on. And thanks for the fantastic welcome in Nashville. Thank you for coming on the show and have a safe flight home. And hopefully we can get some good traction here in Nashville with Sunday. I'm sure we will. All right. Thanks, bye. All right. Thank you so much, Christine De Wendel for joining us from Sunday. Kind of an infomercial. I was sold on it. I loved it. I thought it was great. I thought that there were aspects of Sunday that were really neat. It might take a little while to set it up, but it's inexpensive.

49:37You could save money on credit card fees. Giving control back to the guest a little bit if you're using a toast or somebody like that. One of these cloud-based systems, which I think everybody is now. Definitely interesting. Definitely something I wanted to share with you guys. So you can take it or leave it, whatever it might be. But I wanted to say thank you for listening. We got another episode coming up real soon. I'm just gonna throw it back to back. It is with Margin Edge. And that is a company that is gaining lots of traction all over Nashville. And this is one of those things. If you have a really good accountant that wants to make their life, if you wanna make their life easier and you wanna make your life easier, Margin Edge is really great. Not a sponsor. None of these people are sponsors. Just really cool technology that I like to bring to people. So thank you for listening today. I'm gonna get this out there and hope you guys are being safe. Love you guys. Bye.