Qu - Restaurants Reinvented - Solomon Choi - Transcript

[00:00:00] Jen Kern: Hello there. This is Jen. Thanks so much for stopping by Restaurants Reinvented. Today's guest is Solomon Choi. He's the founder of 16 Handles, which is a 30-unit froyo chain that started in New York City and it's clearly pushing way beyond the conventional norms and boundaries in that food segment. As you'll hear, Solomon is all about tackling problems and challenges head-on.

[00:00:25] He not only prevailed with a thriving business, which he started in the crazy year, that was 2008, but he was also way ahead of the curve when the pandemic hit in 2020. Today, Solomon, I kicked off the episode by addressing a big point of contention in our industry, and that is the role of POS. I wanted to, in fact, name this episode in true Tina Turner style, What's POS Got To Do With It?

[00:00:53] And well, according to Solomon, POS has pretty much everything to do with restaurant success today. In [00:01:00] fact, he calls it the mothership that connects all the relevant information and data points on your consumer. 

[00:01:22] As you might guess, it was my sheer joy and pleasure talking to Solomon today. He's clearly a leading pioneer in our industry who's re-inventing restaurants for the better and truly helping others do the same. Enjoy the episode. 

[00:01:38] Good afternoon, everyone and welcome back to Restaurants Reinvented. 

and today I'm joined with Solomon Choi, the founder of 16 Handles. 

[00:02:00] the thing that really caught my attention was, when I heard you recently, I think it was the beginning of the summer on a podcast, and someone said, "Solomon, what would you say if you had to give one recommendation to operators, is the most important aspect of the tech stack, the hospitality tech stack today, and where would you recommend they focus?" And, so, you went to answer that question. You started talking about POS and they said, "No, no, no, what? You're not allowed to say POS," and I thought, "Wow, that's interesting." Like, in the [00:03:00] context of that conversation, what has happened, do you think, in the industry that has caused POS to be something that people just don't want to talk about? 

[00:03:10] Solomon Choi: that's a very good question, and certainly one that clearly stirs as some controversy, depending on what line you're standing on. But, you know, for me, and I think it would help, my, my first job out of college was with enterprise rent-A-Car company, and I remember even then, and this was in 2002,

[00:03:25] what you would call their POS was certainly very much an outdated legacy system, right? Cloud base, none of that existed. And, so, you know, it was very much a glorified computer slash calculator, you know, quite simply. Fast forward, I got into the restaurant industry by way of my father, who was a multiunit franchisee of a Japanese buffet franchise,

[00:03:46] and, so, in 2005, when I moved down to San Diego, I'm in a turnaround situation for one of his restaurants, I learned yet another POS, something a little bit better, definitely more modern. It wasn't monochromatic, so that was certainly a step in the right direction. But, over the [00:04:00] years, as I then worked on other restaurant concepts, what I realized is that is the main frame of the business.

[00:04:06] The point-of-sale is really not just where all the transactions are, then, you know, gathered and processed, but the touch points for everybody within the organization comes through, comes through the POS. So, all the data that's going in and all the data that's going out, from a reporting standpoint. Fast forward to 2008

[00:04:25] when I moved to New York City to start 16 Handles, I was with a, another legacy, a point-of-sale provider. I won't name, name the name because I'm no longer with them, but, once again, it was really a lot of the old habits of what I learned in my previous years of hospitality through different systems where I went with kind of the big name, right?

[00:04:44] I'm like, "Well, this is, you know, prevalent," you know, I found a distributor here and I thought, you know, my business today in 2008, is probably not that different than, you know, prior and, so, I'll do that, but how quickly things changed, and I think, really, for me, the turning point was really through the [00:05:00] advent of a lot of digital tools, including that of social media.

[00:05:03] And, I remember even learning from my customers at that time, you know, how to set up a Facebook page and Twitter, and these other handles as well as some of these other third-party solutions that then were impacting my business from a customer optics and engagement standpoint, but I wasn't capturing and funneling any of that information anywhere.

[00:05:22] So, it was all very separate. And, what I quickly realized, and also, starting with a loyalty program that was an old school, it was a stamp card, right? I started with a stamp card, so, very low tech, but something that I realized, you know, guests certainly want it, and there's the value proposition of increasing loyalty and engagement that way,

[00:05:40] but there was, again, no transfer of information. And, so, what I thought was, with my restaurant, the only way that I'm actually capturing this is through this point-of-sale system. And, so, as a result of that, and again, you fast forward now, and it's common place where you don't have an open API integration with, you know, some solution [00:06:00] provider that's helping you do anything from inventory management or back office or labor management, you know, loyalty.

[00:06:05] These things now are really a, you know, a table stakes to have, have a chance at having a successful food service operations, just because the consumer is dynamic. The consumer is omni-channel whether you are prepared to be, or whether you're actually servicing them in that manner today or not, they are, right?

[00:06:22] And, so, a lot of discovery, even for your loyal customers are still happening online, engagement is happening online, even if it's something as simple as looking up, "When does the restaurant open?" Or, if you're a multiunit like we are, "Is there one in this, where's the nearest one to me?" And, gone are the days, for the most part, where they're calling the restaurant, you know, looking up in a directory or Googling the phone number and even within search, you know, part of our tech stack we use, we use Yext,

[00:06:47] and, so, from a directory listings, a directory management, a menu management that then shoots out to these directories, there's just so many different touch points in terms of how to keep the customer engaged with your restaurant and your brand, [00:07:00] that to not think you're on the channel, I think you're, I think you're, operators who are still in that mode are really missing the mark,

[00:07:05] and there's a huge opportunity there. I see all this, because, again, where is all this information being gathered, processed, and shared with some of these other, the digital tools and solutions without that information? And, you have all these silos. 

[00:10:56] But, you know, to say that, that, you [00:11:00] know, that mainframe, that, that hub isn't the most critical part, I think, is missing the mark. I think it absolutely is. And, so, I, for one, am, you know, on, on that side of the line where I think it's absolutely critical, and while the form factor of it may shift and has been evolving, the main purpose of it, I think, in terms of level of importance has gone up significantly.

[00:11:20] It's not just a place where you store your transactions, right? And, I think that's the old school way of looking at it. It's really, there's a lot of information happening in the background that we don't see, but those decisions then are allowing us to make, you know, some call to actions that can improve our business,

[00:11:36] or if we choose to ignore it can be, you know, it can be a negative as well.