Grateful For Tech

At Branded Hospitality Ventures, we have a deep appreciation for our partners, friends, and the food service community.  As we gather this Thanksgiving to feast and share our gratitude, we’d like to highlight some big ways our Branded Portfolio companies are serving up tasty tech, which can improve the customer experience, relieve labor shortages, and feed people in need.

Consumable Customer Feedback

What do you call a restaurant without customers? CLOSED! Successful operators understand the importance of customer feedback, as it is critical for determining a customer’s wants and needs. One of the best and proven ways to attain actionable customer feedback is with the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. The score is gathered through a short, 2-question survey that can tell operators a lot about how their brand is performing. Incorporating NPS into a customer success strategy can help improve consumer experience and drive revenue. In order to retain customers or acquire new ones, customer feedback and engagement tools are essential for every operator’s tech stack.

Ovation was voted the #1 guest feedback platform in a nationwide survey by RestaurantOwner.com. Ovation utilizes a 2-question, SMS-based survey and works both on and off-premise. Through frictionless integrations with online ordering platforms and other methods, Ovation allows restaurants to easily resolve guest concerns in real-time, get more 5-star reviews, discover insights to improve, and thus drive revenue.

Yumpingo is another leader in the customer feedback space. Yumpingo transforms real-time customer satisfaction data into performance insights, quantifying how well hospitality teams are executing against customer expectations, and defining the path to more happy customers.
Yumpingo is proven to increase customer satisfaction. Their dynamic One-Minute Review engages more guests than any other provider. The review gives a voice to 99% of customers who would have otherwise been left unheard, ultimately translating happier and heard customers into scalable growth.

Delicious Data

It’s been said that data drives everything. It’s certainly at the forefront of the restaurant industry today. When it comes to the key to success, data is King.

From personalized marketing and mobile menus to smart kitchens, analyzing and implementing strategies based on data has become necessary to not only survive but thrive in the market . Digesting data has never been easier thanks to companies like Brizo and Ingest.

Ingest is a data management and analytics platform for restaurants and hospitality groups.

By integrating with industry-leading systems and tools, Ingest connects siloed data sources to unlock hard-to-reach metrics, giving decision-makers the real-time insights they need to better run their businesses. Through interactive dashboards, emailed flash reports, and exportable files, everyone in the business can see what’s working, what’s not, and where improvements can be made.

Brizo FoodMetrics is a leader in insights and analytics for food service companies. They provide the strategic data companies need to win in their market. Brizo empowers restaurant vendors and restauranteurs with better data for business intelligence, market research, and competitive analysis. Brizo monitors the online footprint of every food serving establishment in the US and Canada – from social media presence, online reviews, menu items, market composition, and even technological choices.

Plate Worthy POS

Remember when there was just a cash register? And you had to print daily tickets and add the totals together? POS makes it so much easier! A comprehensive POS system can reduce errors, prevent food waste, and minimize wait times while improving customer experience and satisfaction.

GoTab uniquely allows patrons to order and pay through a server (without a smartphone), order and pay directly from their own mobile phones, or blend the two experiences. With its easy-to-use mobile point-of-sale (POS), GoTab allows for contactless ordering, payment features, and kitchen management systems (KMS).

The guest never has to download a mobile app or create a password. Operators get industry-leading features and actionable data, which can be rapidly deployed and adapted to their unique requirements for dramatically reduced costs.

Incentivio is the only digital platform for restaurants that operates across web, mobile and in-store channels. The platform helps restaurants acquire new customers, drive visits and spending, increase loyalty and engagement, reduce cost and drive incremental revenue.

By combining online ordering and white-labeling, restaurant apps with loyalty, gift cards, and machine learning can upsell CDP analytics, a data-driven marketing suite, and guest journey management. Incentivio gives operators a powerful system to build relationships with their guests.

Bite is a  first-party digital ordering technology that elevates hospitality by personalizing each guest interaction. Their tech includes five core products; kiosk, line buster, web, drive-thru, and app development.

Bite use the products and associated feature sets to create an omnichannel guest ordering platform and power business intelligence. They leverage AI and machine learning to power their ‘Bite Lift’ feature set that drives incremental sales. The Bite suite of products produces ROI for operators via labor savings and increases in sales.

Tasty Time Savers

Having the right tech to help with purchasing is a time saver. And, time is money. To keep up in today’s world, advanced purchasing software needs to be employed at every step of the procurement process. The latest tech used in purchasing can greatly improve and even remove supply chain issues.

Cut+Dry is a time-and-cost-saving application. The technology is a first-of-its-kind, unified ordering and payment platform that allows restaurants to order any product from any supplier.

Cut+Dry was created and is led by a team of food service fanatics with decades of experience in hospitality technology, restaurant operations, wholesale food distribution, and food analytics. They was born to solve this problem for restaurants, distributors, and manufacturers in support of the people and places that feed us.

Meez is a culinary technology company built for and designed by professional chefs. The platform transforms recipe content including videos and pictures into an interactive database. Chefs’ use meez to ideate, organize and search, collaborate, share, and execute their visions.

Meez is the all-in-one recipe tool for culinary professionals, centralizing the development process, making menus easier to execute, and offering a universally accessible and editable recipe format. A first-of-its-kind culinary operating system created for chefs by chefs, meez is the epitome of user-friendly, built with operational empathy and ever-evolving product updates via industry feedback.

Galley helps food businesses see the data behind their operations to empower them to make more profitable decisions. Galley connects the dots of food data to create a system of feedback loops that helps operators make better decisions, faster.

MarginEdge is a restaurant management platform that provides real-time food and recipe costs, using POS integration and invoice data. Whether you’re a multi-unit operator or an independent, MarginEdge automates tedious processes, connects systems, and radically streamlines key activities, like inventory, cost-tracking, ordering, and recipes.

Luscious Labor Savers

When it comes to limited supplies these days, nothing compares to the labor shortage crisis. While some processes will never replace people, fortunately, automation is helping to relieve the labor crunch, creating a better workflow for staff. Let’s take a look at how a few of our partners are optimizing cost-effective automation to create solutions with long-term benefits.

Picnic is a pizza system that saves time, money, and labor by streamlining pizza making without compromising quality. The Picnic Pizza System is a modular, easy-to-use, automated pizza assembly system. The system uses your exact recipe to top dough with precise amounts of sauce, cheese, meat, and veggies to create a perfect pizza every time.

PourMyBeer is paving the way in automation with its revolutionary self-pour beverage technology that benefits both the customer and the business operator. Using hardware and software built to last, PourMyBeer is helping business operators worldwide increase sales while decreasing waste and staffing challenges, creating an unforgettable experience for patrons.

Minnow creates contact-free Pick-up Pods, which keep food secure and people safe. Pick-up Pods can be used anywhere that food is delivered or picked up. The Minnow Pick-up Pod enables food service operators and commercial property managers to provide a safer and more convenient food pick-up experience.

Lavit is a revolutionary, globally-patented technology that personalizes the way people drink where they work, shop, and live. Lavit produces on-demand water coolers which offer still or sparking water and 25+ delicious beverages at the touch of a button. The cooler eliminates the need for plastic bottles, cans, or jugs. It uses EcoCaps, which are made from 100% recyclable aluminum.

Cornucopia of Caring

It’s often been said that no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. And caring is the foundation two companies have built their brands around, and the world is a better place for it.

Copia utilizes technology that allows businesses to safely and efficiently donate excess food and ingredients to feed people in need through an easy-to-sign-up platform.

Kimberly Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Copia shares, “It should take no more than three minutes of your team’s time to be able to track your waste for the day, or submit a donation. Our matching algorithm tells us exactly where your donation should go, to the local nonprofit that’s most in need of that food. It not only finds a home but the right one.”

In addition to helping out the community and the environment, operators receive other advantages from Copia as well, including providing the business with audit-proof donation receipts and tax deduction dashboards. Copia helps to reduce waste and carbon emissions while getting perfectly edible food into the bellies of those in need instead of landfills.

Dispatch Goods is another company that’s preventing waste from going into landfills. Dispatch Goods partners with restaurants, businesses, and consumers to provide reusable container options. Their innovative packaging has prevented 1,304,325 single-use items from entering waste streams since 2020!

Thanksgiving may look different than it did a few years ago but  as our industry continues to return to the new normal, now more than ever, we have a lot to be grateful for. From the Branded team to you, we want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!

At Branded, we subscribe to the theory that it takes a village. If you’re interested in exploring investment opportunities with Branded, please contact us directly.