00:00.00
vigorbranding
Everyone today I am joineded by my friend Alex Kantor he is the Ceo and cout co-founder of Nextbyte which where you are going to tap into a bunch until then Alex say hello give a little bit of backstory.

00:10.27
Alex Canter
Hey, thanks so much for having me and yeah as mentioned my name is Alex Cantor Ceo and co-founder of nextitee and also fourth generation of cantors delhi in Los Angeles which is one of the largest and oldest restaurants in l la. Started by my great grandfatherfa ninety years ago and just like my father and my grandfather I grew up working in the family business waiting tables at 12 years old working my way up through all the different positions and eventually became in charge of all things new bringing in new technology and proving to my family that. Change can be a good thing I heard a lot growing up if it’s not broken. Don’t fix it but also really enjoyed running around to all these restaurant conferences and signing up for whatever was available really trying to expand the the cantors brand outside of the 4 walls of the restaurant. Reaching customers everywhere wherever they were and experimented a lot with delivery enjoyed enjoyed the ah the benefit of being on all these great revenue streams from uberries to doorda. Ah all these these apps eventually grew delivery for cantors to be over 30% of our revenue which was. Couple million dollars a year just in just in delivery orders and yep, just a little bit and and the staff in the restaurant hated me because I was the one who brought in all this new technology. We had 9 tablets, 2 laptops and a fax machine to manage all of those incoming orders.

01:28.12
vigorbranding
Just a little bit.

01:44.15
Alex Canter
Um, so we ah you know we had ah a bit of an operational nightmare to solve and that’s what prompted me to eventually start a tech company to help restaurants usher them into the new digital age to help them reach these customers outside of their 4 walls through this new manageable software and solution that we built. Sort of partnering with thousands of restaurants and have really evolved the business now to expand our product offerings into into virtual restaurants and all this other crazy stuff which we can get into it a bit but that’s the backstone.

02:13.44
vigorbranding
Yeah I Love that? Yeah, So you know what I love most about that is I think it really is the pathway of the American dream. Its immigrant family sees the opportunity onces a bite of that pun intended of that American dream and then through the generation’s hard work passing down. Um, and I think that’s one of the reasons why I love this Industry. So Absolutely much is your story isn’t the only one and I think it’s It’s such a wonderful path to get ahead. Um, so before we hop fully in let’s sort out some misconceptions from the proverbial Horse’s Mouth. What are the differences between virtual restaurants Ghost Kitchens and dark Kitchens because we hear them tossed around.

02:58.73
Alex Canter
Yes, so these are ah these are new terms to describe restaurants that have no physical storefronts traditionally um, it really started with um with ghost kitchens which are basically warehouses for delivery only restaurants. This is more like in the actual infrastructure like a we work for kitchens in a way where these these large real estate companies and businesses are developing new kitchens that are specifically designed and optimized for for an off-premise business experience. Traditionally there’s lots of little kitchens with a central area where drivers come to interface with ah with with many different restaurants and 1 kind of central hub and then they can pick up orders and deliver them and. People who are placing these orders on Uberris Doordash may not even know that it’s coming from ah from a ghost kitchen or a traditional ah warehouse that that’s designed for this and I think you know ghost kitchen dark kitchen commissary kitchen these are all words that can kind of be used interchangeably there’s there’s. Couple different varieties within that world. But traditionally those words are are used to describe the more traditional real estate approach of like designing these kitchens specifically for this business and there’s this whole other category which I call virtual restaurants which are which is any restaurant that.

04:17.32
vigorbranding
It.

04:26.62
Alex Canter
Only exist online. There’s no physical storefront. However, these virtual restaurants can be operating out of a ghost kitchen or they can be operating out of any restaurant that has excess capacity or the ability to make more food out of their existing operation using their same. Costs that are already there So we at Nextbyte have taken the approach of sort of a new asset light version of of this like what I would call a distributed ghost kitchen model where instead of building New Infrastructure. We look at the 800000 restaurants in the Us and say.

04:55.95
vigorbranding
And.

05:05.19
Alex Canter
We we really don’t need more kitchens at this point we need to make more output out of these underutilized Kitchens that are already that are already out there and if you think about a traditional restaurant whether it’s fine dining or fast casual or Qsr There are ah. These kitchens are are typically operating at what I would say 30 to 50% output like they could really crank out more food because there’s slow times of the day slow days of the week and these are fixed cost businesses. The rent is fixed. The lights are already on the staff is already in the kitchen. Whether you’re cooking food for 1 brand or multiple brands so we are in the business of creating these new virtual restaurants through somewhat of a licensing model where we’re partnering with existing kitchens teaching them. To carry new ingredients make food a certain way and and essentially put a new sticker on the back going out the door so that when a driver comes to pick it up. They can they can go drive it to whoever ordered the food and we can now turn 1 restaurant into multiple virtual restaurants as well and and that’s a. Ah, newer approach. We’re not in the business of renting kitchens or cooking food ourselves but rather creating new brands that are specifically optimized for for the delivery only world and then partnering with restaurants that turn it on.

06:21.33
vigorbranding
Yeah, love that and and I think it’s easy to see the benefit from the restaurant here. Standpoint um, you know take the big brands out of it. Let’s just take the mama pop on the corner. Um, you know my my max hours are from you know 11 a m to five zero p m maybe well. I’m still paying rent and utilities for the other remaining you know 18 hours or whatever and so why not add breakfast but I think what happens is some brands try to do that some companies or or restaurants try to do that and they end up spreading themselves so thin because. Especially with the competition you mentioned 800000 plus restaurants in the us I have the place for my breakfast burrito and it ain’t yours. However, you know I’m never going to know your brand for that. But I will know this other brand and if you can adopt that then you actually do open up the opportunity to incrementally increase your revenue. And then maximize optimize the space that you already are paying for so. The the attraction is there and and I think it makes a lot of sense. Um, what have been some of those hurdles though to create a brand um a virtual brand and. Yeah, it’s more obviously it’s more than just a name and a logo and ah and a menu. How how do you operationalize it so someone can quickly learn integrate and operate.

07:43.36
Alex Canter
Yeah, so such a good question so rewinding back to 2018 where this all kind of started in our in our world. We did a lot of experimentation and the first virtual restaurant I actually ever launched was out of cantor’s deli. It was a grilled cheese brand that I made up from scratch basically looked at you know what? our cantors menu has low food costs. It’s easy to reproduce and what do we want to sell more of so grilled cheese sandwiches kind of roseast at the top because it’s really cheap food costs.

08:13.70
vigorbranding
Me.

08:20.64
Alex Canter
Ah, maybe one or two dollars to make a grilled cheese sandwich you can sell it for ten bucks so 10 to 20% food costs and um and and we we will never run out of cheese and bread. Those are things we have unlimited of essentially so um I sput up this menu created a logo in 5 minutes and put it on door dash uber eats grov hub postmates, etc and without doing really any marketing I didn’t even create a website or an Instagram for this brand. It started performing at a very high volume. It was very surprising to see how quickly people were. We’re just ordering this grill cheese concept doing ah it added approximately a quarter million dollars in incremental growth sales to to my family’s business in that first year without without even touching it. However, um, gone are those days.

09:12.30
vigorbranding
So great.

09:13.78
Alex Canter
You no longer just put a brand online and expect it to to perform it’s it’s really important that you’re optimizing the menu for what consumers crave and and filling demand gaps and in certain geographies and the hours are critically important one one of the benefits of. Canner’s is it was a twenty four seven operation so if you opened up uber eats in west hollywood at 3 in the morning there might only be 3 or 4 options of restaurants to order from so grilled cheese. You know, grilled cheese was one of those options we were getting a ton of orders in the middle of the night and um. And and really, what’s happened now is like every restaurant has gone online. That’s what the pandemic forced was basically every remaining brick and mortar restaurant business that hadn’t yet moved online moved online and every restaurant started to realize like they could be doing more out of their current operation. So we saw. A ton of restaurants experimenting with their own virtual brands trying to launch you know, new concepts and menus. So it became a very crowded space where you need a very very strategic plan to drive demand and consumer awareness and um and when we create brands with nextbyte. Ah, we now have 20 brands in our portfolio of concepts some of them are designed to your point for breakfast burritos. Some of them are for late night like our stoner brand that we did with ah in partnership with Wiz Khalifa we created a brand together called hotbox by Wiz Khalifa which is kind of a munchy menu things like. Mac Mac and cheese bites covered in hot cheeto dust just really fun food and um, um, we’re going around partnering with restaurants training them make make the food this way and you can turn this brand on put the sticker on the bag.

10:51.29
vigorbranding
Delicious.

11:03.13
Alex Canter
And not all of our brands that we’ve launched have been Successful. We’ve had to really experiment and understand what works in an online environment. There’s a lot of um experimentation that has to happen just from a brand Dev and and creation side like um. We Yeah, we test everything under different names and with different pictures to to see what works and what doesn’t work and then when we launch it across the Us We got to find really high quality partners to to work with to to turn this on and then of course the marketing strategy is a huge component to this. So.

11:35.16
vigorbranding
Right.

11:37.51
Alex Canter
Not only are we marketing within these delivery apps on behalf of these restaurants but we’re also doing a lot of work to build consumer awareness and social media following outside of the the third party delivery apps themselves. So there’s ah, there’s a big holistic strategy around this. But what’s really interesting to me. Is that we have a chance to build specifically brands that are designed for delivery from scratch versus a brick and mortar restaurant that is taking their existing in-person experience and trying to convert that to be online when you’re taking cantors and putting the menu on door dash. People are expecting you to have milkshakes and breakfast and french friends and all this stuff that they’re used to ordering in the restaurant but some of that stuff is not optimized or designed for for an off-premise experience the most extreme example would be like a steakhouse.

12:28.58
vigorbranding
Okay.

12:31.59
Alex Canter
Trying to put a mediummerre steak on a delivery menu is like you know, not a recipe for success but we have a chance to build these brands with with the arrival experience as the the first priority so we can actually remove french fries from our menu from the beginning and put. Tater tots instead which even if being driven around for an hour it might not be hot when it arrives but it will be crispy. You know there. There are all these strategic things that we can do to to really optimize for that delivery first experience which I think separates our approach from. You know what’s what’s what’s out there right now which is like how do we take? what we already have and and make it work online.

13:12.38
vigorbranding
Yeah, so what’s interesting. You kind of lightly touched on this on Maybe maybe you didn’t know you were going to but um, unbeknownst to you because of this just like with regular capitalistic scenarios. When 1 thing rises. A lot of other things around it also rise like the the need creates need and so packaging men I think that’s the biggest thing is you know we’ve been in this world of foam clam shells forever and you you mentioned the frenchry scenario the like there’s nothing worse than getting limp wet french fries. When what you wanted was maybe not necessarily crispy but like that nice crunch that nice soft interior yada yada so um, what are you seeing if anything as far as innovations in the packaging space because of this off-prem revolution. Do we want to call it that. Uprising I don’t know one of those? Yeah yeah.

14:05.62
Alex Canter
Ah, more like reality like it’s just like how things have evolved like the way that we talk about that actually is like the we’re helping restaurants meet consumers wherever they are and right now it’s like. More digitally than ever before we’re we’re calling this the e-commerce phase of restaurants because people are are now shopping online for food from restaurants. They used to. You know if you if you go back? 20 years there were all these brick and mortar retail businesses and then the internet happened and everyone wanted to shop online from the. The brands that they love everyone who had a jewelry business or a clothing store eventually had an online presence and and then what happened was when people were used to shopping online. It. It opened up this new opportunity for brands to emerge. Only existed online ecommerce brands and a lot of these ecommerce brands would digitally market to you or you know find a way to get in front of you through through ads or however people are scrolling through Instagram you see a pair of shoes now and. You order it and you don’t even question like is this a physical store where is this coming from it just shows up and it arrives and the same thing is happening in food right now where twenty years ago the consumer the only way to interact with the restaurant was to drive to it and walk in or go through the drive-through. And now people are opening up uber eats when they’re hungry scrolling through brands clicking on ordering it. It comes to them and the same things that are important in the e-commerce world like reviews and ratings and and pictures and how fast the products going to arrive to you and the shipping price and all that stuff. All of those things apply here in this in this digital restaurant ordering world and I know your question was more focused on packaging. But if you think about this new experience and this new consumer. It means that the packaging has to be. Specifically designed for this new arrival experience because it’s not about how does the food leave the restaurant. It’s how does the food arrive to your door 20 minutes later and and I think the more thoughtful restaurant owners can be about that the more um, the better they will be at at making this.

16:09.72
vigorbranding
Um, you know.

16:16.54
vigorbranding
Um, right.

16:27.40
Alex Canter
Work like 1 of the early experiments that I did with cantors was I would package up like 10 to 20 items at a time from the restaurant as if I were setting them out for it to go order I would drive around the block for about fifteen twenty minutes and then open everything up and check the temperatures and see like. You know, did the potato paniccake stay crispy and and I found like I had to like poke holes in the bag or you know use foil but not close it all the way because if you if you do like it will get soggy like there are all these little experiments that I had to run to even understand like what to.

16:46.81
vigorbranding
Um, 50 And.

17:04.80
Alex Canter
How to package this stuff correctly and what to remove from the menu completely as well. You know we wanted to do milkshakes to go because people love milkshakes. But we we found consistently that there was no way for us to successfully do that in a way without buying like really expensive packaging to keep.

17:21.67
vigorbranding
Right.

17:24.37
Alex Canter
Milkshake like we’d almost have to like send it in like a thermos to to keep the intent of what it is otherwise it arrives melted or it’s not a great experience for anyone and then customers are requesting partial refunds and and then we’re having to like you know, pay that out from our pocket and also pay for the food cost that went out the door. So. Decided like let’s let’s really dig into the analytics on the uber eats dashboard on the door dash dashboard um to understand like what’s working what’s not working you know Philly cheeseteak sandwiches were something that consistently had negative reviews when people would order it. Were consistently saying it showed up the cheese was hard. It was cold like you know it wasn’t good so instead of trying to yeah instead of trying to make it and it’s not even a popular item really for us. We just had it on the canners menu but instead of trying to make it work and find the right packaging. We just decided to remove it from the menu entirely.

18:06.13
vigorbranding
I’m sure the bond was just soaped you know, like with the with the Jew right.

18:20.16
Alex Canter
Like let’s just let’s just not set people up for failure focus on the things that do work online and and narrow the scope of the menu to to accommodate that. So I think it’s a combination of um, revising and tailoring the menu with the delivery optimize experience and then also.

18:21.89
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah.

18:39.78
Alex Canter
Really leaning into like what is the best in-class packaging and the technology that’s coming in packaging. There’s like certain French fries now that are like coated in like a specific like new technology that like keeps the fries hot and crisper for longer I think.

18:52.79
vigorbranding
Um, a.

18:57.81
Alex Canter
Wendy’s has like a commercial about it. But um.

18:58.29
vigorbranding
Yeah, isn’t isn’t that like the basis of the job of Chevy Chase in Christmas vacation if you’ve ever seen it like he created the new spray to keep the corn flake crispier longer in the milk.

19:12.47
Alex Canter
I’m I’m not familiar with that. But but that’s that’s that’s a good example like we we have to really lean into like what’s available and like what how can we tailor this experience. Ah and it also goes to food costs as well. A lot of people are like I can’t make my my menu work. On a third party delivery app that’s taking 25 to 30% of every order, but but I always ask the question to restaurants like what can you sell at 25 to 30% take rate like what can you remove from your menu so that you’re only selling things that are lower food costs or how can you add.

19:31.40
vigorbranding
You get.

19:46.51
Alex Canter
A dollar to the price of your burger to somewhat makeup for for that. Ah, that cost because now the online ordering platforms will actually let you have higher prices online than you do in store and that’s been a really helpful way for restaurants to be able to absorb some of those ah some of those extra fees.

19:56.58
vigorbranding
In here.

20:03.22
vigorbranding
Um, yeah.

20:04.78
Alex Canter
Um, so there’s there’s a lot that can be done to make to make your menu work online. You just have to lean into like the very concrete details and and go deep with it.

20:12.97
vigorbranding
Yeah I mean I think the the pack iaging industry should be hearing the the cries for help. At this point you know because if you’re if you’re physical I’ve seen the holes physically poked into the styrofoam clamshell. Um, and for the longest time there. There has been. An ongoing issue with cold drinks before delivery. So we’ve worked with a number of brands where they have talked about green initiatives I’m like that’s cute. You have Styrofom Cups and they’re immediately like we can’t change that because we sell a slushy like drink any other cup. Thing melts in minutes. You know so like to start from insulates it.

20:49.33
Alex Canter
Yeah, and and and and there’s a lot of states that are like banning styrofoam and like plastic bags and pushing the the needle forward with like you have to figure out different ways to to keep this stuff. Warm or cold or however, it’s intended and like it’s it’s hard like even even within the same order. Sometimes there are things that are intended to be hot and things are intended to be cold like a salad you want to keep it as cold as you can, but it might be next to a warm burrito that is like sitting on top of it and like.

21:23.12
vigorbranding
Um, right.

21:27.95
Alex Canter
Salads making the burrito cold the burritos making the salad warm and that’s not ideal so you got to like really be thoughtful around like not just like the packaging itself. But how you’re loading up the bags I’ve seen like Starbucks has has really pushed the ball forward with like innovation on like putting dividers within the bag so that like. You can put you know a couple drinks and some like warm breakfast items next to each other without them interacting with each other and like you know that level of of thoughtfulness is really important today.

21:54.98
vigorbranding
Yeah I Wonder how long it’s going to be and maybe you have some ears on the ground but there needs to be some sort of ah product mechanism machine. Whatever you want to call it that can be inserted into these delivery drivers vehicles or trunks or back Seats. Actually has a compartment for cooling a compartment for heating ah to just keep things alive longer especially because this is no longer a um, a flash in the Pan. It’s here. This is how things are now like you said it’s a reality that behavior has changed.

22:28.77
Alex Canter
Yes, convenience convenience is not a trend. It’s not something that’s like here for a year. It’s like people are learning how easy this is and and becoming more frequent users of it from all age groups too like pre covid.

22:30.89
vigorbranding
It’s not going to change. It has changed so.

22:43.27
vigorbranding
Um, yeah.

22:46.65
Alex Canter
The the ordering demographic on these platforms was like 18 to 35 years old call. It was like the bulk of the orders that were happening now like my grandpa who’s in his eighty s has the dash pass. He’s ordering from his favorite restaurants multiple times a week because he can’t go anywhere and he’s scared to.

22:57.59
vigorbranding
Um, a.

23:05.19
Alex Canter
You know, put himself at risk of of going to pick up food from a restaurant so you know I never thought he would be leaning into this but he’s now a power user and you know a very frequent order order and that’s that’s not going to go away like now that he understands how to push a button and have his favorite restaurants brought to him.

23:07.17
vigorbranding
Right.

23:24.72
Alex Canter
He’s like I’m going to use this forever like you know until until I can’t but ah, it’s like you know this is um this is not a trend. It’s not a short-term situation. In fact, what we thought was going to happen from a digital ordering perspective over the next ten years basically happened in a matter of months because of code.

23:40.67
vigorbranding
A.

23:43.16
Alex Canter
Just accelerated everything that we anticipated was coming just happened in hyper speed.

23:47.59
vigorbranding
Yeah, it’s funny. One of the talks I gave back in 2019 was about the future of restaurants and what you just said was sort of what I was saying which is like hey it’s not going to be next year it’s probably not gonna be the year’re after but look it’s coming like people are going to lean like brands are going to lean more into kiosk ordering reducing the the stress of labor. Costs and and everything involved with that and then the pandemic happened and I was like oh man I was really right? I just did not expect the pandemic to happen. Um, so getting back to to nextbyte and just virtual restaurants in general Where do you think operators are going wrong with activating and marketing. Virtual brands.

24:28.70
Alex Canter
Well I think particularly for mom and pop businesses. They don’t have digital marketing teams or big digital marketing budgets. So I think there’s this expectation of like oh I’m just going to like. Pick an item on my menu. You know make it into like a different menu and hopefully it will work and then they they upload it and they’re disappointed when they’re only getting like an order a week or a couple orders a day because it’s not. You know it’s not that easy anymore back a couple years ago that was like the recipe for success but but that’s.

24:51.74
vigorbranding
And out the head.

25:03.71
Alex Canter
That that window has passed and now um, you know it is really difficult to get this stuff right? There’s a ton of data that we look at from what’s performing well in which market to what time of day. What’s happening internationally what are people searching for what sauces are are blowing up right now.

25:20.59
vigorbranding
A.

25:22.56
Alex Canter
And information is spreading faster than ever right now because of things like Tiktok where you know traditionally like if there’s a exotic new international cuisine. That’s like becoming popular in La or New York it usually takes a couple of years for that to spread into Middle America in the south. Um, but now like the way that information spreads like every single person in every college campus market now knows what boba is for example, like you know because these things can can move so quickly and like people are watching videos and and information is spreading faster than ever. So there’s there’s really.

25:48.64
vigorbranding
Um, all right.

26:00.23
Alex Canter
Incredible opportunity to like get on board with what’s coming next faster than ever before like instead of opening a physical restaurant to sell this food. You can now launch virtual brands within within your existing restaurant in a matter of weeks without without spending. Hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating or building a kitchen or buying equipment. Um to do that. So um I think you know it starts with the with the concept development itself and and picking the right stuff to sell and then once you nail that down. There’s a lot of strategies to promote and market it one one thing that we’ve found effective with with what we’re doing is is um, partnering with influencers to leverage their built-in audience I mentioned the halbox by Wiz Khalifa you know that was a stoner brand that we brought to life.

26:42.64
vigorbranding
Um, it.

26:50.41
Alex Canter
And immediately you know Wiz Khalifa is posting this to his 35000000 instagram followers driving massive awareness overnight like we had I think on the first day we had something like 20 or thirty thousand instagram followers just from just from his post because he’s driving all this ah all this.

27:04.37
vigorbranding
Um, yeah, well.

27:08.89
Alex Canter
His he’s influencing his built-in audience to go try this new thing you open up uberites. You see this new brand with his face on it and it’s like well I want to try this new concept that sounds crazy. So I think leaning into all the things at work in marketing and other industries like partnering with influencers.

27:16.85
vigorbranding
Um, right.

27:28.22
Alex Canter
Digital marketing even like direct Mailers Tv Campaigns. We’ve done billboards for our brands and in certain markets to test that out. It’s really an Omni channel approach. You have to measure all the different. Um. Return on investments on on the different channels and lean into the ones that are working better than others and and it’s It’s constantly evolving. There’s new platforms opening every day Tiktok is is a channel that cannot be ignored at this point. So So there’s a lot to lean into there.

27:59.27
vigorbranding
Yeah, and and it it starts to turn into a content ask too which is a very heavy lift for a lot of restaurants out there. But like you said that the influencer thing does have a lot of merit still especially with more micro influencers I mean obviously Wiz Khalifa is whi Khalifa but um. You know when you start to get onto that more granular level. Let’s to say here in Atlanta or even you know Memphis Tennessee um, you might get more traction with a person who is our influencer of that area or region as opposed to more of a macro level influencer as well and that’s that’s a interesting nut to crack. So. But let’s talk convergence a little bit here so you mentioned earlier on when you were starting this ah with cancers one of the biggest gripes that I hear from restaurants here is in operations individuals is this bank of tablets you know I think you mentioned you had like 9 tablets and a fax machine and yada yada. Um, they’re an eyesore and it actually hurts speed of service. So how is nextbyte adding to that or helping re relief relieve. It.

29:01.11
Alex Canter
Yes, so before we we rebranded the company to be called next byte at the end of last year we were actually called the order Mark for the first four and a half years of the business and our our original product that we brought to market in 172 was an aggregation software that consolidates all of those incoming ordering streams into a single device for the kitchen to make it. You know, very manageable to be on on many different services at once that meant you know one reporting system 1 menu to make updates to. 1 dashboard to go to to pause service across all the different platforms. So we we started by creating this software that that pulls all these systems into one and and we we partnered with thousands of restaurants from mom andpot businesses to large chains. Everything in between to to bring that to life. And through that process we realized like now that we’re aggregating all these different order incoming ordering streams we can take it even 1 step further by layering extra menus or extra brands on top of these businesses all through that same device that’s already in their kitchen. So many of the restaurants that we were partnering with had. Capacity and and and the ability to make an extra ten twenty thirty orders a day. So why not create these turnkey brands through nextbyte and originally we launched nextbyte as ah as an as a natural expansion and evolution of our product and it became. The most important thing that we could be doing for restaurants right now which is literally driving extra orders into their kitchen and so we we rebranded the whole business at the end of Twenty Twenty or sorry end of 2021 can recall next fight I forget time isrrelevant and and.

30:43.36
vigorbranding
Um, where we’re we’re all on the same boat I’m pretty sure it’s still 2020

30:52.58
Alex Canter
And and we still have um one of our products that we offer 2 restaurants is still the ordermark aggregation software which we have hundreds of restaurants each month signing up just to just to simplify and manage all their delivery apps and in one single interface. Then of course they have the ability from there to layer on these incremental brands that we create for them.

31:12.27
vigorbranding
Yeah that’s amazing. You know it’s it’s interesting to hear this you know I’m involved with a lot of tech startups and and kind of keep my finger on the pulse as well. Convergence has to happen even beyond what you’ve done I mean. There’s so many components to the tech stack for restaurants now when it’s only growing more and more and more um and I think what what we’re going to start to see is it’s going to start to spawn labor I hate to use that word because it it actually demeans what people really are but humans that are more than just button pushers. That they actually fully know the restaurant tech stack from you know, virtual kitchen interfaces through online ordering through po like you know the list goes on and even into the marketing systems and how they are all starting to become interconnected either via Api integration or. Quite honestly like bigger companies gobbling up or a company such as yourself starting with 1 thing but then adding on ancillary symbiotic things. It’s going to be quite an amazing thing to see ah in your opinion. What is the future of virtual restaurants ghost kitchens. What’s on that horizon and then of course, what’s the future for nextbyte if. You’re willing to dip the cards a little bit and show a little bit of your hand.

32:27.77
Alex Canter
Sure. Yeah, so you know we were’re constantly innovating as an organization to figure out what products services tools we can build to help restaurants reach customers outside of their 4 walls and. You know, creating these brands for them. We’re continuing to understand what works what doesn’t work. How can we drive even more orders into these businesses. How can we increase basket size all all of these things are critically important for the restaurants that we’re partnering with and our north star metric as as an organization is really how do we drive. Millions of orders into underutilized kitchens. That’s that’s really what we’re all about our business model is set up that way where we’re not making money if our restaurants aren’t making money and um and and really we believe that the next chipotle the next sweet green the next biggest brand. For the restaurant community will be restaurants that are specifically designed and optimized for an off-premise delivery experience. We’re building that future. We. We believe that some of the brands that we’re going to be building will be in thousands of locations across yeah the us and. Eventually internationally as well to to really enable and empower restaurants to do more with with that. Ah with that fixed cost the labor that they have so that’s that’s what we’re laser focuseded on right now you know our our team is is. I think what really motivates our team is hearing these stories from restaurants of like you guys are keeping my doors open. You guys are keeping my staff employed like we are. We are not in the business of competing with restaurants in any way shape or performance. It’s only driving orders into these into these kitchens and I think that’s you know, unique approach that we’ve. We’ve found in this in this very messy, complicated space and a lot of these ghost kitchen businesses that are like you know in the business of of building new kitchen space in real estate like they’re taking orders away from restaurants. So like that’s philosophically very different from ah from what we’re doing here.

34:27.37
vigorbranding
Um.

34:33.84
Alex Canter
And I think that’s that’s going to be a key difference as we’re as we as we continue to scale and continue to expand our team. We’ve grown last year we grew from 90 employees to over 350 employees in the company and it’s been just incredible to watch the amount of um.

34:45.84
vigorbranding
It’s awful.

34:51.26
Alex Canter
Impact that we can make in this industry creating ah a more sustainable and profitable model for for restaurants to be successful. It’s a really hard industry at my heart is always with the restaurants that are navigating this this crazy storm that we’re in right now. It’s been a devastating year for. Devastating 2 years for for the industry and it’s great to be a part of the the solution like we’re not going into restaurants and charging them to use software. We’re paying them to make food for us and that’s that’s ah, that’s a big difference.

35:18.41
vigorbranding
Yeah that’s that’s certainly a huge difference and and quite an amazing one. So this might be the toughest question of the entire session here. But if you had 1 final meal on this plane of existence. What would it be where where would you eat it? What what does that look like.

35:39.79
Alex Canter
Um, ah that is such a tough question I’m a huge foodie I love restaurants I love dining out. Um and I would have to I’d have to do sushi. It’s just number one and in my heart. And I’ve only been to Japan once but it would definitely be somewhere somewhere in Japan in some dark corner of an alley like with ah you know an ah eightseater sushi chef just feeding me whatever whatever’s on the menu. So.

36:13.65
vigorbranding
I love it. Yeah fantastic. Well Alex um, how can people find you and next by and connect with you where did they go.

36:16.33
Alex Canter
That’s that’s definitely my my my final death row meal.

36:23.72
Alex Canter
Yeah, you can you can hit us up just go to Nextbyte Io or you can look up any of the social channels as well look up next bite and you’ll find us there. So.

36:35.42
vigorbranding
Brilliant. Well this has been awesome. Thanks for taking the time out of your day and shedding a lot of light and insights man. It’s it’s been wonderful I appreciate it.

36:42.29
Alex Canter
Um, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, great, great conversation.