The Critical Role of Perseverance in Entrepreneurship

• 40:36
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
perseverance in entrepreneurship, online ordering, point of sale, Papa John’s, Humana, Easy Chow, kiosk ordering, COVID impact, digital channels, payment monetization, AI in restaurants, conversational ordering, drone delivery, dynamic pricing, labor cost savings
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Mo Sloan

Damon Pistulka 00:08
All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon Pistulka, and I am so excited today because we have none other than Mo, Sloan from easy Chow with us today, and we are going to be talking about the critical role of perseverance and entrepreneurship. Mo, thanks for being here today.

Mo Sloan 00:34
Thank you. I’m super excited about being here. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, it’s going

Damon Pistulka 00:39
to be fun. It’s going to be fun because you, my friend, have lived this, you’ve lived this, and we’re going to get into that with easy Chow. You’ve got a an incredible background prior to that, and and then I think that really helps you to, you know, launch easy Chow and take it to where it’s at today, but let’s start like we always do. Mo, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to easy Chow.

Mo Sloan 01:11
Yeah. Well, thank you. So it’s kind of funny, because even I’ve been coding and developing computer program since I was a kid born in the late 70s. Definitely a product of the 80s. My first computer was a Commodore VIC 20, and actually random, what was called a bulletin board system. BBs, yeah, back in, back in the day, back in the War Games Day, Matthew Broderick days, etc. But anyway, nonetheless, I always had an affinity for business systems and helping people solve problems. So I spent several years at Papa John’s as an architect there, where I got to work firsthand on their online ordering system, their point of sale rewrite, their coupon management system, what they call virtual back office, which was their back office, operational management system and reporting system, etc. So I gotta see firsthand how technology benefited a restaurant or especially something some an entity like Papa John’s. And so when I left Papa John’s and went to Humana, it was a totally different line of business. You go from food service, restaurant, hospitality, to over to health insurance, specifically pharmacy. And while at Humana, I got I just my role wasn’t as much hands on coding and developing as I wanted at the time. So I just kind of would tinker. So I went back to the original idea that I had in probably the late 90s, you know, around access databases, Microsoft Access databases, and point of sales and everything specific for pizza places. But nonetheless, I reached out to a local pizza here in Louisville, Kentucky. Was like, Hey, I like your pizza, but you don’t have online ordering, you know? Why is that? And this was 2050 this was 2014 ish that I did that, and they were like, We want online ordering, but we needed integrated with our point of sale. And I knew exactly what they meant by that and why that was important. Because, as I mentioned, I spent several years at Papa John’s, so it was just, it was just this opportunity where I saw, I recognized the problem. This is, you know, nine years ago, and it might have, might as well be 20, the way it feels. But I recognize the problem that restaurants would need to go to. Some restaurants would need online ordering, and therefore was like, why can’t I develop a solution that provides restaurants the ability to do online orders, specifically targeting the segment of the market, SMBs, where they don’t have the resources, such as a Papa John’s, etcetera. Yeah, that’s how easy child got started. Yeah.

Damon Pistulka 03:46
So when, when you are at Papa John’s, are you part of that? I mean, was that during the time when they were really developing out the online ordering a lot?

Mo Sloan 03:56
Yeah, so when I was at Papa John’s, it was towards, it was really when pizza places had the online order. And that was, really, was just bloating right in and I left Papa John’s in 2013 so I was there for about 36 years, 2007 2013 and I got to see, you know, them, rewrite the online ordering system. And I got to participate in that. And was one of the developers or architects on that, as well as got to deal with their virtual back office. Also got to work with some of their point of sale rewrite. They were, they were going to proprietary point of sale. They were developing in house. So I got to see a lot of their technology. But, but in those early days, like I said, it seems like it’s, it’s the Flintstones. Now, yeah, those early days, it was lot of restaurants and that technology wasn’t easily accessible. Yes, it is today with the cloud based POS systems, etc. So

Damon Pistulka 04:49
yes, yes. So when, when you first thought of easy Chow, you. You, I mean, because it’s different even from Papa John’s, because Papa John’s talking about online ordering, and yes, easy Chow initially started out, but you you’ve expanded easy challenge, and now kiosks and other things like that as well. Did you really think that easy child was going to go into this multi format kind of thing, where you can have an in store, kiosk, online ordering all that. Yeah,

Mo Sloan 05:27
the original plan, and we still have, we call them digital ordering channels, right? So we focus the it was simply online ordering was the easiest entry point into the into the space from ordering perspective. And so, because it didn’t require hardware, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So we always planned on expanding COVID In the Great, the late, the labor event that was a result of COVID, you know, where people were basically doing, like quiet quitting and those kind of things. And the people that were in the restaurant, the restaurant food and hospitality industry, a lot of them, they go back, especially in the QSR and fast casual area. So it led to the to the to the need. It sped the necessity up for a kiosk in the ability to sell for is not anything new, banks and guests gas pumps, so I guess we’re technically the first ones to do it, yeah, you know, ATMs and grocery stores and now, you know, now it expands into restaurants and specifically qsrs And fast casuals,

Damon Pistulka 06:41
yeah, yeah. So let’s take a step back. When you started easy Chow, you started thinking about it, you know, and we talked about it here before we got on your venture back company. Now, you know, it takes money in the tech industry to be able to grow a company. What are some of the things that you didn’t know at the beginning that you go? I would do it a little bit differently, knowing what we have to do now. Yeah,

Mo Sloan 07:11
well, I’m gonna give a shout out to a website that is very that’s been very helpful for me and answering that question, and it’s reforming retail.com I’ve been trying to get whoever the webmaster is. I’ve been trying to get them to give me a shout, because they’re very knowledgeable about the retail, restaurant order payment space. So to answer your question, payments, right? This a lot of when I first started this because of my purview from Papa John’s, I was focused on, okay, but pre COVID, maybe seven to 8% of restaurants volume was online orders, right? Mm, hmm. So you know, it wasn’t a true it wasn’t the Hall of shebang. So it from our perspective, it was always about making sure that order could get into that POS in the most efficient way possible, and so we and so my perspective of working at Papa John’s, where I got that, was the number one thing is about efficiency, right? We’re trying to maximize margins, yeah, and whatnot. So that’s how I took the development of the system, was to focus on the ordering aspect. Well, it really unbeknownst to me, in the way that software and specifically the restaurant and the food tech sector has has changed, especially from when I got started to now, no longer do you see the legacy based point of sales, which are with a client server architecture, where you have a desktop running and then you have these big terminals that connect and blah, blah. Now you it’s either iPad or Android based POS system. So mobile based POS systems running off of mobile operating systems. And so therefore lot of the features have gotten better, quicker to develop, etc, but the cost had, the amount you can charge a customer, the price you can charge a customer, has gone down because that the perceived value is, even though there might be, you know, people can’t. It’s different than buying cars. You can tell the difference between a Ferrari and and a Honda, right? You can’t tell the difference between a Ferrari salt written software and a Honda written software. Oh, yeah, other than you can’t on the surface. Other than once you use it, you’re like, Man, this you can tell like, you get a lot of bugs, etc, etc, set up. And so what, what’s happened, unfortunately, is that a lot of operators have devalued their software, right? They they think that if they get orders from DoorDash. Or GrubHub, or they put up a website, or they, they they got a Facebook page, or they send emails out. They send texts out. Or, you know, they, you know, they think they, if they touch on some of the one or some of these components that they that they’ve done something for lack of better term, and really, they have it and so, but it’s the, it’s what it’s the whole technical, technical ecosystem, and understanding that the value that it brings to a merchant right, understanding that, hey, you’re getting your not only your you’re getting your orders in and because they’re coming in the digital manner, there are 99.9% correct, because it’s based upon what the customer you know, everything lines up, it’s efficient for your operations, and therefore that software is of value. Now, all I’m saying is that it goes back to what the question that you asked, What? What? What do I wish I knew then that I know now, and that’s unfortunately, that the only way to be successful in this space, from a business perspective, because, because not talking about our mission is to help Joe, Joe pizza, sell as many pizzas as he can at his restaurant, his pizzeria, so that he can open up another store, open up another store. We believe in the American dream, and that’s our mission. From us, from from a social perspective, yeah, but, but from a business perspective, it’s obviously to make money. And unfortunately, the only way that software companies that do ordering that provide that that front of house engagement can generate revenue is through monetizing payment Street and and so I wish I knew that a long time ago, because then we would be in a lot different spot. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 11:40
yeah, yeah. Well, it’s very interesting, as you say, the transition from from on site, more on site based POS to totally digital, totally mobile. You know, as long as you can connect your your your good with your mobile based POS systems, and how that changed the value, the perceived value, of

Mo Sloan 12:06
your systems, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a race to the bottom, unfortunately, yeah. And so what you see a lot of companies do is they the way you basically the way you grow and scale, continue to scale, kind of like we talked about before this show started, is that you have to add features and then monetize on top of the payments, so that, yes, you may have to, I may sell credit card processing to you for 3.25% but the reason it comes to 3.25% is because includes your website, includes your website, includes your marketing campaigns, includes your email campaigns, includes your loyalty, includes all these different things that you allow you to run your business and grow your business, and therefore, you know, you have to participate on the on the payment side. It’s a, unfortunately, it’s not, you know, when I it’s nebulous. It’s a nebulous environment, but it’s just, it’s just the way it is,

Damon Pistulka 13:05
yeah, yeah. That is that. It is an interesting environment, that’s for sure. So you talked a little bit about it. Let’s, let’s, let’s talk about, you know, you’re running, you’re running in 2019 everything looks good. And then you hit COVID. And we’re now, we’re talking, it’s the end of 2020, I mean, it had to just skyrocket demand for your product.

Mo Sloan 13:32
Yes, it did now, but the unfortunate thing was that, you know, it’s kind of catching the it’s all about timing. I think there’s a good song from a country movie. I like a country strong or something like that. And it talks about the songs about the second off either which way they don’t meet, right? Yeah, that’s unfortunately with COVID. COVID was probably the, product was probably the oddest chick we’ve ever would have met, but, but, but we met her. We were 16 years old with braces and and it was scrawny. We just, we just started lifting weights. We were, yeah, and then, you know, then, boom, when we’re ready, she’s no longer there. So, but, yeah, it was, it was, it was, it would have been perfect for us if it happened nine months later. Yeah, then, then, when we got funding, we Funny story, and I think I’m probably one of the few people on in the United States, or even on planet earth that can, that can claim this. But we, we closed the rent, we closed our our first and only investment capital venture background on March 16, 17th of 2020, which was the first that, whatever that Monday was, yeah, shelter at home orders, right? Because I had an investor call me and was like, hey, if we back out of the deal, does that blow everything up? I was like, Yeah, it kind of does. And so, you know, but. They ended up not and we closed and everything and but the problem, it was great on the surface, right, great from that. But the problem is we started fighting. There’s a lot of military strategy you can glean from from my experience one of my advisors, we always talk about the art of war and Sun Tzu and stuff like that. So, but in this case, we were fighting on a very elementary level. We’re fighting three. We were fighting three different battles, right? Three different wars or three different fronts. Number one, once we closed around, we had to bring in people that were new to our team. And so we had to train and do all these things. Number two, you went from, as I mentioned, 678, percent of their volume, maybe 10% if they’re doing some stuff, from online ordering volume to 99% overnight, yeah, because you couldn’t go into the restaurant, so the only way to order was to order online or call. So, you know, you and and then our that was for so existing customers, we saw cost increase because our existing merchant partners saw more traffic, more throughput, and we decided at the time not to increase our rates, because it was the right thing to do. We weren’t trying to we didn’t know how this was going to come out on the other right. We didn’t know what it meant for us. So so we didn’t increase rates. And then new customers came up, new customers that were needing a solution immediately, they were coming to us. Now, unfortunately, the platform wasn’t built to, it was built to, it was a proof of concept to a certain Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t, it wasn’t scalable at that point, yeah. And so we weren’t what took us about six to eight weeks to onboard a still decent amount. It was still good time back in those days. And you know, 20 in 2024, years ago, it wasn’t horrible, not especially from because it was POS integrated. 99% was with POS integrated. But what took us from, you know, six to eight weeks to onboard a merchant to get them taking orders. Now we can do it at 60 to 80 minutes. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. And so we made that kind of efficiencies, but if we had those efficiencies back then we, I probably would. I probably do much longer. I probably wouldn’t be talking to you. Yeah, we

Damon Pistulka 17:14
would be talking right now. But that is quite, I mean, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s, that is mind blowing. Efficiency gains,

Mo Sloan 17:27
yeah, no, it is, but it came at a cost, right? The cost is, we didn’t have a large team. Our runway was short. So, you know, it took us longer than we would like to, right? Yeah, because, because what we’re about is we understand the only way to be successful in this, in this, in this sector, as I see it, is to obviously scale. And the only way to scale is to do it efficiently, efficiently so you can’t have a linear linear scaling won’t work. You got to be able to do the hockey stick from a location support perspective. So our system is all predicated about doing everything in the system, managing the system, and not having developers, not having a bunch of overhead that allows us to run our business as efficiently, as lean as possible, because a because it’s the right thing to do, and it sets us up well for the future. B is because we got to Yeah, so yeah,

Damon Pistulka 18:25
yes. Well, this leads us right into the topic so perfectly, because, you know, we’re talking about the the critical role that perseverance, you know, takes in, in entrepreneurship. So let’s, let’s talk about that. In as you, you were closed that round of funding, you had this tremendous demand. What were, what were some of the, some of the real, oh my goodness, kind of moments that you had at during that time. Because I gotta imagine, you had people calling like crazy. You you had just, you know, got some funding so you could, you could help to scale some of this stuff, or get more of these places set up. But it had to be challenging.

Mo Sloan 19:14
Yeah, it was challenging. But, you know, the the my experiences and growth didn’t really start happening in September 2020, so without getting too much into specifics and everything like that, the wars on three front call caused us to burn through our cash quicker than we anticipated. We didn’t see when, when I started, start raising fund. When I started capital raising back in 2018 I didn’t see a global pandemic happening. Yes, I didn’t see it on the day we closed. So it was, it was all kind of discombobulating. From beginning, we never really got a chance to set our feet and to, you know, like quarterbacks that say you gotta set your feet. Before you get if you got happy feet, you’re not, it’s gonna the past is gonna veer off. We’ve been, we’ve been we’ve been scrambling the whole time, and even till now, we’re still scrambling. But as soon as we can, the perseverance comes in realizing that, hey, you just have to avoid. If I can, just live another down, just live another down. Just put, two or three downs together, you know, just move the ball, and if you can just keep moving and whatnot. And it started, you got to strategize. You got to do all that. But you just have to, you just have to keep going. And then also, at the point too, you just have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror. And whatever happens doesn’t diminish you. You know, it just means that shit, shit didn’t work out. Yeah, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 20:46
yeah. And that’s that is, I tell you what I think for for founders everywhere, that’s a huge thing, because sometimes it’s just timing, it’s market, it’s people, it could be a myriad of things. And like you said, it just doesn’t work out. And, but it’s not you as a failure. It’s just, it just didn’t work out because a lot of things didn’t happen, right, you know? And, and, and that’s where that perseverance really comes in, because you can you, I’m sure there were days you had to go, go home going, boy, I don’t know if tomorrow is going to be another day or I don’t want to do this right now.

Mo Sloan 21:25
I mean, you still those things are very real, and you can’t get away from me. You just have to find them head on, right? Yeah. And so, you know that’s you just have to, it sucks. It really does, because you question you like, Why did I do this? Why did I do this? Why did I do this? Maybe it’s my generation. Maybe it’s me being the age. You know, I still, I still. I saw, I saw what, what my I took what they taught us in school and internalize that, right? I like, like, you finish it out. You put a good job. You do a good job. You do the best you can do. So I took that, and as long as I’m alive and breathing, then I’ll do I’ll give my my best shot, and we’ll see the chip fall.

Damon Pistulka 22:15
That’s That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So if you are going to share something about perseverance with people that are listening today. What? What would you share with them? Oh,

Mo Sloan 22:27
yeah, don’t give up. I mean, I’m a big fan of the Jimmy Valvano speech, right? I go, I go to, I go to sports, because, other than programming and and whatnot, sports, I love sports, but I go back to Jimmy Valvano and his don’t give up, don’t ever give up, right? And that’s the best thing about perseverance. Is, yeah, it might, it looks kind of, it looks kind of, but, but you, you, you have to find a way forward. Just figure it out. Figure that the Calvary isn’t coming. So figure it out.

Damon Pistulka 22:59
Yeah, you have to find a way forward. I love that. And I think that that is really the secret behind a lot of successful people, is they just found a way forward when a lot of other people may not have or may not have wanted to take that next step. Yeah, that’s awesome. So as we’re moving forward now, you know, AI hit the marketplace here. What is it a year and something ago now, or to almost two years as as we know it, the chat GPT thing as the public knows it. How do you think this is going to have effect on on your types of systems. What do you what do you see? Is it, it’s doing or not?

Mo Sloan 23:47
Yeah. Well, disclaimer, so any 20 some odd year old that that gets the that takes this and moves on with it, just call me and let me be an advisor. That’s all I want to do, right? But, but, but here, here’s, here’s the two areas, at least from a restaurant, because I eat, breathe restaurant hospitality, yeah, yeah. We are the two areas that I see, quote, unquote, AI impacting, well, maybe three, but number one, conversational ordering, right? So the ability to go up to the they have this in Asia now, but the ability to go up to the kiosk and treat it as a Virtual Employee. Talk to it. Have a conversation with it. Be like, Hey, what do you think about the fries? Well, 99.3% of our customers like the fries, or, you know what I mean, or, or whatever, or whatever that looks like, or, and they’ll be different, not programmed. Conversational like, hey, what’s what do you think the weather’s gonna be like tomorrow? Those kind of things, right? So conversational the ability, and then once you have that, you have the ability to the merchant. You get the merchant ability to create virtual employee. So it’s all about automation, yeah, the dirty little secret is that it’s all about automation and and capitalism is about. Maximizing profits and minimizing costs. And the way you minimize cost is get rid of labor as much as you can, yeah, especially human labor, because you you need stuff, and so you take them out, right? I don’t agree with it, but that’s the way it is. So, so, so, by doing so, you now basically can run your front, what’s called the front of house automated. Then what happens is, of course, the back of the house gets automated. I I can barely cook a hamburger, let alone have a robot cook a hamburger, so I’m not even that’s not my area of expertise, so I’m not but so those that’s one area. But then then you also look at drone delivery and how that will impact because it goes back to the labor equation again. Get rid of get rid of people. You reduce cost significantly, Uber, Lyft, etc. They will have autonomous vehicles, and they will use drones to deliver right, and companies like me will be around to try to compete with that and hopefully out, get the out beat them to where. That’s another story for another day, but that’s one, that’s another aspect. Then third and final is implementing AI into the into the operations, right, making, having it make decisions. You hear something a little bit about Wendy’s caught some slack a couple of months ago with dynamic pricing. Where, where change, where things changed on the menu based upon time of day, demand, supply, those kind of things that’s coming, where the people, you know, they caught, they caught hell for it, because they were the first to do it. But it’s going to come just like airlines do dynamic, yeah, it’s going to come to food and so you see, AI will run those operations. So you don’t have to have anyone, you don’t have to have a bean counter. You have someone give it a you give it a profile, you have it learn and it will execute your, your what your your objectives are. So those are the ways that Cai implementing themselves into the restaurant. But all of those, if you think about it, all those are just a single thing, which is elimination of the human labor component.

Damon Pistulka 26:59
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, wow, that’s a lot right there. That’s a lot right there, because you think about the restaurant industry, restaurant in general, just think of your local pizzeria, like you said, where you can come in and sit down and or, as you said, conversational ordering for someone to be able to just walk in and talk, even if you Yes, you’ll reduce labor there, but you can still keep the same quality of the food that’s coming out and things like that, while still still making a bit more. And then the the autonomous delivery, or by drone delivery, that’s that’s a huge thing for a lot of companies, and they don’t try it now, but if they could do it economically, that more would,

Mo Sloan 27:42
yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that’s, you know, I think there’s a, like, a Nissan commercial that’s been, I’ve been seeing, that’s got the drone that hits the sign and falls off, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, it’s coming. It’s coming once. I think there’s a couple of regulations, yeah, FAA regulations, those kind of things. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of those regulations removed now and for the interest of business. Yeah, and then that’s going to happen more. So I think it’s going to come but we that’s a whole conversation for another day, because I’m, I’m of the mindset that I don’t believe all technology advances are really the advances for humankind. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 28:23
yeah. This is true. This is true. And then, you know, some of these, some of these other things, like you were talking about the operational decisions. I mean, we covered a couple of them there with pricing and things like that. But you know, there are going to be other stuff in the back, even just keeping the right stock in in House of product, helping change menu. There’s going to be tons of things that it could do that doesn’t really affect the labor, but helps the efficiency. Yeah,

Mo Sloan 28:50
one day I predict, I don’t know if it’ll be my lifetime, and it may be, but it might, but it might not be, but I don’t think it’ll be too far off. One day I predict you’ll, as an individual, will have the ability to call, to not call, to go, to engage on a website or whatever, however it works at that point, and say, hey, I want to open up a chicken franchise with you. And then you’ll be able to do it basic. Basically, you’ll be able to set it up without a single person doing it. And that will be because that right there is maximum efficiency, yeah, so that I think that will have, that will happen at some, at some point in the future,

Damon Pistulka 29:26
yeah, so we look at it from this aspect again, a lot more efficient. Do you see some people are able to utilize this type of efficiency gains to really enhance customer experience by maybe, say, if, say, if I can reduce my labor X much, well, I take half of that reduction and use it on people that are really creating a better customer experience.

Mo Sloan 29:56
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean the cost savings that that you can get. From, from, from, automating your front of house ordering, whether it’s online ordering, kiosk ordering, or both, is really, is really up to you. What you do with those savings, right? Yeah. And you know me personally, as a business owner, I would reinvest those savings into into the product, to make it to make it better, to make generate even more revenue. And, of course, a lot of stuff I’m talking about too. We’re not, we’re kind of skipping over a segment which is a very important casual dining right? And as long as you have you I, I do, I do believe that eventually, because you see robots now, you see robots that take the servers, will actually place the food on the to the robot, and then touch where the tables goes, and it takes it out there and the customer book, and while it’s very it’s simple. I mean, you will, there’s no reason that the robot couldn’t, you couldn’t order from the robot in the future, yeah. But so my point is that that’s all possible. But yeah, I think from a technology perspective, you just have to kind of look at all everything you do, and see where all the touch points are, etc, yeah.

Damon Pistulka 31:06
So what? What are you really excited about going forward? What? What are some new developments or things that you go this really has me excited,

Mo Sloan 31:16
yeah. What’s got me excited about? Stuff like I said, the conversational ordering, the ability to to implement that, give merchants the capability to have implement that for their operations, to join, you know, to during additional margins, etc, etc, so, and then our, personally, just our ability to monetize the payments a little bit more now gives us an opportunity to compete with some of the larger entities, because now we can, hey, you know, it’s a you can compare our solution to their solution, without the without monetizing payments. We can never really offer that, you know, like it was. You could compare a solution, but now you can, and I think the perceived value, the value will be perceived better within the market.

Damon Pistulka 32:11
Awesome, awesome. So as you’re as people are listening today, we’re talking about the role of perseverance and entrepreneurship, how critical it is, what what advice beyond, beyond what you said, you said, you know, just keep going. But what are, what are just one piece of advice that someone gave you that has really helped you?

Mo Sloan 32:39
Well, it’s along the same lines as they keep on going. But it was, it was a story. And his name is Carl. He used to own the gym that I went to to work out. And he as a business owner, he was part of a master masterminds group, a business group. And he actually introduced me to my first partner this Her name was Sally, but she worked for a merchant processing payments company back in the day, but nonetheless, him and I would talk and and he knew a lot was going on business wise with me. And then I would, you know, and we share information, but this is probably around 2021, something like that. And it’s around the time like, Man, I don’t know if I want to keep doing this. You know, those kind of things where you start having doubts, start creating and everything. And he told me a story. He’s like, I’m gonna tell you a story mode, like, this guy is doing the gold rush in San Francisco, California, right? He buys all this equipment. He goes out to he goes out San Francisco’s digs for six months not not getting anything. Six more months not getting anything, finally gives up, sells it to somebody. And then two or three days later, this person finds gold or whatever, right? And you know, the more I’m sure it did. It anecdotally happened, sure, but, but, but the moral of the story is obvious. You could tell is, hey, just don’t know that next and next pile of dirt you pull up, it might be Yeah, so you just have to now. You gotta be smart. You gotta know when to hit the EJ button. So yeah, and you gotta have, you gotta, you got to plan for a graceful exit, right? You just, you know, you just have to do that, but you have to also just kind of keep going at the same time. It’s a weird thing, and I’m not me, being a Gemini allows me to kind of think both sides, I guess, the same time, but it’s really weird thing.

Damon Pistulka 34:39
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So one of the things that that we were talking about before we got on, and I think that you can can help us a lot with, you know, kiosks aren’t for every situation. So what are some of the things that people. People might want to, you know, think about if they’re going to consider, you know, do we? Is this a good solution for us? Yeah.

Mo Sloan 35:06
So with online ordering, every type of restaurant can benefit from online ordering, right from from bowling alleys to casual sit down to upscale casual to cafeterias to whatever, whatever. Most of the time any place can bid for Illinois, the only time where I’ve seen it, not really, I wouldn’t say beneficial, but it’s always beneficial, but maybe not needed, is in the case of fine dining, where you’re going to an establishment, Jeff rubies, here in Louisville is a good example of one where you’re going to one and you’re not going there. You don’t want to get a steak for there to go. Yeah, exactly, yeah, but, but I wouldn’t want to, but, yeah. But when it comes to kiosk ordering, kiosk order is a little bit different beast, right? So kiosk scoring, as it as it works today, is best suited for qsrs, quick service restaurants and fast casual restaurants, as well as anything that’s counter style. So anything that a customer walks up and says, Hey, I looks at a menu, I would like this, this and that that’s perfect for a kiosk. Anything that you go to like a blaze pizza where you’re saying, I want you to walk across the line. Now you don’t really have to do that. You can. You could do that on a screen and then just go to the end of the line and wait and and whatnot there as well. So, but, but anything QSR fast casual counter style really benefits from kiosk what doesn’t work for and also some casual dining. If you have a lot of to go business, if you if you got a section for your to go business where people walk in and sometimes place orders or or whatnot, then you could potentially use a kiosk. I wouldn’t go overboard more than one, but you could potentially, so you know, those are the times. And then also, to keep in mind too, with the kiosk, what we tell our QSR fast casual merchant partners is, look, you gotta where you place of kiosk is critical, right? Because you want to create a circular flow. You want to create an assembly line process where someone comes over, hits the kiosk, grabs the food, you know maybe hits the kiosk, grabs her cups, goes to the drink station, get the drinks, picks up the food, goes out the door, right? Yeah. You want to keep that coming. You don’t want people crisscrossing each other and stuff like that, because it just up one, it just bundles, messes everything up. It’s not efficient, right? And you want efficiency when it comes to your customers, because your goal is to especially the QSR, fast casual. Your goal is to get them in and get them out.

Damon Pistulka 37:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, Oh, that’s good. That’s good. So who are some of the companies that, you know? I mean, one of the things we talked about a bit before we got on was, you know, this is the the kiosk. Well, first online, you know, there’s some businesses that don’t have it yet, some restaurants don’t have it, but they they need to. But the kiosk is it just that we see it more in the news or or, do you actually see this being adopted more in the big chains like a McDonald’s or Burger King or something like that? Um,

Mo Sloan 38:16
I see it. We see it kind of everywhere, right? Is it anywhere you see my shirt. Need labor cost saving. Blah, blah, even where you were you have high labor costs, yeah, or labor availability may be on maybe a detriment. That’s, you know, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 38:31
yep, that’s true. That’s true. Good stuff. Well, Mo, it’s been awesome having you on today. I just just your your technology, and bringing that technology, you know, the big companies have been able to do it, but you’re bringing it into these smaller, regional change, smaller restaurants that can really benefit from the online ordering, and then, if appropriate, the kiosk. So if, if someone’s listening today wants to talk to you, what’s the best way to to reach out and learn more about easy Chow.

Mo Sloan 39:02
Yeah, visit easy dash Chow com. Easy dash, C, H, O, w.com, I’m also on LinkedIn. Mo Sloan, you can find me on LinkedIn. You find me on Facebook, yeah, so I’m a little bit at I’m a little bit on Twitter. If you’re, you know, want to hear about my thoughts regarding U of football, you can find them there, but yeah, so

Damon Pistulka 39:25
good, good, good, good. Well, Mo, thanks so much for being here. We appreciate it and and just love sharing your thought. You sharing your thoughts on perseverance and the story and easy Chow and how you guys have come through and really are building a great product that helps these restaurants, you know, with online, ordering, digital through different ways, kiosk in the in the restaurant, and just stopping by today and sharing that with us.

Mo Sloan 39:53
Thank you. I appreciate Damon. It’s been, it’s been great. Immensely enjoyed the experience. Thank you. Awesome.

Damon Pistulka 39:59
Awesome. I want to say, I see we’ve got some listeners. We didn’t have many people commenting today, but I can see we’ve got a fair amount of listeners there. Thanks all of you for being here today. If you got into this late, you want to go back to the beginning and start over and listen to mo from the beginning. He was talking about the story of easy Chow and how it took that persistence for him to go from the idea that he formed back in 2014 and built it into what it is today, and he continues to build so thanks everyone for being here. Mo, hang out for a minute. We’ll finish up offline. All

Mo Sloan 40:33
right. Thanks, sir. You.