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Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore
1282: Cutting Your Software Cost in Half (or more!) with Albert Sanchez, CEO of HotShift
01:11:39
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- [00:00]
A
What up Unstoppables? Quick favor to ask before we hit play on today's episode and that is please follow and subscribe to this podcast. Nearly 70% of the people that listen to the show or view it do not subscribe or follow. And you owe it to yourself to do just that. Because if you do, when we get an amazing guest on the show that gets a lot of likes, a lot of shares, a lot of views, the algorithm is paying attention and it will push that episode to your feed so you'll get our best content. Not to mention it is absolutely free to you and it is the most impactful thing you can do to support this mission. Mission to inspire, empower and to transform the industry. And I can't do it alone. I need your support. Thank you in advance. Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1, 000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry. And by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next, listen to today's guests and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. If you're an independent restaurant owner, building next week's schedule probably comes down to a gut feeling. Guessing if Friday is going to be slow, hoping you're not overstaffed and bleeding labor costs. Restaurant owner and listener of this podcast, Albert built Hot Shift to fix just that. Hot Shift pulls in local events, weather, even nearby concert and game schedules. Weighs that against sales history and shows you the forecast labor cost before you even publish the schedule. Go check out Hot Shift at Hot Shift Pro Unstoppable. That is Hot Shift Pro Unstoppable. Private event inquiries are coming in in your losing them. Unanswered emails, ignored calls, leads that vanish before you can close. You're not losing to the competition, you're losing to the clock. Meet Mia, an AI agent built specifically for private dining. She responds to every lead within seconds 247 with personalized human like messages. She knows your venue inside and out, handles the back and forth, updates your CRM automatically, and converts leads you forgot about into bookings. You didn't expect all of this without touching your team's plan. Actually, MIA takes 85% of the busy work off your event team and gets fully integrated in under 10 minutes. Stop leaving private dining revenue on the table. Head over to Hermetic AI. That's h E R M E T I C A I to learn more and tell them I sent you. This episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies, the leader in automated cooking oil management. Their total oil management solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers modern monitors, filters, collects and recycles your cooking oil, eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Restaurant Technologies services over 45, 000 customers nationwide. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI Inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started. This episode is made possible by US Foods. Running a successful restaurant takes more than just great food. With US Foods, you can expect more high quality products, advanced tools and flexible deliveries to grow your business. Their industry leading moxy platform also does more than just place your US Foods order. It uses AI to help you take control, save time and increase profitability. Visit usfoods.com expect more to learn how to become a US Foods customer one more time, that is usfoods.com expectmore more with excitement Allow me to welcome back on the show for a second time and only 22 episode episodes ago, founder and CEO of Hot Shift, Albert Sanchez. My man Albert, are you feeling unstoppable today?
- [04:12]
B
I am, Eric.
- [04:13]
A
So like I mentioned, you're on 22 episodes ago. Originally you came on your episode 1260. Then you came on as the one of the co founders of Betos Mexican restaurant in Dallas, Texas or just outside Dallas. Today we're going to talk about your journey as the CEO and founder of Hot Shift and we're going to be covering three, sorry, five major topics today. The origin story of Hot Shift, the evolution of Hot Shift, the features of Hot Shift as it stands today, how we plan to fuck shit up. I'm really excited about that part and we're going to wrap it up with why I believe the restaurant industry needs more Albert Sanchez's. But before we get into that man, let's get the motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?
- [05:02]
B
It's always the same, Eric. Embrace the grind.
- [05:05]
A
Embrace the grind. Why is that always the same? Why is that so important to you, man?
- [05:09]
B
If you embrace the grind? I mean life gets tough. Listen, and if you just realize that, accept it. Life is not that difficult man. And that's just the way that can I, I move forward?
- [05:21]
A
Yeah, it's, it's hard. I think we, we want, we're, we're being told we want more convenience. We want things to be Easy. And I think that is the biggest lie on society because it's. The reality is the harder you work, the more hard shit you do, the happier you are. And we're being sold a bill of lies. Is that the expression? A bill of lies?
- [05:42]
B
A bill B I L l Yes, I think so.
- [05:44]
A
I think so. I think that's what's happening right now, man. So I'll go with, yeah, great way to get this thing started and. All right, man, let's just get right into it. So the origin story, you know, why did you build Hot Shift? We got into that a little bit in episode 1260, but just if our listeners didn't catch that again, like, what is Hot Shift and why did you build it?
- [06:07]
B
Originally, I wanted a gamification. I wanted something fun for the staff to. To kind of compete against each other. Have some friendly competition, whether it be like beverage percentage or tip percentage or check aver. And I think every restaurant does it in some capacity. Back in the day when I used to wait tables, we'd have like server bingo and you'd upsell something and you'd get the little mark. And there was always, you know, you're always trying to make work as fun as it can be. Yeah. And I just try to digitize it and. And we did. Originally, I kind of hard coded some stuff and it took me about an hour a day. I mean, I was copying and pasting and just like at every Monday, I kind of just did not look forward to going into toast and copy and pasting everything. And it started on a Monday, and then I moved it over to a Tuesday and I was doing it less, less and less. And I'm like, man, I've got to find a way to automate the process. And that's, that's really, that's, that's exactly how Hot Shift started.
- [07:09]
A
Yeah. And I think it's worth mentioning again, you're on the show, episode 1260. If our listeners did not catch that episode, there's some context that's missing here, and that is that up in the family restaurant, I'm always afraid that I'm saying your restaurant's name. It's. It's Betos. Did I say Beart?
- [07:26]
B
It's all right.
- [07:27]
A
Oh, my God. Sorry.
- [07:28]
B
As long as people come in.
- [07:29]
A
Yeah. Betos. And named after your old man. You started the restaurant with him. You wanted to go to school for programming and computer science. That wasn't in the cards for you. You ended up being a founding partner in the restaurants. This was what, over 30 years ago.
- [07:44]
B
32.
- [07:45]
A
32 years ago. So. But your passion for computer science and coding, and you've always been kind of like a, a closet nerd and geek. When you're not at the restaurant, you're like, you're on computers, you're playing. So. And we talked about this in the first episode, like you discovered, you know, you. When, when AI started to accelerate, you were there, you were a part of that scene. And when Vibe coding started to accelerate, you're like, oh, wait, what? I can. All these ideas of how I can create software for my restaurant that I've been sitting on for the past 32 years because I've been grinding and working 40 plus hours, 60 hour weeks. Like, I can literally tell Claude what to build me. And I have this language because I know the language of developing code. Like I, I can just build whatever I want. And that was a big reason why I had you on the show, because I was. Because you're, you know, a listener of the show, community member, and you're telling me about all this stuff. I was like, I got to get this guy on the show. Like, this is really cool. Like, this is a game changer. What's going through your mind?
- [08:44]
B
Exactly right. It would take me a couple of the first apps that I built, literally took me six months to nine months. You can build that same thing in a week with vibe coding, and it really changes the game. And as operators, everybody listening, listen, we got to prioritize. We got fires going on on the restaurant all the time. And you know, for most people, they don't have an extra six to nine months to sit in front of me. Luckily for me, it's a passion project, so I didn't look at it as work. You know, it was something that I would be tinkering around with anyway. Most, yes, my hobby. Yeah. And for most restaurant tours, we just don't have that extra time. So vibe coding, literally, it just kind of, it's changed the game for me.
- [09:25]
A
Literally.
- [09:26]
B
Literally changed the game.
- [09:28]
A
So you had all these ideas. A big part of what you wanted to create was you wanted to gamify the software in your restaurant. That's where you kind of left off.
- [09:36]
B
Yeah, that's where it started. Specifically, here's one thing that people really never talk about. We talk about marketing and, and how to bring people in, but the one thing that people really never talk about is actually getting the revenue that's already on your table. So any listeners out there, the sodas and the teas and the coffees that don't have to go through an expo and you're just kind of relying on your servers to ring it up. Hey, best case, I mean like the absolute best case, I bet you only 7 of 10 of your Cokes, teas and, and coffees get rang up on the ticket. And not because it's anything malice or your servers are stealing from you, just like, listen, they're busy and they forget to put it into the ticket. It's unlike a beer or food that has to come through a bartender or the cook. And that was literally the origin story. I'm like, listen, I need to find out what our beverage percentage is. Make sure all these drinks are rang up.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah, you need to incentivize people to go to work the system.
- [10:33]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:35]
A
And gamification is huge. Like, we are comp. Like by nature, we're competitive. You know, we want to see how we stack up against the other people in the tribe. Where are we in the social ranking of this tribe? We're in. We don't want to be at the bottom. It's, it kicks into our survival instincts kick in and we go, I don't want to be at the bottom of the pack. Like, I want to, you know, like the, the being able to see where you rank kicks in. This like, psychological like motivator to like step it up and to, to compete. And you know, it's, it's powerful gamification.
- [11:09]
B
It is. And it's fun. It's really fun. And we noticed that right away. We and people that are subscribed to Hot Ships don't have to do this. We actually have a screen in the bar. It's a 27 inch screen that has the leaderboard on it. And really the, the fun part was to see the staff members kind of circling around that screen and like, okay, hey, this is fun and it works.
- [11:34]
A
Yeah. Great book out there. Jack Stacks. The. The Great game of Business. Whenever I think of gamification, I think back to that book and it's really just this idea of like businesses about like, it's all numbers. Right. So if you, when you teach people the numbers, but you find other ways to incorporate numbers that help you understand how to do better or where you stand. Like, that is so powerful. Anybody who hasn't read that book needs to check it out. Like, have you read that book, the Great Game?
- [12:02]
B
I have not. I'm writing it down right now.
- [12:04]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So anything else you want to tell us in terms of like, why did you build the hot shift? Like, that should come out of your story.
- [12:12]
B
Yeah, it just, it evolved from there. I mean, kind of just the reaffirming aspect of them, you know, huddling around the. The screen kind of motivated me anymore. And then you're kind of looking at all the different things that you use. Scheduling and review management or reputation management and online, and you're like, you know what? And. And then the. It really starts ticking where. I don't know if any app that has everything under one roof. And that's. That's just the origin. That's how it's kind of started to evolve. Yeah.
- [12:46]
A
So it started with you in your mind understanding that you could build something better. You're not just somebody who's passionate about coding and developing. You're a restaurateur. You're in it every day. But you just didn't have the time to build what was in your mind until the vibe coding came out. So at first it was just that you wanted to gamify. And then like, when, when did. When you started building, like, take us through the evolution. So it's. What. What did it start as and how did that evolve over time?
- [13:14]
B
So it was literally just the gamification. And then everybody started circling around, and
- [13:21]
A
that was just the track. The drinks that weren't going through.
- [13:25]
B
Yeah, we were just. Well, there was a couple more things we were tracking. Drinks tracking, check average, and we were tracking tip average, tip percentage average. And the beverage didn't really excite them in terms of competition too much. What changed the dynamics of the competition was really the tip percentage average and how much average they were tipping, how much they were receiving per week. That really got their competitive juices going.
- [13:51]
A
So again, that was drinks, tip and check average.
- [13:54]
B
Right. And there's a couple of more things, but those are the, the three that we started with and then. And I don't know exactly when it was Eric, but at some point, you know, like, well, why don't we just add the schedule to hot shift? They're on there anyway checking out their tip percentage or where they are ranking. Why do we have to send them off to somewhere else to check their schedule? Let's just build a scheduler on Hot Shift. And then that's. It's. That's. The next thing that we built in Hot Shift was the scheduler.
- [14:26]
A
Okay, so when you. When did you start calling it Hot Shift? Because in my mind, originally I thought that it started off as a schedule. I didn't know that it was the gamification that really sparked this offer you.
- [14:37]
B
So that was the Original name. The original name. The first name that came to my mind was Hot Shit. That's true. Because I'm like, okay, you're number one. Oh, you think you're hot shit, right? Because it was just a game of. Of course I couldn't call it hot.
- [14:54]
A
Why not?
- [14:55]
B
Whether it be, whether it be just for me or anybody else. So I'm like, okay, would you be
- [15:02]
A
able to register that?
- [15:06]
B
I don't know. But true story, that's exactly the first name that, that came to my. Oh, you think you're hot. Like, okay, I can't call it hot.
- [15:15]
A
Could you call it up by.
- [15:17]
B
Right, you could, yeah. I don't know if you can trademark that.
- [15:20]
A
So. Okay, so it started off as the gamification. I'm curious before you. You know, we're like, well, you know, how do we tie this to scheduling? Was there an instant, like, return on investment of time in development of this, this gamification feature? Like, did you start seeing check averages go up and, like, tip immediately? What did that look like?
- [15:41]
B
And not only that, there's. There's. There's got to be some type of accountability, right? There was literally no. We did not have a system in place at all whatsoever to check how people were doing in terms of metrics. Now can you go into toast? Absolutely. You can open up your toast, go in there, run a report and get it. But it's not something that you literally could just open the app and like, hey, John is at 22% a dashboard of. Yeah, just a dashboard. Simple, one click. So, yeah, the answer is no. Was I checking it? No, I wasn't going to toast every single week.
- [16:21]
A
Can you share the numbers of, like, before and after?
- [16:23]
B
Like, yeah, so we were, you know, good and bad right there. And here's, here's what we see. Typically for most restaurants, you're going to have your top performers. You just are. Where, depending on the type of restaurant that you have, your tip average is going to, you know, and this is for us in the Dallas Fort Worth area, where a good server is averaging 21% on their tip average. Right. Where your lower people are going to average around 17%. And that doesn't really change. The top performers are always the top performers, and the lower tier is the lower tier. So the real question is how, One, who is my lower tier? And then two, how do I get my lower tier to become top tiers? That's really what the question is. And that's those metrics. That's what really gives you that information. Like, I Got these same people at the bottom week in and week out. How do we motivate them? How do we educate them? How do we train them to get up there with the topper tier people? Yeah.
- [17:27]
A
And I think also, I think those, those people that fall to the bottom, that's going to help weed out the people who aren't supposed to be there.
- [17:35]
B
I agree 100%. I mean, you train them up or maybe you have to get them out. I mean, it's that simple.
- [17:39]
A
Yeah. Survival of the fittest. I mean, you want to train them up. That's the goal, to develop people. But the reality is some people just don't want to be developed.
- [17:46]
B
That's right.
- [17:47]
A
So this is a way to gamify and also to let the cream rise to the top.
- [17:52]
B
I agree. Yeah. That's exactly why we built it.
- [17:54]
A
Yep. So start off as the gamification. And then we evolved into labor management scheduling. Take it from there.
- [18:03]
B
So we. So we built out the schedule and it was, it was very simple. Right. So we're no different than any other restaurant. We have, we have servers coming in from different places. We. We keep them. Our turnover is really low. And they have, they have their own expectations. They were on seven shifts at another restaurant. Like, hey, how do I request off? Hey, where do I set my availability? Hey, how do I give away a shift? And all these things. You start hearing from other staff that might have come from another restaurant, and you're like, okay, well, let's just start building out. Let's start building out the schedule. So. So it has everything that your employees expect to have, whether it be shift trades, giveaway shifts, setting their own availability. So really, it evolved, really building out the scheduler where all of our employees, when they go to hot shift, they have everything that they would come to expect from a.7 shifts. And it does. And more.
- [19:04]
A
What's the more. Actually, no, hold off. We'll get into that. I think that's on the next segment. So in terms of evolution, I have this like this flowchart that you share with me.
- [19:14]
B
Yeah.
- [19:14]
A
On these notes. So it starts with employee, applies online, and then it goes from there to the pre evaluation and there's an interview, then there's a hire, then there's a train with quizzes, and then there's schedule and there's a shift coach. Then there's motivation and creating. That's kind of where it is today. If we're taking a snap, a snapshot. But has. Was there any more evolution along the way to get to that Snapshot where you are today.
- [19:39]
B
Well, I'm gonna rewind about three years ago at Jiu Jitsu, and I was talking to another coder, just geeking out, and I'm like, hey, man, if you ever want to make a million dollars, build a restaurant app that follows the entire life cycle of the employee. Now, this is really before the newest versions of vibe coding, and it would literally. I'm not exaggerating it, Eric. To build Hot Shift today would take hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of development. Without a doubt, I'm not in any coder out there that hard codes would like to argue that. I'd love to see how fast you can do it.
- [20:15]
A
If you're an independent restaurant owner, building next week's schedule probably comes down to gut feeling. Guessing a Friday is going to be slow, guessing how many cooks you need, hoping you're not overstaffed and bleeding labor costs. We've all been there. That's why I've invested in Hot Shift restaurant Unstoppable community member and founder of Hot Shift. Albert wanted to stop guessing, and he wanted to stop paying five different subscriptions that never speak to each other. He built Hot Shift because he needed it himself running his own restaurant. And here's the cool thing. Hot Shift does not replace your manager's judgment. It feeds it. It pulls in your local event calendar, weather, even ticket sales for nearby concerts and games, and weighs that against your historical sales for that exact day alongside the eight weeks leading up to it to actually project how busy you'll be. I'm telling you, Albert's a smart dude. Then it shows you the forecasted labor cost percentage before you publish anything. After the shift, Hot Shift shows you forecast versus actual. So you're getting sharper every single shift, not just guessing next Monday. If you want to stop guessing and start scheduling with actual data, go to hotshiftpro/unstoppable. That's hot shift dot pro slash unstoppable. Here is the painful truth about private dining inquiries. Most of them die in your inbox. Your team's already spread thin, so when an event lead comes in, especially after hours, nobody jumps on it fast enough. The prospect moves on, the booking goes to the venue down the street, and you never even knew you were in the running. Now let's play the what if game. What if you had a team member who never clocked out, who responded to every private event inquiry in seconds and every single time, no matter the hour? That's M.I.A. an A.I. agent built specifically to convert private dining leads into booked events. Mia gets trained on your venue and integrated with your CRM in under 10 minutes. From that moment on, she is working. She sends personalized human like messages to the leads the second they come in. She answers questions about your space menus, the availability with the confidence of your best tenured salesperson. She nurtures the leads that when cold and reactivates past guests year after year automatically. No input from you, no follow up reminders, no dropped balls. Mia handles 85% of the busy work your event team dreads so that they can focus on what actually requires human touch. She doesn't sleep, she doesn't forget. And she is constantly refining her approach to close more deals over time. This is not a chat bot. This is a purpose built AI agent that treats your private dining room like the revenue engine it's meant to be. Stop leaving private dining revenue on the table. Head over to Hermetic H E R M E T I C AI to book your demo today. Tell them I sent you. And that's not even, that's not even considering like if you're a software company, the additional layers of customer support, sales, you know, all these additional expenses associated with not just the development of the tool but the, the organization around the tool that needs to sell and manage in cus. Like all the, like all that.
- [23:24]
B
It's, it's everything that goes into it.
- [23:26]
A
Yeah.
- [23:26]
B
And what I told him, like, hey, listen, if you ever have some extra time and you develop an app where a restaurant manager and owner can hire employees and train employees from the gym, that was my set point. From the gym. With one click you will be a millionaire. So that's where the evolution of like all under really where that idea came from was all under one roof. Albert, can you hire, train and schedule an employee from the gym? And the answer is yes, we can. With hot shift you can, without a doubt.
- [24:01]
A
Yeah. So in terms of evolution to where you got today, are there any stops along the way we should be aware of before we kind of jump to the next segment of our conversation where you're really just painting the picture of what it is today?
- [24:13]
B
There's a lot of stops just in frustration. It's not easy. I don't want anybody to think out there they're going to jump in front of a computer and for the $20 a month subscription to whatever platform they're on, they're going to build a universal SaaS. No, there's a lot of.
- [24:27]
A
You've been waking up at 5:00am for the.
- [24:29]
B
I wake up at 5, 5:30 every single day.
- [24:32]
A
Yeah.
- [24:32]
B
Seven days a week. And my wife can attest. I mean, there are a lot of days where you. You'll make two steps forward and you'll literally take three steps back and you're worse off. So is it easy? I would say yes. But there is work relative to what it was, right?
- [24:50]
A
But it is relative to what it was, right?
- [24:52]
B
Yeah, yeah, relative to what it was. Yeah. So there were some stops. And I mean, that literal.
- [24:56]
A
How long ago were. You know, you start. You built this for you.
- [25:00]
B
Correct.
- [25:01]
A
Then eventually you had some of your friends trying it out, right? Your. Your owner operator friends.
- [25:05]
B
Yes, well, what happened was one of my owner operator friends saw it and literally like, holy, Albert, that's fucking amazing. And then I was like, oh, any. Any developer out there, there's a difference between turning something into a SaaS software as a service versus hard coding. And at the time when I built Hot Shift, it was hard coded just for betos that meaning nobody else could. Could. Could log in. There was no tenant. And when he said holy, I would buy that. Literally, it's what he said, holy. And I'm like, well, oh, maybe I'm on to something.
- [25:36]
A
Yeah. And literally, because you started this project in November of 20.
- [25:40]
B
November.
- [25:41]
A
Less than a year ago. Like, literally, like, I was gonna say almost like six months. Like a little more than six. Like eight months ago.
- [25:47]
B
Correct.
- [25:49]
A
That's crazy. And I was in Dallas. Let's give your hometown some. Some credit. What's. I know you're not Grand Prairie. Grand Prairie. Thank you very much. I was in Grand Prairie with you in. I want to say it was like, March. March maybe. Yeah, March. So only five months after you started this project and you're talking about it, when did you have this friend say holy? Would you say holy?
- [26:14]
B
Yeah, he said holy.
- [26:16]
A
What was that?
- [26:16]
B
Right. I mean, probably in January when I just really had the gamification.
- [26:21]
A
Okay. So not long before I got there, which is.
- [26:23]
B
Yeah. Not testing before you go to fast.
- [26:25]
A
This stuff moves with the. With vibe code.
- [26:27]
B
It does, yeah.
- [26:28]
A
And when did you. Where are you today with how many people, aside from you are using it?
- [26:33]
B
So we've got nine restaurants on Hot shift right now. You and I have talked. The goal is not to have a thousand. Right, Right. But it's hard going up against the bigger tech companies of the world.
- [26:46]
A
Where were you in March with other people using this platform?
- [26:50]
B
2. I had two restaurants at the time. The Holy friend.
- [26:54]
A
Yeah. You know, so is you in Holy?
- [26:56]
B
Fuck yeah. Me and my holy friend. And he was willing to pay for it. And he's known me for a long time and you know, and I've been coding my entire life. I've been tinkering. So he knew that it was going to evolve. I kind of laid out like, hey man, you know, we can do this and I can do that. And he was like, all right.
- [27:13]
A
So in full transparency, when I, when I connected with you, I was really excited about this whole idea of restaurant owners being able to develop their own software. Because I think that frankly, and this doesn't do me any favors talking about this publicly, I think that software companies rake restaurant owners over the coals. I don't think maybe not two or three years ago, maybe it was a really, it was a reasonable cost. But with Vibe coding with, with the cost for the software developer plummeting because they can now use AI to develop these, like the, you don't see the cost of the software plummeting either. You know what I'm saying?
- [27:49]
B
No.
- [27:49]
A
So it's just like, well, with all this new innovation, like why are we paying so much money for software? Like, this is a game changer. I want to get Albert on the show to inspire more restaurant owners to Vibe code. And we were even talking about having you lead a forum or a course in our community restaurant unstoppable Network to teach other owners how to do this. And I was astonished at how little people were interested in that. Like, totally astonished. I was like, what the people? Like, it's right here. Like the answer is right here. Step across. Like, come into the future of the restaurant industry. And why don't you think people showed up for that opportunity?
- [28:32]
B
I think. Here's one. As an owner operator. We're busy, Eric. I mean, and I've said it a hundred times, you're talking about Vibe coating versus your dishwasher not showing up. Your walk in cooler is at 48 degrees and not 42. We're just, we're inundated with a bunch of little fires that we, we got to put out. And, and I just don't think we have the bandwidth to learn something new sometimes.
- [28:59]
A
I get it. No, I mean, and I think you're right on. I think you hit the nail on the head. It's a lot to learn new things. And into your point, even if you have the, the interest in developing software, you wake up, who's going to wake up at 5am every morning before a 12 hour shift? Yeah, you know, it's the people that are passionate. It's their hobby. They enjoy it. It fills their cup. There aren't a lot of those people in the restaurant industry that have that same level of intense passion that you do for software. So anyway, we decided that, you know, maybe we shouldn't push forward with the course. But we still have a lot of great conversation in the community. You've been showing up and you've feedback from other operators on how to make this thing better. I introduced you to some of the best consultants I know on my network to say, take a look at this thing. And like, how can we. I think Rudy Mick, quoting Rudy Mick, he said, you know, a lot of the, the software in our industry is built on a broken system because you have all these developers going to restaurants that are operating on an old business model and we're just building software on a broken business model. But what if, what if we could connect Albert to these leading consultants, leading restaurateurs who are challenging the system and engineer solutions based on where we should be going? What's going through your head?
- [30:19]
B
Yeah. And really, I mean, we haven't alluded to it yet. When I said and more regarding seven shifts and he's like, well, hold off. Those came from the Rudy mix and the Bobs of the world, man. Listen, it's one thing to build the schedule and it's another thing to have the scheduler help you and save you money and, and, and show you maybe where you're losing money.
- [30:44]
A
Yeah. So there's some things that, you know, you wanted to come out in this, this time, the part of the conversation. I think all those things have come out where, you know, we've been building this for, or reverse engineering this based off of what operators have been saying. We've been getting feedback from some of the best minds in the industry. And you really, there's a pivot point for you where you wanted everything to be under one roof and to like really follow the, the employee cycle. Right. Is there anything else you want to say in terms of the evolution to, of, you know, what Hot Shift has been up to this point or should we just get right into.
- [31:24]
B
Let's get right into it. Yeah, I mean, I, I would get too personal with Hot Shift. It's my baby. I love it. I'm patching it. Hopefully that comes out, but I think that's, we've covered the, the evolution.
- [31:34]
A
Yeah. So let me just list off. Okay. If we're getting to what is Hot Shift today? It is basically. Here are the, the. I think we have five. How many specific six elements to Hot Shift I have in Front of me. It's a hiring funnel. Training, scheduling and forecasting. We also have a shift coach. It's gamification and it is review and reputation management. So let's get into that first bullet there. Yeah, hiring funnel. Hot Shift is a hiring funnel. What do you mean by that?
- [32:04]
B
So a hiring funnel. So Hot Shift will create your own vanity URL, like for us hotshift.com or.pro/betos/apply. So your employee, your applicants apply on your own vanity URL. That applicant comes into the funnel. We call it a funnel. It's a hor, literally a visual horizontal funnel. Enters, you evaluate based on the application with one click. So you'll get a notification on hopshift and or sms. And with one click, you click the link, you look at the application. Hey, I like this applicant. I want to take it one step further. We call it a pre evaluation or a pre interview questionnaire. It gets just a little bit deeper, a few more questions. With one click, it sends them an SMS text like, hey, we like your application. We want to bring you in for an interview. Fill this out for us. They fill it out again, horizontal funnel, all in the same place. Notifies the manager. You look it over and like, hey, I like this applicant. How do we schedule an interview? You don't have to go off to another app. You don't have to go up to Google Calendar or Calendly. With one click within Hotship, it sends them a link to schedule an interview. The only manual process of this is actually bringing them in and interviewing them. So they come in, you interview them, you like them one click higher. So we send them the training link.
- [33:34]
A
So now we're into the second element. So we covered the hiring funnel.
- [33:37]
B
Yeah.
- [33:37]
A
And then once, you know, with one click they go through that entire process and now you have this list of candidates and then that brings you right into the next phase of the employee cycle, which is training.
- [33:49]
B
Right. So we've hired them. So Hot Shift has an option on there depending on the. And not all job codes are going to require the same training. So you can customize the training based on job code. And because Hot Shift syncs with Toast, it brings all that information into the system. You can customize the training per job code and then you can make different trainings what we call required. And what that means is, hey, if bussers have to do this required training, you don't have to remember to send them the training link as long as it's required in Hot Shift, the minute they hit the toast system, it automatically sends them the training link. They have to complete it. And based on whatever you put into the system, they have two day or three days to complete it. And if they don't, it follows that life cycle of that training as well.
- [34:46]
A
Got it. So we've covered the first two elements of what Hot Shifts is today. It's a hiring funnel. It's training from hiring to trained. And then what is the third element of Hot Shift today?
- [34:59]
B
Well, it's just so we've, we've trained them now we got to get them onto the schedule. We get them onto the schedule and if there's, there's conversations, any operator out there, you don't just hire an employee like, hey, welcome to the team. And that, that's it right? There is continued coaching, there's continued training, there's continuing education and there's continued motivation. So that's where kind of the scheduling and the gamification, all that is intertwined. There's really no way to separate that from an employee's journey. It's continually motivating and coaching the employee.
- [35:36]
A
Got it. Any features of the scheduling and forecasting that we need to, to talk about 100%.
- [35:43]
B
So we bring in so and anybody out there tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't know many other scheduling platforms that are doing this right now. So Hot Shift creates an AI agent just for you. So it's going to know obviously where your restaurant is based on your address. It's going to start using different APIs like SeatGeek and SportsDB and Weather Forecasting. And it's going to start bringing in all that information. Hot Shift allows you to upload two years of data. So it knows, hey, you sell on Average on Tuesday, $2,000, $3,000 on a Wednesday. So it's taken every Wednesday, every Tuesday, every day of the week. And then it's going to put it up against your eight, eight week trend. Hey, there's a World cup game in Boston or in Dallas, Fort Worth. This might impact your sales. Hey, if I'm a coffee shop, you might be busier on rainy days versus a Mexican restaurant. It knows food days. It knows like, hey, Cinco de Mayo. I've looked at your other Cinco de Mayo's. You need to schedule more. And then it breaks it down per day, Eric. So it tells you, you schedule so much on a Monday and it gives you your forecasted labor. And then when Monday's over, it gives you your actual labor to make sure that that actual labor matches up with that theoretical labor cost. And I don't know of a lot of other platforms that are doing that right now.
- [37:16]
A
I know Restaurant Assistance Pro was had that. That was one of the things that really separated them. And all the love to Fred Langley and Restaurant Systems. Probably they were ahead of the curve of being restaurant owners that develop their own software.
- [37:29]
B
Right.
- [37:31]
A
But now it's just becoming so easy and like in, you know, again, more credit. Credit to Fred and the Restaurant Systems Pro. But Fred isn't a developer. You know, he's a restaurant consultant.
- [37:42]
B
Yeah.
- [37:43]
A
So. And that was the biggest criticism he got was that his software, and I'm not being disrespectful, was just clunky. And I know that they have plans to. To develop that and to make it better. And, you know, I will get into this later. There needs to be more Albert Sanchez's and more Fred Langley's out there. And that's. That's kind of my message. But anyway, so we've covered in terms of what Hot Shift is today. It is a hiring funnel. It is a training tool from hiring to trained scheduling plus forecasting. And it has all the features of your best scheduling tools out there with the. It's freaking beautiful, too. It. The usability. It's. It's so well put together. And we haven't got into the. What, the shift coach. Right. We haven't tapped on that yet.
- [38:32]
B
Yeah. So Shift coach from. From just personal experience. Listen, can you go into TOAST and see what time every one of your employees is clocking in and out? Of. Of course you can, but you got to literally log into toast, go into the reports and find out what time they're clocking in and out. And then you got to remember to say something to them. So we built in shift coach, and originally it was called Hype Man. That's what I wanted to call it. So it's originally started as literally a hype Man. So regarding on the gamification aspect, let's say you're number one on the leaderboard. It's going to send you a text like, hey, great job, eric. You're number one. The leaderboard, keep it up. But if you're number two or three, like, hey, you're just 30 points behind number one. You know, you got this. You got three more days. You're only 73 points behind the leader or a coaching intern. Let's say your tip percentage is a little low. Like, hey, you're at 18.3% this week. I know you got this. And this is all customizable and it's like, hey, the goal is 21, you know, I know you got this, but really what we use it for on the most part, where I get alerts almost weekly for sure, is the people riding the clock and the people clocking in late.
- [39:50]
A
Right. So what I hear right now, I think of, you know, first just the power of gamification. What gets measured gets minded. And then if it's out of sight, it's out of mind. So it's not just being measured, but it's being resurfaced constantly. So you're, it forces people to look at that. Isn't it a requirement that when you clock in too, that I know there was some feature that. Did you miss? Did you mention that? And I missed it.
- [40:12]
B
What's that?
- [40:13]
A
When you clock in. I know there was, I know there was something tied to the significance of being able to clock in and being able to see your numbers. Am I remembering that from a different conversation?
- [40:29]
B
No. I mean you're going to clock in, you're still going to clock into toast.
- [40:32]
A
Got it. I don't know what I recall from that. Then my mind's going places. So just to summarize up to this point, relative to what hot shift is today, we have hiring funnel training scheduling. It is also a built in agent shift coach. You also have built in agents for the scheduling, for the forecasting and getting, you know, how whatever events nearby might be influencing your traffic that day. We have, we've mentioned the gamification, anything that is the fifth element of what hot shift is today. But do you want to resurface or echo any of the sentiments around gamification?
- [41:09]
B
I think it's a huge motivator and I'll leave it at that. If you don't know the numbers, it's going to be really hard to talk to staff.
- [41:20]
A
Got it. And then the last feature that we haven't talked about a lot at all really today is you built your own reviews and reputation feature on, on top of this platform, which is huge.
- [41:31]
B
And this was a separate platform that I had built. This was about nine months of my life. About 18 months ago, I kind of hard coded an Ovation app and at the time it wasn't built into Hot Shift. But I'm like, well, we're giving away prizes for five star reviews. Eric comes into Betos. He has a great experience. He says Albert took care of him. You did a great job. And then we were literally at one point a couple years ago paying out and we weren't pressuring guests. And if it just happened organically, we were having contests and paying out for five star reviews. Well, that ties in directly into the gamification aspect of Hot Shift and reputation management. So what we do is very similar to Ovation. You can print out a table 10. Each table gets a dynamic QR code, so it knows each table. A guest has a positive experience. They click they, they scan the QR code. If they have a five star experience, it funnels them to Google reviews. If they have a negative experience, it immediately texts the manager with what happened and what table. And the goal is to catch that guest before they leave the restaurant and hopefully correct whatever went wrong and, and hopefully prevent them from leaving a negative Google review.
- [43:08]
A
Yeah, and I, I hate how dependent the restaurant industry is on Google. I'm not gonna lie. I think it's absolutely bonkers that that platform has as much influences. Like you talk to restaurant marketing consultants and you're like, what's the answer to restaurant marketing? They're like, Google. And if that's. And it's. The thing that pisses me off is that it's a true statement. It is a true statement and it shouldn't be true. That is a testament to how much power that organization has over an entire industry. And by more and more people saying, you got to get on, you got to get on, it's just like we're just, we're just adding fuel to the fire, you know. Anyway, I digress. That's a conversation for another day. But you know it. And I hate that. I hate this expression too. It's a necessary evil.
- [43:52]
B
It is. And it's not just that, Eric. I mean, of course it's not just the, the reputation management part of it. So if any of your listeners, there's a huge SEO aspect of Google reviews as well, in case, if any listener doesn't know. So whether you're using Hot Shift or any other reputation management or just doing it manually, super important that you respond to all of your Google reviews, good and bad, because there is, there is SEO implications to that, which is so
- [44:24]
A
ridiculous to think about. How busy are you in a day? And you get all these people in from all these different platforms. It's unreasonable, you know, it's difficult.
- [44:34]
B
But hey, listen segments perfectly into what Hot Shift does. Listen. Creating a customized response to every single one of your Google reviews. And listen, if you're a bigger organization and you have a social media manager, that's all they do is social media and Google listen. This is, you know, you, you're doing better than 90 of most places. Right. But what Hot Shift allows you to do is with one click it creates the scaffolding for your, for your response. Yeah. And you don't have to use it. Exactly. But with one click it'll create a response. And within Hot Shift with our Google API, it pushes it right out to Google. So there's again same thing. You don't have to leave Hot Shift to respond to a Google review.
- [45:25]
A
It's. Yeah, it's. I think it hurts my brain to think of how like sloppy the world has gotten where we have all these things happening where we're just creating AI agents to do all this that we, we nobody want wants to do, but we have no choice to do it because it's marketing. It's just anyway. But what I do like about it, but I do like about it is that it's so stupid that this is like a tool to fight back to like the just absolute absurdity that we're, we found ourselves in. We're like it just, you know, like you want me to respond to all these reviews. Well, here's a tool to do it, your system. And that's what I like about it. It because so it's because it's absolutely absurd. Anyway, I digress. So but problem solved, right? Use technology. Technology. So that's super powerful. I hate how powerful and necessary that is. But like to your point, necessary evil. So we've covered I think everything man. Again, so what Hot Shift is today, it's a hiring funnel. It's a training platform form. It's scheduling plus forecasting with built in agents, AI agents to pull things to the surface, to look into the future, to forecast. It's a shift coach with which is another agent in itself encouraging bringing things to the surface, information numbers to the surface. It's gamification, tapping into the human side of just making people more competitive, making them aware of where they are in the organization to rise, to encourage them to rise and elevate. And it's also a system to hack the system with reviews and reputation which is super powerful. And all this you get. And this is where we're up to the point of the conversation where we're gonna show you how to up. And so we've covered the origin story, the evolution of Hot Shift. We've covered what Hot Shift is today and I can't wait for you to tell us how we're gonna up. So what does Hot Shift replace go through like line item everything that okay.
- [47:35]
B
And your listeners are going to probably know all of these. So reputation management, Ovation, you know, scheduling seven shifts, you could say review Duel in the gamification of the five star reviews. Lms, whatever LMS platform that you're using to train your employees already built into Hot Shift. I don't know if any gamification apps are out there right now, but it's definitely Hot Shift and some type of task list, something like Jolt. So man, if you're adding all those up, Eric, I mean help me with the math but I mean you're talking
- [48:20]
A
but you also have SMS right next to me.
- [48:22]
B
Yeah, and. Well just SMS is built into the scheduler. We didn't talk about that. So you can communicate, you can communicate with your staff individually, you can communicate by the entire team, you can communicate by job code. And what's super important is that you're not putting job codes per person when you sign up to Hot Shift, it uploads everything for you so you don't have to build it from scratch. That's the beauty of Hot Shift. Yeah.
- [48:49]
A
So if we're going through the list one more time, you have reputation management, that's about 130amonth with Ovation listed there. Seven shifts is at about 70amonth.
- [48:59]
B
I think it's 74.
- [49:00]
A
74. Next me. What is that again?
- [49:04]
B
It's a wait list. So part of, part of the agent. So hopefully you're busy enough to be on a SMS wait list. Eric comes in, party of two, we put you on the list, send you a text, and we send you a text when your table is ready.
- [49:18]
A
Why isn't that one of the things that was on the list of things that you get with Hot?
- [49:22]
B
It does a lot of shit, Eric. I forget sometimes there's another element.
- [49:26]
A
So there's a wait list.
- [49:27]
B
It's a wait list. It's an SMS wait list. And how that ties into your specific agent learning. So it's bringing in all this stuff into your scheduler, yourselves and events, but it's also reading. So if I put Eric on the wait list for 10 minutes, right, on a Friday night, and every Friday night it picks up that you are consistently not seating people within that window of time. Party of two, I quote you 10 minutes and consistently it's 17 minutes. Well guess what? Your agents picking up on that and saying hey, you're seven minutes late on the quoted time on average on a Friday. Maybe you should schedule another server or another host. Something is. Something is not jiving or simply quote a longer wait time.
- [50:17]
A
Got it. So from the top again it replaces Ovation at 137, shifts at 70amonth. A wait list or next me at 50amonth. We're up to 200amonth or no, 250amonth review. Duel at 40. So we're at 290 review an LMS platform. And there's a lot out there that's at 50 bucks a month. So now we're. I don't know, I'm losing track of the gamification and that's another 50. And it also replaces a side of work tool like Jolt or Blanket. So we're up to a total of 430amonth of subscriptions. Of subscriptions that Hot Shift replaces. And what are you charging for hot shift?
- [50:59]
B
99.
- [51:00]
A
99amonth. That's how we're gonna up.
- [51:03]
B
Yes.
- [51:04]
A
And back to this whole. Like, when I discovered what Albert was doing and I got him on the show and I was like, this is how we're gonna up. We're gonna teach restaurant owners how to vibe code their own solutions so that we can way lower, like, save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month on restaurant software. Like, we don't need these software companies anymore. Like, let's up. But the reality is, even with how easy it is to develop software, people just don't have the bandwidth or the attention span or the drive, the desire or the language to speak to a vibe coding platform like Claude. But Albert does. And if, if we can, we can open the door into that world, but so many people just won't walk through it. So the best or the next best way we can fuck shit up is to give you what Albert has created at a fraction of the cost. And I think that if we do this, we will force the software companies, we're gonna blow shit up. We're gonna kick the legs out from the system right now. That's. That's my hope. I'm gonna lose so many friends with
- [52:12]
B
this episode, at least sponsors, right?
- [52:15]
A
Yeah. I mean, with their friends, you know. But I think the reality is, is it's the world's changing, man. The world's really changing. And I think we have to be very aware of how it changes because there's a lot of people out there predicting the future. And all those people predicting the future, the majority of them are invested in that future. They have an agenda, they have a narrative, and it's the technology companies that are predicting that future. Here's the thing, the future is not predicted, it's made. We do not have to choose to go in the direction of these software companies. And that's what I don't think restaurant tours understand. And this brings us to the last part of our segment today, which is I think we need more Albert Sanchez's in the world and we need more independent operators and we need more owners, not just restaurant owners, but we need more entrepreneurs in the world. We need to build back the middle class. And I think the restaurant industry is going to spearhead this movement. We need a revolution. Maybe I'm going out of line, maybe I'm too lofty and dreamy, but what are your, what are your thoughts up to this point?
- [53:28]
B
No, you're exactly right and I get it. And, and one of the pain points for restaurants is it's changed, man. I think as an industry we're just scared to change. And I don't know if, if it's embedded in us, if it's kind of who the type of person that gets into this industry. I quite haven't figured it out as a software developer because there's two sides of any business, right? It's what you do and, and then the business of what you do. Hey, listen, Eric, I'm going to tell you right now, and, and I think we're better than almost every one of those apps that we just talked about. Not to be braggadocious, but those apps and systems were built, we've talked about it, were built for enterprise. They necessarily were not built for the independent restaurants and how that independent restaurateur thinks at that kind of, that hour by hour part of their day. And I don't know if any software developer like, hey man, I'd love to hire from the gym and it could be, hey, I would love to hire from my kids daycare class or whatever it is, right? We're busy, we're, we don't have a lot of bandwidth. And I don't know if, if some of these software developers think that way
- [54:46]
A
like an operator, 100% and what you just mentioned, that these softwares are not built for independence. 100% can back that up. And here's how I know, because I have conversations on the regular with these software companies who want to support and sponsor my podcast. That's what I used to think it was, support and sponsor. But now it's more like we want to pay you to say things and to spin our narrative. And the narrative is, the real narrative is that most of these, the overwhelming majority, we'll say 99, I'll get 98% of these software companies want the business of 50 plus unit operators, that's who they're building software for. Because that's where the money is. Because here's the reality. It's not worth it. You're not worth it to them because you're working with a 1, 2, 3, 4 unit operator. The lift isn't worth it. It's just not. The software industry is engineered for scale. They don't give a fuck about you. And that's what pisses me off. Because here's the thing. The majority of the industry, what is it like 70% of restaurants are independently owned?
- [55:50]
B
I think it's higher.
- [55:51]
A
Yeah. It's crazy. In the fucking lazy software industry. Just like, I just want to scale and sell and conglomerate. Like, you know, like this homogenization of the restaurant industry. You have three fucking companies right now running the restaurant industry because they control the technology. That's not good for independence. And all you see online, all you see on social media are these four or five companies because they have the marketing budget to control the narrative and the agenda. And we're supporting it. It's driving me crazy and I've been silenced because I can't bite the hand that feeds me. And I'm broke right now, dude. I am broke. If you.
- [56:27]
B
I'm not laughing at that. No. But I'm excited that you're excited.
- [56:30]
A
Google search best restaurant business podcast or ask any LLM out there. They're going to tell you that number is restaurant unstoppable. And I can't make a dime right now because I'm not willing to tote a narrative that doesn't support the people I serve. Not sponsors. Independent restaurant owners. It's crazy, dude.
- [56:49]
B
Well, that's exactly why we're doing what we're doing. Right up. My goal is not to serve the 50 unit. That's not who I am. I couldn't even speak their language. Right, Right. I don't know what it takes to run a 50 unit operation. I know what it takes to run an independent. And what I think when I start deciding, like, listen, it'd be great. I don't know, what do we add up? 400 and some odd dollars for each. Man. It'd be great if I had so much business that I didn't care about 430 bucks.
- [57:16]
A
Yeah.
- [57:16]
B
But I do. Yeah, right. I do care.
- [57:19]
A
Yeah, dude.
- [57:20]
B
And I built it for myself. I built it for others. So you know who's the ideal is this? Small independent restaurant. Restaurant chains.
- [57:27]
A
Right.
- [57:27]
B
That's. That's who we want to help. That's. I think that's. Why. And we haven't talked about your investment. Right. I don't. I don't know if you want to.
- [57:35]
A
And that's how we're looking at this. And I. I have to change my business model. So to educate the listeners, there's three ways you make money with a podcast. Through sponsorship, through affiliate marketing. And, you know, sponsorship is basically the ads you hear. And now it's less obvious what a sponsorship is, because content marketing is sponsorship where people pay you to be a guest on the show. Albert didn't pay me a dime to be a guest on the show. Not the first time, not the second time. Affiliate marketing is getting paid to promote services. And if there's a conversion, you get paid, like a cut of that. That's closer to what Albert and I are doing. And then there's having your own product or service that you use on the back end of your podcast to drive people to your services. And that's what the majority of restaurant podcasts today are. It's content marketing for software companies or coaches or consultants to drive business to their. To their podcast or to their. Their. You know, they're using their podcast to drive business to their. The services or whatever. No shade on that. It's a very smart marketing approach. But the. My issue is, I started this thing as a student. I literally wanted to learn from successful people. I never had a product. I don't want to be a coach. I don't want to be a consultant. I want to be curious. I want to chase truth. Truth. I want to expose truth. I want to help people. And I want to be cheap, free if possible, because I think that's what the independent restaurant owner needs. They need a source of truth. They need transparency. They need help. And that's why I started this podcast. So I'm struggling because my. My business model doesn't support. I should be a nonprofit. So I need to figure out how. Like, I need to focus less on sponsorship and more on strategic partnerships and promoting the people I believe in and the future I believe in and building a product behind my podcast so I can have a recurring revenue model to. To support the mission. And that's what Restaurant Stoppable Network is. So I'm. I'm looking at this as an investment. I haven't made a penny from Albert, but he is going to give me 30% of recurring revenue from every sale. So are we giving it to you for a fraction of the cost? $99 a month versus close to 500. Yes. And 30% of that. Albert's giving to restaurant Unstoppable. And our goal isn't to get tens of thousands of subscribers to your service. If we can get 100, we'll be happy. If we can get 500.
- [60:03]
B
Holy fuck, I'm retiring at 500. No, no, no. Yeah, you're right. You know, the, that's still a small number compared to some of, I mean these apps, I mean you're talking about.
- [60:13]
A
And here's my true hope, and I don't know how Albert's going to feel about this statement. My true hope is that we inspire more operators across the country to do what I'm doing, to do what Albert's doing, to build community, to support each other and to develop their own solutions. Because what the future needs again is more owners and we more independence. Controlling the narrative, controlling the technology that we use. So if we inspire more people to break off and develop their own softwares and each one of these companies has a couple hundred clients and maybe it's the northeast solution or the southwest solution or the Midwest solution, these different communities and then those communities come together, independent networks come together and share information and compete to make the solutions better, the technology better, the industry better. Then we can fucking cut the head off the drag and I just punch my microphone and remove our or like free ourselves from this, this tech conglomerate like bullshit. Because there needs to be a change. How is it working for us so far? Is it getting easier as a restaurant owner?
- [61:21]
B
No, it's just getting more expensive, Eric. I mean if you're being honest, I mean I'm an operator, I see it all the time.
- [61:27]
A
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- [63:23]
B
is to the community and I think you know, pricing at $99, when you fuck shit up, which I think we are right? And I think you're going to see some shifts in the industry in terms of restaurant technology. But there tends to be, you know, that human dynamic where if it's too cheap, it must not be very good. And let me be very clear, without being too braggadocious, anybody that's curious, demo it. If it's not as good, it's just simply better.
- [63:50]
A
Right?
- [63:50]
B
In any one of these. And I think, I think that being so cheap, people might misconstrue that, right? We're doing this to up. It's not because it's not worth it.
- [64:02]
A
And we haven't even shared the full story. I'm kind of a, I can be an. And Albert was like, hey, how about you promote this for me? I was like, albert, no offense, dude, I don't know restaurant software, you know, like, that's not my thing. I, I'm a 30, 000 foot how to, how to go from wanting to own a restaurant to getting into 20 locations. Like, I'm a big picture guy. I'm not a technology guy. I don't even like being on computers. I drive across the country so I can avoid being on computers. I was like, I want to help you, but I can't just promote you because I like you. That goes against everything I believe in. So here's what I'll do. I will take the biggest assholes I know in our community and I who I know no technology and they will tell you without a blink of a eyelash that that it sucks or it doesn't suck. And I was, I was like, ready to crush Albert. I'm like, this is gonna suck. But like, I can't, I can't just promote like I What is that word when you favor your own children?
- [65:01]
B
Biased.
- [65:03]
A
Nepotism. I can't be a nepotist. Like this whole thing is about word of mouth and promoting what people are saying. So I, I let Albert demo it to like some of the most intelligent like plugged into technology individuals I know and they were like wow, this is really impressive. We, we demoed it live in restaurant stoppable network. I invited those people to be there and I was really like, oh wow. Like they didn't make Rob, they didn't make Bob or sorry, Bob was the one that. Yeah, Bob, Bob will probably laugh if he like I'm talking about Bob Sloop and you know, he's very, he knows the world technology. Like that's what he does. And you know, Rudy, Mick and other restaurant owners that are in our community to look at it and everyone was really impressed and I was like, holy, we might have something here, Albert.
- [65:48]
B
We do have something here.
- [65:49]
A
Albert's talented. And, and I didn't know that talent at first but now I'm aware of it. Now I'm pushing the out of it because not only does it support my values of, of doing my work and word of mouth in like due diligence but like it's helping good people connect with good people. Not only is he talented. Albert, you're awesome, dude, man.
- [66:08]
B
Well, thank you brother. Appreciate that.
- [66:09]
A
You know, and this makes me feel so good in so many different ways. So it isn't just like hey, we're going to try to get rich off this. Like no, like I was an to Albert and I was like, no, I can't promote it. I have to do all these things to make sure that you actually build something of value and it's been incredible and it's, I couldn't be more transparent right now.
- [66:28]
B
Yeah, I think, I think everybody's heard that just the, the complete honest truth and, and hopefully they give us a chance at least demo it. Let us show you what we're excited about, what other people have seen. And then I really believe Eric, that as soon as the industry and I'm not saying Hot Shift is going to change the industry, but what I am saying is somebody like Hot Shift is going to change the industry. So when there's more hot shifts of the world, the other big platforms will have no choice but to take notice. That's already happened once with pos. I mean Micros and Aloha were the legacy brands and then you start getting these cloud based brands that have become, they were the disruptors and now they're the legacy brands.
- [67:17]
A
Right?
- [67:18]
B
Right.
- [67:19]
A
Think about that first eclipse. It was like the 90s into the middle mid 2000s, like 2010, 2013, 14. Right. That was a good 25 year run and now it's like seven years. And that is a testament to Moore's Law how fast technology is evolving. It's right there in front of us. And the next wave is going to be like three years or two years. Right. But we, again, we need to control that narrative. Right now there's this book out there, and if you don't believe me, read this book. It's called Power and Progress. It is a. Our 1000 year struggle over technology and prosperity written by Daran Akamaglu and Simon Johnson, who are like MIT economic professors. They also Duran wrote Wealth of Nations. And in this book they talk about how whoever controls the. The technology controls the agenda, controls the narrative. So we're in a situation right now where there are five, probably five companies you can count in your hand that are controlling all the media. They are paying influencers to tell you something that's not true. And they are trying to convince you that they are the solution. They are telling you what the future is and oh, how convenient they are. The future.
- [68:32]
B
Right. Yeah.
- [68:33]
A
Here, like the, the tail is wagging the dog. And in this analogy, the, the technology companies are the tail. The dog is the restaurant industry. And we have. We are so out of control and we're so ignorant. And I don't think ignorant is a mean word. It just means we don't know what's going on, but that's how it's designed. And maybe I'm crazy or maybe I'm dead on. No one else is talking about it because they're afraid to bite the hand that feeds them because the people that talk get influenced by these people. They are the influencers. That's how it works. I turned down $16,000 yesterday. I'm not in the position to do that.
- [69:08]
B
And for the listeners listening, this is not. We didn't script this, you know, and Eric and I have had conversations offline in terms of, of his commitment to the community, you know, so help us up.
- [69:21]
A
Yeah. You know, so I mean, I think this is really important that I think the future. And this is the last thing I'll say before we have the call to action. The independent restaurant industry will never be fully independent until we choose to, to own not just our restaurants, but our industry and the systems and technologies that we leverage. We, we talk about being, you know, buying local, supporting local Conscious capitalism. But then we turn around and we don't walk that walk. We're in California using POS system. That's in Boston. Yeah, you know, so, yeah, you know, I think we need to be very conscious with our money. We need to support the Alberts of the world. We need to take our industry back. And the way to do that is to head to Hotshift Pro, slash Unstoppable, and to check out what Albert's built. It's awesome. And I can say that with confidence. And you owe it to yourself. Even if you have all these solutions and you, you don't need a solution because you already have a solution, wouldn't you like to save 400amonth? And if you're looking to start a restaurant, start with Albert. Like, it's really cool what he's built and it's only going to get better because Albert's in our community restaurant stoppable network and he is not just building this for himself, he's building it for the community. We're giving him feedback. We have other community members who are now also getting interested in vibe coding and we can build shit together. I have access to the best minds in the industry that can influence the things we built. This is the other part of this is Restaurant Unstoppable live. Head over to Restaurant Unstoppable.com live if you want to be a part of these conversations. Albert will be live on the next Coffee with Eric, which is going to be a Monday after this episode goes live live. So every Monday, 11am Eastern, we're hanging out, we're sharing information. We're taking our industry back. We would love to have you be a part of it. Albert, any final last words?
- [71:11]
B
You got it, man. You wrapped it up better than I could.
- [71:13]
A
Sweet. Well, this is where I say thank you so much for doing the work you do to, to help us up to. To give what you've built away at a such generous rate to not just the industry, but to share it with me, to support what I'm doing because I need all the help I can get. This is where I say, man, there is no questioning. You are unstoppable.
- [71:37]
B
Thank you, brother.
- [71:38]
A
Cheers.