Scales Of Success Podcast

#13 - How AI is Transforming Your Meal with Brandon Barton

• Marcus Arredondo

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What if ordering a meal could be as seamless as a conversation with a trusted friend? In this Scale of Success Podcast episode, host Marcus Arredondo sits down with Brandon Barton, CEO of Bite, to explore how AI and innovation reshape the restaurant experience. From working alongside Danny Meyer and Gary Vaynerchuk to collaborating with Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken, Brandon shares lessons on leadership, hospitality, and the role of emotional intelligence in business. Discover how AI is helping restaurants enhance service, reduce costs, and build meaningful customer connections. Whether you’re in the restaurant industry or a tech enthusiast, this conversation is packed with insights on building a brand, embracing digital transformation, and fostering a customer-first culture.

Brandon Barton is a hospitality technology leader with nearly two decades of experience in the restaurant industry. As CEO of Bite, he drives innovation with the industry’s leading AI-powered self-service ordering platform, partnering with brands like Chick-fil-A and Bluestone Lane. Previously, Brandon was a key player at Resy, where he led sales and operations before its acquisition by American Express, and held leadership roles at Avero and Local Bushel. A Cornell University graduate and former Varsity Basketball player, Brandon lives in Westport, CT, with his wife and two children, balancing work, cooking, and basketball coaching.

Learn more about Brandon Barton:
Website: https://www.getbite.com/
Email: brandon@getByte.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandoncbarton/ 

Episode highlights:
(3:56) Creating the secret menu
(8:02) From hospitality to restaurant technology
(17:38) Transition to tech with Avero, Resy, and Bite
(21:42) Lessons on leadership and culture
(30:01) The concept of Founder Mode
(34:42) Post-COVID impacts on restaurants and the digital guest experience
(37:25) Understanding dynamic pricing
(41:54) Successful use of technology in restaurants
(45:17) Tipping and the future of customer service
(47:27) Brandon’s daily routine, leadership style, and mind diet
(50:00) Outro

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Note: The transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

Brandon Barton: 0:00

The high the dopamine hit whatever you want to call it that I get off of making other people happy and maybe even anticipating their needs and doing things that they don't expect to be done for them, to them, the high that I get off that is. It's unmatched and it's addictive and, frankly, I've wanted to stay in that space forever.

Marcus Arredondo: 0:23

Frankly, I've wanted to stay in that space forever. Today's guest is Brandon Barton, Ceo of Bite, an AI-driven self-service platform revolutionizing the quick service and fast casual restaurant industry. We dive into Brandon's career consistently at the intersection of hospitality and technology, spanning from his early days at Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group to leading sales at Resi before its acquisition with American Express. We explore Byte's innovation, including their work with Shaquille O'Neal's Big Chicken brand, and how AI is revolutionizing the restaurant industry. Let's start the show. All right, brandon, it's been too long. Thank you for being on. I'm super stoked to dive in here.

Brandon Barton: 0:57

Oh, it's great, Marcus, great to see you and super excited to be here, man.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:06

So as two, I'm not going to use the word former because I think we're still basketball players. There is a big intro I understand that I caught wind of on LinkedIn between at least one basketball player and another head of a professional sports league, and I'm wondering if you might just share with us two big men in their own respective industries. There you go, dana White and Shaquille O'Neal. I want to hear how you met them and what that story is all about.

Brandon Barton: 1:30

Yeah, it's actually all related. I don't know, maybe this will come up a couple of times in our conversation, but luck favors the prepared person right. And so this all came together because of a lot of hustle and a lot of hard work, but really grateful to have met the Big Chicken team. So Big Chicken is Shaquille O'Neal's family's brand. Years ago Shaquille O'Neal was involved with Papa John's. I don't know if he's divested those units or not, but the story goes that he eventually felt like that's not his and it's not representing what his upbringing was. He's a huge family guy. You know Nearly everything he had to say when I met him for that 45-minute period. He was talking about some story about his father and the way his father taught him something and what he's teaching to his kids. It's lovely. Anyway, he started this brand, big Chicken, with his business partner, perry, and Big Chicken, through a series of hard work and fortunate events, chose Byte, my current company.

Brandon Barton: 2:27

Byte is, for those of you that don't know, is a self-service kiosk company. We utilize amazing AI to help predict what people want and put the best options in front of them. But if you've walked into a QSR or fast casual restaurant in the last few years. You've probably seen a kiosk and many of them might have been bite, especially in California. Anyway, back to the story.

Brandon Barton: 2:48

Got to meet Josh and the team and there was this opportunity to try to infuse Shaq into the kiosk. And there is nobody. I think this is actually true. I don't think that there is anyone that's more memeable for our generation and I'm including straight down to the Zers and everything okay than Shaq. Shaq is hysterical. Shaq doing anything because he's a 300 and probably 60 pound man. If he shakes his butt or does a chicken dance, that's hysterical. And so we had the opportunity to put this into our kiosk product. I sat in Las Vegas for an afternoon to watch just random people use the kiosk. Everybody walked away laughing and anyway, this all led to being able to meet Shaq in person, have a conversation with him, tell him about the kiosk, show him his family, lucille's famous mac and cheese, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to have met this guy because he's incredible. There's this concept of what is a celebrity really like. He's better than whatever you think he is, because he is just an incredible human being.

Marcus Arredondo: 3:51

That's such a great story. So I know you guys met and you put him in your kiosk. What was the genesis of that? How did that come about so?

Brandon Barton: 3:58

I'll give a little bit of credit to the PR company that we started working with. They opened my eyes to this thing that I may not have realized in the earlier years of me being a CEO, which is sometimes you have to build product that is newsworthy, and we were so focused, and have been so focused, on building product that is really functionally what our customers want, but we probably in the early years had not spent enough time dreaming about what the customers don't realize that they want and building it, and so I had this idea to make a newsworthy feature, which is the secret menu. Everyone's been to an In-N-Out and you've ordered something animal style and you feel cool. I remember when somebody showed me you can do that and I felt cool and it becomes a part of the lore and I said let's do a secret menu. So you know, luck Favors, the prepared person here, got a phone call from Josh Halpern, who's the CEO of Big Chicken. Then the next day I got a phone call from Perry Rogers. Perry Rogers is. There's incredible stories with Perry and I'd hate to tell his story here, but let's just say he has had basically as an agent of three different top performing athletes throughout his career Andre Agassi, shaquille O'Neal and Jason Tatum. Okay, he's only had three clients because he's not really an agent. He's like a businessman who also was best friends with Andre Agassi when he was little, so it became his agent and, anyway, the stories from Perry are amazing.

Brandon Barton: 5:22

Anyway, when somebody like that calls you and says, hey, I want to infuse Shaq into this experience, it was very meaningful. And he said we're doing this photo shoot with Pepsi where we have a day where we're going to have Shaq and his family, his daughter, his mother, there and they're going to be doing all these little gifts and we want to put this in the kiosk. And I said, bingo, I have the best idea. Let's make this Shaq secret menu. Okay, and we ended up calling it the O'Neill family menu.

Brandon Barton: 5:55

And you know, we took this idea that I had about how to productize something really special in the secret menu and how to put Shaq into it and I said this is perfect. So we did the photo shoot with Shaq, got all these funny gifts and then put it into the product, and so, really, this was about how do we create an experience inside a restaurant that could be fun and make people smile, and it was the perfect alignment of brand and celebrity and everything that led to it. And, by the way, super props to my product and engineering team, who took my little dream and said we can actually do that and made it happen.

Marcus Arredondo: 6:27

That's. There aren't many people that have a story like that, where your phone rings like that, but I think that's a testament to what you've built over time. I want to dive into Byte and hear a little bit more about that, but I'm a little bit curious before we do that. And also I have a slew of questions about the future of the restaurant industry, how AI infuses into that, because I think there's a lot of theoretical right now that you're on the front lines being able to witness, sure. But I think it'd be interesting to sort of dive in. You got a hospitality.

Brandon Barton: 6:59

Yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 6:59

I did, and I know you've had a few rungs up the ladder before Byte came around.

Brandon Barton: 7:05

Yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 7:06

Walk us through sort of post-graduation, because when I, you and I went to school together in, you know, within different colleges.

Brandon Barton: 7:16

I thought you were about to say the year. Don't say the year. People don't need to know.

Marcus Arredondo: 7:18

No, no chance, no chance.

Brandon Barton: 7:19

Don't worry about that.

Marcus Arredondo: 7:27

So once we graduated I never look. I mean, I grew up and I knew if there was really four or five things. You could be a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, maybe a police officer, a fire department, something like that. Had I known I could have gone into law and not been a lawyer, the whole world would have opened up to me. So my purview was pretty limited when I was in high school. It expanded obviously in college. Graduating with a hospitality degree, I just assumed people went into hotels.

Brandon Barton: 7:50

I mean that was really my limited knowledge.

Marcus Arredondo: 7:53

What did you walk away from that education and sort of tell me about what steps you took?

Brandon Barton: 7:58

following that? Yeah, yeah, sure, I mean you should know. I don't know if you know this, but I was an engineer my first semester at Cornell so I stumbled into the hotel program. That's because I've been working in restaurants since I'm 14 years old and I realized my best buddy, who also went to Cornell, was in the hotel school and I was like you know what? These people seem a lot more fun to hang out with and it's pretty ironic that now I hang out with a bunch of engineers who are creating software and you know, maybe I should have stuck with the software side of things. But yeah, I mean, I was always what you might have called. There's hotel school students which you could be called hotelies, and there's the subsegment of us who love restaurants and food and wine and everything, and this concept of a foodie was something that I heard 25 years ago and there were the hotelies and the foodies and that phrase is now turned into every Instagram person. I'm a foodie. I don't like it, it's not my thing anymore.

Brandon Barton: 8:55

But the point is is I loved restaurants and the thing that's addicting about restaurants is hospitality is selfish. Okay, Let me tell you I love the high. The dopamine hit, whatever you want to call it that. I get off of making other people happy and maybe even anticipating their needs and doing things that they don't expect to be done for them, to them, the high that I get off that is it's unmatched and it's addictive and, frankly, I've wanted to get off. That is it's unmatched and it's addictive and, frankly, I've wanted to stay in that space forever, and so it's made me love the world of restaurants.

Brandon Barton: 9:36

Then get into restaurant technology. Why? Because my whole goal with restaurant tech has been pretty simple I want to help restaurant operators use cutting edge technology to make their operations better so that more restaurants survive. You know more restaurants can stick around. You know, operator, restaurant operators are not the most tech savvy group of folks. That's. That's probably not a, you know, a far reaching statement. I think everybody knows that and they're there for the art.

Brandon Barton: 9:58

But for me, you know, I got to go work with Danny Meyer, who is arguably the best restaurateur in the country and of our generation as well. Got to go was working with him at Tabla during the early days of Shake Shack, so got to see kind of Shake Shack from its infancy. In fact, there's a funny story where I applied and two people had applied to basically be the opening GM of the Shake Shack and it wasn't the opening GM, but it was like the GM position as they were creating it in the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. And the other guy got the job not me, which is a great learning lesson. He deserved it. He was way more qualified for it than I was.

Brandon Barton: 10:41

But I remember being like three minutes late to the interview and the person at the time, Paul Bowes Bevan, who was kind of in charge of HR, he said this is not why you're not getting this role, but you should consider that it is a part of it, right, Like why were you a few minutes late to this interview? And I'm glad I didn't get that role because I think it would have taken me on a different path, not in the tech side and the food tech side that I've been on, but it's an interesting sliding doors moment. Anyway, back to your question. Yeah, the things I've taken with me are how can you make restaurant operations easier and be fully guest focused? And it might be ironic to hear somebody in restaurant technology saying that, but technology is here to help the P&L. It's not here to replace the hospitality I already, given the restaurant that I was working at, Tabla, notice that I was, I actually gave him three or four months of noticing I wanted to leave.

Brandon Barton: 11:45

I did not know what I was going to do next and this is a good one, what I was going to do next, and this is a good one the head of a company called Avero CEO of a company called Avero, I should say came in and had lunch at Tabla, at the restaurant I was working at, and the general manager of Tabla at the time, Terry Coughlin, bless his heart, was like you should go talk to him. You're so good at the tech side of things and whatever. And I was like I don't want to work for some tech company and I was like I don't want to. You know, it's like POS crap or whatever. And I was in love with wine and like the beauty of service and all these other things. And it was towards the end of his lunch and he said Terry said to me did you go over? Talk to Damien yet? And I said no, I didn't. He said go talk to him. So I went over and talked to Damien. Damien said why don't you just come in? I heard you're leaving. We can just do an interview or whatever, just see what it's like.

Brandon Barton: 12:36

At the time I was getting paid probably in the range of like $35,000, $40,000 a year. Restaurants don't pay a lot of money. That's not again, not too far or hot of a or hot of a. Take here and interviewed with Damien and I think that they offered me and I think they thought they were low-balling me I think they offered me 80k at the time and I was like, all right, I can do tech for a little bit. After you know many years of just barely paying rent, I was like, okay, this will be great, but it was. It was a really again this like lovely, fortunate decision. I, as I said before, I had a background where I thought I was going to be an engineer. So there was part of me that did love technology and math and the business side of restaurants and this place, Avero. I worked there for eight years and it gave me an incredible opportunity to go learn how to deal with restaurants in hotels, restaurants in casinos, restaurant chains, independent restaurants, and I really widened my network.

Brandon Barton: 13:37

I can remember this one thing very famous restaurateur Will Godera, who I've become very close with over the years.

Brandon Barton: 13:43

I called him and said Avero asked me if I'd like to go move to Las Vegas for a year and it's like I don't know what to do.

Brandon Barton: 13:50

And he said well, look, if we looked at this, Facebook was like the hot platform at the time.

Brandon Barton: 13:55

He said we looked at this as like a Facebook type of activity. If you go there and let's say it's for one year, you'll make so many new contacts and so many new friends and you'll open up so many new doors and, honestly, if you come back in a year, everything's going to be basically the same here. What are you going to lose friends here? No, just, you're gone for a year. That's fine, and I'm grateful that he gave me that advice because I did take him up on the offer. And now I have this whole group of friends and people from Las Vegas and contact from even places as far as Los angeles, where I spent a lot of time, where I know you are um, because of doing that. So it really opened up that step to get into tech and that another step to get into, you know, the west coast. It just all kind of it all made sense like every part of my career made like very clear, logical sense in the moment as to why I should do that next thing.

Marcus Arredondo: 14:53

I think there's such an important lesson behind that in that, you know, I think a lot of people want to change their life, a lot of people want to start a business, a lot of people want to go do that thing and where they end up getting so caught up in how to do it and what to do and the negative components of doing it. But life reward action, like life, the more action you get, the more you actually do, the greater the number of nodes out there that generate luck right, I mean, the greater the surface area of luck. And you know, I sort of want to talk a little bit more about sort of taking that next step, one thing that I keep going back to. So I do remember that you were, you had studied engineering. You're different than a lot of engineers, though, ok, and I'm sure there's engineers that'll be irritated by this, this comment, but it's no surprise. I went to school with a lot of engineers. Some of my closest friends are engineers, but they tend not to be as gregarious as you are.

Brandon Barton: 15:54

You are an incredibly affable person.

Marcus Arredondo: 15:58

You're from Brooklyn right.

Marcus Arredondo: 16:05

Yes, originally up getting sucked into your vortex and your charisma and I think there's a real power that comes from the Venn diagram overlap between an analytical engineering mind and the ability to communicate effectively, and I think that's really that nexus is, I think, really an important component. So, translating a little bit of what you said about hospitality being selfish, it makes you happy. Anticipating people's needs, this sort of seemed to give you a little bit of an angle to become the wizard behind the curtain in that to start directing the technology and seeing that sort of inside loop where you're actually starting to get and I want to dial this in a little bit more down the road in what we're talking about. But understanding the consumer's needs sort of shortens the distance between where you are and finding the customer being happy. Yeah Right. And if you start to aggregate that data and be able to be more effective at sort of identifying that, it's sort of a secret sauce, right. I mean, like that's where the juice is.

Brandon Barton: 17:14

So I wonder.

Marcus Arredondo: 17:15

I want you to go a little bit into sort of what that transition was from. You know, being at Avera, what you took from that and where you thought, okay, let's put my own rubber to meet the road here, Like, where do I take launch? Thought, okay, let's put my own rubber to meet the road here, Like, where do I take launch? How did this idea behind Byte start to be born?

Brandon Barton: 17:37

Yeah, it's great. And there's one important step in between Avero and Byte, which was another, you know, right place, right time type of thing. I got a phone call. I was actually in the midst of starting my own business. I thought I wanted to start my own business. I had this concept around reservations that I wanted to do, and so forth, and I remember seeing a deck for this company called Resi and I was like, oh shit, they're kind of doing some of the stuff that I want to do. This would end up being competitive to what we do. Stuff that I want to do or like this is a, this is this would be end up being competitive to what we do.

Brandon Barton: 18:13

Uh, by the way, during that time my I had met my wife, uh, you know, then girlfriend, then fiance became my wife, um, and I remember she bought me this uh, she like bought a magnet for the, the um, the fridge that said jump and the net will appear, and like that's just to go back to your point of putting yourself out there, out there, and taking action and and, by the way, surround yourself with people that will like that, that want you to take action, like just fucking throw the haters out. You know what I mean like like there's no room in life for that and if people are, even if they're not haters, if they're people who just kind of bring negative energy in your space and and I it sounds a little hippy dippy, I'm not that way, but I'm just saying there are negative people, guess what? Get them out of here, you don't need them anyway. Back to the positive people, where my wife has encouraged me quite a bit to um to go do that next thing, because I was at a company for seven years and I was kind of bored at that point and I saw this deck from Resi and I was kind of excited about what they were up to.

Brandon Barton: 19:15

And I got a phone call, a lead, funny enough, that came into Avero which was this guy, mike Montero, the CTO of Resi, who was asking about point of sale integration. And I was like let me take this, this is the guy. This is not for you, or I forget who I said this to. But I was like this is for me. Like I spoke to Mike and it was a funny conversation because by the end of it he was like ah yeah, we were just thinking about it, just exploring, it's not that important. I was like I should come in and meet you. And so I came in to meet him.

Brandon Barton: 19:53

I was, you know, maybe like 48 hours later I had met Gary Vaynerchuk, who was one of the co-founders of the company, met Ben, who was the CEO of the company, and, um, you know, I was bold enough to say to them at the time I said, you know, there's about five people in the country that could do this job well, and, and I was like I'm one of the five people you know. So we, we should do this, because it's going to be very hard for you to figure out who the other four are. And, uh, I don't know if that was went in my favor or not. I had an offer later that day. I basically accepted it in 24 hours and, um, again, it was this kind of like this beautiful moment and, by the way, going back to my earlier story, part of why I had the confidence to say that is because I went to the west coast and I met the restaurateurs on the west coast and I knew who they were and I was networked there and I had, you know, the backing of this beautiful cornell hoteli world right, and I had already spent the time learning about software as a service sales, saas sales which at the time was like new right, I think you would still get Microsoft versions and it wasn't this like constantly updated, like Microsoft Word that we have now, and I was confident when I said, yeah, that's me or five other people, and I knew who those five people were who could actually do this job.

Brandon Barton: 21:13

Well, I think it turned out pretty well. We did a pretty good job. Five years into it, selling the company to Amex.

Marcus Arredondo: 21:21

That's such an interesting story. So now you've got, I mean, tell me at least high level. What are some of the takeaways? I mean, these are two of the biggest names in the business right Between Danny Meyer and Gary Vaynerchuk. What takeaways do you have working inside those organizations in sort of understanding how they craft a?

Brandon Barton: 21:41

culture? Really great question because, um, I know that gary um often has said, like the way that danny's crafted his organization he wants to learn about uh, because, uh, they, they both are so special in what they've done. So danny meyer has crafted an organization that um truly cares about the people in the organization more than any other place I've ever been. And that means both that idea of radical candor where you care enough to tell somebody that what they're doing is not correct, but it comes from this beautiful place of empathy and love for that person, but also in a way that you care for every single person in the building. So whether you're walking in and walking past the prep cooks, you say hello. You don't say hey, what's going on. You say, hey, phil, how are you doing today? Right, we had some of the most. It didn't matter if they were a dishwasher or a bus person. Every single person in the organization mattered and you would be called out if you did not act in that same way.

Brandon Barton: 22:55

And I think there were so many powerful lessons that I learned during my time working at Union Square Hospitality Group. I had some people that had worked there for many years as my mentors Terry Coughlin I mentioned before being one of them, and he knew every lesson that there was, so much so that during that same time was when Danny turned it into a book called setting the table. So everyone's gotten to learn some of Danny's lessons, but a couple of them that always have stuck out to me is one concept called ask the question before you say the thing. So somebody walks in late to their shift right, there may be a server walks in late to their shift and you don't say why were you late. You start with hey, is everything all right? I'm I. You know I noticed you're late today, but that's not like you. So I'm, is everything okay, right, and and what's you know?

Brandon Barton: 23:46

What's surprising about that is what you do is you find out things about people and you find out who they are and they know in that moment that you care about them rather than you're just a cog in a wheel. Get to show up on time and other people had to pick up your work. There was a time that that happened and a guy was unfortunately in like a biking accident on the way into work and you could see that he was like disheveled on the way in and I was like you know what? Take a half hour man, like, take your time to get ready If you need a moment. You know we went to the store, got him new pants because his pants got ripped. You know it's those types of things that you will never learn in school, you will never learn in a book. But how to manage other people in a way that they know that you care about them, it's an unbelievable skill set. So ask the question before you say the thing Trust but verify. Everyone uses this but, like conceptually, if you don't, you know, if you don't have that layer of trust established with your team because you care about them, then it's hard to verify without it feeling like micromanaging.

Brandon Barton: 24:52

You know, there was also this wonderful. There's a gentleman by the name of Richard Corain who ran Union Square Hospitality Group for a long time. I forget his official title, but he was like Danny's right hand forever and he went through this incredible seminar called Welcome to Management and this seminar a long time. I forget his official title, but he was like Danny's right hand forever and he went through this incredible seminar called Welcome to Management and this seminar was just like hey, it's midnight, your last shift before you're going on a week-long vacation to Mexico and there was a guest complaint where they had something hot spilled on them and whatever. Guess what you got to write it up Doesn't matter if it's midnight. You have to write it up from midnight to 1am. It's going to take an hour to do it. Tough shit. Welcome to management.

Brandon Barton: 25:28

And it was this really like a wonderful christening into the idea of of. You are where the buck stops, like the buck stops with you. You can't leave anything to not be done. Well, and of course, that is essentially another Danny philosophy, which is being a 51 percenter, is what would you do if nobody's looking right? Do you walk past the trash that's on the floor, do you pick it up and dispose of it? Or, if the manager's not there, do you walk by the let's say, the dishwasher and don't say hello on the way in? Or would you do that anyway if nobody was watching right? And concepts, I think, are very much a part of the structure and the management that I've learned there.

Marcus Arredondo: 26:11

Now on.

Brandon Barton: 26:12

Gary's side such an interesting different approach and this is the time that I was within Gary's sphere Rezzy was being incubated out of VaynerMedia. So we were in the VaynerMedia office and let me tell you I don't know if I've ever met as passionate of a group of people and ambitious as a group of people that worked at VaynerMedia. I mean, these folks would run through a brick wall for Gary, but not just for Gary, for the other people on their team, and they all cared so much about putting in the time. Okay, you know, I think that that's. That's not something you teach in the restaurant industry, because you know it's going to be six, six day work weeks and and you know, a hundred hours a week and that's kind of what you sign up for these nights and weekends and all that other stuff. But when you have this kind of agency nine to five world Gary had the unique way of just telling people that hustle mattered and he attracted people who understood that and, by the way, it also detracted others who probably didn't want to put in 100 hour weeks and did not want to stay there till 10pm.

Brandon Barton: 27:15

But we in Resi were there forever. We were there all day. We'd get in in the morning and we'd be there till the last reservation was sat at 9.30. Because at the time we were doing a lot of manual stuff. But you could tell, of the 300, 400 people that were in that company, the 30 people that were left, all of them became wildly successful and it wasn't by accident, it's because they cared. They were there late. We'd turn on the music at about eight o'clock and maybe people started to bring in some takeout or whatever. And it was just obvious who the people were that cared. And they were in their early 20s and they just hustled harder. They worked harder than anybody else in the room and it's easy to jump on the Kobe mentality thing. But I don't know that stuff's addictive and when your leader and Gary, you know, is working twice as hard as you are, putting in twice as much time, it's the type of thing that becomes infectious in a really positive way.

Marcus Arredondo: 28:15

So, as you, I want to take this and segue into building bite right.

Marcus Arredondo: 28:22

There's something that actually keeps reverberating through a number of other founders and leaders that I've spoken to, and so not surprisingly, but I think there's a tendency within business to reduce the value of emotion, and what I mean by that to counterpoint is among these leaders, and I think you sort of hit the nail on the head with Danny about emotional intelligence.

Marcus Arredondo: 28:48

The ability actually part of being a bigger person is actually shrinking yourself to some degree, which is, instead of focusing on why that person was late and the impact of the bottom line of then and now, you sort of subordinate that thought to what is this person going through? How can I pull myself out of this equation and look at it from a broader perspective and I think I'm just curious you know that's just sort of a microcosm, but between that and sort of identifying passionate people who are faithful to a purpose and in some ways like yes, I'm very curious about Gary's ability to attract that talent, and obviously a lot of it is in his own leadership style, but when you have that many people also pumping in that same velocity as you are expecting, it also raises his own accountability. He almost has to sort of continue to outperform, to live up to the expectations of being a leader to those people. And I'm curious if you can take some of those experiences and what was so important in building the culture that you've created at Byte.

Brandon Barton: 30:00

Yeah, I mean, look, it's interesting because the culture at Bite has been a couple of things along the path here. First of all, covid was crazy hard for us. Okay, people were afraid to touch the shopping cart. Okay, nevermind a shared touchscreen in a restaurant. And yet at the same time there was a silver lining where everybody, from, you know, grandparents down to the, the youngest of the young, now understand how to digitally order, and so if they understand how to digitally order on a phone, you can do this on a kiosk and it made things like self-service way more familiar to just the general population. So there there was a silver linings. But, you know, at that time the culture was trying to keep the team together and keep us innovating and and and keeping us focused, even though we had not really found product market fit yet.

Brandon Barton: 30:53

In the past six months, you know, I've really tried to actually emulate a little bit more of that, like Danny Meyer being in every restaurant and every night in the early days, gary, you know, working his ass off and taking every opportunity that he can to take meetings. I think you might call it this founder mode stuff, even though technically I'm not a founder, but I should say that I'm fortunate to have met the founders and they brought me on very early and put me in the CEO chair. But the concept of founder mode to me has been really about trying to extend my light and my fire that I have as far reaching as it can go. It's not about micromanagement, it's not about and it's also not I don't know if you've spoken about this on the pod yet, but this concept of founder mode often gets juxtaposed with the concept of like, hire great people and let them do their job. And I don't think either, like it doesn't need to be an either or To me, this idea of founder mode is, like I said, extending my fire, my light, as far as it can go.

Brandon Barton: 32:03

Sometimes you use that fire to light somebody's butt so that they can get moving. Sometimes you use that fire to light the way. Sometimes you use that fire as a place where you create a campfire where everyone can get together and have a conversation, important conversations, whether it's the future of the product or the strategy that we're taking. And sometimes it's just handing that fire out, lighting somebody else's candle and saying you take this over here. So I've been trying to extend myself into as far-reaching parts of the business as possible and doing wildly unsustainable things. So I have been on the road a ton meeting with our customers.

Brandon Barton: 32:42

I think it's just such a pivotal moment for our business to understand if we're doing the right things like obviously going to trade shows and customer trade shows and stuff like that but also getting out of the way of other people. There was a woman in our organization, leah Thomas, who's just. She's incredible and she's somebody who I, more than anybody, want to just enable to. Just. She's incredible and she's somebody who I, more than anybody, want to just enable to do what she does best and then get out of her way. And you know, that's an important part of this like journey of leadership as well.

Marcus Arredondo: 33:14

So I want to talk about COVID and AI in the restaurant business, because I think you have such a unique insight into that and, I think, just as consumers and the future of the industry, I'm curious how this plays out, especially within your organization. But you know, here we are on the brink of Q4 2024. And you know, in a large way, I mean there's a number of things that have gone on elsewhere between geopolitical pressures and economic pressures and, you know, cost of capital, a number of things right. But I think we're starting to see a lot more post-COVID ripple effect shake out now than we have maybe in 2023. Maybe it was too close and I think that's happening in our zeitgeist, I think it's happening in our conversations. I also think it's happening in business.

Marcus Arredondo: 34:10

I'm curious post COVID, how do restaurants prepare themselves? How does your industry, how does your technology prepare against it? I mean, I think to a large degree, we're individually more prepared for an environment like that because we've never been through it, but and so maybe we don't we we don't face that turmoil with as much resistance. I don't know what that case may be, but on your side, how did that impact how you guys did business, and I mean in terms of incorporating it into the future.

Brandon Barton: 34:41

Yeah, look. I think for the restaurant industry, the long-term effects of COVID are that, all of a sudden, the people in the innovation seats, the CTO, the CIO, are now at the big kids table. Something to the effect of between 10 and 25% of a restaurant's orders are typically now coming from out of the store in a digital format. With people like us putting our kiosks in tons and tons of national brands, there are more digital orders inside the store. So the choices, the path that a guest takes to order your food, it's now going through these digital. So the CIO, the CTO, this chief marketing officer, is now a part of the conversation. The COO is now part of the conversation, and everyone is not in this general position to reject technology, but they're saying how can we use these things to improve our business? And that happened, honestly, throughout 2020 and 2021. That's when that happened to this business, because obviously in 2020, for a large majority of restaurants, everything was order ahead for a while.

Brandon Barton: 35:48

Okay, and you know that's that's been the change, and I think that we're finally getting around to what I like to call digital guest experience and the concept that your experience, that your customers are going through, is a digital one, and it has to be infused with hospitality.

Brandon Barton: 36:09

So, going back to the shack thing, it's great to have a kiosk. You're helping to supplement labor costs, you're meeting people where they are, giving them the time that they want to order and explore a new menu, but also you can give them fun and you can do something that is really hard to do if you're just a cashier Even the concept of surprise and delight. We're building this into our product, which is another kind of hospitality feature the idea that we can randomize when somebody gets a free coffee or a free cookie along with their meal. It's something that's really hard to do as a cashier to say, ok, every hundredth order, I might just give something away. I know Cozy used to have a great program with this where they empowered their cashier team to give away coffee. If somebody came in and just ordered a coffee, hey, this one's on us and just give you a coffee cup. That's happened to me a couple of times and it was very memorable. We can do this much easier digitally than you can with somebody.

Marcus Arredondo: 37:10

Sure. So how about AI's role in hospitality and the restaurant industry and then sort of underscore that through sort of dynamic pricing? Because between those two things that creates what I would consider. I mean, by all objective standards, that's the perfect juncture of supply and demand right. But as a consumer there is a feeling that that could become manipulative.

Brandon Barton: 37:34

Look, I, I did a bunch of research on dynamic pricing or whichever which way we want to call this restaurant revenue management. I I actually took at cornell, I took a graduate course with it was called restaurant revenue management with professor sherry kives. This is, this is all those decades ago when we went to school, right, um, again, not mentioning how many, uh, I think our, our college degrees can drink, by the way, just so you know, they're legal now. So this concept of dynamic pricing, I think first of all, it's kind of a sexy topic to talk about on a grand scale, and I think the reality is that it's in its infancy, so we still have a lot of you know, path to go down. But here's the thing that doesn't make sense to me For the research that I did, the conclusions that I've drawn, is the larger scale something happens, the more unlikely it's that consumers will be able to accept pricing, any pricing dynamics with it.

Brandon Barton: 38:47

And so I kind of went through all these categories, like let's just take travel, because the travel is the one. Well, airlines are differently priced and hotel rooms are differently priced, and yeah, that is definitely true. But as you start getting into other segments of travel, I thought about airlines. Of course, dynamically priced, you have a different price for the seat versus that. That makes sense, blah, blah, blah. And consumers have accepted it. Well, it's kind of on the high end of luxury. We don't want to, we don't want to necessarily say that, but it is like there are people that can't afford to fly places and don't fly for business, and blah, blah, blah. It's a luxury, good flying.

Brandon Barton: 39:22

So if you drop it down to, let's say, a regional train going like an Amtrak going from New York to Boston, they do some dynamic pricing but it's really kind of more like tiers, like tier one, tier two. Certainly they have like a business class and a not business class, but generally speaking, the New York to Boston Amtrak is going to be the same price. What about a regional train? The New York to Boston Amtrak is going to be the same price. What about a regional train? Regional trains have off, peak and peak, usually right, commuting people into the. And then let's go down to the subway. Now we've went from the smallest subset of people to larger, to larger, to larger, larger, right. Now let's go to the New York City subway.

Brandon Barton: 39:59

Let me tell you what would happen if you tried to dynamically price the New York City subway, the whole city would be burnt down, and it should be, because people rely on this to get to work, they rely on it to pick up their kids from school, and so when you get down to a certain level of broad-based application of something, the dynamic pricing argument doesn't work.

Brandon Barton: 40:23

Now, if you put this into food, sure, market price for a lobster makes sense, or a variable tasting menu that costs more on a Friday than it does on a Monday, via a reservation at Tock what's up, matt Tucker? That makes sense, even if you go down to, let's say, happy hour. Okay, again, not everybody is able to go out and have drinks on a Friday afternoon after work, but if you can, you pay a little bit less because it's in the happy hour and you're probably ordering more food. There's a dynamic there that makes sense. But if you get down to McDonald's cheeseburgers and French fries being a different price on Monday and a different price on Friday, there's something that doesn't. It doesn't connect to me.

Marcus Arredondo: 41:06

And I think it.

Brandon Barton: 41:07

I think it starts to erode trust, it starts to erode guest experience, and so I'm, in a weird way, I'm okay with it at certain levels of luxury, but I'm not okay with it when you get down to the most basic um, you know, basic, um kind of levels of cuisine and the and and like the most simple, the most widely you know use levels of cuisine at the QSR level. Dynamic pricing doesn't make as much sense to me and I I understand why consumers don't have rejected it. So so far, Good answer.

Marcus Arredondo: 41:43

What are you, what are you seeing successful restaurants doing as it relates to integrating technology? You know what? What are the ones that are using it it better? How are they using it better, and what is that translating to?

Brandon Barton: 41:53

yeah, I mean this is. This is an easy one. Um, any restaurant ceo that's talking about getting to 100. Digital is in the right place. Okay, as I mentioned before, digital transactions it's just such a bigger world that we can do things in. You can randomize happiness, you can reward people on a different level, you can recognize people, you can have fun, and so BITE's a part of that. But, moreover, there's a very interesting thing on the back end for people who want to be recognized in these restaurants and want to be known, even though they don't want to necessarily be a part of, let's say, a loyalty program, and download an app or do it. There's many other ways, with an opt in from a guest, that you can start to connect who this person is, and the more that a restaurant that has positive intentions right, there are some that maybe don't, but there are most restaurants that we work, every restaurant we work with, most restaurants that I've experienced my whole life. The end goal here is to make somebody happy and to feed them. Okay, and so, if you start with that premise, the easiest way for me to make somebody happy is to know more things about them.

Brandon Barton: 43:03

You mentioned before this idea of communicating, and I mentioned anticipating people's needs and you were saying communicating, and I used to view walking around a fine dining restaurant as this like interesting psychological study. By just viewing somebody's face or four people's face at a table for that split second that you walk past them, you have to make a deduction as to like do they need anything? If they are they, if they're not happy, is it because of us? Is it because of their conversation? Is this the right time to go over and approach them, is it not? I mean, there's so many things that happen in that blink, in that moment, and the more you would know about a regular oh, that's just Jimmy and Sally, they're always, you know, chirping at each other over dinner the more you can know about people, the more likely it is you're going to give them a better service experience. And the same thing goes at the QSR and fast casual level, where we're kind of talking about these bigger restaurant brands. If they were able to know that you were vegan, because they had that information about you, they will be able to serve you better. They will be able to give you options that are vegan options.

Brandon Barton: 44:10

I was having a great conversation with a really beverage focus, like a juice brand, okay, and you know, folks, that that frequent juice locations often have certain dietary needs. They might be trying to gain muscle or they might be trying to lose weight and things like that. And the person who I was talking to was a cashier at one of these restaurants and she was saying how that's a very hard conversation for her to have because it's almost like asking a little bit too much information on the on the first time you meet. They just walked into your restaurant. Now you're saying, hey, you want to lose weight. The way, do I need to lose weight? You know like, um, you know, so it's a much easier conversation to be had digitally. So there's all these different ways that the CEOs that are saying I want to get to 100% digital ordering. 100% digital ordering it's really with the intent to serve the guests the best way that they can.

Marcus Arredondo: 45:02

That's really good feedback. So quick question which you can dodge, but personally I've noticed tipping has become a lot more expectant in certain circumstances where it wasn't traditionally before. Yeah, covid, do you have any comment?

Brandon Barton: 45:16

on that Funny, it's very apropos, I actually so. Look, I think that the way that inflation is gone in the country, everyone probably feels that their wallet is not extending as far as it used to. Okay, so the reality is, if you have the opportunity to tip and it is, and it's it's something that you can do and want to do hospitality workers will accept those tips. They work their ass off. Yeah, that, that is. That is a 100% bona fide fact. They work hard, but no hospitality worker is going to give a different level of service. Tipping happens after the fact, it happens after you give the service. So they're not going to be giving you a different level of service if you are not somebody who can tip in those environments or either is not educated on how it's done, uh, here in America, or probably has never worked in hospitality.

Brandon Barton: 46:34

Yeah, but, um, but in in the scenarios where it's like a fast casual, where somebody might've just, you know, put together your burrito and handed it to you and you know you don't have what, you don't have the ability to tip that day, that's okay, you know, uh, I don't, I don't think that that is something that has become a mandate. Uh, in the same way and just giving people an opportunity to tip. Um, you see, we see tips go up in restaurants by giving people an opportunity to, and it's not a mandate, Um. So you know, I I don't know if it is like pressure put on the consumer. I hope that that's not the case, Um, but uh, you do. I do definitely know that hospitality workers work really hard.

Marcus Arredondo: 47:12

Yeah, that's great feedback. I know we've got to wrap up soon, so I'm going to start with a couple of the closeout questions I'd like to ask, which is um, you know, as the master of your own destiny, what does your day look like? How do you structure your day to maximize what you can uh, we can get out of it.

Brandon Barton: 47:27

Yeah, I mean, uh, in the I in the morning, prior to the kids getting on the bus. It's good time, you know, um, I do wake up, probably check my email right away, but I try to stay off my phone when I'm around the kids, get the kids to the bus. And lately I've been hitting the gym, uh, trying to lose weight myself. Um, I have a nice bet with somebody in the business to lose some pounds, so, and I do think it gives you a little bit of energy. You know, throughout your day, you know, then I'm on the phone.

Brandon Barton: 47:57

You know I try to spend as much as my time talking to my team. If I'm spending time not talking to the team or talking to customers, I'm not using my powers or my my, my strengths. You know I love a spreadsheet, but there are other people who are better at that than I am. I love marketing messaging. There are many other people who are better at that than I am. I want to hear and understand what people need, both inside and outside of my organization, and then try to put the plans in place to do those things.

Marcus Arredondo: 48:25

Great feedback. And last is, what's feeding your mental diet? What podcast books? What are you reading? What are you watching?

Brandon Barton: 48:35

You know this has probably been said before and it does get on an annoying level, but the All In podcast is outstanding.

Brandon Barton: 48:44

You're not the first person really is yeah, of course, uh, and and I've encouraged, you know, I've encouraged everybody in my organization to listen to this, because there's like geopolitics that's involved. There's national politics. It gets preachy and I don't know if we should all be taking advice from, from billionaires. Um, in general, because they just have a different perspective on the world than the average show, but yet, at the same time, there are nuggets of the future that I think they see via their access that help me to say, oh, this might be where the world goes, again, not politically, but where AI goes. A lot of my AI opinions can start to be formed around, informed, around stuff like the All In Pod. So they do a great job.

Marcus Arredondo: 49:31

So where can people get a hold of you and who would you want to hear from if they do reach out?

Brandon Barton: 49:35

Find me on LinkedIn. Find me on Brandon at GetBytecom. I'll give out my email address. That's fine. If you ever want to jam, shoot me a note. Hopefully I have some time. You know, would love if restaurant operators out there listening to this, uh franchisees listening to this, and and you haven't um tested kiosk yet, I think you should. You should give it a try and see if that's something that uh could help you uh, you know, become more profitable.

Marcus Arredondo: 49:59

Awesome. Thank you, brother, it was great to see you. Thank you for your time, you as well, man.

Brandon Barton: 50:04

All right.