Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: I've been spending a lot of time on the road
Speaker 2: this summer, tapping.
Speaker 3: Into plane streains and automobi.
Speaker 2: Drive through fast food. Do not judge me, but our
Speaker 2: next guest really understands the space big time. What are
Speaker 2: your I have a happy meal. Don't judge me. We
Speaker 2: got a happy meal, chicken McNugget, a little bit a fry,
Speaker 2: and I get a water.
Speaker 4: Do you get a toy?
Speaker 2: Sometimes?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Wow, You're just you. You and my four and a
Speaker 3: half year old would really get along because he likes
Speaker 3: to have well. Our next guest understands the space big time,
Speaker 3: and really the overall mobile restaurant space. It's been a while,
Speaker 3: but it's great to have back with us. Christopher Sefkin,
Speaker 3: head of technology at Zeni. It's a subsidiary of the
Speaker 3: publicly traded Global Payments Xenial. It's a thirty two billion
Speaker 3: market cap company that's up about twenty five percent year
Speaker 3: to date. Chris joins us on a zoom from Charlotte,
Speaker 3: North Carolina. Chris, how are you good?
Speaker 4: How are you doing pretty well? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Doing doing pretty well thanks, Okay. So we had on
Speaker 3: our plane call this morning, we got into a little
Speaker 3: debate about how people order and the lack of people
Speaker 3: who are around when you go into a restaurant, and
Speaker 3: it kind of feels like, I'll be honest, it feels
Speaker 3: like in this day and age, a lot of the
Speaker 3: work that people used to get paid to do, like
Speaker 3: taking orders, now falls on us the consumer. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think there's definitely been a shift, and I think what
Speaker 3: our customers and restaurants have done has really taken an
Speaker 3: all of the above approach, like you can, you can
Speaker 3: still talk to a person if you need to, But
Speaker 3: I think what they've really done is redeployed the folks
Speaker 3: that are working in those restaurants more towards the production
Speaker 3: of the food and getting you what you ask for,
Speaker 3: and allowed the technology to take the ordering experience so
Speaker 3: that you can, you know, do more customizations and have
Speaker 3: more you know, specific things that you might want. And
Speaker 3: we find that customers really take advantage of those capabilities
Speaker 3: when they have say a Kiosk or a mobile app
Speaker 3: or another ordering mechanism other than just walking up to
Speaker 3: a person where you feel time pressure to figure out
Speaker 3: the menu and you may not understand everything that's coming
Speaker 3: on a sandwich, so that that is something that you
Speaker 3: would expect to feel. But I think from an actual
Speaker 3: restaurant employment perspective, you'll see that that that labor hasn't
Speaker 3: left the building, but perhaps moved around a bit.
Speaker 2: So how's it all evolving? Right, We're all getting used
Speaker 2: to jumping up to a kiosk or mobile ordering. Where
Speaker 2: does it go from here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 1: I think we see a lot of folks testing out
Speaker 1: the voice spot, voice AI and the drive through, so
Speaker 1: I think you're going to see some more of that.
Speaker 4: You're going to see I think a good bit more.
Speaker 1: Of that as as generative AI, you know, gets better
Speaker 1: at being able to have those conversations with customers. I
Speaker 1: think you're going to see an additional move towards those
Speaker 1: kiosk experiences. We've seen a lot more adoption recently. It's
Speaker 1: not a new technology, has been around for a long time,
Speaker 1: but we've seen a lot of a lot more folks
Speaker 1: adopting it. I think also you're going to see more
Speaker 1: sophisticated sort of drive through and pick up environments where
Speaker 1: you know a lot of folks are testing out more lane,
Speaker 1: four lane drive throughs, drive throughs that have specific mobile
Speaker 1: ordering pickup points, things that help.
Speaker 2: Caught Tim's attention. There, nanny just perked up.
Speaker 3: Chris, I gotta tell you. I mean, Chris, you can't.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you can play favorites here, just
Speaker 3: do me a favorite, play favorites. But does anyone do
Speaker 3: it as well as Chick fil A?
Speaker 1: I can't play favorites, But I mean they definitely are
Speaker 1: folks that all of our customers watch and everybody keeps
Speaker 1: you abreast of whatever they're doing. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I know they're building a new restaurant concept. I think
Speaker 1: I saw that in the news. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of folks are watching. Like I said, that's four lane.
Speaker 1: How do we do four lane drive throughs?
Speaker 4: Really? Well? I see that happening in quite a few instances.
Speaker 2: Well, is that like what Chipotle's doing in terms of
Speaker 2: you have a drive through I think specifically for mobile ordering,
Speaker 2: and then there's people who come up and who are
Speaker 2: actually doing the order there. I mean, this is what
Speaker 2: we're talking about. This is where we're moving towards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what's happening is a lot of folks
Speaker 1: are experimenting with new ways to do this. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you deal with cars and you're working with drive throughs,
Speaker 1: you're limited to the real estate of the actual space
Speaker 1: that you're working on. And so some of these restaurants
Speaker 1: you see with an elevated second floor try to take
Speaker 1: advantage of the fact that there's only so much ground
Speaker 1: floor that cars can move on. And then you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, you've got a lot of folks that
Speaker 1: are are kind of experimenting and trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how do I maximize that through But either of a
Speaker 1: real estate they currently have that's already out there, or
Speaker 1: when they build new buildings or redesign and re upfit places,
Speaker 1: you know, what's going to be the most efficient way
Speaker 1: to move cars through and take advantage of that pre
Speaker 1: order technology? So, do we have one drive through lane
Speaker 1: that's dedicated to a mobile pickup then other lanes that
Speaker 1: are more traditional, you know, sort of like the toll
Speaker 1: booth concept where you go easy pass versus you know,
Speaker 1: a regular lane.
Speaker 4: Kind of thing.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, I actually come from a town that outlawed
Speaker 3: drive throughs. I believe it was in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: due to environmental concerns, and I'm wondering if increasingly we're
Speaker 3: starting to see that idling cars. Yeah, no drive throughs
Speaker 3: allowed in Sandleance, Obispo, California. Is that something that you see,
Speaker 3: Chris increasingly happen?
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 3: Is that conversation happening again?
Speaker 4: From my viewpoint the opposite.
Speaker 1: Like I said, we've seen a lot more folks looking
Speaker 1: to try and expand the capability of the drive through
Speaker 1: versus shrinket. The pandemic closed in interior restaurants, and folks
Speaker 1: now are looking at ways to build restaurants that maybe
Speaker 1: don't even have an indoor experience at all and are
Speaker 1: only servicing drive through or pick up, you know, delivery
Speaker 1: type orders.
Speaker 2: Hey, tell us about stuff like camera based car recognition technology.
Speaker 2: What exactly is that about? And that makes me a
Speaker 2: little freaky, but go ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: We're working on some pretty cool technology on this front,
Speaker 1: and rather than being creepy, what we're focused on is
Speaker 1: really understanding what's happening in the line so that if
Speaker 1: we get an order to you, like let's say, somebody
Speaker 1: walks up to your car and takes your order and
Speaker 1: then hands you the bag of food, you know, we
Speaker 1: want to understand that how long did that interaction really
Speaker 1: take and when did that happen, And so if you
Speaker 1: drive away, before you leave the line, we want to
Speaker 1: know what's going on so we can help figure out
Speaker 1: if these new strategies and things are working. So what
Speaker 1: we're really focused on there is just your car type
Speaker 1: in colors. It's a black sedan, a red truck, so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and understanding as you move around
Speaker 1: maybe there's a merge that that happens. We can reorder
Speaker 1: those events in the kitchen to help the staff members
Speaker 1: understand they're getting the right order, the right car. One
Speaker 1: of the key things that you want to get when
Speaker 1: you go to one of these places is the order
Speaker 1: that you ordered.
Speaker 4: You know, made the right way.
Speaker 3: Yes, Chris, I want to talk to you about this. Okay.
Speaker 3: I've been to a drive through like one time in
Speaker 3: the last six months. It was on Saturday, was the
Speaker 3: Happy Meal. We ordered a six we ordered a six piece,
Speaker 3: we ordered an apple juice, and we got an order
Speaker 3: that was that was wrong. And I know these things happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, I worked in fast food when I was
Speaker 3: a teenager, and you know, we're all human I'm wondering though,
Speaker 3: because people make mistakes, how do you how do you
Speaker 3: use technology to decrease the number of mistakes.
Speaker 1: I mean a great example of that is, you know,
Speaker 1: that final event that happens in the kitchen is that
Speaker 1: you know, worker is taking the food out of the
Speaker 1: out of the restaurant. We're actually putting a picture of
Speaker 1: the car up that they're delivering to.
Speaker 4: So they've got the bag of food.
Speaker 1: They yeah, hit the button and now because of the
Speaker 1: camera tracking, we know, hey, that's the car you're bringing
Speaker 1: it to. Is one more final like, you know, step
Speaker 1: and think about it. We're just trying to reduce the
Speaker 1: number of things a person working in this environment has
Speaker 1: to think about.
Speaker 4: We want to make it easy, you.
Speaker 1: Know, as easy as possible, so they can walk in
Speaker 1: and start working and do their job and you know,
Speaker 1: produce that experience that that the brand wants to produce
Speaker 1: every time.
Speaker 3: For what it's worth, my kid a one chicken nugget
Speaker 3: and then fell asleep, so it didn't matter at all
Speaker 3: that we could get the six piece instead of the
Speaker 3: four piece.
Speaker 2: So hey, Chris, I do wonder how much of this
Speaker 2: just makes sense because of how the pandemic impacted us
Speaker 2: in you know, all the food ordering or the mobile
Speaker 2: ordering and the you know, how that kind of has
Speaker 2: changed us forever. Is a result of the demand that
Speaker 2: you're seeing a result of the pan demic specifically, or
Speaker 2: is it also a tighter labor force and so we
Speaker 2: need to kind of figure out how to make restaurants
Speaker 2: work and mobilize or use technology to automate things that
Speaker 2: were once taken care of by humans.
Speaker 4: I think it's both.
Speaker 1: We definitely saw a huge behavioral shift in folks moving
Speaker 1: to the drive through, for example, as opposed to going
Speaker 1: inside and doing more delivery. I think we've seen some
Speaker 1: of the delivery volume drop a little bit compared to
Speaker 1: you know, coming to the restaurant again, you know, probably
Speaker 1: for cost concerns, But what we've really seen is that
Speaker 1: the workforce itself, you know, is looking for jobs that
Speaker 1: it makes sense, and the tightness in the labor market
Speaker 1: means that you have to compete not only for the
Speaker 1: technology that the consumer uses, but you want to compete
Speaker 1: also for that worker who's going to choose between working
Speaker 1: for you or somebody across the street who maybe has
Speaker 1: a more difficult concept to run. And so we definitely
Speaker 1: have seen that technology try and enhance the worker experience
Speaker 1: and automate some of those tests so that workers have
Speaker 1: more job satisfaction for what they're doing.
Speaker 4: Try.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna try to get you to pick a favorite
Speaker 3: one last time. What's what's your favorite? Fest Foed.
Speaker 4: I don't know. It's a good question. I think it
Speaker 4: would be wrong for me to pick a favorite at
Speaker 4: this point. I don't think that's fair.
Speaker 3: I bet you do, but you know, we'll let it
Speaker 3: slide this time. You can't have a favorite?
Speaker 4: Ki, Yeah, I do like a good chicken sandwich.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, okay, Chris, listen, thank you so much. Chrisyfkin.
Speaker 2: He's head of technology at Xenial is, a subsidiary the
Speaker 2: publicly traded global payments company that's a thirty two billion
Speaker 2: dollar market cap company, roughly up about twenty five percent
Speaker 2: year to date. Joining us on Zoom from Charlotte, North Carolina,