This week Chris talks with Kim Teo, CEO & co-founder of Mr Yum.

Born in Singapore, spending her teens and 20s in Australia and spending her time between LA, London, and Melbourne, Kim Teo was appointed Mr Yum CEO in 2018. Mr Yum is a mobile payments and growth platform that has revolutionised the way people order food and drinks at hospitality and entertainment venues and now has more than 13 million global users. A passionate advocate for women taking leadership roles in technology and business, bringing big ideas to life and creating a dynamic company culture is the energy that drives Kim and turns work into play. Having recently closed the company’s recent record-breaking funding round, which was Australia’s largest Series A for a female-led company, when not working on Mr Yum you’ll find Kim watching Australian Rules Football, at the gym, or visiting the latest Mr Yum hotspot. 

During the chat we discuss:

• Kims journey and lessons learned along the way to growing Mr Yum
• The lack of female CEO's in Tech and why that might be?
• Growing a global team and giving autonomy.
• How to grow adoption rates with your customers and their teams 
• Whether the industry is getting it right in terms of tech and the role both the suppliers and the operators have to play. 
• The values of Mr Yum and how Kim believes " running towards fire " is key to any business as it grows quickly
• The difference between the markets in Australia and the UK
• The latest developments in data and how we can empower the servers at the table to personalise the experience 

Tune in every week for your weekly fix of Tech on Toast.

The Tech on Toast podcast is powered by REMS Hospitality. Benchmark your restaurant across other venues securely and gain market share.

This week Chris talks to John Mason, learning guru and founder of Sideways.

Since moving to London from his native New Zealand John has been obsessed with learning after struggling with learning in the early years of his life.  John had no confidence when it came to his early years in work and still to this day John believes that peer-to-peer learning helped him, good people taking time to help him learn sales calls, talk to new clients, and basically deal with the world of work that school hadn't prepared him for.

John believes that " everyone is good at something " and with all the technology at our fingertips now we should share what we are good at, sideways lets you do that.

In this episode we cover :

• Why asking for help at work  is absolutely crucial 
• Banking knowledge is key to ensuring when our mentor leaves a role we can still keep learning and growing.
• Giving permission to ask, allowing your people to ask questions and get the help that otherwise stunts personal and company growth
• How video can be the key to learning 
• How good content is crucial for encouraging younger learners
• Good retention is directly linked to training.
• Learning created by the employee for the employee, learning how they want to learn NOT how our generation think they should learn
• Personalised training, how matching existing content to peers can help the heroes teach their colleagues.
• Building a community around learning, The People collective.

If you want to ask for help, John is available below

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://sideways.ai/

Dedicated hospo site : sideways.ai/hospitality (coming in a week or two)

 Books mentioned :

Give and Take - Why helping others shape our success. Adam Grant All you have to do is Ask. Wayne Baker

There are loads more...so tune in and come and meet John.

The Tech on Toast podcast is powered by REMS Hospitality. Benchmark your restaurant across other venues securely and gain market share.

This week Chris chats to Angus Jackson, Co- Founder of Storekit.

About Storekit, "Storekit is the easiest mobile ordering system for venues, designed to get your customers ordering more. We formally launched in 2021, although we’ve been working in hospitality software for a little while longer. We’re a team of 25, based in London, and ready to take on the world."

In this episode we cover :

• Angus's background and the "pivot" that brought about Storekit
• Recognising that the "Shopify for Hospitality" didn't exist, so went about creating it!
• Recruiting a team of Hospitality people to speak the same language and support implementation with their customers
• Encouraging collaboration with suppliers to help speed up the integration process
• Using digital ordering to benefit the customer, ensuring that speed is key in this frictionless experience and not " hijacking the checkout" with logos and grabbing data.
• Encouraging the operations team to be involved in the buying process of tech, whilst supporting marketing delivering the brand experience & explaining that the operational strategy has to sit alongside the digital strategy.
• we discuss that one of the evergreen problems tech cant fix is people and how the industry needs to keep this particular challenge at the top of the agenda!

Tune in every week for more episodes from Tech on Toast

The Tech on Toast podcast is powered by REMS Hospitality. Benchmark your restaurant across other venues securely and gain market share.

This week Chris talks to Tech connectors Eva Fayemi & Ruben Westmeijer from Bond Connect.

About Bond Connect:

The influencers that really count are micro-communities. The Bond Connect platform enables you to find and connect to a global network of qualified professionals and products in Hospitality and Travel Tech open to collaborate, share knowledge and support each other. There are 500+ people engaging on BC, connect with them and expand your network.

The dynamic duo joins us from their base in Lisbon, Portugal and we talk all things Tech. Eva & Ruben work in the hospitality & travel tech sectors and share their insight on the following :

• Landing tech in  a hotel environment 
• building a community around their product
• Why using external consultants to help land your new purchase can be vital as the buying process is complex but so too is the initial period of adoption.
• Ensuring adoption and ROI on tech in hospitality
• Buying specific SaaS models to focus on Niche operational issues
• Using Tech to support human performance, not diminish it

These guys are great and share the same passion as Tech on Toast, connecting people with technology. 2022 is all about working together and i for one am looking forward to our first European Tech on Toast brunch in Lisbon. 

The Tech on Toast podcast is powered by REMS Hospitality. Benchmark your restaurant across other venues securely and gain market share.

This week chris talks to Dub Lee, Systems Architect at Honest Burger.

Dub is a self-confessed tech nerd ( like me!) and has spent his career to date building systems that enhance and support company cultures 🔧.

We had a fantastic discussion around all things tech and I started to understand why the team at Honest Burger is having so much success around their culture & people, its because they care deeply about how their people are communicated with & that they feel valued, and with 98% employee  engagement with their chosen tech they are getting a lot of things right,

Now they are a brand hosting their own Tech Stack with its own API.

Also in the episode we discuss :

• Workplace by META and how Honest are using this tech to drive engagement and how "bot" building is driving engagement 
• Encouraging employee usage and listening to feedback
• Building from scratch realising that not one size does actually fit all!
• Creating tech that fits company values 
• Getting any iteration of their product into the user's hands and learning from their reactions.
• Where Dub got his name from!

The Tech on Toast podcast is powered by REMS Hospitality. Benchmark your restaurant across other venues securely and gain market share.

This week Chris chats to William Connors, Director for IT operations at Popeyes.

William has spent 30 years working within the restaurant industry and applied his technical and operational experience as a member of Ring International Holdings, working with Popeyes Louisiana Chicken and Burger King brands.

We cover off in our chat  William's Specialties:
• Quick & table service • Processes & controls • IT sourcing
• Training & support • Social Marketing • IT project management
• Wireless technology • EFT (credit card integration) • Inventory management • Delivery integration
• AR menus • PCI compliance • Mobile ordering & payment

William talks through his career to date, his views on operations accepting technology, and his thoughts on what's coming up next in the world of Hospitality technology.

The Tech on Toast podcast is powered by REMS Hospitality. Benchmark your restaurant across other venues securely and gain market share.

This week chris talks with Neil Potts, co-founder of The Vurger Co. Neil, and his partner Rachel founded The Vurger Co on a trip to California. 

Having suffered from Crohnic stomach illness that couldn't be diagnosed Neil found his new diet was helping to relieve those issues.

Whilst there was no plan to start the Vegan QSR brand they were inspired by the quality of the food they discovered in California and Neil by his own admission an avid meat eater was converted!

Disillusioned by their own careers & turning 30... Neil talks about the feeling a lot of us may have had around feeling like a number & feeling like they weren't really having an impact, they decided to leave their jobs and go for it!

A brand built on respect and high-quality product Neil talks about how they have learned many lessons along the way but mostly how they have tried to follow their own path and not get too distracted by what the rest of the industry is doing. 

After starting trading at events in the UK  The Vurger co soon had 3 physical sites. Neil & Rachel hope to continue to grow their business into the USA over the next 12 months ( when allowed to travel!) through their new condiment range which is already stocked across UK retailers.

Chris and Kieron talk with Craig Bunting the co-founder of Bear in the east midlands.
Bear is so much more than a coffee shop or bar, it is a lifestyle brand built from a desire to positively  impact the high streets of the towns they are part of.

In this episode the boys talk strategies for managing an emerging brand through a pandemic, spending time with loved ones without guilt and even touched on Adam Grants work on procrastination as Craig is a self proclaimed procrastinator of the highest order.

This is an open and honest look at the life of a founder and a brand that he clearly loves, from the inception of Bear with Craig's co-founder and best friend Michael after a trip around Australia, making soup to serve in the shop despite having no love for soup to making good choices about the people you surround yourself with.

We talk about the king of crowd funding Gary Usher at Elite Bistros and what the future holds for Bear, spoiler alert, it is very exciting!

Kieron is joined in discussion with SimoneRemoli to talk all things, Pasta Remoli, from walking the streets of Rome to work in kitchens as a young man to leading a chain of 6 six restaurants and a CPU today.

Simone founded Pasta Remoli after working in amazing kitchens like Roka, Barafina, Quo Vadis and then to creating pasta for Aldo Zilli in Soho but opportunity knocked and Simone could never be described as a man who avoids a challenge, so Pasta Remoli was born in Westfield.

Simone shares insights into how he has built his brand to six sites without external investment and what has made him decide to take it on board in 2021.

We meet Simone's GM from his new opening in St Pancras,  whilst hearing about his passion to bring amazing food for great value to the people of London which he and his team had literally opened the doors to the day before we recorded this podcast, which meant we really appreciated Simone sharing his time with us.

I am incredibly excited to try the pasta at Remoli, St Pancras is my station in London and I'm fed up with duff butty's, so a beautiful portion of fresh pasta prepared just for me, I can only see my train journeys home being much happier occasions.

In this special edition of The AFD, Chris and Kieron talked with David Robinson & Jacqueline Hollows from Beyond Business in the Green Room about mental well-being and strategies we can deploy to manage our own mental health and how we can impact those in our teams. After the session we agreed that we needed to share it on the podcast too, we felt it would be rude not to.

Chris and Kieron shared their own personal experiences whilst talking about how strategies can be implemented and the impact that they can have when done so effectively. This is a really interesting discussion where we share leadership lessons and much more

David and Jacqueline's brand, Beyond Business offers organisations a deeper understanding of how the mind works to improved employee wellbeing, resilience, and performance.

With the realisation of how we create our experience of life, we can navigate ourselves, circumstances, and situations with more clarity and ease.

Unlike many corporate workshops on the market which are content-led, Beyond Business delivers insight-based programs that see transformational results for lasting change - from the inside out.

When working with presence, individuals and teams will experience; reduced mental stress, improved wellbeing, better relationships, effortless creativity, and problem-solving, directly impacting business efficiency and results.

Simply, when we feel better, we do better.

Regardless of position within the organisation or personal circumstance, the impact of this understanding can be life-changing.

Who Are Beyond Business?

Jacqueline Hollows and David Robinson have joined forces to produce this powerful program. Having seen for themselves the impact that this understanding can have on business, on relationships, and on their own mental well-being both Jacqueline & David have gone on to provide workshops for a broad spectrum of people; teams, prisoners,
ex-offenders, senior leaders, and entrepreneurs.