meez podcast

Britney Ziegler on The Future of Hospitality Management

Headshot of Britney Ziegler

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About this episode

Josh sits down with Britney Ziegler, Founder and CEO of Panso, to explore the innovative world of restaurant technology and hospitality management. Britney shares her entrepreneurial journey of launching a comprehensive restaurant technology platform that streamlines multiple tools into one unified system. She reveals how her team's industry experience has been crucial in reducing onboarding friction, particularly through hiring people directly from restaurants who understand the unique challenges operators face. The conversation covers Panso's strategic approach to building in stealth mode, allowing for careful product refinement before market launch, and the critical importance of helping restaurants understand and leverage their customer data for success.

Britney discusses the art of deal-making in the restaurant business, emphasizing how industry connections and word-of-mouth strategies have driven their sales approach. She outlines her vision for empowering restaurants with true customer data ownership through what she describes as a genuine CRM system that enhances customer loyalty and collaboration. The discussion touches on the transformative potential of AI in enhancing customer engagement and operational efficiency, while also exploring the significance of strategic partnerships in driving business growth. Throughout the conversation, Britney reflects on the personal growth that comes with entrepreneurial success and her commitment to revolutionizing how restaurants connect with and serve their customers.

Links and resources 📌

Visit meez: https://www.getmeez.com

Follow meez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getmeez

Follow Josh on instagram: @joshlsharkey

Visit Panso: https://www.hellopanso.com

Follow Britney: https://www.linkedin.com/in/britney-ziegler

What We Cover

0:00 Innovative Onboarding in the Restaurant Tech Space

2:26 The Journey of Launching Panso

9:00 Background and Experience in the Restaurant Industry

13:15 The Art of the Deal in Restaurant Business

19:16 Building a Unique Hospitality Management System

23:58 Vision for the Future of Panso

28:34 A Small but Mighty Team

31:14 Non-Traditional Paths to Market

34:21 The Value of Diverse Perspectives

36:08 Integrating AI into Business Practices

40:52 Finding Balance Outside of Work

50:11 Philosophical Insights on Happiness

Transcript

Britney Ziegler: [00:00:00] Hiring people who come out of restaurants to ensure that when we do onboard a client, we don't have to ask that many questions if they're speaking to us. The person on Team Pan so understands what they're saying and we're not creating unnecessary friction during that process because we are all operators and so we're going into the market as one of our customers, and that is helping really alleviate, I think, a lot of.

The pain points for what a traditional onboarding process might look like in the technology space in the restaurant industry. 

Joshua Sharkey: You are listening to the meez podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals. On the show, we're gonna talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate.

And operate and how they consistently execute at a high level day after day. [00:01:00] And I would really love it if you could drop us a five star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky Anywhere works, but I really appreciate the support and as always, I hope you enjoy the show.

Well anyways, welcome to the show. 

Britney Ziegler: Thanks for having me. 

Joshua Sharkey: I think, uh uh, Gia folks put us in touch. Is that right? 

Britney Ziegler: They did, yeah. 

Joshua Sharkey: That's cool. How did you connect with Gia? 

Britney Ziegler: I met Gia through my network a couple years ago actually, and we hit it off and I mean, she's wonderful and brilliant. The best in class in what she does.

And I said to her, we need to work together. And she was like, well, I don't really do tech. And then it's like, okay. Um, I was also very new at starting this business. We were in no position to have brought on a PR agency at that time. 

Joshua Sharkey: [00:02:00] Yeah. 

Britney Ziegler: And then fast forward to maybe nine months ago, I went back to her and was like, Hey.

You wanna talk again and Yeah. We found synergies and we've been working together about seven months now. 

Joshua Sharkey: That's amazing. I'm excited to learn. I, I don't know a lot about ponchos, so we'll, we'll, we'll learn today. Yeah. But I wanted to start with, um, I'm always Ed, obviously, like, you know, I've had to build some companies now and you built a company.

Totally. 

Britney Ziegler: Yeah. Uh, 

Joshua Sharkey: I just wanna hear how, how, how was it, uh, launching this thing? What was it like to. You know, move from running restaurants or operating restaurants in that world to now starting a business. 

Britney Ziegler: Yeah. 

Joshua Sharkey: Um, just tell me anything, you know, anything and everything that you can about how the launch went.

Britney Ziegler: Yeah, happy to. So the, we officially launched in January of this year, although we've been building since July of 2021, so 

Joshua Sharkey: take it back. Oh, wow. Long time. 

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