Joshua Sharkey (08:33.016)
Yeah. I feel like that's it's such a common theme of anything, any great business is that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And people take that for granted so often. I remember I talking to the guy with this premise of, you know, you can you start a you know, a beer bar or something like that and the food is kinda But like what if everything was good and every piece of it was good. And I think that the really great businesses they you know, they understand that like every little detail matters. And fine dining like the best example of that. Exactly. Every little thing, the right angles of where you put things on the table and
you know, the kitchen and how you store your ingredients, and how you wrap them up and how you label them and you know, what your apron looks like and it's all it all matters. Nick also sort of resonated with that 'cause that's that's that's really cool.
Maddy Shannon (09:09.462)
It all matters.
Maddy Shannon (09:14.028)
Yeah. And at single thread actually they have a phrase that gets said at every lineup at the end of every lineup, which is kaizen, which means continuous improvement. It's always taking one thing better. And they kind of would use it as a verb. So it would be like, you know, this person really kaizened, you know, the the way we fold the napkins when we prep the surface or something. This small thing that actually is we're always trying to get better in every single thing you do. And sometimes it is
You're gonna kaizen the walk in and you know, the labels have always been on the front, but now they're gonna I'm making this up, but you know, now they're gonna be in the front left upper corner and it matters.
Joshua Sharkey (09:55.286)
Yeah, I am now envisioning my my wife saying, Josh, I really wish you would Kaizan that trash, take out like a little bit more than you did last week.
Maddy Shannon (10:03.758)
I mean, it's worth it's worth thinking about. Like we can apply that in our own life. And it's there's something comforting about it's not an overnight transformation. It takes time. I and I think that's implied in the idea of continuous improvement. It's a little bit every day, and that little bit compounds. And that is how great restaurants stay great, too.
Joshua Sharkey (10:25.134)
I think so. Any great business or product stays great. It's funny 'cause you I think you and I have a similar sentiment around product and hospitality, given you're now in product in a tech company, but you came from hospitality and they are very similar things. But I I think the beauty of being a chef or being in product, I'm sure there's a ton of other parallels of other industries. Is like it's never finished and not in a bad way. But the the idea is not that like okay, this thing is great now. It's that this is constant
You know, this constant iteration. And it's what makes cooking so fun and it also it's what makes makes product so fun. I don't know if you you feel the same way.
Maddy Shannon (11:03.064)
Yeah, no, I do. And I think, you know, one thing that we talked about after my talk in Boston is kind of going back to the basics. So anticipate and deliver was the big message of that talk. You need to understand the needs of your user or your customer really deeply. Needs evolve. So we can always be trying to understand them more. And the deeper that you understand the needs, the better you can proactively solve.
for those needs, which makes the experience better. And so yeah, I think, I think products is absolutely has the we we have this mindset. It it can always be improving as the needs change, as the tools that we have to serve those needs changes. You're never done.
Joshua Sharkey (11:50.37)
Yeah, I think there's also this element of like removing ego that is really similar in both. You know, in cooking, when you're young, you're first starting out, you're just trying to like do whatever you can to to let people know that you know how to do things and cool techniques and you're trying stuff out. And then you realize over time all that matters is like, did you create something delicious that people love and and they remember? And I think it happens a lot in product too, where not enough people spend time really understanding what what is the
What's a problem I'm trying to solve? Not not what's a cool product we could build or a cool feature or something that that looks cool or that everybody's talking about or is fast, but like what what's like a problem that we can actually solve? And it ends up usually saving a lot of money, among many other things, because you know, you can spend, you know, one one hundredth of the amount of time, energy, and dollars to just to go solve a problem as opposed to if you want to, you know, sort of boil the ocean and build some massive feature. and I f I feel like it's the same thing. You know, like there's some there's some similarity there.
I don't know if you guys deal with with like spot on or how you think about building building products on there.
Maddy Shannon (12:53.568)
Yeah, I mean, so we we really think about the job to be done. I mean, it's a pretty common framework, but what is the person using this product actually trying to do? And I I also lead our we I didn't didn't even say what I do now, I don't think, but
Joshua Sharkey (13:09.974)
Yeah, hold on, let's stop the record. Yeah. So what's your job today? 'Cause we talked about a linea and then we actually sort of just sort of the audience can make an inference that you went from a linea to single thread to
Maddy Shannon (13:19.5)
To single thread. Yeah, exactly. And then then I went to business school and then I went to Spot On and my goal at Spot On was to expand the impact from working at a restaurant or a restaurant group to helping tens of thousands of restaurants. And so at Spot On, I I am head of product strategy and I lead a couple of different product teams, our reporting product team, our Profit AI product team, and our product analytics team. And
To your question about, you know, how do you stay focused on the core job to be done? We think about that a lot. Like the job to be done of a point of sale. I mean, there are sometimes several, but one of the main ones is quickly and accurately send orders to the kitchen, like and to and then take payments. And so we we can focus on this in a couple of ways. One is deeply understanding the the needs of the user who's trying to do that job. And then the other on the product analytics side is.
You know, let's make sure that we're measuring the right thing to know if we're doing that well. So what's our North Star metric for whether or not we're achieving that specific job to be done, for example? You have to really care about your users to want to serve their needs. And it's spot on, it's it's super clear that people really deeply care about the restaurants that we're working with. So that helps me go, all right, I see this pain. I want to help you. I want to build for that. You know, it's it's focus.
Joshua Sharkey (14:43.116)
Yeah. How do you derive like the job to be done? Maybe for everybody that if they haven't read the book or don't know the premise, the mental model around jobs to be done, gonna share a little bit of that. And then when you go to build a product, how do you derive, okay, here's the job that you know needs to be done as opposed to just kind of assuming what it is?
Maddy Shannon (15:00.59)
So the idea is basically think about your users, and often it comes from a pain point, but think about your users, think about the kind of end goal that they're trying to achieve with this product. I don't want to be pressing buttons. I want to achieve some outcome. And I'm using this product as a tool to get to that outcome. So that's the the job to be done is is anchoring not on what happens within the product, but on what results.
From my use of this product. and I actually think it it it's interesting to talk about what this means in hospitality as well. So to use an a kind of analogy, when I think about restaurants, I think a lot of people perceive the job to be done is serve food or something like that. But I actually think that's not quite right. The job to be done is something like make people feel cared for and
Food is part of that experience. Hot food, cold drink, you know. But the ultimate goal that we're trying to drive for is make people feel present, cared for. And when you think about it that way, I think the way that you think about what you're delivering changes as well.
Joshua Sharkey (16:17.678)
So you mean, you know, if if that's what the job is for the restaurant, how do you, in this case with the spot on, help them to do that? Help them to spend more time caring for their guest?
Maddy Shannon (16:26.466)
Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of it's about time saving. So we don't want people spending, you know, time away from the guest. Ultimately, human serving humans is what we're enabling. So we design the point of sale so that, you know, the faster that you can type punch in an order and get it to the kitchen and making sure that that happens reliably and seamlessly means more time that you can spend with your guest. Or if we look at the back office too.
The less time you need to spend digging through reports and the faster you can get the answers to your questions, the more time that you can spend thinking about your guest and the guest experience, which is ultimately what restaurants are trying to deliver.
Joshua Sharkey (17:07.192)
Yeah. Are there any like like step function takeaways of something like, whoa, I didn't realize we changed this little thing and and we just changed the game for how they, you know, experience the product. Is there anything that you uncovered that has been a like a step function change in how they how they operate?
Maddy Shannon (17:23.831)
Think we're discovering those things now. So I'm working on a product called Profit AI, which is basically proactive set of weekly insights. It looks through all of your data and it comes up with these are the four things that matter this week. I think that the ability to do this now with AI is going to change the game. A lot of the kind of core tech in restaurants hasn't changed that materially in the last.
I don't know, five, 10 years, right? AI is kind of breaking that open a little bit. So this product, for example, here are your weekly insights. we're gonna tell you what matters proactively so that you don't have to go digging through all of your data to figure it out yourself. that should take, you know, it's taking what used to take hours for people to kind of come up with their own answers and dig through their their data on their own. It's it compresses it to, hey, read this in five minutes, dig into a little bit, and you know what you know what needs to change in your business. So
I think we're on the precipice of some of those really meaningful step changes in in how restaurants operate. I was talking to a restaurant customer of ours. He's got, you know, four Mac minis. He's essentially agentified his entire operation. They're running it for him. All of the back office, all of the, you know, missed clock outs, things like that that people deal with. I mean
That's a fundamentally different way to r to run a business. so it's it's gonna be super interesting to see what happens.
Joshua Sharkey (18:56.728)
Thousand percent agree. We've been spending a lot of time on you know, how do we activate all this menu menu data that we have for customers, like all the, you know, yield adjusted recipe item and menu item and allergen and attrition data, both to help like, you know, creating more profit and just knowing more about your menu, asking questions that you otherwise maybe would have taken months to or weeks or days to figure out. Mm-hmm. and it's wild, you know, especially once you have all that data really tied in, how much you can do and
So I I I I totally agree. Did you talk about the invisibility problem? Was that or am I imagining that? Can we talk about that for a
Maddy Shannon (19:33.432)
Yeah. Yeah. My point was when great hospitality experiences or great product design, when it's done really well, it's essentially invisible. It and it should be. Because when it's done well, it's removing friction. So you're not supposed to sit in a restaurant and notice all the ways that friction has been removed because it makes you present. You're in you're supposed to be in this kind of version of a flow state.
same thing when you're using a great product. I actually an example of this came up over the weekend that I thought was just so, so on the nose. So I have a two-year-old daughter and she loves wheels on the bus, that song, you know. So we're always in the car and she's like, bus, bus. And so we type it into Spotify, we search wheels on the bus, press play. I don't know when this changed because I didn't even notice it, but at some point it changed from you search for wheels on the bus and it prayed
plays, you know, 18 renditions of the same song. Wheels on the bus by 18 different people. No one wants that. Who wants to listen to 18 versions of the same song? So now when you search for it, it essentially starts a radio and it's plays, you know, similar songs. That keeps you listening. You almost don't even notice that wait, this friction that was there is now removed. I sure noticed it when I was listening to the third version of Wheels on the Bus. And I was like, you know, I have to now search for something else. But when it was removed,
I just kept listening. I didn't even notice that it had been taken away. And that's intentional. So sometimes the best hospitality experiences, the best product you you don't know how they're removing friction. You just know that you feel present and all of that.
Joshua Sharkey (21:16.28)
Yeah. Totally agree. Though I will disagree because my kids will listen to the same song three hundred times. Right. Unfortunately they also love Taylor Swift and I'm not a huge Taylor Swift fan. Uh-oh. And we will listen to Shake It Off, is that what is that songs? I'm not a Like five hundred and and I get in trouble. But besides that, I think you know what's really cool is that I think now that is that sort of
Maddy Shannon (21:31.946)
Yeah. Right.
Joshua Sharkey (21:43.704)
premise of the invisibility problem is is really creating some of the great conversations because tech that becomes even more prevalent, right? Because things can look very simple and then you don't realize like in the back end there's so much involved, especially when it's a front end tool. For for me is we're very front end. So like so much of what happens is it has to happen right away in real time. And a thousand people are working on the same thing and you know, you have to have the visual and has to be easy and there's there's a lot to do to to make that work. But you would never know.
Right. But if you start to try to build it, you would know. And you're like, shit, this is and I think that's what you know, it's it's great because there is there's a lot of stuff now that you can and should build. And it's a this is a great equalizer where you can start to understand what's easy to build and what's harder to build. And I think that invisibility problem starts to get like really really interesting. Mm-hmm. Even something like superhuman is a great example. I actually stopped using it, but used it for like six years and it's a it's a very, very good product. And you if you I'm sure there are many people like I'm gonna rebuild superhuman.
Maddy Shannon (22:16.504)
Exactly.
Joshua Sharkey (22:43.664)
but they spent so much time on these little things that seemed innocuous but have such an impact that, you know, they spent years on that y are very difficult to reproduce, even with AI.
Maddy Shannon (22:54.316)
So I ran to this exact thing. I I I was a big fan of Notion. I was using it for all of my to do, you know, task management work. And then I built my own task management app with AI and I love it. And it pulls from Slack and from my notes and and email and all that stuff. But there's bugs or there's these things that pop up. And I'm like, well, now I'm the one who has to fix the bugs. And I'm the one who has to, right. There's a reason that when you
click the checkbox, it goes to a done section because sometimes you want to revive it. Or so now I have to go and encode, okay, actually when I click this checkbox, I need you to save it somewhere. And you start to uncover more and more of that the deeper that you get into it. So I do think some things that restaurants are currently buying or software that they they can and should build themselves. But not everything should be built themselves. Like how willing are you to fix, fix the bugs when they come up? Right.
Joshua Sharkey (23:51.918)
Yeah, I think it I think it's also, you know, team dependent, person dependent. Like for me, I'm same thing. I'm building all kinds of things like that. And I just enjoy it. You know, so I build like watchers. If there are bugs, it sort of identifies them and goes and fix them and but that's fun and it's more 'cause I also enjoy it. I'm sure it would be less of my, you know, time versus money to just buy Asana, but I like building my own task app for for example. But it depends on the restaurant. I think some restaurants will be okay with and some will be like, I don't have time to like I'm not gonna spend
You know, what's the highest and best use of your time? And in some cases it is, and sometimes it's not. Okay. I don't want to get too much in the weeds of that yet, because I do want to talk to you about AI. and I want and 'cause it's just, you know, we had like a conversation we started and I want to get more into that for a lot of reasons. But before we do, you had this talk at BU and you were talking about sort of this sort of difference between surprise and delight, which is what we hear. They're very sort of like, you know, standard come in, we want to surprise and delight you versus anticipate and deliver.
Mm-hmm. And that premise I think is really beautiful. But you also before that, did a talk, I think at Stanford. Mm-hmm. Yeah. About, you know, what a restaurant meal costs. I wanna start there because I have a very similar perspective on why a restaurant costs what it costs. You know, for example, you go to a spa and you're gonna spend a hundred and fifty dollars for the privilege of being in that in that room. And you might go get a lunch and you'll spend money on that as well. But the the
The room and the HVAC and the things that you're doing are all just like you you you pay for that. And yes, there's pools and things they have to like take care of and things like that. But in a restaurant, the lighting, the you know, the music, the you know, the the the all the sort of furniture and fixtures that they've specifically picked out for this and the space between all those things and the spacing of people between, you know, between seatings and all these things that go into the experience that you get, the what happens when you walk in the door, what does it smell like, what does it look like? Mm-hmm. Keeping up with that. Those are all things that
or an experience as opposed to staying home and just getting, you know, a box of food. And I think, you know, you're paying for that. The cost of prawns is only one of many, many, many, many, many line items, and really not the most important one when you think about like how much should I spend on, you know, these grilled prawns. It's, you know, do I want to clean up after myself afterwards? Do I want to know that this is the right lighting, you know, if I'm, you know, on a date and all those things. And I talk about this a lot.
Joshua Sharkey (26:16.894)
and always feel like the biggest, you know, limiting factor is just the ceiling of which people will pay for food. Yeah. No matter what. You know, 'cause you can go to a a really nice spa, there's a place in Tribeca called Air A. I I love it, but it's probably three times more than most. but there's only so much you'll spend on food and no matter what. So I'd love to hear if that resonates with you, if you're if there's other things that I've missed and why you kinda came to the same sort of conclusion.
Maddy Shannon (26:44.622)
No, that's exactly right. I I completely agree. It's so much more than the food. And I I think we've I think there's two reasons why people essentially undervalue restaurants. One is this invisibility problem. I I'm not supposed to notice the lighting. If I notice the lighting, it's probably because it's bad. When it's really good, I don't notice it. So I don't bring it into my mental calculation of what is this meal worth to me right now.
so that's that's one part is the invisibility problem. The other part is I think I think we've actually as like in as an industry done ourselves a disservice by putting menu items with a price next to them. It'll be prawns, like you said, you know, some sort of prawn appetizer with twenty dollars next to it. That implies directly that I'm paying twenty dollars for prawns, which I'm not. I'm I'm paying twenty dollars for
the entire experience, the wine glass that gets refilled, the, you know, person took that takes my crumbs away so I can just sit and have a nice meal across from this person that I, you know, hopefully love. so we equate the price we pay with food really directly on a when we do pricing in in restaurants. And it would be like going to a, you know, you go to a hotel or something and it's like, you know, a hot shower, $400. Well, that is one of the things I'm getting, but it's not.
the thing I'm getting. That's kind of what we're doing at restaurants. Like during COVID, I think there was a lot of creativity around this idea because everything was sort of blowing up. And David Nayfeld, who's the owner of KFICO and others in San Francisco, he had such a cool idea, which was we should do a bill the way that you get a bill from, you know, your your plumber or something. It's like materials, labor, total price. It breaks down. Like these are all of the things that you're paying for to make it really visible. Now
I don't think restaurants are necessarily gonna do it, but that mindset shift I think would be so helpful.
Joshua Sharkey (28:46.146)
I agree. I don't know how, because you know, basically you're just talking about like a tasting menu and and then you can you know I guess you could line item out what happens. I mean when you go to a restaurant and it's a tasting menu, you don't know what prices for either one. You might have different tiers of tasting menus. But I think then you're just paying for an experience. Mm-hmm. I guess more restaurants could just do that and maybe not even make it a tasting menu, but just say, to to eat here it's this much. Order
You can order an app, an entree, you can order dessert, you can order two apps if you want instead of an entree. Right. And you know, if it's a different type of restaurant, so you can order five of these apps and but this is do do whatever you want. It's actually an interesting premise because you would be ordering based on what you want, not based on price. Mm-hmm. So we know that no matter what for you to come in, we need to make X amount of dollars and that's just the price. Right. And actually kinda like that.
Maddy Shannon (29:38.05)
It's so hard to shift the mindset though of guests. You know, it's I think because we cook at home, we grocery shop, we we feel like we kind of know what it takes to make a certain dish. Like in in my talk, I I talk about an experience I have right after I started working in restaurants where a friend of mine was like, I could make this at home for five dollars, you know? And I'm like, No, you can't. You can't make it at home. 'Cause first of all, you'd be at home, not at a restaurant. You'd have to
Cook it all yourself. You'd have to buy all the ingredients, cook it yourself, do your own dishes, but also you're not being taken care of. Like in a way, we're paying to be cared for.
Joshua Sharkey (30:17.538)
Yeah, and I think that I that argument of I can make it at home is there's just a million ways to debunk it that that no nobody cares about. Can you make it at home on demand for anybody that wants it whenever they want it? Can you store enough so that like if twenty people come to your house you can make it, but if only two people come to your house you can still make it? All those things, but they don't care. But I do think I don't know if it would be necessarily that hard. I mean, there are restaurants that have broken paradigms, like Tracy and Archov in in Austin with like table service and now more are doing that. I think
Maddy Shannon (30:23.181)
It's common.
Joshua Sharkey (30:46.552)
It has to start with like really exceptional and then it could go downstream. So, like for example, if you didn't have a tasting menu, but you said, Hey, you know what? To to eat here, it's this much. Right. Here's your guardrails, but do what you want, it's this much. I think that I mean, I w I I would be down for that. You you already know what you're gonna what you're gonna get. And then and you kinda have to bite the bullet on some things. Like, okay, yeah, we have a wine list. You're gonna be able to pick any bottle of wine you want from there. Mm-hmm. You don't drink, fine, there's another tier. And then maybe there's like twenty wines that are like
way above and then there's gonna be some wines that you make ton of money on and some that you don't. I think it's worth trying. Mm-hmm. It has to happen with some with a restaurant where it you you're gonna walk away and be like, fuck, that was so good. Right. And they don't even think about the thing and then and and then another restaurant tries it another restaurant. But I do think it I do think it's interesting. Right. I don't know why has anybody tried that yet?
Maddy Shannon (31:35.434)
seen you know I I think the early days of talk were kind of heading that direction a little bit. It was never positioned that way, but tickets was one thing and then and then deposits too was another. Now the deposit always kind of went went towards your bill. It was really a way to reduce no shows but you can kind of twist that a little bit and serve it this you know you have there's a cost to the reservation itself. There's a price for getting in here. But then we get into
You know, people are reselling reservations and they're they're effectively doing this, right? They're they're saying that the the reservation itself has value before you even step into the restaurant. But when I've talked to my restaurant-owning friends, my chef friends about that, they don't love it because there is a ceiling to the value that you're getting. And so just because someone's willing to pay a huge amount doesn't mean they're gonna feel satisfied once they come in after paying, you know, some huge amount just for the reservation itself. So
But I I think we do we we price on cost and we should be pricing on value.
Joshua Sharkey (32:38.444)
Yeah. again, it's just you can't often. Yeah. If Minet Tavern has the best burger in the city, they still can't charge a hundred dollars for it. Right. You know, no matter what. And there's just a there's just a ceiling to what you can charge in terms of value. Right. I think the market sort of informs that. So you could just keep trying to charge more. At some point there's gonna be a you know, it just becomes like a banish gimmick kind of thing when you have a hundred dollar burger. Right. Yeah, I think there there's definitely opportunity there. Whether it's like a a fee
You know, or the pr the thing is you have to start I think you have to start zero to one. It has to be like a restaurant that's like, you know, we're just changing this and it's a risk. Might work, might not, or it's like a new restaurant that's popping up. And then just see it has failed often, you know, like the clubs and the tokens and things have not worked great, but do you think there's something there? Mm-hmm. What do you what do you miss most about 'cause you're now in food tech and you spend a lot of time at some incredible restaurants, so single thread and a linear. What do you what do you miss most? 'Cause you
You tend to I I can see you drive a lot of joy out of like building in in true deck, but I'm sure there's things that you miss. This show is brought to you by you guessed it, Mies. Mies helps thousands of restaurants and food service businesses all over the world build profitable menus and scale their business successfully. If you're looking to organize your recipe IP and train your team to put out a consistent product every day in less time than ever before, then Mize is just for you. And you can transform all those
Maddy Shannon (33:40.376)
Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (34:03.722)
Old Google Docs and Word docs and PDFs and spreadsheets and Google Sheets into dynamic, actionable recipes and Mis in lightning speed. Plus, stop all that manual work of processing invoices, because Mii's will digitize all your purchases automatically. And there's a built-in database of ingredient yields, prep yields, and unit of measure conversions for every ingredient, which means you're gonna get laser accurate food costs in a fraction of the time. Visit www.getmeis.com. That's G-E-T.
M-E-E-Z.com to learn more. And check out the show notes moving forward because we're gonna be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant Miize podcast listeners get a sweet deal on Me's.
Maddy Shannon (34:45.166)
I miss I mean, I miss the people the most. I think these are the, you know, they're the hardest working, most generous. I say I say people at single thread, you they have like ho they have hospitality in their bones. It's just to their core. You know, I I invited the wine director over for dinner when I was living up in Healdsburg. It was a dinner for four people. He brought six bottles of wine. It's like you just don't see that kind of stuff these days. So I miss that a lot. And then
I miss lineup, honestly. Like I I wasn't actually in lineup to then go and, you know, cook all night or or serve guests all night. But I I just love the energy of those twenty minutes before, you know, the night kicks off. It's like the opening of a show. It's so efficiently run. It's so it's so exciting, I think. And so if I had to go back to like one moment, I'd go back to
Line up at single thread if I could.
Joshua Sharkey (35:46.178)
Yeah. Yeah, there's something there's something about the battle that you're in with with people in in restaurants, especially over time, you know. I I can't speak as much to the front of house, although I did some front of house. but in the back house like the you you're kinda going through war every night. And then what happens is you you end up not only building this camaraderie, but there's this propensity towards like going overboard for everybody. So if it's your day off and you come in to eat, we're gonna fucking style you out. You're gonna have like everything and we wanna do whatever we can to make you feel like
you got, you know, the whole nine yards and then some and if somebody comes in from another restaurant, the same thing. And if you if you have a party, same thing. And I think there's something to that. It's not it is the hospitality in their blood. And I think there's also this this there's so much suffering and it's so hard in restaurants that you also build this sort of camaraderie that you just want to go out of your way to help people.
Maddy Shannon (36:36.194)
Right, exactly. And I think there's like a there's like a negative spin on it, which which is, you know, we're kind of trauma bonded or or whatever. But I I think there's also a lot of beauty there, which is you are you're taking care of your team as well. And and the other thing that's amazing about restaurants is everyone has to be on. Everyone has to hit their marks for the whole thing to work. So you you have no choice but to trust.
That the person next to you is gonna do their job, you're gonna do your job. And if we all do that, it's gonna work. When someone next to you needs you, you know that like that could take down ever I have to go help them. I want to help them and I also have to. Like I I stodged at single thread a couple of times on the pastry team. I had no business, you know, being in there. But but you you rely on each other in a way that you don't really see in other industries in the same way.
Joshua Sharkey (37:30.572)
Sometimes like liken it to like a Broadway show. 'Cause like yeah, you're you're always on no matter what. Every night. It's like it's not it's not changing. When the door's open, you're you're on. And there's also something to the pressure that that everybody's under and how you perform under that pressure that also just builds like a level of like respect and camaraderie too. Yeah. That yeah, you don't you just don't see it in other jobs. Not because it's not there, you know, I think it's there in in many industries, but it's so palpable in the in the restaurant. You know, service is hard.
And it's you know, you have to be fast and you have to be fast, but also thorough and you know, and especially at the highest level, it's be fast and thorough and pristine and that's really hard. And when you're with someone doing that, it's just like there's like a level of respect that you just never lose from that person.
Maddy Shannon (38:17.208)
Right. I I we talked a little bit about leadership earlier in the conversation. And I think Kyle Cannot Kyle and Katina both from Single Thread, he his version of leadership was so inspiring to me. Because I think there's two ways to kind of motivate a team to do what you're describing. There's there's prove me right and there's prove me wrong. And I think some leaders go with the prove me wrong. Like, I'm not sure if you can do this. Show me that you can. Kyle
I think does he does prove me right. He goes, I know you can do this. And then I become motivated to show him that indeed I can. And I want you to the expectations you have of me, I want to hit those expectations to prove you right, not to show you that you're wrong. And that's such a beautiful way to lead a team in a in a setting like this where the stakes are actually quite high. So I loved working.
Joshua Sharkey (39:09.986)
Yeah, it's it it it actually takes so much more confidence to do that and like bravery really because yeah it's it's scary, especially when it's your food and it's your restaurant, and then you're entrusting in that person to do it right and you have to give up that control. But when you do and they surprise you, it's incredible, right? And it's so much easier to just have your thumb on them at all times because you don't want it to go wrong, and then they never really break out of that of that shell.
But it takes so much like confidence and the and and being able to like get past that sort of fear of of lack of control to let that to let that happen. And it I I've struggled with that for a very long time and and I'm always trying to sort of I don't know if you've ever heard the one minute manager, it's it's great. It's like literally like this this big. But one of the premises in the book is catch them doing something right. And essentially you just want to always find something, no matter even if a person's just just fucking up all day long. Find something that they did right and they're gonna latch on to that.
And then they will if you do it every day, by the way, this is every day you find something. I'm gonna find something that Matty did right. Even if she it's just terrible. Screw it up. One day I might not. And she's thinking like, my God, Josh, you know, like the last month you've you've you know, like been great. And if I miss it, it means even that much more. But it also just like people, you know, like they they thrive on on that sort of positive outlook as opposed to Kyle's point of prove me, you know, prove me wrong. It is hard, but it's the only way.
It's like leading out of fear versus leading out of, you know.
Maddy Shannon (40:39.436)
Love. In some ways. Can I ask you a question?
Joshua Sharkey (40:43.95)
Yeah, of course.
Maddy Shannon (40:45.47)
How how have you had to, if at all, change your leadership style from leading a team in a restaurant to leading a product and tech team?
Joshua Sharkey (40:55.8)
Such a great question. And it's been a I think it's been a bit of a bell curve actually. You know, I was in restaurants my whole life, twenty some odd years. So I knew how to do every position. And so when I opened my first restaurant, I knew what good looked like for everything. Right. So not only could I manage everybody and and know exactly what good looked like and help them and w help them, right? And then guide them and give them, you know, feedback. But I knew how to do their job better than them in most cases. Which is already, by the way, another, you know
mistake I made over time that I had to learn was like, just find people that are like way better than you, even if you're very good at it. When I moved to to to tech, I didn't know anything about anything. I didn't know what the word product manager meant, let alone that there's a job called product manager and here's what they do. I didn't know what, you know, a RevOps means and what, you know, sales is in this regard and I didn't know any of that. So not only did I have to hire a team, I didn't know what good looked like for any of those positions. And so I had to learn how to shift my
leadership style from, hey guys, I know, I know everything. I'm gonna help you do your job to, okay, everybody, I am very crystal clear on the vision. I know exactly what this is going, you know, this should feel like as a company. And I and here's our first principles around what I believe is important, but I don't know how to do your job. So I need you to help me define like how you get to that with your job because I don't know how to do it. And that was
It's you know, it took a very long time. It's still an ongoing thing where you where you have to understand how to lead people when you don't know how to do what their job is and and and there are some cases when you just don't know what good looks like. So it takes so much more to your point, what Nick Kakonis does is clarity of vision. You know, make sure it's crystal clear what your vision is and then get really good people who like believe in that same vision, then you don't have to worry as much about knowing how to do their job. You just need to make sure that they're inspired and that you nurture them.
You know, and that you give good, you know, good good feedback that's genuine. So it's been a big change for me, honestly, because it's just such a different way of leading. That said, you know, I I I still like to get in the weeds a lot. So I also have to figure out how to navigate. How do you get in the weeds as a leader without feeling like it's microanaging? And that's a constant constant challenge. You know, how do you do that? I always think about like Elon Musk, how the fuck do you do that? Like you're on the floor with them all the time, yet, you know, they still sort of get behind you. So
Joshua Sharkey (43:19.672)
But it's a I mean, I don't have the answer, I just know that that's something I'm working on.
Maddy Shannon (43:22.934)
Right, right. I think it's an ever, evergreen thing to work on, right?
Joshua Sharkey (43:28.31)
Yeah, yeah. But I think that the the the overarching thing that I've learned over time is one, through the paradigm of when you don't know, you don't have all the answers is you know, it's interesting. I'm I'm spending a lot more time thinking about how the brain works and how and how we make decisions because of this thing I I've been building this kind of like second brain. And I wanna understand more about the brain works because I'm building kind of this this thing that ingests all the information from everything in my life and
What's interesting is the brain actually works a lot differently than we think, and that we don't use our brain nearly as much as we think in terms of how we make decisions. A lot of what happens is is external to our brain and requires, you know, you just create the right environment for yourself and for others and, you know, the people that you're around and things like that. There's a great book I'm reading by this woman, Ann Ann Murray Paul, about how the mind works. And it's really interesting because a lot of you know, a lot of what you have to do is
Kind of remove like every cognitive bias that you would think you that you would have, but yet still trust your gut. Mm-hmm. One of like the the the greatest correlations in for example between a really great finance financier and investor, you know, is not how smart they are, how like analytical they are, how good they are at math, but how good they are at introspective learning. So how good they are at like understanding and feeling their body and then quickly taking action. Basically trusting your gut.
And it turns out the body is like exceptionally better at knowing the answer before your mind does. Wow. I won't get into all the studies, but there's always studies around like your you know, your body can perceive things far faster than your than your mind does. So the the TLDR here is I think the biggest, you know, thing that I've been working on a lot lately as a leader and as a person is how do I trust my gut faster? Because I think we all know what our gut is and sometimes you you feel it and you talk about it, but it might be like a year, two years, ten years later when you finally make a decision. And how can you sort of, you know
change that to I have a feeling and I'm gonna act on it. And again, Nick Kakonos, I think, is very good at that as well, right? Where he can, you know, have conviction and take action quickly. And it's a really great trait in a leader.
Maddy Shannon (45:35.214)
I mean, I I think what you're first of all fascinating. What you're talking about is like vibes, right? It's basically vibes. And so can your second brain I heard about it on on the simmer, you talking about is so interesting. yeah. Can your second brain, knowing it is always gonna have the absence of vibes, it can outperform your first brain, your actual brain in several ways, but not ever on
gut. So will it will it surpass through logic?
Joshua Sharkey (46:10.038)
No, so here's here's this I I'm so happy that you asked that. Because on logic alone, no. I think where it gets really interesting and where people get freaked out when I talk about this is you know, I have this plod, right? I recording device and I used to and I I wrote down I I've I've always journaled for a very long time. And every morning, every evening, depending, I journal, right? And so I talk about
What I did, what decisions I made, how I'm feeling, right? And that it plus, you know, it takes in sort of therapy sessions as well. And so the beauty in this is again it compounds, is that over time you start to share, I'm feeling this thing. I have this thing in my gut. And for example, like very recently, like Maddie, I had this I had this unlock this weekend that I told my wife about w from the second brain. I was like, Holy shit, this is a whole new paradigm. 'Cause there's something I've been dealing with for many years through therapy and
Yeah. About sort of something that I do with people pleasing. And it's always been partly because of my father, because he was abusive. And I gosh. But it turns out there was this more to it. And I this came about because I started to to work through this problem that I'm trying to solve that I, you know, have just now I've now made a decision on. And I went to my brain and I said, Hey, help me pattern match. what am I missing here for this decision? I mean, I'm gonna have to get into the details because I can't. What am I missing here?
And you know, here's what I'm thinking of doing, da da. And it sort of it it went back and said, Josh, you don't have a perception problem. You have an activity problem. Said in 2023 in September, here's what you said about this. And then fourteen days later you said this, and three months later you said this, and this Slack message said this and this said this. Said, You've been thinking this for two years, three years yet you're only now deciding about this. It's like
Maddy Shannon (48:00.63)
Well
Joshua Sharkey (48:04.45)
You already knew what the answer was. Your problem is that you're not sort of taking action on what you perceive. And so, you know, I sort of went through I won't get into all the details of it. Yeah. But no, on on its surface, no, the logic won't help. But if it has context of these things over time, then it starts to catch these things. Right. You just would never pattern match on your own. It's scary and it's sometimes it's frustrating because it's like, okay. So you're basically just saying like I'm I'm being a wuss about making, you know, decisions in the gut as opposed to like
Not knowing I'm almost like procrastinating by trying to find all the sort of like patterns as opposed to just finding out that like, hey, you already know the answer, but here's why. But having that data, having that ability to sort of like surface that and because it's indexed, like pull up all these examples over the past like ten years where you see like, okay, this is not a one off. Right. It's a lot more self assuring.
Maddy Shannon (48:55.446)
It sounds to me like it confirmed what was already in your gut. Yes. Did it feel that way to you too? I wonder how that would feel if it was if there was a discrepancy between what your second brain said and what was in your gut.
Joshua Sharkey (49:10.998)
The second brain is me. It's just everything that I think or say or do. So
Maddy Shannon (49:15.394)
You with an L L N you know, there's some
Joshua Sharkey (49:18.51)
So so again, you have to think about this through two different lenses. There's the there's the indexing of context, right? And then there's a using that context within the the confines of an LLM. And the context is my theory here is what's important. Like that's where all the power is in all the context. An LLM, absent of that context, will just tell you a surface level answer. Right. And you you notice this whenever you talk to, you know, Claude or AI or OpenAI or whatever, that as you you ask a question, it gives you an answer. You're like, yeah, but
well based on that I achieve each time. But if it has all of that context, right everything, then it can give you, you know, it can give you the outcome. But it also takes prompting too. So like the the brain is one piece and there's an agent that sits on top of it named Theo. And Theo is is instructed very specifically, you know, to to steal man, to never just sort of answer the way that it thinks that I want it to be answered. It's very specific about that. and that's that's just programming.
Maddy Shannon (49:49.866)
New answer.
Joshua Sharkey (50:16.098)
You know, I I think I said this before, but like you you could easily, you know, devise you know, a system that just confirms whatever you want it to confirm. Right. But I just go out of my way to not let it do that.
Maddy Shannon (50:26.966)
Right. Play it sounds like the LLM plays two roles. One is deciding which pieces of context are important or relevant. That's the hardest part.
Joshua Sharkey (50:35.394)
That part's the hardest part. Tech is, you know, there's all this embedding and chunking of the data and then constant synthesis of all new data and so that, you know, over time it's creating all of the sort of links. Kind of like if you think about the obsidian if you've seen the Obsidian app, you see all those sort of like links between every piece of data. It's doing that in the database. That's the hardest part to get right. And then 'cause you have to have a constant sweep of like making sure that there's not
that there's not duplication of things or misconstrued things and that is actually the hardest part is is making sure it knows what to go look for. Mm-hmm. And not being too overtuned. I'm getting to the weeds here. But yeah, that that I think is actually the hardest part of this to get right is is how do you how do you do that so that like that semantic search is really, really good. But that's I think where the powers. Wow. I think it really is the future, you know, because you you know, it's your data. Mm-hmm.
Maddy Shannon (51:25.644)
Fascinating.
Joshua Sharkey (51:32.78)
These LMs are really good at taking data and and give you an output. So it's just what data are you gonna are you gonna give it? And I think that's where both from a personal perspective and a business perspective, just there's so much so much power. I'm curious how are you using AI today? Yeah.
Maddy Shannon (51:48.654)
I'm in it every every single day. Constantly, you know, it's like the first window that I pop open. I've done a couple things with it that I'm stoked about. One is this task management app. Just I basically went, I went to my whiteboard and I said, What are the most annoying things that I have to do every day that if I if I could hire an amazing employee to do, I what you know, what would I have them do for me basically? And that framing was really helpful. And the first thing on my list was like, you know.
just aggregating all keeping track of all the little things I have to do. And so AI is doing that for me now. And I really subscribe to the brain, AI, and then brain. Like I I think it's super important to start often with a piece of I actually find myself using paper almost more now than I did before to get started. Then I go in and chat with Claude as my LLM of choice at the moment.
And then I and then I go back to my brain and I say, okay, let's like make sure this really understands. I think there's a I I don't want to become overly reliant on the beginning stages of shooting off a question and letting AI kind of anchor me. But it depends on the it depends on the question. So yeah, I'm I'm in it where spot on is fully fans of using AI to help us move faster and more efficiently and stuff like that. So it's been really fun.
Joshua Sharkey (53:12.662)
What's like next thing that we're not seeing right now in restaurant tech that AI is gonna unlock?
Maddy Shannon (53:17.366)
Yeah. So I I really it's it's actually sort of similar to this second brain idea. Data has been a topic of conversation in restaurant tech for a long time, but data is actually plentiful. There's a lot of it. The the issue that restaurants have always had and tech serving restaurants has always had is attention. Attention is very scarce. And that's not my phrase. I forget where I got it. Data is plentiful, attention is scarce. So whatever we do with AI.
It will be taking the context, the data of a restaurant and helping restaurants use it to make better decisions. But we have to do that in a way that works under the constraints of a restaurant owner's attention, which means often I have five minutes to try to understand the state of my business because the other 18 hours that I'm working that day are on, you know, real world stuff, working with my team or, you know, plunging the toilet or whatever it is.
So I think the the real unlock, which we're obviously working on it spot on and I'm I'm super excited about, is how do you take all of that data and then use it to give people answers, to give them the five minute here's what you need to know, instead of the, you know, let me ask questions and I have to come up with the right questions and I could be prompting back and forth for quite some time.
Joshua Sharkey (54:41.038)
Yeah. I one thousand percent agree. Although I will say I think we're we're you know, there there's different problems because I don't know if like the the CEO of a forty unit restaurant group is I I think they actually do have the time. I think the part that really resonates with me is knowing what questions to ask. I think that that's really the hardest part. You have all this data. One getting the data structured is incredibly I I think it's really undervalued. Yeah. And not just structured
Maddy Shannon (54:55.47)
They do. Okay.
Joshua Sharkey (55:10.234)
individually for yourself. that that's important. And then an aggregate for their industry to make sure it's all structured and unified. Because AI can't help at all if you don't have structured data. Right. It's actually very dangerous if you don't have to get really structured data. But then knowing I I think that I I agree with you. I think that the future is actually giving them the answers to questions they didn't ask. And I think that that's that's something that we can really help with, you know, when we have all the data.
Maddy Shannon (55:20.846)
Right.
Joshua Sharkey (55:37.42)
And you have really good inference and you have good context. where, you know, you're you're not looking at a dashboard to see what are my metrics today. You're looking at a dashboard to see here's three things. If you change these three things, here's the impact of them on an annualized basis. And I've talked to, you know, operators that that, you that's what they're saying, like, Josh, you this is great. We love the UI, it's really cool. But like, can you just tell me what to these are sophisticated operators that running like very great businesses. Right. Where like they just want to know, like, you tell me the
Maddy Shannon (56:01.038)
Exactly.
Joshua Sharkey (56:07.054)
But I don't wanna have to shuffle through all this stuff. Like can't you just tell me? And I think that's I think there's just so much opportunity there.
Maddy Shannon (56:13.134)
Early on when we were building Profit AI, we I talked to a bunch of operators and we asked this question. If you had, you know, a genie in a bottle, you could ask one question, get the answer. What question would you ask? And there was always a long pause. It's like, what question should I ask? And so it became clear that it's it's not about, like you're saying, it's not about it is about determining what question should be asked. Like
They know their goals. They know where they're trying to get to. Everyone cares about profitability. It's a huge focus for us. So can we just skip the part where you have to ask a bunch of, you know, imagine going to your doctor. I like to use this analogy. Imagine going to your doctor. You're feeling sick. And then you have to ask a bunch of questions. Like, you know, is it my head? Is there something wrong with my head? I'm just like, nope, not your head. Okay. Is it my heart? Is there anything going on in my heart? Something with the electrical, you know, in my heart.
No, not your right. It's diagnose me. Just you tell me. You you have all the information. You've looked at me. You tell me what's what's wrong. And that's I think where we're going.
Joshua Sharkey (57:19.948)
Yeah, I totally agree because it's it's also one of those things where this is where AI is is going to be the strongest because it's not it's impossible to keep all of those parameters in your head, but there's so much that you can, you know, you can unlock if you can connect those dots. Right. It is very similar to the personal brand. I think the c you the company company side's the same thing because it's not you know, these these decisions aren't binary. It's not, well the food cost percentage on that is twenty two percent, we should make it twenty one. You know, of course there's like, okay, what on a weighted average
How much am I selling that on the menu? But then also, you know, like who's making that? Can we can we actually produce more of it if we sell more of it? Do people love it or they if we changed it, would they even care? You know, is it important to our, you know, to our core menu or would we just you know, th all all those things are actually, you know, part of that decision, not just the the number in front of you. And I think when you have that much context and you know, like, okay, here's the core values of our business, here's all the Yelp, you know, reviews and Google reviews and here's what our team thinks, and here's who makes those dishes and here's what station they're on and
Here's how often we order those ingredients. Like all that stuff is just, you know, that context is in is is part of that decision. And imagine if you don't have to even think about that. It's just like, hey, you know what? Based on everything, you have a celery root mayo and you have this lemon mayo. Yeah. And you're only using the lemon mayo once you're using celery mayo on four dishes. What if you use that celery mayo on the lobster roll? And by doing that, you're going to consolidate X. That's going to save you forty two thousand dollars for the year.
And da da da and you know, there's things like that that I think we're we're already doing on on our side that I like I think there we're just kinda like scratching the surface.
Maddy Shannon (58:50.702)
Yeah. And I I I do think it's important that the the owner or the operator remains the ultimate decision maker because there's always going to be context that you can't get into the AI. It lives in this person's head or it's a personal conversation they had or something like that. Not everyone's gonna be able to carry around your little card. So I think when it's at its best, it's gonna be, you know, here's what we've seen from all of the data. Here's what we think you should do or could consider doing.
And then the operator gets to decide, does that make sense for me in my business right now, given all the other constraints that are in that person's head? So exactly as you said, you know, hey, you could consider this, or even how your second brain did it, it's it's hey, here's the pattern we've seen, you know, I've seen in you. So so here's a suggestion. And then you get to decide, all right, I'm the one who's actually gonna do this or not. And and that's I think preserving that is really important.
Joshua Sharkey (59:46.456)
Hundred percent. I I think that last mile is important for a lot of things, you know, like in writing. You know, AI, no matter what you do, is you know, it's not gonna be you. And y you know, that imperfection is actually important. I never want the AI to fully write something for me. Right. And I can always pick out when someone lets that happen. And and you know, like sixty percent of the time it's fine. You know, it works, it's fine for what they're trying to do for some post, it's like okay. But for the most part, you know, it's just it's not you, you know, and then you
to sort of deal with this thing that's out there. That's like not you. You just let this thing you know, that's that I think is the danger zone.
Maddy Shannon (01:00:20.334)
It sort of becomes you though, you know. It's a risk. Our Brian, the CPO of Spot On, says restaurants, as all of us, are gonna have to deal with their own version of AI slop. And I I do think we're it's hard to navigate that. It just sort of bombards you at a certain point. So being really thoughtful about how all of the tech companies, what are we doing with AI that's actually gonna help? You know, it's easy to do something with AI. Let's do something that really matters.
I th I think we have to be th really thoughtful about it.
Joshua Sharkey (01:00:53.56)
Yeah. Well, last question for you. What product inspires you outside of Spot On? Maybe even outside of food tech in general. Like what excites you today?
Maddy Shannon (01:01:02.51)
Gosh, it's such a good question. I am really excited and inspired by mastery. Like, it really flies against a lot of the kind of modern trends. The people who are just, I've been a woodworker for 30 years and I know every single thing there is to know about how to manipulate this piece of wood or whatever it is. So the the way that that shows up in my life, I have a
Dinabe rice cooker pot, which is a clay pot handmade in Japan, and it makes the most incredible rice. It is purpose-built to make rice. The people who made it have been making dinabs for years and years and years and years, and they've absolutely mastered it. And so, not kidding, like when I when I go and cook in that, it reminds me that there's so much value in really honing your craft. And maybe this is why I like
chef so much because you know you dedicate yourself to something and you learn how to do that pretty specific thing exceedingly well. And I just I I love it. Like I in another life, you know, I want to be a a potter or a woodworker or a shoemaker or something like that where I can just learn every single thing there is to know about something.
Joshua Sharkey (01:02:20.622)
Yeah. I mean, first of all, hobbies are I I I underestimated hobbies for a very long time in my life and then realized how important they are. But I totally agree with you, but it's funny 'cause I was listening to who was the Pizza Awards the other night, and Anthony Mongieri, who's the founder of Una Pizza Napolitano in New York, and he was saying, you know, I've been doing this for thirty years and I'm just so grateful that I get to keep doing this every day and that I'm still doing the same thing I did thirty years ago and I'm just, you know.
Maddy Shannon (01:02:27.054)
We need it.
Joshua Sharkey (01:02:50.446)
He didn't say this exactly, but yeah. This premise of to your point of mastery and just doing the same thing for, you know, the the Jiro dreams of sushi it's tough because I have this like I have this like internal battle with it because, you know, part of me is it's it's so beautiful. And and for me I would love to do that. And then I also have this especially for restaurants, this this premise or this this this notion of like, well man, like yes, if you can, that's amazing. But yeah, most chefs are
Maddy Shannon (01:02:57.496)
Yeah, exactly.
Joshua Sharkey (01:03:18.488)
40, 50, then 60, then 70, and they're still in the kitchen and they can't they don't have a good retirement plan and they don't have like a and that's tough. And it especially in in America, I think there's a you it's designed to to be even tougher in in America. The system is not necessarily designed for you to just be doing that for 40 years in the same kitchen because you might not have a re a a way to retire. And so you have to learn, okay, how do I run a business? How do I scale this? How do I have more people so that they can do that and like, you know, execute my vision for you, then you learn these new skills.
Yeah. You're constantly honing new crafts as opposed to the one that got you into it in the first place. And it really is this kind of conundrum that I don't know how to how to reconcile in my brain because I I I resonate more with like I wish I could just, you know, cook every single day or and and just do that for rest of my life. But I know that like, you know, there's it's it's it's it's all it's almost impossible.
Maddy Shannon (01:04:11.914)
I know. I I think I do think, you know, capitalism doesn't exactly incentivize mastery necessarily. It's it's always be striving for the next thing, the change. And and sometimes you're just you just have to. So I have a lot of empathy for that. Look, I haven't been able to pull this off in my own life either. I I do think it's it's valuable to think about it though, because there are so many pulls in the other direction toward constantly shift and change to move.
Toward something, it's nice to consider that there there may be another path. Like one of my favorite songs of late is called Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You, right? It's Wilson Pickett, I wanna say. Let's see. Wilson Pickett. Do it.
Joshua Sharkey (01:04:52.632)
Who sings it?
Joshua Sharkey (01:04:57.986)
Mike, can we put that I'm gonna ask Mike if we can put that song in post.
Maddy Shannon (01:05:03.724)
And there's something to that, you know, there's there's a beauty in maybe not always looking to the next thing and focusing on the thing that you're doing now.
Joshua Sharkey (01:05:15.298)
Yeah. I don't I don't know if it's necessarily even capitalism. It i it is difficult in that there's no backup, right? If you are you know, if you are just doing that and it's you every single day, the day that you're off, there's just no revenue. Now I I imagine Anthony is has got people to you know, allow him to take days off, but Yeah. You get the premise. I wish I could spend another two hours talking to you what you're working on and AI. but I know we both have jobs to do.
Maddy Shannon (01:05:39.114)
Same.
Joshua Sharkey (01:05:44.726)
Or do I'm so grateful that we found time to do this.
Maddy Shannon (01:05:47.374)
Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I love this conversation. I I also could do it for two more hours, so maybe we need to, you know, get a beer and do it there.
Joshua Sharkey (01:05:56.492)
Yes. Is there anything I didn't ask you today that you're like, Man, I r I really wish we had talked about that before I let you go?
Maddy Shannon (01:06:03.628)
Honestly, I I think we covered we covered so much of it. I I have so much love and empathy for the the people who, you know, work in restaurants and give us this place to have connection and respite from the world and delicious food and, you know, cold beer. Like it's it's such a gift and I I just want to make sure that people really consider
the value that independent restaurants have in our society. And, you know, we need to support them so that they stick around and we can have those experiences for years and years and years to come. So next time you go to a restaurant, my whoever's listening to this, just take a beat, look around and notice what what it is that makes that place so special. And maybe don't look at the prices so closely.
Joshua Sharkey (01:06:59.774)
Many people in the at least in the food tech space would say what you said out of like, you know, just the the just so people hear them say that 'cause they serve restaurants. I can tell the audience here that you you really do mean it just from talking to you that you really do like just love this industry. So thank you again.
Maddy Shannon (01:07:18.99)
Thank you.
Joshua Sharkey (01:07:21.058)
Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you liked this episode or any other ones, you can actually check out more of this at getmes.com slash josh. That's G-E-T-M-E-E-Z slash J-O-S-H. I have my podcast there, the Meese Podcast, plus some other shows and interviews. Starting to write some stories and blog posts, some recipes, recaps, things like that. So I think you'll enjoy it. Again, it's getme's.com slash josh.
Double Easy dot com slash J O S H. Thank you very much. Very grateful for all of you.