[00:05:32]
And there was a guy there called Mike Novogratz, who now is known in crypto, but at the time was running the, uh, liquid markets and hedge fund strategy there. And you got to work with him. A little bit. I mean, he was just very kind to take me under his wing and sort of give me some projects and feedback on them and let me just be in this place where there were incredibly smart people and, and have an opportunity to learn from them and do things that I had no business doing, frankly, but he was, he was very generous with his time with me and, you know, bringing me into the firm, you know, during that period of time where I was still student and everything.
[00:06:05]
So that was really cool. It just, yeah. Continue to sort of, I don't know, it just, it just fueled my fire in terms of wanting to do something amazing and be around smart people. And so I thought that I frankly was going to go into some either or of finance, politics or a combination of the two of them. But when I was at the University of Virginia in, I guess it was 2015, 14.
[00:06:24]
I found that the local housing market was just a huge pain point for both the renters and in many cases, many of the properties running in a way that created a lot of complexity and confusion and inefficiency and just starting from the basic premise of, Hey, let's bring all the inventory locally online.
[00:06:40]
Let's give people information and transparency, things like reviews and ratings and give them an opportunity to also go through the more onerous parts of the process, like applying for an apartment screening, getting improved, putting down a deposit. Let's put all of these things into a, in, into a better set of tools and software.
[00:06:56]
So I started that there, you know, it picked up traction. I raised a little bit of money from some angel investors to continue to invest in the business and just grow it. So I actually left UVA of my own volition, uh, at the End of 2015, I moved to Austin to get the business kind of up and running and be in a place where I could build and be around other smart people and not be distracted.
[00:07:19]
I actually did that before I received the Thiel Fellowship. So I think a lot of people's association with the Thiel Fellowship is You get it and the cat. It's the catalyst for, you know, dropping out and building something. I had already kind of done that. Uh, but, but spend the next really four and a half years building and scaling that company.
[00:07:36]
It ended up being that Tiger Global was the lead investor. We were working with most of the largest, you know, real estate operators around student housing markets in the country. We helped so many people find and book apartments and really young, disempowered renters going through this process for the first time, give them a better set of kind of tools and information and support to do this.
[00:07:56]
Now, things were sort of moving along. How did we get from there to table 22? Well, in March of 2020, we all know what happened. COVID comes to the U. S. Universities shut down and go to virtual instruction. And so when this happens, it becomes clear to us very quickly that We don't have a good path forward for the business that we had been building.
[00:08:16]
We were bookings based business bookings went to zero revenue went to zero and all of a sudden, the entire premise of our company was, you know, in doubt. And this is when they were saying, you know, four or five years to a vaccine. And so. I came to our board pretty quickly and said, candid assessment. We don't have a great path forward here.
[00:08:33]
Open minded to, you know, what do you guys want to do? And we should try to sell the business or we can wind it down and return cash. And, uh, our board came back and sort of said, we think there's a third option and we like you and the management team. And if you've got it in you to take a crack at something else, we'll support you.
[00:08:50]
Uh, and so, you know, sadly we did have to whittle the team down at that time, but you know, in those early months of the pandemic, we had kind of a, We had kind of a mandate from our board to, you know, see if there was something else that we were really excited about and they would support us through that process emerged Table 22 and I can talk obviously about the origins of that.
[00:09:10]
But that's how Table 22 starts in 2020. And that's that's how we get there
[00:09:15] Josh Sharkey:
Now. I have a bunch of questions. We're gonna go all the way back. Sure. I'm glad you sort of wound all the way up now. I think everything that I'd love to ask you is What happened along that way. Sure. And of course, you know, we'll learn more about Table 22 as well.
[00:09:26]
First off, you said you're from New York and your father's business has been around for 34 years. Are your parents also from the city?
[00:09:32] Sam Bernstein:
My dad is from the New York area. Uh, he grew up in Long Island and then my mom is actually from Alabama. So she grew up in Alabama, you know, one of six kids in Birmingham and, uh, not in a, you know, from a family of significant means, but she developed an early sort of love and set of abilities around like sewing and making her own clothes.
[00:09:53]
And so ultimately that You know, became a career in the, in the fashion industry. And she came to the Northeast to go to BU and then ended up at Columbia. And she and my dad met on the subway in New York. Is she still in the fashion industry? Yeah. Yeah. She works for an American brand called Tonya Taylor that makes really amazing stuff.
[00:10:11]
That's great. So you, I mean, you really came up in an entrepreneurial. Absolutely. I mean, she, she consulted and had a consulting business for so many brands. And my dad, you know, has two businesses. One of them is an architecture firm, but, uh, it's a project management business, which is very adjacent. But, you know, my dad worked like every Saturday and Sunday growing up.
[00:10:30]
I mean, he spent amazing amounts of time with us and was an incredible, they were both incredible. Parents, but I just watched like that work is not a nine to five You know, that was the thing that I kind of grew up around and you know, you have something you're pushing it forward. That was very much a governing philosophy.
[00:10:46] Josh Sharkey:
I love that I also love seeing the product of what that can can make I'm a father of two children and I think about all the time You know the balance between how much do we spend at work versus you know with them and it's For me so much more about the quality of time you spend with your kids when you're there, as opposed to the quantity of time.
[00:11:02] Sam Bernstein:
Yeah. And it's, I imagine it's a de, you know, difficult balance. I'm not a parent, but they're gonna emulate you, right? Yeah, absolute. Absolutely. Like, and so you wanna, you wanna model
[00:11:10] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:11:10] Sam Bernstein:
The behavior, the aspirational, the hard work. Yes. At the same time, you don't want that to come at the expense of Yeah.
[00:11:16]
What you need to give to them to be a good parent.
[00:11:19] Josh Sharkey:
A hundred percent. So you went to UVA in 2015? I was there a bit, a bit earlier. I left in 2015. Gotcha. Were you working for Mike in sort of this, you know, investment VC world before you went to UVA?
[00:11:31] Sam Bernstein:
They let me intern there the summer before I went to UVA and then I continued, I went back, I did it again, you know, I continued to do stuff while I was in school.
[00:11:38] Josh Sharkey:
Cool. Alright, well, obviously we have a lot to talk about with Table 22, but I'd love to just a little bit about the Thiel Fellowship and how that came about. And for those that don't know, Peter Thiel, You know, he founded PayPal, incredible investor, has a founder fund now, lots of controversy around, you know, the ways in which he thinks, but a deep libertarian and has an incredible book called Zero to One, which I love.
[00:12:00]
Yeah, it's awesome. Many premises in there that I'd love to chat about, but an incredible thinker and investor and he has Thiel Fellowship, which is not an easy thing to become part of. You did. So I'd love to understand how did that happen, man?
[00:12:13] Sam Bernstein:
It's maybe a more personal thing. surprising and anticlimactic story than, than you would think. But I met on a subway, they reached out to me. I think, you know, this was at a time where they were a couple of years into the Thiel fellowship. Now I think they've been doing it for, you know, 10 plus years. So they've continued to kind of tweak and refine the model very much in one fashion. But I think the early model was the thing that many people still associate with it and which generated a lot of controversy, which was, We're going to find 20 incredible young people, like the original premise was 20 under 20.
[00:12:47]
We're going to find 20 amazing young people who have not either yet gone to undergrad or haven't graduated from undergrad, and we're going to give them this 100,000 grant and we are going to. Basically pay them to drop out of college and see if we can like sort of catalyze them building something special.
[00:13:06]
By the time that I joined, I think they had refined the model a little bit because I think maybe one of the, and I can't speak for them, but my sort of vague understanding is one of the learnings was. What makes entrepreneurs successful and special is that they have a self drive around a particular problem, not just that they're tinkering and stumble into something necessarily.
[00:13:27]
And so, I think what they found was, while these people are amazing and so smart, actually we're looking for people who maybe have already made a little bit of progress around something, they've taken some of the steps, they've achieved some of the milestones, and they're so committed to it that maybe they even have already dropped out, like, of their own volition.
[00:13:43]
I was in that camp. Like I had already left UVA. I was building a company. We had raised maybe our first round of outside funding by that point. And so that's how they learned about me. I mean, we had had a press, I think, you know, we had a press announcement around our first round of funding at loft smart, which was my first company.
[00:13:59]
And they just reached out and said, you know, do you know about the Thiel fellowship? Have you considered applying? We see from afar. You're doing something interesting and actually dropped out already. Uh, we think you might be an interesting fit. And so they basically invited me to apply and I did. I got into the next round of, you know, interviews and they flew, I don't know, maybe 60 finalists or something out to San Francisco from which I think they picked 20 or 22 and everyone like Did several interviews in person and actually pitched what they were building and did a presentation to the whole group and that was a fun and totally interesting weekend and, uh, anyways, I ended up, you know, being selected. Got a call a couple months later.
[00:14:37] Josh Sharkey:
It's so interesting because it is true. You don't Learn to be an entrepreneur. It's sort of in you or not. You know, I think, I think it's really smart that they're looking for the early indicators. I mean, typically if you're an entrepreneur, you probably started selling something long before, you know, you had a company.
[00:14:53] Sam Bernstein:
Yeah. My first business, which I neglected to mention was we went to a place Growing up called Fire Island, which is an island off of Long Island, and there's no cars there. And so, uh, when people take the ferry over, they have bags. And so there's like all the teenagers have a wagon and you get, you know, you get paid to do wagon hauls of people's luggage to their house.
[00:15:12]
And so that was actually the, my first, you know, micro small business, but, uh,
[00:15:17] Josh Sharkey:
That's awesome. So, so what did you learn from the Thiel Fellowship or what did you gain or what were the sort of the resources that you were able to leverage from it?
[00:15:23] Sam Bernstein:
I think the main thing, it's actually fairly hands off. Program in the same way that like, you know, Y Combinator, like you're, you're not, I didn't do YC, but you know, you're not working out of YC every day. I think the main thing that both the Thiel fellowship and YC do very well is they put a bunch of smart people in a room. They give you access to resources and experts that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise had access to.
[00:15:46]
And then there's just some great programming and events where good collisions and learning can happen. But otherwise, I mean. You know, it's a stamp of credibility that helps you in all of your other, you know, endeavors and like things like fundraising. And so it's a nice marker badge and a great community to be a part of.
[00:16:05]
They were not mega hands on in terms of the like building of the business.
[00:16:09] Josh Sharkey:
Did they take equity? No, it's, it's, it's a grant. Cool. So, so fast forward, you, you know, you built this really incredible, uh, real estate company. It sounds like you didn't necessarily exit. You pivoted to a completely different business model.
[00:16:22]
That's right. The pandemic hit. So let's talk about how you got into this restaurant space. Just, you know, Very different from real estate and how you how Table 22 became what it is.
[00:16:34] Sam Bernstein:
Yeah, of course So, I mean a couple of things the first is I had spent the years that I was in New York from 2016 on Even while I was building loftsmart becoming really I'm a lifelong lover of food and restaurants and just a reverence for them But I had spent those years where I now had a little bit of disposable income as much as I could be in restaurants I wanted to be in restaurants.
[00:16:57]
I found it the place of The greatest joy that like one could experience is a great meal with friends in a place that's doing something special that's creating a unique environment that's transported of the food is amazing the service that you know relationships that you can develop with the team there and through that process I became really a regular at a couple of places and and like capital are regular going a lot first name basis, you know, dap up the you know, the folks on the team when you come in and, you know, have a chance with those spots.
[00:17:27]
One, the, the, really the main one that comes to mind is Pasquale Jones, which I lived around the corner from in New York city. And when it opened in 2015 or 16 was like just, you know, totally dismantled I think a bunch of ideas about what fine dining was and it was loud rap music and like incredible care of the ingredients but in a more casual as a lot of things that now feel common but I think they were at the forefront like of a lot of that and unbelievable wine program paired with a pizza from an incredible like it just now you see that a lot but I think at the It like sort of hit New York in an interesting way.
[00:18:02]
They had a sister restaurant, Charlie Bird, which also had an incredible amount of love and acclaim and still does. And I was just going to both of those spots a lot, and they were taking incredible care of me. And in return, I was, you know, really kind of bringing people in. I would have business dinners there, you know, I would like bring customers and clients there.
[00:18:21]
I bring friends, dates, right? And I saw that there's this Economic engine between regulars and restaurants. And what an important, uh, sort of business pillar that is for the success and longevity of restaurants that you have these very, very high frequency and commitment segment of customers that make a big impact on the business.
[00:18:40]
And so, and then I saw on the consumer side, wow, what a magical. You know, experience that that that unlocks to be part of that community, that that group. And so when we were embarking on the process of starting a new business, the thing that became Table 22, a, I knew I wanted to do something in the hospitality area, even as we evaluated certain options in other places.
[00:19:02]
B, I had this idea in my mind that this notion of Helping restaurants drive more of that kind of regular dynamic and behavior and finding other ways to capture spend and monetization from those guests could be a really impactful thing. Third, we're at the beginning of the pandemic and it feels like, wow, we're in a sea change moment for how restaurants are going to think about interacting with their guests, you know, capturing spend and dollars from them.
[00:19:28]
And having a more diversified business, you know, beyond just on premise dining, our view was the pandemic will end at some point, and we want to build something that's helpful both during the pandemic, but has legs and longevity even beyond that. So after spending time with really thousands of restaurants around the country.
[00:19:46]
We came to this view that if we could help the hospitality industry have tools to engage their best and most loyal guests, generate predictable high margin revenue from them, and expand the kind of brand and product experience beyond the four physical walls of the restaurant, that would be a winning model.
[00:20:03]
That would be something that would persist beyond COVID. And that is what we've seen. Uh, it helped a lot of restaurants a lot during COVID. We're really proud of that, but the business is significantly bigger now than it was during COVID and it's continued to grow. And, uh, and I think we're seeing the thesis play out to some extent.
[00:20:21] Josh Sharkey:
That's exciting. It's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that the pandemic did that I love to see was, you know, pay off this notion that you can expand Horizontally and not always need to have this vertical expansion of like more four wall boxes of restaurants. You can add on catering, CPG, subscription, all these kinds of things.
[00:20:41]
And still have upward mobility for your team. Still have incrementally new revenue without having to open up another of your boxes. I mean, Charlie Burton, Pasquale Jones is a great example of, I mean, JetBlue, Mint. I mean, I mean, I don't know what the economic model is there, but I'm sure it rocks.
[00:20:58] Sam Bernstein:
No, and I think that that evidence is like one of the points that that we believed, which was we heard from a lot of restaurants, like, and particularly the ones that are busy and doing well and have created something special.
[00:21:08]
You're leaving a lot of money on the table every night. There's just only so many seats, right? And so restaurants are looking at this unmet demand for what they do. And they're thinking, I've got two ways to monetize this. I can go on, you know, the delivery apps and I can lose control of the customer relationship and I can pay.
[00:21:25]
Very high fees, and I don't totally control the experience, or I can spend, you know, three million dollars to go open another box. I don't know whatever the number is, but in New York City, it can be that much. And we just felt like those were two very extreme options that both had complicated propositions.
[00:21:41]
And so we wanted to give them a new mechanism to kind of meet that demand. So what is it? Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
[00:21:48] Josh Sharkey:
Also, maybe just to start, where did the name come from?
[00:21:50] Sam Bernstein:
It was the table at Pasquale Jones. That's awesome. Yeah, exactly.
[00:21:54] Josh Sharkey:
So they get a little A couple of shares.
[00:21:57] Sam Bernstein:
Um, we've never worked with them actually,
which is, uh, which is too bad.
[00:22:00]
But in any event, I have a great respect and admiration for their team. How does it work? What is it? So the thing that we started with that we came to market with very focused product is the best set of subscription and membership commerce tools for the hospitality industry. And today. We work with restaurants, wine shops, butchers, bakeries, farms, all manner of different, uh, kind of product driven community driven hospitality businesses.
[00:22:25]
And what we help them to do are really to launch, grow, and manage these subscription offerings for guests that are successful. These are mostly product driven subscriptions, things like Dinner series, supper clubs, wine clubs, you know, farm share, CSA style boxes, butcher boxes, cheese clubs, all manner of different kind of product driven subscriptions.
[00:22:47]
And we provide, you know, the e-commerce tools, the shipping and delivery enablement, a lot of support on the marketing and operations. And in return, restaurants get, you know, monthly pre orders from their members, significant new line of revenue. And they're able to. Do so in such a way that doesn't disrupt the core service operation, you know, with orders hitting during busy periods and everything, and they can really control what it is that they put out and tell the story, and that seems to be a model that's working really well, and we have more restaurants and hospitality businesses than ever that are generating six, even seven figures of revenue using the platform, so can can be for many restaurants.
[00:23:25]
The difference between being, you know, in the red and in the black,
[00:23:29] Josh Sharkey:
This show is brought to you by guessed it, meez. meez 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 consistent product every day in less time than ever before, then meez is just for you and you can transform all those old Google Docs and Word Docs and PDFs and spreadsheets and Google Sheets into dynamic, actionable recipes in meez.
[00:23:58]
And lightning speed. Plus, stop all that manual work of processing invoices, cause meez 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.
[00:24:15]
Visit www.getmeez.com, that's G E T M E E Z. to learn more and check out the show nuts moving forward because we're going to be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant podcast listeners get a sweet deal.
[00:24:38]
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd love to just learn a little bit more about the actual product itself. I mean, are you, like, are you leveraging. Stripe or like something like a Recurly for the recurring payment thing or do you build that in house or what is the interface that the customer is using?
[00:24:52] Sam Bernstein:
Yeah, great, great question. So Stripe is the processor.
[00:24:55]
So that's typically what you're using? So they're the payment rails, right? They're the actual gateway. They do the payments processing. What we've built on top of Stripe is a really sophisticated set of subscription management and billing tools. Now we work with restaurants or wine shops or whatever all the time that are coming from a Squarespace or Square or Shopify, you know, using, you know, recharge or curly or something.
[00:25:22]
Um, Where they have built up a program, but they want more configurability. They want a cleaner UX that's really designed around subscriptions. They want better tools to communicate the guests. They want to offer delivery. All these things. They don't know how to market and grow it. All these things that our platform addresses.
[00:25:39]
And so it's purpose built subscription management tools for the hospitality industry with a bunch of layers of actual operations and marketing enablement. And to deliver a richer guest experience. So that's kind of, you know, and of course, we use things like Stripe, uh, where we don't have a core competency in, let's say, payments processing.
[00:25:56] Josh Sharkey:
I apologize. This gets a little technical. I just, I'm just really curious. Sure. The interface is sort of admin facing then, right? For the customer. And then so on the, on the front end, they might be using bento box or Squarespace and then it's plugged into that.
[00:26:09] Sam Bernstein:
So we build the hosted commerce experiences for the restaurants.
[00:26:12]
So like I just downstairs saw one of our. When I was walking in, one of our amazing partners, the chef Fiore Tedesco from L'Oca d'Oro in Austin. I
[00:26:20] Josh Sharkey: I just had him on two weeks ago.
[00:26:21] Sam Bernstein:
Oh, awesome. He's great. So they do these like beautiful meals and pasta kits and wine pairings through the Table 22 platform.
[00:26:28]
They've been with us since pretty like early days of the pandemic. So it's years now we've worked together and they've You know, basically we build them a hosted, uh, checkout experience that it lives on Table22.com, but it's pretty white labeled, so they just link out to it from their site or their instagram.
[00:26:45]
You know, consumers buy, then they've got a back end portal where they can manage all of the information that they need about who are their members, who's active, turn, pause, cancel, the different cohorts when they're fulfilling, uh, be able to text and email with guests directly. So they get that sort of robust back end set of tools, and then they have the support of our team helping enable, you know, things like delivery, shipping, pickup, marketing, and so on.
[00:27:07] Josh Sharkey:
It's a lot. Uh, yeah. So I was just actually talking about, to my team about this yesterday, I was like, what are all the things that they're providing? Because I, we use Recurly for our technology company and, and of course we use Stripe on the back end and other things, but of course we were discovered, Ursula who works for me mentioned like, yeah, but no restaurant could use that.
[00:27:27]
And it's very specifically built for tech and it sounds like what you're building is all of these, to your point, these very purpose built products for not just a recurring subscription of a plan. Sounds like you can. Do something to be for membership or for a product or CPG. Yeah, that's really any, anything that you want to, you know, create a subscription for in a restaurant.
[00:27:46] Sam Bernstein:
That's why I love it. That's absolutely right. And, and in addition to the core product, which is, you know, subscription and membership tools, uh, we just launched at the end of last year, what we call a one time commerce product or a la carte commerce. And what that means is the use case that we're starting with is we've got a lot of Partners who do really well and do a lot of business selling sort of single event based packages.
[00:28:09]
And I don't mean like in store, you know, prefix menus or anything like that. That's still mostly handled by whatever their reservation and table management system is. But if they sell a ton of Thanksgiving pies or everything but the turkey or on Mother's Day, they sell a home brunch kit or New Year's Eve, they sell a champagne pack, like whatever it might be that sort of pre order based.
[00:28:31]
Fulfillment oriented, like batch fulfillment oriented commerce use case, we've actually built amazing building blocks around. And so we shipped this one time commerce product in Q4 of last year. 5 percent of our partners, our customers piloted it, and it drove a 20 percent lift to our business in Q4. And so we're seeing a lot more expansion of that product this year.
[00:28:53]
And I think over time you'll see us be more than just subscriptions and memberships. You're already seeing that. And I think it's really helping them with all the tools they need to identify and monetize their best and most engaged customers. I love that. It's
[00:29:07] Josh Sharkey:
So funny now that I'm like hearing you talk. I remember during the pandemic when You know, when Blue Hill started selling like their, CSA type things, but it was actually food. And then you had like Attaboy starting to sell all the Korean products. And it was like, everyone was doing their own sort of grocery. I don't know how much of that was you, but it was happening a lot.
[00:29:25] Sam Bernstein:
We worked with, we worked with many restaurants during the pandemic. Uh, David Barber from Blue Hill is actually one of our investors. Uh, we didn't get to support those, but through his venture fund or, or just, yes, through, through his fund, you know, we didn't get to support Blue Hill stuff directly, but.
[00:29:39]
Basically, the way that I've seen a lot of restaurants go is, you know, whether it's like Coats of the World or AttaBoy or Blue Hill, like many people had extreme success with this during the pandemic. And then when they were, you know, not forced to reopen, but able to reopen, they were forced to wind down a lot of these, you know, Sort of non core lines.
[00:29:56]
Many folks are now getting that stuff back up and running. And we've had conversations with several of the people we just talked about, about kind of bringing some of this stuff back because now that they're restaffed, they're stable, they're open, they can sort of contemplate again, different ways to grow.
[00:30:11]
And I think like, if you look at squares, 2024 future of commerce report, and they've got a bunch of amazing, obviously hundreds of thousands of restaurants that use their point of sale and a bunch of great consumer research as well. Yeah. The number one theme is restaurants wanting and needing to have a multi hyphenate revenue strategy for their business.
It's a no brainer.
[00:30:32] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I mean, you, you know, you buy a, you lease a restaurant, a space. And you do the IRR, I'm like, okay, over 10 years, here's what I'm going to pay in rent, it's going to increase over 3 percent every year, and like, you can only do so much top line with however many seats you have, no matter how busy you're going to get, and The best case scenario is you hit a cap.
[00:30:49]
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that's, that's when you hit that cap, but there's so many opportunities for incremental revenue, and I think that, I love that this is happening, you're seeing this opportunity to look at your four walls of restaurants, like, yeah, sure, I have all my customers coming in to eat this experience, but there's A bunch of other ways that I could monetize the thing that I've built.
[00:31:08]
Side note for everybody, by the way, this is not an advertisement. Sam didn't pay to come on this show. We just happened to be at the conference together and I saw you building that, I thought it was really cool, I wanted to learn more, but Yeah, thanks. I think we're, you know, we've thrown a lot here, but I appreciate the acknowledgement of that. We're just meeting, I mean, for the first time.
[00:31:26]
So I understand. Clearly, the subscription piece of it and creating that model where they can have a recurring subscription. But it sounds like you handled the distribution as well. First of all, why? Like, why did you get into that? That's a, that's a, that's a whole beast of a problem to solve. And how are you doing it?
[00:31:41] Sam Bernstein:
I don't think that we ever necessarily wanted to Be in the business of like moving things around in the physical world. It's harder, but it's also where the need is from the restaurant. Like that's, that's the main driver of why would we would make a decision to invest in something or build out a particular operational muscle is like, do our customers benefit from it, you know, tremendously.
[00:32:02]
And I think in this case, as restaurants were reopening from COVID, they were just like, Whoa, our dining room, which has been a fulfillment center for the last year or however, however many months is going to go back to being a restaurant again. And so many of them came to us and said, we would like to continue to do this, but we don't have the space for all the packages and we can't just have, you know, pickups occurring during service and all the time.
[00:32:27]
And so our solution to that was, well, we'll help you. You know, get them delivered around town. And so we built up our own network of, you know, basically fleets and drivers that we subcontract with in, you know, now 25 U.S. cities. I think we have this, and it's our own sort of self managed network of, of trusted delivery partners, you know, come do batch pickups and deliveries from restaurants when they fulfill their needs.
[00:32:52]
you know, their subscription orders and can help them clear that inventory out of the physical space and get it in the hands of the guest. And then, you know, as far as shipping is concerned, we do have a number of partners who ship and we're integrated with, with all the kind of carriers and can get them good rates and provide prepaid shipping labels through the platform.
[00:33:09]
And so we can even send, send the FedEx truck to come, you know, pick stuff up.
[00:33:11] Josh Sharkey:
I mean, it really is the hardest part. I mean, of course, getting somebody to want to buy something and get them to your website and, you know, Pressing the, the, the CTA to buy. That's all like, you know, there's work there, the marketing, but that's kind of measurable.
[00:33:25]
But then, you know, how do I actually get this stuff to all these people is a real, is there, is a real pain. I remember during the pandemic, you know, like, I don't know if you probably remember this gold belly sort of proliferating a lot more. Yeah. CookUnity and similar companies started, you know, adding these incremental new revenue streams.
[00:33:39]
But then to your point after the pandemic, like, Oh shit, I have to go back to. Operating my restaurant every day and I still have to maintain this because why am I going to give up this revenue? Yeah, are there parts of how you help them with the actual packaging and, you know, that whole sort of operation of packaging and shipping stuff out?
[00:33:56] Sam Bernstein:
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the areas that we have to do a great job and I think our position to add a lot of value to our restaurant partners is we've learned a lot and you know, we've seen. A thousand restaurants that have launched programs, you know, using our tools. We see what sells, what kind of marketing works.
[00:34:13]
We see, you know, what kind of packaging and experiences consumers respond to favorably and ultimately retain in and continue to spend more on. And so we were able to kind of like aggregate all of those learnings and for each new restaurant that comes on the platform, we are suggesting or offering advice around the most optimized version of what they're.
[00:34:33]
You know, offering can be can look like what the variants are, the pricing like we're bringing that day to the table to kind of help them avoid mistakes that they might otherwise make or just not leave dollars on the table. And I think that extends down to the operation side too. So, you know, let's say you have 100 orders while we're saying.
[00:34:50]
Hey, you know, here are the different ways that you can spread that fulfillment out across the different days here. The way that other restaurants are packaging. Here's the way that we see consumers, you know, times or days of the week that we see consumers, you know, most interested in receiving a picking up or receiving a delivery.
[00:35:05]
So, yeah, I mean, I would say like from from top to bottom, we are trying to bring experience to bear to help them You know, both succeed operationally, have it be smooth and not disruptive, but also deliver like a really great and convenient guest experience. It's awesome. I love it.
[00:35:21] Josh Sharkey:
I want to do a little bit, one more thing on Table 22, and then we're going to do a little founder therapy.
[00:35:27]
Whenever I have another CEO on it. Sure. Sounds good. I understand a lot more about what table 22 is now, but what's the future look like? Are you thinking about sort of like what the next iteration of the product is?
[00:35:36] Sam Bernstein:
I mean, I think we're bringing this really unique mix of what the industry has come to understand as first and third party capabilities.
[00:35:42]
First party being own your customers, you know, harvest your demand, you know, nurture those relationships and have your brand at the forefront. Third party, generally having been the connotation of those logistics chops, those operations chops that maybe restaurants don't have as a core capacity in house.
[00:35:59]
We tried to kind of put the best of both worlds together on those things. And I think It's a set of capabilities. It's a model. It's an infrastructure that can be applied to almost every single one of the commerce streams that they have maybe beyond the four walls. And so When I think about, you know, these pre order like, you know, one time commerce use cases, I think we're already achieving a lot like helping our restaurants achieve a lot more there, beat their previous sales records, sell more Thanksgiving pie, you know, whatever it is.
[00:36:26]
Then there's the subscription and membership stuff. I think every restaurant in America should At least try this, uh, and see if they've can kind of rally their community behind predictable revenue and great products. And I think that that's working. Then there's, you know, they're catering, there's gift card, like there's just all the different stuff that they do.
[00:36:42]
And I think, you know, we, we feel like over time we are building the guest monetization engine for the hospitality industry to really help them take back power, uh, identify the different Moments and use cases and sort of spend pockets that they can capture from their guests, whether it's their home cooking and dining, their grocery shopping, retail, you know, their wine buying like restaurants can serve all of these use cases for their most sort of engaged guest segment, and we can help them do the hard parts of that.
[00:37:14] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, you probably have gotten this question from investors. I don't know from restaurants, but you have a two sided marketplace. Is there some point where you're going to build an actual marketplace of where there's discoverability?
[00:37:26] Sam Bernstein:
So I don't know that I would consider our business a marketplace today. We principally engage with the restaurant and then they use our tools to sell things to their guests, right? So we help them with the marketing piece, but the main reason they sign up to work with us is not to access a consumer network. So, so just, just to be, just to lay out like how I see that. I do think that.
[00:37:47]
What that makes us is a B2B2C business. We go B2B, we give them tools, then they sell B2B using, sorry, B2C using our tools. However, over time, we have cultivated a, you know, guest following and network in a number of our cities. And we have been able to use that to, like people who sign up for our newsletter and who are following along on Instagram, whatever.
[00:38:08]
And we have been able to use that to, I think of it like a cherry on top. We've been able to use that to add additional exposure and demand to, to our, our restaurant partners. And I think they're seeing a lot of value from that. It's one of the reasons I think. They're switching a lot of their one time packages, which maybe they've sold through toast or talk in the past over the Table 22
[00:38:28]
is that, you know, we're driving a 20 percent lift to sales from our local network in the city.
[00:38:33] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I mean, I have to imagine that at some point there's enough inertia with enough restaurants you're working with where you can sort of optimize for discoverability, right? We're like, yeah, you have enough of these restaurants that are offering these things where if there was a And I'm not telling you on your own, but like, you went to Table22 and I could find Fiore’s, you know, sauce there, and I didn't even know who he was.
[00:38:56]
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't rule that out in the future. Yeah. Alright, well, on that note You know, you started a previous company, now this company. I'd love to understand, just because I think about this a lot, I mean, as you know, like being a founder, it's just, uh, stress with more stress. And over time, I think, you're young, but I haven't imagined you already, like, experience so much of this, is that you have to sort of take the highs and the lows together, you know, because there's both of them.
[00:39:24]
Yeah, go mad if you don't. Yeah, yeah. Don't get too excited when it's really going well, and don't get too upset when it's not going well. You know, other things you do to manage stress.
[00:39:34]
I think some of it is just your set of personality dispositions, but I've also been through enough cycles where to your point, you know, when you start out, the highs are here and the lows are here.
[00:39:44]
And then over time, just the band kind of gets narrower in terms of your emotional volatility. So even when I get bad news today, I mean, it affects me. I want to solve a problem. But I don't let it like I got to keep moving on to the next, you know, and so I think that's just part of, you know, getting cycles and experience and I'm sure you've been on the same journey because you have some great days and some very bad ones, I think.
[00:40:08]
You know, the other thing for me is I just, I don't know that I have any specific like mechanics, like meditation or whatever, and I'm probably behind on a lot of that, but I have good centers of joy in other areas of my life, like I have an amazing, you know, partner or fiancé, I have the a great family that I love.
[00:40:25]
I have amazing friends who I, you know, make time to see. And so between those things and other personal interests, like I get out and try to play tennis a couple of times a week or, you know, get in nature, take a walk or a hike from time to time. You live in the city. I live in the city. So it's not the best place for either of those things, but, uh, but, but you can, you can find it if you, uh, if you try.
[00:40:45]
And so, and then I think, honestly, I just still get a lot of joy from the work. I mean, that that's really like, yeah. If you're not enjoying the work, everything else is screwed and, uh, you gotta be passionate about the problem that you're working on. You gotta enjoy working with your team. We have a no assholes rule, uh, you know, inside the company, so we just try to all Enjoy working with one another and be motivated around solving the same problem and getting to the same end state.
[00:41:09]
And then, you know, part of my job is I get to spend time with these amazing restaurants. I get to go to different cities where we have customers and are bringing on new customers and, you know, you know, See some of the best of what the US has to offer culinarily and I got to be grateful for that. That's pretty good
[00:41:25] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, I mean like you have to find something that brings you a lot of joy from the work, which I totally agree I mean, it's funny I cooking is something I have loved more than anything anything my whole life other than my kids But now you know having it I would have never imagined having a tech company I just love seeing chefs, you know, like resonate with the product.
[00:41:48] Sam Bernstein:
When the product There's no better feeling. I mean, when you have done the hard work to create something that someone gets a return or some value from, and that's someone, you know, you care about them in their world and helping them, what could be better?
[00:42:03] Josh Sharkey:
But part of, you know, it really is a part of being an owner is you, you do, I don't know what you think about this.
[00:42:10]
You do sort of develop a bit of like this numbness to, and sometimes like something really good will happen and I'll respond. Similarly to how when something bad happens to my team, it's like, wait, hey, this is awesome. Amp it up. This is great. You know? Yeah. And there will be tomorrow. Yeah. And it's, it's tough because you have to have that balance of really appreciating things, but also, you know, having that stoic sort of, you know, Got to celebrate the wins.
[00:42:34] Sam Bernstein:
It's important for your team to see you celebrate the wins, but I forget who said it. Common trope, right? Things are never as good as they seem or as bad as they seem. A different way of saying that is I think, you know, when Amazon went public and they have this period of tremendous volatility, like early on in the business, Jeff Bezos, I think, got up and said, when the stock goes up 30%, We're not 30 percent better as a company.
[00:42:57]
When the stock goes down 30%, we're not 30 percent worse as a company. We're not the stock price. We're not this day's events. Like, yeah, let's not miss the forest for the trees.
[00:43:05] Josh Sharkey:
It all comes down to just continuing to have a really deep confidence in the vision of what you're building, because on any given day, it's very easy to get discouraged.
[00:43:19]
But something doesn't go well, as long as you really truly believe the thing that you're building is meaningful and it's going to have an impact. For me, that's the, that's the best way to get through all the hard times. For sure. I am curious though, if you have, you know, you've been doing this a while, it sounds like you, you've surrounded yourself with, you know, some really smart people.
[00:43:36]
I did want to ask you about Adam Fishman and what he means to you.
[00:43:38] Sam Bernstein:
Oh, sure. Yeah. So, I mean, Adam Fishman and I have been working together for a couple of years. He's on the board, uh, of Table 22. I invited him to Join and basically sit in an independent type of seat. I just, you know, started working with him in an advisory capacity.
[00:43:54]
We had been connected by another of our board members for background. He used me to share with. Yeah, for background. So he was the head of growth that Lyft, and then he was the VP of product and growth at Patreon. The. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, which, which is many, many ways like so analogous to our business, you know, subscriptions to creators.
[00:44:11]
It's, it's similar, uh, at the business model level and he ran product and growth there. And then he was the chief product and growth officer, I think at imperfect foods, which later sold to misfits or merged with the misfits market. And now he's just been doing some kind of consulting and advising and some interim gigs here and there.
[00:44:26]
But. You know, if you think about our business, it's kind of as if Patreon and Imperfect Foods like had a baby. And so, it's rare that you meet someone whose career experience is so recent, so practical, and so applicable. 100%. And Lyft, to be honest with you, because Lyft is like
[00:44:44]
Yeah, at some level as well, right? And then the logistics piece, right, of Lyft. And so, uh, there's just So many elements of what he's learned along the way that I've found really, really, really helpful and at a certain point of working together for, I don't know, 6, 9, 12 months in an advisory capacity, I just asked him to join the board and he did and he's been a super, super valuable resource and I know he's doing his own podcast thing, which is, which is, yeah, yeah, he's got some great guests on.
[00:45:10] Sam Bernstein:
It's just folks in tech and product and particularly some ideas around like fatherhood.
[00:45:15] Josh Sharkey:
And so anyways, he's an interesting guy. Yeah, we have this, uh, one of my investors, angel investors, got Lenny Richitsky.
[00:45:21] Sam Bernstein:
Yeah,
[00:45:21] Josh Sharkey:
He, he and Lenny are tight. Yeah, yeah, I know. Actually, the original idea when I was like, I should do a podcast, Lenny was like, do a podcast.
[00:45:28]
Cool. All right, so I'm curious if, I don't know if you ever think about this. I actually don't think about it as much anymore, but I ask it a lot. So I don't know why I keep asking it, but. You know, you have to have, you know, a decent amount of capital to build what you're building. But we're still restrained by how much capital we have and how much time, the time horizon it takes to build the thing that you're building.
[00:45:45]
I'm curious if you, if you had unlimited capital, unlimited resources, time was not a constraint, like what would you build with, either with Table22 or just in general?
[00:45:54] Sam Bernstein:
I think the prioritization decisions that we have to make today are obviously driven by constraints. And so on any given day we make or quarter or something, because that's probably more of the horizon on which we're making these kinds of decisions.
[00:46:06]
Like any given quarter, we're making the choice between do we continue to invest in making some part of the current core product better? Do we build something that's more exploratory, like start to build a catering pilot? Like, you know, there are all these sort of questions you have to ask. And you know, when you're constrained.
[00:46:25]
Who knows what the right answer is, but those are the kinds of decisions you make. And so if, if we had all the capital in the world, I mean, I think the two things that I would immediately turn around and do tomorrow, uh, would be one, I would really scale up the core go to market engine, which is really an outbound sales and biz dev team, reaching out to restaurants, helping them learn more about our product, sign up, whatever.
[00:46:47]
So, you know, have seven sales reps today. Like I'd like to have a lot more than that would help us grow the business more quickly, reach more restaurants, et cetera. The second part of the go to market motion, I would continue to invest more behind is what I would kind of nebulously called brand stuff. So, you know, being at conferences like the chef conference, you know, being present at all major events and we're at some, but not all doing things that are more in the, in the sort of brand universe, which we've been lighter on because we probably over bias as a team towards things which have a demonstrable.
[00:47:16]
R.O.I. And that, you know, that may be short sighted, but that's the second area. And then the third would be, you know, I wish we had more engineers and we could just build all the elements of the kind of all in one platform that I talked about these different commerce streams, you know, continue to automate some of the functions around logistics, enablement, you know, guests communicate like all these things that I wish we could do.
So what about you?
[00:47:39] Josh Sharkey:
I totally agree. We end up having to make these sort of parsimonious decisions because of these constraints, but it's funny, you know, I, I asked this question a lot and then after the show, I ended up having this conversation. So I'm going to try to just have this conversation now because, and I've mentioned it a couple of times, but are you familiar with the Brian Chesky's 11 star experience from Airbnb?
[00:47:54]
Yeah, I do this often. I did it before we built meez and, and I still do it because it actually drives our product roadmap because we tend to have this sort of, in my opinion, somewhat myopic like views of like what to do next when we think. Pragmatically, you know, like, Oh yeah, this is an unnatural extension to my business, but what if it wasn't the Airbnb reference, you know, like you are brought via private jet destination and Elon Musk shows up with, you know, an electric car, if you, if you want that.
[00:48:21]
And there's a parade with elephants taking you there and they have like. You're, you know, I think about it a lot with what we're building and it actually builds our roadmap. And what ends up usually happening is we get a version of it. And Peter Thiel actually talks about this a lot, by the way, of like, you know, okay, you're saying this will take six years to build, what would it look like to build in six months?
[00:48:40]
And oftentimes we end up like finding this really interesting middle ground that gets you closer, where you can have something, you know, a product live or something. For us. Things like just tell me how to make more money on my menu, you know, and like, you know, you have all my stuff Can you tell me how I can make more profit and we do that now and there's a it's not quite the version that I would Have envisioned but it's there and I think for us like future things are take all of my culinary IP help me tell a story and uh, create content Dynamically create a cookbook that I can distribute to my entire audience and abroad.
[00:49:12]
And I want to make money off these beautiful things that I'm building and interact with with my audience. And we'll build that as well. And, you know, I want to, you know, have a marketplace that I can go to. And anyways, there's, there's a number of these things that I think about for my company, but generally speaking, maybe we could do this exercise of, of course you want to spend more in sales and marketing.
[00:49:32]
You want to ramp up your engineers, but If you've built this for a reason, right? You've created this whole new incremental revenue stream for these customers. What would that 11 star thing be like for Table22? Wow, you really put me on the spot there. I know. Take a second if you want, but, and by the way, if you can't think of it, when this is over, go home, think about it, and then shoot me a note, and I'll do it in a recap.
[00:49:56] Sam Bernstein:
I think the dream for restaurants is that more of this stuff could feel easy, and more of it could run for More on autopilot. I think, you know, in a food business, it's often the case that there are some economies of scale, but broadly speaking, after your fixed costs, like to make more money, you put in a linear amount of additional like labor and, and, you know, inputs like ingredients and so on.
[00:50:19]
And so when I think about kind of like the dream would be for restaurants, it would be this idea that we talked about, right? A guest monetization engine. So people are coming in the restaurant. We're collecting. That's where it all begins. You deliver a great experience there. And then all these other ways of monetizing packages, catering, subscriptions, memberships, whatever.
[00:50:41]
I think they all emanate from the well of customer love and loyalty and trust that you've established. Inside those four walls. Yeah, that's not going to go away. And I'm not a huge believer in the ghost kitchen model. Like I think what makes independent restaurants special is what you initially experience and the relationship that you begin to cultivate.
[00:51:01]
100 percent agree. What would be the automated and easy component of that would be, well, those systems are collecting guest information. They are building a profile and a set of characteristics about that guest. And then. Helping you formulate what are the products to sell to them, triggering automated marketing events to sell them.
[00:51:22]
So you don't have to like push the product as much. Like as an example, you know, you go into a restaurant, they see that you have a pattern of a certain kind of wine buying. Well, we're going to send you a really tasteful sort of personalized note. inviting you to join our wine club and talking about how your preferences map to the kinds of things that we're really featuring and exploring in the wine club.
[00:51:43]
Today, a lot of that is more manually done. And I think that, you know, for restaurants, if a lot of that, we're running on autopilot, like you have a unit of a guest, they come in, but then there's XYZ ways that we can monetize them almost passively in the background, like that would be incredible. And then at some point, someone still has to cook the food or select the wines or whatever in an 11 star experience.
[00:52:06]
Maybe they've got a whole dedicated team to that in an offsite space. And, you know, that can be done in a way that's, you know, Feels easier or something, but yeah. And then, and then for the, for the consumer, the 11 star experiences, the restaurant knows me, they recognize me, they give me these amazing kind of rich ways to experience them.
[00:52:26]
Even when I'm home, like I can have the deliciousness of the food from Keiko in San Francisco, or I can have the wine curation of the Four Horsemen in New York. And like, I can elevate my home cooking and dining from my favorite places while also supporting them and feeling a connection to them. Yeah.
[00:52:42]
That's the sort of like. philosophical thing, I think, on both sides.
[00:52:44] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I love that. I mean, first of all, I totally agree. Like, brand equity is, is really everything, right? And that's why the Ghost Culture model gets more difficult. There are times when it works, but it's far more dependent on execution than, and, and discoverability.
[00:52:57]
But just, it's like spitballing. This, if I'm sitting at a restaurant and this often happens like, okay, I sit down and let's just say that this is a restaurant that I have a subscription to via Table22. So maybe that means that I have this experience when I'm in the restaurant, but then the extension of what they do can come to my home.
[00:53:15]
I sit down, I have a dinner and I'm having this amazing bottle of Crémant d'Alsace. And they brought this cultured butter, and there was this really incredible salsa verde. But then we had this whole meal, right? And I just let them know a couple things. Oh, I love that bottle, and that salsa verde was so good.
[00:53:31]
And then, you know what? At my house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a case of the cremanta el sas. Yeah. And once a week, I get salsa verde with a recipe of like, here's other things you can do with it. Because the experience is what you pay for at a restaurant. You know, you're gonna have a whole meal. You're gonna have a bunch of stuff curated for you.
[00:53:47]
So you're not gonna go remake that at home. You're But if you want to sort of get the benefit of all the things that this restaurant has built into that experience and then have some of it at home.
[00:53:58] Sam Bernstein:
Absolutely. And, you know, like I subscribe to one of our partners and their sort of market box pasta kit stuff is a place that I just mentioned in San Francisco called Kefiko.
[00:54:09]
And, uh, yes, there's like a little part of the box that's a pasta kit and a sauce and, you know, a way to sort of make a beautiful meal. But also part of it is like just some of their selected favorite products. It might be their favorite capers or olive oil or whatever it might be. And I find myself just in my daily home cooking, feeling like I'm cooking with handpicked products from some of my favorite places.
[00:54:31]
Like that's pretty awesome. And it's a small daily drip of elevating my experience of from that place. So
[00:54:37] Josh Sharkey:
I love that. This was awesome.
[00:54:39] Sam Bernstein:
Yeah.
[00:54:40] Josh Sharkey:
There's a bunch more questions I could ask, but I think in the interest of, uh, we had a good hour here. I'm glad we did this. Yeah. Likewise. Thanks so much for reaching out and, and making it happen.
[00:54:48]
Yeah. Well, I'm glad we were both here. So anyways, great to meet you. Yeah. Likewise. And I'm looking forward to like learning more from you. Cool.
[00:54:57] Sam Bernstein:
Thanks so much.
[00:54:59] Josh Sharkey:
Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, Fresh Daily.
[00:55:06]
For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z. com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.
.png)
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
