#TheLABMiami

Member Spotlight: Order Out

 

  Associating your restaurant with multiple food delivery databases could result in an economic gain, but it could also result in chaos. OrderOut, a system that combines all of your delivery partners on one device, will maximize your profit by simplifying the process of receiving orders. Chaos is no longer a concern with this system. OrderOut provides a dashboard with all of the information needed to manage orders at an efficient pace. The platform eliminates the need to have multiple tablets and to hire personnel to manage the orders. While we could list all of the benefits associated with the system, Zach Martin, the CEO of OrderOut will further our notion.

Why did you choose to become the CEO of Order Out?

     So, I got approached by LAB Ventures. LAB Ventures typically  comes up with an idea and they look for entrepreneurs who will bring them to fruition. OrderOut is an example of an idea developed by LAB Ventures; it is not necessarily something that was conceptualized by my persona. When I saw the opportunity, I was working at another incubator at Rokk3r LAB. I was working at another start-up and I had created a start-up myself back in California. I decided to check out this new opportunity, and I came in to the LAB to talk to everyone at LAB Ventures. They told me about OrderOut and what they had already built; I got immersed in the project and the idea of it seemed really interesting.  It’s one of those ideas that you don’t think about until someone tells you or you are familiar with the restaurant industry. So the more I learned, the more I wanted to get myself involved. I knew, because of my background, that I could take a company from essentially nothing to something (which we’ve done from the most part). So, my excitement and confidence from my experience led me to occupy this position at OrderOut. I firmly believe that if you are excited and passionate about something, you have to pursue it. 

What did you do before working on OrderOut?

   I graduated from the University of Miami in 2015. Right when I finished, I moved back home to Southern California and I immediately wanted to start my own business. I always knew that I was going to start my own company;  it’s innate, I had this entrepreneurial bug. So I started this company called Loil, which is a mix between the words loyalty and oil. The reason for this is that we were doing on-demand and scheduled auto-maintenance, such as, oil changes. I built this app where you could essentially order a mechanic to come to your home or office to do an oil change, change your window wipers, etc. It was definitely something where I had to use my intuition and skills.  I had seven independent contractors who worked for me and I had a fairly decent growth number. After six months, I was approached by a company in San Francisco, called RepairPal, to acquire it. They offered an acquahire, where they would buy me out and I would work for them, but the timing wasn’t right for me. Having that in mind, I put that aside and decided to go back to Miami. As soon as I got here, I started working for another start-up, and immediately got that entrepreneurial bug again. Right after came OrderOut and I could feel the excitement. 

How does Order Out work? 

     OrderOut is fundamentally a software. What we are doing is integrating the third party delivery food platforms directly to a restaurant’s point of sale. UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates, and pretty much every other third party food delivery service, gives restaurants individual tablets so that they manage and input the information into the point of sale. This process becomes a nightmare for restaurants, especially when they add multiple third party food delivery services. When you walk in a restaurant, which doesn’t have our solution, you will see all the different tablets spread out all over the place, causing a physical and operational dilemma since they need to hire staff to manage the incoming orders while the tablets ring simultaneously. OrderOut brings a solution to this problem: the consolidation of the system in a software that connects with all the third party delivery services and with the restaurants’ point of sale. We offer an API oriented software that comes with an easy-to-handle dashboard that collects all of the incoming orders and information. 

How was this problem originated? 

       The strategy for the third party food delivery services was to scale as quickly as possible. To raise a lot of money, their initial strategy was to give tablets to restaurants. They have gone super deep in this strategy, so there is a difficulty in transitioning the restaurants over to a new integration system. Not to mention that these integrations are complicated and they require resources, such as, time and money, and number of hindrances that these larger companies just won’t do. On the other hand, the point of sale systems are really fragmented. You go to a restaurant down the street and they may have a different point of sale service than the restaurant next to it; so for the delivery service to integrate with all these points of sale becomes troublesome. So we come in as intermediaries between the delivery services and the point of sale systems to facilitate the restaurants’ operations. 

How do you plan on expanding your business? 

     The goal is to be in as many restaurants as possible. Coming from a sales acquisition strategy, we gain a lot of customers with our website. Simply through SCO; we have a lot of peole who search for uber eats integration software and our digital platform comes up. Many will take a look at our website and submit leads, and we will contact them and hopefully get them to use OrderOut. We plan on setting up  various partnerships with point of sales companies, so instead of integrating with the point of sale company and then going to the restaurants, what we’ll do is we will integrate with that point-of-sale company and use it as either a referral or partner. This way, they will actually see the benefits of OrderOut and will present us to the merchants as their partners. There will be a financial incentive for these companies to do that and a great opportunity for us to grow and expose our software.  

Is OrderOut only based in Miami?

    It is currently based in Miami, but we just sold our first out-of-Miami product in Georgia. We do plan to go national as we integrate with more point of sale systems.

What has been challenging about OrderOut? 

    For sure the relationships with the point of sale companies and the third party delivery services have been challenging. Basically, trying to be able to get that access to the point of sale companies has been difficult. So for example, with Clover, a company that you can see at ice cream shops, it took us about nine months just to get accepted to integrate with them.  In other words, timing, getting in touch with the right people, convincing them that this is going to be beneficial for them, are some of daring aspects. 

Are there currently any systems like OrderOut?

     There is one called Order mark that does something similar, but they push all their orders to a kitchen printer, which we also do, but that is their main service. 

Is there any advice that you could give to other entrepreneurs?

      I think it depends on what they’re doing. Entrepreneur is one of these words that gets thrown around a lot; people think that they can start an Instagram account and become an entrepreneur, so it all narrows down to your definition of the word. In a general sense, you need to have at least 90% of a passion or a fire to do whatever it is that you are doing. You need to be able to answer that email at midnight, get up in the morning at 6 am, make that phone call to a potential partner and if you are not hungry and you don’t want to do it then it’s probably not going to happen. If you are going to do something you should put as much effort as you can, so, for sure, my advice to entrepreneurs or someone who wants to start a company will be to find something that you are passionate about. Honestly, if it’s something that makes a lot of money, then maybe making money is your passion, who cares! Find whatever makes you passionate; if it’s earning money, curing cancer or something else then do it. Always keep in mind that people have different excitements. 

What is your favorite thing about OrderOut and about being an entrepreneur? 

    My favorite thing about OrderOut is its potential. The restaurant industry has a huge market and this is a big problem; these are the first things that you should look at. My excitement comes after evaluating that this solution could actually make an impact and facilitate tasks for restaurants. 

   I’ve always been a leader and I like being able to showcase my thoughs and creating something out of nothing. This is what makes me like being an entrepreneur. 

 

By Alesia Lopez