Brio Demo

A straightforward approach to a common problem, Brio was readily accepted by colleges students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Publicly traded beer conglomerates had their eyes on our data & ability to serve targeted ads at the point of sale. The ability to bring an offline venue online - in the ad & data collection sense -served as a large opportunity given that studies showed over 70% of patrons walked up to the bar for the first drink without knowing what they were going to order. Other studies showed that once ordered, patrons repeated their order for the duration of their visit.

This data, coupled with the common annoyance from the patron side and the houses’ loss in productivity & security risks from non-PCI compliant transactions made for an attractive opportunity.

Successes

• First company founded

• Recruited technical co-founders

• Negotiated ownership

• Raised first angel money

• Completed 2 accelerators (gBETA & Madworks)

• Implemented software into multiple venues

• Drove downloads & saw repeat usage

• KPI’s (tipping percentage & total spend) improved over traditional methods.

Key Feature Implementations

• Pre-Authorization

  • Problem: After numerous discovery conversations, I found that the biggest hangup for venue managers was the lack of “pre-authorization”. (This is when a venue swipes your card to check if it’s valid, and sometimes they’ll put a hold on a certain amount of money - it prevents loss from walkouts). Our API (Omnivore) did not provide such capabilities.

  • Solution: Taking into account the difference in transaction rates between the venues’ existing processors (which we had already integrated with) and a payment gateway that would allow pre-auth (Stripe or Braintree), the tech team & I devised a two pronged payment method that resulted in both pre-auth capabilities and no increase in transaction fees.

    • We had already setup Omnivore integration with Spreedly to tokenize payments. To add pre-auth, we added an automatic Stripe account creation with the creation of a Brio account. Every time a tab was opened, we made a call to that user’s Stripe token (for whatever amount the venue set in their dashboard), which effectively froze that amount. We held onto this token until the Spreedly token was successfully submitted and then canceled the Stripe call, which cost nothing since we did not transfer any funds. Should someone’s Spreedly token not go through, we were able to transact via Stripe at the increased fee but this happened very infrequently.

• Autopay & Auto-tip

  • A common concern was that people would tip less if they could leave and not have to look into the eyes of the server they’re tipping. We added an auto-close & auto-tip clause to the user agreement which resulted in an 18% gratuity. Tip buttons of 18, 20, & 22% also added to increased tipping that helped win over service staff.

Lessons Learned

• Integrations

  • Both sides must have the drive & power to implement

  • The two sides in our case (us & the venue) had the drive, but the venue was at the mercy of the POS company. Unfortunately, NCR decided to pull the plug on all payment integrations despite our API touting both read & write functionality and guaranteeing our acceptance to their cloud licensing. We reduced all of the risks we could be still ended up biting the bullet there.

• Sales cycle - LTV Ratio
  In the beginning, you do things that don’t scale just to get the boulder moving a bit. Momentum, of course, makes the next yes incrementally easier. At the end of the day, restaurateurs have fires burning everyday and are scared of tech. Lowering that “action threshold” is the name of the game.
  
  It was apparent that we couldn’t survive off of SaaS fees from venues alone and that building a full-time sales team wouldn’t be economically feasible.
  
  The two pronged approach is to increase LTV via additional third party revenue streams (ads & consumer) and to decrease both the cost & length of the sales cycle via channel partners (POS providers & campus reps).
  
  Beer conglomerates loved the ability to serve targeted ads in the palm of the bar-goer, right before they were about to order. We also explored small fees to the consumer to pay via mobile. We didn’t get far enough to truly explore these, but the incentives were aligned and surveys were overwhelmingly positive.
  
  On the distribution side, we have multiple POS vendors contacting their clients on our behalf. While we didn’t expect them to seal the deal, the warm intro from their trusted technology vendor was an important icebreaker to expedite the process.
  
  Campus reps were also an important time-saver. These college kids knew everyone at the bars on their campus, could pop in between classes, and were willing to work off of commission only. It allowed use to build a dispersed sales force for nothing upfront. Although we never moved beyond UW-Madison in terms of implementation, we had bars on numerous other campuses waiting for our NCR/Aloha integration to go through (yeah, that was annoying but that’s life).
  

• Teambuilding
  Varied skillsets and compatible personalities are very important. That being said, I truly believe EQ is the most important piece in getting anything off the ground - whether it’s a brand new company, product, or featureset. Given the extremely lean (broke) lifestyle and constant adversity, you can never succeed unless you are empathetic and put your teammate first. This forges stronger relationships, trust, and ultimately the buy-in that you need to win together.
  
  Luckily, my co-founders were mature beyond their years and whenever we disagreed, we did it with respect, care, & our common goal in mind. It is my intention to create those personal relationships with my team wherever I go. I know it makes all the difference.