The Future of In-Store Transactions | Payment Trends for Retailers and Restaurants | B2B Vault | Episode 171

Quiet. Ready? I'm ready.

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Gary Sheffield of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. In today's podcast, we'll be talking about the future of in-store transactions, payment trends for retailers and restaurants, and all the stuff in between. Um, there's a lot of new, uh technology advancements when it comes to paying for things at stores during COVID I'm sure everyone was bear witnessing to this firsthand. As you would go to the store, people would say, oh, we don't take cash, blah blah blah. So, you know, businesses had to adapt to the times. And, uh, yeah, so there's a lot of stuff to cover. We're not going to cover it all, obviously, because that would lead into a very long, uh, podcast, and we're trying to avoid those moving forward. So how you doing, man?

I'm doing great. So what teams— I know Gary Sheffield played for, at least he played on the Marlins for a bit, right?

Uh, yeah, but he started, uh, for the Milwaukee Brewers, sir.

Okay.

Yeah, and we loved Gary Sheffield. Um, Gary had a tough time in Milwaukee from my memory. He did great, but like just his time there didn't really— he had some stuff that was going on. So then he got out of Dodge and he did great for Miami and played for a couple other— I think he played for the Yankees too.

Yeah, he was— he went around the league.

Gary Sheffield definitely played for the Yankees. But yeah, man, quite a few teams.

We're having a really wet week here in South Florida.

Yeah, I'm glad I don't live in Miami.

Yeah, it's like raining.

I feel bad for all you, for all the people in downtown Miami, man. You guys are— every time I turn, my dad watches, well, local news. Yeah, my dad gets up like before the, the, you know, the roosters are roostering. And so like in the morning when I start to smell the coffee, I'll naturally wake up. I don't drink coffee, but it's still like Folgers in your cup. Yeah, yeah. So you smell it and then it's like, oh, it's time to wake up, whatever. So I go in there and literally every morning for the past 3 weeks.

Oh yeah.

It's just disaster after disaster after disaster in regards to Miami, like with the water. It's just cars are floating around. They're pulling cars out of canals. Parking lots are flooded.

Up all the grass. Yeah, there's an article a few months ago where they sold the last piece of grass in downtown— my— in the downtown Miami area. They sold the last piece of grass. Someone's going to build a building on it. I mean, you get rid of all the grass, where's all the water going? There's no—

there's nowhere for the water to go, sir.

Get rid of all the grass and build all these buildings up, up, up. Right? The water has to go somewhere.

How was your Father's Day?

Father's Day was cool. My daughter sent me this like wooden set with a nice Father's Day message on it.

Oh cool.

And some spoon— wooden spoons, which I can put to use in the kitchen.

Oh, to cook spoons, cooking spoons.

And Jacob got me a, uh, Marlins hat and a Marlins jersey, which I'll have to wear one day on the podcast.

For sure.

Outfit. We'll have to coordinate and do a baseball day.

I could dig it. You know, I could dig it. I'm prepared.

So let's plan that one coming up soon. Do a baseball, baseball outfit podcast while baseball season is still going on.

We got a lot of left for baseball season.

And, uh, and then, you know, so Father's Day was cool. How was your Father's day?

Um, mine was chill. Uh, I didn't do anything. Me and my wife hung out.

Okay, that's good. Kids left you alone. Mhm.

Yeah, as they should have.

Jacob was busy, he worked. I went—

you cooked pancakes?

Iowa. Oh yeah, the morning I made—

I don't know, I'm one of them dads that I'm— I said it on the last podcast, don't ask me for anything. Don't call me, don't do anything.

Oh yeah, I don't care. I made a whole Father's Day thing. I made this, uh, blueberry thing where you take— I get the pan, the skillet, the cast iron skillet, spray it down, and you put blueberries.

I didn't get not one gift.

What?

My dad bought me gifts.

Wow, that's crazy. Your kids, man, they're on the date.

Oh dude, one of my kids didn't even text me. What?

Uh-oh, that's not good. Yeah, my daughter texted me, called me, sent me a gift.

I know life happens and I'm just talking crap, but my feelings were hella hurt for like, for like 3 seconds, and then I realized like, you know what, don't take it personal. Don't take things personal, Jay. I have 2 kids, so I got 6 daughters.

Yeah, Jacob, he had—

I could see why, you know, not everyone loves me either all the time.

You know, listen, sometimes you got to be tough on people. No, so he got— yeah, he— we made— I made him that blueberry pancake, this big giant blueberry pancake that I make in a cast iron skillet with no dairy and no— and, uh, gluten-free flour.

Nice.

Mixed with egg whites.

Yeah, my, my wife woke me up and she took me to the beach. Well, first we stopped for a café con leche. Which is a Cuban coffee for all you non-knowers.

Non-Miamians.

Yeah, uh, which I don't typically indulge in because there's milk and sugar and all kinds of things, but you know, I enjoyed it. I really did. I did enjoy it. My— I mean, I was ready to go for sure.

That'll wake you up.

Uh, yeah, so, uh, then we went to the beach. Which was really nice because I hadn't been into the ocean for a while. It was one of the mornings where it actually had a break of the storm, right? So, you know, the sun was out and then about 45 minutes into it, I looked south and I was like, yeah, it's probably time to go. And before we even got home, it was pouring.

Yeah, so storms are weird that we're having now. It's like a wave. So this, a wave comes through.

Yep.

Starts raining, pouring, thunder and lightning, then it stops for an hour and then it starts going again. Yeah, so you know, you gotta get out and do your thing in between the waves. So let's dive into the— dive into this whole thing with the what's going on. What are the payment trends retailers and restaurants need to look at? And you know, it was, you know, COVID definitely sped up Apple Pay and Google Pay and Samsung Pay, which is— I don't even think that's around anymore.

It's Google Pay, I think, right?

It's Google Pay now. Those apps have been around for a while, and there was a lot— there was some penetration into the market, right, with that over the last few years, because it came out like 2015, 2016, around.

I mean, yeah, I don't even know how long I've been using Google Pay for stuff for a long time, right?

But I'm saying it came out where you could do the thing on the—

yeah, on the machine with your credit card, the tap.

Yeah, tap your phone to the credit card machine. That's been around since around 2015. That like really rolled out the end of that year, and we saw a lot of adoption.

What year did smartphones come up?

Smartphones? No, before that. Smartphones were out like 2009, 2010.

So then Google Pay was right behind that. Yeah, Google Pay, but it didn't have the Okay, yeah, I see what you're pointing at. We had Google Pay but not Google Tap, right? Okay, I get what you're saying.

Yeah, you pay online but you didn't have the tap feature. Okay, so the, you know, so the adoption we saw in the very beginning in 2000, like 2015, because that's when they rolled out EMV. Yeah, so when they rolled out EMV, you know, then you have all this tap-to-pay. Apple Pay came out, Google Pay. Was already out. They added the tap features, and then once that started happening, we saw the biggest penetration was the younger market for sure, and then the techie people.

Yeah, like me, don't want to be cool.

Yeah, so we saw that.

I don't want to be cool, man. Don't make it sound like that. We are cool. We use the cool stuff. We use the new, you know, technologies. We always have the gadgets. Like, we grew up on Inspector Gadget, yo, so I'm always down with the cool gadgets and little devices and state-of-the-art new stuff. Of course we're going to hop on that, right?

So that— so we saw that adoption. And then COVID, every— nobody wanted to touch anybody, nobody wanted to touch anything. So everybody all of a sudden, tap-and-go cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay took off, contactless payments. So we can see inside the portal, like What's the percentage of contactless payments versus, you know, people putting a chip read? They're all chip reads, but we can see the difference, right? Like, so we can see how many people did Apple Pay, Google Pay, contactless cards. You can see the breakdown.

So now it's, it's, that's the predominant way to pay, like with your phone, you say?

No, just anything tap and pay.

Oh, that way.

Okay. It's, you know, greater than 50% of all transactions is tap and pay in person. Yeah, tap and pay or the wallet pay, any kind of, any kind of payment that's coming from the EMV, from the, you know, either you're tapping your card. I mean, now we have the thing on the phone and tap the card on the phone. It's like, so that's, that's took off like crazy, you know, for sure. Thing was, you know, hey, scan it restaurants, they bring your bill to the table, says scan a QR code and make a payment. That's big. I mean, I've even seen that in, in retail stores where let's say you want to buy a particular item that they might have on sale. Yeah, I was somewhere recently and it said I was scan the QR code and pay, and then you had to go up to the front and show them the email that you paid, and then they went and got the item. Because it was something expensive, right, that they didn't want to leave sitting out because I guess people were trying to steal it maybe. So, you know, text-to-pay, that became huge where you could send text message and get payments. Even though it was out for a long time, it became a more big thing. But the next—

yeah, because like people weren't utilizing it for small business, you know, it was more so like companies, bigger companies, like pay your, uh, light bill online and stuff like that. That's what, you know, it didn't get adopted by small business for— I mean, geez, it's still not really adopted by small business.

It's really like, we have some towing companies that use it, they love it.

It's a perfect user case scenario for that.

Like, I mean, the towing companies that we have using it, they love it. They'll tell— they tell me all the time, oh, we cut down on chargebacks for sure. And this— but the biggest thing that they cut down on was this. So typically this is what happens: you call up the tow truck company, they take your credit card over the phone, they key it in, and they charge you like $35 just to come out, or whatever, you know.

And then another transaction.

No, no, but, but then what happens is they— if another tow truck comes up right before the one you ordered, people sometimes go with the other tow— the tow truck that showed up first.

Well, of course.

But now with the text to pay, the person doesn't do that because they know that they paid. They're for sure that they paid because they put the credit card in, right? So now when the other tow truck comes up People say, no, I already paid somebody, so they're coming. Because when they took the credit card over the phone, they didn't really know, did I pay or did I not pay? Because you don't know, you don't know, did they run a transaction or not? So like, I mean, I would assume that they ran the transaction when you took my credit card, but less people take another tow truck over them because they, they did the payment themselves. And they have less people doing the chargebacks also.

Well, yeah, no, that makes sense.

So it's a great way to get to, to do payments, to do it that way. But the big thing, you know, that we're seeing now is kiosks. And like Justin talked about how, you know, text-to-pay and the Apple Pay and Google Pay, the bigger stores were the ones that like rolled all that out. Yeah, right. And now kiosks are everything.

Same thing.

The key— I saw a kiosk in the airport. So you go into the little stores in the airport, you want to buy a bunch of stuff, you know, snacks, you scan it on the thing, on the scanner, and then the kiosk tells you how much it is. You pay with your credit card and walk out the door.

Yeah, I really, uh, think that some small businesses who are lacking help that right now could utilize a kiosk? You know, like places that are ordering, you know, sandwiches or, you know, food.

I definitely think that, like, like fast food— well, not fast, fast casual, like sub shops.

Yeah, I'm talking like those, like, you know, those bowl places, poke bowls, all those types of places with items smoothies is a great example because there's, you know, there's so many things where, oh, I don't want blueberries in this or this, this, and this, which can make for training your, you know, your employees really difficult, right? Like to master the point of sale system to where as opposed if you use this kiosk and you input the data correctly and everything's there for you, you know, the user experience or your customer rather, I'm thinking of it on a technical side, is just so much more seamless and it's like perfect, right? Like it's the perfect ordering experience. If I like at Wawa is a great example of this, right? When you go to Wawa, you order your sub through the kiosk. And if there's a mistake on that, you know, it's on you, right? You know, like I haven't gotten a sub from there where there was like tomatoes on it when I didn't order tomatoes, right? So I think that this should be adopted by especially like those smaller boutique style— I don't want to call it boutique. What's a like—

yeah, mom and pop, small.

No, I'm talking about like those restaurants, like they're fusion type restaurants, you know, like the new school type restaurants, like where there's like, you know, the, the menu changes every day or something like that. These kiosks would just you know, your business operations would be way smoother.

Look at the— look at like Starbucks, right? So, you know, during COVID that obviously, like, all coffee was a nightmare. Everybody was going through the drive-through, right? But when you walk into a Starbucks, most of the time nobody's even up at the front ordering a coffee except for the people that don't go there often. People that go there all the time order on their app.

Yep.

They put in their order and then they're just standing there waiting for their coffee. You can speed up your operation of your business by doing that, by having online ordering, scan a QR code. Listen, we talked about this on another podcast.

We're at the hotel, there's 50 people in line trying to order lunch from one, one register.

One what? Yeah, so we walked outside, we saw the QR code, bam, ordered sandwiches, grabbed the table that opened up, and we had our sandwiches in a few minutes.

A lot faster than everyone else in line.

Yeah, everybody that ordered from the cashier was still waiting for their food.

Absolutely.

And so, you know, those kind of things can help you speed up your operation. Labor is crazy right now. People don't want to work, people don't want to do those kind of jobs. I mean, you walk into— I don't eat McDonald's, but I went to McDonald's the other day. They got kiosks just to go see the kiosks. They had like 3, 4 kiosks. Everybody walks up, boom boom boom boom boom, orders their food. There's one person standing.

I don't get why you can't pay right there though.

You paid the kiosk, the ones—

oh, that's right, you do. But it's the time I was there, I was gonna use the kiosk. That's right, never mind.

You pay on the kiosk, right? And then instead of them having 3, 4 cashiers, they just have like a couple of one Yeah, they have like 1 or 2 people over there, but one of them is like getting the drinks. Yeah, you know, the other person is maybe making the shake or whatever, right? And then they're— they just— the food comes up, they call your number or your name, and, uh, you know, and I'm not— awesome.

Yeah, they're awesome, right? And I'm not saying like kiosks are like this tool to replace humans. I'm saying it as like a consumer, on a consumer side, right?

Yeah.

If you're struggling already, your business, to find employees or to, you know, whatever instance it is, I'm just one of those people that I'm gonna go, I'm gonna promote technology, right? You know, go and use the technology to help your business grow, right? So like you could use these kiosks to definitely help your business grow and just— but don't, you know, instead of you— maybe you, you use this kiosk and then you're able to hire someone else for marketing or something for your business, you know what I mean?

Your money on something else. Maybe you can pay your cooks more money.

Exactly.

Instead of, you know, and because you're not gonna have to have 3 cashiers.

There you go. You gotta, you know, you can figure ways to supplement that.

You can reallocate what you're spending your money on. But also, like, kiosk, you know, the other thing is like in like a restaurant. Like, I was talking to a guy opening a new fast food restaurant, so I go, you're gonna have one register. I said, what if there's like 10 people in line? Like, how are you gonna line bust? So I said, you could have a handheld with a person standing there ringing it all up on a handheld, and then move your— you gotta— because you got— if you can't move—

yeah, that's not smart.

No, no, but I mean—

But that's, so that's a perfect example of why they should have a kiosk.

Right.

That was what I was talking about. Those small boutique style, whatever, boutique isn't the word, 'cause that's for clothes. But it's for those real small little restaurants who are doing like chickpea tuna salad sandwiches, whatever those guys, you know what I'm talking about? I love you guys. I'm just saying like there's 1,001 of you, but, and you go there and you try to order the smoothie because you heard about how good it is, but there's 47 people in front of you and you don't have time to wait, right? Like, you need to figure out a better ordering process. Yes, please listen to what we're saying.

Have it— have online ordering so customers can download an app or scan a QR code, order their food, boom, they're done.

And I— and, and efficiency, right? I can't understand how all of this can be super overwhelming, right? Because you're trying to operate your business, you're trying to understand the finances, you're, you know, you're running your business. It's a lot of work. I know, I did it for 10 years. So if that is the case and you don't know or you're uneducated on how you can use these things, ask questions, you know, questions, talk to people.

You know, the only thing— Toast and Clover aren't the only things out there.

It's not your only option.

There's other options.

There's way better other options, actually, especially for smaller, you know, operations.

Like, I'll give you an example. I'll go to a restaurant recently, they have two like seating areas. One has only like a few people sitting at the tables, the other one is kind of full. I said, 'See, God, why are we waiting? There's tables everywhere.' No help, they have no waiters. So I said to the guy, I said, 'Why don't you get some— like, you could get some cheap Samsung tablets.' right? When people sit down, you— it's— the waiter could be handling a lot more tables, right? Go the way the wait staff come over, hand the person a tablet, say, here, there's today's specials. You know, some, some restaurants, I wonder, like, they have a huge menu. Take some of the stuff off your menu, you know, make your menu smaller, become more efficient, you know what I mean? Yeah. And also run more specials. Like when I was a chef, right, I ran more specials because I wanted to get fresh things and different things, right, for my customers, right? So I have, you know, 3 or 4 specials every day and a smaller compact menu, right?

Right. So real quick, so on a kiosk, how difficult is it for someone to change their menu?

No, they go online, they go on the back end and change the menu.

Boom, really simple. And you could set it up like where you have multiple menus, right?

Yeah, you could set up breakfast, lunch, dinner, right? Happy hour. They stop at a different seasonal—

you can have it seasonal. So this is what you do every— I mean, there's a lot you can do, and it can help you organize not only that but plan out, you know, your, your meals for whatever.

Changes the— like, during the day, like, the menu changes by the time in the system, right? So lunch only goes to 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock, boom, then it switches over to the Happy hour menu, then it switches over to the dinner prices. Yeah, so on and so forth. But you know, people could have sat down at the table, they could have handed you like a Sam's, a small like Android tablet. Oh, here, place your order.

Boom.

I would sit down, put in my food, hand it to the next person, the next person. Everybody put in their food order, or one person could put in everybody's food order, hit the button, goes to the kitchen, then the waiter can come out and do the thing, you know. They could come over and just say, the specials here, this is how we order. Because if restaurants don't start doing things like that and trying to sell like more like pick your food up at the restaurant and all that, you're going to lose business. And especially right now, one of the bad things that I was listening to on business news was, you know, the Fed's talking about raising the rates again. Yeah, and believe me, we don't want to go to the 1970s recession price increases because with the current way prices are now, food is almost double food what it was 3 years ago. Crazy, bro. Look, you go to a restaurant, food prices are through the roof. Me and Justin ordered 2 sandwiches, it was like $40. I mean, that's ridiculous.

Yeah, I was— I mean, I didn't pay for it. Thank you, Allen, for buying lunch that day. And I was upset, like, you got—

you like, you gotta chill.

I'm like, no, it's not that I, I get it.

Happy?

No, I, I was just saying, I'm just like, yo, $40? I, I mean, for 2 sandwiches, $40?

Yeah, we didn't even get chips.

No chips, not a pickle, no potato salad, no coleslaw.

Yeah, not even a little dish.

That's what I'm talking about. A cup of macaroni salad. Nothing. And it wasn't even that good.

So I mean, believe me, I wasn't happy about it, but what are you going to do?

You're No, I was complaining about like, yo, food is $40, so $20 a sandwich.

That's nuts for tuna.

I should have started my restaurant because I can make some mean tuna sandwich— tuna, tuna salad.

Yeah, man, it's a tuna sandwich and a chicken sandwich.

That was crazy.

Craziest meal I ever— I would have to say that's like going to the ballpark, man. Well, yeah, well, I mean, we went to the ballpark that time. Hot dog was like $12.

I got a glizzy with no hot dog and it was still $8.

That's nuts.

That's crazy.

Yeah, I know, it's too expensive. And I had like the kosher hot dog was more than that.

Yeah, it was like $16. Yeah, and it was the Jewish—

it was the Israel baseball—

world, world baseball, world baseball team.

Versus the Marlins warm-up game.

It was great. That was awesome.

We had a great time.

That was cool. That was hilarious. Like, anyway, man, yeah, but, but, you know, kiosks—

you have to start thinking about efficiencies in your business. Even in a retail store, why not have a kiosk? Kiosk have scanners on them. People can scan their stuff. It's like self-checkout, and you don't need to spend the money like Costco or Publix.

You see what's happening at Walmart?

What do they say, people are stealing a lot?

I don't— retail and self-checkout just don't make sense to me.

Yeah, I'd get that.

It just don't. I'm, you know what I mean? Like, I love people and I love humans, and I, you know, I give every human a benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, there are a lot of terrible human beings in the world.

Well, they don't really have a really good system at, at, uh, at Walmart when you go to check out. The last time I went there, I needed to get couple of things. So I go look, I'm like, wow, there is like 30 self-checkout things and there's 30,000 people in line and there's like literally 2 cashiers. Yeah, I was like, man, I love going to the cashier because listen, I'm for employees, right? Yeah, I'm not for, you know, machines. But I was like, there's no way because there's like 10 people in each line. I gotta get out of here. So I go to the self-checkout. The self-checkout was pretty efficient. I bought an item, there was like a warrant, you could get the warranty for like $2, pops up on the screen, the button, boom boom. But then on the way out, they don't really check like how many items you have.

Now when you go to Costco, if you have a big cart, yeah, they check, they check. Oh yeah, that's not fun.

Like, but I'm just—

and they're like going through every bag, they're like trying to count because it says like Yeah, 136 items, right?

And they're gonna go sit there and count them.

They're not. But there's— I've been there sometimes when like an older person or something. Yeah, like my kids, you know, but they don't have like a—

but the thing is they don't have a system. Like when you go out of Costco, they have 2 people there.

Oh, I like going to those self-checkouts at Costco.

I, I only use the self-checkout if I have like 3 or 4 items. And nothing heavy. If I have heavy stuff, I'm not dealing with that. I just go to the regular thing. But they have a ton of cashiers, and when you go out, out, there's guys at the door. Oh, you got 20 items, boom, boom. But everything's like big. All right, yeah, I mean, they're not over there trying to—

you're not stealing. I mean, yeah, it'd be kind of hard to steal a box out of Costco.

I can strap it to your back, you better off running right out of there. But I read the other day on the story, right? And that app, Newsbreak app.

Yeah. And oh, shameless plug, check out newsbreak.com. Is it dot com?

Newsbreak, I think it's just an app you can download on your phone, and then you put in where you live and it gives you breaking news stories.

And we're on there.

Yeah, we have— they're posting some of our stuff there.

Check it out, Newsbreak.

Check it out, Newsbreak. But, uh, the, the thing is, is the other day I'm reading this story where this guy went in Walmart, he pretended to go through the self-checkout. Apparently he had bought one TV.

Oh, I've seen it when he got tackled for it.

You see me for one TV, but then he came back with the same receipt.

Is this the one where he got tackled?

No, he got away with it.

Oh no, I didn't see that.

So this guy came in right? He went and got another TV, then he went out the other door with the same receipt. Then he came back and got another TV.

This is from Walmart?

From Walmart. After he came in and got about—

I would say someone else was in on a deal.

So after he got about the fourth TV, because he did, he like left and came back like half an hour.

He didn't change clothes?

Yeah, he changed, he changed his shirt. A different hat.

He's super smart. How'd he get caught?

He got caught because the manager like recognized the guy. He recognized the guy's like, man, this is the same dude, this is like the fourth TV. So he's going out of the store with the TV and they're like, whoa, whoa, stop. And then the guy stops, like, I got my receipt right here. He shows him the receipt and the manager looked at the time.

I knew you were going to say the time and Bam!

The guy took off running. They go outside, the guy's got a van, man. They got a van full of TV sets. He was going a bunch of Walmarts, going to different Walmarts, but this one Walmart, he had gone in there like a few times during— he was going, he was going like to that Walmart and driving to another one close by. I mean, he's used the same receipt.

How long ago was this?

Just happened like in the last week or so, man.

I mean, I was about to say we were doing this in Milwaukee a long time ago, but I was not doing anything. I did never in my life steal a TV. I may have bought—

never mind, uh, fell off the back of the truck.

Yes, um, we have a lot of that happen in Milwaukee, you know.

Yeah, we had that going on when I lived in—

stuff comes from Chicago off the freeway, just like lands in barber shops. I don't know how it happens, but it always happens.

When I was in Atlanta, we had a guy that used to to come behind the restaurant and he's like, oh, you guys want some TVs? And we're like, of course, TVs, yeah, how much? $50.

The guy, like, TVs, VCRs, DVD players, CDs.

I mean, where did it come from? Like, the owner of the restaurant bought like laptops, like 10 TVs.

Exactly, my man. I miss those people, man. I'm sorry, bro. Like, the back of the truck, my one man got his whole house, uh, security camered out because of the— man, where are the boosters at? No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

No, but we're dealing with a labor shortage, we're dealing with hiked up prices, right? You know, hiked up employment of people paying people— you got to pay employees more money, right? Because prices are up.

Do you?

No, I'm just saying, good.

No, businesses are— you have to.

Yeah, you have to pay more money because your employees— everything costs more for everybody. Gas costs more, everything costs more. So everything is, everything is increasing.

It's weird for me because like, I'm, I'm 43. I'm a middle-aged man, right?

Yes.

And this is the first time like all of this I can say is really affecting me. Okay. Like when this happened in what, 2008?

2008, 2009 was— it was, it was really, really— it was really, really rough for—

but it wasn't like this, I feel like. No, well, this is worse.

Well, the thing that made this worse is the whole supply chain.

So let me finish. So like messing this up, so like as a, you know, like it's just really like, like you've witnessed this before on multiple levels.

I witnessed like the worst thing ever was like, okay, relax.

So like I'm trying to get there, like What did you do to like, you know, like even deal with that? Like, okay, for the most recent, what were you doing personally?

2008, 2009.

Yeah, like what were you doing to help save you money? Like on a personal level, like this has nothing to do with the podcast, but—

A really bad thing happened to me 2008, 2009.

You had the ATM fiasco.

Well, I had bought a house.

And you bought a house?

Yeah, I had bought a house a couple years before that.

Oh, okay.

And, uh, you know, I was living in my house for like 2 years at the time. I get a letter in the mail says, oh, the value of your house dropped, therefore we're accelerating your loan on your house. And I was like, I can't pay that. They wanted me to pay like a double house payment.

Whoa.

So I was like, no can do, can't do it.

Right.

So I ended up having a short sale on my house. Sheesh. And it was really rough, and I had a really bad, really bad time. And then I needed to find a rental, which is probably even harder. Rentals at the time, the price— there was like very little available. Lots of people were getting thrown out of their houses in 2008, 2009. And let me tell you, they raised interest rates like they did back then. And the— and with the price increase.

All right, so what did you do, man?

What I do? I worked harder. I literally— I'll tell you what, my— you won't like this, but my, my favorite show at the time was The Apprentice.

Okay, I want to like—

everybody doesn't really like the guy who was the star of The Apprentice, but this was before he was a douchebag. Okay. So I'll never forget, Trump was the guy he's talking about.

Trump. I used to love Donald Trump. I told you I love Donald Trump, man. I ain't got nothing wrong with Donald Trump. He says stupid things.

I get it. So I'm watching Donald Trump on TV, right? And Donald Trump gets on The Apprentice, he's like, yeah, when the economy is bad, that's when you got to buckle down, save, figure out what you can cut out.

That was my question. What did you cut out?

Like, really, what did you cut out through everything that I paid for and figured out what I could absolutely need, what I absolutely needed, and what I was not going to pay for anymore. And I cut it all out at my business.

For how long did you do that?

Um, probably for about a year, about 2 years, because it was, you know, there was a like— you just cut all the fat.

Okay, so you did that for 2 years, right? I did that for, for 2 years.

Let me just get to the point. Point what he said. So Trump said, uh, he was on, he was on an Apprentice episode. He goes, this is the time when you make a bold move in your business and go out and try to make sales. So while everybody else was bellyaching, right, right, I took the opportunity and Dave, and we sat down and I said, hey, this is the time where there's going to be some bigger companies, right, that we can go after, right? And we can go after them and say, hey, we can save you some serious money on credit card processing. And we landed, uh, 4 very large merchants, okay? Now that we got lucky, but we landed 4 very large businesses, okay, that had multiple locations. And then, you know, we— because we were losing income because we had other businesses that were going out of business, right? Their sales were down, right? And that kind of like boosted up the business.

It's terrible.

And also during that time, we had the problem with that— we had— there was, there was a whole thing going on because Obama had this choke point thing on businesses with cash. I started cracking down on ATMs. And we started to get— grow our ATM business. And that really like boosted us up and got us through all the bad times. You have to take— you have to look at these things, that's these things in the economy.

Yes, basically.

Yeah, you have to say, hey, now's the time to spend a little money, make a bold move, because we did. We bought $30 grand worth of ATMs. We had somewhere where they were going, but we had $30 grand of ATMs. PMs. We knew we were going to make the money back, so we took the risk. Now's the time— you don't have to take that big of a risk. A kiosk is only $1,000 or $2,000. You don't have to— but now's the time to look at your technology and go, how can I— how can I make my business more efficient and save money with technology, right? That's what you got to look at today.

And I was going to say, what he's basically saying is you got to work harder. During these times. I can— I agree.

It's harder, smarter.

Work harder and smarter. We'll work smarter, not harder. Well, because there's a lot of technology. I mean, physically you don't have to work hard, but you gotta, you know, you gotta, you gotta grind it out. You gotta utilize your 24 hours. That's what I told my daughter this morning. I said, you know, there's a lot of opportunity in the world and, you know, you just got to utilize the 24 hours that you got. And make the best of it. And, and, you know, she went yesterday— I mean, she went somewhere today. She wanted— basically, I told her, you want to change your life, you go and change your life. You don't like where it's headed, you don't like— you go figure out, go fill out the application for the job that you want, go do whatever it is for that you want. And she's at an interview at, uh, pet clinic today.

Okay, great.

So it's like, and, and that was just like, I, I literally— she said, Dad, I got an interview and blah blah blah. And I literally, the one word I sent back was, see, like, all you have to do is put in the work, man. Yeah. And you want some change, change it.

No, if you want a job, you got to go out and ask for the job.

Don't go get it.

Yeah, go get it. No, so the thing is, is You have these times in the economy. This is a time where you say, okay, how can I do this? Like, that's why I was saying, you know, use technology to your advantage. If you own a restaurant, get a kiosk. If you don't have a kiosk, you need a kiosk.

At the bare minimum, upgrade your point of sale system.

If you don't have ordering and pay at the table, you need to get that. Yeah. Because you're not going to overcome this labor thing. No one's going to overcome that. And I believe that it's going to get worse. There's going to be some smart restaurateurs that are going to figure out how to use technology and kiosks to increase their business.

I mean, and we seen at the SEAA, you know, robots, robots and robots and robots, more robots. So like robots are going to be bringing your food to the table. They're going to be taking the order. They're going to be doing the bus downs.

But they got one guy said, oh, you could use the robot. And, and tell it what the specials are. Yeah, the robot can roll up to the table and go, oh, today's special is broccoli and cheese soup, and we have— I mean, and we have chicken wings on special, and then we have—

we've seen it on Back to the Future, right? You've seen it on The Jetsons. It's in real life now. Like, you literally don't have to watch TV to see it. You can go and get it and put it in place in your business.

I started to watch this TV show the other day, and it was all about Star Trek and how Star— and I didn't realize Star Trek was only on TV for a couple, couple of years, the original Star Trek. I thought it was on much longer. But the, the, uh, they talk about in this show— I have to go, I have to go find the show again, what channel it's on, but it— because I didn't finish watching it. And it was a show about how Star Trek affected technology, how all the stuff that show on Star Trek, and that was in the early 1960s, and how that affected technology. Like some of the stuff that they're showing people with a tablet, the communicator, you know, that's like—

man, did you see out in China that they're paying with their hand?

Oh yeah, I'm not doing that. I saw that, I saw, I saw that WePay, which is this thing that Chase Bank has, and you can pay with your palm print. No, we are not in China. Joe Biden. Chase Bank, we are not in China. Not paying with my palm. No, no, no, no, no.

I don't want any parts of the Market of Beast, man.

Like, no, not paying with my palm. If you put in palm payment in your business, I'm not coming there. A lot of people won't go. Yo, that's way too much Big Brother, blah blah blah.

I, I, I seen that and I just That is some spooky stuff, dude. And they gave Elon Musk the go-ahead to put the Neuralink thing in your dome.

No, listen to this. They're gonna have Elon Musk and, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah, celebrity death match, like boxing match.

Yes, possibly.

Yes. Now I'm gonna tell you, it's gotta be on MTV.

If they do that, he and Justin are gonna do a live podcast. We're gonna come, we're gonna do a live podcast. We'll have to bring all the equipment like to my house or something. We're going to sit on the couch and we're going to live podcast what the heck's going on on that thing. Because I'm— that's going to be some crazy stuff, because that's some two nerds going to go to Elon Musk.

Uh, well, actually, I heard, uh, not heard—

he's bigger than—

so look, Mark Zuckerberg, on a, on a Hunger Games level, I heard that Mark Zuckerberg is bananas with a bow and arrow.

Oh yeah, he is like—

and he's like trained in like, like weaponry, right? So on that level, he'd probably mess Elon up. But Elon is on pure mass size in comparison, would just destroy Zuckerberg.

I don't know, let's say they have a fight, it's just gonna be funny, that's it. I mean, listen, is it though?

Like, who wants to see the, the little nerdy— I don't want to see the little nerdy kid get beat up by the—

I'd rather put like take like Kamala Harris and then they go get like whoever Xi's assistant is over there in China and let them go give them in a cage match to settle whatever the difference are.

I just want to see Joe Biden walk up some stairs.

Well, we can have Joe Biden without falling, like they can get in the ring and fight.

You know, who wants to see old Joe fight? Dude's gonna—

I don't like this war in Russia. How about you get Putin and the guy from, uh, Ukraine What's that guy's name? The president?

Zelensky.

Zelensky. Let them get in a cage match and settle the war. Whoever wins wins. That's it. Putin can get—

I heard something about Putin. I want, you know, I don't— well, I don't, you know, I know I don't— I'm USA to this thing blows. So, but anyway, I heard Putin, one reason why a lot of the organizations across the world hate him so much is that he banned genetically modified food from Russia.

He should. So you shouldn't have it in the US either. So Monsanto—

I was— there was a— anyway, I seen this woman, she was a Russian.

Yeah.

And she lived in Ukraine.

Yeah.

Long story short, she was saying you guys are making Putin out to be this monster and he's not. So I mean, it's, it's really hard to know the real Yeah, we don't know what's really going on over there. I know a friend of mine was—

we got way off topic now.

I know a friend of mine was in 2017, was on the border of Russia waiting to fight Russia, but that never happened, and he was from the USA. So I mean, there's just a lot of stuff. But anyway, man, whoa, buddy, I don't want to talk that loud.

So here we are. So let's covered. We talked about, you know, kiosks in restaurants, order and pay at the table for restaurants, kiosk and retail stores, you know, ordering your food off a QR code, you know. So let's get— let's give like— we'll rate stuff like what we like. So order and paying from a kiosk, I give that a thumbs up. I think more restaurants need to look at this as a solution.

I mean, I look at— I give it a thumbs up because of the, you know, the seamlessness that it's, it's just, you know, it could save your business. It could save your business. I don't necessarily, you know, I'm pro-human. I'm pro-human.

Yeah, but it could be just for like to-go food. Oh, you're ordering the food to go, right? You know, there's different ways to use it as a solution in your business to make it run more efficient.

But yeah, I give it a thumbs up.

I definitely think I mean, I think we're going to see the day where restaurants are going to bring tablets to the table and you're going to order your food from a tablet or you're just going to order it off your phone, which is already happening. But I think we're going to see more of that.

I don't like to scan a QR code and order from a table from my phone. If I'm going to a restaurant.

Yes.

Okay. Order from the tablet that you provide me.

Yes, I get it.

All good. But you telling me that I got to scan this QR code and then use my phone, right?

I don't really like that.

User experience is not cool, right?

I think they should provide a tablet. Yes, that's what I think. So the QR code in some cases is okay, and in some cases it's not okay. Yeah, I think people go out to a restaurant for an experience.

Exactly, that's what I was getting at.

Create that sci-fi experience.

Yeah, you got— if you're going to be using that, you better make that QR code do something. Do a dance or like pop up some sort of—

you're going to use— if you're going to bring tablets to the table, put them in cool cases, you know, do something for sure that's going to help people, you know. And then robots, I think we're going to see these robots sooner than later.

I'm neutral.

I give it a, you know, I give it a, I give it a little bit more time for the product to develop. Yeah, but I did see this one robot that could like— they put pizzas on it and it could like bring the pizza out.

No, I definitely see the use case for it.

I see the robot where it told the people the specials. That was kind of cool. I saw the robot, they put like bus tubs on there and then the waiter can just put the stuff, then the robot can take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen while they're wiping the table off.

Pretty, you know, that's efficient.

That could help a lot of restaurants. So I think, you know, but will robots— will that be cool or will it be like a fad? You might go to some pizza— somebody might be smart and say, yeah, I'm gonna open up a pizza place and get like 3 robots and I'm gonna be like the robot pizza place, you know, and then make it look like the Jetsons inside. People might say, yeah, that's cool, because maybe it's a fad. Right? Or maybe somebody figures out how to actually do something constructive with these robots.

I like it.

So let us know what you think about these trends, you know. Is that going to deter you from going into a business because they have a kiosk? Or do you like it? Do you like to— would you look, you know, like to order your tablet, you know, order your food from a tablet, right? And, you know, then the robot, you think that's cool or weird? And let us know. Yeah, man. And then, you know, that's the podcast for today.

The future of in-store transactions, baby.

Yep. It's a pain. These are the payment trends coming, technology trends. This is the time in this, with this potential bad economy, this is a time to make bold moves with technology.

Absolutely.

Peace out.

Peace. Subscribe to the YouTube channel.

That was good. Yeah, that was a good part. It was a good ending.