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From Boardrooms to Bistros: a conversation with Alison Galik from Dinova - YouTube
Channel: UpTech Report
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- [Alex] Every year corporations
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spend $100 billion on dining.
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Dinova is a technology company
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building the digital resources
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for small and large restaurants,
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to harness that massive market potential.
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In this episode of UpTech Report
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I speak with Alison Galik,
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the president of Dinova,
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who discusses the technology
and marketing challenges
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in facilitating these mutually
beneficial relationships,
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and some of the unique opportunities
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involved in developing B2B technology.
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(light electronic music)
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Well, thank you so much
for joining me Alison.
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I'm excited to hear more
about the journey of Dinova
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and how are you innovating,
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and staying current in today's world?
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Starting us off, what
year did you start Dinova,
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and what year did it start?
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- Okay, so I started with Dinova
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about a year-and-a-half
ago, in April of '18,
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however Dinova was started 10 years ago.
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So we're just celebrating
our 10-year anniversary.
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It was started by a guy named Vic Macchio,
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and Vic's vision was to create
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a restaurant program for corporations.
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Just like corporations
have airline and hotel
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and car rental ground
transportation programs,
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his vision was to create
that same kind of program,
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a discount, preferred vendor program
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for the restaurant
industry for corporations.
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- Got it, and was it bootstrapped?
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Was it VC-funded?
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How big is the team and
where are you guys based?
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- Yeah, so right now, we
are owned majority share
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by a company called Frontier Capital.
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They're a private equity firm outside of,
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well actually inside of Charlotte.
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And Dinova is a company based
in Johns Creek, Georgia,
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which is just about 40
minutes north of Atlanta.
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- Gotcha, and how big is your team now,
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that you were in?
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- So our team now is 72 employees.
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- Nice, good size of group
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and now going forward,
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this focus, 10 years has been a long time.
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But the focus has, sounds
like, remained the same.
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Who is your target market,
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and how are you helping them?
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- We really target two
groups of customers.
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First, obviously is the restaurant side,
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because we need to have a lotta
restaurants in our program
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to create a restaurant
network and marketplace
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for corporations to interact
and send their business to.
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So we target restaurants
primarily in the U.S.,
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and then of course, to make a marketplace,
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you need the other side of that,
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which is the corporations.
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And the corporations we target
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tend to spend a million
dollars or more on dining,
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business dining throughout the year.
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So what, kind of our sweet spot,
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I would say, pharmas,
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obviously pharmas are
spending a lotta money
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on business dining and catering
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and things like that.
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So we have pharmas and
then financial services,
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and we even have government
agencies and universities
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now too on our program.
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But we have 430 corporations
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and over 20,000 restaurants
in our program, in the U.S.
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- That's a quite, some good numbers there,
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431 different enterprises
and different industries.
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Pharma knowing makes sense for that.
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And for them, using your service,
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being able to track
their, and maybe rebates.
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I think I saw somewhere on your site.
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What's your revenue source, then?
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How do your packages and pricing work?
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- Yeah so the great news
for the corporations
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is that Dinova is free to participate in.
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Actually, it's more than free because you
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actually get paid to
participate in Dinova.
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The more business dining you send
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to our 20,000 restaurants,
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the more rebate you will earn.
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What's funding that, of
course, is the restaurant side.
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So every time we send diners
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into one of our Dinova restaurants,
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the restaurant will then
process a rebate to Dinova,
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and then we send that
off to the corporation.
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Dinova takes a small piece of that rebate,
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and the rest of it goes
off to the corporation.
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The reason that restaurants
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like to participate in our program
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is because what we're
doing is we're sending
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majority of Monday through
Friday traffic to them,
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and it tends to be a higher average check,
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because it's business dining.
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So it's typically teams
going out or customers,
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meetings, things like
that that are happening
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in a business dining setting.
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So obviously a higher check
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and Monday through Friday traffic
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when consumer traffic tends to be down,
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is a really nice sweet
spot for restaurants.
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- Gotcha, and the way
the rebate works for them
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is after the check has been paid,
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then they send a rebate back to you guys,
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which then you process and
send some back to the company.
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- Exactly.
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- Gotcha, the technology behind it,
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you're having to manage both
the database, obviously,
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of all these different restaurants
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and keep track of all the transactions.
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Tell me a bit more about
your overall structure
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and partnerships and technology behind it.
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- Yeah, so Dinova has our
own database that we house
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and do, it's actually a
matching process we do.
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How much spend is coming
into the Dinova program
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being matched against the
restaurants that we have.
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So every time a corporation
spends on dining,
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that information is sent over to Dinova.
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We match it against our restaurants.
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We figure out what the rebate will be,
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and then we push that back out to the,
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actually both, to the corporation
and to the restaurant.
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So the restaurant wants to know,
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why are you charging me this rebate?
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Who's been in my restaurant, obviously?
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And then on the corporation side,
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they get the rebate and they can see
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where they're spending,
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where their corporate diners are going,
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and how much they're being
able to influence that spend
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to the preferred restaurants
in the Dinova program.
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- What do you see the most value
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that the enterprises or
the businesses enjoy?
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Is it the rebates or is it
the ability to track it?
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Obviously both, but what do you,
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they really see, enjoy most?
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- Well, I think actually it could be now
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a third component, which is
the actual employee benefit.
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So we have a rebate
program obviously going
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back to the corporation.
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We also create now a
preferred dining program
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so you know where to send
your employees, right?
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So the employees who are
traveling on business
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or buying catering,
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they know which restaurants to go to.
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And then thirdly, is we
have a points program,
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so a loyalty program,
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which is getting so much bigger
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it's actually now expected
in many areas of spend.
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But primarily in the travel industry,
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it's expected that you
have a loyalty program.
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So whether you're a corporate
admin buying catering
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or setting up private dinners
for your employee base,
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or whether you're a individual traveler
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or salesperson on the road dining out,
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you can earn points every time you dine
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in a Dinova restaurant.
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- What was harder to build
and continue to grow?
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Is it that list of businesses
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that are a million-plus spend,
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or is it the restaurants?
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Tell me a bit more about
building those partnerships.
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- Yeah, so if Vic were here
he could tell you the story.
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He was able to get them
both simultaneously,
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but started out really
with just one corporation.
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One corporation and a few restaurants
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that served the needs of that corporation,
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and that's where it started.
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But obviously we have 20,000 restaurants.
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We have a lot more restaurants
than we have corporations,
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but as a corporation you're
gonna dine in many restaurants.
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So the challenge, the driving force
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behind our sales team,
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is primarily to acquire new restaurants,
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restaurants that we
consider business grade,
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and will keep our corporate diners happy.
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So that's really where we tend to spend
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most of our sales effort,
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and sales and marketing dollars.
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- For going forward, the vision.
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- Yes.
- Five years, where do you
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see you guys?
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- Yeah, so well, this year,
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we are starting to consider
a expansion outside the U.S.
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So we're looking to expand into Canada,
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which is pretty exciting.
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And so that should start in 2020,
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so I would imagine in five years,
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the company will be
much more international
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and we will have restaurants
all over the globe
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as well as corporations
all over the globe as well.
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We just launched a
catering portal as well,
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so we just started to step
our feet into more technology
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than we've actually
had before, previously.
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So now we have a catering portal launched
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in a few cities in the U.S.,
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but we're hoping to really grow that.
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So I'd imagine catering would grow,
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and then we would get more international
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in both our restaurants
and our corporations.
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- For you personally,
how are you innovating?
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Where do you look for
new insights and ideas?
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- Yeah, so we have, because I am part
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of a private equity firm
that owns the company,
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they have anywhere at any given time
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15 to 20 companies that they
own within their portfolio,
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and they gather the executives together
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on a annual or more frequent basis,
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and we get together and we kinda
share ideas and brainstorm.
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So I get a lot of input
from the other CEOs
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of those companies, those
portfolio companies,
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and obviously I read.
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I belong to Harvard Business Review,
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studies and you know, Wall Street Journal,
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things like that.
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- What kind of books or audiobooks
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are you reading or listening to right now?
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- So right now the big book
that I've really dug into
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is a book called "Traction,"
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and have you heard, has
anybody shared that before?
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Yeah, so it's by Gino Wickman,
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and especially if you're a
growing business like we are,
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and high growth environment,
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and you're still a smaller business,
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like we only have 72 employees,
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it's a great way to
help people really focus
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on the big boulders of
this strategic plan,
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versus getting distracted
with the day-to-day.
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So really getting your executives focused
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on what are the most important things.
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- For you, on the technology side,
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I know you're not necessarily one in,
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in-depth in technology,
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but do you see anything
out there currently,
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upcoming technology that
you're most excited about,
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whether it's just applying,
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maybe applying in your own business,
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or just technology in general?
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Anything you're most
excited about right now?
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- Yeah, I would say it's really
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the consumerization of apps,
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and particularly in business travel,
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how many apps are out there right now
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for business travelers.
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So one of the things that we do
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is we will integrate
with certain travel apps
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so that the restaurants
will display as you land
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or you are in a certain hotel.
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You can see what
restaurants are around you,
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so I think that kind of proliferation
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of using apps while you travel,
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particularly on business,
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is becoming much more important,
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ensuring that you're using
the right travel suppliers,
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in our case restaurants,
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but travel suppliers in general,
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you're safe, people know where you are.
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All of that, I think, is really key
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for business travel overall.
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- That's awesome, absolutely.
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Alison, thank you so much for joining.
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Where can people go to
learn more about Dinova,
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and what would be the first kinda steps
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that you'd recommend them to take?
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- Yeah, so obviously you
can go to dinova.com.
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We have, on our website,
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not only how you can sign
up and a little bit more
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about Dinova as signing up as
a corporation or a restaurant,
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but there's a lotta white
papers on traveler satisfaction
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and business diners, and
the generational changes
[842]
now that the millennials are
over 50% of the workforce.
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So a lotta changes,
interesting information
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that can be shared on that as well.
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- [Alex] Have you seen a company using AI,
[854]
machine learning or other technology
[856]
to transform the way we
live, work and do business?
[859]
Go to uptechreport.com and let us know.
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(light electronic music)
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