00:01:39:20 - 00:02:08:11
Rob Napoli
Koen I'm excited to have you on the podcast. Koen is the founder and CEO of Mr. Winston POS and we're here to talk a little bit about, Mr. Winston also getting into a little bit about the guest experiences I think I love to talk about is, you know, Omniboost we work in integrations and data unification, and we have the core purpose to help our customers focus on their core purpose, which is delighting their guests and our fans back to hospitality of customer experience.
00:02:08:13 - 00:02:30:18
Rob Napoli
So how did you, come up with the idea and why did you get into POS space and start a company called Mr. Winston POS? Talk to me about how you fell into this industry. Because if I'm not mistaken, your background originally was in you know IT right? You went to school, research and then got into IT and consultancy. So how did you fall into hospitality?
00:02:30:20 - 00:02:50:05
Koen Lavrijssen
Yeah, I the hospitality bit was, mainly because I was working in a restaurant, at the time. You are right in saying that I'm more of a techie. I've been programing since I was 12 really haven't stopped since. I don't get to do it as much anymore as I would like to.
00:02:50:07 - 00:03:17:20
Koen Lavrijssen
Because I've got a great team and now that does most of that, for me with me. But, yeah, in the restaurant where I was working, I just noticed that people were running into issues with the system that they were using at the time. Basically the thing that most people felt was that, the system they were using was more in the way of their hospitality process and that it was actually contributing to it.
00:03:17:22 - 00:03:40:15
Koen Lavrijssen
So I remember one night, the manager, the chef, me were having a drink at the bar after busy day and the manager up and running around, the venue, linking his laptop to all of POS systems that were there and trying to reconfigure stuff and fixing stuff, and it just didn't work. The chef wasn't happy about how the tickets were coming in.
00:03:40:17 - 00:04:00:01
Koen Lavrijssen
I had to teach people, like, three times in the first week, and then they would still make their mistakes in the first couple of days. On how to use the system. So they were like, okay, Koen you know how to program, right? Can’t you just build a POS? And I told them, after taking a sip of my beer, I was like, oh, I guess I could try.
00:04:00:03 - 00:04:09:04
Koen Lavrijssen
And you guys order me a hard drive and that's what I did. I mean, a couple months later, they had a working prototype.
00:04:09:06 - 00:04:24:08
Rob Napoli
So basically comes out of frustration, a few drinks and hey, just because you've been programing since you're 12, can you figure this out? And it's just like, sure, why not?
00:04:24:10 - 00:04:39:19
Koen Lavrijssen
And yeah, a little frustration, a bit of, fdia I guess as well, just, how hard can it be build up POS? Needs to be a couple of buttons on the screen. If you press one of those buttons, something else open a list press another button it will open advance of tickets. I mean, that's the basics POS
00:04:39:21 - 00:04:59:02
Koen Lavrijssen
And it's still that, but it's way more complex. There's a lot of stuff behind it. But essentially it's still that it's a way for, the people on the floor to convey the wishes of the guests to the people, in production, like in the kitchen behind the bar. And making sure that that process is properly facilitated.
00:04:59:04 - 00:05:31:02
Rob Napoli
Yeah. I think you make a great point there. And this is why I love talking about the guest experience is a POS is complicated, and there's a lot of stuff that is going. But at the end of the day, it needs to be simplistic enough and it's user experience that you have, whether you're doing a quick service restaurant or a fine dining establishment or something in between, you have multiple people, multiple orders, and you've got to be able to do that fast and move people through because you make money based on turnover, ticket size, all these things.
00:05:31:04 - 00:05:54:08
Rob Napoli
So if the user experience of a system is so hard to learn, which part of your frustration it was your teach people when they can't learn it, then be as powerful as it once the people. It's not easy to use. I mean, we all know that's why we are still use Excel. There's other tools out there. Excel is complicated, but at the end of the day, everyone knows how to use Excel because it's a basic program and at its core, it's easy to use and it has tons of functionality.
00:05:54:10 - 00:06:03:05
Rob Napoli
We try to get away from Excel for years and we still use Excel. And it comes down to user, you know, can you use the tool effectively?
00:06:03:07 - 00:06:21:23
Koen Lavrijssen
Definitely and as we're building out the product because we've been in the markets, we've been active in the market here in Europe for, four years now. I think the first version of the product was released in 2013. So that's over ten years in the market. Back then, it was just a hobby project.
00:06:21:23 - 00:06:46:04
Koen Lavrijssen
But as we're building out of the product, you are seeing more and more that we need to cover complex use cases. But at the same time, all the time, we need to make sure that we balance that with keeping that simplicity so that people don't get confused by the system. I still want that system to be the same way as it was in the first version, that a new employee walks in and they're just able to start working with the system right away.
00:06:46:09 - 00:06:58:08
Koen Lavrijssen
I mean, I should be able to put someone without hospitality training. I should be able to pick them off the streets put them in your restaurant and say this is the POS, good luck, and then they should be able to work it out. That's our philosophy.
00:06:58:10 - 00:07:19:02
Rob Napoli
And I love that philosophy because most people have a cell phone right? Have some sort of cell phone, smartphone. You don't see too many people with an old school Nokia flip phone or Motorola Razr running around. If I do see somebody, I'm gonna ask them, like, why? And I also kind of want it because that reminds me of, you know, growing up.
00:07:19:04 - 00:07:37:21
Rob Napoli
But if you can, you know, navigate a smartphone and, and be able to open up Facebook or Instagram or, you know, book your flight on a whatever, and you can't operate a POS, like if the POS is overly complicated than a basic kind of cell phone usage, then you know you built something that's too complicated. So like, I love this idea.
00:07:38:00 - 00:07:59:15
Rob Napoli
So anybody off the street should be able to, like, learn the POS in a quick amount of time to at least do the basics. Obviously there's advanced features and that's the hard part, right? You're developing a system that needs to be complex on the back end with data insights, mapping all these things, but needs to be used every day, multiple times a day, hundreds of button clicks a day, virtual button clicks, a touch screen a day.
00:07:59:17 - 00:08:17:17
Rob Napoli
How do you balance that and, you know, obviously when you built this out of frustration, you thought about this in the front hand. But as you continue to evolve the product over years, what's that trigger for you to always keep that in mind of, like, how do we make it easy to use but powerful to deploy?
00:08:17:19 - 00:08:42:15
Koen Lavrijssen
I think that the single most important thing that we do to make sure that we keep on, delivering that same value is, that we make sure that our engineers that are actually working on the product, that they either have some hospitality experience or I work hospitality experience into them. So last year, I went with a couple of engineers of the, I went to go work myself at one of our clients.
00:08:42:15 - 00:09:01:03
Koen Lavrijssen
I just went over there and there was work in the kitchen behind the bar, serving tables. Just doing that stuff that I used to do also, because I really, had been out of it for quite a couple of years now. And, it's just good to feel how it's, Yeah, get a sense of how it feels working with your own system.
00:09:01:05 - 00:09:34:12
Koen Lavrijssen
And they were basically just running after me through the venue, typing out stuff, maybe even fixing stuff as they were seeing me do stuff like, okay, this it's going to be easier if we change, this interaction, into a shorter interaction because I would take you all the time out of that. So I think making sure that we keep really close to the people in the actual restaurant, I think that's the most important thing that we can do that, but another thing is also, POS systems can be very complex.
00:09:34:14 - 00:10:01:18
Koen Lavrijssen
But if you make sure I mean, it's also the customers sometimes asking complexity, but sometimes it's also the POS or the dealers responsibility to show a customer a restaurant how they can do something in a simple fashion. Because, I mean, restaurants all over the globe are very similar. I mean, every restaurant is unique, but they are very similar.
00:10:01:20 - 00:10:26:08
Koen Lavrijssen
And I think if you can, kind of create a baseline level functionality that covers most of the use cases, then I think the question for the restaurant should be, do I want to, make this specific functionality where I want something custom? Is that my pure differentiator in the market? Is this really where I want to make my stand, that do something different from all of the other people in the world?
00:10:26:10 - 00:10:43:00
Koen Lavrijssen
Or is that something else? Is it my food is it my, the venue, the lighting, the music, the people visiting? And yeah, I think a lot of times, there's a whole another answer them, doing something difficult in the POS.
00:10:43:02 - 00:11:07:15
Rob Napoli
I love that. And I think that's really cool that you still take time to go work at the customer location using your software, using your tools to, to really understand process improvement. I think that is important. And it's easy for us to as easy for us. I say it's easy for tech to build a solution right to a problem.
00:11:07:17 - 00:11:32:16
Rob Napoli
And usually in theory that's good. But in practicality, that's where a lot of issues with technology becomes overly done. It's why, you know, everyone talks about user experience testing when you deploy a new technology, right? It needs to be unless it's a back end script or something running. If you're if it's using front end, it needs to be thought of from a human interaction perspective is the amount of time and care that you put into that really shows through it.
00:11:32:18 - 00:11:49:13
Rob Napoli
That's something that I, I've always liked about your story. And, you know, I've had the pleasure of talking to you a few times about this. I wanted to highlight that because it does, I think, make it really stand out of how Mr. Winston is being deployed across, you know, across as you grow markets. Right? You've been in Europe for a while now.
00:11:49:13 - 00:12:19:23
Rob Napoli
You're now expanding markets quickly, rapidly growing quick. So, talk to me a little about that piece of it, right. Because the way you go to market, you have, very unique thought process on the dealer mentality and how you really want to drive growth with partners, growth with your team. So talk a little bit about your kind of methodology on how Mr. Winston is going to add new markets moving forward as we look at 2025.
00:12:20:00 - 00:12:45:18
Koen Lavrijssen
When we started to scale relatively early and I'm talking like 2017, we noticed that, we were developing a product, we were marketing the product. We were selling it, we were implementing it, we were supporting it. We were getting feature requests that went back into development and selling more and more and more, and our company was just being drawn into every direction.
00:12:45:20 - 00:13:09:13
Koen Lavrijssen
It was pretty much impossible as to keep on scaling like that. So, we looked at the market and we saw that, some other competitors were, willing dealer model, value added reseller. Doesn't really matter how you would go to the partner model. But basically they were working together with, a gun dealer for this discussion.
00:13:09:15 - 00:13:37:07
Koen Lavrijssen
Who would buy the hardware, get a license for the software, combine it with the man powers of the people, and then deliver a complete package to restaurant. I really believe that that's the only way that it's ever going to properly work for decent restaurants. Because those restaurants want to have someone that they can ask for advice before they can start implementing this but also call for support if something goes wrong or do something with the hardware.
00:13:37:09 - 00:13:53:20
Koen Lavrijssen
And, and the person needs to be there and it's impossible for us to, to scale to such a size that we are near everyone and can provide that level of service. And, and I don't think, a lot of the large industry players who aren't working with a dealer model, that they can actually provide that service.
00:13:53:22 - 00:14:10:17
Koen Lavrijssen
So for us, really, POS as a total package is like 50% software. The other 50% of the data goes to the whole product consists of the software combined with the servers and hardware all put together.
00:14:10:19 - 00:14:32:23
Rob Napoli
So I think that's really cool. And you know, it's interesting you bring that up because obviously working in Omniboost in working with our partners. We see how these play out and have, you know, resellers that, bring in things and do things with within the partner channel. And it is unique because I think at the end of the day, when you're deploying a new system, especially at the restaurant level, you want localization.
00:14:32:23 - 00:15:03:03
Rob Napoli
You want somebody that you can trust to recommend the best software, best hardware, best support methodology. Be there, close to be able to be there to train you and help you out. And you look at some of the bigger players while they do a good job at having key people in key markets, you kind of choose which markets that you want to dive into, and there's some markets that you can't versus with a dealer reseller model, you can really find people who can handle different markets and go deeper and really have that localization.
00:15:03:03 - 00:15:12:11
Rob Napoli
So you're giving that globalization and localization to your customers to really leverage the power of the system. So I think that's a really cool methodology for growth.
00:15:12:13 - 00:15:33:14
Koen Lavrijssen
And definitely, we basically have two types of partners as well. Right. But you really touched upon it just now to the integration partners as well. So we have dealer partners but also integration partners. And our philosophy there is the same I mean it's impossible to be the best at everything. Anyone that's going to tell you databases, everything, they're just talking.
00:15:33:14 - 00:16:00:00
Koen Lavrijssen
Well crap basically. Yeah. So what we do with integration partners as well, is that okay. We say we have this whole hospitality suite available, right? So, Winston, it's not just POS. It's also, kitchen displays. It's also, online ordering. It's like QR ordering. It's, reservation system. There's a whole suite of it.
00:16:00:02 - 00:16:23:03
Koen Lavrijssen
But at the same time, we also partner with reservation systems. We also partner with kitchen display systems. No, because, Oh, yeah. Well, we maybe do that because some customers may have maybe, okay. With just our own version of the, the module. But a lot of customers will want more, and they are right.
00:16:23:03 - 00:16:43:20
Koen Lavrijssen
they want more. But if they are going to ask us to develop in all of these directions again. So that's the end of the company, story again, where the company is being run in all directions. But the same applies to fall it if we allow ourselves in all of those directions. Basically the average quality of the whole products will go down, will have a bigger product.
00:16:43:22 - 00:16:56:04
Koen Lavrijssen
And the partners will not be happy because they are competing with them. And I'd rather work together with them because together we can deliver a great experience to the restaurant on both for instance, KDS and POS.
00:16:56:06 - 00:17:16:05
Rob Napoli
I love that. You know, I think that's really, really impactful and important. And I think it's also great that there's this that mentality. Because you're right, a lot of people think they can do everything. And yeah, you could probably learn to do everything, but you don't need to do everything. Because I was like, does is stretch you thin from being really good at what you do best.
00:17:16:07 - 00:17:32:03
Rob Napoli
And focusing on what do we do better than anybody else? What is our core product core offering, and how do we offset that with great partners and the likes to really drive the best experience, the best product to market, and the best overall product that can be on the market.
00:17:32:05 - 00:18:04:17
Koen Lavrijssen
And in every module or part of the product. It's so easy to overlook what seems like minor peculiarities of the, the hospitality process right. So an example of that I always use is inventory. In a lot of businesses, inventories is just going to be correct. But in hospitality in pretty much any hospitality business, inventory is never going to be correct because someone drops something or doesn't register something or pick something to drink from.
00:18:04:17 - 00:18:28:24
Koen Lavrijssen
So. And so what we build in there, is that a lot of systems, if you're out of inventory, they will force you to not being able to order something. So let's say they're out of, coke. You won't be able to sell that. What we do is we give a notification. Well, actually, we give you the option now, so you can choose whether you get a notification or it's disabled.
00:18:29:01 - 00:18:45:24
Koen Lavrijssen
Our basic implementation is a notification like this is probably it's out of stock, but you can still order it because maybe that crate of coke came in the morning and a manager didn't put it into the system yet. And then you have a customer who wants to coke that's the experience they're asking for you as it's standing there right in front of you.
00:18:46:03 - 00:19:08:04
Koen Lavrijssen
You cannot order on you’re POS. That's the kind of stuff that gets in the way. And this is I mean, there's so many of the small bits in the POS that do certain things probably. And the same applies with KDS. The same applies for online ordering and reservations. And I think it would just be grandeur if we were to say, okay, we can be the best at all of this.
00:19:08:06 - 00:19:16:00
Koen Lavrijssen
We are going to find each and every one of those and then do something great that, you just don't think that's possible. I don't think it's realistic.
00:19:16:02 - 00:19:37:02
Rob Napoli
I agree, and that was a great example with like simple coke, right? It's things happen so fast that if deliveries get delayed or not, they're or they come in a little late. Right. As the restaurant kicks in full gear, it's really easy to forget to add to, to update something so that you can actually sell it. And it's like you have product here.
00:19:37:02 - 00:19:42:13
Rob Napoli
You have an experience that the customer wants and you can't do anything about it that's mental, right?
00:19:42:15 - 00:20:07:13
Koen Lavrijssen
I think the old restaurant business is one of the most, by definition, unstructured, chaotic businesses that there is it's really difficult to, do at the same time provide a solution that brings enough structure so that you can get the word easily. And, and everything runs like clockwork, but not too much that you're getting in the way.
00:20:07:15 - 00:20:13:16
Koen Lavrijssen
So you can be super structured with super flexible at the same time. And I think that's really difficult to combine those two.
00:20:13:18 - 00:20:40:06
Rob Napoli
Yeah, I really think hospitality at all phases, restaurants, hotels to travel, it's chaos in motion, right. Because it can't it needs to be flexible enough to, to move and shake with the highs and lows. You can do all the planning you want. It's nice to work at all. You can eat pizza buffet, right. And in the summertime, we would always know when the high times were like when it would be slow the rest of the time.
00:20:40:08 - 00:20:59:21
Rob Napoli
But during the summer, if it rained, we knew we were about to get slammed because everybody's pool day, everybody's, amusement park day just changed to because we had a game room. Now, well, we're gonna go to the pizza buffet. We're going to spend three hours there and go play, get the kids games and go play. So we'd get slammed.
00:20:59:23 - 00:21:17:08
Rob Napoli
And you can't prep for that. I mean, yes, you can look at the, the weather, forecast, but you know that meteorologists are wrong most of the time. So you don't want to make, you know, crap for, you know, something like way over and then not have it because then you have to cut that also lost and that's wasted product.
00:21:17:10 - 00:21:31:08
Rob Napoli
So you have to kind of balance that out. And so there is times like as soon as we start seeing a pour down randoms like, all right, we need to start now in the middle of the rush like we're going to get slammed again. We need more, we need faster. And you know that's a whole process.
00:21:31:08 - 00:21:41:05
Rob Napoli
I love that hospitality is chaos in motion. But there's also ways you got to put the process and protocols in place that you can also quickly adjust to that chaos in motion. And it's such a.
00:21:41:07 - 00:22:00:24
Rob Napoli
Unique way of doing business. But also it's kind of a thrill, like I remember I don't know if you ever think about it, like sometimes we're, you know, we're working at tech jobs and obviously I love it, but sometimes I'm just like, man, I kind of miss the chaotic craziness of working on a frontline food service job and just how much fun I had.
00:22:01:00 - 00:22:17:18
Rob Napoli
Cook it as a cook, as a line cook, for pizza restaurant, and working the buffet and talking to people. I just, you know, the huge rush and then it slows down and then it picks up again. And I sometimes miss just that. Like that excitement and that craziness of chaos.
00:22:17:20 - 00:22:39:22
Koen Lavrijssen
Definitely. I think it's hospitality is one of the, working in hospitality is one of the most stressful jobs. But also rewarding and in a certain sense, I mean, personally, I used to really enjoy making sure that everything was prepared properly, and then there would be a big rush coming in, and you could handle that.
00:22:39:24 - 00:23:03:20
Koen Lavrijssen
Like, like you as one person would be handling, an amount of people coming in that would normally require like three people to get the bar serve. So because you had everything properly set up, you can mask. And then if you do that, if everything is really like clockwork because you're being clever about your inventory and stuff like that, then you have time extra to make sure that you're watching out for the guests, checking whether their experience is actually doing all right.
00:23:03:21 - 00:23:26:13
Koen Lavrijssen
Because to me, hospitality restaurant business isn't about food. It's not about drinks. It's about an experience. Right? You have drinks and food in the fridge, you know, and, you're still going to have dinner somewhere, you know, to get a quick bite because you're on the road or because, you want to have a nice experience with your partner, with some friends going out.
00:23:26:15 - 00:23:49:20
Koen Lavrijssen
And, I think if the business is, is running like clockwork and POS can be supportive in that, I'm not going to say that we are going to guarantee you that, because it needs to be the people working together with the system in order to make sure that everything does run like clockwork. But if it's going like that, and I remember when I was working in a restaurant, it was going like that for us.
00:23:49:20 - 00:24:10:12
Koen Lavrijssen
I mean, we are implemented of POS. I was happy with I was going and, I had some fun. I was just looking through the restaurant, and I saw a woman sitting there, and she was just couple times like. So I was like, there's something wrong there. Yeah. And they you can evade that and you can try this.
00:24:10:12 - 00:24:26:00
Koen Lavrijssen
And, I'm not going to approach it because it's going to be an issue. But I worked up to her. I said, Hi is everything all there? Oh, of course everything was all right. We're waiting for the main dish, and it was taking longer than expected. So I was like, okay, well, I'll do, I'll check the kitchen right now.
00:24:26:00 - 00:24:44:06
Koen Lavrijssen
And on the way back and I bring you guys some complimentary drinks. And just by doing this, because I had some time to spare, because things were running as I want to run, I was able to turn that negative experience into a great experience. Just everyone working on in the kitchen, on the dish is ready, so I could tell them it's going to be out in a couple of minutes.
00:24:44:06 - 00:25:04:11
Koen Lavrijssen
I'll bring your drinks to you. And those were because of the event. You have to be able to do that. If you are slammed all the time and packed up and, yeah, resolving problems, where, some table was moved to another table. So the drinks ended up on the wrong table and nobody knows where to bring this tray of, food.
00:25:04:13 - 00:25:13:16
Koen Lavrijssen
Yeah, it's everything needs to by into each other. And in order to enable those experiences.
00:25:13:18 - 00:25:36:22
Rob Napoli
I love that. And it is impactful because you also think about, you know, I always laugh when you go into a restaurant during an off hours and you wait longer than normal for food because they're not focused on cooking. And so maybe there's not as much food already ready. You like it, they're cooking it fresh. And so sometimes things happen because when you're cooking during the rush, you're cooking a lot of things in motion, and there's a lot of heat.
00:25:36:22 - 00:25:56:07
Rob Napoli
So things can just move. And so it's making that experience the best possible and being able to leverage those things and having the tools to support that. Because the flip side of this, all that stuff is that, yes, there's the human element. There's no never going to change that human element, but our tools and our assistance going to be set up for us that we can have more time to focus on the human element.
00:25:56:07 - 00:26:22:22
Rob Napoli
And that's essentially what our systems do, right? Integration, Omniboost builds. The POS that Mr. Winston builds is all meant to give those employees who utilize that system every day more time to focus on making sure their guests are well taken care of. And they're for the experience because, yeah, we go out to a bar and pay $10 for a beer when we can drink $2 beers at home, but we still like to spend the $10 for a beer at the bar anyways, right?
00:26:23:12 - 00:27:00:10
Koen Lavrijssen
Yeah, exactly. What you just said. So I think that, whether it's the tools or simplifying your business that allow you to get some time left is also telling the entrepreneurs and manager to think about how you want to strategically position your business. And that sounds like a little bit too much management jumbo. But I do think you should be thinking about, what sets you apart as a restaurant for the other restaurants and in my opinion that most of the time that tends to be the guest experience and food or drinks can be guest experience, right?
00:27:00:12 - 00:27:29:05
Koen Lavrijssen
If someone is going to, a wine bar, then the Italian food is something that sets them apart for something else. But the experience itself and how the people in the venue are servicing you, I think that's something that's often overlooked and personally, I like to visit and revisit venues where something out of the ordinary happens and out of the ordinary doesn't have to be over the top.
00:27:29:07 - 00:27:48:20
Koen Lavrijssen
But I personally don't want a restaurant that's like three course standard meal. And, we will do everything perfect. Like, if they're mixing things up a little, and it doesn't have to be all out there. I mean, even the US, you have this, this restaurant chain where they show that you or they go, see you.
00:27:48:22 - 00:27:59:03
Koen Lavrijssen
It doesn't have to be that, but make it something special. And I think that should be something that the. Yeah, restaurants can focus on a little more.
00:27:59:05 - 00:28:15:23
Rob Napoli
So you literally are following my train of thought. So I was about to say, you know, the experience piece of it. We now have restaurants where they give you a bad experience. We go for the bad experience. Partly, I think it's such a novelty because it reminds you of what a good experience should be like or what a normal experience should be like, right?
00:28:15:23 - 00:28:32:09
Rob Napoli
Because I think it's crazy when you think about experiences and that we go to restaurant chains that give us bad experiences, but it's all part of the experience, right? And I agree, the experiences are really important piece and it's something that you need to hone in on. And it's that's what makes a difference.
00:28:32:09 - 00:28:54:22
Rob Napoli
And all the tools that could give you the ability to give the customer the experience that came into that restaurant. For that's the game changer. And that's where the difference really needs to be. And I know that's something you care a lot about because we've been talking about it for the last half hour. And it's also why you built a POS system working at a restaurant in the bar to to know where you are today.
00:28:54:24 - 00:29:19:03
Rob Napoli
It's all based with that in mind and that kind of shines through. I want to transition because there's a lot of things we're talking about. You know, 2025 is where the horizons and this will actually drop. They'll probably be early 25. What are you most excited for about 25, for the business, for the industry just in general as it relates to Mr. Winston and stuff that y'all are working on.
00:29:19:05 - 00:29:41:02
Koen Lavrijssen
But, yeah, the, our whole team at this moment, including me, the thing we most excited for is our launch in the US. So, over the past couple of months, we've been working together with a couple of dealers there, in order to bring our product to the markets. They've given us, shipped on a feedback on the product. To make sure that it's, properly suited for the US process.
00:29:41:04 - 00:30:01:05
Koen Lavrijssen
For instance, the way that, payments of tipping works in the US is completely different to what happens in the European Union. But that's, that's something we haven't built into the system. And for us, it was like mind boggling how it works. Now, like, do you really have to print the tickets and then have the credit cards?
00:30:01:05 - 00:30:27:04
Koen Lavrijssen
And then they'd bring you another ticket and then people tip on it, and then they go to the end of the, you know. Yeah, that's really what they do. It's just a huge surprise for us. Well, not in the best month, but when we started, to do work. Yeah. So I think for me, the major thing to look out for where we're, we're aiming a launching on the 1st of February. So in January, we are still, doing some, pre launches, with some customers.
00:30:27:05 - 00:30:58:18
Koen Lavrijssen
So we already have some customers running the system in the US, making sure that it's, all set up for taxes. But mostly making sure that the process is properly implemented as, US restaurants expect to be covered, because that's the thing. What made us successful there in Europe. And that, I believe, is also going to be the thing that makes us successful in the US, making sure that when someone uses our system, they get this feeling of, finally a system that works with me instead of against me.
00:30:58:20 - 00:31:05:21
Koen Lavrijssen
And if I, if I can convey that feeling to people using the system, then I'm happy.
00:31:05:23 - 00:31:26:23
Rob Napoli
I love that I think that's like the cherry on top, right. The, the bow on the present is, that that feeling of a system that works with me, not against me. And so many times in so many industry as we build tools to solve problems, in theory they work well, but they work against the user at every step of the way and make it so tough.
00:31:26:23 - 00:31:30:02
Rob Napoli
And I love that we come back to that simple message, you know?
00:31:30:02 - 00:31:43:19
Koen Lavrijssen
Yeah, you don't want to have that computer says no scenario where you're like, man, I'm in a rush to trying to help these people get along and that, yeah that frustration
00:31:43:21 - 00:32:03:02
Rob Napoli
Well, that's I love that we're fixing that. I'm excited for the, for your launch, an early next year and all the prep that goes into it. I know it's a lot, so really excited to see how that continues to drive forward for y'all. As we as we close out Koen how do we, how do we get in touch with you?
00:32:03:02 - 00:32:12:00
Rob Napoli
If somebody is interested in learning more about Mr. Winston or wants to gets in touch with you, where do they find you? How do they get in touch with you to learn more?
00:32:12:02 - 00:32:34:01
Koen Lavrijssen
They could definitely take a look on our website. It's, winstonpos.com. So we're rebranding, actually, also for Mr. Winston and Winston. That's a change is also going to happen in the first quarter of next year. And, you can also always drop me an email personally. Just Keon it's the way it's the pronunciation, at the, winstonpos.com.
00:32:34:03 - 00:32:51:05
Rob Napoli
Awesome we'll make sure to put that in the show notes to the website and the email if you want to get in touch. Keon definitely do and learn more. I am excited that it's going to be Winston Pos because whenever I try to type in Mr. winston.com doing Mr. Winston without the without the period after Mr..
00:32:51:05 - 00:33:10:16
Rob Napoli
Is always hard to forget like it's just natural to always type it like properly. So excited for that. Really appreciate you taking the time to jump on. I love this conversation. And the simple messaging of, a system that works with me, not against me. So excited to see all the things you have in store as you continue to grow and scale.
00:33:10:18 - 00:33:19:17
Rob Napoli
And we appreciate you being a partner with Omniboost and the stuff that we get to do together and work on and chat about. So really appreciate all of that, and thanks for joining the show.
00:33:19:19 - 00:33:22:02
Koen Lavrijssen
Thanks a lot for having me Rob
00:33:22:04 - 00:33:31:21
Rob Napoli
Ofcourse all those out there. That's been another episode of hospitable. If you could be a tier one like rate, subscribe, review, do all the things. And until next time stay well.
