Founded in 2019, Koala is an industry-leading platform that creates premium, customizable apps for restaurants to offer digital ordering. Koala provides a premium experience for more than 4,000 restaurant locations nationwide. Digital orders with Koala lead to higher conversion rates than a white-label solution and an increase of up to 20% in average order value. Creating a seamless, streamlined online ordering experience that’s free of confusion and obstacles is critical for the customer journey. Many restaurants are competing against organizations that are continuously improving, optimizing and streamlining the user experience. When it comes to online ordering systems, the ability to customize the experience and the look and feel of the experience is important. Machine learning and the role of AI is going to play a key role in the future of online ordering. Quotes “One of the gripes that I’ve had with the online ordering process for the smaller (restaurants) is that there’s really no way to make the customer experience tailored to the brand.” - Joseph “Custom (ordering) software leaves so many brands behind because of the cost to do so. There’s a massive barrier to entry for most brands, which is the cost.” - Brett “Our mission was to make premium accessible. Building a tool in such a way that it could be affordable for everybody.”  - Brett “It’s amazing what’s happening right now. I think what needs to happen is convergence. We’re at the point in this industry where convergence is waving its hands furiously and people are begging for it.” - Joseph “(Koala is) that holistic, digital interface into the ordering ecosystem. In many cases for many brands it is the expression of their brand to their customers digitally. Another way to say it is, “we are the experience layer that sits on top of everything else.” - Brett “We think of interfaces as screens but interfaces are really just connections.” - Brett Transcript 00:00.00 vigorbranding Everyone today I'm joined by my friend Brett Spiegel he's the co-founder and Ceo of Koala which we'll dig into in a little bit I met Brett through 1 of his partners or maybe he's not a partner but he's definitely on your team and it was great because. And a couple seconds I realized one of the case studies he was talking about was a mutual client in that's scratch kitchen so it was a bit of Kimet. It was pretty awesome and then since our since then our relationship has grown quite well. But Brett why don't you say hello give a little bit of backstory. 00:29.84 Brett Spiegel Great and and and thanks so much for for having me on you when you reached out I was honored and I've been excited to have this conversation. So thanks again. So as Joseph mentioned my name is Brett Spiegel I am the co-founder and Ceo O at Koala Koala is a customer experience platform. And I think we'll have ah a chance to kind of dive into to what that means but a little bit on my background so I actually grew up in South Florida outside of Fort Lauderdale and went to college at the University Of Central Florida in Orlando as most people know Orlando is the epicenter for casual dining concepts in this universe and so. Um, being one of those people that had to work through college I did my tour of duty through many casual dining concepts and got my start in the back of house I was a dishwasher I was a prep cook a line cook I did some front of house as well. I was a food runner server and ah. Eventually a bartender at the famous Tgi Fridays and you know I can't say enough to younger people. How important I think it is or at least an opportunity. It is to go work at a restaurant while you're in college. You know if you have the time. Super flexible hours. You know if you're front of house. Get some cash in your pocket every day which which is nice and you know working at a very busy full-service restaurant on a Friday night is is character building and soft skill building in