Launch HN: Boostly (YC S22) – SMS marketing for restaurants
Restaurants live or die based on their ability to keep their customers coming back. However, with the rise of the third party delivery platforms, which charge 20%-35% commission on each transaction, restaurants are afraid that many of their customers will stop ordering directly from the restaurant (even if the restaurant can do their own delivery), and wipe out their small profit margins.
The delivery platforms also maintain ownership of the customer data. They know how valuable this is for marketing, whereas the typical restaurant owner is focused on the food and service, as they should be—and they miss out on being able to communicate directly with their guest as a result. With so many restaurants hanging by a thread these days, it’s more important than ever that they be able to market to their customers themselves, build relationships, and get their customers to order through their most profitable channels.
Customer data is notoriously hard for restaurant owners to access because it is scattered across different systems with various challenges. Even if they access it, they don’t have a way to manage opt-in consent for texting. And of course, most restaurant owners are non-technical and so none of this stuff is easy for them to begin with. We help restaurants access their data, get people opted-in to receive text marketing, and then put it all on autopilot.
All of this started when I (Shane) was running sales for Jolt, a restaurant operations software company, and saw the early stages of online ordering trends. Everyone was focused on the transactions, while customer data was largely getting neglected. Our insight was that this was leaving an incredible amount of opportunity on the table—to turn online ordering into a marketing tool for the restaurant, instead of just being an order taker.
Initially, we founded the company as an online ordering system with a few marketing and feedback tools. We thought that the only way for us to access the customer information would be to own the transaction. We sold that online ordering system to StrideQ, and through that experience we learned how to access customer data from the restaurant's point of sale, online ordering, and other systems. We’ve built Boostly's current tools to put that data to work for the restaurant.
Essentially, we work with the restaurant's point of sale, online ordering, and phone systems to ask for opt-in consent for the customer to receive marketing texts. For example, when ordering online, someone could check a box to opt in to receive marketing texts. Or when someone calls the store, one of the prompts that they can select is to “Press 1 to join our text club and get 10% off today’s order.” Once we have the customer’s permission, we put text marketing on autopilot for the restaurant, so that they can send weekly offers, birthday deals, and other reminders to their opted-in subscribers. We then track the usage so that a restaurant knows exactly how much revenue they drove through their text marketing campaigns.
Additionally, we collect feedback on the customer's experience and give an easy option to leave a review or to give internal feedback to the restaurant that the restaurant can use to resolve issues in real time and get the customer to come back and re-order.
I know some of this might sound a bit spammy, by HN’s demanding standards—one key thing we help the restaurants understand is that it’s in their interest not to over-text their customers. We are scrupulously opt-in, focused on asking politely for permission, and making sure that restaurants set the right expectations for how many texts the customers should expect.
Here’s a quick video that shows a bit about how it works: It only gets tricky when you want to have portability between SMS marketing vendors. It's not uncommon for new restaurant customers to see quick results and want to start texting more than once a week. Fortunately, we a) know the short-sightedness in that
b) have a white glove experience where we have tight control over what gets texted and how frequently. The system automation is literally constrained to a weekly texting pace Love the grouped offer suggestion. As a consumer that's more in line with my personal preferences. I think eventually this would be a nice feature in an effort to give the consumer power to customize their notification preferences. There are laws against this unlike email. Also, your privacy policy isn't very confidence-inspiring. Sharing name, phone, and physical location with third parties shouldn't happen. I'd never use your services for that reason alone. I wish you the best of luck, but I can't say your services are for me. I also believe that there is a difference between marketing something to new customers that they might not want and what we do here. The only people who will raise their hand to join a text club are the actual fans who like the place and the product. Then this serves as a rewards mechanism to provide additional deals and incentives to continue to purchase more. This is retention marketing--not new customer acquisition. Since this is an opt-in program, only the people who really want to receive texts from a particular restaurant will participate. If that's not you, that's totally fine. Either way, we appreciate you sharing your thoughts! - An SMS confirming my appointment. - An SMS the day before reminding me of the appointment. - An SMS the morning of the appointment inviting me to checkin. - An SMS after I left asking me about my experience on a scale of 1-5. That's four SMSs relating to one appointment/visit. The moment I read this post I could just imagine a similar situation - I make a reservation online for a table, and I'll get spammed indefinitely about offers, and invitations to leave a review. https://blog.curogram.com/what-are-tcpa-and-traced-act-and-h... They will do anything to fight this. And I am mostly at their side in this particular issue. One specialist I've had to go to frequently has a very good system. An SMS 3 days before as a reminder. Another the day of, which you reply to to check in. When they're ready for you, they text back, and you go in, and the nurse meets you at the door. (Even ignoring Covid, I'd much rather wait in my car, my with choice of tunes cranked, etc). That's all good in and of itself. What makes it really good is that someone human actually reads those messages and dispatches them as appropriate. So whenever I've had a billing question, need a refill, have a question for my doc whatever... I just text that number, and if it's during normal business hours I usually get a response back within 5-10 minutes. (And actual response, not "You are very important to us, we will return your call within 48 hours") This was/is the sentiment of myself and a majority of our developers from a consumer standpoint. It's a curious experience being your product's chief skeptic. It's also been interesting to observe the number of consumers eager to participate, along with the degree to which it works on behalf of our restaurant customers. A few months ago my skepticism decreased when one of my favorite local pizza joints became a customer and I found myself ordering a lot more with them despite my aversion to being "marketed to". Fortunately, food quality appears steady so far . One of the things I look forward to with more bandwidth and runway is to craft the product in a way that may even appeal to the segment of the market that shares our preferences. In the meantime, thanks for taking time to share your perspective. My guess: some combination of believing it could be a good business while helping restaurants. Now that you know it works, do you plan on expanding beyond restaurants? Wouldn't you like to send text messages from car dealers, record stores, dry cleaners, grocery stores, clothing stores, taxi and ride share companies, landscapers, HVAC service companies, dog walkers, barbers, book stores, home improvement stores, electronics retailers, and so on? You could have phones buzzing with commercial messages a dozen times a day! Brick and Mortar retail is a big market with similar dynamics to restaurants. We do have non-restaurant customers already but believe there are advantages to carving out this niche. Some of the best customers who like us best are those that were texting with more generic companies prior. I have to register for every other website if I want to purchase something, then get subscribed (without my consent) to some garbage spam mail. And god forbid if I abandon a shopping cart. Now I get some creepy email to come back and finish an order that I probably dgaf about. And if I revisit some ecommerce site a year later, I get automatically re-subscribed to their marketing spam again. I guess the next logical step is to migrate this nightmare to phones, where we'll all be forced to keep opting out of shit we never asked for in the first place. I'm glad we're really using technology to make the world a better place. I wish I'd never received one single marketing text or notification ever in my entire life. I wish I could purge the entire world of such things. stop But if you really like a place and want discounts to them, this could be a good option. - Ask me to opt-in but only the 3rd or more time I am ordering from the same restaurant. Asking me to opt-in right away will seem more spammy. If I am coming to a restaurant for the 3rd time, I probably like the food and will be open to receiving some marketing stuff if it helps me as well - Send me targeted messages and not generic. For example, lets say I frequently order "General Tso's Chicken", perhaps send me an offer that mentions it. I would be more inclined to act. - Do not over text/SMS. You mentioned this already but cannot be understated. Thi is where you have to teach the restaurants. I would even say put technical limits ( a restaurant cannot SMS same customer more than 2 times a month etc) even though you charge by the SMS. It is in your long term interest that customers are not turned off by too many messages. - Make it a bit fun and not all marketing/money. Send me interesting stuff on the food I just ate (may be how it was made etc). - Coupons would be awesome if I haven't visited for a while and it could get me to order my fav. food again. How do you handle offer "staleness" if you're rotating through a set every so often? And additionally do you have tools that automatically remove unengaged numbers? Is the long term plan to offer Boostly to larger businesses or chains? Initially, this has been built for the SMB restaurant or the franchisee to do local marketing rather than large brand based marketing. And a second, more technical question. Why are you loading "font-awesome.min.css" (Cloudflare) and the IBM Plex font (font.google.com) every time you show the popup? Pretty boring answer here: Shane (non-technical) was left to put together the website and I think he just picked a wix template that happens to do this. We are b2b and a majority of interactions with customers take place over the phone, including signing up to be a customer. The website, up to this point, has relatively little utility compared to other company websites. We've prioritized placing technical time and energy on the actual product. We did have a designer spend an hour on making it look better than it use to though. <script> (function(w,n) {
if (typeof(w[n]) == 'undefined'){ob=n+'Obj';w[ob]=[];w[n]=function(){w[ob].push(arguments);};
d=document.createElement('script');d.type = 'text/javascript';d.async=1;
d.src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/provely-public/w/provely-2.0.js';x=...}
})(window, 'provelys', '');
provelys('config', 'baseUrl', 'app.provely.io');
provelys('config', 'https', 1);
provelys('data', 'campaignId', '6555');
provelys('config', 'widget', 1); </script> If a guy like me, without any experience in JS can find it in less than a minute, it shouldn't be a problem for you to fix it. I know a few friends running and owning restaurants. Nobody would have time to work with anything related to sms marketing. But let’s see if this will work: I saw a couple companies come and go doing this. > Nobody would have time to work with anything related to sms marketing That's actually one of the value propositions: we know you don't have time so let us do it for you. Just sit back and see the results > But let’s see if this will work The famous first words. So far we've been pleasantly surprised to see it does. I guess we'll find out to what degree and how far we still have to "go" No consumer wants these messages. I understand why restaurants need them and why they are profitable, but actually recipients will be irritated (even though they "opted in"). My concern is that these will turn SMS, one of the last (mostly) clean communication channels, into another cesspit like email and the web have become. I'm not asking what you're doing to prevent that because you can't build this into a successful company without moving the needle in that direction. I just want you to question why you're doing this and whether your business is creating a world you actually want to live in. To me and everyone who isn't profiting from it, it's pollution of our personal lives. (Unrelated: I started a company years ago with restaurants as customers. They are by far the worst people I've ever had as clients, if you could even sell to them. It's basically impossible to build a profitable software business with restaurants as customers -- even "Big Delivery" is unprofitable). > No consumer wants these messages. While I personally resonate with this sentiment, it's not accurate in my (very skeptical) experience. "many" consumers? "most" consumers? maybe. but I'd be slow to underestimate the size of the market here. > My concern is that these will turn SMS, one of the last (mostly) clean communication channels, into another cesspit like email and the web have become Valid and well articulated. I don't have a great response on the broad concern (we've demonstrated as a society/culture why we can't always have nice things; e.g. robocalls) beyond knowing the degree to which this medium gets regulated by the big 4 utility companies (and government). They are quite sensitive to their customer's (and constituent's) preferences to not have this personal space invaded. As for boostly, I think it will only shoot ourselves in the foot to overstep (or even get close to) these important boundaries. > They are by far the worst people I've ever had as clients, if you could even sell to them Certainly not the easiest lot. We do view the ability to sell to them and meet needs as a competitive advantage of sorts. Thanks for your informed feedback! So you want these messages? You're happy to see them? Even if there are a few people who want these messages, I'm going to wager that you'll only be profitable if you're messaging a lot of people who don't (and accidentally agreed to get them). > "many" consumers? "most" consumers? maybe. but I'd be slow to underestimate the size of the market here. Your market is restaurants, and the market is certainly huge. > As for boostly, I think it will only shoot ourselves in the foot to overstep (or even get close to) these important boundaries. Depending on how much VC money you've taken or will take in the future, you won't have this choice. Your investors will demand growth, and the only way to get it will be to creep further and further out of your comfort zone. Marketing automation is full of dark patterns. The only company I know of that never really implemented them was MailChimp, and MailChimp also uniquely never raised capital. In this context: yeah, I want these messages and am even sometimes happy to see them. Ultimately (and this was my paradigm shift), it appears markets are far more diverse than I gave credit to and my personal preferences can't be applied as generally as I previously assumed. > Your market is restaurants, and the market is certainly huge. The market I was referring to, in this context, was people who would happily receive texts from restaurants if it meant they saved money. > Depending on how much VC money you've taken or will take in the future, you won't have this choice. Your investors will demand growth Valid point and concern(s). Can never really underestimate the power of these incentive dynamics and would be foolish to suggest we might be immune to them. FWIW we are bootstrapped outside YC participation to this point. Appreciate your reference to MailChimp. I'll look to take note on some of their practices. This is the one thing that might make it acceptable to me, but it also begs the question: Who is opting in to getting spammed? (Intentionally, I mean; I'm going to assume you're not using dark patterns to pull one over people while still claiming to be "opt-in") Generally they're opting in to save money and get good deals at their favorite eating establishments. For some, getting this via text is a preferred method and less friction than downloading an app or alternative medium. > I'm going to assume you're not using dark patterns to pull one over people while still claiming to be "opt-in" these wouldn't hold up very well in a lawsuit even if you wanted to do this So let me understand this. * I order food through a self-serve PoS or website, or cashier/waiter, whatever * Presumably the interface collects my phone number - potentially a checkout process which previously did NOT collect my phone number * Immediately after I receive a text from you, a third party that I may never have heard of, not attached to the restaurant, and this text asks me to opt into marketing for the restaurant I just ordered from Questions: 1. In the initial SMS will you identify yourself as a third party not affiliated with the restaurant? 2. How do you plan to identify and report success metrics for your customers marketing campaigns? Tracking links in the SMS that mark as conversions when clicked? 3. If your company succeeds and you get a whole bunch of big chains to do this, how will the average dining experience change for a customer of the restaurants you partner with? Clarification question for you to help me answer: Why are you asserting we aren't "attached to" or "affiliated" with the restaurant? Maybe there is a misunderstanding of the relationship here. As a customer I do not equate the Boostly brand/notifications to the restaurant I plan to visit. Even if they sign a contract giving you the right to use their name and branding, I don't want a friendly text saying "Hi its Milagros bar and grill, would you be interested in receiving updates on our latest dishes?". In short, I will not attribute good will owed as a patron to the restaurant to the marketing service making my phone buzz. It will be an adversarial relationship from the beginning that unfortunately would effect my opinion of the underlying restaurant. The rest of my questions are built around understanding the rest of the experience, once we get over that uncomfortable hurdle. Good luck to you guys, but I hope you'll find a way to make this less annoying than I expect it to be. And please allow for a simple general opt-out. I do miss the days when you could just go through life not feeling like an NPC in someone's scheme to extract money from your pockets. 1. actually cook food ( most don't??) 2. Don't use chef Mike ( no fresh frozen) 3. Don't use harmful oils and ingredients 4. Offer basic menu with 10-15 items, nothing weird. Where can i find a such a 'no kitchen nightmares' restaurant list near me. I thought I must have "opted in" non-consensually on some website (dark patterns abound), but I couldn't figure out which one. After a while I decided they were spam and it was best to not click the product links or opt-outs. Same reason we were taught to not click the opt-out links in spam email: Telling them a real person is reading increases your address's value as a target.. It took over a year before I spotted on my mobile bill that these were incoming premium rate SMS. This is in the UK, where incoming SMS is normally free, but each of these messages added a few £ to the mobile bill. They weren't spam, they were designed to look like spam! So the recipient would just ignore them if they were infrequent. They took about £100 total. When I spoke with the mobile service provider, they said I must have agreed to receive them and I should contact the sender. As if I could figure out who they were and as if scammers would care. Later the provider said it was a known, common form of fraud but sorry, they couldn't block it or compensate. Needless to say, I'm wary of incoming SMS that seems like marketing now. Even a message asking if I'd like to opt in would have me checking my next bill to see if it was SMS fraud, unless I recognised the connection to somewhere I agreed to receive messages from. No. Questions: 1. How do you capture phone numbers even for optin? Does the restaurant port over their phone number to your automated answering before reaching a member of the staff?
2. What POSs do you integrate with and how? Does the server need to ask a customer for their phone number and enter it in the POS which then you pull periodically from?
3. When a customer redeems a promo, do you process orders or let the POS/server/other online ordering do it?
4. Do you tie promos to specific items that the business has higher profit margins on?69 comments
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