Jason Hall

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The restaurant industry is brutal.

It's very, very low margins.

The ones that do well have great locations, great operations, and they turn their inventory super fast, and that's how they thrive.

Figuring out which of these tech platforms are value versus vaporware, the obvious first place to start is trying to figure out how sticky a platform is with its existing customers.

You look at the results and you talk to the people.

I could use, just as an example, Toast.

We looked through some of Toast's results and we see reported locations increased 23% year-over-year in its most recent quarter, but annualized recurring revenue was up 30%.

Gross payment volume was up 24%.

That says, existing customers are using it more.

That's really, really important.

Another thing, anecdotally, I've made a point to talk to restaurant managers and staff when I see that they're using Toast or other platforms to find out.

What I get...

overwhelmingly, is they're effusive of Toast.

When the people are telling you that, and the results that Toast is reporting backs that up, you find out what is creating value for these restaurants.

Now, to answer the other question, tech can help cut costs and do things more efficiently, but the restaurants that survive when times are bad are the ones that have a good value proposition, are easy to buy from.