Max Denevich

Technology is only useful as a strategy behind it.

And what actually works in QSR specifically is like design the customer journey first, invest in your people on the ground, train and motivate your staff at every location to be part of this digital experience.

Communicate value clearly to users so they actually want to engage with your program.

And again, human interaction still matters enormously.

And then, yes, use data, use AI to personalize and automate at scale, but let it serve a strategy and not replace it.

And also don't pour money into online ads if your in-store team can't explain why they have methods.

I believe on the market, most QSAR brands don't have a technology problem right now.

They have a strategy problem dressed up as a technology problem.

So once you understand that, you know exactly what to fix.

Oh, the biggest lesson wasn't about the strategy or a market.

I still believe it.

It was about people, specifically about what matters most when you're putting a team together.

At different points in our journey, especially when we had budget and felt pressure to grow fast, we hired for experience.

We brought in people with impressive track records, senior titles, years in the industry.

On paper, it was perfect.

But what we kept learning over and over is that experience without ownership is a problem.

In a growth stage company, you need people who take things personally, who see a gap and feel it without being asked.

So who sell not because they have the perfect feature set, but because they believe in what they're building and can transfer that belief in the customer.

That's a soft skill, but it's the hardest one to hire for.

And we had cases where experienced salespeople spent their time asking for product changes instead of selling.