Shane Murphy (00:02.126)

Welcome back everybody. We are lucky to have Juan Orrego with us today. Juan co-founded Cuboh over six years ago where they automatically integrated all of your restaurants online orders into your point of sale, whether they were coming through a direct or a third party channel. And back in March, Cuboh was acquired by ChowNow, a direct online ordering company that serves over 15 ,000 SMB restaurants.

throughout both the US and Canada. As part of that acquisition, Juan's now the general manager over the Canadian business unit for ChawNow, and we're super excited to have him here to share his story and his learnings with us. So Juan, thank you for coming with us today.

Juan Orrego (00:47.317)

No, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Shane.

Shane Murphy (00:50.21)

You bet. Maybe before we dive into too many things here, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and the story behind Cuboh?

Juan Orrego (00:59.308)

Yeah, for sure. you know, take it back to my younger years. I was born and raised in Colombia, which is a very entrepreneurial country. There's a lot of poverty and stuff. So a lot of people, you just grow up kind of like, you know, if you want to make it, you have to build your own business. So both my parents are entrepreneurs and they taught me since five years old, hey, if you want to buy a video game, you have to kind of make your own money. And that's, know, so like I really wanted

by my brothers and I would sell ice cream door to door. So since really early I've been kind of like on this journey of learning how to make money and adding value and selling and so on. When I was 17, I ended up moving to Canada. I moved to this small city called Victoria, just just like north of Seattle on Vancouver Island. Super beautiful city.

and I got into this great business school. I have no idea how I got into it because I wasn't a great student. And as part of this, in order to graduate, you have to do what we call a co -op, which is basically like a paid internship. And I met this guy called James. He's like legend here in the Victoria startup scene. He's been doing startups since 2005.

And he was like one of the main guys, you know in the early days that was trying to get Victoria on the map So I worked for him for three months and I I'm just an entrepreneur like I'm not a good employee. So wasn't meeting my quota It's ends up taking me on on a walk and he says yeah, you know, we you know me quote us. We were letting you go Like I said, I wasn't a great student So I ended up going to the university and I was like, I don't want to have to do this four months

know, internships again, I needed the credits to graduate. I wanted to drop out and they were like, well, if you, you know, let's get creative here. Like what if you create your own company and then employ yourself under it? And then we can kind of use that experience as that internship and you can get the credits. And so that's what I did. I had worked in restaurants like most college students. And so I was like, okay, I think the business I am going to create is going to be tech, like a tech company in servicing restaurants. It's like the only two things that I knew.

Juan Orrego (03:24.541)

you know, how to do really, really well. and the main idea behind cubo was I want to help restaurants make better decisions. So we were, we started by consolidating all of this different data points from a lot of different platforms in one place. but we weren't able to sell it. And this one restaurant basically said, Hey, you know, we're not interested in this sort of like data play, but if you can consolidate all of this delivery apps, this was back in 2018. like delivery apps were just starting to grow.

So we're like, if you can consolidate all this delivery apps, of our orders, put them in our POS press, we'd absolutely buy that. And so that's how Cuba started. So it back in 2018. The journey has obviously been incredible. 2019, we did Y Combinator just like you guys did, graduated from the program and then COVID hit. So we kind of weren't, we weren't ready for the scale that was about to happen. We figured it out. And yeah, in 2024, in March,

Chao now, well, I mean, before that, of course, they knocked on our door after a few months, the deal closed in March. And for anybody that isn't familiar, Chao now is a direct online ordering platform. So you don't only have to work with third party apps, you can also have your own branded mobile app and your wide label website so that your customers that are loyal can just go directly to you and not have to pay commissions. So we're kind of like now how this operating system for everything online ordering, that's kind of where we're at today.

Shane Murphy (04:52.084)

That's amazing. That's hilarious that it started through this internship and this idea of, man, I have to figure out this whole school thing and look what was created from that. That's a fantastic story.

Juan Orrego (05:04.862)

Yeah, for me it was just destiny. I remember thinking, okay, I think, I watched this, there's this speech that Steve Jobs gave, I think it was Stanford. And he was like, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. so I was like, I just had this immense belief, I'm a big believer in the law of attraction. So was like, okay, this is my time, this is what this means. And it ended up working out. And a really cool part of the story that I left out is James, the guy that fired me, ended up being our first investor. So I like pestered him for months.

until he was like, me at this pub at 9 p And I did, and he was like, I think he felt bad and just wrote me like a small check, but, and you know, ended up doubling down later on, and you know, he's a great friend of mine now.

Shane Murphy (05:44.588)

That's great, what a fantastic story. so you initially started with this data play and started observing some of the challenges with, it sounds like this specific customer who's like, hey, if you build a way to consolidate my third party delivery orders into my point of sale, then you have me as a customer here.

When you were observing the challenges and deciding, hey, we're going to do this pivot and we're going to go after integrating third party orders into the point of sale, what were some of the core challenges that you were observing?

Juan Orrego (06:20.707)

So when somebody told me about this idea, my first reaction was, okay, you we've been doing this data play for a few months now. It hasn't really worked out. I want to make sure that before we pivot, that there's an actual problem here and that this isn't the only restaurant that's facing this problem. But I mean, in theory, that probably made perfect sense to me. couldn't believe that restaurants needed, you know, a tablet per app and someone to like manually enter all those orders. So the first thing I did is I picked up the phone. found 10 restaurants. I called them, emailed

and try to see if this was a problem that they were facing. the reaction that I got was so positive. Like it had never been so easy to sell a product because everybody was like, my God, I always thought about this. I wanted to create it. I just didn't know how. Like, this is fantastic. So before we even wrote a single line of code, I had two people that were paying me just waiting for us to build the product. So because we were trying to get money to validate that people were willing to pay for this.

People had their normal natural objections slash questions about the products that they would ask. You hey, know what happens if I run out of an item, can I do that through your platform instead of having to go through all the delivery apps? And we were just learning. We weren't very familiar with this problem. So I would just write it down. I'd say, yeah, absolutely. Just classic entrepreneur. I'll figure it out later. And so that's how we started understanding all the challenges. The main things that we found were, and this is kind how we think about the problems that we help restaurants solve.

This is Cuba specific because again, now that we're working with ChowNow and are part of ChownNow, we can do even more. But before the acquisition, we thought about Cuba as like we're solving three main problems. One is restaurants shouldn't have to deal with so many tablets because training all the employees is a pain point. They get overwhelmed with in -person volume and they kind of have to forget about these tablets. It's just like not operationally easy. And so the way that we solve that is we just have this one remote control basically that consolidates everything.

And then in addition to that, there's like this second problem, which is, I need all my orders in my POS so that they print in the kitchen so that I have them in our system of record. But having to pay an employee to manually take care of that is super time consuming and they make mistakes and, you know, in -person traffic gets them overwhelmed and so they have to forget about it again. So we do that for them. And then lastly, like the third big benefit of a platform like Qubo is we centralize all the menus as well.

Juan Orrego (08:46.672)

when a restaurant was thinking about adding a new item or updating a picture or a description or it's either want to just test if they can up their prices, they can just do it with the click of a button and push it out to all the delivery apps instead of having to do that over and over and over. So you're running out of a bunch of items every day, which obviously happens. It's super time consuming. You forget, customers end up ordering it, your reputation is tarnished. And so that's what we're attempting to solve. And then with China, we kind of have

play where we now can title together so that those customers that are coming to you through third parties can hopefully you can do such a great job with your food that they want to order from you again. hopefully you can, know, a platform like Chow Now can help you have that direct channel so you don't have to pay that commission. So it's kind like a top of funnel bottom funnel approach that we're taking.

Shane Murphy (09:39.318)

Yeah, which everyone who has been in the restaurant industry has really experienced that level of there's the good and the bad that comes with the third parties and figuring out how to harness that for the good and really being in control of your business is super hard. can

speak to the role that these third party delivery companies play in marketing for the restaurant.

Juan Orrego (10:09.022)

Yeah, mean third parties are super expensive. There's a reason why they're expensive. You know, they're burning a lot of dollars trying to trying to do what restaurants aren't great at, which is like marketing their product and getting traffic. So that's their main role. And that's kind of how we see it as channel. It's like this is, you know, we're not necessarily like me personally, at least I don't think about them as like, you know, like a bad channel for you. It's just top of funnel.

Tell a funnel that if you try to get it will probably be more expensive because you don't have this scale the third parties But it's obviously not for everyone right not all food travels well very expensive food probably won't do very well in the delivery apps, but if you're a QSR Fast service restaurant that can pump out a lot of product and you can you can you have space for? More ordering volume than the third party is a great way to do that And again, hopefully you do such a great job because we understand they're expensive

they can come to you directly in the future, whether it's through your website or whether it's through, you know, they see you and they're like, my God, I've ordered from this restaurant. Like, let me walk in here. They can be very, very, they can be very, very good at that. And a platform like QO, you know, makes it really easy to just like pause the delivery app. So if you're super busy and you don't want to take door -to -door orders, then you can just do that.

And now that the delivery apps are very conscious of, you know what? We are pretty expensive. They're a lot more friendly when it comes to restaurants up charging their prices. Now that cost is pushed onto the consumer, which at the end of the day is the one getting the value out of all this, just due to the convenience. So yeah, that's how I think about

Shane Murphy (11:56.482)

Yeah, I know that's great. I think you described that really well. I love the funnel concept here because one of the challenges that people have experienced with the third parties is that, I go there because they are marketing. They have this big marketing reach. That's where they're putting dollars and it's going to bring me more new customers. But

as time goes on they fall into the trap of, this is kind of cannibalizing my existing customers because the third parties are so good at marketing. Now my customers will only come through those channels and if I'm not up charging my prices, I'm eating it in the margins.

what you highlighted is a really important thing that I need to do such a good job that people will come to me directly and I need to be able to give them options of how to come to me directly. If this is the top of the funnel, I want to get new customers and then find a way to make them my own customer by doing a really good job and giving them good quality and all of those things. Are

strategies that you've seen restaurants implement in order to really nail that part well of really earning that customer as a direct customer in the long run instead of just always ordering through a third party.

Juan Orrego (13:22.607)

Yeah, it's actually very simple. Like if you focus on your packaging as a restaurant and you know have your website listed there, you're get really smart. I'm not saying do this or don't do that, but what I see a lot of people do is, you know, a little brochure in the bags that say, like you can come in person next time, here's a little coupon, or actually order from our online ordering, well from

website directly next time hears this 15 % off if you order from us, that tends to be really successful because again, the consumer doesn't want to pay extra. Like if you can provide the same service, but save them that 30 % commission that you're up charging on your items, they're going to do it. It's in their best interest as well. You just want to it all together. And so that's why having a platform like in this case, Channel, I don't mean to promote our own service here.

Shane Murphy (13:53.965)

here.

Juan Orrego (14:17.579)

There's a lot of other platforms that are really good at this too. You just want to have this engine that is just basically doing all the work for you. But again, there's no need to overcomplicate it. The third -party apps are great tools for driving orders. They're a great order driver. And then you definitely want to have your own direct engine so that you can keep those customers coming back, hopefully every couple of weeks.

Shane Murphy (14:47.276)

Yeah, that's fantastic. that is one of the great things about ChowNow is ChowNow gives so many different ways to market to your customers. And so there's the app, there's the website, there's ordering through Google or through social. They help implement everything across the way.

Once you do order direct, there's email marketing. know, obviously, Boostly is an integrated partner with ChowNow, and you can implement text marketing. There's all these different ways to really cover that customer wherever they are living. And you can really start to use third parties as that marketing engine, which was generally the reason.

that restaurants go to these third parties in the first place in addition to offering delivery if they don't have their own delivery logistics.

Juan Orrego (15:44.854)

100%. Yeah. Shout out to Boostly. know, great, great part of ours. but yeah, like that's the goal, right? Like how do we take this customer and have you own that data so that you can continue retargeting them? Because once you have that customer in your database, it's game over. Like you just need to make it enticing enough for them to try and order it. But you know, like we have a lot of holidays, know, it's Superbowl, like Superbowl campaigns sent to be super successful. et cetera, et cetera. It's, know, your birthday. Hey, like

20 % off if you order on your birthday. There's a lot of really powerful things you can do. And again, with additions like Pusli, text messaging, such a successful channel to reach someone. But the end goal is let's get you ownership of that customer data, because that's where a lot of the revenue comes in. And it's pretty much the same for any business. E -commerce, they kind of do the same thing. They want you to join their newsletters, because that's how they keep you coming back.

Shane Murphy (16:40.588)

Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned that because that was one of your initial insights was data for these customers is really valuable for the restaurant. But often it's really hard to use the customer data in ways that will really drive business for the restaurant. And you found this other problem and then it almost always circles back to that data. You can handle that data well if you can make those customers your own.

There's so much power in that from a marketing perspective. And I think many restaurants go and use the third parties and they just turn it on and then they don't think about what happens to the customer ever again. They just hopefully see orders and hopefully those customers come back to me directly at some point in the journey.

I think more and more restaurants are realizing, I can be very intentional about how I approach these guests. You mentioned things like the packaging, put your website on there, brochures in the bag, give them a coupon to order direct. Even without a coupon, they're going to save often 20 to 30 % because the prices are less. And so even if it's not a direct coupon, you can say you're gonna save

percent compared to ordering through the third parties without giving away any margin in the process. Then as you give that good experience so that when they do see you, they come and order direct. Once you get them in that customer database, employ all the marketing that you can to keep them coming back. Those were really great tips and advice that you gave. That was awesome.

Juan Orrego (18:29.05)

No, I appreciate it. Yeah, no, for sure. It's a new world, right? Like it's only been four years since COVID, which is when all this started changing. It feels like 10, 15 years ago, but actually it's like fairly recently. So we're still adapting. Restaurants are still adapting. But it's definitely a new world. And all I hope is, you know, restaurants can adapt and not stay behind. This is, my opinion, the way to do it. And now with the rise of AI, this is only going to be a stronger value driver because now you'll, you know, it's not.

I can't think of anybody that does this really well, but I'm hoping that in the future where the industry goes is, you know, if I'm Juan and I like to order pizza at 2 p when it's rainy and there's my favorite team is playing and the AI can decipher that, how successful could that be? And those are the things that we're thinking about. It's obviously more complex than what it sounds. But at the end of the day, it's all about adapting to this.

mostly digital world, COVID changed how we behave and we like to spend a lot of time at home. so giving our customers, like the consumers, they need the food, option to do that directly is absolutely

Shane Murphy (19:46.424)

Yeah, now to maybe pivot gears here, obviously in March, Chaonau acquired your company. Can you share a little bit about that experience and what led to the acquisition by Chaonau? And what does that mean for the future of Chaonau and the future of Cubo?

Juan Orrego (20:08.499)

Yeah. So ChowNow and Cuboh have been partners for a while. I want to say three to four years. I could be wrong, but it, you know, that feels, it feels right. so basically we're, you know, started as a platform that, would consolidate, you know, this third party apps and, then, platforms like ChowNow. And we built a great relationship and what became really apparent

man, our two cultures are really, really similar. Like the teams like each other, we hold each other in really high regard. We obviously work with other partners, they work with other partners too. But there was something about Chow Now plus Qubo that it was like this equation of like one plus one equals three, because we thought about the industry very similarly and about our team as well and where we wanted to go. So they approached us last year and

We entertained the conversation, we weren't looking to sell, but it was just so obvious as if it was written somewhere that this was meant to happen. It felt like that for sure. So yeah, the deal closed in March. It's been, I believe, I keep thinking it's like five to six months, but I think it's more like four to five. But time's flying. Meeting the team, we went from being a 30,

person company, 35 % company to now being a part of a much larger organization, I believe for about 250 to 300 at Chao now. And so, know, teams are trying to figure out like, what do we learn from each other? Because they have a lot that they can learn from us and we have a lot that we can learn from them. So it's kind of this really cool process that I'm witnessing, front row of us like trying to drive this impact of like, let's move faster, you know, let's...

we really need this process here. I think the product should be able to do this. And then the same for us, we definitely on our end need a little bit more process as well and be ready for higher scale. And so it's this dance that I think is going really well. I'm super excited for the future. This deal, we didn't have to take it, we took it because we thought that it just made, again, one plus one equals three.

Juan Orrego (22:28.163)

And so the way that we see Chao now is like, want to be this like one place, this one operating system where restaurants can run their online ordering engine all in one place without having to use a bunch of tools. And you were talking a little bit about it. know, it's now restaurants are able with, you know, since the acquisition, they're now able to have this third parties consolidated through QBO and at the same time have this direct commission free channel that is also centralized through our hub.

And on top of that, you we have other products like we allow your restaurant to have delivery, call it Flex Delivery, we allow your restaurant to accept orders through a bunch of massive channels like Yelp and Google, we call it the Order Better Network. So it's a super, super powerful engine with over 15 ,000 restaurants. We have our marketplace as well, where we have thousands of restaurants listed on a lot of traffic that also kind of allows us to behave like a third party and drive business.

You know, DoorDash and Uber Eats, DoorDash and Uber Eats, this is not necessarily a competitor to them, but rather like, this is, you we have people that are looking for cheaper options than the third parties and this marketplace is great for them. And hence, you know, like a good way for our restaurants to generate a little bit more traffic to their listings at the same time. And honestly, there's a lot more to come. So it's been five months, but like I said, like things are moving.

really quickly, I'm super happy. The team is super happy. You know, we're in Canada, the Chao Nau team is in LA, crazy how we can be, it's not like really that far away, but we're just so similar, even though we're different parts of the world. you know, traveling to LA from the Canadian winters is definitely not gonna be a bad thing as well. So, no, everything's going really well.

Shane Murphy (24:19.662)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy (24:24.524)

That's fantastic. And how can the audience learn more about Chow Now, Cubo, and yourself?

Juan Orrego (24:34.627)

Yeah, so Cuboh.com that's Cuboh.com and then ChowNow is just chownow.com C -H -O -W -N -O -W .com. You can just Google, both companies are like pretty high up on Google ChowNow is the market leader in direct online ordering. But we have a lot of information on our website, really friendly salespeople on both ends. Please reach

Shane Murphy (25:04.61)

And I'll just highlight for those who haven't been exposed to like Chow Now or Cubo, I know this about both of them. They believe in this like white gloved experience.

They know operators are busy, don't have time to go and do everything that needs to be done in the restaurant. You're running the business. so one of the things that has caused our company to partner with Chow Now historically has been they really care about the customer experience for the restaurant, taking as much off

your plate as possible to make sure that you have a good experience and you can focus on the food while they focus on just getting you more orders and easing your operations. check out chownow at chownow.com, check out cuboh at cuboh.com, and Juan, thank you for joining and sharing your story and experiences with us.

Juan Orrego (26:00.955)

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much Shane. This was a lot of fun.

Shane Murphy (26:04.088)

awesome.