Give an Ovation · 2026-06-29 · 18 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
43 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Atul Sood brings dual perspective from roles at McDonald's, Kitchen United, and now Curry Up Now to explain a critical mistake restaurant operators make: confusing feature-based solutions with true product companies. The distinction matters because investing in features dressed up as products creates distraction and cost without long-term value. Sood advises operators to identify their core need, then partner with best-in-class providers they trust to execute a strategic roadmap - not necessarily vendors perfect today, but led by teams whose vision aligns with the restaurant's future. He emphasizes that relationship-driven business development (not transactional sales) is how the restaurant industry actually works: buyers reach out when ready, after years of trust-building. His framework for vetting vendors: ask about the roadmap, the competition, and which larger companies already offer this as a feature. If vendors deflect, they lack faith in their own solution. At Curry Up Now, this translates to demonstrating genuine care for guests at every dining occasion to earn repeat business.
Ask the vendor what their roadmap is, who their competition is, and specifically which larger companies already offer this as a feature. If they deflect or seem uncomfortable answering, they lack faith in their own solution, signaling it's a feature, not a product.
If their core offering is best-in-class for your primary need, you can partner with them if they have solid capital, strong leadership you trust, and a strategic roadmap that aligns with your long-term needs - they'll build the secondary features over time.
Buyers purchase when they're ready to buy, not when sellers want them to buy. If you've built authentic relationships and trust over years, restaurants will reach out to you when they have a need, making relationship investment more valuable than quarterly close pressure.
A business development representative who understands both the vendor's solution and the people behind it, serving as the interface between the brand and the tech vendor during implementation - this role helps align vendor capabilities with restaurant needs.
By demonstrating genuine care for guests at every dining occasion and making it clear the restaurant wants to earn their business back, treating both food quality and experience quality as equally important.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains one genuinely useful framework - distinguishing feature-companies from product-companies with a specific diagnostic question - but it's buried under substantial banter, mutual complimenting, and Ovation promotional content. Most of the 18 minutes yields commonplace advice about relationship-building and caring about guests.
I saw a lot of companies out there that I thought were not products but were features. And I would argue that there are a lot of features in this industry that present themselves as companies, but they're not really companies.
specifically ask what larger company has this product of yours as a feature. And if they're wiggly about that, if they try to deflect the conversation, then you know that they don't even have faith in their own solution
The features-vs-products diagnostic heuristic is moderately fresh and the specific sniff-test question has real tactical value, but the rest - relationship-first selling, trust the leadership roadmap, care about guests - is recycled conventional wisdom with no contrarian angle.
buyers buy. They don't buy from sellers who sell, they buy when they want to buy.
there's less and less reason for consolidation now because you can just build a damn thing, right?
Atul Sood has legitimate practitioner credentials - led global delivery at McDonald's, was the founding employee and CBO at Kitchen United, and now holds an operating role at Curry Up Now - making him a genuine multi-sided operator. He isn't a career podcast personality, but the episode extracts far less from his experience than his background would warrant.
I started there doing a handful of business development things and then focused on leading global delivery.
When I joined Kitchen United about nine years ago as the first employee
The episode offers a handful of biographical specifics (McDonald's creating the BD role "12 years ago," Curry Up Now locations in Birmingham and Flower Mound) but contains essentially no operational metrics, no named failing vendors, no guest-experience data, and no financial detail to substantiate the claims made.
It's why McDonald's created the role 12 years ago. I think it was one of the first business, if not the first business development role in the industry for that specific need.
We're in Birmingham, Alabama. We're in uh Flower Mound, Texas
The host poses one genuinely useful follow-up ("Any tips to sniffing that out?") and a reasonable consolidation-vs-best-in-class framing question, but he repeatedly steers the conversation toward promoting Ovation, accepts all guest claims without pushback, and spends significant airtime on mutual praise rather than extracting depth from a guest with real experience to share.
And any tips to sniffing that out?
How do you balance the consolidation with best in class?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Send us Fan Mail Atul Sood, Chief Business Officer at Curry Up Now, joins Zack Oates to discuss the evolving relationship between restaurant operators and technology providers. Drawing from leadership roles at McDonald's, Kitchen United, and across the food tech ecosystem, Atul shares why relationships still matter, how operators should evaluate technology partners, and why the future belongs to companies that solve real problems rather than simply adding features. Zack and Atul discuss: Why buyers purchase when they're ready, not when sellers push The difference between a product company and a feature company How restaurants should evaluate technology vendors Balancing best-in-class solutions with platform consolidation Why caring is at the center of great guest experiences How AI is changing the future of restaurant technology Thanks, Atul! Links: linkedin.com/company/curry-up-now
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
1 - > Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation, the Restaurant 2 - > Guest Experience Podcast. 3 - > I'm your host, Zach Oates, and each week I chat with industry 4 - > experts to uncover their strategies and tactics you can 5 - > use to create five-star guest experiences. 6 - > This podcast is powered by Ovation, the AI feedback and 7 - > operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. 8 - > Learn what's actually happening in your restaurants and exactly 9 - > how to improve while driving revenue.
10 - > Learn more at ovationup.com. 11 - > And today I'm so excited because Atool Sud is going to be joining 12 - > us on the podcast today. 13 - > And not only is Atul a good friend, but he is someone who's 14 - > been in this industry for a long time and he doesn't look it.
15 - > I mean, like Atol, you've got to be a good one. 16 - > I don't know. 17 - > I know. 18 - > Before I started ovation, I had no grays in my beard.
19 - > I believe that. 20 - > But Atul, you've had such an interesting career. 21 - > You were head of business development at McDonald's. 22 - > Then you were chief business officer at Kitchen United.
23 - > You've gone on the tech side of things. 24 - > You've been on the restaurant side of things. 25 - > You are now working as a fractional biz dev executive for 26 - > restaurants and food tech companies. 27 - > So you're sitting on both sides of the fence.
28 - > How do you do it all? 29 - > And what do you like more? 30 - > Do you like the dark side more or do you like the light side 31 - > more? 32 - > Yeah.
33 - > I'll let you guess which one's which. 34 - > Exactly. 35 - > I'll have to interpret that on my own. 36 - > One, I feel very fortunate to be in this industry.
37 - > Thank you for having me on this call. 38 - > What I love about this, by the way, is we've done absolutely no 39 - > prep, no questions in advance, none of that, which I absolutely 40 - > love. 41 - > Seat of the pants conversations. 42 - > I did seed you with a nice blue ovation hat, though.
43 - > You did. 44 - > So that's it. 45 - > I appreciated that at RLC, and uh I've been wearing it uh 46 - > plenty over the last several weeks. 47 - > I've got to say, I love the operator side.
48 - > I was fully embedded in it at McDonald's. 49 - > I started there doing a handful of business development things 50 - > and then focused on leading global delivery. 51 - > Still love being an operator and having that hat on. 52 - > But I think that makes me a better operator to have the tech 53 - > experience of selling into operators and understanding what 54 - > their needs are outside of my own limited universe.
55 - > So although I uh prefer, let's call it the light side, I have 56 - > some dark blood in me as well. 57 - > Well, as not everyone is maybe as familiar with what a chief 58 - > business officer does, either on the restaurant side or the tech 59 - > side. 60 - > So I think let's start there because I think there's some 61 - > education, and maybe both on the tech and on the restaurant side, 62 - > maybe there's some gaps that they need filled fractionally, 63 - > or maybe there's some rearranging of what they need to 64 - > be doing, because maybe there's some responsibilities that don't 65 - > quite have a home right now that should.
66 - > Yeah, absolutely. 67 - > So it is a broad-ranging title. 68 - > When I joined Kitchen United about nine years ago as the 69 - > first employee, and they were deciding on the title. 70 - > They were they offered me the CEO role, didn't want to be CEO.
71 - > We were deciding on the title. 72 - > I picked chief business officer because it is broad and 73 - > encompasses everything from fundraising to sales to PR to 74 - > general growth initiatives. 75 - > And that applies both to restaurants and to tech 76 - > companies. 77 - > It's kind of a catch-all bucket to do anything that needs to be 78 - > done to advance the business interests of a company while 79 - > playing a senior role in the C-suite and making sure that I 80 - > can impact strategic and or product decisions as well.
81 - > So it's been a role that fits me like a glove. 82 - > It's not a direct sales role. 83 - > I'm not a good direct salesperson. 84 - > I care more about the relationship than about the 85 - > deal.
86 - > So it gives me the wiggle room in business development to be 87 - > sales-minded without necessarily needing a close to be 88 - > successful. 89 - > Yeah. 90 - > And I think that's so important taking that long-term approach 91 - > because in sales, it's like, all right, what am I closing this 92 - > month, this quarter, right, right now, right now? 93 - > But with what you're talking about and how this industry 94 - > works, it's so much about relationships.
95 - > Like, how many times have you connected with someone where 96 - > it's like three years later, they're like, hey, I actually 97 - > need what you do. 98 - > Can we talk? 99 - > And boom, there you go. 100 - > Right.
101 - > And I think that that is something that this industry, 102 - > probably more than others, that relationship really means 103 - > something because we're a bunch of people people, right? 104 - > Absolutely. 105 - > And look, at the end of the day, I firmly believe buyers buy. 106 - > They don't buy from sellers who sell, they buy when they want to 107 - > buy.
108 - > So if you have the relationship when they're ready to buy, if 109 - > they know who you are and what you sell, then they will reach 110 - > out to you. 111 - > I see it as a buyer right now. 112 - > I'm a chief business officer of Curry Up Now. 113 - > And I see that.
114 - > When we have needs, we reach out because we're well in tune with 115 - > what's happening in the industry. 116 - > So as hard as you try to close a deal this quarter, this month, 117 - > this week, if the buyer isn't ready to buy, they're not going 118 - > to press the button. 119 - > And the relationship, the duration of it, the trust that 120 - > you build, the friendliness, the meeting at conferences, shaking 121 - > hands, giving away baseball caps, that's the key to it.
122 - > And the I think the other aspect of it is doing it because you 123 - > really do care. 124 - > I feel like there's people that I'm friends with who have 125 - > canceled ovation, and I'm still friends with them. 126 - > There's people who I've never done business with and like 127 - > friends with them. 128 - > And I'm not friends with them just to like try to earn their 129 - > business one day, but I'm friends with them because 130 - > they're good people.
131 - > Right. 132 - > And I think that's part of it is like, and you have that a tool. 133 - > You're a very authentic person. 134 - > And so, like, you and I have talked, we've never really done 135 - > direct business with each other, but we're friends.
136 - > Like, we've had numerous conversations, just catching up 137 - > and on the phone. 138 - > And I remember driving to Vegas and having long conversations 139 - > with you. 140 - > And you've always been very generous with your advice and 141 - > your time. 142 - > So when someone is like, hey, I need this, I'm like, Oh, I know 143 - > a tool.
144 - > I think you do a great job of building your reputation like 145 - > that. 146 - > What advice would you give to restaurants who are looking to 147 - > improve their guest experience in terms of like, how do I 148 - > leverage biz dev to improve my guest experience? 149 - > Because we're talking here about the relationships in the 150 - > industry, but at the end of the day, it's like these 151 - > relationships are for when you boil everything down, it's 152 - > either to improve the PL or to improve the guest experience, 153 - > right?
154 - > Yeah. 155 - > Well, I think one restaurants really need to care about their 156 - > guests and exude that care. 157 - > The quality of the food is important, the quality of the 158 - > experience is equally important, I would say. 159 - > And that experience has to incorporate care into it.
160 - > And I use that word carefully because I think that's the 161 - > feeling that a customer wants to get from the restaurant 162 - > experience today. 163 - > And I think to leverage business development most effectively, 164 - > they can hire a business developer. 165 - > It can also often be a role intermingled with the CEO role, 166 - > where that person is charged with going out to market, 167 - > investigating the tech vendors out there like ovation, who can 168 - > impact the guest experience, identifying the best of breed, 169 - > identifying the different niche requirements that apply to my 170 - > restaurant versus your restaurant, and then figuring 171 - > out the roadmap to implement that strategy.
172 - > Obviously, ovation has a suite of solutions. 173 - > There are others out there as well, but having somebody who is 174 - > truly, I would say, friends with the community and understands 175 - > both the solution and the people behind it, because one thing is 176 - > the solution. 177 - > The other thing from a tech vendor perspective is the 178 - > service you're going to offer to clients as you implement that 179 - > solution. 180 - > And having a business developing representative to be the 181 - > interface between the brand and the tech is, I'd say, very 182 - > important.
183 - > I mean, it's why McDonald's created the role 12 years ago. 184 - > I think it was one of the first business, if not the first 185 - > business development role in the industry for that specific need. 186 - > And I think a bunch of restaurants should have it. 187 - > But I know at Curry Up Now, we want to make sure that we 188 - > demonstrate to our guests every dining occasion that we really 189 - > care about them and want to earn their business back.
190 - > Yeah. 191 - > And that's something. 192 - > Oh my gosh. 193 - > I the Punjabi by nature, it is just such an amazing restaurant.
194 - > If anyone listening has not been to Curry Up Now, go Google and 195 - > find out where the closest one is to you because it's amazing. 196 - > Yeah, and it's such a good food Bay Area anymore. 197 - > We're in Birmingham, Alabama. 198 - > We're in uh Flower Mound, Texas, so we spread our wings a little 199 - > bit, but the core base is still uh the Bay Area.
200 - > That's where the concentration is. 201 - > It's got a great brand reputation in the Bay AF. 202 - > I've got to say everybody you talk to knows about it. 203 - > It's accessible Indian cuisine, and it's definitely very tasty.
204 - > You gotta come out to the Bay, Zach. 205 - > You gotta let me take you there. 206 - > I know. 207 - > I I feel like I gotta go out there because there's just so 208 - > many good restaurants in the Bay Area.
209 - > And uh I I lived in San Francisco for a while, and I 210 - > feel like there's a little bit of a dearth of like great 211 - > restaurants. 212 - > And in the last few years, I feel like a lot have been coming 213 - > in, especially around the Bay Area. 214 - > So anyway, but glad that curry up now is still going strong. 215 - > And so, what advice do you give?
216 - > Because right now there's a lot of talk about consolidation. 217 - > How do you balance the consolidation with best in 218 - > class? 219 - > Because the way that I look at it as a technology side is like, 220 - > all right, ovation, we do certain things best in class, 221 - > and then we do other things that are like check the box and like 222 - > we're gonna be a good solution for you. 223 - > But if you want something about connecting with a guest and 224 - > turning that into operational improvement, it's like we are 225 - > best in class there.
226 - > And if you want some other things, it's like we can do 227 - > that, but other people have a lot more bells and whistles. 228 - > And so, how do you get people? 229 - > And I feel like that's pretty much every company, every 230 - > company has their strong suit, and then there's other things 231 - > that are added on in different varying levels of completeness 232 - > and feature set. 233 - > How do you balance that as a restaurant of let's consolidate 234 - > versus best in class?
235 - > I think you identify what your core need is as a restaurant. 236 - > What is your core need and who's the best in class provider for 237 - > that core need? 238 - > And after that, because it is much better to have one vendor 239 - > versus a smattering of vendors for point solutions, if the 240 - > other areas of corollary opportunities are not your core 241 - > need, you can accept a company that will build a best in class 242 - > solution that may not have it now. 243 - > And partnering with that company, which has the right 244 - > intent, which has the right leadership, where you trust 245 - > their long-term strategic plans are going to overlap with your 246 - > future needs, then that's a perfectly worthwhile solution.
247 - > And again, it's not necessarily about the product as it stands 248 - > today. 249 - > It's do you have trust in the leadership to build a product 250 - > for tomorrow and the next day that will meet your broader 251 - > needs? 252 - > And if that's the case and they're reasonably well 253 - > capitalized and they have the right heart behind them, then 254 - > partner with them for best in class and trust that the kind 255 - > of, as you say, checkbox solutions will evolve over time.
256 - > One of the challenges I had when I was looking for a job before I 257 - > uh decided on this fractional path is I saw a lot of companies 258 - > out there that I thought were not products but were features. 259 - > And I would argue that there are a lot of features in this 260 - > industry that present themselves as companies, but they're not 261 - > really companies. 262 - > And it's very problematic to engage with those feature 263 - > companies instead of a product company like ovation for your 264 - > solution because you're gonna spend more dollars and you're 265 - > more importantly gonna have more pain, which will distract your 266 - > leadership team from their core goals, which are serving the 267 - > customer in the store or in delivery.
268 - > So I would absolutely caution operators to avoid the snazzy 269 - > demo that is really just a feature with a little bit of 270 - > lipstick on top and go with a real company with a real product 271 - > like you guys have. 272 - > Well, I appreciate that. 273 - > And any tips to sniffing that out? 274 - > Yeah, ask what the roadmap is and then bring them back to what 275 - > that feature does today and ask what their competition is, and 276 - > then specifically ask what larger company has this product 277 - > of yours as a feature.
278 - > And if they're wiggly about that, if they try to deflect the 279 - > conversation, then you know that they don't even have faith in 280 - > their own solution because there are a lot of product companies 281 - > that have, let's say, guest reviews as a feature. 282 - > But there's some companies that have guest reviews as their 283 - > primary product. 284 - > And you got to wonder about that. 285 - > And I look at that and it's interesting because as you look 286 - > in the market and as you see all these different tech companies 287 - > that are popping up, it's amazing when you look at who 288 - > you're gonna partner with.
289 - > Because, like, for example, in the last six months at ovation, 290 - > we have 15x how fast we are building. 291 - > Wow. 292 - > And it's incredible. 293 - > And and we're, you know, uh looking to double that again.
294 - > And so as you look at like the rate of change, where we went 295 - > from, hey, let's build a few things every month, and now it's 296 - > like every week and uh pushing that out, and then the ability 297 - > that we have to build at the speed of thought as we're doing 298 - > our meetings now. 299 - > It's not like, hey, would it be nice if it did this? 300 - > It's like, hey, let's build that right now. 301 - > Is this right?
302 - > No, I want to do this. 303 - > Great, let's tweak it and then does it want this? 304 - > Yes. 305 - > What about this?
306 - > Yes. 307 - > And so we can build that quickly now. 308 - > It's so incredible because uh you're less looking for someone 309 - > who can maybe have all the features that you're looking for 310 - > in terms of today, and more looking for that partner that's 311 - > going to build with you and going to continuously innovate 312 - > because that's got to be core to who they are, is that obsession 313 - > with innovation and becoming better. 314 - > Absolutely.
315 - > I work with a company in the construction project management 316 - > space driven by AI, and they will literally sit side by side 317 - > with a customer and ask them what features they want, and 318 - > they'll turn around those features next week. 319 - > And you can do that now. 320 - > We can do that now. 321 - > Your customers should start demanding and expecting it.
322 - > And that's really exciting. 323 - > And I think it will marginalize a lot of these feature companies 324 - > because they don't have that tip of the spear to enter in with 325 - > what we talked about earlier, is a core solution. 326 - > So I think we may see some consolidation in the market, but 327 - > there's there's less and less reason for consolidation now 328 - > because you can just build a damn thing, right? 329 - > So I think instead we will see some market share expansion from 330 - > the established players who've adopted AI quickly, who already 331 - > have a client base and are just spreading their wings in a land 332 - > and expand manner.
333 - > And I think some of these smaller, more recent upstarts 334 - > will be honestly forced out of the industry and it'll be a 335 - > little bit of a reckoning. 336 - > I think it'll be better for the brand. 337 - > I think it'll be better for the ecosystem. 338 - > It'll unfortunately be hard on several people.
339 - > Yeah, yeah, totally. 340 - > Well, I know that we're coming up here on time, Atul. 341 - > So who deserves an ovation? 342 - > Who is someone that we should be following in the industry?
343 - > Is it wrong to give a shout out to my CEO? 344 - > No. 345 - > If some of you watching this have been to conferences over 346 - > the last several years, he's been off the circuit the last 347 - > year and a half or so. 348 - > But there's a crazy Indian guy, Punjabi Akash Kapoor.
349 - > He has a blue goatee, he's got more earrings than any sensible 350 - > man or woman should have. 351 - > I'm pretty sure he has and the personality to match it. 352 - > And the personality to match. 353 - > I'm pretty sure he has his belly button pierced.
354 - > I can't verify that, just to be clear. 355 - > Yeah, just to be clear, he does not have his belly button 356 - > pierced, but uh, but it wouldn't surprise me. 357 - > He's built a brand in the Indian fast casual segment that has a 358 - > lot of legs, he has a lot of heart, and definitely a due 359 - > innovation. 360 - > Awesome.
361 - > Yeah. 362 - > Akash is someone definitely worth a follow. 363 - > He's a great guy and an amazing personality and great person. 364 - > So and a tool, how do people find and follow you?
365 - > And if they want to get in touch with you for any fractional biz 366 - > dev work on the restaurant or tech side. 367 - > I love meeting new people. 368 - > It is almost an obsession of mine. 369 - > I am probably easiest to reach on LinkedIn, which is also an 370 - > obsession of mine, and first name, last name.
371 - > I'm very, very responsive when I'm awake. 372 - > So please do reach out. 373 - > Yeah, and that's a tool, A-T-U-L-S-O-O-D. 374 - > A tool too.
375 - > That's right. 376 - > Well, a tool for reminding us that caring about the guest 377 - > experience is the first step to improving it. 378 - > Today's ovation goes to you. 379 - > Thank you for joining us on Given Ovation.
380 - > Awesome. 381 - > Thank you for having me back. 382 - > Thanks for joining us today. 383 - > If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or 384 - > your favorite place to listen.
385 - > We're all about feedback here. 386 - > Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a 387 - > two-question estimate-based actionable guest feedback 388 - > platform built for multi-unit restaurants. 389 - > If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create 390 - > a better guest experience, visit us at ovationup.com.
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