Ep.19 - How To Build A Best-in-Class Restaurant Tech Stack - Jackson Versitano - Supy Talks Podcast

Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of the Supitalks podcast. Today with us we have Jackson Versitano, Senior Director of Hospitality at Lightspeed. He's been in the trenches all across retail and hospitality tech and uh, today he's here in studio with us to tell more about his experience and how he sees the market evolving in hospitality. Jackson, welcome to the studio and please tell us more about yourself.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me. Um, more about myself. Ah, it's always a fun topic to talk about yourself, isn't it? Um, I, uh, I've been in the UK for now for 10 years. You can probably pick up that my accent is not the, the strong British accent that you might imagine for a uh, UK director, but you might have

Speaker A: guessed you're an Aussie.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly right. Um, you might be able to pick up the slang, the terms there. Um, I, uh, yeah, as I said, I've been in the UK for 10 years now and I entered uh, my, my journey here in hospitality which was great and um, and then slowly moved into a company called Vend, which, which was uh, the retail product, uh, or is still the retail product today at Lightspeed, as we were required by Lightspeed. Um, so my first few years were um, in the retail sector and just sort of learning and playing my trade there through outbound sales funnily enough. And uh, yeah, over like a six year tenure there, just growing through and getting a great understanding of the UK market. Um, we went through a really significant process when, when Lightspeed acquired us, um, which was around the COVID time. So like a funny moment to be able to go through you know, a restructure and a realignment in the business. But um, ultimately it set up the right path for us to, to increase our market share and get into a great place um, for, for our UK product, um, and for our UK presence at.

Speaker A: So now you've been through retail and then you've also then shifted into hospitality. Yeah, that's a really interesting topic to explore on. Um, how is retail so different from hospitality when it comes to how a POS function, how you do inventory management, how you do bookkeeping? What's the difference? The biggest differences have you seen?

Speaker B: There's some great ones I think. Like um, the first thing I think about in the differences between retail and hospitality is that retail is 24 7. So you have your online store, um, and that runs 24 7. People can purchase from you at any given time. I think that that is um, you know, a blind factor that we have in hospitality because we're focused specifically on only being able to work within our trade windows. So, um, you look at the hospitality sector and you think about a lunch period, um, or any service periods that they have. You know, we've got potentially four hours a day to make the money that we need to make in comparison to a retail business that runs for 24, 7. So, you know, there's some really key aspects there. And I think the most important part of all of this is if you have a bad day in retail, that stock still sits on the shelf the next day. If you have a bad day in hospitality, all of that inventory goes in the bin and you need to start again. So you lose all the revenue that you had in place for that day. So you need to be really specific and really timely for.

Speaker A: Great point. So then hospitality, you're obviously dealing with a lot of perishable items, depending on what cuisine you offer, of course, whereas in retail you typically have longer shelf lives. How does that then impact how you should be doing? Demand planning, for example, and forecasting? Like, how does that impact it?

Speaker B: It's, it's a really key, um, piece to business in hospitality these days. So your efficiencies are essentially your strong point and your key target to success. So, you know, like the demand forecasting, which is, you know, a timely tool for businesses in hospitality, can be and should be used in a way to make sure that your business has longevity to it. Um, so there is processes, ah, to our system, um, to our pos and our landings that we have that allow you to do this. But also, if you're working on a vast landscape, you might be looking at inventory partners to be able to give you a greater understanding of how you can continue to operate day on day, week on week, year on year.

Speaker A: Yeah, especially when it comes to margin management. That's something we see. There's such a big difference between retail and hospitality. Because hospitality, you're typically serving a dish and the dish consists of multiple ingredients, and each ingredient has its own cost, can be procured from multiple suppliers. Retail is a little more simplified. You've got one item and you sell the same item. Typically, sometimes there's a little transformation happens, but hospitality business, in essence, is more like a little factory. Every little restaurant is a factory and you have specialized skill sets that are being employed. You have a chef, you have a waiter. Whereas retail, there's a little more overlap on the skill sets. It's more about the sales process rather than the production or the selling of recipes. So we see from our side that when it comes to margin management, it's just a very different ballgame. And that's why our system with sapi, what we built, is creating that visibility on how you can manage your margins across every menu item, across all the ingredients that you've purchased. So that's the biggest difference that we see. But, um, when it comes to a point of sale, is it in essence very different, like how a retail item is sold or to, in a hospitality business, how an item is sold or how's that different?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think like the, the, the main things you need to look at is just the. Like. For retail, it can be quite simple. Like your, your purchasing or your procurement process is aligned to, um, one or two places, whereas you think about the purchases that are required to run a hospitality business. Um, and you think about, like, the types of menus that we see in the modern day. Um, there are so many intricate details to a menu and so many intricate details to a, um, the types of foods that you put out, um, the way that you operate in your menu and what that might look like. Um, these types of details are ones that can be really scary if you get them wrong. Um, and you need to manage those margins very, very closely. So, um, you know, you look at the modern day in terms of our efficiencies and our sustainability that we try and have in businesses. Again, that's, that's the type of thing, if you get this wrong, um, you could be running into a shortfall very quickly. But if you get this right, it makes your business incredibly efficient and has you as a market leader or as a leader in your region or, you know, any location that you might be.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's very interesting point. Now, uh, let's talk a little more about hospitality, which is what we obviously have more in common. And what we see is an interesting fact is that every day in the uk there's five restaurants that close down due to insolvency. So clearly it's not that simple. Like, people have this dream of, oh, I'm going to open my restaurant, it's amazing, I'm going to have my guests over. But getting it right is just very hard, especially beyond the first location, like opening the first location, and you're a very passionate F and B entrepreneur, you're there every day. It's not to say it's easy, but it's easier because you have more control. We see often where the failure happens is when, as soon as they start scaling, that's where often groups that seemingly were doing very well so suddenly have to Scale down or even obviously go bankrupt as well. Is that something you guys see as well with lightspeed or like, what's your vision when it comes to how should you scale? And like, what's uh, what should an entrepreneur be looking out for if they want to scale successfully?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think these factors, um, change over time for sure as well. I think it's important to note that, you know, there might be three mainstay topics in this, but, uh, the way that you maybe set up a business 10 years ago to today is completely different. And looking forward that that is going to be the exact same thing again. So, um, always thinking first and foremost is like the concept that you're trying to enter the market in. So entrepreneurs coming in today, um, and when we see all these new businesses coming in, we um, have the luxury of working with these customers. So we are able to see the downfalls. We have to see the positives that come through. We're able to see businesses that start and close very quickly. And you know, we're not too proud to say that, but this is uh, the reality sometimes in hospitality. But we also see the good measures in businesses that start well and are able to scale at length. And again, starting as like, the concept of the business is really important. As I mentioned before, the way that you want to operate your business is the way that we, uh, engineered to work towards our success. So if we look at a hospitality business, when you're entering there, you're entering for an experience, um, you might be looking into a specific, ah, cuisine, you might be looking into a specific location, you might be looking for an escape, um, from, from reality, um, as an example of lightspeed customer, I went to last week for my birthday, um, I went to Lagar, which is near our office. It's an Italian restaurant near Tower Bridge. And you enter there and it's almost like you're not in London anymore. Um, it's almost like you've entered Little Italy. Um, and, and you know, having those types of experiences prove that concept is king when it comes to the type of restaurant you're trying to do. So if you, if you're moving into like a generic takeaway, sure, you know what you're trying to do, you know, the customer you're looking for. If you're moving into fine dining, if you're moving into experience, um, when setting up a new business as an entrepreneur, get these details right, know your target audience. The second part would be location. Um, again, like, I'm not, not too proud to talk about this, but like in our street where our office is located, there's, you know, there's two businesses, there's two locations that I've seen close and three different businesses have tried there in the last 12 months. And this is, this is in a peak area. This is, you know, London Bridge. Um, so location is incredibly important and like specifics to your location and your cuisine and your types, um, these are really, really important needs for a business to be successful. Uh, and knowing that target audience and where you're going to set up and align your business, it can't just be for the reason that you wanted to set that business up.

Speaker A: Yeah. Has to be more than just a passion. I love food, I love guests. Also, the numbers need to make sense and this is something that we often see with starting up entrepreneurs, especially if they come from a chef background, is that numbers are not their nature. It's more about the passion and the food and everything. But then of course, if you have a single restaurant that kind, you can kind of get away with it perhaps. But then, um, as soon as you start scaling, that's where we see problems happening. So what advice would you give as soon as restaurants, like a restaurant owner says now I want to go open a second, a third location. What are the things they should be looking out for?

Speaker B: Two really key factors, your people and your technology. So staffing is really hard. In hospitality it's really difficult to get the right staff. And making sure that you've got the right staff that want to follow your ambitions is a really important point. Um, understanding that hospitality turnover is another key important factor is that you have to have the right staff and in the right places. Working on that level in one place is great. It means you've been able to set up a brand and be successful in that. But typically, um, once you start adding to this, you can't make the same decisions that you made as a one, if you're a two, three, four or five location or more. So what we typically, uh, try to engineer with these businesses is understand your menu and understand how that the engineering might need to change in terms of your menu and your operating factors around that. Um, because again you, on the scale of having a single location, you know, doing that times five, can you sustain this and the different types of traffic, the different types of locations as we spoke about before. And then it comes to probably the most important part is your software. So typically the software that you use for a single location again might not be the type of software that you need for a five location business. So um, when it comes to the types of factors that you need to start, um, I guess understanding when you make these decisions is how can I improve my business without making everything go out the back door in terms of, uh, my revenue and my incoming. So, um, that's where you might need to start to look at how you can work on the brain of your business. And I think Lightspeed, um, uh, in general is the best POS on market because we are the brain of your business. And then you can start adding in our integration partners. You can start adding in all the different pieces that will start to help your business grow. So we like to work with businesses that can scale and we can help them scale, uh, by adding different components to their business.

Speaker A: I think you've mentioned a very important point about how Lightspeed positions itself. It's also how we do the same with SAPI is that we believe the future is best in class softwares. Before there was a time that you could get away with all in one softwares because the needs of the market were also less complex. You didn't have online ordering loyalty. CRM wasn't really a thing. It was just about opening a restaurant as you punch orders, do some basic inventory perhaps. And that's kind of it. It just evolved so much with all these new needs. And also building software became easier, which is what we see now is that there's more operators from a deep experience in an industry building softwares to solve very niche problems, which is something you didn't have before, because before it wasn't very democratized to build software. So you had only the big giants that were able to afford saying, we're going to build the big all in one software. Was it that great? Perhaps not, but it was the best that the industry could have at the time. But now, because building software is relatively easy, even more now with AI, it's easier than ever to build software. So you have very niche software like one for managing guest feedback, one for managing loyalty, one for managing reservations. But of course, for that to work seamlessly, it has to talk to each other. And we see this fear in the industry of, yeah, but what if I have to talk to different vendors all the time and what if there's a problem and they start pinpointing to each other? And I think this is what you guys did so well, is building that ecosystem. Like you said, the point of sale is the brain. But at the same time it does talk very well. Not just technically as an integration, but it's also really that relationship that you guys Build with the whole ecosystem so that if there is a problem, let's say there's integration, there's a mismatch of the data, etc. There's people we can talk to and we can get things solved. I think, I think something that Lightspeed did very, very well, I must say. So.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Applause to you for that.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, certainly wasn't me, but, uh, I can talk about like the best in class piece is really important to us and I think it speaks to our business at its core. I think you look and as you mentioned there, like the Lightspeed is the brain of your business and we want this to be the base and your platform that you work in and you're in this in every day. Then we start to look at the extra pieces that need to help your business function and need to help your business grow. And I think that we would be blind to not notice that we're, we don't try to be the best in class for everything. Um, we are the best pos. So we do our POS functionalities the best in the market. When it comes to all these external factors that all the other businesses need. If we were to try and do those factors, we take away from working on our key focuses, so we don't try to do that. We have incredible inventory partners, we have incredible reservation partners, and ultimately, um, our partners continue to complement our business. And that's why a lot of people like Lightspeed, because we're not forcing you to use anything. Um, and also there's a lot of businesses that have fear to make these decisions because they typically say, but I don't need that. Why am I paying for this? I don't need that. Whereas in, in our world, um, we have this base level for you and we can grow and add our little pieces into this. So it's almost like a plug in, plug out, which makes it very, very simple for our processes. And, um, you know, that opportunity for a business to then use all the best pieces that are available to them. Why would we deny them of that?

Speaker A: I think that's a very important point. And this is something we see that some operators get wrong is that the moment they purchase software, they see the needs of their business as in the moment that they purchase it. So if today they have two locations, okay, today I need this, I don't need inventory, I need this, I need that. Great. But what about in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months? So you have to like, plan ahead and I guess with a solution, like how you guys do it like you said, plug and play. Today I don't need inventory, but as soon as I have three locations I will need it. And that moment, when it comes, you don't want to be ripping out your POS and your whatever you have already because that will disrupt your business. So if you can just like add a plugin into it, get a subscription where you only start paying the moment you really start needing it, not the moment that you think, oh, maybe in two years I might need it. So it's really about helping operators scale as they grow. And like, as the needs evolve, you, you can just add in more components instead of ripping out your entire tech side because that will disrupt you.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I think like you mentioned so many good points there because um, data should be at the focal point of any business. So you look at um, do, do you want to grow? What's your plan for the next year? Like what are we trying to do? What are we trying to achieve here? Um, it's okay, some businesses just want to maintain and just want to coexist. But for ambitious operators, they look at like, okay, I want to be the best at shared menus. I want to be the best in the Indian cuisine. Whatever the cuisine, whatever the type of style, whatever the fine dining, I want to move into Michelin. Like all of these processes can only come when you have the right data to be able to move forward. And if you're not looking into those technical details, you will kind of have the handbrake on your business. So really, um, like using data is the most important thing that they need to do to analyze what's in front of them. And to be, to be ambitious, you need to generally understand what data is going to drive your business. And it could be again down to things we've spoken about in terms of really intricate details around the ingredients that you're using. Or it could be the concepts that you have with your business, um, or the market that you're trying to get into, trends that you're trying to follow. So trends are friends in our business. So we're trying to always um, follow through and understand like why pieces of our menu can be really well, um, you know, we have incredible ah, analysis in our internal system where you can have a good understanding knowing what um, consumers want and how much they're purchasing this specific item or um, when they're purchasing all these intricate details that will drive your business forward 100%.

Speaker A: And there's so many good examples of where a point of sale and inventory system can really work. Hand in hand and complement each other with data points that each of them are the master of. What we see often with a point of sale is that obviously you know what is being sold at which tables, which guests, et cetera, because you'd also connect with guest data. For example, our site is more about the food cost, understanding the margins, and as they fluctuate as ingredient prices go up. So that's a whole ball, uh, game of its own. But what we then see, the connection between the PoS and adventure, which is so beautiful to see, is, okay, how can we increase the average spend and the average profit for a table where you can then start looking at how can we do cross selling? Because maybe you have certain items that you sell on the menu, like a steak that it's expensive, but also it's expensive to purchase. So the margins are actually not great. But how can we now pair this with the right wine, the right side dishes, like a portion of fries that do have better margins. So it's by knowing those profit margins in real time and as they fluctuate over time, because maybe fries get more expensive, etcetera, that that data that we have from sapi, we connect that with what you have in lightspeed, and that really gives you that insight of, okay, how should I be training my waiters to overall improve my bottom line? How can I make them sell more? Not just sell more in terms of revenue, but how can we really increase the bottom line? That's the end goal. Eventually.

Speaker B: It is. Absolutely. And like, um, our product team do an amazing job at understanding why these things are important to business. We, um, released, um, Tempo, which is a new piece into our software, which also moves with the shape of your business and the style of your service. So, like, for us to be in this, um, day and age where we can analyze and understand that, you know, table 37 hasn't ordered or we haven't been to table 37 in, you know, 20 or 30 minutes. Why are we not doing that? Like, they need drinks, they need entrees, whatever it might be. That is something to be able to understand the flow of business or, you know, we need to slow business down. We want these people to spend a little bit more money here. You know, the concept here is that we have slow service, right? Let's slow down. Please stop going to their table. Leave these people alone. Um, so, like, things like this can be incredibly important. You know, they're not details that we'd been thinking about. I think everything in terms of these details has always been upstairs in our brains. And now to be able to have a technology that helps you do that and gives you that understanding, it's going to vastly improve our business 100%.

Speaker A: And now, based on everything you're saying, there's of course the magic buzzword we have to drop at some point in this podcast. AI. There's so much buzz around AI and obviously it is changing the industry for good. There's no way of hiding from it. We have to somewhat embrace it. We do also feel there's a lot of unnecessary buzz around it. But I would love to hear your opinion. Jackson on M. Like, how should operators think about AI?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a question I get asked a lot, even just being in the hospitality community. I think, um, from my time being in the hospitality community in the last year or so, the. This conversation's come up at least 50 times. I think it's just something that people are really curious about. I think there's also a lot of fears around AI. I think, um, I had a panel recently where we discussed AI with, uh, some pretty big players in the hospitality market. And, um, we try to remove the fears because I think if people just try to push AI into their business, they're likely going to make the wrong decision and then have a bad idea around how AI can work for your business. But I think that there's an intelligent decision around how you make AI, um, work for your business. And I think this needs to come from exactly what you need first. So if there's no general needs to be able to grow or be ambitious in understanding where your business moves next year, don't move into A.I. um, this will probably just hurt you and be an extra financial need that you, you probably didn't need to use. But when it's used, well, um, this, like the way that this can simplify your business is really, really healthy. And I think that a lot of businesses can use this in a way to, to push their growth and take away all these manual things that maybe cost us a lot of time and effort in the past. So, like my advice to businesses looking to move into AI would say start very slowly and start adding things, um, as you go, and then, you know, find the important things that you want to invest in and, and that ultimately will be the decision then for you to be able to be a bit more ambitious with your next move as well.

Speaker A: Couldn't agree more. We always keep repeating it's all about the foundations. And there's this old saying of garbage in, garbage out when it comes to data that is just being amplified by AI. Because if you don't have good foundational data in your restaurant, in terms of the data that you input into your systems, if you throw some AI on it and ask a chatbot, hey, what should I be focusing on? Uh, how can I improve my margins? But if the input to that data wasn't there, now AI is going to give you a fancy answer. It's still going to give you, oh, I think you should do this. But if the data that entered it was wrong, it's just going to mislead you. And that's the real danger with AI is that we start trusting it too much without focusing sufficiently on the foundations of what is feeding into that AI. What is training the model. That's the foundation that we always vouch for.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, don't use AI, uh, like me, like I, I talk to ChatGPT just to be my friend, um, sometimes. But no, it's, um, I couldn't agree more. Like, don't let it replace your thoughts. Um, please don't just punch everything in there. Don't use it as a calculator. Like, keep using your brain for the things that, you know you can. It's more like, you know, I tend to use it for brainstorming and like, getting some general ideas or just getting some polish on things that we've already done. Um, you should never use it to make a decision for you unless you've got the right accurate detail. Um, I think again, a lot of businesses just need to analyze what they want to use it for before they make any decisions there. Because you can make the wrong decision and that might cost you in your business moving forward.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Since you took over hospitality at Lightspeed, there's been some incredible positive trends. Tell us more about the strategy.

Speaker B: Strategy is a big word. Um, we spend a lot of time, um, analyzing and moving into the new financial year. And I appreciate the comment. I think it's good to notice that other people are noticing our success. Um, the focal point of our success in the last 12 months has been around our partnerships team and the partnerships that we have. Um, to be completely transparent with you, like, this was not a thing on the retail side. I didn't have the opportunity, I didn't have the community that we have in, in hospitality partnerships and, um, and the team that we have there. Um, although it's a small team, we've only got eight people there. Um, it is also probably the largest partnerships team across, um, point of sale. You know, in in our competitive landscape. So, um, and what they're able to do, um, the team absolutely packs a bit of punch around them. Like they're, they're the market leaders in a number of, a number of areas. Um, in terms of where we work and how we work and what partners we work with are very selective. We have, um, people who have helped set up that network, um, for many years, who's. Absolutely not myself. There's some amazing people before me. Um, and Lauren, who leads my team, um, in the UK is also like the, the foundation of our group there. Um, the team in itself are over, you know, 60% of our revenue. So what we're able to do, I think is quite unique and I think it's because of the great relationships that we have. Um, and as I said, like, this was something I completely underestimated before I moved over. And I think, um, the, the ability to, to scale with this group has been incredibly impressive. This, they've exceeded all expectations and it's because of the partners that we work with and our ability to generate revenue based on relationship is something that I've never really seen before and it's incredible. And you can probably understand that it's something that we want to push into next year and the year after. And, um, the success that this group has had is something that's really laid the foundation for us to be successful in the uk. So, yeah, a lot of my strategy, um, before I came in was around, you know, the group as a collective. But then with the power that we found in the first quarter, uh, of this financial year, we had to pivot that and move towards where our trends were. And obviously that was in hospitality, 100%.

Speaker A: I can only commend how you guys built out partnerships because the truth is, of all POS companies that we've seen out there, Lightspeed is the only one that takes partnerships as serious as you guys do. You actually make it a part of a strategy and the numbers speak for itself. 60% of your revenue is coming from partnerships, so clearly good investment. So whoever made the call, was it you or your predecessors? Very good calls to get into that, but at least you've been growing out the team very strongly. And anyone we work with, Lightspeed is always very easy to work with. It's always been pleasure to collaborate on existing clients. Also this, for example, very fun that you guys want to do this. So, uh, kudos to Lightspeed.

Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate it. I think it's music to my ears and I think, you know, the team, um, would also Love those reflections. I think we have some really, really amazing um, opportunities that we have via this group and um, you know we've been able to travel Europe um, based on, you know, relativity with our partners and doing amazing things. Amazing opportunities. I mentioned to you over a coffee recently, we were talking about the fact that we were able to go to the San Siro in Milan um, with one of our resellers who, you know, ah, an incredible reseller and it also gives us the ability with these resellers to be in places that we are not uh, able to have fully fledged teams and locations. So you know um, our reseller partnership and our reseller network is also another one that's made us incredibly successful because we have boots on the ground via someone who can do uh, something that we have to do with our presence in the UK and they're able to do it in other locations and be Lightspeed's generated there for us too.

Speaker A: Amazing. So Jackson, you know like the needs of hospitality operators can be quite complex and as I said you can't have an all in one software trying to solve all the needs that a restaurant may have across POS, inventory, accounting, etc. I guess a beautiful example of a collaboration between our companies and also with another company, William Stanley is for example how we work together on the cork and collection. Very sophisticated fine dining operator here in London where they chose for Lightspeed for the point of sale, SAPI for inventory and then expert finance accounting with William Stanley. I think this is a beautiful example. How has that been for you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean like um, through the connection of William Stanley. This was great and I think like the important part to note here is that they came with a lot of complexities and I would say that um, there were some doubts at the beginning whether we could all connect to be able to make this happen for the operation that they need. You know you think about um, like the excellence of that brand and how unique they are and how popular they are in the uk. I think you know you have to get these things right so you know to be able to connect um, with a number of different partners there and obviously our work with yourselves like this, this was a ah, situation where we turned something from being you know, a scary opportunity for us, um, into something that ended up being incredibly positive because were able to overcome the doubts that they had around the business but also around the hospitality industry. And um, there's a lot of internal factors there as well but um, you know for visibility it was great that we could all combine and Turn that into a positive situation and, you know, they're obviously a very happy customer today.

Speaker A: And tell us a bit more about Lightspeed in general as a company. And is Lightspeed for everyone, like, or who, who can work with Lightspeed?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely not. I, um, think, like, it's important to know where we fit in the market. I'm not the type of person that would be so proud to say, like, hey, everyone should use Lightspeed. It's just not the case. Um, you want to look at the type of business operators, um, that are looking to invest in their business. You know, you want to make smart decisions with your business, then then you should start looking at Lightspeed. If you want to have a base in a platform for your business, then you should look at Lightspeed and then, you know, by all means, like ambitious operators and people that are, ah, looking to have their businesses grow. Lightspeed will grow with you and will help you grow. So, um, that's the type of customer we look for. Um, it can be for everyone, but it's probably not, it's not best used for everyone. So, yeah, it's important that, um, the right people are understanding this. And, you know, my, my team certainly wouldn't push this on the wrong operator. Um, you know, we would downshift towards someone else. And if there's something that's, um, maybe too high and complex for us or maybe just not even in our market, then we'd probably tell them to look at other operators too. Again, it's not something we're too proud to get in the way of.

Speaker A: Makes total sense. And how's it been since Dax, uh, took over again? Because you've been through multiple CEOs now.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How has things changed for you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I've been at the company for seven years, so, um, I've seen a lot of changes and I've seen a lot of, um, like, directional moves that we've made. And, um, what Dax brings is a calming influence over our business. So, um, for a long period of time there, like, we were, we were making acquisitions and we're really trying to build this juggernaut. Uh, and what we have today is incredible because of those moves. And I, you know, can stand by all the decisions that we've made at Lightspeed. I think, you know, the business we are today is incredible. And it's because of the past, um, moving into the present that we have now. Um, Dax really brings a calming influence back to the business. Um, obviously he was, uh, found he's founder and he was CEO for a period of time there as well. Um, so him coming back has realigned our strategy. I think. Um, our plan, uh, 12 months ago was to really align our purpose behind the business, and Emea Hospitality is at the forefront for our focus, and Dax brought that back with us. And the other part to this is, you know, our. In terms of our strategy and what we push out to the market and what we ask, um, from our investors. We've been really clear with that since Dax's return. And I think, um, I think as a. As a whole, for people that have been around for a fair while, it was a really welcome move for us. So, yeah, he's an interesting guy. Um, interesting in a great way. Like, he, you know, spending time with him. I'm very lucky to be able to get visibility with him in my world too. So, um, you know, he's not your everyday CEO, I can tell you that. Um, he's brought out, um, he's recently brought out a book, um, Echoes From Eden, which is, uh, something that everyone should pick up, which is, you know, also got absolutely nothing to do with point of sale. Um, but if you're looking for a light read, like, this is a. He's a really interesting man, and that might also give you a sense of what he brings to our business.

Speaker A: That's amazing. Well, Jackson, thank you so much for sharing all your insights today here with us in the studio, and, uh, hope to see you again.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you very much.