The showroom will have a live restaurant and bar setup. | Image courtesy of SpotOn
POS company SpotOn is opening a showroom in Hawaii.
It may sound like a restaurant tech Mad Libs. But there’s no madness here. The company sees a lot of value in the showroom concept, particularly in Hawaii, one of the country’s most unique, and uniquely challenging, restaurant markets.
SpotOn also has offices in San Francisco, Detroit, Austin, Chicago, and New York City. The Honolulu showroom is its first anywhere, but it plans to open more. It likes the idea of allowing operators to see and feel its technology in person.
“We can really help folks understand, it’s not just new technology that you’re buying, but actually some behavioral change too,” said SpotOn CMO Kevin Bryla. The showroom will have a functioning restaurant and bar setup, so SpotOn staff can demonstrate how its tech works in context. Clients will also be able to use the showroom as a training site before going live.
It brings a more immersive element to the typical IT sales process. In the lower 48, some of SpotOn’s sales pitches happen over Zoom, which is fine for demoing software, but not the whole package.
“I think that physical part of it and the ability to sit and play with the stuff is kind of a big deal,” Bryla said.
Operators can visit the showroom by appointment, and SpotOn also plans to hold events in the space. It is located in Our Kaka’ako, a mixed-use district in Honolulu, and will double as an office, with 10 employees stationed there currently.
It represents a big investment in Hawaii from SpotOn. The company has been in the state for six years and now works with hundreds of operators there. It is growing quickly and sees more upside.
“I think it’s close to 7,000 restaurants in Hawaii,” Bryla said. “There’s opportunity there.”
The company felt that the idiosyncrasies of the market called for a more hands-on approach. Hawaii is a six-hour flight from the mainland U.S., and the isolation makes for a unique business environment. Relationships, community, and trust are even more important than usual, so it helps to have a physical presence.
“You need that community to survive, because not only physically, but business-wise, you are on an island, and so you’re stronger together,” said Megan Palmer, SpotOn’s director of external communications.
Hawaii’s remoteness also creates practical issues for running a restaurant, like reliable internet and access to everyday supplies like printer paper. SpotOn hopes to be a support system there too: It plans to stock printer paper at the new office, for instance.
“It sounds small if you’re not living there,” Bryla said, “but trying to think through those little details makes the difference.”
The proliferation of technology, and particularly AI, since the pandemic, has created some trust issues between operators and vendors. Many restaurants are tired of hyped-up sales pitches and an endless parade of new features that don’t solve their actual problems.
SpotOn’s showroom is the latest recent tech move that feels like a step toward improving those relationships.
There was also Toast’s announcement last month that it plans to fund the opening of a new restaurant that will run on Toast’s technology; SevenRooms’ new free tool that aggregates reservations across platforms; and Thanx’s free AI bootcamps for operators hosted by co-founder Aaron Newton.
These are all examples of vendors putting their money where their mouth is to benefit restaurants, while also doing a little strategic marketing along the way.
If nothing else, these companies are thinking outside the box about how to sell their technology in a competitive market. That’s more than welcome in a sector that too often feels rote and impersonal.
