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Whether it’s coming from Seamless or Caviar or whoever it is. Gourmos: No, because for us, it’s an email. Thayer: Is it hectic to have separate delivery services coming through with requests? Magid: Caviar, Seamless and DoorDash in New York, Seamless and Eat24 in our New Jersey location. Thayer: How many of these platforms are you on? So I think in 2016 you’ll see our delivery business increase. So we are evaluating our best path to get more entrenched into that. So as a growing brand, you kind of have to be in that game. I think that New Yorkers especially are more inclined to order food through some of these platforms than they were five years ago. Magid: We’re getting deeper into delivery now. Thayer: What's your overall delivery strategy? And a lot of these partners are really good at monitoring all that feedback and telling us, “Here’s how we can get delivery times 10 minutes faster” Caviar also has their support team, so you can call them to check on an order or complain if there’s a problem, but a lot of the feedback came directly to us. So if there’s a problem, they’re likely to call you first. Magid: They’re ordering through a separate platform, but they know the food is coming from your restaurant. Gourmos: Believe it or not, they call us still. Thayer: When something goes wrong, how are you getting customer feedback?

We give delivery services guidelines: they have to keep food hot, have the right meals, have enough couriers to get the food their fast enough. We don’t want our reputation to get ruined by our food being compromised in delivery. So whenever we saw a little bit of a slide, like a complaint from a customer, we addressed that. Gourmos: We never want our food to be compromised. Thayer: So there’s no formal analysis or metrics you look at? And if you have a good partner, like Caviar, who can adapt quickly, it’s a smooth process. You have to figure out the problems and troubleshoot with the team.

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Magid: It’s really trial and error, because a lot of these businesses are new. Thayer: What’s your testing process like? Once we roll it out to all the other spots, we know it will work and that all the problems have been figured out. Magid: Anytime we bring in a new technology like Caviar, we always test it in just one of our places first, to get all the kinks out. So making food and getting it there is not a problem. We built 7 restaurants and have a central location that supports them all. Gourmos: Somewhat, but it doesn’t cannibalize us. Thayer: Did you suddenly need to make more food to keep pace with your delivery business? To the extent that Caviar can just handle all the fulfillment, handle the volume, the wheel turns smoothly.

So we were already set up for the delivery format. We can facilitate a lot of volume because the food is all ready to go and we’re just packaging it up. And when you smoke food for 20 hours - like our brisket is smoked for 20 hours - the food is ready, it’s not like it’s ordered and then cooked. Magid: We were such a natural fit for them, because our food already comes in to-go containers. Thayer: What has being on Caviar done for your business?

Honestly the thing that sparked the interest was that I just happened to read they had been acquired by Square and recognized the name. And then companies like Caviar started calling. There was just no way to handle both the restaurant and deliveries. Magid: We did, very briefly, but we got overwhelmed after our New York Times review came out. Thayer: Would you have tried delivery on your own eventually?

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