The second instalment in our Partner Spotlight series has landed. And this time out, we’ve been in conversation with Dojo - a leading payments specialist and key partner that helps us deliver faster and more unified payment experiences for operators across the foodservice sector.
Syrve’s Head of Growth, Anna Warchol, recently sat down with two senior figures from Dojo, Colin Jackson and Jonathan Knott. And what was intended as a fairly brief interview turned into a rather fruitful discussion spanning a raft of different topics. Before we begin, here’s a little profile information about Colin and Jonathan.
As Head of Partner Technology, Colin works at the intersection of product, technology and partnerships. With around 10 years’ experience in payments, his focus includes integrated payments, connected hospitality technology and helping partners build reliable solutions that improve operations and the customer experience.
Jonathan is General Manager of Data Products and leads the development of data products that turn payments information into practical commercial insights. An experienced consumer-insights specialist, he helps hospitality businesses understand customer behaviour, identify growth opportunities and measure the impact of their marketing.
To kick things off, Anna asked Colin and Jonathan to take a step back from payments and technology to look through the eyes of the customers and clients.
So what makes a great restaurant experience for you?
CJ: It's a good question. So, for me, I really love food. It's about finding hidden gems, little authentic places through word of mouth or a blog. Having said that, it's only one part of the experience. It's (also about) all the little details, like the attention that you get from the staff and receiving a good service - all those kinds of things.
One of the things that I love doing when I go to a new restaurant is asking the staff what their favourite dish is. And then you go for it and it’s just a really nice dish. For me, that's something that's really special about going to a restaurant…you can't recreate that. It's that knowledge and insight from the people that work there and care about what they do. You can't beat it.
CJ: Yeah, I mean obviously it's a known situation in the industry. It’s hard to get staff and retain them and especially the better staff. It's definitely something that we hear about as being a problem that our customers have.
The experience that the staff have working in a restaurant really makes a difference as to whether they want to stay. (It’s important) to make sure your staff are looked after and have the right tools, so that they can find enjoyment in their work.
How can restaurants control rising operating costs while retaining good staff and creating an environment where people want to stay?
CJ: I think it boils down to not fighting against the current of running your business. Concentrate on the things that matter. And the things that matter are your staff, your customers, (and the) running of your business. It's the human touch; working with your staff and customers and finding the right tools and technology.
Do restaurant owners recognise that the technology they choose can influence the atmosphere and experience they create?
CJ: I think so. I've certainly been into restaurants where you can see how flustered the staff are because things are just going wrong. And it's often not because of anything they're doing wrong. It's because of how the restaurant is being managed from a technology standpoint.
Technology can be the greatest thing and it can also be the absolute worst because if it goes wrong, it goes wrong in a big way. And suddenly you're fighting against the thing that was supposed to be helping you.
Are restaurant owners beginning to see payment as part of the guest experience, rather than simply the final transaction?
CJ: I think people are catching up to this way of thinking because historically the payment side was quite literally transactional. It was just the final piece of the puzzle. What we see now is really the huge spread of people's expectations when it comes to payments; to be able to pay the way they want to pay and there being more diversity in that.
"There's a much bigger payment ecosystem now in terms of how people expect to be able to interact with a restaurant."
When I first started in payments, it really was a card machine taking a payment and that was it, whereas now people are expecting to be able to interact with a restaurant in different ways. Depending on the type of venue, it could be QR payments, ordering payments, or it could be like a pay as you go…or a kiosk style solution in a quick service restaurant.
There's a much bigger payment ecosystem now in terms of how people expect to be able to interact with a restaurant. And it's up to us to make sure we're building the right tools that service our customers.
Payments should feel invisible when they work, but become a major frustration when they fail. Is it becoming harder for restaurant owners to meet customer expectations around split bills, payment methods and different ways to order and pay?
CJ: Absolutely. It's a key thing and you touched on something really important there which is reliability and the expectation of things (going) right. Because there's nothing worse for a business owner or your customers when a payment flow goes wrong.
There's a level of embarrassment in that. It's a really big contentious issue and it's our job as a payments provider to ensure that the process is smooth and slick. It’s the biggest thing that we care about as a payment provider: that our systems are reliable. For restaurant owners, it's the lifeblood of their business.
How is the technology behind payments changing?
CJ: I think technology is growing and becoming a deeper part of our lives every single day. And payments are no exception (but) not just in the ways of taking payments. It's also the interconnectedness - an expectation that all of our technology should be smart enough to talk to each other and become greater than the sum of its parts.
For us what we see is a huge growth in the surface area - that complexity but also how that interacts with other systems. So I think it's really important to get that right, and to be able to present that complexity as something quite simple.
Can you give examples of how Dojo integrates with other systems and how that helps restaurant owners run the business or save money?
CJ: In terms of integrations as with wonderful partners like Syrve, (it’s about) how to make sure our systems talk together in a way that is fundamentally useful for a business owner. So, to be able to send an amount to the card machine and drive the sale that way so that both systems are in sync.
Or even being able to pull the value of a bill from staff walking around with a device and being able to just bring up the bill for table six and pay it off immediately. It saves a lot of back and forth, a lot of pain points.
What hospitality trends are appearing most often in customer conversations? Are businesses focused on AI, or are other topics taking priority?
JK: There are a couple of things that we see loud and clear in the hospitality sector. (There’s) a clear shift away from late-night spending - while this isn’t a new trend, we see far fewer people visiting hospitality venues after 8:00. That decline is driving the overall decline in the sector at the moment. So there is certainly a shift in behaviour that hasn't happened overnight.
But the counter is that more people are willing to eat out in the morning - maybe that's the brunch or café occasion, (unlike) the marked dip after 8:00 where fewer people are prepared to splash out.
(There’s also a) shift in spending in the takeaway sector. So taking food or drink out and having it at home or elsewhere is performing better for that late night. More people are staying in, eating in, doing more social occasions at home rather than the out of home stuff.
Is that linked to rising restaurant prices, or is it a broader cultural shift?
JK: I think there's a few things driving it. Certainly costs, yes. That late-night decline tells us that people are less prepared to go out and spend…it's become more of a big hit on your budget especially in the macroeconomic climate. So that's definitely true.
Also we haven't got hard data on this ourselves, but it's very commonly acknowledged that slightly younger demographics are behaving differently to other older demographics as they become a bigger part of society.
How are restaurant businesses adapting to this shift from evening occasions towards more daytime trade?
JK: Those that are doing it best are able to communicate different occasions. So if a business clearly won't shift from being a late-night restaurant into something completely different, it’s about giving that person who's considering what to do with their money that month, a reason to visit them at a different time.
We see lots of offers targeting the time of day such as the afternoon. For example, you get a really good value occasion if you visit us between 3 and 5:00. You see a lot of people trying to find new reasons why you might visit them.
Which KPIs are operators monitoring, and which important measures are businesses still overlooking?
JK: The most poorly understood part of a hospitality business in my view is the customer. There is a huge amount of gut feel and instinct in the hospitality businesses about customer behaviour.
"There is a huge amount of gut feel and instinct in the hospitality businesses about customer behaviour."
Clearly great hospitality businesses get to know their customers. That’s where hospitality needs to be catching up, versus say the FMCG sector where Tesco and the big supermarkets are all over this data. There's just not the same level of understanding about customers and how they’re behaving.
Colin, is there anything you would add to Jonathan's point?
CK: I think it's about being able to surface the data and the insights which is really what’s going to make a difference to hospitality. It’s so much easier from a technology point of view to get this data when it comes to the online world (as opposed) to traditional bricks and mortar setups where it largely isn’t there.
But we are seeing this transformation where things are moving online. I think it's going to be such an interesting time for the sector when they have this power, once they've got all this data they can work with.
What do you expect payments to look like in five years?
CK: It's so funny but whenever I go to payments conferences, the big thing that they always talk about is agentic commerce and the AI world. But I don't know how that translates to the person. Definitely we do see a trend of the blurring of those lines becoming more and more prevalent.
It’s becoming really interesting because of the order and pay solution. So, it's online, but it's in store. There's a strange mix of the two. I expect that to accelerate. I think alternative payment methods and open banking could be interesting.
And I think my big bet on future guests would be payments on non-traditional carbon sheet devices being able to take payments on any Android device. That's already something we have and see growing - a lot of people have become really interested in it.
I think what’s particularly interesting is the form factor where suddenly, it’s not just a traditional card machine. For instance, you could have a little square device that sits on the table and people can just make their payments on it, instead of calling a waiter.
But if I'm going to a nice restaurant I want that human interaction and I think that (tech allows) restaurant owners to spend more time ensuring that personal touch by offloading the things that they don't want to deal with.
Payment needs differ significantly between a QSR and a sit-down restaurant. What should operators consider when choosing a payment solution for a new independent venue or a growing chain?
CK: I think it's one of those things where every owner is different and the experience they want within their restaurant is going to be wildly different. One thing I would say is to try and experiment with this stuff. Take a leap of faith.
Because we've seen cases in more casual restaurants where they've tried out kiosk technology that they never expected they would, and actually found that customers were buying more. It’s the non-judgement thing.
Also, try to look at case studies. We have tons of examples at Dojo of different ways people have tried different technologies in hospitality. And so we'd be more than happy to help out with any restaurant owners that are curious.
Do restaurant operators understand that payments can affect revenue and the bottom line?
JK: I think the most progressive operators get that point entirely. Those that are investing in, say, insight data solutions understand that that essentially helps them make decisions that get them more customers who spend more often.
Whereas businesses that are only really thinking operationally - they're the ones that typically don't perform as well. And our data backs that up. So I think the majority haven't quite made that link. How can payments data drive my revenue? But the minority of best performing businesses are getting that.
Have you seen examples where investing more thought in payment technology has produced a measurable return?
JK: So, payments data for many businesses that we work with is helping them target where their customers are, how to find more of them, etcetera. Probably the clearest example is a business using payments data to understand where their customers are in the country and (then using) targeted digital marketing activity through Facebook and Instagram ads.
We could tell them where their customers were coming from based on payments data. Then we could measure the impact of that marketing campaign through payments data. The result was twelve grand of extra sales.
Most of those sales came from people they hadn't seen before. Therefore, you can make the link that it was genuine incremental revenue, not just cannibalised revenue. So, yeah, that's a good example of a progressive thinker that is getting the power of payments data to make more money. That wasn't doable a few years ago.
"The basis for everything that we do, every decision we make is absolutely founded in what it means for our customers"
How does Dojo use customer feedback when developing and prioritising new technology?
JK: The way in which we run our business is that we want to make decisions that are customer-centric. So that is built into every development process we have. And the criteria for deciding if we do something or not tends to be based on where the value is for the customer and clearly for Dojo as well, but only if those two things come together. I'd say the way we develop our solutions is really closely tied with what the customers are telling us.
CJ: I think that really covers it. The basis for everything that we do, every decision we make is absolutely founded in what it means for our customers. And we love working with partners that have the same philosophy as us when it comes to this kind of thing. I think that's where the relationship that we have with Syrve is great.
It's been going for a couple of years now and we clearly have the same philosophy - it's all about making a difference and being the best in breed at what we do.
Why did Dojo choose to partner with Syrve, given that we are still building our presence in the UK?
CJ: We absolutely love working with partners that have the same philosophy and approach to how they operate. And that's building brilliant technology and products, really caring about the customer, wanting to drive and push things forward.
You guys have really worked closely with us and given us feedback on some of the integrations and features. It makes it enjoyable if you're in a partnership and you're both trying to align on solving problems together. It's so much easier to do if everyone thinks the same way.
I really feel that's something that we have in this partnership. And it's proven itself. We've got hundreds of customers that are enjoying the fruits of our labour.
What do businesses tend to value most about their POS systems, and what commonly drives them to switch providers?
Colin Jackson: Off the record but very on the record? We hear about people having trouble sometimes with their POS provider and that they're moving away, often largely because they're not able to support them in the way that the customer needs them to. So maybe even fairly basic things like putting support requests in and not getting answers quickly enough.
And the POS is such a crucial part of operating that business. So you really need it to be working for you. If there's problems with it and you're not getting the support that you need, then it can be enough to push people away from using the system.
It's no easy task to swap out your POS system because it's the heart of everything that you do. And so from what I see, things tend to have to be in a pretty bad place to push people over that edge.
Changing a POS can feel like a major undertaking. What makes the process so difficult?
CJ: I think it's just the coordination of everything, like all of your stock information and if you've got loyalty or online ordering through QR codes…the POS is the centre and often there's lots of things that it's responsible for.
So you're not just changing the POS. You've got to figure out what this means for my staff management, for my loyalty, for my stock management, for ordering…there's just so much that you have to think about.
And for businesses that are starting out this is why…it’s really important to find the right provider because it'll be so much harder to rip it out later down the line. You've got to see this stuff as an investment and ask: am I getting the right technology that’s going to help me rather than hinder me?
When customers onboard with Dojo, do they prefer personal guidance, or are most of them comfortable setting the system up independently?
Colin Jackson: It's a great question from our point of view with our devices. We've known the pain of what it's like to set up payments in businesses. So when we were building Dojo, we made a very conscious effort to make it like setting up a new phone where you turn it on and it's a simple guide that walks you through and then it's up and running.
We wanted to take that same experience and apply it to payments so that someone could literally get our card machine out of the box, walk through a wizard and be able to take payments in five minutes.
There's often a little bit of setup that needs to happen on the POS but all of our machines, if it's in conjunction with a partner like yourselves, will go out ready to be integrated. So it's all about making it a really smooth process. Having said that, there are also people who do like the support and just want to make sure things go right. And we're always here to help out on those things.
How does the Dojo and Syrve partnership improve operational efficiency and the guest experience?
Colin Jackson: So, I'll cover it first from a business point of view - the integrations that we've managed to build between us are really nice technology and so many customers benefit from it every single day…and they tackle a few key operational points.
"The problem is time not spent with your customers or thinking about your business or doing the things that matter. It starts to fold into the customer experience as well."
Speed is one thing first and foremost, so being able to have an order go from one system to the other and all the data is correct and everything's there. It's something that staff don't have to think about. They can just press a button and take a payment and it's all good. It's nice and easy.
Reconciliation is a huge thing as well. Any business owner that's had to figure out why some anomalous payment is in the system or why they’re down by a certain amount will know the pain of having to go through all the transactions and figure out where it's gone wrong - you can waste hours doing it.
The problem is time not spent with your customers or thinking about your business or doing the things that matter. It starts to fold into the customer experience as well.
What is the one piece of advice you would give someone opening a restaurant?
JK: So, if I'm opening a new business, I'd want to know everything I can about the people in that area and how they behave. Getting a handle on that is crucial to the success or not of the restaurant. So really use whatever you can in terms of data sources and systems that can help you to better understand who's visiting your business, why, how to improve based on what they want. Those kinds of things.
CJ: I would say take some time to really pick the best providers for your business. Do your research. Make sure they're forward-thinking and that they're staying on top of the tech stack so that you don't get left behind.
Make sure that they're there to support you, that they fundamentally care about you as a business owner. Because it's going to make your life easier. They'll offer support and be able to help you through that growth that you go through as a business owner.