Category Archives: Data

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Are Credit Card Processors and POS Dealers Cannibalizing Themselves?

There’s no question COVID-19 turned all our lives upside down. For the restaurant industry, it meant pivoting as quickly as possible just to stay alive.

One of those pivots is adopting technology at a rate faster than any other time in history. From new ordering platforms making it easier to sell curbside/delivery to new contactless payment options for when guests are dining in, there’s no shortage of new solutions that have streamlined operations.

But what have these changes meant for the credit card processing industry? Or even the POS dealers and resellers?

Getting Cut Out of the Deal

Many processors and dealers have been so quick to accept and push solutions to their restaurant clients without stopping to think that they’re actually cutting themselves out of the deal.

What do we mean by that?

Restaurant POS dealers and credit card processors make a significant portion of their revenue from credit card transactions. However, most of the solutions that have emerged are using third-party online processors like Stripe and PayPal; they aren’t leveraging the restaurant’s existing processor.

So when a credit card processor or POS dealer strikes a deal with a third-party contactless payment solution and resells it to their restaurant clients, what they’re actually doing is driving business away from themselves and into the hands of a different online processor.

Yikes.

And most don’t even know they’re doing it. They’re being so reactive to the state of the industry that they aren’t stopping to think through how the transactions are being processed from these systems. Sure, a commissioned-based kickback program from that solution sounds great. But that’s not where the money lies. The money always has and still does lie within the transactions themselves. And once these processors get the restaurant onboarded with a contactless payment system, it’s hard to switch them away. Which means as consumers continue to accelerate their adoption of mobile payments, the processor and dealer put a knife to their own revenue stream for years to come.

There’s a Better Way. Vemos Pay.

We at Vemos do not believe credit card processors or POS dealers should be cut out of the mobile payments revolution. In fact, we see it as an opportunity to increase revenue for not only the restaurant, but also the processor and POS dealer.
Because our legacy and upbringing has been in the inner-workings of this industry, we understand first-hand how the supply chain works and where the opportunities exist for all parties. That’s why we built Vemos Pay with the credit card processors in mind, and remains to be the only solution that is completely agnostic to work with multiple processors and POS systems.

How does that work?

Our unique technology allows the tokenized credit card to be sent directly through the restaurant’s existing credit card processor. This ensures the processor and POS dealer is still getting their cut of revenue from transactions, whether those transactions are happening on a mobile device or with a physical card at the POS.

Vemos Pay is also completely free to the restaurant as well as the customer, and integrates with over 16 POS systems. So dealers and processors alike can feel confident in recommending Vemos Pay to their clientele, while also ensuring they have a business model themselves for years to come.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Mobile Payments Driving Traffic at Restaurants

While mobile payments have been available for the restaurant industry for the past few years, restaurants were slow to adopt them, especially compared to other industries. And then COVID hit.

The immediate need for reduced interaction between waitstaff and guests, increased efficiency and lower overhead is what brought mobile payment solutions to the forefront.

But it’s more than just payments. There’s several added benefits that came along with mobile payments that most restauranteurs did not anticipate: a surge of guest adoption that drove increased traffic, increased tipping, and increased spending.

What’s driving the surge? Customer Experience.

The very thing that was holding the restaurant industry back on adopting technology became the thing that ended up catapulting engagement. And that’s meeting customer experiences in a way that they expect.

What do I mean by that?

For the past several decades, the hospitality industry has believed that customer experience is in-person, face-to-face, physical interactions. But what other industries have proven over the past 10 years is that customer experience goes far beyond the in-person exchange.

Customers have become increasingly digital, and as a result the experience they expect is a mix of in-person and digital offerings. In fact, 74% of consumers in a survey stated they prefer to use their phone to pay for food. So while the physical interaction may feel important to the restaurant, it’s not an important driver for experience with consumers.

Let’s look at the airline industry with Delta – it’s similar in how they provide hospitality, but radically different in how they provide customer experiences.

Historically, the only way to check into a flight was to stand in a long line to wait for a person to help you. That was also the only way you could pay for a checked bag and get your seat assignment. And while we were greeted by a person, the wasted time spent waiting around for that person to be able to help us caused more friction and distaste than the face-to-face interaction made up for.

Then Delta digitized this entire process with an app and gave all their customers the gift of time. Now I’m able to check into my flight, pay for my bags, see my seat assignment, and get real-time updates on my gate and departure time right in the app. I don’t have to wait in line when I arrive at the airport — I drop my pre-paid bag off at the kiosk, walk through security, and head to my gate. It’s seamless, it meets me where I expect the experience to be, and it allows me to enjoy the personal engagements that much more.

The restaurant industry is finally seeing this for themselves. Having a digital solution that allows your guest to pull up their check the moment they sit down, transparently see the information that’s been added, and pay whenever they’re ready gives them that same gift of time and meets them where they expect the experience to be.

How significant is that time?

According to Lumina data, speed of service is a key driver for consumers when eating out. The average time it takes to finish a meal, ask for the bill, and pay that bill takes between 12 and 17 minutes. That’s 12-17 minutes of friction that’s bringing down your level of customer experience. Even if you had the opportunity to physically present them a check and say thank you, that’s not going to make up for the annoying delays (in fact, I vividly remember all the times I was late due to waiting for my physical check, but I’ve never once had a thank you leave a lasting impression). That’s why QR codes at the end of the receipt aren’t working for restaurants — they’re more of the same experience. Consumer apps like Vēmos Pay put the power in the consumers hands and allows this waiting time to disappear, increasing the perception of experience of their overall visit.

So how does this translate to increased traffic & sales?

Customers continue to go where they have great experiences. That’s always been the case with restaurants & hospitality, and that part hasn’t changed. When you deliver customer experiences in a way that they expect — both physically and digitally — you win in multiple ways.

When it comes to mobile payments, joining a consumer-facing app has shown to unlock many residual benefits beyond paying a check:

  • Get discovered. Consumer apps like Vēmos Pay have thousands of users on them already. Getting listed on these apps allows you to show up to these consumers who are already enjoying contactless payments elsewhere and shows them that your experience is in line with what they’re looking for.
  • Increase cost per head. Time is money. Literally. Mobile payments reduce the wait time after finishing a meal, which not only means faster table turns, but also an increase in spend and tips. That’s because mobile payment apps provide transparency for what’s on the check throughout the meal. This has proven in many studies to increase the guest’s overall spend. Mobile payment apps also auto calculate tip percentages, which has proven to increase tips for your staff.
  • Integrate loyalty. You can now turn mobile payments into loyalty without having to manage a separate system. You already have a line of communication with your customers with a history of Sku level purchases, which allows you to promote your deals and offer rewards directly to your guests while they’re in the venue making purchasing decisions. This allows you to unlock the power that the Starbucks app has created without needing to build it yourself.
  • Repeatable business. Not only do all of the above increase customer experience that drives them to come back, but 84% of Americans are more likely to go back to brands to redeem an offer, with 57% spending more with those brands. It’s this cycle of reduced friction from eliminating wait times, increased experience from allowing guests to pay on their own terms, and driving loyalty through that same system that’s driving traffic and increasing sales.


    • Author Whitney Larson Posted on

    The Biggest Opportunity You’re Missing

    It’s a story that’s too often told, but it’s arguably the most important story there is. Because it often becomes the difference between life and death of a nightlife venue.

    This past weekend, I was invited to a product launch party that was hosted at a third-party cider venue. The place was packed. I’m talking bursting at the seams packed. And they only had 2 bartenders working.

    It took over 30 minutes to get our first round of drinks, so I just paid for everyone in my group to ease the burdens of the bartender needing to do multiple transactions. Then it took another 25 minutes to get our second round. At this point, we’ve spent nearly an hour of our time just waiting to get a drink, so we left to go drink somewhere else. We supported the launch like we wanted to, but staying here wasn’t worth our time anymore.

    The largest e-commerce retailers spend millions of dollars a year to understand their customers. The nightlife industry has yet to change its mindset that it’s beneficial to have the same solutions that thriving e-commerce companies use, which is available to them at a monthly price that’s less than my one tab. Why are we so stuck in our old ways?

    Aside from the issue of being grossly understaffed, there’s a bigger issue at hand for the venue: they have no data to improve. Think about it, the largest e-commerce retailers spend millions of dollars a year to understand their customers’ habits so well that they’re predicting what they’re going to buy next. Amazon alone spent nearly $19 billion in 2019 on their marketing efforts and they achieved 20% net revenue growth.

    But we as a nightlife industry have yet to change our mindset that it’s beneficial to have solutions that e-commerce has to experience that level of growth. At the end of the night, this venue is going to look at their POS reports and use it as a guide for how they performed that day, and it’ll tell them a very inaccurate story. They have no idea how many people were inside their venue, which is a huge issue. Here’s why:

    • I paid for all of my friends’ drinks. Their POS has no idea that my friends even existed. It’ll show them the number of transactions that were made, but it won’t show them the number of people that were there.


    • If they knew how many guests were there, they’d know the average amount each guest spent, often known as average cost per transaction (CPT). My tab was $160 total on two rounds of drinks for my group of 10. Their POS is just going to show 1 transaction for $160. But in reality, the average CPT is $8. That’s a huge difference between a CPT of $160 and a CPT of $8. They’re going to operate their business believing every guest spends $160, when in reality, the average spend across all guests is $8.


    • While their labor to sales ratio may look favorable, they would have likely made thousands more dollars if they would have been staffed adequately. A couple extra bartenders would have reduced the wait time for people getting drinks, resulting in more drinks in people’s hands, resulting in more money. But because they don’t know how many people there were, they’re bound to make the same staffing decision for a future launch party looking at incomplete POS reports to guide their decision.

    But why does this matter?

    It matters because this is the type of information that needs to guide decisions to continue to grow and build their business. And because this was a launch party for a different company, I’d estimate 80% of the people that were there had never been to that venue before. And statistics say that 70% are unlikely to come back on their own. Now add in the terrible experience of waiting an hour to get drinks, and that percentage likely increases.

    But what’s worse is because they weren’t tracking who came, they have no log of who was there to be able to reach these people again. Do you think Amazon grew to be an $87 billion company by not knowing who’s on their site and not understanding what drives their sales?

    I’ve spent over a decade working alongside venue owners and I know firsthand that many are putting their life savings into their venue. I know they want it to succeed. They aren’t looking to throw all their money into a business that’s going to die in the average 18-month timespan. But I also know that most aren’t thinking about how to grow year after year. They tell me they’re “surviving.” They run without insight, hoping people walk through their doors when they open. They aren’t investing in systems that allow them to experience continuous growth.

    The Missed Opportunity

    Had this venue been using the Vemos ID scanner at the door, they would have had the exact number of people that attended their venue that day. They also would have the names, gender, age, and geographic location of all of those attendees in their dashboard. And had they connected their POS to their Vemos dashboard, they would have the exact CPT readily displayed to them. They’d know which guests made the transaction and what they purchased. They’d be able to define the type of customers that have the biggest impact on their bottom line, and have a strategy to go out and attract more of those types of customers. They’d know who was a new vs. returning guest, and would have been able to get some of those new guests back in the door.

    This system is what allows a nightlife venue to operate within an e-commerce model at a monthly cost that’s less than my tab. It’s not hard. It’s not expensive. But it can make the difference between surviving and thriving.

    Author Whitney Larson Posted on

    How Community-Based ID Scanning Can Provide Safety

    As a Minneapolis-based business in the nightlife industry, it’s hard to see a dominant player in the Minneapolis nightlife scene be struck with the terror of an active shooter inside their venue. It’s the third incident of a shooting inside a Minneapolis venue since we first started talking about this back in 2018. In the days since this incident, we’ve been spending our time thinking about those involved — the victims, the staff, the owners, the guests — which has refueled the fire inside of us to do our part to help keep nightlife venues across the country a fun, safe place for everyone to be.

    It’s a mission that’s driven us from the beginning. We believe the best security is being able to stop an incident before it happens. That community-wide communication and collaboration makes an area stronger. That with more data comes more knowledge. And that knowledge is what drives not only one business, but an entire community forward.

    Usually data is used for positive proactive reasons — to collect insight on what drives a business, to get a deeper understanding on valuable customer habits, and to bridge the gap between a venue and its consumer to drive loyalty and experience.

    But data can also be used when the unexpected happens. When information from IDs is tracked, logged and timestamped, it’s able to act as the puzzle piece to help authorities track down the suspect of a crime. It empowers a venue to place a restriction on that person so they’re not allowed back inside. It alerts other venues in the community that the person was banned fo a specific reason should that person try to go into their establishment. It’s this type of network effect that helps band a community together for the greater good of public safety.

    Data and ID Scanning, of course, is not the only answer; but it is a step toward being able to take an action in the wake of an incident. There’s still work that needs to be done to continue to build safe environments for all. We stand behind our industry peers in Minneapolis and across the nation. We believe in the longevity of the nightlife industry and will continue to push ourselves to build tools and systems that help our customers. And we’ll continue to pursue partnerships with the police and city officials to build a network of information that works to keep venues, staff, and their patrons safe.

    Author Whitney Larson Posted on

    Finally. A venue management app that’s both powerful and simple.

    We at Vēmos are excited to unveil our latest Venue Management app — a project that’s been in the works for months with a critical focus on user experience.

    We knew the nightlife industry needed a solution that was robust enough to manage an entire venue from one app, but simple enough that venues didn’t need to worry about more training, all at a price point that made sense. So we set out to achieve this.

    And now that product is available.

    Introducing the first truly comprehensive solution to manage your entire venue, starting at just $50/month. Reservation management? Check. Guestlist management? Check. Events & Ticketing. Check & check. You can even collect walk-up cover charges at the door with cash, credit, Apple Pay or Google Pay. And yes, you can do all of this by simply toggling between Reservations, Guestlist and General Admission screens to accommodate every guest.


    We truly built this with the user in mind. Simplicity on the surface to get up and running as quickly as possible. Complexity behind the scenes so you’re presented with information when you need it most.


    Let’s take a deeper look.

    VIP Reservation Management

    Easily manage all your tables in one view, allow staff to sell available tables, and even take table deposits to reduce no-shows. See full guest details to provide a personalized experience as soon as they arrive. Track table spend and party size so you can make smarter decisions in the future about what type of VIP guests have the biggest impact on your business.


    Guestlist Management

    Never flip through another piece of paper again. Your guestlist is now digital and always up-to-date. Whether guests are added from promoters, ticket sales, your website, or staff, it all funnels instantly to one place, making check-in a breeze. Plus, all checkins tie back to guest profiles, so you always know what types of guests to attract to keep your nights busy.


    Cover Charge Management

    Like a POS for your door, the Vēmos GA screen gives you true accountability at your door. Add as many entrance types (aka cover price based on promotions) as you want. All users are automatically added as referrers. Now you can collect cover payment from every walk-up guest, know who’s getting in for free or at a discount, and track which promoters are bringing them in for easy payouts.


    Events & Ticketing

    Create, manage, and sell tickets to your events, and get paid from your sales as soon as a ticket is purchased. All pre-sale tickets will automatically appear in your guestlist with ticket details displayed. Easily handle walkup sales with Cover Charge Mangement, so all tickets are accounted for no matter when they were purchased. Uncover what marketing efforts reach the best guests, which ticket types drive the highest bar sales, and when you can expect to sell out based on historic trends.


    Guest Profiles

    All your guest details in your pocket. See each guest’s unique profile from their last visit to what they’ve spent at your venue. Read notes from your staff, and see how to connect with them all at your fingertips. Have a recurring guestlist guest that spends a lot at the bar? Upgrade them to a VIP table next time and make their next experience unforgettable.


    Insight Only Vēmos Can Give You

    Other systems only track your VIP guests. With Vēmos, you get rich insight on all your guests so you can make smart decisions that drive profitability. Connect ID Scan with your POS to track individual guest spend, and unlock even deeper insights about every guest that walks through your door so you can continue to maximize your revenue.

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