So, we are here with Zach Cohen of Island Kitchen. Zach is a current customer of Curate and we'll be talking to him today about his experiences with us and about his business in general. So, let's just start with a quick intro. Zach, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your business? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Eugene. Yeah, Island Kitchen Catering. We started in Nantucket, Massachusetts 12 seasons ago as a little 40 seat restaurant. Kind of started catering as a side hustle, let's call it. It's grown into two states, four different markets. We are primary caterer for most of the social clients, large scale fundraisers, galas, weddings. And three years ago we expanded the business down to South Florida and have been having a lot of fun down here. So yeah. What type of events does Island Kitchen typically specialize in? So we are fully bespoke customizable. We'll do a two-person dinner if it makes sense. And we routinely do 1200 person large scale events. We're doing the Afar Gala on Palm Beach Island on March 15th for 500 people plated and everything in between. I guess before you came on board with Curate what got you interested in the first place? What were some of the biggest pain points that your catering business was facing? Sure. Yeah. To be completely transparent, when we went to LCA executive summit two years ago, Curate was one of the people that were presenting and while it looked beautiful, your team and Ryan were nowhere near what you guys came to be a year later. So we had kind of had curate in the back of our head, but really fully transparent, it wasn't even on the table. We have been using Caterease because prior to that we were just in Google Drives. We switched to Caterease because LCA did a technology request and I think like 70% of the LCA members were using Caterease and when we went to LCA in Chicago in October, Ryan presented again and like I said where this software had been brought to in 12 months was just it was unbelievable. I actually messaged Ryan right there after his presentation and myself and one of my colleagues set up a meeting with him in Chicago and here we are. Obviously the progress probably left somewhat of an impression but were there any frustrations with the previous system that you were using that got you interested in switching in the first place or started looking for a better solution? Yeah. Yeah. We internally joked about it being Cater Hard and not Caterease. The three biggest pain points were one it wasn't web-based. So they Citrix required you to download and sign in after it signed you out every 15 minutes. So the time wasted in simply getting into the program was insane. It wasn't intuitive. It wasn't pretty. Which is a huge thing. I mean, you know, when you're dealing with Nantucket Palm Beach clients, it may sound silly, but a proposal can set you apart and if you have something curated and dialed Caterease wasn't allowing for that. And lastly, one of the biggest things too was the integration into credit cards. It just it was more arduous than helpful almost in every step of the way. So yeah, that it's a long list. Was I guess during that decision process was it you literally you just saw Ryan's presentation, you decided to switch or were there was it like you were ready to kind of switch to another tool and then you explored some others or was it just like saw the platform, loved it? We saw Ryan's, we weren't really going to switch. I think what drove us so quickly was that our Caterease renewal was like two weeks later and we didn't realize that. So perfect. So that's what made us yeah. You know it's kind of a lot of our decision making is based on okay how much value will this drive? If the cost is X, do you think we will return that value in work booked or time saved or another sales call? Like I might be jumping ahead, but one of the best things about this is I can get on a sales call and within a 30 minute block I can do the call, send the proposal and have that to the client. My last workflow with Caterease was call, maybe I was getting out the proposal that night. It just, you know, so we weren't looking at anything else. We saw Ryan's presentation. We met with him and yeah, we jumped on board. So very happy we did. That's amazing. So, I would ask if there were any hesitations or anything, but it sounded like that was a super quick decision. Just it was to be completely honest, the it was the price, you know, it was significantly more expensive than what we were paying with Caterease. And so, yes, if there was any hesitation, it certainly was price driven. But again, like I just said, it's all about the value and what that drives. And I know my colleague Maggie and you know, she runs our sales department in Nantucket. Feels the same way that the value was certainly worth worth the spend as of right now. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean to your point I always say yeah we're not going to be the cheapest but if you can do that whole process in 30 minutes like you said instead of, that's what we say to our clients too. I mean the way we operate the way we cater that it is extremely different than other people and we are certainly not the cheapest and that if that's what you're looking for that's fine then we're just not the right fit. During that transition period. I assume you know people typically coming over from Caterease have used it for a while. How was that transition process for you? The onboarding, the setup. How was it to get started with Curate? It was great. It wasn't laborious. It wasn't hard. I really struggled when we switched from Google Drive to Caterease and like I had resistance in it. So, it took me a little while to integrate. Whereas curate I I mean I was excited about it. So I certainly whereas Maggie when we switched to Caterease she was kind of leading the pack on that and I was lagging behind it was flipped on the other end. I thought Ryan and the team did a great job. Is that I guess was that when you were switching from Google Drive to Caterease and then I mean coming to curate is was that user experience and that like ease of use kind of the big thing that you were feeling that push back on? Google obviously you know they they have everything designed for easy experience and whatnot. What was that hesitancy on your part? From Google Drive to Caterease. Yeah. Like you said, you were feeling because it was different. Yeah. But it was it was hard. Caterease. It was harder for me. It was also like Google Drive. I knew it. It Google Drive is great. It's not meant for caterers, but we worked it in a sense that made it easy for us. Easier, I guess. And no, I thought the biggest not the biggest, there was so many different things, but the fact that Caterease is PC based and we are all of us work off of a Mac was that was extremely difficult. So yeah, that'll do it. Yep. What about what about mobile? So I do really what's great on the mobile side. I use it primarily in two ways. I'm never writing proposals on that. But how I use the mobile is for inquiries. If I'm not in front of my computer when we get a submission, it's very easy that I'm able to go on mobile inquiry, send off the email that I want because we have I have so many email templates which is amazing. And then also it's nice to have, right? I might not be at the event that one of our managers is on and instead of them, well, you couldn't with Caterease. You'd have to print everything and you wouldn't have a real time look to it. So, we use curate web a lot. If there's a question about a BEO or something like that, it's able to jump on there real quick. And so, yeah, I've just I've never had to write a proposal on it cuz it just, you know, I usually have my laptop with me. But, no, the web-based application is great to have for sure. So you mentioned, you know, you can basically go process like A to Z with 30 minutes on the platform. Are there can you actually put any numbers to I guess the efficiency improvements or just to the time savings or is it is it literally from you went from a full day process to 30 minutes which you know if that's more or less an estimate that's amazing you can stick with that. Yeah, I definitely couldn't put I mean, one of the coolest things was one of the first proposals before I actually knew what I was doing I sent through curate and I don't think it was the sole reason that it was booked, but the first line of the response from the client was, Oh my god, what a beautiful proposal. Because it was it was curated again to to them in the pictures and again was it the sole reason they booked? Probably not. But it was nice to like oh okay so to put a value amount like that event probably paid for half a year of curate right there. As far as time save, I honestly couldn't tell you. With all said and done, our workflow was phone call, proposal, downloading of Caterease proposal, opening Gmail, finding the address of the client, sending proposal, assuming they took it, then taking said proposal, putting into QuickBooks, sending invoice from QuickBooks to said client. Whereas now phone call, proposal, email, payment, I don't know if it's fair to say it goes from an all day process to a 30 minute, but it's probably pretty close giving out. I mean, we'll do close to 900 events between Nantucket and Palm Beach this year. So, if you save 15 minutes alone on each event, it adds up. Yeah, that's pretty big difference. Yeah. Okay. So, you mentioned somebody mentioned the beautiful proposal. So, it sounds like you've actually seen clients noticing the improvement with it. Yeah. That's amazing. Yep. Okay. That's which you know possibly the most important thing, right? So keeping the clients, that was one of the biggest drivers for us is like again we're dealing with the 1% the 1% and we were sending over a either a Google sheet to them or this Caterease thing that they swore we could customize and and do this and we couldn't and the lines didn't match up correctly. The coloring wasn't correct. It just it you know, you sell yourself or we sell ourselves as a top tier high-end bespoke catering company and you you got to kind of you got to fit the bill across everything and the proposals were more C-grade than anything else. So, yeah. And that won't cut it when you're dealing with the 1%. No, for sure. I mean, you just you don't legitimize yourself, right? You're like, Oh, okay. Yeah, you talk a big game. Everything seems great. Then you're sending me this janked out piece of paper. I can't read what I'm looking at. And you know, so that was really what drove us to it was we had the ability to customize and make it beautiful and bespoke just like our company. I mean you've mentioned I guess a few different aspects that that you're seemingly happy with with curate. I guess what would what would be the biggest reason you'd recommend Curate as a platform? Time. It's the time saver you know I mean I know that's a corny cliche but time is money and you know what is the value I'm a husband and a father and you know not simply from a work perspective but what is the value that it drives from a personal level to save that time and you know you can't really put a price on that. So, 100% it's the time. So, so I guess if somebody was on the fence about choosing curate, is what would you tell them or is that exactly what you tell them instead? Yeah, I mean it really I would tell them listen I would imagine most people are on the fence with curate because of the cost if we're being completely honest. I would imagine that's why, you know, it's a little bit different given what our sales volume is compared to, you know, maybe an upstart catering company or someone that's not dealing in the markets that we're dealing in. And it would be exactly that the time value that you get back from not only an admin side to it but as well as on the back end of even something as like the BEO prints like you know the kitchen prints and all that and it's the time and how valuable is that to you? And they can't some people can put a price on it and you know that's really what they would have to decide and to be completely honest I don't even think we've scratched the surface of all the possibilities that curate could do from the packing list to the profit margins to all of that stuff I genuinely don't think that we've even come close to utilizing the full potential of what the software is so I mean honestly curate has legit changed the way we operate our business from a sales perspective to an execution and it was probably the best decision we've made for our business in 2024 and 2025. So hopefully hopefully beyond it. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. All right. Well, Zach, I appreciate it. I know you're super super busy during the Palm Beach season right now, so thank you for taking the time. Of course, absolutely. And we're hoping to roll out a lot more useful stuff for you here in the very near future. I don't doubt that. I mean, I know that AC was a game changer for Maggie in the Nantucket market and you know that lastly that is what I also really loved about what you guys did is that it is kind of a startup, let's call it. I know you guys aren't, but you're still you're not Caterease that it's been established forever and it's like, oh, you got a suggestion, go yourself. You know, everything that we had pointed out and talked to McKenzie and talked to Ryan about, it was either in the works, they hadn't thought of it or hadn't had a request for it and actually took it seriously and it's in progress. Or it was just about to be rolled out. So, I mean, that's nice that it's nice to be like, Okay, cool. You guys actually care about what your clients are saying and are working to tweak this and not hey it's your job to figure out how to work with us not our job to figure out how to work with you. So yeah, I mean at the end of the day, if you have that feedback, chances are somebody else does too, right? It's probably going to be useful across the board. So we have developers for a reason. So no, absolutely. Well, no, I this has been great. So I appreciate your time. And if you need anything else from us, let us know. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Not a problem. Have a good one.