The Secret Sauce of Local Restaurant Success With Mike Jacobs, Founder and CEO of Kitchen Data Systems

Mike Jacobs is the Founder and CEO of Kitchen Data Systems, a software company designed to help you create and scale your virtual food brand with very little upfront or overhead costs to focus on improving the bottom line. As a serial entrepreneur, Mike also founded Nextbite, Tapin2, Ordermark, Grilla, and Team Kitchens. His expertise includes innovation, crafting business models, product management, marketing, and building a positive company culture. Previously, Mike was a counterintelligence analyst for the FBI and was nominated for the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterintelligence Award. What you’ll learn in this episode: The pandemic had a massive impact on our lives and forever impacted multiple industries. Arguably, the restaurant industry was hit the hardest and was forced to evolve as a result. Among the new restaurant industry developments is the emergence of virtual brands, whose business is based primarily on delivering cooked food to the customer. These restaurants don’t have signs or seating areas, so how does anyone discover them? What marketing strategies are effective for these brands?  According to Mike Jacobs, Founder and CEO of Kitchen Data Systems, 5% of restaurants in the US are using a virtual brand business model, up from 0% two years ago. How can a virtual brand effectively make restaurant customers aware of its existence? Mike says there are companies launching brands even though nobody knows they exist. You’re not going to be discovered by displaying a sign, so virtual brands have to find alternative ways of making their presence known. So, what can you do to get noticed? On this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni welcomes Mike Jacobs, the Founder and CEO of Kitchen Data Systems, for a conversation about how delivery-first restaurants are doing business as virtual brands. Mike discusses how virtual brands can enhance their bottom line by making customers aware that they exist, ways to create brand awareness, and how to build a meaningful connection with customers since food is only part of the total customer experience.