Knowing Where to Tap

Friends of Branded!

Happy Saturday and I hope you had a great week.

There’s an old story about a factory owner whose machine breaks down, resulting in the production of the factory grinding to a halt. After hours of frustration, the owner finally calls in an expert. The expert arrives, walks around the machine, listens carefully, and then takes out a hammer and with a single tap, the machine roars back to life.

The expert hands the owner an invoice for his work.

The owner protests: “$10,000 for a single tap of a hammer.”

The expert replied, “the tap is $10, knowing where to tap is $9,990.”

My dad told me a version of this story, although his was about a creaking floor board and how a carpenter fixed it with a single very thin nail (and in my dad’s version, the nail cost a nickel and knowing where to place it was $99.95 of the $100 invoice).

We all know some variation of this parable and how ultimately anyone can buy the hammer, but the edge is knowing where to tap.

The hospitality industry has no shortage of tools, and that includes of course POS, delivery, loyalty, inventory and so many other platforms and programs, but the winners aren’t the ones collecting the most tools, the winners are the ones who know where and when to use them.

I was a dinner on Thursday night, and I was specifically bringing some newer friends together with some older friends. My older friends (for clarity, I’m referring to the length of time I’ve known them, not their age) played host of the dinner at one of their restaurants not far from Branded’s office.

I was a few minutes late (which was really bad form on my part b/c the two groups didn’t know one another) and when I arrived everyone was already seated and there was action at the table. Our group had increased in size last minute, and the table needed to be adjusted to accommodate the change.

My guests remarked how from the moment they walked into the joint, they felt seen, welcomed and even the issue of increasing the size of the party by 50% was addressed seamlessly. They had an immediate sense of the prowess and seriousness of the operator before a single morsel of food was even seen or sip of a libation was tasted.

Despite my obsession with ResTech and the criticality of technology & innovation playing a key role for our industry, there’s no technology in existence that can make that happen and specifically make guests feel welcomed like that.

Readers of the H^2 know that Thursday night is my writing time and it’s not uncommon for me to draw ideas and themes from the hours just before I sit down at my desk.

My Thursday night this week had  me bring a group of heavy tech people together with one of Branded’s favorite restaurant owner / operators and at the risk of over-sharing (is that a thing with me?), I was with our partners from LDV Hospitality. This is an old-school restaurant crew (damn, there’s that word “old” again) whose mission is to channel its passion for genuine hospitality into creating charming restaurant and bar experiences. This crew may or may not want people to know that in addition to being hospitality experts, they’re also stealth-tech-ninjas when it comes to leveraging the tools that help them operate more efficiently and specifically surprise & delight their guests.

I’m moving on from LDV before its partners get mad at me for making them the target of salespersons from every sector of the ResTech market, but my overarching point is that the winning combination in our industry is the hospitality expertise, armed with the appropriate ResTech tools, and, wait for it, knowing where to tap.

Like so many industries, hospitality runs on who you know, but it thrives on how you know them. This represents the importance of context and its not about the size of your contact list, but a deep understanding of it. Relationships may afford you some level of access, but without insights and understanding, your access will be wasted.

Anyone, and I mean anyone, can buy software, sign a lease, strike a supplier dealer, attend or even sponsor an industry conference, but knowing which tech stack will actually boost throughput, which location will thrive, which distributor relationship unlocks margin and which conference to attend and how to make it a rewarding experience, that’s where real value lives!

Sticking with my parable, the “hammer” is the tool (the software, real estate, financing, conference).

The “tap” is the action (the deployment, rollout, negotiation).

The knowledge of where and how to apply it comes only with deep expertise and industry relationships.

WARNING, a self-interested comment is coming next.

At Branded, we’ve built our edge on this exact principle. We don’t just hand out hammers. We know where to tap, how to activate expertise, how to deploy relationships and how to create leverage where others may see noise. That’s the advantage we want to bring to our partners, operators, and investors.

That’s the work. That’s the edge. That’s Branded.

If you’re sensing a certain change in tone this week, it’s b/c for all the years I’ve been doing this, I’m finding this to be among the most interesting of times in our industry.

Capital flows are loosening, and I dare say we’re seeing more interest and activity when it comes to the deployment of capital. The number of parties seeking strategic partnerships has also increased and I expect it’s the importance of bundled and best-in-suite platforms being recognized as the more desired path for operators that’s driving technology platforms to respond accordingly (smart move friends).

Next week we officially enter the 4^th and final quarter of 2025.

Oh boy, this is going to great!

It takes a village.