The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gift3r App Digital Gift Card Mobile App & Marketing Platform Solution For Struggling Restaurants

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

Gift3r App Digital Gift Card Mobile App & Marketing Platform Solution For Struggling Restaurants Gift3rapp.com [powerpress_playlist]

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to another episode of our podcast, guys. We are currently in the coronavirus epidemic and we're trying to find and give our audience solutions to what's going on right now, help everybody out, give them sort of ideas, concepts. If you haven't gotten a chance to listen to the last few episodes, I've been giving people that might be out of work, people that might be struggling, people that worry about their finances, some different tools from my asset toolkit. And I've been pulling a lot of details from 2008, things that I learned when I lost everything in 2008 and then went through a grand recession, which looks like we might be going through that again. So we're going to interview a CEO who's been on the show before.

We did a big promotion with him at CES, and he got a lot of really cool brands that were interested in him at CES and stuff. And let's introduce him right now. Anastasios, did I pronounce that right? Welcome to the show. Yes. Hi, Chris. Excited to be back on your show.

Yes, the name is Anastasios or Tasso. I go by Tasso, T-A-S-S-O. It's always nice to hear your voice and be on your podcast. I've got to get my Greek down better, clearly. I've got to watch some more Greek movies. We were talking in the pre-show about Anthony Quinn, who's one of my favorite actors. I was really crushed when he passed away,

but he lived a life like, oh my gosh. So I got to go watch some Greek movies and work on my Greek accent. Clearly, one of these days, I got to go to that beautiful island. We need some ouzo. I might have to move there soon considering the way things are going.

Might be a step up. I remember seeing, oh, who's the other gentleman who passed away who's the great food uh tv restaurateur on cnn uh anthony bourdain um i used to love when he used to go to greek and the people there are just so lovely so welcome back to the show we had you on those of you who um haven't caught his earlier episode he did with us uh search for gifter three app or gift three r app uh on the chris fosh show podcast or the chrisfoshshow.com you'll be able to pull up those podcasts and see his

earlier appearance uh he is the ceo of gifter app and you can go to their website at gift three the numeral three r as in randy app.com, Gifter 3 app. So the 3 basically acts as an E, so Gifter. And he's got an app that I think can really help a lot of people, both consumers and restaurateurs. So if you own a company or if you know somebody who's a company, please forward this message to them so they can get familiar with the app, get signed up and all that good stuff. So let's talk about what Gifter 3 is and what it does. Why don't you give us an overview that we can start with and we'll lay the foundation from there. Yes, of course.

Gifter app is a digital gift card platform that brings consumers and local businesses together in order to empower joy among friends and family in our community. And in a few words, Gifted Hub is helping local businesses in these hard times to generate revenue while they have their doors closed in a form of gift cards, Chris. So, go ahead So go ahead. So one of the cool things you guys do, I'm going to help you pitch this

because I love the concept. So what Gifter app is doing is they're disrupting, you know, normally if you want to, let's say you want to give a gift to somebody and you're like me, you kind of know what they want. But, I mean, food is one of the best gifts you can give, especially your favorite restaurants. Like I'm always like, I'm always inviting people to, Hey, you know, Hey, you got to check out this restaurant. This restaurant's really good.

One of the reasons I push that is because I want that restaurant to succeed because I like their food and I don't want them to go out of business because then I won't get their food anymore. It's kind of selfish when it comes out, but Hey, we're all kind of built that way, but that's the beauty of being an influencer or sharing is we all share what we like, and when we find companies that make really good food, really good things that we love, their atmosphere, et cetera, et cetera, then we share it, and then, you know, it becomes common knowledge, and I found some of the best holes in the wall that you would never find,

you know, just driving by. California's notorious for that. You can drive around California, you can see just these strip malls that you're just like, am I going to get mugged and killed in there? And inside there'll be this authentic food from anyone, a number of countries around the globe, and it's from someone who's come from those countries so that it's not,'re not just you know ripping the food name off you know like they do with some things like tacos or mexican food and you're like this isn't real mexican food that you're just

calling it mexican food and you're just stealing the genre but they'll be the authentic restaurateurs from from those countries sometimes they don't even speak English in California which is awesome and that's kind of how you know too but they're wonderful people they they're giving they'll they'll come out and talk to you and and they'll ask you how good the food is and they make the most beautiful food that you've ever had in your life and you're just like holy crap I would never know how great this place is judging by the outside of it uh so so I see that a lot in California but uh you just find these holes in the wall. Like I, I will cruise through different food apps and be like,

I try and find someplace different to eat. Cause I'm always looking for that one place in California. I found this really great Cuban restaurant using food apps that I never would have known about. And this, this gentleman was from Cuba. And holy mother of God, this guy can make the pork and the plantains, the fried plantains.

Oh, my hell. I'm getting hungry talking about this. So what this app does is it's a dual sort of purpose app. One, it helps consumers go on in the app and instead of going down to the store which is what i talked about before it used to be that i would go down to like the local grocery store which is like why are you going to the grocery store and you know drive down the grocery store and they'd have this this kind of uh uh shelf piece of all these different gift cards and sadly most of the gift cards are for like really rich companies

like Starbucks and Chili's and other places that can really afford to pay for it. And, you know, they have all these gift cards there. But the problem is a lot of your great mom and pop stores, some of those people that make that really great personalized food that I love. You know, I try and stay away from chains as much. Chains are good, but, you know, I try and stay away from chains as much. Chains are good, but you know, yeah, I like this personal touch of the thing, the personal environment, that guy, you know, who's not mass producing your food. I love those sort of places. So those, all those people, they can't afford to get on those big systems and stuff. And so you won't see their

gift cards. You won't see your, like your local mom and pop shops, your main street sort of shops on there. But, you know, the big chains are there. That's good. So then you buy your gift card. You've got to go through the counter, and then 90% of the time the gals know how to process the things. I don't know why it won't activate. That or you get it home and it won't activate and you paid for it

and you got to go back to the store. So there's that whole process. And then one of the problems is you have a gift card and you'll throw it in a drawer you'll send it to somebody and they'll be like okay well if we ever go to pizza we'll use that they throw in a drawer and they forget about it and then expires and and uh sometimes you send people a gift card to a restaurant like you might send them to meat lovers like what's that there's some brazil Brazilian restaurant where they just bring you endless meat, scrape it off of a pit stick. Like you may send that to somebody and they're like, I'm a vegan.

Like, why would you send me a gift card there? And the problem is you can't re-gift these gift cards sometimes. Or like, say you've got an aunt in Ohio and you're on the other side of the country, you know, you don't want to mail her the gift card and she can't really get it and use it unless she has it physically in her hands. So what you guys have done is disrupted all that where the consumers can take an order, the gift cards off the app, they can re-gift into friends on the app and it's all virtual. And that's probably really more important with what's going on right now where, you know, you really don't want to be in a store more than you have to. You really don't want to be touching anything more than you have to with the coronavirus. So you can literally download the app by going to gift3rapp.com, gift3rapp. You can search for

that. You can find on any of the different platforms. You can download it off the App Store for Apple or Google Play. And when you download the app, of course, you can register. And then you can either buy gift cards or you can give them away. So if you've got, you know, somebody on the other side of the country, their wedding, birthday, anniversary, any sort of that thing, you can give them a gift card for that, and the beauty of that is they can use that anytime, so hopefully after we get out of this sort of lockdown that we're in to try and compact this virus for a couple months, once that changes, you know, people are going crazy at home, I gotta tell you, they're going crazy, and what's going to happen is once

we get all this cleared up we get all the testing we had some antiviral stuff and things people are gonna go out to eat like mad because they're sick of being at home like people are starting to climb the walls now after three weeks so i and i'm gonna be the same way like as soon as you give me the green light to go out and eat all the time i I am never eating at home for like a month. So, um, and, and so the converse side of this is you can,

you can get these, you can get some deals. They've got some deals going on with different restaurateurs. So you may be able to pick up some really good discounts. Think of it as a group on, if you will, where you'll be able to buy these things and then use them in the future, and you might get some deals to put up on the restaurant. Now, the converse side of this is you'll be helping out your local food places.

If you can get them to sign up for the app and get them on the app, you'll be able to help them because you're giving them cash that they can put in their hands and be able to give you food in the future. Now, if you know people that have a small food place or business or a chain or whatever, this is a great app for them because right now what they can do is they can start selling the gift cards, but they don't have to expend any sort of costs to do it. Like normally, if I say, hey, come over to my business, you know, if you come over today, I'll give you some free fries, right? Well, if you come over, I got to pay my employees for that. I got to pay for the food. It's an immediate cost to me. But if you buy a gift card for say 30 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 hundred on the gifter app and send it to a friend, they might use it in two months. So that gives them immediately cashflow. Cash is king to restaurants right now. You can help support them, keep them in business. Maybe you can use

them for delivery. If you want food now, of course, a lot of these businesses are pushing delivery. And this is a great way for those businesses to have some cash flow so they can keep their employees, so they can keep the lights on and the business rent paid and all that sort of good stuff so that when we can open here in a month or two, they'll still be there. Am I right? Did I nail it? Yes, yes. Very, very well. And another thing that the app does, Chris, is it solves the biggest problem that humans we have when it comes to buy a gift for a friend. When we want to buy a gift for a friend, we pretty much 99% of the times, we never know what our friends want.

And as a result, we end up buying a gift card from a local grocery store or a gas station that is usually a big corporate gift card from Amazon, Best Buy, Target. We put it in an envelope. Hi, BFF. Thank you so much. I love you. And then we pass the gift card over. you problem that allows consumers to search and discover their favorite local businesses. And it allows them to create a personalized wish list with those favorite local business

they like to support. And in this way, their friends get to access their friends' wish lists from the gift app. And now you know what your friends want. And in just three clicks, you can buy the gift card, attach a picture, a nice video, and you instantly send it to your friends, which is, it kind of brings that social element of virtual that we are entering right now

in this economy as well. That's pretty awesome because I've had people just hand me a gift card and they're like, here's your gift card for your birthday. And you're just like, wow, thanks for going overboard there, man. You couldn't, you couldn't at least buy a card and put in the gift card in the card or, you know, an envelope or wrapping a box. You couldn't, couldn't put the extra work. You clearly phone this in. So I think that's cool that you do that.

But, you know, hey, I'm not going to complain. If you give me free food or free money for free food, hey, all the more power to you. And like I say, I know so many people that are losing their minds. They're having to learn to cook again. As soon as they get the green light to go run around and start shopping and eating at restaurants again, you're not going to be able to get a table at a restaurant because people are just going to be like, oh my God, finally, I'm so sticky. Oh, I'm never going to get home ever again. And so it's going to be good. You know, both you and I went through the 2008 crash,

and a lot of our skills from that surviving that are coming back to us. And one of the skills I learned from that crash was cash is king. And in an environment like this, having cash, being able to have cash to make moves, being able to keep the lights on, being able to keep the gears moving at a minimum basis is really important. And to me, if I was a restaurateur, this would be a great business because what I could do is I'd take my list of whatever I'm mailing out to my clients, you know. I'm getting that right now.

Ever since this started, I'm getting amped up emails and blasts from Del Taco and McDonald and and uh you know any any place i signed up i i signed up a long time ago to a bunch of birthday things because you sign up you get like a free birthday gift every year and uh so i signed up for a bunch of them so somehow i'm on all these lists and then of course you know i'm on some gift card coupon well they're not gift cards but they're like uh frequent diner things i guess where they you know every 10 subways you get a subway sandwich sort of thing um and so all these companies have lists if you're a really smart restaurateur even if you're mom and pop or main

street you've got a facebook fan page you you that you can market to you you should have a mailing list with mailchimp or aweberber where you can mail out the things. And you were talking about how some of the companies using your app, they're doing the promotions where they ran their lists. And of course, you guys have your own audience. So it's a collaborative effort where when people sign up with your service,

they can really take advantage of your audience and their audience. They've got something to offer them. And the great thing is, is it's not going to cost them anything more. People may buy those cards and use them in the future when things recover. Absolutely, yes. I mean, Chris, as a local restaurateur for the last 14 years,

I was able to experience Groupon, Elpe, GrabHub, Uber Eats, all these companies that are coming up and they are offering great value to local business owners. We designed to be more than just a gift card platform. It has a series of

marketing tools that can help businesses with loyalty programs. It can help them reach customers, retain existing customers, and it can reactivate them with smart features we have on the app. They can pretty much reach customers while they are sitting on their sofa, and with an email promotion, our current businesses we have, they find smart ways either through email or social media or even QR codes. I was talking to one of our businesses yesterday over here in Paradise Valley

that they printed out business size cards and they put one of the barcodes on the barcode on the business card and what they do they pass out those business cards with the QR code to they take to go it's economy and their customers use they download the Abeniskan barcode and they receive like five bucks so that's what they receive from the business, it's enough, gratefully enough to bring the customer back to spend 50 bucks, 25 bucks. So it's a great way

to use for your business, especially the pricing we have. It's a series of tools. It's a bucket of tools that helps business become more efficient, reach new customers, increase sales,

and many, many more things. So if you're a restaurant or food business, you definitely want to sign up on this app, get the kit, get access to the back end, and figure out ways to market this thing, either to your list or promotions or letting people know as they engage with your business that, hey, download this app. You can buy gift cards from the app.

Maybe run some specials with the app or, you know, hey, you get an extra whatever. If you buy this, you get an extra $5 value or, you know, whatever you can do to make it work. But the great thing about this is it can bring you cash if you can get those sales in uh but you don't have to initially be doing all the work or selling the food so it can help you just survive this sort of dip that we're going through there's been a lot of stuff that's been going on online if you've seen it there's been uh supporting chefs uh supporting restaurants supporting their workers you know the one thing you have to realize is these people make the economy go round. I mean, they spend money, you know.

One thing I learned when you live in Vegas is even if you're a waiter or a waitress, if you're a restaurateur or somebody, even though you make a living off of tips, when you go meet those other people, you pay tips. You can't just say, well, you know, I get tips, so, you know, I don't need to pay you tips. And the one thing we always, you know, talked about in Vegas is the money makes the world go round. So if you usually invest in the economy, it comes back to you, you know. The jobs, everyone's jobs is interlinked. And I think we can see that now with what's going on, that if a lot of these people in the restaurants fail, if a lot of the food companies in your area fail, a lot of the

mom and pop stores, I mean, honestly, a lot of the big chains, no knock to them, but a lot of them are going to survive this. They got enough money. They got enough ways to do it. They might have to close some stores or cut some overhead by laying off employees, but your local mom and pop places are going to be the ones that are most hardest hit. And hopefully they can take advantage of some of the economic measures the Congress is supposed to be giving them. But it looks like those are going to take longer. So this is definitely a chance for businesses to take advantage of them

where you can support your local businesses. You can support your local economy. You can support your local jobs. And if you're in a position to spend some money yeah you're going to have some great gift cards in the future where you can take and utilize those and uh you know once we get out of this sort of thing like i said i'm not eating at home for like a year after this i'm going to be in and out like every freaking night and all my little mom and pop stores.

There's a few mom and pop burger places in my area that I just love. And I got to tell you, man, I sit home and I'm just like, I really want those fries. I should go there and get those fries. And it's killing me, man. It's just killing me. I think that's the worst thing for me is like when you say i can't have something it just makes me think about more and uh so like the worst thing has been sitting around homebound with this coronavirus thing and i'm just like

in and out burger yeah and like normally i wouldn't crave an out burger like i'll have one once like once a month but now i'm just like oh man i'm really fucking done i think so um and unfortunately when you go to the internet burger their drive-through is is very clean they don't even they don't barely touch anything in fact they hand you the credit card machine and you you slide it in you don't have to touch it uh or them uh think about the only thing they touch is the bag they're wearing wearing gloves and masks and stuff, so that's good. But this is a great way to support your thing, and, of course, this won't last forever.

Hopefully, this is just another month or two of this crisis until testing catches up and all the different things catching up. But this is a great way for businesses to make money. It doesn't cost the business anything to sign up other than transaction fees of selling the cards. So it's not like they got to buy like a $500 package or a $1,000 package, right? No, no, we don't have any sign up fees. We are currently charging a 3% and $1 per transaction.

It's a transaction we help the business make. And out of that 2.8% of 30 cents is usually the payment processing fees. So we charge only a traction of the amount on the fees because I really want to help local businesses, Chris. This is a smart tool that was designed based on my needs to help my business as a restaurateur for the last 14 years. And I believe we have created something that offers genuine value

without actually taking 30% of the profits from the local business. I think Groupon takes a large percentage, don't they? They just recently changed their business model, I believe, that they try to bring more value to the business. But for some reason, small local businesses, they might have a bite with Groupon. Not to sound, you know, it's a great company. Don't take me wrong.

I use them and I love them. They are doing some amazing things. But every company has a different value proposition. Our goal is to be also bring the bring the social aspect where the users your customers get to promote an organic growth of your business word of mouth and through our wish list features it helps the business spread word of mouth through the grapevine, which for me is the biggest. It's the best way to grow your business, especially in moments like that.

And in times like these where everyone's sitting around going, oh, man, we need to make it through this curve, I mean, try everything. That's what you and I did in probably 2008. I don't know about you, but I tried everything. I was doing every – I was pushing every button banging everything i got i twitter was just coming out that time and facebook was starting to hit its stride and there was all sorts of different apps uh that would do food and reviews and so i was hopping all those i was doing everything i could under the sun and like i said what's great is the entry point for this,

it doesn't cost you anything. What do you have to lose? You have nothing to lose. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And when it comes to cash flow, I mean, I love non-inventory cash flow where it's like delayed delivery cash flow, basically. Pay me now. i've got clients that hire me on retainer they'll pay me for a year's worth of business and or they'll buy like

blocks of my time and just like an attorney and then they might not use it for like i've had clients like a year ago by and i'll be like hey can we use that uh service that we bought off you and i'm like yeah sure you can use it now and uh sometimes i offer them great deals if they buy now and use later um and so this is that same sort of principle that they're doing where you could sell these gift cards to your clients you could you could say hey man support our business you know our employees you know use it with mom and pop businesses you you know the employees you know the owner you you know you you have your favorite probably waiter or waitress um you know you you want to support those guys because you want to see them when they're when they're back i mean i won't every place i have that's a favorite place of mine i really want

in business um when i come out of this because I'm going to be hungry for some good food. And I think we're all tired of being in prison in our homes. So being able to run around and eat. And like I say, I'll probably never eat at home again for like a month. I'll just be like, get me the hell out of here. So you can sign up with the app. You can go to gifterapp.com. That's gifterapp.com.

You can, of course, find them across social media and stuff. And then, of course, you can decide whether to join up as a business. You can contact them. I'm sure their phone number is on their website, right? We don't have a phone number. We have our email info at gifterapp.com. There you go.

That's the best way to contact us or they can fill up the application online and we'll get in touch with them in 24 to 48 hours. Cool. And if you're part of the press, help share this information. You can go to press at gift3rapp.com. There's a place for users and facts.

There's a place for facts for businesses on the website. And then a form you can fill out and, of course, support as well. So if you're in the press, give us a share. I mean, help stuff out. You know, one thing most people in the press have to remember is that we need to share this stuff so that we can help businesses stay in business. And if we do that, they're probably going to buy advertising from you, especially if you're TV, radio, website and stuff like that. So if you work to help keep these people in business, they're going to hopefully buy ads in the future. And of course, like I say, the money goes around. So what you give is what you get. So we all need to kind of help the economy along

and help people get through this thing and make sure that the businesses that are out there, especially the mom and pops, are still out there. Because, you know, those are the people who hire our kids when our kids are like 16, 18, you know, coming up, learning some skills and stuff. Those are the people who are our local folks, our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, all the people around us that we're helping keep in business and all that good stuff. So anything more we need to cover on your guys' app? I mean, part of our vision and mission, Chris, is to be able to help the local community stay with the local businesses. And we are also looking to partner up.

We recently partnered up with a local nonprofit that focused their mission to empower the teaching community, which is really big for us because we believe that's how we can make a difference, especially since our mission is to spread joy among friends and family. We want to stay local and find ways that people can help more people and a gift therapy it's a great way where the community can help the people in the community and actually experience the feelings that comes when we give so that's part of our plan when we grow. So we want to keep our values and authenticity around of what we are doing. Nice.

Yeah. Nice. And anything to keep business rolling and rocking and rolling and cash coming in the door so that you can pay your bills, you can keep your overhead moving. I mean, and like I say, say i mean right now there's probably a lot of people sitting around looking at the wall if you're a restaurant owner and so what do you have to lose get to work this is this is the most important time to be doing everything you can to cultivate lay seeds try and grow different things try everything like literally bang all the buttons on the on the on the board um because

you know the one thing i found in business over all these of all the years that i've been in business sometimes you never know what's going to click like i remember uh years ago uh we were starting uh started a business with a friend and I remember, uh, the business he was starting, he, we were using the knowledge cause he worked at a, uh, what was called ARUP. It was a blood testing. Uh, well, it was a, it was a body. It was a testing, uh, for human fluids, I guess you would call it tissue, et cetera,

et cetera. Um, at, uh, in Utah and, and he's like, you know, they need more business and they need more help because the career company that's working with them is doing a shitty job. So why don't we start a career company and then you can do business with us and, and, and, you know, uh, blah, blah, blah. And so I said to him, I said, well, that's great, but there's only so much business we can get off of. And it's kind of demand business, butadic um uh we need we need you know we

need more business i mean that's just a business you need more than one customer and so i remember him saying well we got to find more of these people and i'm like well no we need to expand our vision so i remember this is back this is back in the sweat equity days this is back in the cheap business we started this company for two grand um and i had my old ceo i've told the story a few times in the podcast i had my ceo uh my ceo was sick of me trying to start businesses on the side and he said look i'm gonna give you two months of of payments of salary and he goes if if you start this business successful we need your help from that company because we don't like the company that

we're using either. So we'll become a customer here. So, uh, if I help you, then you get to help me. Uh, or he goes,

this is the deal. I'll give you two months of salary. If this doesn't work, you have to come back to me and I own your ass and no more of this, no more of this starting a little business on the side. You're mine. I guess he liked me a little bit. So I said, deal.

And so I used the two months of that. We used about $2,000 we had between us. We were just kids, fucking, you know, the top ramen lifestyle, you know, single young guys. And so I think we had like $100 or something oh we're gonna send 100 mailers so i said no we're gonna do is we're gonna send 100 mailers and we're gonna send them we're sent 20 to different industries because we have no money to 100 mailers right and uh and of course we hand stuffed them and you know did the flyers print them off you know all that sort of stuff that's how that's how guerrilla marketing we were uh sweat equity and and i remember him arguing with me he's like

no we got to focus on the blood business and the hospital business and we got to we got to stay in this vein this is where the money is and i go you don't know that and i go you know i i run other companies so we've you know we've got a and so we're gonna we're gonna do the shotgun effect where we're gonna shotgun this email or this mail this is old days of mail you can look google what that is if you're a millennial um they have stamps and shit you had to pay for uh and uh so i said we're gonna do this shotgun marketing and we're going to send out a hundred pieces of mail. It's kind of crazy to think about nowadays. And we're going to send 20 to different industries than I see other people

doing. And I will give you an admittance here. We did do some dumpster diving and we kind of had some data from the dumpster diving on what some of the key industries were of competitors. And so we sent out these things, and my business partner, I remember arguing with him the whole time. He's like, this isn't going to work. This is stupid.

It's a waste of money, waste of time, blah, blah, blah. Always. And you know what? It kind of was for like a week. Like for a week, it was like crickets after we sent the thing we should have been you know getting some answers back and i'm like wow maybe we did floor one on that one and then all of a sudden uh the fight we sent to five different industries of course 20 uh males to each industry all of a sudden the mortgage business industry, we started getting calls.

And then we got more calls and we went, wait a second. There's a, there's a, I forget what you call it, but there's a lane here, right? There's a lane of marketing and we're getting response from these people. They clearly have a need for our business. And so we started expanding that model because we're like, if five if five mortgage companies will talk to us um whatever and then we started going on to those five people and we said okay you know why are you talking to us why don't you like your current company and they're like well you know we don't like them for this reason and so then we started tuning our marketing to like the other people because we you know what people usually don't like is pretty common as as as is

what people like and so that whole field fucking opened up for us and we never would have done it if we hadn't banged all those buttons if we hadn't slammed our our fist down on the board and said let's you know do everything because what do you have to lose? I mean, when you've got this gun to your head, and especially in 2008 when I went through this, I think I've told this story a couple times, but my friends at one point, we started so many different businesses and I was trying so many different things like Twitter and Facebook to get more traffic to my websites to keep them in business. My friend said to me,

you've started so many different companies and interests, Chris. If one day you got arrested and found to be an international arms dealer of you know that's just what you finally got to fucking click like we wouldn't be surprised like you've fucking tried everything and that's what you gotta do in this market if you're a restaurateur if your mom and pop with a food place, bang all the buttons. And if it doesn't cost you money and it's sweat equity and it's a little bit of work and programming or whatever you got to do to put it on your list, do it. Do it. What do you have to lose?

Like the worst thing you can do right now is sitting and crying in your soup and going, oh, it's never going to work. You've got to work harder now more than you've ever worked in your life to to make things work and you'll really be surprised that some of the uh serendipity that can come out of this so i think this is a great product i think i've always been sold on this since i met you and and we did some interviews and promotion at ces i think it's great i think it's just awesome. I mean, if I was a business, I'd be marking the shit out of this because it's cash in hand and low inventory output.

You know, there's some people that buy these things, and they sit on them for a year. I think I probably have gift cards in my drawer that have sat on them for a year, and I've never used them. I've never gone to the place. You know, sometimes I'm just like, I don't really like that place that much. And the beautiful part is people can re-gift these virtually on

the app. So if you get a gift card from a place you don't like, you can re-gift it to somebody else and you're like, there, I gave you a gift. Don't know if you'll use it, but it's a gift. Yes, yes. Another cool feature, we have a crisis that consumers like our customers,

our users can search and discover their own favorite businesses, and they can nominate them to join the app. So it's kind of a way for our community to participate and come together. So we want our community to help us discover those hidden gems that their favorite restaurants or coffee shops around your town. And we want people to kind of come up and say, this is our places that we want to participate. We like to support local. It's definitely a great way to, it's also a great way for local businesses to increase sales, drive leads, grow their brand.

It kind of does everything like a local business needs. And this is just the beginning. We have lots of features that are coming up that are going to bring more value to the community, to the business, as well as the consumers. So we're really, really excited to be able to launch in this time a few months ago, especially right now with the coronavirus going around. But I will agree on what you said,

like there is plenty of opportunities right now for small local businesses, and they have to give it a chance and hustle anything that comes in front of them that potentially can bring them value or even revenue in these days. And cash is king, man. This can put cash in your pocket if you market it correctly.

You put it on your list. You put it on your Facebook, your Twitter. A lot of businesses right now are pushing to support us. Hey, man, keep us in business. Get delivery. This is a great way to do all that stuff. Maybe you know some pity who's on the other side of the world and they need or the other side of the country they need they need some food

you can buy them some food and they can go out either pick it up at the window or get delivery um and uh they can take advantage of these things so it's if you've got kids maybe at college or they're stuck in their college town or or, neighbors, relatives around the nation, you know, you can virtually hook them up that way. So I think it's a great app. People should check it out. Go to gifterapp.com. You can get a gift, three R as the letter R, app.com.

Anything more we should know as we break this down? I mean, we are available. You know, the app is available on Apple Store and Android Store. We're also working with installing Apple Pay and Google Pay currently right now. In Arizona, if you are in Arizona, we are offering our services for free for the next 90 days as a way for us to help with the coronavirus businesses that they got affected. Local businesses, they make a sale and they get their cash in 24 to 48 hours. So it's definitely a great tool for local businesses as well as consumers. One of the things that we got from our current merchants is that their customers are more willing to help and support them through gift cards right now.

Yeah. So it's really amazing to see people coming together and they want to support their own local favorite places. So, this is really amazing, Chris. Thank you. Thank you for having us on your show. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. Yeah.

And just one thing I want to throw in here. I probably should have done this more in the middle of the show, but you've owned a lot of restaurants and partnerships and restaurants. I mean, you're not some guy who's just coming from an app business who's a tech dude. You've been in this business. You've been up to your sleeves in it, and you know what this is like. So you're bringing a lot of that experience and expertise to this business and this app. Yes, I've done seven restaurants from scratch, from the kitchen, from dish washing, from serving. And when you run a restaurant, I personally believe that if you want to be an entrepreneur,

you want to work in a restaurant. ASI has several departments and you learn a lot of things. So running a restaurant is not easy at all. You learn a lot, you grow a lot, but above all, you come close to people. And when you connect and you learn how to connect with people and you understand your customers, you understand the people you work with,

you are able to provide value that actually can make a difference and really affect, genuinely affect people's lives. That's what I bring on the table, Chris. After 14 years in the restaurants, I still love them. I sold my last one two years ago. My wife wants me to open up another one, but maybe when I retire when I'm 60. She's just trying to get you out of the house. That's what she's trying to do.

All my male friends who are married. Their wives are starting to climb the walls and they're phoning divorce attorneys. No. They're starting to climb the walls. I think everyone's getting a little tired of everyone being locked down.

It's becoming a cellmate sort of situation. There you go. Anyway, guys, download the app. Go to the website, gifterapp.com, gift3rapp.com. Download it from the store. Set up an account. You can invite your local shops to take and put their business on there. If you own a business, this is, like I say, bang all the buttons.

You want to be marketing harder than you've ever marked in your life because guess what you probably have the time to right now um so bang all the buttons try everything flip all the switches um anything you can do to get cash flow rock and roll it cash is king so uh thanks for being on the show man it's good to have you on again we'll always always a pleasure one of these days we need to when this thing comes back we need to talk about like tips on how to have a successful restaurant and different uh things that i'm sure you can provide from the whole business aspect of that field i've i've never gotten into it and i know it's a crazy business it's hard as hell and 24 7 and and and you you know but it's a hell of a business when you're successful in it it's definitely a hell of a business and

it carries a lot of respect in order to be in the restaurant industry I mean you learn a lot it's like for me it's ten businesses in one that you have to micromanage 24-7 but we definitely have a love to share I would love to share more about restaurants and my experiences through them. Definitely a million stories. I'll bet. I'll bet you probably have a few books in you. Always.

So anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to go to YouTube.com, Forge. That's Chris Foss. Hit that bell notification button and watch the videos we have there. You can also go to the CBPN and see all the different podcasts. Stay tuned. We're going to have more things we're going to be bringing to you

on ways to survive the coronavirus apocalypse. If you want the COVID apocalypse. Stay healthy. Wear your face masks. Stay indoors. Remember, it's not all about you getting sick. It's about the people you might kill, the older folks, the people with immunodeficiencies

and all that good stuff be a player and remember it's not about you thanks for tuning in, I love you all hope to see you next time, thanks for tuning in thank you, thank you guys bye Chris