Rob Grimes, CEO of the International Food and Beverage Technology Association (IFBTA) sat down with Kevin Jaskolka, Vice President of Marketing for PAR Technology to discuss their involvement in the food and beverage industry and why they decided to become a global industry partner of the IFBTA.
(R) Hi Rob Grimes with the IFBTA and I have the pleasure this afternoon a being with Kevin Jaskolka, the Vice President of Marketing for PAR Technologies, so welcome.
(K) Thanks Rob, appreciate it.
(R) So I guess the first thing I’d ask you is why PAR has invested in the IFBTA and, we obviously know why you invest in the industry, but this is great being a founding global industry partner of the IFBTA. Why did PAR make that investment?
(K) Thanks Rob. So there’s really three reasons that, part of it is being, you guys are in the right industry segment. You know, as I look through and see what you’re doing, not only in the restaurant side, you know the quick service, fast casual, but also the food retailers and by that, I am more specifically mean grocery, food distribution and the c-stores, which are really important to us from a food safety side on what we’re looking to accomplish there and also the contract food guys – The big folks to do government programs for the military, education programs, corporate cafeterias. So it was really a great place to find everybody at once so the right industry was a big piece of it. Next part, you’re bringing together the right technologies. When I look through about what we do on the POS side and food safety side, it’s great, but you guys are also looking at front office, back office, digital menu boards and a whole list of other technologies that are important for the industry. And finally with the technologies, it’s the ecosystems so it’s one place for us to meet all of the allied vendors and partners, if you will, to bring together better solutions for our joint customer base.
(R) Well listen, we appreciate your coming on board as a founding industry partner. I guess you’ve actually just brought up a number of different things that would be of interest because a lot of our members might not necessarily think of PAR broadly defined in the contract feeding space, military you mentioned, all the different areas and perhaps maybe you want to bring people up to speed as to where PARs focus is – you mentioned c-store and grocery and good safety – and I’m betting those are areas people might not readily think of PAR.
(K) Yes, PAR is best known as a point of sale company and that’s on the software side and the hardware side and the services. And largely, you know, we are best known in service for the fast casual and the casual space. But more on the grocery and c-store side, we start talking about our food safety solution and what we’ve been doing around our food safety solution, SureCheck. That’s where we tied into the other side of our business, which is food safety.
(R) Does the food safety piece standalone or does it tie in, sort of, into the ecosystem of what you might sell to a customer?
(K) Yeah definitely toward the ecosystem. PARs really reinventing itself not just as a POS company and food safety. We’re really looking at food and beverage management technology has a whole – are those two things come together. But more importantly, on the POS side, it stands as the engine that sits around other allied technologies that you’d find inside of a restaurant specifically and then on the food safety side, as it gets to grocery and the other allied markets.
(R) Well listen, I want to thank you for joining us today and it’s been a pleasure really learning more about the PAR and certainly working alongside of you and the team at PAR on focusing on how we build the IFBTA. We greatly appreciate both your support of the IFBTA but also the industry as well. I look forward to seeing where things go in the future and sharing that with our local chapter members.
(K) I appreciate it and appreciate the community’s group and leadership in the market.
(R) Great, thank you for joining us Kevin.
(K) Take care.
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