A Better Way to Close Your Tab

Technology is an ever-increasing presence in restaurants. Over
the past year, restaurants have scrambled to move to contactless
services to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. But, Tim
McLaughlin did contactless before contactless was cool.


On this episode of The Main Course, host Barbara Castiglia talked
with Tim McLaughlin, the CEO of GoTab. GoTab is a Restaurant
Commerce Platform (RCP) used by large- and mid-sized restaurants,
breweries, bars, and hotels. GoTab uniquely allows patrons to
order and pay through a server (old school), or directly from
their mobile phones (contactless ordering and payment - new
school), or blend the two experiences all on one tab, through its
easy-to-use mobile point-of-sale (POS), contactless ordering and
payment features, and kitchen management systems (KMS).


“As many people in hospitality know, payments are a friction
point and not a fun point of dining” - Tim McLaughlin


The duo dug into contactless payment and GoTab, which started in
2016. McLaughlin started his career in e-commerce and was
attempting to solve the pain point of payment in restaurants. He
opened his own brewery and started to see the pain points of
restaurant life. One of those payments was payment.


“As many people in hospitality know, payments are a friction
point and not a fun point of dining,” McLaughlin said. “There
were not solutions I thought were very good.”


So, he started GoTab on the side. It didn’t take off because it
only focused on payments. So, they set out to solve another pain
point: ordering. They launched several versions of their software
that allowed users to order through their phones.