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.