Name: Scale Smarter 2026
Uploaded: 2026-03-18T15:32:16.997Z
Duration: 59 min 48 s
Description: Scale Smarter 2026

Transcript for "Scale Smarter 2026": Good afternoon, everybody, and a very warm welcome to our first TakePayments ScaleSmarter webinar. Great to see so many of that have joined us this afternoon, and the sun is shining. What could be better? Just before we start this this webinar, just a a few housekeeping rules for today's session. Today's session will be recorded, so you'll be able to play this back at a later date. You'll see on the right hand side, we have a chat box and q and a section. So if there's any technical issues or any feedback you wish to give, please use the chat box on the right hand side. Or if you're on a mobile phone, it'll be at the bottom of your screen. Later on, there'll be a q and a session, so ample opportunity to pop any questions you have into the Q and A section, again, the right hand side. Just toggle from chat to Q and A, and we'd love to see as many questions as we can through there, and we'll fill those later on. At the end of the session, we will allow literally just a couple of moments for you to complete a survey for us. It's really important to gain feedback from today's session. It will take you no more than thirty seconds, and we'd love to hear from you. Okay. So let me just talk through our special guest today. I guess myself, first of all. For those that don't know me, my name is Darren Gibbons, and I'm one of the partner directors here at Takepayments, which is part of the global payments company. And it's a pleasure to be here today to host our first webinar. Joining me, I'm delighted that we've got Doug Day from Just Eat. He's the head of sales strategy and operations. We have Andrew Goodacre, who's the CEO of BIRA, which is the British Independent Retail Association. And Andrew's brought along two special guests as part of his session. We've got Claire Wright, founder of Gemini Bullman, and we've got John Jones who's the managing director of Philip Morris and Sons. Great to have you all here today, and they'll be coming on stage shortly. In terms of the topics then today, so three great topics to talk about today. In order, we're gonna be covering all things AI, understanding how it works and how it can help you save time. We'll be covering that. Second topic will be leveraging data and how does that help aid decision making. And the third topic today will be around social media and loyalty skills. So a great session ahead of us, and so I'd like to welcome on stage Andrew Kumbawa. Just a technical issue there. Andrew, you're on mute. I do apologize. No problem. But any time I do webinars and Teams things, there's always something like that. I apologize, everyone. I'll go back to the starter. So I'm here to help show examples of understanding AI and how we see it practically applied in businesses. But first of all, let me tell you a bit about BIRA and what BIRA does. So BIRA is Independent Retailers Association. We've proudly been around for one hundred and twenty five years in some shape or form. We've merged with other associations over the years. And we basically do two things, but with one objective in mind. Firstly, we provide business services, advice, services that help independent retailers from their businesses smarter, more efficiently, more effectively, and hopefully make more money. And on the other side, we do representational work, advocacy work, policy work, which effectively represents the whole retail sector, members or not. Because that one single objective that unites those two broad bodies of work is that we want every high street independent retailer to succeed. It's as simple as that. If we do nothing else, we should just have that one aim in mind that we want those businesses to succeed. And part of that is evolution, that success. And part of that success currently is AI. And we need to really understand AI because it is the buzz technology term at the moment. It has been now for eighteen months, two years. It stands for artificial intelligence. I'm sure many of you know that already. And basically, it's a technology that allows you to do what you do now, but faster, quicker, smarter. With more insight, more intelligence. And it learns as it goes along. And that's the important aspect of this. We know it through popular tools that we see in our everyday lives in many ways. ChatGBT, creative, generative AI. Google Gemini. If you do Google search, you will get an answer now first and foremost from its AI tool Gemini. And then Microsoft Copilot, which we use in our workplace to help us to read documents, summarize documents and basically just make our processes that bit smarter and more intelligent. The ways I think we are seeing it at the moment, AI in business, is marketing, organization, and data analysis. Those are the areas I think we'll see it explore and expand in the future as well. But first of all, let me introduce my first guest and introduce John Jones. John Jones is a long standing member of BIO, the businesses. The business is Philip Morris and Co. John, first of all, tell us a bit about your business. Afternoon, Andrew. Yeah. We're a very long established hundred and eighty years family business in Royal Harriershire. We're pretty much traditional high street hardware store that's expanded over the years, you know, specializing in country clothing and homewares. And we're primarily now also an online business with over 80% of turnover generated online, having invested in this really since the very early days of ecommerce and continue to evolve it ever since. That's brilliant. And you know, you've been around that many years. You must have seen so many changes. You personally. I'm not saying you've around it under eighty years. Your business has, of course. But but just before we get onto the AI bit, I mean, how have you seen technology come into your business, as as an independent retailer? Well, it's it's changed enormously in that time, obviously. And and as a business, we we try to be early adopters and gain a competitive advantage in these kind of things that we had an EPOS system way back in the day, way before most independent businesses would have had EPOS. We had digital accounts way before most businesses of our size would have digitized accounts. And and, you know, that was the sort of the early moves. But then, you know, we we continue to follow that since we've we've been in ecommerce since 2003, which was really very, very early days in terms of physical delivery of of good sport on the Internet. And we've rebuilt the website and the whole platform repeatedly since then to to continue adopting things as they come along early and gain the advantages. I mean, retail is all about dynamism and evolution and making those changes. So AI has come along. I presume you're still an early adopter when it comes to AI as well, are you? As much as we can be. Yeah. And we we've really got two types of AI usage going on in the business, some agentic and some generative. The genitive part really came first and and it's very much used by people like our marketing team and and the guys doing analysis and so on that it it it's that's all the tools that you know and hear on every day, like ChatGPT and Gemini and so on that you just mentioned. And it's used for things like web content writing, descriptions, metadata, that sort of thing, planning tool, analysis tool that, you know, a good example. I I wanted to know some brands that were commonly occurring in 250,000 search terms the other day, which I just couldn't have done a few years ago. ChatGPT did it for me in in just seconds. It's a fantastic piece of research that allows me to focus my marketing. And then the other part that we're really using a lot is AgenTic now that we're a brilliant piece of software that posts all our invoices straight into the accounting system. Wonderfully efficient. It saves hours. and hours and hours, Okay. and we can set it up in just minutes. Another good example is chatbots that we're experimenting with on the website at the moment, getting them to provide that initial part of the customer service with with a human that can jump in later if required and and, of course, comes enormously into our marketing through Google where there's there's a huge amount of algorithms running. And and we we focus those algorithms, we refine those algorithms, we we allow them to actually make changes to the account, and we monitor those changes rather than having to do them ourselves. I mean, that's brilliant. And I think what I really like about this is that quite often what I hear about AI is that people tend to focus on the generative creative element of it, which is often customer facing, as you say. But you've also adopting it within your back office as well and using it to make your business so much more efficient from receiving goods. to selling goods. Yeah. I. think that part is sorry. Yeah. I was gonna say that that, part is. very much. early days for independent businesses. I think it's only now reaching a point where that is accessible to businesses of our size. And I think you need to be careful with it. You you can't, you know, just let it go. You've got to train it. You've got to monitor it. You've got to keep an eye that it that that agentic side is is working accurately, particularly if it is customer facing. But it is definitely now there for smaller independent businesses to make use of. Yeah. Just just one question about it all. Because when when people talk about AI and we I've done it myself. I've I've looked at what AI products might be available, and we're not spoiled for choice, are we? You know, there's there's lots of people developing AI products that that they want us to buy into. You're using different products. Well, how have you decided which ones to choose? It's incredibly difficult, and if I'm honest, some of it is trial and error. The the chatbot thing, for instance, that I mentioned, we've been down a couple of dead ends on that one, and and also the invoicing software I mentioned, again, we we start off with a different tool on that one and monitored it, what percentage accuracy were we were getting, and so on. And and we weren't afraid to then back out because the the good thing with these tools is very often the the cost to trialing them is is minimal. So. you can give it a go and back out again very quickly if it's not working and then test something different. That cost being a low risk cost, is that because the items that the products you're choosing are free to use or because you can easily implement and if it's not working, just take them out of business just as quickly? Yeah. They're they're easy to implement. They're generally only paid on monthly subscriptions, and they're not tied in so. you can, come back out again very quickly, and you've only only paid for maybe one month. Okay. John, it's been great talking to you. I think if we could summarize your approach and we talk about back office invoice processing account management, an element of stock management there as well. Online sales and marketing is managing your advertising, is managing website content and AI generated images and generative experience optimization, GEO. It's replacing SEO at the end of the day and it's clear that you as an early adopter taking that on board, which is fantastic. John, thank you so much for your time. Okay. I'm sure you could regale us a lot more information, but keep leading the way for independent retail and thank you for your time. Think it's great talking to John and the three key takeaways that I think would would come from John's talk. I talked about his approach. Don't be afraid. John is an early adopter. He's an experienced retailer, but I I think he's what he's saying there is is is don't be afraid about it. Over an open mind, it isn't just a big change or big companies. John's business is one of the larger independent retailers, but there's lots of other smaller ones using AI and being courageous in trying out more about it. But interestingly, be measured. Embrace it, but you need to monitor it. You need to make sure it's working and you need to make sure that it learns and it's training because AI is a learning product. But thank you so much for that, John. I'd now like to introduce the next guest, Doug from Just Eats. Thank you, Andrew. Just checking I'm definitely not on mute, which I don't think I am. Okay. Good start. Thanks. As was mentioned, my name is Doug, and I'm the head of sales strategy and operations at Just Eat, which you've probably figured out from the extremely bright orange background behind me. That is not the color I've chose to paint the walls in my own house because I'm so passionate about the company. Just Eat is a delivery marketplace specializing in restaurant takeaway and groceries. We've got over a 100,000 partners, but at least 60,000 of those are independent partners. And we work closely with them to drive orders, make their businesses efficient and possible, and to try and guide them and support them where we can. I've worked at Just Eat for almost twelve years, so during that time, I've probably stepped into thousands and thousands of individual local restaurants and takeaways all around the country and seen seen many that thrive. And the topic that I'm here to talk to you about today is data and how it can be a key ingredient to success of those businesses. Many independently run businesses have manual processes and make decisions on a whim due to time and cost, but I'd urge each and every one of you to take the power of data seriously. As the guys previously talked about, there are so many free and easy to access tools that are available. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about that and hopefully give you some insights now, into into some partners on Just Eat as well. So why is data important? Big chains and restaurant groups have data at the heart of every decision, and it can help inform them of almost every aspect of their business in our industry from prep time, quality and service, cost margins, and basically everything else in between. Large businesses invest thousands, if not millions, dependent on which of those large businesses you are in having a really strong data ecosystem, but independent businesses can compete in this space too. There are many free and low cost tools available that can help an independent business garner amazing insights to compete with bigger brands and chains. And I think it's just worth pointing out. We we've talked about AI. We're talking about data here. All of these things, these tools can be at the heart of making really great decisions in independent businesses. But what makes independent businesses special is that finger on the pulse of their local community. You all know all of through all of your experience and you the community around you what decisions are the right ones to make. But if you use data at the heart of that, add an element of human instinct, then that really is kind of a winning recipe across the way. So this is not me here saying use data, make data, create every single decision, but it's using data as a key ingredient as a part of that. So where can you find data? I mean, data is basically everything. Data is essentially any piece of information that you can gather. I'm gonna talk about three specific topics. Third party providers are a really useful source of insight. So I'm here from Just so I'll talk a little bit about Just Eat. As an example, we provide almost an infinite amount of data support partners with the running of their business. We have a partner hub, which is essentially a back end system that tracks all of the data and information around your business and your performance. Have a team of account managers who are around with additional insights to help expansion and growth as well. But this is just one example. Any third party provider, whether it be the guys from Take Payments who are here or any other service will be able to provide you with amazing insights. Think it's worth saying, often independent business owners can see these relationships with third parties like Just Eat or Takepayments as being really transactional, but there is an opportunity to maximize a partnership just beyond simple aspects. And I think the partners that I've seen be super successful on Just Eat are working to extract the most information as possible and then use that not just in the Just Eat part of their business, but the rest of their business as well. Outside of partners, the Internet is your best free tool. You can just go and search for things. Use Google. Ask it a question. We've talked a lot about AI. I'm sure there are many of you on this call who will be a bit skeptical about how to use AI. The great thing about it is you can go on there and ask it. How do I use AI? And it'll help you learn everything about it. It can give you amazing insights about your business. You can go in there, type your business name, type where you're located, ask it essentially any question you want. Who are my competition? What is my local demographic like? Again, in our industry, what cuisines are popular? What dishes are there in our in our area that customers would like to order? It is basically a huge hub of essentially free information that's there for you to access. It's worth noting, you know, it's new and growing. It's not always a 100% accurate, but I think as a starting point in terms of free tools, things like ChatGPT, Chord, Gemini, whichever of these providers you want to use are a really good starting point. And then beyond free tools, if you want to invest, POS systems, data visualization tools, I'm going to talk about Power BI in a second. They're available, and you can buy some really amazing technology. But I think my best advice would probably be to start with what you've got and what's free. Learn what you can. Look at the data you've already got in your business. And then when the time is right, try and scale and invest further in more of that information over time. So just to try and bring that to life a little bit, I'm gonna talk about one of the partners on the Just Eat platform. Salim owns 10 different takeaways in around Portsmouth, so he has a a kind of growing suite of takeaways across all different cuisine types, and he's become a master of utilizing data to his advantage. So he looks at all the different sources of information available to him to drive his business decisions. Obviously, he's with Just Eat, so he captures all of his Just Eat data. He captures the data from his card payment system. He captures his own data through the running of his business and tries to create a really clear visualization of all the information. And like I said, it doesn't mean that information makes decisions for him, but it just gives him the clearest possible picture of his business when he's coming to make decisions about the day to day running or the expansion and growth of his business. The tool that he's using is Power BI, which I referenced earlier, and and there are there are a ton of data visualizations out there, but this is the one that he uses to his advantage. And this tool centralizes all of that information, takes it from those different sources, and just creates really easy views, and that means that he can make simple decisions. Those insights can support trading needs. So are there certain parts of his business, certain sites where, service is slow or ratings are down? It can talk about all of those areas of improvement. Can also signpost key points of strength, where is he doing well, what are the differentiation for his competition, and and other things like, you know, cuisine growth. I mentioned that I showed an image of of scoops. Like, what cuisines within the area are, you know, really successful if he's got a full typical takeaway menu and desserts are all all always becoming more popular. That gives him a great insight into opportunities to grow and kinda drive his business further in many different ways. So just to summarize that, I I I mean, through using a tool like Power BI, and again, this is not a promotion for Power BI. There are a ton of different different tools out there. Working with the partnerships like Just Eat is really able to drive amazing results. He's grown and scaled his business all the way up to 10 sites, constantly highlighting new opportunities, but just using that information on a day to day basis to iterate his processes, look at offers, so what days is business down that he can provide an offer to drive customers, pricing, and basically everything else in between to create growth. He obviously knows the area. He knows the industry, but using that data just gives him an edge on his competition where many of these other businesses around him might not be using data to the same level that he is. So just to wrap that up in terms of what we've learned, first of all, gathering data is the most important part, and I'll go back to what I said earlier. Data is just essentially any piece of information about your business that can be relevant and useful. So ask yourself, like, what what data and information do you already have? Like, what are your data sources? What can you bring into your business? What can you find online? What's free? What can you learn? Like, I'd I'd really encourage people to be exploring in this space and going and figuring out what's out there. And also, you know, within that, who's around you, all the people in the industry that might know. Not to to talk too much more about AI because we because we've already done that at this point, but you you genuinely don't need to be an expert in AI like anyone. You know, I never used it a couple of years ago. I now use ChatGPT almost every day to to help make very, very simple decisions in my life, and the good thing about it is it can also teach you how to use it. So, again, I would encourage people to just explore, go on, have a look around, and it won't just help you gather data, but it can also help you analyze it. If you get really good at learning how to use it, you can ask it questions and it can help to give you suggestions. It is essentially, you know, a digital PA if you if you take advantage of it. And finally, you know, have a data first approach, but follow your instinct. Again, I'm not here to tell people how to run their businesses. You all know how to do that way better than I do, But learn and build your knowledge, but make sure you have access to data that can support decisions. That perfect balance between experience and instinct with data to signpost a decision is always gonna be the one that will be most successful in any business. So have a think about that too. Right. We have talked about AI. We talked about data, and I'm now gonna pass you back to Andrew to talk to you about how you can use social media to scale your business further. Thanks. Thank you very much, Doug. That's really appreciated. It's really interesting, actually. When I started out in retail, he used to say the secret to retailing was location, location, location. I think, that's many years ago, sadly. Now it's data, data, data. And I think Doug has highlighted some very good reasons why that is the case. Another change over the years has certainly been the way we communicate with customers, and social media and digital marketing, however we want to describe it, is certainly one of those key elements. It's become so important. Know, there's some interesting stats there that 97% of SMBs, small businesses, use social media. It's billions people worldwide on on the various platforms. And the biggest ones that we know are Facebook owned by Meta, TikTok, Insta, X as it's called now. You know, we've seen these these various channels develop, and become powerful in terms of forming opinions, powerful in terms of we we connect with our customers. I would like to invite Claire Wright now to join me on stage tell us about her experiences. Hi, Hi, Andrew. Claire. Well, first of all, Claire, tell us a bit about your business, Gemini, in the lovely town of Stratford. Uneven. We're very lucky to be in Stratford On Avon. So we've been, trading in Stratford since well, since the nineteen eighties. So a key location on Wood Street. We've operated through retail, and then we went online in 2008. So mostly Scandinavian British lifestyle brands and and just building well, trying and continuing to build a strong community of customers locally, but obviously expanding that through our digital presence as well. Yeah. I mean, that's absolutely brilliant. And and in many ways, your approach is regular communication. with your customers, rewarding. loyalty which will come on too. But also, like John previously, the the the other retailer, an omnichannel of presence. And that's this idea that you started off in a physical store. and now you've added your impressive website alongside it. And. the two complement each other. They're not replacing each other. It's very much a complementary approach to. retailing. in that respect. Yes. It is. It. is. That's fantastic. Within So that, tell us about in social media, have I highlighted how much it's used, how much it's developed, the various platforms? How important is social media marketing to you and how you promote your business? I think there's many ways that you can communicate with your customers, but social media has become almost like the new shop window because it's the start of a journey. So many customers will look at social media, and then they'll perhaps go online or, you know, click through and come through to your website, or it will drive that footfall through to the store. So it's become a really relevant part of our journey for those customers. I mean, obviously, ideally would become a, you know, a a key revenue stream as well. Right. Okay. We may come back to the idea of revenue because I think I've only ever really heard you talk about it in terms of communication and so on. But. over the years, you've learned a lot about it. What do you think has been your best type or your best campaign, most successful campaign you've done? Did you have, one that really stands out? I think the things with social media, it's it's reactive. And I think that the customer dependent on what you're doing, you know I mean, what we we find generally is that when we shoot videos from store, you know, featuring us as real people, the business is a real business, then those that tends to get the most amount of traction. In terms of running campaigns, if we were linking it to a marketing campaign that may be email first, video, social media. We're linking it all the way through that way. Then I think it's down to to brand. I mean, a lot of customers react specifically to certain brands. So, you know and and actually, you know, sometimes you have something where you'll get a lot of traction and you don't it the customers will react to something that sometimes you couldn't have put that in. You wouldn't have had that insight to know that that was actually gonna happen. It's, you know, it I think within social media, there's so much going on with it. There's so much in the algorithms that can change the way that it works. You just have to be on it all the time. But yeah. So, I mean, I think, but generally, what we do find is is people want to see real people, and they want to see the faces of the business, and they want to see inside your business. And that's really where you get the most success. Right. Okay. That's interesting. I totally agree, especially with independent retailing as well because that is a real people connection and and and I suspect always will be. And you're able. to transfer that that personality of you and your people through social media to customers who maybe don't know you as well and don't know your stuff so well and maybe don't know your shots well, but you're you're you're you're really keen to promote that personality through. Yeah. I think mostly people buy from people. And I I think if you can reflect your business as a personality through social media and add in the other elements of brand, product, specific campaigns certain times of the year, if you're running a competition, you know, whether it's, you know, spring, summer, autumn, winter, whatever you're doing. I think that the the key thing is that the reaction and the biggest reaction is is when people really engage with the personalities that are online. And we can see that. You know, we we see that and it's it's not it's not a great thing to say, but some of our staff members get a much better reaction on social than than, you know, others. And I think it it's it's not about sell, sell, sell. It is about allowing people to see inside your business. Fantastic. As you I think you described it as a shop window, it's even more, isn't it? It's almost a human window as well, effectively. Yeah. It is. I mean, I think the shop window side of. it, obviously, you know, traditionally, shop window, you put your product in your shop window. You make sure sure that your shop's your shop's laid. out in a way that people can, you know, come into your store and see that. And I suppose it's very similar with social. You know, if you if you're gonna get clicks through, they're actually gonna make sure that when people come through to your site, that they're actually gonna see that project. It's gonna be which is why I say the journey for for us is we tend to follow this journey of, you know, we link email, we link it to video, we link it to social, Yep. and then that comes back to home page. So that actually when somebody's. going along that journey, that they they can find quite easily the things that they're looking for. And those click throughs then give us a really good conversion. That's brilliant. So that's that cohesive plan then. It's not just a random. post. It really. is a plan to bring people back. to your homepage and get that conversion as you say. You. mentioned it's about followers. Now, another and following is about loyalty. And I'm really quite. keen to also explore with you because you're one of the few retailers I've met recently who. use loyalty and loyalty schemes. Yeah. I mean, I'm very passionate about loyalty. Yeah. Tell us a bit about your scheme. How does it work for you? I I think loyalty. I I became very aware of how strong loyalty is to drive those customer relationships very early on because I just decided I you know, this I'm going back, you know, over twenty years when we first started to really push loyalty. As Don was saying, you know, we were early adopters. We were very good on EPOS. We had a really good EPOS system. Collecting the data, that's where it started because you have to be able to push your loyalty to the customers that you're serving. So you need to know that you're pushing it to the right customers. And actually having those Epos systems where we could collect that customer data was massively important. You know, to start with, it was all hard copies. It was just addresses. It's just updating that data and then making sure actually that that loyalty, you know, it feeds through to ensure that you're constantly building a relationship with your customer and making them feel valued because it isn't you know, you've gotta have the right information in front of you to be able to build that loyalty because if you're targeting them with something that they're not interested in, then actually that doesn't work. So the loyalty scheme brings people in. It makes them feel valued. It brings them back. You kinda create a personal relationship with them. And then that endorses that whole lifetime value with that particular customer and and ultimately drive sales. And and how do customers sign up to it? Do they sign up when they're in the shop? Your staff's encouraging to have do they have, like, a loyalty card? Is it something they do online? How how what's the process for for bringing people on? Well, specifically, I mean, for online, it's subscribers and they when you first go on and you subscribe, you kind of enter into our wider database. When you make purchases, you end to go you then enter into loyalty. Because as soon as you start to make a purchase, as long as you've created an account, obviously, you know, we can link guest. purchases into it as well. But as soon as they've created that account, Sure. then they'll start accruing points. And those points accumulate to a certain level, and then the system triggers off a voucher to them at that point. That voucher sits in their account. sits in their account and then enables them to come in and use that voucher, you know, against their future purchases. Alongside that, because not everybody gets to that level where the the system is triggering off those vouchers, No. We do run what we call bonus loyalty. So it it captures a wider group of people that we target sort of three, four times a year with a voucher with a minimum spend in the hope that actually they will, you know, they'll come on and they'll purchase and then they'll go into the next band which would enroll them into our system loyalty. It's brilliant. I wish more retail businesses did this and it doesn't have to be complicated. Claire, I think I could talk to you for the rest of the webinar on this topic if I could have done it with John. But thank you so much for that insight. It's really, really helpful. I'm not sure we'll have some questions on that at the end, Yeah. but really appreciate your thoughts on social media and the way you've built a following using loyalty as well. Alright. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you. Just to summarize the key actions there about developing campaigns and stories, building that store personality, encouraging those repeat sales with loyalty schemes. It brings it all together. You know, you create the interest, you get the conversion, the sale, and then you you you reward loyalty for those future sales as well. And and the top three takeaways from Claire was think people. Retail is still about people. She used the phrase we buy from people. And in independent retail, that's so so true. Technology has its role, absolutely. You build loyalty and it's essential to build that. Customers love loyalty schemes, whether you're buying coffee and you get a card stamp, whether you've got a point scheme as Claire has. Customers love loyalty schemes and love being loved to afford as someone is giving him something for their purchases. And I think the other thing that Claire was saying is about keep learning and John would say that as well about the need to understand that data and especially when developing either social media content or what messages you want to follow-up on the loyalty scheme. So some great learnings and great insight there. And I'd like to thank Claire for that. With that, I'd like to hand back to Darren now for hopefully a very productive Q and A. Great. Thank you, Andrew, and thank you to all of our guest speakers today. That was really, really insightful. Just a quick heads up. We've had some questions come in already, but feel free to pop in any questions on the right hand side if you're on a computer at home or in the office or on your mobile phone. The the section will be at the bottom of your of your screen there. So, yes, what I'd like to do, if I can, can I just welcome all of our guest speakers back onto to the digital stage? That'd be great to join me, and I'll just start to have a look at the the questions that have come in, which are some really good ones here. Okay. We'll start with yourself, Doug, if that's okay. Actually, I've got one myself. What's your favorite takeaway, Doug? What a great question. Definitely Indian. So I grew up in Bradford, so I was spoiled by the best curries possible. There we go. There we go. So, yeah, a 100% in India. I'll have a curry any night of the week for sure. Great stuff. I'm sure we all wanted to know that, brother. I know I've been working with you for a number number of number of years now. That was always on my ellipse, Rashid. So thank you. That's cleared up. While I've got you then, Doug, let's have a look at a question that's come in, which is around oh, yeah. What what is the one key piece of data you think is really important for a takeaway or restaurant to be looking at? Yeah. Good question. Accuracy, to be honest, I think gone are the days of phoning up and ordering a takeaway and just sitting around waiting for it to turn up sometime in the near future. People have expectations now on their time. And I and I I was gonna say speed, but food doesn't always need to be fast. Like, there's there's different food that takes a different amount of time to cook, but I think it's more the expectation that's given to the customer, whether that be twenty minutes, forty five minutes, or an hour. How accurately are you delivering against that time? And I think on our platform, we see performance of takeaways in restaurants, the reviews of them often really driven by how accurate the information is that they're providing. Obviously, you know, Justy as a provider can provide tracking services so customers can see where the food is. But any takeaway in general, even with their own orders, if they're able to just try and manage the data around what did they say and what did they deliver, That's a really key part of the experience, I think, in in kind of the modern expectation of customers. That's brilliant. Thank you, and thank you for that question. That's a great question. Okay. We'll move on. We've had a lot in about AI. I mean, that's been sort of common thread throughout of our webinar today. So I'll I'll point this one to yourself, Andrew, and then you can feel about yourself or to one of your, one of your colleagues there. So, should there be government support to help small businesses adopt AI? I'll do a quick answer, but I would appreciate John's insight in this as well. My immediate answer is yes. I think there's been government support in the past to help people become better at managing their business. There was a management skills program supported by the government as we came out of COVID. And I think it makes sense if we want small businesses to, to adopt new technology and to become smarter and invest. It does make sense if if at all possible for the government to to create some kind of a funding process. Maybe on a on a match on a like for like basis, I don't know, but some kind of commitment to help those businesses make the transition. John, from your point of view, would that have I mean, you're an early adopter, but I presume you would endorse the idea of helping your fellow retailers in some way to take the steps that you've taken. Yeah. I would absolutely have. I think there's two two thoughts on that, really. One is that being a high street retailer and a small business generally these days, I think, is is very difficult. And and AI is kind of a big scary area for a lot of businesses. And so there's a risk that the small will get even further left behind because the big players can can can move on with it more easily. And and so the support is important, to to make sure that small businesses are are keeping up. And the second thought there is that, you know, whilst there are lots of things you can do if it's small business, there's there's other areas that are still very challenging. There there's stuff with workflows that I'd like to be doing that actually do require a significant amount of time and input and so on that I know we could really, really benefit from doing them. But, actually, they're too big for us at the moment, and so support for sort of r and d type work on it where actually some coding and integrations and so on necessary would help us to move even quicker. Great stuff. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, John, for that one. We've got one here again. I'll come to yourself, Andrew. We'll probably go to to Claire on this one around loyalty. Does loyalty reward behavior that customers would have done anyway, or is it just a marketing tool to encourage repeat purchases? I'm definitely gonna leave that one with Claire because I know she has real passion for. this. So Claire, please. I think marketing is a bit of both really, you know, because loyalty will encourage repeat purchases. So, yes, you could say it is a marketing tool. But I think deeper than that loyalty, it rewards behavior customer behavior, and it enables the customer to feel, you know, part of your business. Think they I mean, just today, for an example, you know, we've had busy morning on the shop floor and, you know, customers are coming in specifically because they've they know that they've received loyalty. It's driven them to come into the store, and they've actually brought friends with them who have then also sort of enrolled into our loyalty scheme as well because they see the value in it. So so I think that there are two things. I think the one thing you have to remember with loyalty is a is a reward. It's not a discount, but it does it does drive sales. Thank you, Claire. Just looking at these, they're coming in quick and fast. Let's take, this one here. What is the biggest challenge with implementing AI in your business? Andrew and John on this one? I'll I'll start first because because we're a small business. As an association, we're a small business, and we have started to introduce AI. I asked John the question because I think it's been our biggest challenge as well. There are there is now a multitude of products that people are recommending or trying to sell to you. And it's really understanding that there isn't one AI product that will solve everything you want to do in your business. You need a range of AI products. It's really the challenge is finding the right one for your business. And I'll let John follow that up. Yeah. I I I probably sum that up with one word, trust. You you whether it's generative stuff or agentic, you've got to make sure that the stuff that is being developed by influenced by it, etcetera, is correct and that you can trust it and and you're happy for it to be out there potentially being this, you know, public face for your business in in some scenarios and so on. So, trust is a big issue with it, and that's why you you you've got to embrace it, but you've also got to, do so in in baby steps, in order to build up that trust in it. Thank you. Next one, we'll point this to you, Doug. How is Just Eat using AI to help their partners? Yeah. Great question. I mean I mean, the the guys were talking about that. There there are so many ways that you can use it, and I guess the responsibility of an organization the size of Just Eat is maybe to provide tools to partners that they wouldn't be able to acquire themselves. So mainly, internally, we're looking at things like how we, you know, enhance photography, imagery on our platform, you know, descriptions, how we how we create menus, you know, just just general operational bits and pieces that can really supplement the value of our people. So there's there's a ton of different ways we use it, but like most businesses, it's very, very early stages. So we're investigating lots of different ways, you know, not only to improve our own business and the service we provide for our partners, but like I said, tools that we can maybe give to partners themselves to use. So it's it's still very, very early days, and we are very much in a in a test and learn culture of figuring things out at the moment. But, yeah, there's there's there's probably more to come on that in the in the coming months. So a question is coming on the chat. I'll point this at yourself, Andrew, and your your colleagues there, Don and Claire. So is there a quotation receipt software company that you guys can recommend other than Sage or Xero? Since struggling with paperwork, and you can probably see that in the chat, yeah, on the left. hand side. Yeah. Anything. anything can see recommend. there or take away and help us with? I mean, I can step in there, actually. I mean, Yeah. I use. Right. Yes. Yeah. yeah. I mean, if if you're talking specifically about administrative work, which I presume that they are with that question, is that I use I use QuickBooks Professional. We run three businesses through QuickBooks, and we use Dext, which is like Receipt Bank to actually process things through, which I find very easy. Just it's super, super easy to send things in. You can categorize, classify in so many different reports. It's the the AI it's completely AI responsive now, so you can have your bookmarks. It's just very, very easy to use. And think as soon as you set it up, it's and created the rules. It's very, very easy to use. Yeah. And if I jump in there, I'm not quite sure it's directly answering the question on on quotation receipts, but we use Xero combined with text, and we use text on the purchasing invoicing side. And that that's been that good that within a few months of us putting it in a a three day a week book keeper we had came to me and said that they were thinking of retiring. I said, what do think we should do about replacing you? And she said, don't text means you don't need the hours anymore. And it and it proved to be true that it it's literally saved us a three day a week job. It is. fantastic. K. Great. I think that's led to another question actually for yourself, Claire, and and, John. What differentiates your businesses from others out there that allows you to be on top? That's a hard I think that's quite a hard question, actually, because every every business is very different, because every person that owns a business runs a business differently. I think for me, it's just trying to be one step ahead and always looking for any systems in terms of managing the business that can help us manage it more efficiently. It's almost like lean management, you know, what can we do to be as accurate as possible in the least amount of time to free us up to do other things that will help us work on the business. I think that's probably, you know, the best explanation I would have for that one. Yeah. And I I think from us, two things really. One is we try to exploit niches that whilst we are doing sort of mainstream brands, names you would know like Barber, we we we try to be in areas that are not too competitive. And we've still got lots of competition from lots of people in those areas. So then it's about selling ourselves, which touches on something that was said earlier, that people buy from people. So particularly online, it can be very faceless. And so if you can convey your personality to convey that trust and and get people to feel that you are the people they want to deal with. I think that's really, really important. I think John just endorsing what John said about trust. I mean, trust is a massive part in in the way of kind of maintaining and building your business, you know, because it it kind of it sets the route on everything, you know, and and, again, going back to loyalty. Trust is a massive part of loyalty. I'd agree with that. Absolutely resonates as well in in our industry as well. I'm sure it does seem to be dealt as well. Okay. We've got two questions left, and then we'll look to wrap up the q and a. So it's a great question that's coming. I'll again, I'll probably start with you, Andrew, and we'll we'll find our way with all of the guests. How can offline businesses benefit from AI? We've touched a bit of it today, but maybe just to recap on on on that particular piece around offline. Yeah. Within our sector, today you've heard from two businesses that you would classify as early adopters. They've been quick to or quicker than most to see the opportunity of online, see the opportunity of working through. But if a business isn't online or struggles to be, I think that's where social media plays. You don't have to sell online with social media. It's about connecting and making sure that customers know where they can find what they're looking for and making sure that they think of your business as an opportunity or an option within their shopping repertoire. So I think offline businesses have to adjust and change. There's no harm in being offline. Online is hellishly competitive. It's it's probably less in some ways could be reduced margin because you've got the delivery cost involved. Whereas if you're selling through a physical shop, people come and collect it. Yeah. Take it away. So in some ways, the margin stays with the business. But I think we talked about with Claire and the same could be a part of John, omnichannel is definitely the way forward. And whether that omni means more than one way of selling, but it could be in this case for an offline business. You may not want the website aspect to it, but you should not ignore the digital transformation that can or the transformation that can be bought about by using digital products like social media to really connect with customers out there. I agree. I I get asked a lot of by a lot of other retailers how, you know, how I got online, you know, how to do it. They're interested in, you know, taking their businesses online. And quite a lot of them are very small. They're just very small businesses, and that's exactly the approach that I've said to them. You know, you can be online. You're an offline business, but you can be online through your social media. And actually, they've created really good ways of doing lives and getting customers to you know, some of them can go live and have a 100 people watching their live within within a minute. And that is their way of communicating and getting their businesses across online without having an online site specific site. That's great. Thank you both for that. And, just the final one, it's one of my own again. I felt a bit guilty, actually. I I buy one at Doug, and I should only, you know, drop a question to yourself, John and and Claire. So, if there was, one product in your stores or online at the moment, what's selling hot at the moment? What's the product to get in 2026? Maybe start with you yourself there, first of all. Well, at the moment, we've got a really hot product, which is a triangle scarf. And it is just sounds so ridiculous, but it's the tiniest little triangle scarf. I can't tell you how many of them that we've sold. You know, it's just every season you'll get something that people just seem to pick up and go with. But this is definitely a volume item that that I think is gonna carry us through all the way through into the summer. So and besides that, I mean, at the moment, it's just any anything anything colorful and knitweary really is is just that's a key category for us at the moment. Colorful. But but one thing actually that we're noticing is is that people are going back to more fitted clothing, and so that would be a more colorful fitted knitwear and my triangle scarf. Triangle scarf. There we go. Heard it. first here. And, John? Well, after the dry summer, goodness knows how long last year, we seem to have had a very wet winter. So 2026 so far for us has been the year of the welly boots. Absolutely gosh. bonkers. Welly Welly Boot seems to be up like every other sale so far in 2026. So I think it rained for the first two months of this year, didn't it? So, no. I can totally understand that. That's brilliant. Well, look. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, guests, for joining me today and, guest speakers. You guys can drop off if that's alright, and I'll just wrap this final session up. So thank you for the the q and a session. Okay. So that concludes that. A quick reminder for everybody that's dialed in today to this webinar. Whether you're an existing partner, whether you're a customer with us, whether actually this is your first time interacting with Take Payments, you know, we are here for you. So what will happen after this session, you will receive an email from us. We'll have the video recording on there so you can play this back to your to your leisure. We'll have some information, a bit more around our payments and our data services. And if there is anything at all that we can help you with, whether you're existing or new, then please reach out to us on the contact details on the email that you're going to receive. That's the, the end of the, the webinar. All I would encourage you, please, if I may, just for the next twenty, thirty seconds, please stay online. My colleague is going to pop up a quick survey, and, we really do appreciate your feedback. It's our first webinar, so we'd love to hear back from you, on what you'd like to hear next time. And, with that, thank you, everybody. Thank you to our guests. Have a great afternoon. Enjoy the sunshine. Buy your, triangular, scarfs and your Wellington boots, and have a great day. Thank you, everybody.