Tasteful tech
Gloworder wants to revolutionize your bar experience; a fundraiser for fire-damaged Taste of Jerusalem Cafe; our holiday prime rib recipe + more food & drink news
Let’s establish up front this week that I am not a tech reporter and Side Dish is obviously not a tech column. But a tech topic that thematically overlaps with food and drink? Well, sure I’ll take that on.
Actually, I’m lying. I tried not to. I initially gave a man who emailed me, named Gordon Beecher, a polite blowoff response to his query (by inquiring if his company had an ad budget). But I did so hesitantly, because he did get my attention with one of the most entertaining pitch letters I’ve ever received. Hell, that’s just the beginning of it: He later made me a personalized YouTube video where he playfully botched my last name (with lots of colorful swearing) while detailing his product and making a convincing plea as to why I should cover his fledgling company named Gloworder as worthwhile editorial content. “It’s never been done before— I have patents!” he proclaimed. All this was from his basement, mind you.
I would love to share that video with you but he insisted it was for my eyes only. I mean, damn, all that effort for little old me! … Well, he didn’t say I couldn’t steal screen grabs from it and quote from the earlier email, so dig this and you’ll see how he hooked me with personality:
Hi Matt, I'm a fan. I particularly liked yesterday's IKEA piece… I have a 12-year-old daughter that makes the same weird requests (I once lied that I was banned from Costco because, well... it's Costco). Actually, off topic, I know how to fix IKEA and Costco: lazy rivers. Shoppers float down predetermined routes, pulling things off the shelf and into their raft as they meander downstream.
See, that’s amusing, right? (And he might just be onto something. 🤔) So, what the hell, I reached out, and we had a good long chat in which I came to learn that we are fellow Colorado College alum and both spent time way-back-when working in the industry along Tejon Street. Except then he went to law school and became a civil litigation attorney and I went the much more lucrative route and became a journalist. (Please tell me you get that’s a joke, right?)
Anyway, if you were living here in the early aughts (insert your favorite Texan or Californian joke here… go ahead, I’ll wait…) you may have run into Beecher when he was helping Chuck Schafer (who’s FO4R North complex I recently reviewed here) manage Red Martini, Blondies, Gasoline Alley and Cowboys. For roughly a decade, Beecher oversaw staffing and safety concerns as well as back-end paperwork like liquor licensing, etc. for the Guadagnoli empire. Most relevant to this story: Beecher worked in high-volume clubs where quick service was more important than it tends to be at our swankier small cocktail lounges which support more bartender interaction with guests. Which gets us back to Gloworder and what it is.
Click on that link and the splash page quickly explains it, but basically it’s a free app that turns your phone into a POS effectively, allowing you to view a menu, order drinks and pay via the app. (Meaning you wouldn’t even need to carry credit cards or cash.) Your phone will glow a certain color (hence the company name) which directs bartenders to you for the drink delivery at the bar rail. Again, this is designed for high-volume spots like nightclubs and music venues, so don’t picture this tech as being necessary at smaller bars and drink lounges; even Beecher concedes it is not.
But he believes he’s solving roughly a dozen industry-wide problems with this new format that will be of direct relevance and value to the high-volume spots, making service easier on the staff and ultimately easier on and better for the customers. Gloworder is essentially the workaround to having to elbow your way through a crowd to a bar that’s two or three people deep, and get the bartenders attention, and handle a payment transaction too on the spot. “The industry is full of inefficiencies and headaches,” he says, “including the existing POS system model.” He clarifies that those are great for static customers (seated at tables designated with seat numbers in a system), but practically useless in a setting where folks are on the move constantly.
Beecher also says Gloworder will allow bartenders to provide better service as they’ll have more time to interact with guests (or charm them with flair, or whatever) because they won’t waste time handling the ordering and payment part of the transaction anymore. (Their talents reside in mixing drinks, not swiping plastic cards.) They can simply interact with their own Gloworder screen (a tablet, provided free by Gloworder if they don’t have one) alongside their normal POS to receive drink orders, then chat with customers upon delivery if time allows, or get back to banging out drinks to thin a crowd. Beecher claims their tests thus far have shown 70-percent faster service.
It all gets back to convenience. And there’s other back-end benefits for bars and clubs such as avoiding walkouts and chargebacks. That’s when someone disputes a charge the next day, which is “a huge headache, wherein the onus is on the bar to prove it’s not fraudulent,” explains Beecher. He notes it happens a few times a month (thanks to unsavory characters) and that bars often just eat the cost because the time-suck. It can’t happen via Gloworder, and they also handle credit card fees, saving clients around 3 percent annually in transaction fees. Who pays it then? Customers, which Beecher feels is practically negligible when you’re talking less than a buck on $30 of drinks, let’s say. (He points to much higher convenience fees on concert tickets and such that we are all used to now.) And bars/clubs could offset some or all of that with drink pricing would that they wanted to co-subsidize it, so to speak.
If you’re finding this alluring as a club or music venue goer and want to check it out, you can download the app and create an account now, but know that Gloworder is still in a closed, Beta phase wherein it has only onboarded a small amount of test venues and bars in the region. Though Beecher says he has a waitlist already of 60 bars in the country and four more internationally. The benefit of onboarding now, he says, is early adopters may be invited to more test/closed events and they’ll be notified when spots go live in their vicinity. Similar to Uber, Gloworder uses an area map where you can zoom in and out to locate Gloworder venues and view menus ahead of time too.
The company is seeking interested venues in the Springs area to become early adopters says Beecher, noting they can jointly develop the platform to cater to unique needs. Their office is currently in Denver, and Beecher has assembled a 10-person team. They began working on Gloworder during the pandemic and have been totally “bootstrapped up to this point,” he says, noting he’s working soon on a round of Series A funding to begin larger investment growth. (… Man, I do kinda sound like a savvy tech reporter here. Did I have you convinced?)
December is for Prime Rib at Ranch Foods Direct
For our final Gather Food Studio recipe of 2023 we offer you this superb Standing Prime Rib Roast. And YES, before you ask, we will be continuing this collaboration with Ranch Foods Direct in 2024! For my part, I’m super grateful for their early support of Side Dish. Hopefully you’ve made at least one of our featured monthly recipes, but don’t worry if you haven’t. You still have time to catch up, because Ranch Foods Direct will continue to stock Gather Food Studio’s fresh-ground spice blends for each of our featured recipes and you can always find those recipes here or on Gather’s site. Anyway, back to this month’s prime rib: What I can tell you is that I already sampled a good quantify of it after our photo shoot and it’s outStanding (hah, that’s my pun). And Ranch Food Direct’s team already prepared it too in order to film a video of the recipe being made (which I’ll post next week) — and they were singing their praises to the flavors after I last spoke with them. In other words: Your taste testers are all overjoyed, so we’re confident you will be too. Go ahead: set the table.
Taste of Jerusalem devastated by fire
The big news downtown this week was the structure fire that affected several businesses along Bijou Street and its connected alleyway. Among those businesses are several food-and-drink entities, including Icons and Shame & Regret, who sustained smoke damage. But the majority of damage happened at Taste of Jerusalem Cafe (as you can see in the above link if you watch the TV segment).
Owner Abdul Nasser is a community-minded person who has been rightfully praised in the past for feeding anyone who’s hungry (food insecure) for free. He was given a Jefferson Award by KOAA News 5 in early 2022 in honor of that. I spoke with Nasser late Thursday evening and he says it’s too early to know everything (as he speaks with his insurance company, etc.), but he presumes it will be upwards of six months to a year until he’s able to reopen in this space where he’s been located for 15 years. Rather than dwell on the details of the incident or list his upcoming needs, Nasser asked me instead to thank the firefighters who rushed to the scene to put the fire out quickly. “They did a really good job,” he says.
A GoFundMe has been started by a friend/loyal customer of Nasser’s who I vetted through him, so it’s a trustworthy. Now would be a great time for the community to give back to someone who’s given a lot to others — show some holiday spirit!
Bites and bits
• In national news this week, who didn’t get a chuckle out of this story: ‘Woman Who Threw a Burrito Bowl at Chipotle Staffer Was Just Sentenced to Working at a Fast Food Restaurant.’ Best quote from the presiding judge: “This is not ‘Real Housewives’ of Parma [Ohio]. This behavior is not acceptable.”
• For last week’s ‘All I want for Christmas is my Casa Bonita invite’ story, I did reach out to my most recent PR contact for the outfit, who’d helped me land the pre-opening tour in May. I simply asked if they could share the current number of people who’ve signed up for Casa Bonita’s newsletter, who’re still awaiting their invite. What I got back in response: “We don’t have any update on the number of folks on the waitlist, but appreciate you asking and thank you so much for your continued interest.” My response to that response — which I didn’t send but I’m telling you here, trusted reader — is “Lamesauce Mcghee!” We’re all in the dark here, people. BUT I heard some scuttlebutt from a person who has been already and they claimed (read: I cannot verify this, obviously) that their server told them that there’s around 100,000 people on the waitlist and the eatery is moving through about 9,000 a week. Wowsa.
• Earlier this week, I ran into Jay Hafemeister, the owner of the new Dave’s Hot Chicken C. Springs franchise location. You may recall that this is where I managed to get searing Reaper hot sauce in my eyeball back in early October, during my preview, like a rookie fool. Anyway, I asked Jay if there’d been any more amusing episodes with the Reaper hot chicken. (Remember, this is an item you have to sign a waiver for to a be allowed to order it; I rated it “100% pain-train bananas.”) I was definitely not expecting him to say what he did, which was essentially: “Yeah, we had our first customer pass out after eating it. We had to call the fire department and all.” 😮
• Edelweiss is now selling its popular holiday stollen (at $18.50) for pickup or shipping. Owner Dieter Schnakenberg tells me that in order to keep up with annual demand, his team starts baking in late October and produces about 2,000 between then and January. “This recipe is special,” he says, “because it has the cream cheese and is much moister than the traditional.”
• The Wild Goose Meeting House is also selling a holiday item: jars of its delightful gooseberry relish.
• The former 3 Margaritas at 1749 Lake Woodmoor Drive in Monument underwent a renovation over the past couple months to rebrand as Tequila Village Mexican Cuisine. They celebrated their grand (re)opening on Nov. 28 with a ribbon cutting.
Redemption Round
A big update for our ongoing Bar Battle series at Tipperary Cocktail Parlor: We’ve postponed the Battle Royale until Jan. 22 (due to some schedule conflicts). But in place of it on Monday, Dec. 11, from 6-8 p.m., we’re hosting a Redemption Round Battle at the new downtown Wobbly Olive. Meaning: Some of the runners up will return to battle all friendly like to earn placements in future comps that will include Denver bartenders (and possibly a Denver venue to spotlight the Springs up north).
What you need to know: Entry and drink samples will be free. And the Wobbly Olive will be on Happy Hour the whole day, from 4-10 p.m., meaning any of the 103 cocktails on the menu will be just $6, a full half off. Plus Chef Mark Henry will create some food specials to accompany the full, regular menu. If you still haven’t checked out this new Wobbly Olive location, now’s a great time with good action guaranteed.
Upcoming events:
• Dec. 9: Ice Cream & Clay at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. $30 includes a custom bowl made by CC clay artists to take home. Join Josh & John’s founder John Krakauer to learn how to make homemade ice cream.
• Dec. 9: 40th annual Festival of Lights Parade downtown. 5:50 p.m.; dine early or afterwards at your favorite downtown spot (or anywhere you can get in, ahem).
• Dec. 10: Manitou Christmas Parade. 5 p.m.; same idea as above, but you know, in Manitou Springs on the following day. Duh.
• Dec. 11: Bar Battle Redemption Round at Wobbly Olive. 6-8 p.m.; free. (See above.)
• Dec. 12: Salad or Bust Festive Feast. 6:30-9:30 p.m.; $72-$82.
• Dec. 21: Sip With Schnip Holiday Hangout at The Carter Payne. 5-7 p.m.; free. (First beer, featured wine or cocktail free to paid subscribers. Free subscribers get $2 off their first drink.)
Parting shot(s)
I was invited to appear on the Fox21 Morning Show on Thursday of this week to be interviewed by Matt Meister and talk about Side Dish with Schniper. Watch the full segment here. And special thanks to Matt for the invite and thoughtful interview!
