RTM Member Spotlight: Chris Lybeer

Describe your work philosophy in one sentence.

Set clear goals, hire great people, build great teams, and empower them to relentlessly chase those goals.

What unique problem does your company solve for restaurants?

Consumers want something new, especially digitally, more and more frequently (Alexa, send a pizza to the soccer field for me in 20 minutes) - Revel was built with these consumer enabling channels in mind and is flexible enough to support them quickly and natively!

Why did your company join RTN?

We believe community/teams are important in any industry, and we also believe that the partner ecosystem is too challenging to deliver today. We need to have standards so customers can get more value from multiple companies they choose, without a lot of time and cost - something like RTN is the only hope to solve for this.

What's your favorite personal past-time?

I am a bocce enthusiast, have a court with oyster shells from the coast in my backyard, and play in leagues year round indoors and outside in Atlanta's famous Piedmont Park.

What three words would you use to describe what's happening in the restaurant industry right now?

Digital. Disruption. Opportunity.

What's your favorite restaurant?

Bocca Lupo, in an older neighborhood in Atlanta with incredible, day-day, farm-table Italian food.

What's your most-used restaurant app?

OpenTable. Oddly, I am a light user - although I try them to learn. This is only because I live in the city in Atlanta and I can walk to 25ish excellent restaurants, making my experience a bit more old fashioned.

Restaurateur you most admire & why.

Jen Hidinger Kendrick of Staplehouse. For overcoming adversity (lost her partner/husband at a very young age to cancer), and turning that into a passion for her life by creating the Giving Kitchen charity to help the restaurant community.

What technology are you most excited about for the future of restaurants?

AI/ML - I believe restaurants still lag behind the curve in using data to improve their businesses - and its not their fault, they don't have time to make that happen. Their technology providers have to step up and mine the data to guide them. When done right, this will create a step change in the efficiency, profitability and success of restaurants.