Six years ago we sold burgers out the back of a pie shop and Cloud Waitress took our orders from day one. Here's the story of the people behind the platform.
Around five o'clock the pie shop would shut, the warmer cabinet would go dark and the last customer would wander off with a mince and cheese, and half an hour later we'd open the back and start slinging burgers until nine, five nights a week, two blokes with a griddle and an idea that hadn't been tested on anyone but our mates. It was a pop-up, really, and when you're a pop-up you have no shopfront, no sign anyone has heard of and no budget to fix the things you don't know you've got wrong yet.
What we did have, from the very first night, was a way for people to order from us directly. That was Cloud Waitress, and next month it will be six years. This isn't an ad, and nobody asked us to write it. It's a thank you to the people who helped two first-time operators look like a real business before we were one, and a bit of the story of how we got from the back of that pie shop to the two restaurants we run now, on Queen Street at 1/492 in the CBD and at Shop 1, 12 Jellicoe Street in Wynyard.
When Gary and V decided to start a burger joint, Chris Timm was already running Cloud Waitress, and we were lucky enough to know him. V talked about this when Chris came on V's podcast, Burgers to Business, in April 2024, and the thing that still stands out is how fast it all happened. "We had Fat Puku's set up in a day," V said. "I mean, it didn't even take a day, to be honest with you." It would have been quicker again if we'd already had our payments account sorted, which tells you where the hold up was, and it wasn't on their side.
Before a single burger went out, Chris was handing over the advice he gives everyone, which is to own your domain name and your Google presence and keep control of them yourself. It sounds like admin. Six years on, it's the reason the way people find us and order from us still belongs to us.
The part that matters most to a small operator is who picks up when something goes sideways on a Friday night. On the episode Chris put it plainly: "We don't operate bots. There's a team of real people who know how to set up and implement the system." He said they pretty much always get new venues set up within 48 hours, and that some people do it all themselves while others have the team do it for them.
Chris didn't come to this from software first. He came to it from a restaurant. He'd opened a Thai restaurant in Kerikeri, up in Northland, and ended up spending his nights answering the phone and punching orders into the till, seven days a week. "If I could automate this," he said, "I can probably get some of my life back." That's where the online ordering idea started, with one restaurant and then a local restaurant owner who said set me up and I'll introduce you to my family, and it grew door to door around Northland from there.
Having run a kitchen himself, he knew the maths. "The restaurant game is a low margin business," he said, and back then you were lucky to clear 15 percent, so handing 30 to 40 percent of an order to a third party didn't make sense to him. Cloud Waitress charges restaurants a monthly fee instead. In Chris's words, restaurants "own all of the data. It's their solution."
For us that has meant you can order straight from us on our own site, paying with Google Pay or Apple Pay, which Cloud Waitress had early. More recently it has meant delivery too. As V said on the episode, "now we're able to offer our customers direct online ordering and delivery via Uber Eats without paying the commission," with an Uber driver bringing it to your door and the delivery fee going to Uber. Every order that comes to us direct is money that stays in the shop, and in a business this tight that's what pays for the crew who notice your empty water glass before you do.
Near the end of the episode, Chris was talking about how Cloud Waitress grows, which is mostly by sharing the stories of the people who use it, and he said, "Hey, look at Fat Puku's. They're a success story." We'll take that, though the honest version is that a lot of hands made it real, and his team's were some of them.
The pie shop is long behind us now, and so are the nights of wondering whether anyone would turn up at half five. The orders still come in the same way they did on the first night, straight to us. If you want to try it, the menu is here, you can book a table if you'd rather sit in, and you can find Cloud Waitress at cloudwaitress.com. Thanks, Chris, and thanks to the team.
Six years in. Pull up.
Team Fat Puku's
Q: How long has Fat Puku's used Cloud Waitress?
Since we started as a pop-up at the back of a pie shop, which was November 2020, so six years next month. On the April 2024 episode of Burgers to Business, V described Cloud Waitress as part of the business from the very beginning, as the way customers ordered from us directly.
Q: Can I order Fat Puku's online without the commission apps?
Yes. You can order directly from us through our own site, which runs on Cloud Waitress. On the April 2024 podcast episode V said we can offer direct online ordering and delivery via Uber Eats without paying the commission, with the delivery fee paid to Uber.
Q: What is Cloud Waitress?
In founder Chris Timm's words on the episode, it's "a custom-branded online ordering solution for the hospitality industry" that lets people order straight through to the restaurant without paying huge commissions. He said restaurants own their data and pay a monthly fee. More at cloudwaitress.com.
Q: Who started Cloud Waitress?
Chris Timm. On the episode he said the idea came from running a Thai restaurant in Kerikeri, where he spent nights answering the phone and punching orders into the till, and wanted to automate it to get some of his life back.
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