IAM328- Former Restaurant Owner Innovates App for Customers to Find Restaurants

Janaka is the founder and the CEO of Tastefinder. Janaka holds bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a master’s degree in Technology Management from George Mason University. He is a project manager working as an independent project management consultant to the US government. He is a former restaurant owner and an avid foodie.

• CEO Hack: Daily plan- tasks to do tomorrow
• CEO Nugget: Consistency and initiative to do anything in life
• CEO Defined: Being different, always present and doing things collaboratively

Website: https://www.tastefinderapp.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FinderTaste
LinkedIn: https://pr.linkedin.com/company/tastefinder-inc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TasteFinderapp/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Janaka Siriwardena of Taste Finder.

Janaka, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Janaka Siriwardena 0:40

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be in your show, Gresh

Gresham Harkless 0:44

No problem. Super excited to have you on. What I wanted to do was read a little bit more about Janaka so you could hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

Janaka is the founder and the CEO of Tastefinder. Janaka holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a master’s degree in Technology Management from George Mason University. He is a project manager working as an independent project management consultant to the US government. He is a former restaurant owner and an avid foodie.

Janaka are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Janaka Siriwardena 1:13

I'm ready, Gresh

Gresham Harkless 1:16

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off. I want to hear a little bit more about your background and what led you to start your business.

Janaka Siriwardena 1:22

Sure. I have been actually a business owner since 2012. I started with owning a gas station. Small gas dish in 2012 right after I graduated from George Mason University. After that, I moved down to owning a restaurant in Ashburn, Virginia to franchise a burger restaurant. Then from there on, I started my own restaurant. It's a piece of pizza restaurant. Just wanted to explore that world last year.

So I've sold all those distances. And during that business, that's when I actually had this Taste Finder idea.  wanting to bring together how customers can find restaurants, because as a foodie, I'm not actually like a foodie, who goes every day to discover new restaurants. But I actually love experiencing new restaurants and new food. But I find it difficult to find the right restaurant. So I actually decided to come up with Taste Finder to help bridge the gap.

Gresham Harkless 2:41

That makes perfect sense and I love that you had that experience. Especially and I know, like when I met you at 1.1 Million Cups. I heard you speak a lot about the reason for Taste Finder and all the awesome things that you're doing. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about that how the app works, what exactly it does, and just everything you can tell us about it.

Janaka Siriwardena 3:01

Sure. If you think about today for the average consumer, there are at least 10-20 restaurants that are dedicated just to food, right? Looking at reviews, you have Yelp, Google reviews, and Zomato, there are so many Google, basically, restaurant review platforms. Then if you want to do ordering, there's GrubHub DoorDash, UberEATS, and Caviar, there's at least another 10 right there. Then if you actually wanted to get a coupon, there's a restaurant, Groupon, it's all over the place. Nobody actually has everything in one place.

For me, when I was actually looking for a restaurant with my fiance, it took about 30 minutes for us to make a decision. Like, oh, God, take a look at the reviews menu and all of these things. We decided, there has to be an easier solution for this and here it is Taste Finder, everything in one place.

You have your restaurant reviews in one place. You have all the menus, the reviews, coupons, the distance to the restaurant, everything in one place, so you get to make a decision within seconds. That's what takes fundraising.

Gresham Harkless 4:31

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I love the idea of it. And I remember even when you presented it, I remember seeing a picture and I know you made it obviously so you being a former restaurant owner you also built the app so that just as much as you and your fiance or anybody you're trying to go out to eat with, is looking for something that hits all those different checkpoints and all in one place.

It also can be a lot for the people that own the restaurants if I'm understanding correctly be it because you have to have different apps and different databases and all those things for all those different, I guess ways that people can purchase your food and stuff.

Janaka Siriwardena 5:09

That's right Gresh because not only does the customer has to deal with 10 restaurants, but 10 websites restaurant also has to deal with all of these delivery platforms, managing review sites, and all of these platforms.

So we're trying to make it so it's easy to manage for both sides, for restaurant owners, as well as the regular consumers.

Gresham Harkless 5:36

Yeah, exactly. And by consolidating everything, making everything simple, it's interesting that it hasn't been done before. But I'm super excited to hear that you're you're working on and working towards being able to consolidate all of those things.

So, you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you, or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Janaka Siriwardena 6:01

Right, so what sets us apart is that we are not a service-oriented company, meaning that we don't do food deliveries, we don't make food either. So it's basically we are bringing in all of the other services so that you get to take advantage of it in one place. So we're not reinventing the wheel as far as oh, by the way, come order food through our platform, that's not necessarily what we're going for, come on and get the information that you need to make the right decision.

So that's what sets us apart, because that way, like DoorDash, GrubHub, and they're only trying to increase their network, their influence. For us, it's about everybody, you know, everybody in Yelp, everybody in Groupon, everybody in GrubHub, DoorDash, they're all of them. All of them are in Taste Finder. So everybody gets business.

Also, all the restaurants are easily discoverable. And, the other thing is like the biggest thing, we are similar to Expedia for restaurants. Let's say what's your favorite food?

Gresham Harkless 7:24

Let's just go with my favorite food would probably be something Italian. So I'm gonna go with pizza right now because I just had that for lunch. All right.

Janaka Siriwardena 7:33

Okay, let's say it's pizza, right? So other than this chain pizza, let's say they wanted to get a sausage pizza, and you want to find out the pricing. Now, if you Google that today, you won't be able to do a price comparison. There will be like 10 restaurants near you that carry pizza, but you don't know exactly how much they are and what are the reviews. So you would have to go to each one individually to get that information, which consumes time, right?

So with us, when you type in, let's say sausage pizza, that will give you a list of restaurants near you, that carries exactly sausage pizza, let's say five restaurants. And it goes from the cheapest to the most expensive in the list of orders. So that way, you get to make a decision saying, Oh, maybe I want to try here. Maybe I want to try it there. Or that actually looks good, because they got better reviews than the other one. So that's our secret sauce.

Gresham Harkless 8:40

Nice. I love that. I love the idea of it, how everything's consolidated all in one place. And it's funny because I was reading something recently, I saw something recently where it said, like Airbnb and Uber, they're some of the biggest companies and they're literally everywhere, but they don't know, Airbnb doesn't actually own any property and an Uber doesn't actually own any cars.

But a lot of it is just because they are able to make life simpler, they're able to save time. It sounds like you guys are on the same line, just like he talked about as far as Expedia.

Janaka Siriwardena 9:14

That's correct.

Gresham Harkless 9:15

Nice, nice, nice. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app or book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Janaka Siriwardena 9:27

Absolutely. One of the things that I do as a CEO is a daily plan I have every night. I actually write down the tasks for me to do tomorrow. And I do them. It doesn't necessarily mean five or seven tasks. Sometimes it can be one task. But at the end of the day tomorrow, I feel accomplished.

Gresham Harkless 9:55

Absolutely. And I think a lot of times I don't know if you're anything like me, but I know sometimes especially when you're really ambitious, you want to get a lot of stuff done, sometimes you will forget all the things that you accomplished. So even just from a refresher, just to understand how accomplished or how much stuff you got done, it's great to have that list to say, I just checked all that stuff off.

It's a few greater things than being able to check something off that to-do list. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business?

Janaka Siriwardena 10:27

Very good question. Gresh. One of the things I would tell myself is the consistency of doing things, and then the initiative to do anything in life, even for me to start this process or even for me to start my other businesses to do anything in life, you got to have initiative mean that you can't just think about something, but you have to plan it, you got to do interviews, or whatever that you have to do. But you have to start it without starting it, there is nothing, it's just nothing, you're just wasting a word.

Gresham Harkless 11:03

Absolutely. I love that advice. And you know, I always visualize a tree, where you're chopping the tree, you can't just knock down the tree most of the time, which is one really big swing got to do it day in day out, like you said, the grind and the hustle to do that on a consistent basis. And then all of a sudden the check marks on the To Do lists, all of a sudden, that tree starts to fall, because you've been hitting at it constantly over and over again. And next thing you know, you're starting to make a huge dent and a huge impact, which is what I think most entrepreneurs and business owners are trying to do.

Janaka Siriwardena 11:33

Exactly. And you're right, coming back to the checklist. That's exactly what you need. Consistency is part of the checklist saying Okay, tomorrow, I'm getting this and this done. So you're adding it to that checklist and say, okay, that way, you're moving forward, hey, I'm doing this drawing tomorrow, this piece of the drawing tomorrow, or this piece of building the solution, whatever it is. Started consistently moving forward.

Gresham Harkless 12:03

Absolutely, absolutely. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Janaka, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Janaka Siriwardena 12:16

Yeah. Again, you have awesome questions. Gresh. So, CEO, for me, it's wearing multiple hats, I mean, that, depending on your situation, you have to be the motivator, you have to be the student, you have to be the teacher, you have to do a lot of different things based on your audience. And for a CEO, there's no such thing called like a downtime. It's like being a dad or even if you're sick, you got to play with the kid, you don't get a day off, you have many responsibilities for your shareholders to your company, and you got to shield your employees from outside influences while you're building a business.

So, CEO is everybody thinks, oh, man, that's an awesome job. Well, it's a lot of work, but the work that you're doing is happy because you know what, that something you created, you envision it, and everybody envisions it along with you, and working with you to make it successful. It's never only you. It's also the supporting cast, everybody, your co-founders, everybody that working with you to make it successful, but providing guidance. And, like I said, it's a different hat, depending on what day it is, what hour it is, you got to change that hat and just become a different person, versatility. That's part of being a CEO in my opinion.

Gresham Harkless 14:13

Absolutely. I think that's fine. I'm not a phenomenal definition just because as you said, like a dad, you're always on no matter if you're sick. No matter if you're tired you gotta show up, you gotta be consistent. And you got to be aware of everything and the impact that you're having because you gotta lead the team, whether that be the shareholders or the team members working with you, or even the clients that you have as well too. You always have to be on so I appreciate that definition and Janaka I truly appreciate your time. What I want to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how they can download Taste Finder and find out about all the awesome things that you're doing.

Janaka Siriwardena 14:51

Oh, absolutely. In the near future, what we're trying to introduce is actually a better way for the restaurants to communicate, and connect to communities through. So we're trying to do more of like a CEO. Sorry, not see your store. I apologize. I mean this podcast I forgot. It's more like restaurant stories, restaurant owners. They have background stories, why they're doing what they're doing, and how are they making this food. So we would like to get to the bottom of it and go beyond Yelp and Google reviews.

So we're doing actually two to four-minute videos with restaurants. And we're putting it as a blog post in our app. And soon on our website as well. Please download our app. It's an Apple Store, and also Google Play Store. It's Tastefinder one word and downloads it. There'll be some coupons, you get to search by your favorite dish cuisine. And also, you can take a look at some of the events near you to see what other restaurants are doing. So participate and let us know. My email address is Janaka@tastefinder.com If you have any questions or anything, please, any recommendations, any comments, please let us know.

Gresham Harkless 16:10

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much again. Jonaka. What we'll do is we'll have those links in the show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you. But I appreciate you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Janaka Siriwardena 16:20

Thank you. You too, Gresh

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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