#32 -- Alex Canter, CEO of Ordermark, A Deli Birthright Leads to Online Ordering Innovation

Hey Sue

Alex Canter was born with a stainless steel spoon in his mouth, and on that spoon was a really excellent matzoh ball. Alex is among the fourth generation of Canter family members who learned about business early by working at the 87-old deli institution in Los Angeles. Canter's Deli is a Jewish-style restaurant that has been open 24 hours a day for the last 87 years. There is no lock on the door. When Alex began working at the restaurant, he saw that online ordering and food delivery were becoming a major part of the future opportunity for the business. Walk-in customers were down, and Alex wanted Canter's to triumph in this new age. He signed up for nine ordering services and saw the impact of the new revenue stream. He also saw the perils, with separate, non-integrated tablets behind the counter for Seamless, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and more. Orders were being lost, customers were having to wait when they arrived to pick up their food, the staff was confused. In this chaos, Alex Canter saw an opportunity to bring the more than 175 online ordering companies into a single point of sale system that could communicate with the front of house and back of house and fulfill the customer promise of hot food served seamlessly. Ordermark was born, allowing Canter's and thousands of other restaurant partners to manage all online ordering partner companies from a single device. In this episode of the Real Leader's podcast with Sue Heilbronner, hear Alex's story of growing up in an old-school restaurant family and bringing his gifts of vision and technical acumen to the table to create true innovation in the sector. Ordermark has raised in excess of $3 million to date and is part of the Techstars Boulder 2018 class. Learn more about Alex and how to get Ordermark at your restaurant at www.ordermark.com.