Speaker 1 (00:00)
Hello, I am Mike Hendrix from SMB Golfler. And today my guest is Michael Rawlins, co-founder and vice president of product at Club Caddie. And this is a Tech Caddie podcast.

Michael, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:29)
Thanks for having me, Mike. Yeah, happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:31)
It's always good to have a, have a mic in the house. so you know, you're on a bit of this rocket ship right now at Club Caddie. you guys are, are growing like crazy. And, ⁓ I know in your role, as, VP of product, we're, we're going to ultimately talk about something new that you guys are rolling out. But typically when we start one of these episodes, kind of like to get a little backstory, a little origin story. And I think.

I think at Club Caddie for the four of you guys, it's really diverse and interesting. So I thought if it's okay with you, we'll kind of start from the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:06)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm Michael Rawlins. I am a Class A PGA member currently in the Minnesota section. But yeah, I attended the University of Ferris State in Michigan. And my first job out of college was at Rackham Golf Course. It's a municipal course owned by the city of Detroit. And within the first couple of months of my first job out of college,

I was lucky enough to meet the now CEO of Club Caddie, Jason Pearsaw. He was a frequent player at Rackham. ⁓

Speaker 1 (01:39)
Well, let me, let

me, let me ask you a couple, a couple of questions. So one for people that don't know, because certainly most people that watch this will know, but Ferris state is one of the most popular, uh, PGM programs that there is. Uh, we've got Campbell down in North Carolina, but Ferris state, uh, certainly around where, where we live. I live in Ohio. You live now in Minnesota, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin. Ferris state's really a leading.

University for PGM. Why Ferris State? mean, did you know coming out of high school you wanted to be a PGA Golfler professional?

Speaker 2 (02:14)
Yeah, so I did not know that I wanted to be a PGA professional when I was in high school, for sure. I was, you know, I played on the high school Golfler team. We went to, you know, the state tournament, all that good stuff. And I was, I played multiple other sports in high school and there was no colleges that offered a professional basketball management degree. was, basketball was kind of my sport. But

You know, figured Golfler was a close second. So I heard about Ferris State. They're the oldest and the best PGM school in the country. There's, there's not that many schools that offer the professional Golfler management program. And Ferris is the top university for that program in the country. So I heard about the Golfler management and I was all in me and a couple of my buddies from the Golfler team actually all went to, Ferris together. So.

⁓ yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:06)
So you played you played high school Golfler. You played high school basketball. This has been Wisconsin, correct?

Speaker 2 (03:12)
Yes, I grew up in southeast Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 (03:15)
Okay. but so you play Golfler and basketball. I think like a lot of us, right. And so I didn't even have a high school Golfler team where I went to high school, which was in New Jersey. It wasn't, I wasn't in high school in Ohio, but, a lot of people that, you know, we played sports in high school. You wanted to continue that as long as you possibly could. Makes, a ton of sense. Was there, what was there like a local PGA pro in Wisconsin that turned you onto this idea?

Or did you just find it in the early days of Google searching?

Speaker 2 (03:46)
Yeah, it was definitely the early days of Google search. But yeah, I think it was at like college day at our high school. I had never, I did not know that the professional Golfler management program was even a thing until like December of my senior year of high school. I had no idea where I was going to go to college. I didn't know if I was going to play basketball or Golfler or, you know, go into something else and stumbled upon Ferris State.

and got a couple of my buddies together. like, hey, let's do this. Golf is, you know, we love Golfler and let's see what what we can do with it.

Speaker 1 (04:22)
That's good. I think that, you know, more people should know that, you know, maybe, Ferris state isn't, it's not what you would call a PGA of America company or something like that, right? It's, it's its own university, but I think more people should know that so many people that end up becoming members of the PGA of America, they start in a PGM, a program, a credited program.

Um, that really does nurture, uh, young people along. I mean, I'm, I'm assuming you went through some retail, uh, training. You certainly, you know, you got your, your playability test you had to pass, but this is a, you you talk about trades today in 2025, 2026. I mean, this is one of the great trades that's available to people, uh, in the United States. And you know, obviously men and women, we, when we hear trades, we know.

Maybe we think of plumbers or we think of somebody pouring cement or something like that. But I consider ⁓ the PGM program part of that trade tract, if you will.

Speaker 2 (05:26)
Yeah, for sure. mean, it's it's if you have any interest in Golfler, the the PGM program is a great part, not even just Golfler, but really business, because it's more so the business side of Golfler. Obviously, I ended up in the tech side. But, you know, the traditional route would be, you know, Golfler professional director of Golfler, GM eventually for a lot of people. you know, it's.

Speaker 1 (05:47)
even owner, Michael, you know,

professionals that go on to become owners of Golfler courses. Who's better suited to do it, you know, than someone that's learned how to run the business from the bottom up.

Speaker 2 (05:58)
Yeah, I mean, the Golfler professionals are the backbone of the entire industry, right? If we didn't have Golfler professionals, there's what, 28,000 PGA Golfler professionals. So they're the ones that know the ins and outs. So when we go to school for in this PGM program, they really give you all of the tools to run the entire business. Not, you know, it's not just giving lessons and playing, you know, we do have to pass a playing ability test to prove that, you know, we could, we are good golfers. But

You know, we teach the game. We do retail. Retail is huge, huge part of, you know, the business side of Golfler and the member experience, food and beverage.

Speaker 1 (06:37)
You even learn how to manage like a GL, like a general ledger and whatnot. You get exposed to all of that going through the program.

Speaker 2 (06:44)
You do, yeah. So it's not just like the typical college. You obviously have to take your normal college courses. So you get a business degree, at least we did at Ferris State. But then you have to go through all of the PGA specific education. And that's changed as technology is adapting and things like that. So we went on three internships throughout our college career. And you get to go to different parts of the country. I got to travel all over the place.

That's cool. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. About a good college experience.

Speaker 1 (07:13)
I think another strong program near there, in Wisconsin, UW stout, think if I'm not mistaken, it's a pretty strong program.

Speaker 2 (07:21)
Yeah, so UW-Stout, University of Wisconsin-Stout, they have a Golfler enterprise management program. So it's not directly associated with the PGA of America like Ferris State would be. Right. But yeah, it's definitely another good pathway to get a foot in the door in the industry for sure.

Speaker 1 (07:39)
Okay, so then you graduate, I think you graduate college, you graduate first as a PGA Golfler professional. You've kind of been accredited. It wasn't like a year later. I mean, you come out of school and you are a PGA Golfler professional.

Speaker 2 (07:56)
That's correct. Yeah. So like I said, you have to take all of your college courses and then you take the PGA accredited courses and you have to take these checkpoint tests throughout the way on your college journey. And assuming you pass all of those, which I did, you get your college degree and you get your PGA membership essentially at the same time, is, yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:18)
And so, and the reason I kind of wanted to go through that. So you end up at Rackham and it's interesting because I mean, look, first of all, you and I may have even crossed paths back in the day, but it's almost certainly you cross paths with Dan Burry. If you were in Detroit, Michigan as a, as a Golfler course operator.

Speaker 2 (08:34)
Yes, for sure. mean, Rackham is a whole other level of Golfler. I really didn't know what I was getting myself into there. did, I think, 52,000 rounds in Michigan in essentially seven months. was a good welcome to the industry moment. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:54)
Well, Rackham was a good customer of ours and we certainly valued the relationship. But then you mentioned that you met ⁓ Jason Pearsall and Jason Pearsall is the CEO today at Club Caddie. But what's interesting is you and Jason and Ian and they're the fourth.

Speaker 2 (09:15)
Dan Taylor, ⁓

Speaker 1 (09:16)
Dan

Taylor. What's interesting is how you all kind of, you know, over time found each other and formed this nucleus that is really the co-founding team of Club Caddie. But talk a little bit about how you came to know Jason and then a couple steps after that.

Speaker 2 (09:35)
Yeah, for sure. So, uh, you know, I'm at Rackham working a lot of hours as any new assistant professional does, uh, in, the Golfler industry. And, know, I'm trying to manage 60 Golfler leagues that we had at Rackham and just the, of the 52,000 rounds. So we got a lot going on and, and one day, you know, I'd met Jason a couple of times just checking him in for Golfler. Cause he played there all the time. And, uh, he approached myself in the GM at Rackham at the time.

And he said, you hey, I got this idea for an app, a mobile app that will do on course food and beverage delivery. And I think Rackham, you know, with it being such a busy facility would be a great place to test it out. And so that was my first real introduction to Jason, at least on the business side. So I was essentially the first person to test out what is now the on demand module.

in Club Caddie. It was very less refined than what it is today. But that was that was kind of the origin of the, you know, the start of Club Caddie because this this mobile app, it was cool. It looked great. You know, everybody was making a mobile app back then, but it wasn't integrated with the point of sale that we were using. Right. So I had to have our tea sheet open and we're checking in golfers all day from 5am until

you know, 8, 9 p.m. in the summer. And I'm also trying to look at this map, like this GPS map of where people are putting in orders and trying to accept them and figuring out where they are, trying to get people to go deliver the food and drinks. So it was interesting to say the least in the early days of the Golfler app.

But we got through that first season. There was a couple other courses, a couple of the other ⁓ municipal courses in Detroit that tested it out as well. We knew we had really good connections. Jason was, he played there all the time as well. So.

Speaker 1 (11:34)
Well, when you're saying we, right? At what point does this relationship go from like, know, Jason is ⁓ a new vendor and you're a Golfler course operator and he's trying to win your trust. At what point does it, does it kind of morph into, Hey, Michael Rawlins is going to come be on the Golfler team. And maybe you do both at the same time, but at what point do you kind of start to become more interested in, and let's say involved in the business.

Speaker 2 (12:00)
Yeah, so ⁓ it's funny because my current role is VP of Product or whatever, but I've kind of been part of the feedback, QA, product team since then, right? Because I was literally the only one using the app from an operator perspective. So I'm telling Jason all of this stuff. Obviously it needs to be integrated with the point of sale. So that's number one, you need to get that figured out.

You know, just a lot of other things on that side that really I'm still doing today, just on a little bit larger scale. So we I was always kind of involved to some point and then just gradually as the relationship grew over that first year in 2015, I think it was 2015. You know, the bond grew between me and Jason and then Jason linked up with Ian through Michigan State.

And then found Dan Taylor, who was managing Calderon Golf Club in the Metro Detroit area as well, who was kind of one of the pilot courses along with Rackham. But then Jason and myself, along with a few other people, we actually ended up purchasing a Golfler course in Michigan just outside of Flint. So, you know, an hour and a half north of Detroit.

called Flushing Valley in April of 2016. And that was really cool.

Speaker 1 (13:31)
time you go from yeah I'll test this Golfler thing with you Jason to all of a sudden you and Jason and I don't know if that time is it Dan and Ian all four of you all ultimately own a piece

Speaker 2 (13:43)
So Flushing Valley was, yeah, so was Jason, myself, and then Ian and Dan were not part of the ownership group of Flushing Valley, but they were still involved with what was then Golfler at the time, now Club Caddie.

Speaker 1 (13:45)
Ocean Valley, sorry.

Got it. Okay. So in a year's time, all of a sudden, would you graduate college in 2014?

Speaker 2 (14:04)
The winter of 2014, yeah, I believe that's

Speaker 1 (14:07)
Okay, and now we're in 2016 and you're part owner of a Golfler course.

Speaker 2 (14:10)
Yeah, was a pretty wild year and a half. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:14)
Now, what was cool about Flushing Valley is it was one of these classic Golfler properties that truly has multiple businesses in it. I know at Flushing Valley, you were doing lots and lots of weddings, Let's say events. It was real food and beverage. Obviously it was the Golfler operation. And so you guys really got the

full exposure to ultimately, you know, what software could do for a full service Golfler course, if you will. You were starting to get exposed to that, I would say.

Speaker 2 (14:48)
Yeah, we could not have, I mean, we didn't really know it at the time, but we could not have landed in a better spot with, we could have picked a better spot than Flushing Valley. you know, it's, it's kind of the classic tiger boom country club. Like it was fully private in the nineties and then it went under, the bank took it over. So new owners got it, went semi private. So they opened it up to the public and they still had their classic member, base.

but they had built this huge clubhouse. I think it's like 18,000 square feet, massive clubhouse. So they have the daily fee component, they have the membership side, and then they have this huge clubhouse with a full restaurant and bar and banquet space, beautiful wedding banquet space. They had a pool. did, yeah, so we did.

40 weddings a year, I would say, and then we did probably 75 to 100 Golfler outings every year.

Speaker 1 (15:45)
Yeah, just, just massive. really, you know, that was truly a semi-private facility. We saw that happen a lot in Golfler back then that, mean, really exactly what you just said at one time, the business was fully private. you, you know, Golfler got really difficult. That's I say to people all the time, that's, that's what gave us an advantage at GolfNow it was, it was a good time to grow GolfNow because operators were struggling to find rounds.

And that's how this concept of semi-private really popped, where there was still this core nucleus of 60 people that wanted to remain members. But the facility was going to have to have a lot of public play to make it financially viable.

Speaker 2 (16:25)
Yep. Yeah, it's the semi private model has worked for a lot of clubs and you know, like I said, we could not have picked a better spot when we got there. You know, we weren't too, too happy with the software stack that we inherited. Essentially. We got there kind of late. We got there. was actually Master's weekend of 2016. So pretty late, not great timing to buy a Golfler course and try and, you know, implement some new things and new ownership. But yeah.

⁓ yeah, I mean, it worked out great. Jason obviously had, he had a relationship with developers from the mobile app, the Golfler or mobile app for on demand food and beverage. And, you know, we took the feedback of it needing to be integrated with a point of sale. we, Jason was basically said, well, let's just build our own point of sale and tee sheet and incorporate the mobile app and problem solved. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:18)
do you recall what software it was? Was it different pieces of software? Do you even recall what they were using?

Speaker 2 (17:23)
I'm not sure what tee sheet we're using honestly They had they had a different event software Different they did a lot of like the member billing out of their accounting software. Yeah, so it was just like a Frankenstein You know mismatch it right?

Speaker 1 (17:40)
Right. And I always felt, I always felt like, you know, today Club Caddie is a very, very good option for semi-private. think everybody would agree like Club Caddie sweet spot is, you know, it's really good on semi-private. It's certainly, you know, you guys are going to serve municipal Golfler courses as well, and you're going to serve traditional publics as well. But you kind of hit a home run in that semi-private space. it's interesting.

because I do think Club Caddie is an all in one type of solution. And if you go back to Flushing, you can kind of see the origins of it, right? That you guys needed something where you weren't piecing together different pieces of software. You had a sense of like, I'd like for it to be one system, one database, if you will. Talk about that a little bit, like having one golfer record and why that's important.

Speaker 2 (18:29)
Well, it was important for us because we were the owners of the Golfler course. So we needed to know exactly what everyone was doing in order to get the data on how we can best optimize revenue for our business. So we didn't want to go to multiple places. We were busy. I was the head pro GM bartender, line cook, whatever needed to be done. And Jason was more like,

overseeing all of the operations, making sure everything was going well, while also trying to lead, you know, develop this software to run the Golfler course. but yeah, we, just, we had to build everything from the ground up. There was no reason for us to, to go anywhere else other than what we were building to do everything. You know, it just, it, all happened very organically. And I think that

that us as operators, like we were living it every single day.

Speaker 1 (19:24)
And you were really building to solve problems. mean, that's really what you were doing every day. You probably came up with another problem you guys had. And I don't know, maybe 70 % of the time, 80 % of the time, you probably got to a place where you thought, well, we could build technology to solve that problem. Or could add another feature to solve that problem.

Speaker 2 (19:44)
A hundred percent. mean, before I was even like officially employed by Golfler or Club Caddie, I was, you know, I was the head pro GM, whatever, sitting behind the counter, uh, you know, using the software. Obviously it was very, it was pretty limited in the, in the initial stages. It was just a register and a tee sheet. And, but I, Jason put me on, you know, the internal communications, the Slack channels.

to communicate directly with the developers. And I was just, you know, lighting them up all day, just, hey, this needs to do this. need, you know, we need an events module. I need to manage my leagues from here. I need to manage my outings from here. It's all got to be consolidated into one report ⁓ with it broken out by department and revenue center, things like that. it really, yeah, I mean, that's essentially still my job, right? I just didn't have a title back then. was just-

guy that was using the software, giving feedback on it all the time.

Speaker 1 (20:41)
Yeah. And I think, I think some of our listeners know, but then you really go through some classic ⁓ startup kind of stuff, right? Acquisitions and then buying the company back. and just for people that are listening to this episode, give us a brief overview of how Golfler evolves and then ultimately becomes Club Caddie and you guys have the company back.

Speaker 2 (21:04)
Yeah, so I wasn't too involved really in any of that. Like I wasn't an official employee of Golfler. I was just at the Golfler course at Flushing Valley doing my work and grinding and giving feedback on the software. But yeah, we went through, there was an acquisition and then I think that was in 2017 maybe. And then we actually, Jason got the the code base back maybe in 2018 or 2019.

specific on the dates I'm honestly not sure but then yeah I mean we we really I mean we were developing this thing the whole time that we were running Flushing Valley from 2016 up until well obviously we're still doing it today but we got acquired by Jonas Constellation Software in January I think it closed in January of 2020 so it was a pretty

Speaker 1 (21:53)
Yeah, think about that. Think about just, you know, from the winter of 2014 to 2020, a six or seven year period there. That's an amazing ride that you were on personally. Right. mean, geez, you're just trying to graduate from college and find a job. And in a short, short amount of time, you're, the vice president of product. You guys get acquired by really one of the,

great holding companies of software in the world. A lot of people don't know about Constellation Software and we don't have to get into that, but Constellation Software is a Canadian company that loves to buy software companies and then hold them for a long, long time and let those companies grow and flourish. And they like for their shareholders to simply win off of the profits of the company.

Speaker 2 (22:47)
Correct, yeah, Constellation Software, you can look them up on the stock exchange. They've done extremely well. If you look at their, over the last 10 to 15 years, the stock price has gone through the roof, really.

Speaker 1 (23:00)
And it's just a, it's just a different business philosophy than what we see from like a lot of private equity firms or something. You know, a private equity firm is buying with the intention of selling typically. mean, I shouldn't speak for every private equity firm, but typically that's the plan. And, it's just a different, it's just a different world at Constellation.

Speaker 2 (23:18)
Yeah, for sure. mean, that was one of the things that was really enticing to Jason when we were going through this whole process. You know, they do have a buy and hold forever strategy. So that's really something that is a competitive advantage for Club Caddie now. Like we're not going to get sold and we have a very tight knit group of, you know, our founders, our co-founders and really everybody that we bring into the Club Caddie team is like, Hey, we're

You don't have to worry about any turmoil in terms of acquisitions or selling or anything like that. We want the best people and you're going to hopefully be here for a long time because we're not going anywhere.

Speaker 1 (23:57)
Nice. Yeah, it is. It is a nice ⁓ environment to be in. I I'm sure. So, So at what point, as you guys are starting to organize the Club Caddie company, we're talking organizational structure, et cetera, reporting it on and on and on. How do you find yourself ultimately settling to this product role? Like, like how did that happen?

What did you consider? Like, well, I don't know. Maybe I want to be in sales or maybe I want to be in support. Like, you know, how did you get yourself into this product spot?

Speaker 2 (24:30)
Yeah, I mean, it all happened pretty organically, honestly. know, when we were first starting out, we were doing everything. I mean, there was only four of us. So we were all doing support. We were all doing onboarding. We were all doing everything. You know, we were traveling, doing some on-site implementations before 2020 when everything got shut down. But yeah, the product role was really just a natural fit for me being a PGA member.

It just makes sense, right? Like why wouldn't a PGA member have a say in how a Golfler software functions, right? Like we're the one, the PGA members are the ones that are doing it every day. And so it really was a natural fit. And I just kind of stepped into it when Jason got a little bit too busy running the entire company. yeah, we got, Jason and I sold our shares

of ownership in Flushing Valley right before the acquisition to Jonas. And that was when I really stepped into the full-time role of product lead at Club Caddie.

Speaker 1 (25:35)
And what's crazy, think some people know, were you on the team that then purchased, I know it's a lease, purchased Warren Valley? Is Warren Valley, are you part of the ownership team of Warren Valley?

Speaker 2 (25:49)
Yeah, so I am part of that group that Jason leads. We lease, we won a management contract to Warren Valley, so we don't technically own it. We do have a lease through the city of Dearborn Heights. But yeah, that's been an amazing project to see Jason leading the charge there and everything that's happened at Warren Valley has been amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:09)
We're seeing, I think a lot of us are following Golf Follies now. Video production that you guys have spun up and it's, for people that don't know, can Google it, Golf Follies. But it walks the viewer through like, this place was dilapidated and then we had to do this and we had to do this. And I think it's a good watch. But the reason I bring up Warren Valley is because I did want to mention

Speaker 2 (26:13)
the

Speaker 1 (26:34)
⁓ Jason offices out of there in the summertime. mean, you guys are still, I know you don't live in Michigan. You live in Minnesota. You mentioned you're a member of the Minnesota section, but you guys still are very close to operations, Golfler course operations. And, and I would think that that continues to drive Club Caddie and, what you guys are developing on the product side.

Speaker 2 (26:55)
⁓ 100%. I mean, yeah, Jason, Jason lives at Warren Valley. Anytime that place is open, Jason, you can pretty much find him at the Golfler course, whether he's in his office or driving around on the course, talking to golfers or talking to the maintenance staff on course. He is there all the time. And, you know, I don't live in the area, but I do get back there quite a bit. And, you know, I don't think we'll ever not be involved in the day to day operations of a Golfler course in some capacity.

Because that's really where our roots are. And we don't ever want to lose touch with how a Golfler course is being operated. we're kind of at the leading edge of some of the innovation that's coming in the industry. But I think it's super important for not just us as co-founders and Jason as a CEO, but really everybody on the Club Caddie team pretty much has Golfler experience, whether they're PGA or LPGA members or they've worked at a Golfler course or

They've done finance for a Golfler course or other businesses. Everybody speaks the language of Golfler. So it doesn't matter who you're talking to on our team. If you're a Golfler, if you're a Golfler industry professional, you can talk to anybody and you're going to get the same language right back. Yeah. Really.

Speaker 1 (28:08)
So you mentioned, you know, leading edge and product development. I think the biggest thing you guys rolled out this year is Looper and, and Looper is this AI experience, but it's interesting. It's, it's not really for the golfer. It's not golfer facing Looper is for the staff at the Golfler course. Well, you, you, you explain it, but, I did, I would imagine being in your role.

You had a lot to do with the development of Looper and how it's rolled out. And I think everybody would be interested to kind of get an update on Looper and how it's performing today.

Speaker 2 (28:41)
Yeah, so I mean, I'm sure everyone will kind of appreciate that AI is coming whether we like it or not. Maybe they might not appreciate it, but AI is coming whether we like it or not. And we really embrace that at Club Caddie. One of our co-founders, Ian Brickman, really was at the forefront of this. And our lead on kind of the development of it, Ian Carroll, along with some of our other developers, they

they really saw a gap and a need for some sort of AI support tool to not only help out our support team members, but to help out our clients ⁓ for quicker answers, for easy questions that all of our team members personally know the answer to. But it saves them time with Looper answering these questions for them. So we're just at the very tip.

of the iceberg for what we're going to be doing with Looper. So there's going to be a lot more exciting updates to come, but we've seen tremendous success ⁓ in the early stages, the first six months or so, of Looper being rolled out for support. It's decreased support tickets that our internal support team has to answer. It's also decreased the amount of time that it takes for a reply because it's instant.

Right? You're on chat with Looper and it gives you an answer almost immediately, but we're going to be doing a lot of really cool stuff in terms of business intelligence. And then we'll also get into some stuff on the customer facing side that will be really cool moving forward.

Speaker 1 (30:08)
Michael does Looper support voice? Can I just, can I speak to Looper? Have you guys rolled that out yet?

Speaker 2 (30:14)
Not specifically, you know, talking to it. I mean, you could do speech to text, but we're not quite there yet.

Speaker 1 (30:22)
I find more and more people now using, you know, a chat GPT or a Gemini or something with voice. You're seeing, you know, rapid adoption of these tools from humans. And it's interesting to watch how each person kind of uses it a little differently, but these people that have, and certainly people have been doing voice texting for quite a while, but you're actually seeing more people use voice in chat GPT.

than you see in voice texting. It's interesting to see that kind of really explode.

Speaker 2 (30:54)
Yeah, for sure. And that's one of the reasons that we kind of started on the support side, because if you think about it, like people that are using Club Caddie software, they're clicking, like they have a mouse and they click on support and that's what opens up Looper, right? So they're already at the keyboard. you know, a lot of computers, like unless you have a mic, you know, it's not, it's just not like super intuitive or even practical to be doing like the talk, like voice recognition at a ProShop terminal or in the bar.

So that's kind of why we started there. We're definitely going to explore that. But yeah, there's endless opportunities when it comes to AI for sure.

Speaker 1 (31:29)
you backed up Looper with a new food and beverage module. Is that the terminology you guys use?

Speaker 2 (31:37)
uh... it's a brand new food and beverage app

Speaker 1 (31:39)
Food and beverage app, give us an update on the app and what it will look like. I suppose you have golf courses that are beta testing it today.

Speaker 2 (31:50)
Yeah, so the Food and Beverage App is something that we've wanted to do essentially from the beginning of Club Caddie with us.

Speaker 1 (31:57)
Going

back to flushing, right? That you had such a need back then, yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:00)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So going all the way back there, we had a huge clubhouse restaurant bar. It was a sports bar that we essentially turned it into. So it was very fast paced. and we didn't, you know, it was all desktop terminal base. So we'd have to run to tables or at the bar. We'd have to run around with a piece of paper and jot things down. We, we ended up, you know, we could use like a surface tablet, a Microsoft surface tablet, but, it just,

wasn't like the perfect fit for us. So we always knew that we wanted like a truly mobile table side service that could send to the kitchen printers, the bar printers, things like that without having to run back to a server terminal and wait in line while there's three other servers putting in their orders at the same time. So we made the decision about a year ago, I would say, to really go full, like go all in on making a dedicated food and beverage app.

that was designed with the servers, like the server employee with their workflows in mind. You know, the desktop app has all of the functionality that the servers need, but it's not necessarily like the best workflows. you know, it's not built for touchscreen. You know, it works with a touchscreen, but there's a lot of clicks that you have to go through. The buttons could be small depending on the monitor size.

There's more pop-ups than people would want on a touch screen like on a tablet. So we really, we went all in on it about a year ago. We brought in some team members with experience specifically in food and beverage, whether it be on the operations side from big restaurants or working at country clubs with huge food and beverage operations that use food and beverage specific point of sale systems.

Speaker 1 (33:47)
Interesting. So, so what I'm hearing is this app is actually about the server experience. At least that that's what I just listening to you just now just sounds like you guys optimize this thing for the server experience that help them get through, you know, serving a table from, from A to Z, so to speak. It's not pigeonholing the Club Caddie app into a tablet or whatever, but actually just building a version that's

Speaker 2 (34:07)
Yep, 100%.

Speaker 1 (34:17)
I guess more than just mobile friendly, probably mobile first. I would imagine it's probably built mobile.

Speaker 2 (34:21)
Mobile first. Like I said, it's an app that's available on the Apple Store for download. So if you have an iPad, you can download it, log in with your Club Caddie credentials and see what it's all about. everything was designed for mobility, ease of use, minimal clicks to get what you need to do. I wish we would have had it at Flushing Valley because it would saved us a lot of time and headaches for sure.

Speaker 1 (34:44)
But now, so Michael, like I, you know, we don't have people on just to give them a pass on everything kind of thing. But cause, cause one thing that concerns me in just hearing you talk about this is, okay, well, this is an app somewhere else. It's actually not like part of the, the, the Club Caddie app. so in Golfler, without mentioning names, we know there are hundreds and hundreds of operators get really frustrated when reporting from the F&B.

you know, module, so to speak, doesn't talk to the Golfler module, et cetera, et cetera. How will you guys navigate that? Were you, are you able to overcome that? Just give me a, give me a few minutes on that. Cause I am a little, I want, you know, I'm here for the operator. So like, tell me, tell me how that's going to work.

Speaker 2 (35:31)
Well, we got something in common then. We're both here for the operator.

Speaker 1 (35:35)
You've been well trained. Good one.

Speaker 2 (35:37)
We wouldn't do it any other way. Like I said, when we first got to Flushing Valley, it was kind of like a Frankenstein system and the reports weren't consolidated. So we would definitely never build like a bolt on that wasn't integrated with all of the reporting. So the Food and Beverage app is built on the same code base as the desktop app. It all syncs together, right? So if you have a tab in the register on the Food and Beverage app that you have,

And then you go to a desktop terminal, you can reopen that tab on the desktop terminal. It will pull it over from the app and you can work on it from there and then you can pull it back over to the food and beverage app on the tablet. All the reporting, you will not notice one difference in reporting.

Speaker 1 (36:17)
Yeah,

and that's what I'm really interested in. Like, is the bookkeeper though going to be incredibly frustrated or is it seamless?

Speaker 2 (36:23)
Yep, the bookkeeper won't notice a difference in anything. It's all going to report out the same. It's all based on the department and sub-department structure in Club Caddie. regardless of where you sell it from, the reporting will not be affected at all.

Speaker 1 (36:35)
Okay, that's very good. Is it something that you can show here in a desktop environment or is it, nah, it's just too mobile, I wouldn't show it.

Speaker 2 (36:44)
I can give a little preview of...

Speaker 1 (36:46)
Let us, let us see this thing. Yeah. ⁓

interested to see, you know, it's interesting, more and more, and just go ahead as I'm talking, but, more and more, people are, interested in, yeah, but does it look like an Apple product, right? Does it look like a super modern product or not? And so more and more, when I'm looking at software today, specific to Golfler, I'm thinking about those kinds of things. Like how

Refined is the look and feel of we'll let's have a look. We'll see.

This is one of the very first demos I think we've done on the Tech Caddie podcast. So I'm going to look, okay, all right.

Speaker 2 (37:23)
Yeah.

So this is, I'll go to the home screen here. We got our Grant Park Bar and Grill. This would be kind of like the home screen whenever someone needs to put in their pin. Very common screen really in any food and beverage point of sale, right? You got to enter in a four digit pin. You can see we have some club notes with today's specials and upcoming events.

Speaker 1 (37:43)
And so let me, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but let me just ask you because so what's the vision here? The, the server is on a tablet. The server is on an iPhone. What's the vision for like, what would be happening right here?

Speaker 2 (37:55)
Yep, so I'm on an iPad right now. It's a little big. I got like the biggest iPad we can get just for screen size. But yeah, you could be really on any Apple device on any tech, you know, any iPad. works great.

Speaker 1 (38:06)
Okay, gotcha. All right, so go on.

Speaker 2 (38:08)
Yeah, so we'll just put in our pin here and you get pin locked in. The red is my employee color. So everything that's kind of that red color is specific to my employee, my log in, my pin number.

Speaker 1 (38:22)
very Wisconsin, I can see the,

Speaker 2 (38:25)
Yeah, you know, I'm also an Iowa fan, but I didn't want to do black. figured that'd too, too.

Speaker 1 (38:30)
Iowa,

doesn't go over too well in Minnesota. You better watch out for that.

Speaker 2 (38:33)
Yeah,

I know. It's a contradiction for sure. So we'll just click on one of these tabs here. These are two tabs that I already have created. You can see here when I click on the tab, it turns green to know that that tab is selected on the left. And then the items in that tab show on the right. You can see the chips and guacamole. They have the side of salsa also. Those are modifiers, right? So if I click on the chips and guac, I can see exactly what's going on here. The course is appetizers. If it's tax exempt or not.

All that good stuff, I can delete it also if I want to. But we'll just click Done. And then if I click on the tab again, I can actually go in and add more items. So this is where we really start to differ from the desktop point of sale. So you can see if I click on Beverages, the Department of Beverages, and then we go to Beer, that's our sub-department. And then we have all of our categories here. This is one of the bigger differences, is if I click on, you know,

seltzers then I can see the individual items in that category.

Speaker 1 (39:34)
This is, mean, uh, everything you're showing here. And I'm just going to guess a little bit. This is what the typical server today is used to. Right? I mean, forget about Golfler, right? They're, they're working at, you know, a place that serves, uh, steaks and soups, or they're working at a nice fish restaurant. They're used to a UI like this rather than.

maybe what a lot of systems would have like, like forced a snack bar UI into a Golfler system. You guys are saying like, Hey, listen, we just want to provide that real food and beverage experience for the server and the shift manager and the general manager that's used to F&B. You just think that that's more appropriate in, in 2026, if you will. and, that's how you guys want to go, you know, run the company.

Speaker 2 (40:23)
Yeah, for sure. mean, a food beverage employee is a food and beverage employee, regardless of where, if they're at a Golfler course or if they're at a high end restaurant, right? So this, the food and beverage employees that have worked at Golfler courses have historically been frustrated with their software, right? Because it's not, it hasn't been food and beverage software. So that was really the whole goal of this was, you know, if someone, if an employee has never worked at, you know, a Golfler course restaurant,

They've only worked at traditional restaurants. They come in, they see this technology, and it's an easy transition. They don't have to learn 15 different workflows to do the same thing. It's all very intuitive. If we click on food here, we can go to burgers and sandwiches. And we'll click on the cheeseburger. Again, this is all touchscreen, no pop-ups. You can see the different modifier groups here, the meat temp.

as the red asterisk. this has required modifiers for the meat temp. And then it's also highlighted in red on the right side of the screen, meaning that it's not finalized because you have to make selections. So we click on meat temp. We can say medium. We can go to sides. can see we don't have to select any. And you can select up to six. But after I choose onion rings, if I choose another one, tater tots is an extra $2.

Just touch screen friendly.

Speaker 1 (41:47)
I hear you mentioning pop-up a couple of times. It sounds like maybe some of the Golfler system, including Club Caddie, maybe like, Hey, too many pop-ups. That's not what servers want. That's just not, that's not fast enough and convenient enough is what it sounds like.

Speaker 2 (42:01)
For sure. mean, pop-ups are fine. They're good when you're in the back office and you need to make changes to a customer profile, like a customer profile pop-up. That's great. But a food and beverage employee that's trying to enter in 15 orders in two minutes, they cannot stand pop-ups. They just like boom, boom, boom, touchscreen, done, get me out of here, onto the next one. So, and we've dealt with that personally, right? Like people say, we need faster, we need easier, we need more intuitive. So we...

We listen to our clients, we listen to our experience, and here we are.

Speaker 1 (42:36)
All right, let's go back to just the podcast. So we got the demo. That was cool. Hopefully we'll do more of that on Tech Caddie. Did you personally, did you go and spend time at restaurants? mean, I'm curious as to what your process is. How did you guys get to where you believed this is the right way to do this? Again, because you did mention everybody's a Golfler person at Club Caddie. So how did you?

kind of elevate on your food and beverage chops

Speaker 2 (43:07)
Yeah, I mean, a lot of our employees have worked at really nice clubs and facilities that have a big food and beverage component. You know, I've worked at everything from the small community that has no food and beverage to the highest of high-end private clubs that is, it's the fine dining could be its own establishment for sure. So we all have some sort of relative experience in that. And we all, we've always recognized that there's been a need. But

We've listened to a lot of our clients. have clients that do their food and beverage revenue almost, it exceeds their Golfler revenue on an annual basis. we have.

Speaker 1 (43:43)
in this space, but certainly it exists.

Speaker 2 (43:46)
Yeah, for sure. So like their food and beverage component could be its own business separate of Golfler, right? So we've been hearing this a lot from our clients. You know, we've obviously we've seen what other food and beverage specific technology can do. And like I said before, we we brought in some team members that have had specific food and beverage technology experience to kind of get some of those more intricate details and workflows. And then, you know, the

The relationship with Jonas and Constellation has helped as well because they bring that private club expertise. Some of the nuances that are definitely not found on the public side, but are really important pieces of the process on the private side. They've been very helpful in that regard.

It's really been a team effort, not just internally, but from everybody, from our clients. mean, we value our clients' opinion greatly. A lot of our dev work is directly a result of feedback from our clients. this is something, like I said, this is something we've been wanting to do for a long time. And I'm super stoked that we've got it out there now.

Speaker 1 (44:52)
Well, that's great. And congrats. So as I'm doing some math in my head, you're under 35 years old, I would think. Okay. And I don't know if you're married, if you have kids, like, what are you doing 10 years from now? What are you doing, you know, 20 years from now? What do you think the future holds for somebody that you're kind of stacking up these accomplishments? What's the future?

Speaker 2 (45:00)
Correct.

Yeah, I mean, I hope to be right here, maybe in a different location, but I want to be doing what I'm doing for as long as I possibly can. know, this is my passion. This is essentially the second real job that I've had outside of working at Rackham. So I wouldn't trade this for anything. And the way that I look at it is I wish I would have had somebody like myself.

when I was working in the Golfler industry, right? Because I was the one, essentially that was giving the developers the feedback for all this on how it should work. So I love helping Golfler professionals. I love helping people that own and manage and run and work at Golfler courses, make their lives easier with the technology. that's what gets me up in the morning and getting into this food and beverage stuff, we can service all of

potentially more than just Golfler courses. Like I said, we have clients where the food and beverage outlet is greater than the Golfler revenue. yeah, I'm Club Caddie for life, just like Club Caddie is a Jonas company for life.

Speaker 1 (46:20)
That's cool. So I guess I would be negligent if I didn't ask you what's the next product, you know, like, so we touched on Looper, seems like Looper is going to be a win. Although Looper is probably going to continue to grow and iterate. We'll see what the market says about your food and beverage app. We don't know, right? I mean, the market ultimately determines if something is successful or not successful.

But what are you thinking about product wise? does either Club Caddie need to build or what needs to happen to be built for operators and golfers 2026 and beyond?

Speaker 2 (46:56)
Yeah, so the Food and Beverage app is something that we're going to continue to enhance. There's some workflows, some cool new workflows that we're going to be incorporating. And like you said, Looper, the possibilities are endless with Looper. So we're going to go full steam ahead on that for as long as we possibly can and create some really cool tools for operators and for golfers and customers and members. But we also have

a browser-based version of Club Caddie that we will be rolling out at the PGA show in Orlando in January. So right now Club Caddie is a desktop app, it's a Windows app.

Speaker 1 (47:30)
So it does sound like this is going to be one of those years where you have plenty of new things to talk about. It sounds like I don't know what that booth is going to look like. And I don't know what your messaging is going to look like. But it does sound like 2026 is the year to talk about a lot of new stuff.

Speaker 2 (47:45)
Yeah, that's the way we like it. We're constantly developing new things and maybe not quite as big as what we're doing this year with all of these new products. But we don't plan to stop innovating and releasing new products and features and things like that anytime soon. We're going to keep going. It's what drives us. And as a company, really, everybody on our team is super motivated to listen to our clients, listen to the industry, and give them what they want.

Speaker 1 (48:11)
Yeah. Well, that's great. I do appreciate you ⁓ coming on. I think it's interesting to know that Golfler That that team is actually a team of four is kind of what the nucleus is. I don't think a lot of people know that. So hopefully we were able to shed some light on that and help tell that story. And I hope I see it the PGA show. I don't know if you go to these shows or not, but hopefully we'll

We'll bump into each other and it'd be great to maybe play around with this myself on an iPad.

Speaker 2 (48:42)
Yeah, for sure. I'll be at the PGA show. Never miss it.

Speaker 1 (48:45)
All right, good. for you. All right. That is Michael Rawlins, co-founder and vice president of product and proud PGA of America member. So thanks for coming on the Tech Caddie and we'll talk soon.

Speaker 2 (48:58)
Awesome, thank you.

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