Meet Britney Ziegler, Founder & CEO of Panso
"The only thing that was surprising to me was the fact that I had never worked in tech."
I love being in conversation with other awesome female founders. There’s so much to learn from their stories. Today, I’m introducing the first in a series of interviews with women business owners who are identifying problems, seizing opportunities, and changing the way things are done in their industries. I hope you love them as much as I do.
Britney Ziegler is the founder and CEO of Panso, a revolutionary hospitality management system and CRM transforming the hospitality industry by empowering independent operators to access all customer touchpoints across revenue streams. Under Britney’s visionary leadership, Panso drives enhanced loyalty, retention, and lifetime value for businesses, redefining how operators connect with their customers.
A trailblazer in the hospitality industry, Britney has worked with renowned chefs and restaurateurs like David Burke, Carla Hall, and Zac Young, and helped launch ten restaurant concepts. Additionally, she has led strategic partnerships for Good Eggs, Momofuku, and Molly Baz. A former Eater Young Guns semifinalist and James Beard Foundation committee supporter, Britney continues to lead with innovation, shaping the future of hospitality through Panso and beyond.
Why did you decide to launch Panso?
I spent over a decade in the hospitality restaurant industry, both working in-house for large restaurant groups and helping them grow their business, mostly in the celebrity chef restaurant world. I started my own consultancy doing business development, and this was at a time of realizing different types of revenue streams for operators outside of their four walls.
When the pandemic hit, the whole industry had an awakening in terms of the reality that the business model was not set up for a large global catastrophe. And everybody started launching new revenue streams – e-commerce and delivery and takeout and things that weren't traditional dining.
At that time, I took a moment to reflect on my work in the industry and embarked on opening my own restaurant concept. In that process, I got to the tech stack, and I was blown away that I needed seven different platforms to manage the guest experience. And none of those systems fully integrated with one another. It meant I couldn't have true customer data and I couldn’t communicate effectively to that audience.
I couldn't see myself growing this business without understanding the audience that I was servicing. And so at that point in time, I said, holy cow. There is a much larger issue here to solve. And it's not just an issue I'm facing. It's across the entire industry.
Omnichannel business models for restaurants are here forever – they know they need it to be sustainable. Although retail had always operated in that way. I saw the parallel between retail and what the food business had become. So I embarked on building Panso, which is the hospitality management system and CRM for restaurants.
I see that a lot… founders start out with one business idea and in the process of developing it discover that there is this whole other problem or need. Was that surprising to you?
The only thing that was surprising to me was the fact that I had never worked in tech. I have no technological software background. I come out of restaurants. I breathe restaurants. It's my DNA as a human.
And I think what was shocking was the idea to venture out of true hospitality and start to build a software platform. So while I look at it in history at this stage, because I've been building it for three and a half years, it was a surprise to jump over.
Why are you the one to solve this problem?
I understand the problems and challenges and opportunities from an operator's perspective. When I embarked on building the software, I hired a development team and they've been with me since day one. I look at it in a very logical manner, like A and B and C need to occur for us to get to our end result, or one and one equals two. And they translate that into technology.
I’ve taken a very simple view on how the software should work without necessarily knowing the technicalities of how it's being developed and ensuring that what we develop is a simple solution that's nimble, that's easy to use. I say it's like how Apple started with the iPhone and the iPad. You can put it in front of a child and they know how to use it.
Restaurant teams know how to operate it because our system is very intuitive. It needs to function seamlessly by people who aren’t always technical.
A lot of the solutions on the market are built from software engineers who know how to build the system, but they aren't the ones using it. So there's a disconnect in how things actually operate when they're in a restaurant being used to support that restaurant.
What are the challenges you’ve faced as a founder?
I think it's a new landscape for me. So there's a lot of complexity to the business model.
There's the software element. There is the fundraising component. There's managing relationships with investors. And then there's business development and onboarding and managing the relationships with the client and then growing a team.
There's definitely more complexity to how this business is structured compared to a restaurant company. And I think what I learned from being in the restaurants is you have to work on the fly. It is what it is. There's things changing and happening in a restaurant every second, every day.
And so being able to operate in what is a very chaotic environment in restaurants, and then moving into the tech space, which is complex and chaotic in its own way, it's taught me to kind of just go with the flow, learn as I'm doing it.
I think having been doing this for three-and-a-half years, I've learned a lot about myself. I've kind of realized and grown as an individual. I've got thrown into really big things. Fundraising alone is a massive undertaking and a lot of responsibility and people are in the early stage are investing in me.
So the pressure of that has been also something I felt. But I think just connecting the experience from restaurants and utilizing that nimble personality trait that I've grown into from operating in a chaotic restaurant environment has been able to allow me to kind of just build without having the experience, and figuring out along the way.
What gave you the guts to do this?
I think I've always had that fire inside of me. I've always been one to [take a chance], even since I was a little child, a little girl. I've been eager. I've been interested and curious. And in positions in my earlier career, I always worked directly for the C-suite.
I worked for the CEOs, the CFOs, founders, creatives. I was always in that world, which every day, it was a spark. It was like, how do I get more of this? And how do I think about things differently and learn in this environment?
So I think that's always been inside of me. But quite frankly, the restaurant concept was very easy for me to go and start to build. When I got to the software side, which was such a new thing for me, I had called my mentors who were the first people that believed in me in getting this business started.
And I said, I have this idea. I'd love to run it by you. Their immediate response was... go, do it. I think that just pushed me over the edge. And I was like, they believe in me. I should believe in myself.
What do you wish that you knew starting out that you now know today?
I don't know if I can say I wish I knew something back then that I now know. Today, I think I wish I could have given myself guidance to say, you're going to figure it out. No matter what comes your way, there's a route, there's a path, you're smart enough, you're savvy enough, you're going to find a solution. I thought I needed to control everything and I needed to think 10 ideas ahead to make sure I have every which way to get to point B.
And it doesn't work like that. It's very much, be solid in what you're doing, in the moment. Things come to you, opportunities, doors open, everything falls into place in the way that it should. And back then, I didn’t think it was even possible or desirable.
I also feel that that's starting to trickle down into my organization as well. It’s been a great moment for us to get aligned with one another, have clear objectives, know what we're working towards. Just do that. And then everything else will fall into place.
In terms of fundraising, for somebody considering raising money in whatever form that looks like, friends and family, angel investor, VC, what would you say are the upsides and the downsides?
The upside is you can accelerate growth pretty quickly if you get money. And ideas that come off the ground quickly typically need money behind them. It’s a very important aspect for businesses coming to fruition.
I do think there’s money that comes with strings. So that's something to be mindful of. It could be control through money, ownership in your business through money, business direction through money. Understanding that and then being cautious about who’s providing the capital and what’s behind that and what that means to your business.
If you can put your own money in and start your own company, I think that gives more freedom to an idea, freedom to the way that ownership is structured, freedom to making decisions, and really paving a path towards where you want the company to go without outside influence.
And one thing that I now know and see in hindsight… I started making relationships and building relationships with all sorts of investors from day one. Before I even had the restaurant concept, I was building relationships with investors.
When I moved over to the software side [with Panso], I reached out to every venture capitalist. Part of it was being me coming into the space completely naive, not knowing that there's a ladder and a structure and a portfolio thesis around all of these venture capitalists.
It was probably really good for me to just not have that fear of approaching these individuals back then, but I got in front of a lot of the large VCs just by outreaching to them years ago.
And I kept them apprised of my process along the way, have built relationships with them, and can call on a few of them when I need introductions to other people, or if I'm looking to get in touch with other VCs who are in their network, like they are actually, they're humans, so they're helpful.
And when they genuinely care about an idea, especially if they think it's really interesting, they want to stay in touch. So, I already have relationships with people who won't invest until series A. Start early and nurture relationships.
That would, to me, like, especially if you think you are potentially in a position where you're going to want to raise money in order to see your idea come to fruition.
What else would you say to a woman starting their own company? What suggestions, ideas, tips would you have for them?
Be prepared to get to know yourself. I think building this company, I've gotten into my most vulnerable places I've ever been in my entire life. I think that that is a very important part of this process, because you learn so much at your lowest of lows, and it helps you grow even more than you could imagine.
And that was definitely something I didn't know I was getting myself into. And advice I would probably give to any woman is be prepared to go through that process. Don't be afraid of it. There's so much learning in those moments.
Also, build a great team. The team around you should be aligned with the founder.
And be okay if [eventually] they're not, as there may come a time when you realize either you've outgrown an individual or they're just not the right person. That’s also not a negative. It's just means the business is going to the next phase, which is where it needs to go.
But the team is extremely important and being able to communicate in a transparent way is the number one priority in terms of how you build and grow collaboration.
When businesses and teams are siloed it makes it very challenging to introduce new objectives or get interest and buy-in from a cross-collaborative team that might need input into a product that you're building.
So being transparent across all departments and fostering an environment where people can collaborate and bring ideas to the table. Not all ideas come from the top.
What mistakes have you seen when it comes to building a team?
You want to grow so quickly. So you think you need to build your team quickly. And at an early stage, in building a software company at least, it's founder led. That's not a statement from the ego. It's a statement coming from how you have to structure the business. You have to have your relationships built directly with the founder.
The best sales process in business development is through a founder at an early stage company. So, you need to be able to drive that. Adding people in positions that might lead sales or might lead fundraising... these are all activities that the founder should be doing at the onset.
Many founders want to outsource this, but I find myself in between a rock and a hard place because my background is in business development. I thrive in sales. Like I love that. And we're three-and-a-half years in. We just hired PR seven months ago.
We've done no paid advertising. All of our social is organic. Our book of business and our clients range from celebrity chefs to global retailers, all built through the network. And that is something I always go back to – the people we work with are tremendous, best in the best of their industries.
And we've done that organically and they trust us and we trust them. And now we're getting people calling us to work with them. It's a dream. We’re experiencing that and we could easily accelerate the growth, and we could take on $5 million [in funding], and we could build a team of sales professionals.
But that's not where this needs to go. We need to have the right people at this stage around us who understand the product, who want to work with us. That recognition is just trickling into the industry for us. So now not only is it our word, it's word of mouth within the business, it's word of mouth within the network.
And it's just a very interesting place to be.
For someone who’s looking to start or scale a software product in food, restaurant, or hospitality, what’s your advice to them?
Have experience in restaurants. If you're going to build a tech solution for an operator, go be an operator. Take six months and become a barista and make coffee.
Just understand the systems, understand the language, understand the nature of the business, what it feels like as a person to be standing behind a counter, getting screamed at by customers and also giving people the best moments of their day. There are these highs and lows that occur within a restaurant that are super emotional.
I think that has been one key for us – everyone on my team that works with me has worked in restaurants. We understand their challenges from their perspective. We also understand the opportunities from an operator's perspective.
We know what they're saying when they tell us that they need a customer flow to look like X, Y, and Z. We get it. We don't even need to ask questions. We understand. So I think that's super important. But what that also helps somebody who's starting a company in this space is to build relationships, which is at the end of the day, what it comes down to.
So taking that moment to just get that experience to apply it into whatever product they're developing, I think this can help change the way these systems are built because we hear it every day, “These legacy systems were built 10, 15 years ago by people who have never worked in a restaurant and we've been on these platforms for 10 years and we've been asking for things that we need. We still don't have it built.”
And it’s mind blowing to me that they're providing a solution in an industry that they don't even know how to solve a simple problem for.
Learn more about Britney and Panso in these online spaces:
And in case you’re wondering about the story behind the name…
“Panso” comes from "Pansophy," which means universal wisdom and knowledge.
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