It all started with a slice of pizza. In 2016, Clay Burdelik was busy wrapping up lunch in Chicago when he couldn’t find his server to pay his bill. He waited, and waited some more, until finally his server brought the check to the table. There was just one problem — he’d already missed the train he needed to catch.
It’s a problem most people can relate to. Restaurant industry experts estimate that between the time a patron says “check, please” and pays the bill is about 10 minutes. But in large groups, wait times can easily tick to 20 minutes or longer. Whether it’s sticking around to split a tab, or trying to catch the attention of a busy bartender, waiting for the check can quickly turn a night of fun and relaxation into one of mounting frustration.
For Burdelik, 23, a business student heading into his junior year at UW-Madison at the time, missing the train sparked an entrepreneurial vision: solving an age-old problem with the convenience and flexibility of mobile payments. The restaurant industry suffers from a seismic technology gap, he says.
“Obviously, as a patron and as someone who has worked as a bartender, I understand the frustration of a packed house," says Burdelik, who began working in the service industry as a teen. “But, I hate waiting. I grew up with the Internet, and with a cell phone in my hand.”
That semester, Burdelik enrolled in a Venture Creation class, and began exploring avenues to turn his big idea into a viable business model. Armed with research on the food and beverage market that appeared to back his pain points, Burdelik was confident that building an app was the solution to easing the headache of paying restaurant bills.
Fast forward to today, and Burdelik, along with co-founders Chris Betagole and Brandon Humboldt, run Brio, a mobile app that allows users to connect their financial accounts and split, tip, and pay restaurant bills — with just a few swipes of the smart phone.
“The idea itself was very simple,” says Burdelik, who serves as Brio's CEO. “It’s all about solving real-world problems. Everybody thinks you need to come up with big ideas, like Tesla. But you think about Uber, Airbnb, Venmo … there’s nothing super innovative [about those companies]. But, those are the best ideas.”
With the assistance of gBeta, gener8tor's non-equity accelerator, and MadWorks, a local seed accelerator, the team launched the Brio app on Android and iOS earlier this year.
Being a new company working to break into an established industry, Brio initially struggled to onboard restaurants and bars onto its platform, Burdelik said.
“Selling cutting-edge technology to people who are often behind the curve has proven somewhat difficult, especially when you’re new and unproven,” Burdelik added. “Some investors said we were too early for them. We rolled with the punches. We just had to get it off the ground.”
So far, Brio has raised more than $100,000 in angel funding, and plans to open a seed round this spring. The money has given the team enough of a runway to fine-tune their product.
Burdelik says Brio is seeing strong results so far, with tips at bars averaging 24 percent, and other transaction metrics the team plans to use to attract potential future investors.
“We want to be the go-to platform for people going out to the bars on college campuses and we’ll expand from there,” Burdelik says. “The most important thing about being an entrepreneur is being dynamic, even when you have to change direction. With Brio, we’re creating a monetary benefit. That’s what feels good.”
