Hazlnut LLC has evolved from a software management experiment featured at Jacksonville’s One Spark festival to competing head-to-head with corporate restaurant chains.
Company CEO Dick Sikes said Hazlnut is moving into the so-called “white label” menu mobile applications for hundreds of restaurants around the United States.
Hazlnut basically has become a mobile app developer for hire for companies who cannot afford to hire a technology workforce, he said.
“These bigger brands are basically dictating the technology experience in this day and age. So, smaller brands are unable to keep up because they can’t go out and hire their own (software) developers,” Sikes said.
Sikes and Steven Edwards founded the company as Gonogo in 2015 after launching at the One Spark festival as a survey app to collect customer feedback in restaurants. Then in late 2017, the name was shifted to Hazlnut LLC.
It is based at 8301 Cypress Plaza Drive off Philips Highway in South Jacksonville.
“We’d go to these restaurants trying to sell the survey app. But restaurant owners, and this was in 2016, were like, ‘That’s cute. That’s nice. But can you do ordering for me?’ Eventually, we realized that’s where the market’s at,” Sikes said.
The transition to online ordering was on.
It took multiple incarnations, and Sikes and Edwards were on their own. It was not easy.
“We were living off of life savings. There were some depressing times,” said Edwards, the company’s chief operating officer.
The two, who both are 36 years old, managed to secure continued funding, including with Jacksonville-based PS27 Ventures.
Then the pandemic engulfed commerce in 2020.
Edwards and Sikes are careful about touting their fortune, but soon online ordering apps were the rage for just about any restaurant that wanted to stay in business.
“It was like the right place, right time,” Edwards said.
“We weren’t exploiting it. We just happened to have a product that people needed at a very unfortunate time.”
Sikes said Hazlnut managed to save some smaller shops and had to hire more workers. The workforce now stands at 13 people but more hiring is on the way.
“We saw it as a positive, our role in that (pandemic). We were helping clients get a solution up and running quickly. We had team members working overtime staying late,” Sikes said.
“Normally it takes about a week to onboard (a business). We were onboarding them the same day at that point. We knew if they didn’t have an online ordering solution, they couldn’t take orders,” he said.
“It was all hands on deck. We needed to get these restaurants a solution. It was crazy and we were all drinking from the fire hose.”
Hazlnut has stabilized and its reputation has grown. The number of clients for its online products tops 500 retail outlets nationwide.
Annual sales in 2021 approached $1 million, more than double the $400,000 in 2020.
Sikes and Edwards said they now are focusing on what’s next.
“We want to expand to other points-of-sales,” Sikes said.
Shortages of restaurant employees is leading to more automated voice interaction ordering through phone calls.
Hazlnut is developing technology for that, which could lead to more retail outlets beyond restaurants.
Their strategy is formatted for expansion. Edwards said the apps and kiosks in many of the restaurants they serve have a formula.
“We basically have a templated app with their fonts, their logos,” Edwards said.
Edwards said if it worked for apps and kiosks, the same philosophy could be applied to automated voice ordering.
“We think this is the future, voice ordering and AI ([artificial intelligence) machinery. Ultimately, we want to be known as an ordering platform,“ Edwards said.
“We can’t hire fast enough.”
