Cover

Cover is an app concept for restaurants and their guests, best described as a reverse Yelp or a reverse OpenTable. Guests share what a restaurant should know before they arrive: allergens, dietary restrictions, special occasions and preferences. Restaurants, in turn, rate guests on things like timeliness and respectfulness.

The result works like a customer relationship tool built for restaurants. Staff can prepare for each table before it sits down, and guests with strong ratings earn perks such as loyalty rewards and priority reservations.

I led the team as CEO. That meant setting the vision and direction for the company, and keeping the work of our technology, finance and operations leads pointed at the same plan. Each of them owned the performance measures for their area.

• Compete on being different, not cheaper. No major platform offers two-way accountability between restaurants and guests.
• The data is the moat. A competitor could copy the app, but not years of guest preferences and trust built up across restaurants.
• Create a new category. Review sites and reservation tools each cover one side of the relationship. Cover sits between them, focused on what a restaurant knows before the visit.
• Go global carefully. Keep the core product the same everywhere, and adapt it to local norms, such as tipping, which is rare in much of Asia.
• Earn trust first. Rating guests raises real privacy and fairness questions, so the plan includes clear rules, transparency and independent oversight.

Our plan took first place out of the entire cohort.

Cover put two parts of my background together: the restaurant industry, which I know from years of working in it, and the strategy work I want to do more of.