Your Phone Battery Could Be Costing Restaurants Money

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
This is the Morning Drive at Mira Business FM. Could a dying phone be hurting restaurant revenues? More new data from the Dubai-based power bank sharing platform, Ray, suggests low battery levels are cutting into valuable evening dining time, just as restaurants make their biggest sales. So, there's a question I think I'd ask this morning. Joining us are Ray co-founders, Igor Kosolap and Roman Averianov. Is that the right way to say it?

**Roman Averianov** (0:32)
Yes, correct.

**Tim Elliott** (0:32)
Thank you. I'm trying to get there. We'll talk about what the data says about changing consumer behavior, the business opportunity behind charging infrastructure, which is what you guys do, and why Dubai could perhaps become the next launch pad for hospitality technology. Who knows? So, welcome, guys. We've all been there. You're at a restaurant. You're having a great time. Your phone hits 5%.
And suddenly, you're not really looking at the menu. You're looking for a socket. You need to charge. It hurts us all. So, Igor, let's start with you. You argue that a dying phone is costing restaurants money.
How is it costing them money?

**Igor Kosolap** (1:19)
Yes, of course. What will you do if you have only 2%?
And you don't have a socket or something like this. So, you go home. So, you go home early, and you don't take your dessert or mainly in bars. You don't take one more beer when you're watching or sitting with your friends. And you are not calm. So, you are very worried about your phone, because sometimes phone is not about calling for people. Phone is for navigate, for pay, and sometimes you even could not pay because some of places pay by link in web. So, you scan QR code and pay online.
And if you couldn't do this, it's the question. So, you know, right now, most people, they're not afraid to be with our phones. They are waiting from the restaurants to give them a power bank or something like this. So, because it's like a common service from restaurants to charge your phone. And so, sometimes when we come to restaurant, it depends that we not help only people, but also help restaurant to solve the problem of their customers. So, it sounds like B2B2C solution.

**Tim Elliott** (2:32)
Yeah. Okay. So, phone charging isn't really just about customer convenience, but it's about revenue protection in lots of ways, right? So, Roman, you've done the research.
90% of people feel stressed when their battery hits. 20%, am I right? That's a research figure that I read. So, but how does stress lead to a lost sale? You don't bother with dessert, or you don't get the extra coffee or whatever at a table. How does that work?

**Roman Averianov** (3:02)
Actually, it's work like in United Arab Emirates, exactly. Dinner time, it shifts to the midnight, more shift of the midnight.

**Tim Elliott** (3:14)
It's much later, yeah.

**Roman Averianov** (3:14)
Yeah, it's, you know, we have several reasons about it. So, it's summertime, so heat is very increasing. So, it's people shift to this time, to the midnight. And second one is there's some culture, you know, smoke shishas, spend a lot of time to socializing, talking to each other. And usually, local people spend around the four hours for this. So, that means you can work all the day, and when you come to the dinner, your phone probably is the dead, or near the 2% exactly. So, that means the restaurant in this time have peak of the revenue, because a lot of people move to the dinner.
So, that means if people have a stress about the dead phones, they don't think about the, you know, add more or spend more time to talking to, you know, next round of the cocktail, something like this. So, they spend, restaurant, they lose average check, because people live in all this place. This is the reason.
And we suggested that our service, they help to solve this problem.

**Tim Elliott** (4:33)
Okay, so, what about charging speed, though? Because I've used chargers in coffee shops, and you put it on the table, and it's the wireless charger thing, and they're just painful. They're just not even worth it. I mean, they're not, they're awful.
So, you offer a much faster speed?

**Roman Averianov** (4:52)
Yeah, of course. Actually, we have several features to enter over the market, because in the market have competitors already.

**Tim Elliott** (5:02)
Yeah, sure, there's loads.

**Roman Averianov** (5:03)
So, the fast charging is the main of the features for this.

**Tim Elliott** (5:08)
Okay, so Igor, how does it work? How does your system work? Is it just like a little, I don't know, a little device? Is it a pad? Is it, do you just?