Rod Lassiter is a chef first, restaurant owner second, and indoor gardener by chance. When he isn’t developing scorching hot condiments and studying his P&L like a spiritual text, he’s watering the pothos that make Talat Market’s ambiance as organic as the local oyster mushrooms.
For as competitive as it is, the hospitality industry has a softer side, too. The Atlanta restaurant community is deeply interconnected, filled with people doing hard work for the right reasons. Lassiter and Talat Market co-owner Parnass Savang are two such people. Together, they transformed early pop-ups into a 30-seat neighborhood restaurant serving Thai food with Georgia ingredients.
As an independent restaurant, it can feel like you’re alone on an island. But the connectivity of the Atlanta restaurant community makes it feel like less of competition. We don’t have to beat anybody—we’re doing our own thing.
Lassiter and Savang work on the line multiple nights a week, but during mornings and days when the dining room is closed, there’s ordering, inventory, permits and licenses, cleaning, working on budgets (and the pothos).
It’s a strategy that has kept the lights on and the oysters fresh, but also meant Lassiter and Savang were reactive, focused on the day-to-day rather than forecasting the future. They were ready to slow down, get organized, and see if renewed attention to better margins could help them achieve lofty business goals—like providing benefits for employees. Enter SpotOn.
Lassiter and Savang had been contemplating switching restaurant POS companies for years now. Their POS provider had been hands-off, and hadn't kept up with their technology needs as their business was growing. Lassiter, his wife, Savang, and his fiancé were dining at Avize. Leaving the dining room, they noticed the SpotOn restaurant point-of-sale. Seeing the technology help fellow Chef Karl Gorline, at a restaurant they respected, was a good omen.
From the jump, SpotOn Hospitality Specialist Amanda Herrera felt like more of a friend than a salesperson. “I could tell she’s a genuine industry person. I'm calm around Amanda. She always responds quickly, even with a busy schedule,” says Lassiter. So when Lassiter asked what tools were available for controlling budgets as they plotted a second location, Herrera introduced Profit Assist. Within 24 hours of installing the profitability analysis software, it caught an error in Talat Market’s Quickbooks P&L that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.
Profit Assist is a great second kind of layer. It helps us quickly answer the question: ‘Are we doing okay?’
As Lassiter and Savang prepare a second location—a Thai bar with bold Thai drinking food—the partnership with SpotOn has become the template. Two concepts bring exponentially more work. Profit analysis software, an efficiency-boosting handheld POS system, and rapid funding that helps shore up their financial foundation, make it possible to share duties with management staff and do more with less. And for Lassiter and Savang, it means more time innovating the menu, sourcing local ingredients, and creating a team culture that makes people want to stick around.
