When the huge crowd at this year’s Super Bowl lined up to get their hotdogs and beer, they likely had no idea that they were paying using South Australian technology.
But MyVenue, the 2022 Australian Emerging Exporter of the Year, is a solid example of a local company targeting the US market with enviable success.
The company’s Point of Sale (POS) technology is purpose-built for large venues, like stadiums, that sell food and drinks to big crowds.
The solution offers fast transaction times, scalable terminal deployment, innovative mobile ordering, comprehensive back office, and browser-accessible performance dashboards for real-time reporting.
The startup, based at Lot Fourteen, has generated more than 85 per cent of its revenue in the US in the past 12 months; unsurprising, given the country has more stadiums than any other country on Earth.
Most large US cities have major league, minor league and college venues for football, basketball, hockey and baseball.
In February 2023, MyVenue’s technology was used at Super Bowl LVII, where it processed 90,000 transactions across concessions, premium bars, mobile ordering and corporate boxes.
Meanwhile, over three days at the inaugural Miami Grand Prix in 2022, the company amassed 223,000 transactions and US$7 million in gross sales.
Despite the impressive resumé of achievements, MyVenue’s journey hasn’t been without its unique challenges.
Chief executive officer Tim Stollznow says that Americans are very proactive in choosing and changing technology providers and are prodigious networkers.
“If your team or product doesn’t perform as promised, North American venue operators are willing to quickly replace the technology, regardless of the cost. This places a greater pressure on executing,” Mr Stollznow says.
For global entertainment events, such as the Super Bowl, the stakes don’t get much higher.
“We regularly fly Australian-based experts to the US to build relationships and deploy products, as we did for February’s football game at State Farm Stadium. This is costly, but it’s worth the investment,” Mr Stollznow says.
“We also rely on third-party POS terminals and EFTPOS devices to operate a full turnkey POS solution. Unfortunately, post-pandemic microchip and superconductor shortages created supply chain challenges we’ve had to overcome.”
That being said, within three short years MyVenue has grown from zero to 33 employees and continues to expand rapidly its customer base in the US.
MyVenue is also working with the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML) to develop an algorithm that predicts food and drink sales at stadiums.
This article first appeared in Lot Fourteen’s Boundless magazine and is reproduced with permission.
