From Restaurant Operations to Restaurant Technology: Leading FIXE’s Sales Growth
As FIXE’s Sales Director, Matt Greenberg brings over two decades of restaurant industry experience to help solve one of the sector’s most pressing challenges: financial management.
Restaurant Roots
Matt was born in Queens and raised between L.A. and Maryland. His restaurant career began at Sammy’s Pizza in Silver Spring, where he advanced from dishwasher to manager by age 18. Matt’s next role at Hamburger Hamlet led him back to Los Angeles, where he balanced serving at their Pasadena location with studying Psychology at Mt. San Antonio College.
“Hamburger Hamlet taught me that systems make successful restaurants,” Matt says. “They were ahead of their time in staff training and service consistency.” This early exposure to systematic operations would later prove invaluable in his technology sales career.
Leadership in Fine Dining
Since then, Matt has worked at some of L.A.’s top ranked restaurants. As General Manager at Mélisse, he helped the restaurant achieve a #1 Zagat ranking in the city during his tenure. Matt later managed restaurants Capo and Toscana, further refining his understanding of operations and finances.
Technology Sales Evolution
In 2016, Matt transitioned to restaurant technology sales at Toast, quickly rising from Account Executive to Principal Executive. He then moved to a start-up, SpotOn, before finding FIXE. He’s been our Sales Director for a year, where he’s leading the drive for new business.
Learn more about Matt’s trajectory and how he’s been able to help make life easier for restaurants.
How did you find FIXE?
I found FIXE through Cameron Sigurdson from Ottimate. We stayed friends from my Toast days, and he thought I’d be a good fit. Ryan Handel and the FIXE team needed an L.A. sales guy who understood restaurant technologies, operations and finance. “I met Ryan, and we hit it off.”
In what ways has your prior experience with restaurants, Toast and SpotOn helped your performance as FIXE Sales Director?
Knowing the intricacies of the sales process. Knowing when to say no. With FIXE, we have endless opportunities. There are over 800,000 restaurants I can talk to about FIXE in the U.S. “Instead of going after every restaurant, we’re strategic about our Ideal Customer Profile. When we get our message in front of the right customers, we’re solving a real problem – bad financials in an industry with razor-thin margins.”
What initially appealed to you about working for FIXE?
It was more about helping restaurants and finding a product that wasn’t over-saturated, like POS, 3rd party delivery, or a repeat customer loyalty program. There’s a lot of over-saturation in hospitality. Once I heard about this restaurant bookkeeping tech stack that Ryan and the team came up with, it just sounded like there’s a need for this. It felt like a good fit.
What are the most satisfying parts of your job?
I like being part of a small, scrappy team. We all Slack and talk to each other throughout the day. I work seven days a week, but it doesn’t often feel like work. It feels like a puzzle we’re trying to solve. I know if we are able to get this messaging in front of the right customers, we’re going to help them with a problem that they have, which is bad or inadequate financials. Solid financials and data are critical to decision making and knowing that we’re providing that at FIXE is of great satisfaction to our clients and me personally.
Who have you been your biggest mentors at FIXE and what have they taught you?
Ryan’s been my biggest mentor on the product side. He’s a numbers guy. Watching him think and go through the bookkeeping process has been impressive. He has instilled a collaborative culture at FIXE and has created a great team spirit.
Bart McPhail is another guy, like myself, who’s an industry veteran. Working with him has been gratifying as well.
What are your key takeaways and goals for attending restaurant shows?
They’re proven valuable to us. This year we attended 5 conferences, though next year we may scale back to 3 or 4. The National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago is the granddaddy of them all. While not primarily focused on closing deals, it excels as a networking platform.
At the Restaurant Finance & Development Conference in Las Vegas, we received excellent engagement from franchisors operating hundreds of locations, largely due to their need for consistent and improved financial reporting solutions. We had some great reception from franchisors with hundreds of restaurants at the Restaurant Finance & Development Conference in Las Vegas because their restaurants don’t get good, timely financial reporting.
FSTEC in Dallas-Fort Worth was a good show as well.
Having booth presence at these shows has helped us refine our messaging. Given FIXE’s comprehensive service offerings, we’ve learned to communicate our value proposition more effectively – now able to convey our core message within 30 seconds.
Our goal is to build brand awareness and establish Fixe as an industry leader in financial management.
What are your goals for the future of FIXE?
My goal is to keep the momentum going, to keep delivering a clear message, and to partner with more restaurant groups so we can help them, and drive our mutual business growth.
