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SourceForge Podcast
Enterprise-Grade Valet Management: PUR Valet
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PUR Valet transforms curbside operations with five-second photo check-ins, SMS ticketing, one-tap vehicle retrieval, digital payments, and seamless PMS integration. It helps hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and other properties reduce wait times, prevent false damage claims, and deliver a faster, paperless guest experience.
In this episode, we speak with Adam Szabo, CEO & Founder of PUR Valet. We explore how PUR Valet is modernizing valet parking with a ticketless, digital system that improves the guest experience while reducing operational chaos for businesses like hotels, hospitals, restaurants, and office buildings. The conversation focuses on the problems with traditional paper-and-walkie-talkie valet workflows—damage claims, bottlenecks, labor inefficiency, and missed tips—and explains how PUR Valet uses photo-based check-ins, QR/text options, payments, tipping, training tools, and analytics to make valet faster and more profitable.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to the SourceForge podcast. I'm your host, Bo Hamilton. So I have a quick question for you to lead off today's episode. When was the last time you handed your car keys to a total stranger and all you got in return was a flimsy paper ticket? Because if you used a valet at a hotel, a hospital, or a restaurant, uh that's probably still exactly how it went. Um and what's what's a little bit wild about that, besides sort of the obvious, is valet parking is a multi-billion dollar global market, around $4.5 billion and growing. And yet uh labor-intensive manual operations still make up nearly 59%, almost 60% of how the service actually gets delivered. Um and the majority of this industry is still running on pen and paper and maybe a prayer, uh maybe a superstitious idiom. You know, you knock on wood, uh, cross your fingers, just hope you get your car back, everything goes smoothly. Um, Valley parking is a bit of an outlier in a world where almost everything has gone digital. So these contactless payment adoption um uh services in Valet has already blown past 58%, and fewer than 40% of Americans even carry cash anymore, which um is also a real problem when your valet attendance income depends on tips, which of course we'll get into today. Um, and this isn't some niche corner of parking either. Hotels, retail centers, hospitals, and the venues together they drive nearly 68% of valet demand. So we're talking about uh the literal first and last impression at some of the busiest properties of the world. Now, um, I know that was a lot of information, but my guest today is trying to drag all of that into the modern era. Adam Sabo is the founder and CEO of Pier Valet, a ticketless valet parking platform that replaces the paper ticket with digital check-ins, real-time vehicle tracking. You have text to retrieve, built-in payments, and tipping, of course, which is very important. Um it's really the whole sort of curb to keys experience. Uh they're in hotels, they're in hospitals, office buildings, residential garages, basically anywhere somebody's handing over their keys, right? Um now in our conversation, we'll get into what's actually broken in valley operations, why you can't just text the guest and have that really be a real solution anymore, what going cashless has meant for the valet themselves, and then how fast a property can actually like flip the switch, right? Um, and get up and running. So um lots to discuss, Adam. I know that was a mouthful, but welcome to the podcast. Glad you could join us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much. And honestly, that was amazing. So I think we can end the podcast here. You you just nailed every point. So that's a wrap. All right. That's a wrap. We're done. No, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'm glad to have you here. I know um I want to start at the the the top, you know, the big I guess the beginning. Um, so I think most of us have experienced valet parking where you you you hand your keys to a stranger and you get this paper ticket in return. Um, you kind of just accept it and you feel like relatively comfortable with the process because maybe everyone else is doing it. Um, but it it does seem ripe for innovation and and modernization. So maybe you can just give us a rundown of Pure Valet, like who is it built for, and then how would you describe it for folks hearing about it for the first time?
SPEAKER_01100%. So I'll give you a quick background. So, my background, I spent 10 years in the valet industry. I built a company called O Valet, which basically grew from Toronto in Canada to a global leader. So the joke is we were on every continent except for Antarctica. Um, so we were trusted by global leaders like four seasons, Ritz Carlton, and then we sold it in 2021. So what we did after that is now Pure Valet is everything we learned from there and just improved upon. So, as you touched on, you know, the experience side of things, like the digitized version of Valet, all that is what we've done. So essentially it's valet parking software for anyone, parking cars for guests. So anywhere there's a guest touch point. So, like you said, this could be a hotel, casino, airport, resort, restaurant, hospital. Uh, so we provide the ticket and the ticketless software. So there's kind of two options there.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So that's that's easy to remember. Basically, anywhere there's a there's a valet stand, you're you're a fit. So, how did you get involved with the industry?
SPEAKER_01Like I assume you were like maybe a valet attendant yourself back in the day, or so the funny thing is actually I had a software company before that, and uh one of our clients came to us and said, was a ballet company, and they came to us and said, we need a solution to enhance the guest experience. And so I had this team of guys, and I said, you know what? What could we do? Instead of doing a one-shot solution for this one valet company, why don't we make this a bigger thing? Because I did some research, obviously, and I said, well, look, there's a lot of valet in the world. You know, everybody is parking their cars. And there's problems with logistics too. So places like, for example, Miami, you don't have enough spots. You can't even park your own car if you wanted to. So I said, I think there's a bigger, bigger thing here. And that's kind of what laid the seat of the foundation. So the long story short is we never ended up providing this company their own one-off piece of software. We came to them and said, you can license our software. And so suddenly we got into valet, you know, a little over 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah. So you're yeah, you're a problem solver. That's like really the entry point. You saw this problem, you're like, there's gotta be a better way. You used your your software experience. Okay, I love that. That's awesome. Um, now there's a there's a stat I mentioned in the intro, um, but it surprised me, right? It's it's even uh even now labor-intensive manual operations, they still represent nearly 59% of how valet service gets delivered. Um, so in other words, like the majority of this industry is still running the old way, um like pen and paper, you know, which is kind of a classic thing that comes up in this in the SourceForge podcast. A lot of these businesses still run on pen and paper in a lot of areas. Um, but that's especially true in the the valet uh industry. When when you talk to operators, like what are the sort of headaches that come up over and over again? Like what's what's actually broken in the in the process?
SPEAKER_01So that's a really good question. Now, usually in the valet space, like you said, labor is a huge problem. Um, so really there's four key pillars of problems, let's call it. Um, damage claims. This would be obviously a huge one because now suddenly a car pulls up, you've got a scratch on it. What do you do? And so a lot of our hotel clients have uh traditionally been used as the fix your car for free kind of place. You bring your car, you say they've damaged my car, and then they go and pay for your car to get fixed. So this is like a small scratch, a dent. It's it's wild to see how this happens all the time. Um, because all they're left with is you go to this hotel and they have CCTV cameras high in the sky, and those are not going to be accurate, right? They're not gonna see a small scratch or a small dent. So what ends up happening is well, unfortunately, they're gonna take the side of the guest to not have a bad experience and to not get a bad review, and they're paying out these massive claims. And so when you bring a digital system off the bat, you can do a circle check with a bunch of photos, right? So you can take unlimited photos, you have different lighting, you can turn the flash on. And these are now smartphone cameras, right? They're designed for amazing shots and like super high resolution, super sharp images. So basically, damage claims go away. And so, unless your guys actually go and smash a car, that's a whole different problem. That's the labor problem. But if I effectively your damage claims go away, and the system has already paid for itself like 10x right there. So that's for your damage claims. The second would be like your front desk bottleneck. So, what happens is usually in a pen and paper system, like you said, the front desk is kind of like the radio station. So people who are upstairs in their room, they want to get their car. These are the guests, they'll just they'll just call down and say, Hey, can I get my car? And so then the front desk has to go on the radio, radio to the valet with walkie-talkies, old school walkie-talkies. And then you have a bunch of guys running around. And sometimes with a walkie-talkie, if you if you transmit twice on the same frequency, you miss a message. So there are many times where a guest vehicle doesn't get pulled because two people said something at the same time. And so, and you can imagine again, this is just ripe for problems, right? Uh, so we remove the front desk middleman entirely, let the front desk do what they're good at, not pulling valet cars. The third pillar is the turnover. So, because you're now talking about a labor component, labor will never go away for valet, right? So, because you have a labor component involved, what happens next is the turnover is very high. You're not hiring PhD doctors who are parking cars. These are gonna be college students. They're gonna be a little more less, more or less, less careful with cars, let's put it that way, right? So, and the turnover is high. So, number one, the way that they treat the cars for the guests are not as good as, again, somebody who's a doctor is gonna treat a car necessarily, right? Um, so they're gonna be a little more careless. So you might get some some damage from the driver itself. So we can mitigate that with software. We know, for example, who's driving this car today? Um, how many cars did Johnny, the valet driver, get into today? Um, why is Johnny taking 20 minutes to park a car versus everybody else takes five minutes? So that way you know you can weed out the bad apples. But also because of turnover, you have this lovely problem called training. So new people come to valet and they want a job. You, as the valet operator or the hotel or the airport or the casino, you have to train these people now. So you can't just say, hey, go park cars. Great. Like, welcome day one, go park a car. They need to know certain things. For example, when when you park a car in the garage, you want to back the car up. So when the guest retrieval comes down, you can immediately drive away. There's no reversing out of a spot. So there's a lot of SOPs and techniques that are involved in how do we do valet. Also, the white glove experience. How do we greet a guest? You know, the white glove experience that you can imagine when you go to a hotel, you open the door. Hey, Mr. So-and-so, welcome to the Ritz-Carlton, you know. And so there's a whole level of training there on how to talk, how to, how to handle a guest. So, how we mitigate that is we have a massive training dashboard. So, you, as the owner of this valet, saw what's called a company or a hotel, you know you're gonna have a lot of turnover and maybe 20, 30, 40 guys all the time. We help you with just training. So we will we'll add in your SOPs, we'll add in all the little things that make your business nuanced. So, hey, wear some white gloves, open the door. You have to say this certain thing when you greet a guest. Um, how to take care of a guest. So, all that is part of our training dashboard. So, when you become a customer, we load all that in there for the first time. And so when you have turnover, which inevitably will happen, now you can get these guys at least trained to some level before you are actually wasting your own labor time to train them for, let's say, more hands-on and kind of level two. And then lastly, um, is you said the labor cost. So now that you've guys you've got these guys trained and they're good, they're parking cars, everything is good. With a paper system, you have no idea if you have too many guys or too little guys on shift, right? So, as a hotel, how do you know you know, is three guys enough for a really busy afternoon? Or do I need 10 guys? And that makes a massive difference. So, just as an anecdotal quick, quick story. Let's say, for example, you've got five guys overstaffed on a shift, right? So you're supposed to need only five guys, but you have 10. In a year, that's about $200,000 in labor. And that's that's with like kind of minimum wage. So it just adds up like crazy.
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, it just really sounds like there's a lot, uh, just a lot more data that you're able to keep track of. And and data is really key for making a better, smoother, more seamless experience for for all parties involved. Um, it you know, everything from just making sure the car doesn't get damaged to making sure you have the right attendant. Um, I imagine you have like some forms of like background checks and just kind of like data on the drivers, you know, early on with your hiring through the hiring process to make sure, you know, they're they're a good fit, uh, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, that would be the valley company, actually. That's a good point. So, but that goes part of the training dashboard. So we have a checklist that you as a valley operator would say, Did this guy get a background check? Did this guy so on? So we don't do the labor side, but we help you with the labor side. So we provide time in attendance software. So we know that, hey, Bo today showed up late for a shift, right? And did he get a background check yet? Did we complete the background check? And so these are great points that you know, that's where the technology really just adds so much value.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and then like the walkie-talkie example was funny too. Because I just bought, I believe it or not, I just bought a walkie-talkie kit like last week for a outdoor climbing trip. And uh, it's great for if you're like don't have cell service, you just need to like talk to some some buddies um who are you know relatively nearby and just like let them know where you're at and whatnot. But like for running if running a business of operation, I could see how that would be uh inefficient and problematic, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, just imagine now 200 cars on a on a day. Let's say for an average hotel, they they they move 200 cars a day on a walkie-talkie system, and you have, let's say, 10 drivers, it a zoo would be an understatement, right? Because it's it's just like a chicken running without their head off. You have no idea, no visibility. If you miss a request, it's in the air, it's gone.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, then you yeah, you just have all these expectations and standards to live up to or and and deliver, it just creates a frustrating experience.
SPEAKER_01Well, and and I want to bring up a point you just mentioned too on the you have this expectation to live up to, right? So these are you're not having a valet at a two-star hotel, right? You you're having valet either at a very fine dining restaurant or an airport where it's busy and you have standards of quality to maintain, or like a resort, right? So, or even at very high-end hotels. So, what happens is these hotels live and die by reviews, trip advisor, Google reviews, and so on. So, guess what? You had an amazing experience. You went there with your family, you relaxed. There's really two types of visitors to these properties, right? It's either a business traveler who just wants to get on with it and have a great service because he doesn't have time, or it's going to be a family visiting for maybe an activity or visiting a new place. So you had all this all this money was spent on this property and resort to give this guest a great experience. And at the last second, a radio drops the ball because now they can't get their car. Kids are going, you know, you're you're ready to go to Disneyland in the morning, kids are ready, and they forgot about your car. What do you do?
SPEAKER_00No, that's that's bad. And even if it just drops, the review drops like one star, that's like that's a makes a big difference. And if it's something over something like valet, like that's you know, that could be easily fixed with this platform you offer, right? Um, so okay, without getting maybe too redundant with some of the information um and what you detailed already, um, maybe you can help walk us through like, let's say a car pulls up to the curb. What does the experience actually look like from that moment on?
SPEAKER_01So basically, car pulls up, attendant takes one photo, okay? The AI reads the license plate, the make model color. So five seconds, the whole thing's done. Guest gets a text, they're inside already, and now the valet ticket lives in their phone. So that's the entire experience. And from then on, once the guest is inside, you can do all the other stuff you want to do. You can take more photos of the damage, right? You can you can add more details as you want, but that's really it. Five seconds, cars inside the system.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Okay. So by the time I've like finished uh dinner and and and texted for my car or what what whatever the communication of is, it's the car's already out front. That's sort of like the dream scenario, right? Like you don't have to stand at the valet podium for fun and let alone like the check-in process. It's just kind of like hand over your keys and you're you're good to go.
SPEAKER_01That's it. That's it. And like you said, on the on the return, when you want to get your car, the last thing you're thinking about is standing there and watching cars go by, right? You want to have the car ready to go when you get there. So that's what differentiates us from a lot of our competitors is that with with them, valet was sort of an afterthought. They they a lot of a lot of our competitors are parking conglomerate companies where they're focused on parking, they want to make money from gates and and parking traffic. The kind of valet is like this afterthought. They're like, ah, we'll deal with valet later, it's not a big deal. So the experience goes down. So for you as a guest, if you're in a hotel room and again, like I said, the kids want to go to Disneyland, everyone's excited, and they're getting ready, they need a half an hour. What do you do? You can request your car in half an hour. With with with traditional systems, you call down and you can say, hey, maybe I can get my car in 15 minutes. But usually, because of the walkie-talkie situation, it's the moment you request the car is the moment that that car gets pulled. So now you're rushing rather than being convenienced on your own time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so I know some listeners they might be thinking, like, oh, you know, my my valet already already texts me. There are SMS systems out there. Um, I'm curious, like, what made you think there was room to do things a little bit differently? And then and then does going digital mean that the the traditional paper system is off the table? Like, is there room for both?
SPEAKER_01We get this all the time, okay? So there's room for both. And that's what everyone gets wrong about a modern system. So it doesn't have to mean SMS only. Um, our paper ticket, which I'm showing you right here, is digital. There's a QR code here, there's a QR code here, um, QR code for the guest. So what that means is this is a digitized paper ticket. So every one of these pieces of paper are unique. Um, so if you have a hundred thousand valley tickets sitting in the office, every single one of those is unique. And so they all have their own little access pass to request your own car. And the branding. So this is branded to one of our properties or clients. So this could be blue, this could be your colors, it could show whatever you want on it. It could have different shapes and sizes, but that's a paper ticket. And so, in terms of paper ticket versus SMS, this is what the SMS ticket looks like. This is a plastic ticket that goes on and it becomes a hang tag on your rear view mirror. So, what what's the difference between both? One, you get a text message in your phone. Okay, the second one, you got a piece of paper in your hand. Both of these go to the same place. You request a car on a digitized website, and you should you see your car details, you see that, hey, my Tesla is safely parked in the garage, and I can leave a tip, I can pay for my valet, everything you can do. It doesn't matter if you want the paper or the uh texting version, you can do both. Now, there's advantages to both and there's disadvantages to both. Long story short is if you want to get a text only, then you get the guest's phone number and they get a text in their phone, and that's their ticket. This with the paper one, because it's a digital ticket, you just hand this to the guest, they walk inside, and now that experience took less than a second because it's just a ticket. Welcome to the hotel, off you go. So both get the same result, it just depends on what flavor you're looking for.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Well, I love the I love that you brought props, and this is a good reminder for uh those listening on our audio only channels. Check out our YouTube channel, you get the visual experience. And Adam, this is the you the first guest to have uh to bring you know visual props here. So kudos to that. Um and that the branding really does make a big difference, um, you know, and then just we all we all live through the COVID era, we all know how to use a QR code. It's just kind of the the future, it's it makes things easier. Uh, we all have smartphones, we can scan, and and um being able to unlock this uh a better channel of communication with more data and whatnot, like it just seems like a win-win, you know. And then another thing too, um I imagine if you just rely on like an SMS system, you might have international visitors who just don't have like a US phone number, and so you have kind of issues there, right? So you you kind of have to deal with that as well.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. People come to us all the time looking for the SMS option. We give it to them, and they're like, oh, wait, hold on. We actually have international guests. Okay, so now what we do is we can give you both. You can run a hybrid approach. You can have SMS only, and you can have paper for the people who are overseas, or their phone died because that's off, you know, that that happens as well.
SPEAKER_00Um okay, so let's talk about the money side of things, uh, because there's a whole payments layer uh here and it affects the the people actually running the cars. Um so the I the thing that got me on this one was fewer than 40% of Americans carry cash regularly these days. I'm definitely uh one of those um Americans. I don't I everything is like tap to pay these days. Um and for valet attendants who count on tips as like a real chunk of their income, that that hits hard. People who'd happily just tip just don't have the the bills on them. So, how do payments and tipping work inside of pure valet?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So, like you said, basically cashless killed the valet tip. That was traditionally like whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Because before you would have, let's say, a $17 valet charge, and it's but it's by design, right? These are like a little bit knock perfect numbers because you expect the guy to give you a 20, right? So the valet would be 17, and now you're getting a 20. Great, I made $3 in tip. So, but now the cashless thing you mentioned suddenly just killed that. And luckily for us, digital brought it back. So It's actually now with digital higher tips than before with cash. Because think about it this way. So when tipping is an option on the same screen that you pay for your valet on, the valet is earn more because now you have pre-selected boxes, right? So now with before you made maybe $3 in tip. Now you can say, hey, did you have a great experience? Here's a suggested tip range: $5, $10, $15. And people generally go for the kind of middle range anyway. So your $3 tip becomes a $5 or $10 tip. And we support Apple Pay, Google Pay, Credit Card, any type of payment option is open and welcome. And so this way, you know, operators can choose how they want to distribute the tips. There's many different ways, but some people like to do a pool, and here's a collective pool that we then share across to everybody. Some people like to say, okay, it's the guy who retrieves the car. And now because we have a digital system, I know that Johnny brought the car back. So maybe Johnny gets the tip, or he gets a majority of the tip. So there's many ways to skin the cat. So long story short is that's what solves that. And as a bonus, here's a here's a little uh top tip. Operators, so if you're if you're the let's say restaurant owner, or you know, you you suddenly run valet with restaurants in general, I feel bad for them because they're always on a very thin margins. And restaurants want to provide a great experience. They're providing great food, you have a great ambiance, and you have you have to provide valet as well, right? Because sometimes parking logistics, you're dressed up with your wife, you're wearing you know, beautiful suit, dress, you don't want to walk across two blocks. It's not a premium experience. So you have to have valet. And unfortunately, that eats into your margins because if you're running your own valet, then either you're paying an operator for the valet, the labor side, or you do it yourself. And of course, if you damage a car accidentally with one of your staff, you curb the guy's wheel. Now there's a lot of money. So if you want a funny little story there, one of our valet clients, they lost the keys to a guy's uh car. And so here's the breakdown, okay? You happen to have lost the keys to the guy's Rolls-Royce. And so suddenly now you have to re-key the whole car. And then the guy came back and said, Okay, great, you lost my keys, but I also had the keys to my yacht. I gotta go re-key my yacht. Oh, and also my keys to my mansion were there, so you gotta re-key the guy's entire life. And unfortunately, with the way valet company insurance works, um, valet companies usually don't claim the insurance, they they eat it out of their own profit because when you make a claim, you can't really make another claim the next year before because otherwise your rates are gonna go sky high. So you have this huge problem. You have a you have a somebody who's lost something as simple as a key. Now it's cost you $8,000. So here's where I'm going with this to kind of bring it back full circle. As an operator, if you run valet, you can add a small convenience fee. Okay. This goes back to you. So if your valet, let's say, is $17. Now you can charge, just like if you were a ticket master or somebody, you can charge a little convenience fee of a dollar or two. So if you have 1,000 or 2,000 cars parked a month, you've just made an additional one, $2,000 or $4,000, which heavily offsets a lot of these problems and labor. So now suddenly you can run a profitable valley business for your restaurant, and you get the benefit of not being, you know, razor-thin margins anymore.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, it's like a little insurance policy. Yeah. That's uh a great story. That's that is uh frightening and hits kind of close to home because as somebody who has, I mean, speaking of props in this episode, my keys just full of a million keys on my keychain. Um, losing losing my car keys means losing, you know, all of my my locks to like my trailer and like um my house key and all this, all these things are just gonna be massive headaches. So um what's interesting to me too is um we we mentioned this, is you're not just doing hotels, your your footprint's obviously a lot like wider uh and weirder in some ways than I'd ex I'd expect otherwise. Like you work with hotels, you work with retail centers, hospitals, event venues, um, all of which make up nearly 68% of valet demand, which is pretty staggering. Um and they're obviously different environments, right? Like um, I know like hospitals, patients are are stressed. Um, you know, elderly, like they need to like they just need to drop off their car quick and get in. They're emotional, um, versus like you're going to a fancy dinner, you're all dressed up and kind of in a good mood. Um, what changes when you're running valet at that, say, like this hospital environment versus a hotel? Like, what did you have to build differently to accommodate the different environments?
SPEAKER_01Everything, everything. So hospital valley parking is basically the busiest parking in the world. Um, you've got hundreds of cars a day. Now, you also have multiple lanes sometimes uh and multiple drop-off points. So you can drop off in one section of the hospital and pick up in another section. So logistically, it's it's just way bigger than a hotel operation. And then on top of that, like you said, you have to combine compassion with it as well. Because you're not going for a great experience. You know, I'm not going to a spa at a hotel anymore. I'm going because unfortunately, somebody I love is in the hospital. It's for maybe myself. I'm going for maybe a uh a scan or something. So it's a totally different animal. And then you also have to deal with things like gates at these parking garages. So maybe there's the hospital might have reserved parking just for the valet team, and the gates have to go up and down. So now you're integrating with gates that need to be um available to the valet team and not the regular general public. Um and then to flip from a hospital, let's go to commercial uh office office towers, let's say, for example, residential. So suddenly you're dealing with monthly parkers, people who have who buy a pass. And so, what's different in commercial real estate versus a hospital or a hotel? Well, these guys all have to arrive at the same time. So everyone's coming to work, generally around 9 a.m. So you have suddenly, you know, 500 cars arriving to go to park at this uh this massive office tower, and then nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then suddenly 5 p.m. comes around, and all these 500 cars need to go out again. So, how do you mitigate that, right? You you're not you're not issuing a valet ticket for those guys anymore. In that case, what we've done is we can put a sticker in your door jam or in your rear view mirror or in your mirror somewhere or your windshield, and that sticker becomes your permanent, like call it valet tag, right? So now you don't have to worry about giving your phone number or getting a ticket. You just show up, they scan that little tag on your car, and they know, oh, hey, Bo, welcome back, go park your car. And we have a dedicated app for that, for just these monthly parkers, these residents and condos, these office tower um employees. So all you do is you go on your app, you say, Hey, by the way, I want my car today at five o'clock. And then out comes your car at five o'clock, you know? And the one little nice cherry on top is that you can schedule this in advance because you know every day you're gonna leave work at, let's say, 5.15. I'm gonna set it up for Monday to Friday. At 5.15, I can have my car. And so you don't have to even think about it because you're busy finishing up some some last-minute emails and you forget to request your car. Maybe now you're waiting to 30 minutes because it's 500 cars coming out. So, how nice is it that you can schedule in advance every day, Monday to Friday? I want my car at 515.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the scheduling is a nice little cherry on top of everything else you mentioned. So, yeah, there's so much to love about this, what you guys offer. Um, I I want to like sort of flip the script. Like, let's say, like, prospective customer, like somebody's listening right now who runs one of these properties. They're sold based off everything you've you've mentioned up into this point. Like, what does getting set up and actually running look like? Like, how fast can they realistically get going?
SPEAKER_01You can be live in 48 hours. So the software is ready to go. Your team, everything that it runs on is already on their phones. So they can install the software on their own phones. Training takes half an hour. And I mentioned we have this whole training suite, so we can cover you on the training. And then we also keep everything in stock. So tickets are ready to go, hardware is out the door, anything you need. The joke is I always say hardware can be overnight anywhere in North America and pretty much next day in most major world cities.
SPEAKER_00So, what about um like playing well with what somebody already has going on, like the the dynamics they already have in play? Um, like the integrations, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Like hotels, especially, they they live and die by their property management system. Um, how does Pure Valet fit into what a property is already running? Like PMS platforms, um, like opera payment systems, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, luckily for you, we already integrate with all that. So as the stuff is on its way in FedEx on a plane to you, integration is already complete. So all you have to do as a hotel is find pure valet in your PMS, like Opera, install it. And again, again, we're gonna walk you through all this. You just install it with one click and you're you're integrated before the stuff even arrives. And so payment side of things too is very easy. It's all online. We support all the payment processors like Stripe, Square, and so on. So we just link it with your finance team. They have some uh some you know, a couple of clicks they have to make, and then payments now flow through you. So essentially the payments go right into your own bank account as well. They they bypass us, they go right to you. And so integration-wise, it's it couldn't be easier.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Yeah, and I imagine like you're I mean, you sounds like you already have most of the integrations in place, but you're probably adding more as well, like the some of the more niche integrations. Yes, all the time.
SPEAKER_01All the time. Because there's thousands out there. So when you go to a trade show for hotel technology, there's probably 2,000 different companies that provide hotel PMS systems. So the lucky thing, the good thing is about this, is that all these hotel PMS systems have an integration available, right? So if we don't have it, we will have it for you. There's that's a promise. It's not even a question of can we do it? If you need it, it's done.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. It's only a matter of time. Um, well, once a property's like gone fully digital, they've integrated pure valet. What do they suddenly see that they couldn't maybe do before? Like, is it wait times? Is it like counting cars? Like how how many valets do they actually need on like a Saturday night? Like, what's the biggest thing they noticed?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just like we mentioned, basically. So before you're operating blind, imagine you just are one walkie-talkies, you have no idea what's going on. Now suddenly you know car counts, you know, the peak in possession. So, what is the peak of my Fridays? Every Friday I have this many as the peak of cars. Tip tracking, like we talked about, right? So, how many tips came in? How do we distribute those tips? Incident logs, how many times did a customer claim a damage photo uh was you know incorrect? Let's say, for example, so things that a clipboard can ever tell you, basically. And then to the points earlier, instead of guessing for the labor demand, which is the biggest component of this, right? So you run the run the system for a couple weeks, let the data roll in, don't touch anything, and then we start to see the ebbs and flows. Okay, hold on a second here. We're wasting labor on Wednesday nights. We have way too many drivers, not enough, not enough uh usage of the valet at all. So then kind of your your second, third week is more trimming the fat, right? So you're just making efficiency. So, number one, you're becoming more efficient. Your guest experience from day one goes up. You know, you can request from your room, you can request from anywhere. It's branded to the property. So you're not just requesting on some random black and white screen. Um, it's branded to your property. But now all this data is trickling in. So as the weeks go by, the labor side is improving, and basically you're gonna see a return on your investment in the first month.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I picture it's almost like kind of I picture being overwhelming with how much data you get, but overwhelming not in like a log jam sort of manner, but just sort of like a uh enlightenment sort of way where you're just like, oh, I can do all these things now. I can, I can um, you know, my return on investment becomes all the more rosy. Um, you know, the the drivers start like seeing more tips, like it's just sort of a chain reaction of beneficial outcomes, I would say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and you're not overwhelmed with the data either. So that's where we pioneer, you know, it's really hard to do something simple. And so anybody can give you a thousand reports, you're never gonna click on them, right? Because you're not gonna even know what these reports are. So anytime you've ever used a new system or a new technology, it's it's a lot to learn. So what our system does is it distills it down for you as you need it, right? That's where the AI comes in. And obviously, AI is the most famous, best word in 2026 now. Everyone's using AI for everything, but we use it strategically to get the right data to you. So you're not overwhelmed. So the system says to you, hey, I noticed on Wednesday you have a little bit too many drivers there. Like they're running around, they're not doing much, right? Or, hey, by the way, um, the guest feedback score came in, and you're not doing too good on the retrievals, right? Maybe the the time is slipping. So that's where our analytics come in. It monitors your site all the time, and then it just feeds you the data as you need it. Hey, by the way, this can be improved, right? So that's where it's overwhelming with a new system, but now this distills it down, makes it a lot easier.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've got a few more questions for you, and I want to sort of uh treat them like these elevator pitch questions, hard, you know, quick hit questions. Um, maybe, you know, feel free to elaborate on your answer and whatnot. But um, in a sentence or two, what what would you say makes Pure Valet like the pick, the solution over everything else that's out there?
SPEAKER_01It's speed and choice, right? So you get a five-second check-in and you get the freedom to run SMS or paper, which is a digitized paper, or both. And so the other nice little bonus on top is we're the only software that has offline mode. So with a parking garage, you always have spotty connection. Doesn't matter with with even if you have no internet at all, Pure Valley is the only system that still works and just syncs everything up as soon as you get back. So you get the guest experience, offline mode, five-second check-in, and you can run whatever choice you want for tickets.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Okay, clean answer. Yeah, speed and choice. Those are the two things to really to remember and and kind of hammer home. Okay, and then every founder like yourself, they they have this one thing they wish customers just got, right? Like the one thing you you could shout from the rooftops. Uh I'm curious, what would that one thing be for pure valet?
SPEAKER_01It's that again, modern doesn't mean SMS only. People keep coming to us and say, I want a modern system, that's SMS. And we're like, great, that's not it. So basically, modern means you have choice, and you can have it in 48 hours or less. But essentially, modern is your choice, right?
SPEAKER_00And modern doesn't equal SMS. Got it. Um, and then what do you what do you think others in Valet Tech uh are getting wrong that you're determined to do differently?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so all the category leaders were built like 15, 20 years ago, and these guys all got absorbed into these massive parking conglomerates. So, you know, valet, as I mentioned earlier, just became this afterthought. They're focused on gates and and and just parking technology. When you go to a parking garage, you pay with a and you get a little stub. That's what they're focusing on. Nobody's focusing on valet, which is the guest experience side. So that's why our name is Pure Valley. That's all we do is valet software.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Okay. And then maybe you can leave us with a story that really like has resonated with you, maybe a time that Pure Valet just kind of went like above and beyond for a customer.
SPEAKER_01We always go above and beyond. We try at least our best to uh to go above and beyond. But there was one time we had to launch a five-star ski resort in Colorado Intellide. And so the person who's supposed to install the system happened to call in sick the day before, and poor guy got sick, and he was supposed to fly out. So, well, you got to do what you got to do. So I booked a flight for myself for the next day, hopped on a flight, and it's not just one of those things where you can just land into this ski resort five minutes away. You gotta land in from me, at least, for coming from Canada. I got to go to color, um, where am I? To uh Colorado. I got to land in Denver. Then I got to hop another flight to Montrose. And then once you get to this tiny airport in Montrose, you got to take a 45-minute shuttle. So, you know, by the time I got to the ski resort, um, it was a bit of a journey. But we got there, I had to set up the whole system myself because the guy who's supposed to install again couldn't be there. Train the whole team, but you have to do what you got to do. So sometimes even the CEO has to go and make a visit in person. And but that's part of our our mantra. So with us, there's no such thing as leaving our guests behind, right? Our guests are our actual customers, right? So this is a five-star ski resort. We can't let them down. And so you gotta do what you gotta do.
SPEAKER_00Well, I love all the stories um and and the props and everything you've mentioned. I think um, you know, the the platform really, you know, sells itself once you you you kind of see all the offerings it contains and the integrations and whatnot. Um, and uh that story was just a great note to end on. So, Adam, uh thank you for everything you've shared with us. Um, for listeners who you know are curious about Pure Valet, they want to learn more, where's the best place to go?
SPEAKER_01Purevalet.com, and that's spelt with P-U-R valet.com. So it's pure without the E.
SPEAKER_00Pure without the E, Purevalet.com. All right, and then uh if you want to get into contact with Adam, go over to LinkedIn. All right, Adam. Well, uh, this has been fantastic. Thanks again for everything you share with us. And um, I hope to have you back. Maybe we can lead a narrowed, focused, topic approach uh, you know, episode with you.
SPEAKER_01Would love to. Would love to. It's been great, Bo. Really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me on. Of course. Thank you all for listening to the SourceForge podcast. I'm your host, Bo Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one.