Former ezCater Exec Ed Ariel joins OpenCity as Customer Acquisition Continues to Take Off
OpenCity, the leading omni-channel, multi-service customer engagement AI company for restaurants, announced today that Ed Ariel has joined the team as Chief Services Officer. OpenCity is revolutionizing the way customers and restaurants communicate, now serving over 500 restaurants.
Ed Ariel has decades of experience in developing and managing world class customer service teams and products. Ed was the former Global Head of Service Operations at ezCater, the world’s largest catering marketplace ($1.25B). He launched the industry leading “Ninja” order taking and support team. Previously Ed led TNCI’s national voice, data, and cloud services team and managed AT&T’s call center team. Ed will be overseeing OpenCity’s newly launched real-time end-to-end customer service offering.
“Ed has the right mix of domain expertise, customer service scalability and AI vision, to build a seamless customer management service for restaurant franchises and independent brands,’’ said Nick Belsito, Founder and CEO of OpenCity.
“I have been intricately involved in working with restaurants as they seek to adopt AI technology. It is obvious that AI is clearly the next step in the evolution of restaurant experience for ordering and support. OpenCity’s AI platform stood out. It’s impressive how it instantly and accurately responds to customers, seamlessly books reservations, and captures orders as well as private event and catering leads,” Ed Ariel emphasized.
“2020 is going to be the year where AI technology will be widely adopted by restaurants,” said Belsito. “We partner with large national chains and individual operators.” Every restaurateur is thinking about how to build and retain their direct to consumer business while improving margins. Restaurants can leverage AI to stay closer to their customers, drive revenue, improve operating margin and reduce overhead, in today’s competitive food-hospitality market.
Not all AI systems are alike. “We own our IP, whereas other AI companies leverage third party NLP and ML models” exclaimed Belsito. “Having a unique AI solution allows flexibly and control of development and deployment of solutions. It also enables advances that competitors in this space cannot currently match.”
About OpenCity
OpenCity, a Boston based omni-channel, multi-service customer engagement AI company for restaurants. Built by Restaurant People. For Restaurant People. OpenCity has changed the way customers and hospitality businesses communicate. Our AI automatically takes orders, books reservations and responds to customer questions 24/7, allowing our customers and partners to focus more on operations while creating new revenue streams. Curious about how it works? Text us at 617–858–8305 or visit us at OpenCity.co
