Aryan Motedayeni is banking on burgers, California chic and creative artificial intelligence being an appetizing combo to the tech-savvy students of Simon Fraser University.
When he was a SFU computer science student, Motedayeni believed the campus could use a good burger joint. When CaliBurger opened in downtown Vancouver in June 2016 he went to check it out. He loved it had spots to wirelessly charge cellphones. A big Wii-like video Funwall allowed customers to play interactive games while waiting in line was pretty cool too.
“It was just little things like that that made it appeal to me,” said Motedayeni, 22. “I really liked the product. I went online to see if they were offering franchise opportunities, and they were, so I filled out an application.”
Although the downtown outlet recently closed, Motedayeni’s, complete with a nine-foot Funwall, opened in the Cornerstone Mews at SFU’s UniverCity on Feb. 15.
“It’s been very busy. We opened during the middle of reading week, and we have had huge rushes coming in,” said Motedayeni.
There’s more sick stuff on the way. The store will soon have self-ordering kiosks. On top of building their California-style burgers at the kiosks, facial recognition software will help customers who sign up build their loyalty accounts. It will also keep track of how customers have customized their condiments and orders in the past minimizing the number of buttons they have to push to get their personalized preferences.
“There’s nothing like that on the mountain. I’ve seen videos of the one they use in the Pasadena (California) store and it looks awesome. I’ve never seen a kiosk like that, so I’m looking forward to it,” said Motedayeni. “We get huge lineups, and yeah, we can put two cashiers on it, but students like to see something new up on the mountain. SFU has a high percentage of international students, and they’ll see something like that, get attracted and tell everyone. It will be a key selling point.”
Motedayeni said the kiosks are expected to arrive in the next few weeks after some of the legal logistics for storage of information are established and the kinks of integrating it into the store’s system are worked out.
Another CaliBurger is scheduled to open in Surrey this summer.
