CUSTOMER STORY
Since 2017,
still building
Dan Goneau runs GoBooth, photo booth rental in Ottawa, and he signed up for Check Cherry in 2017, when three events on the calendar at once became more than he could keep in his head. He is still here. These days he builds his own software on top of our API.
It started at three events
One booking is fine. Two is fine. Three is where it stops fitting in your head.
"You have to keep track of so many things. What kind of backdrop do you want? What kind of template? And then, did I do the template? It doesn't sound like much, but it really adds up. When you're juggling life, I needed a system to make sure I was on top of all those things."
So he went shopping, the way most owners do. He tried the general-purpose CRMs, including the two everyone names first, and spent the better part of a few days setting each one up before deciding none of them fit. Then he found Check Cherry.
"I got on a call and you were trying to sell me on it. And I'm like, dude, shut up. Just take my money. This is exactly what I want."
What he wanted was not complicated. He wanted the event details to land in the calendar on his phone, so that when a tech showed up on site the information was already there. He asked. It shipped that day.
"Boom, 30 minutes later it was there. And I was like, oh my God, these guys are awesome."
Those were the early days, when the product was small enough that an obvious win could be shipped between coffees. It is harder to move that fast now. But the habit of listening to Dan never went away, and years of his feedback are sitting in the product whether or not his name is on it.
"As soon as I got Check Cherry, I could get my life back. I just knew what to do and how to do it."
Dan Goneau
Owner, GoBooth
A staff portal
His team sees their own events, photographs a parking receipt, and the app reads the amount off the image and reconciles it against what the event should have cost.
A pricing calculator
Equipment, consumables, cost per print, all the way through to whether a given package actually makes money.
An on-site print tool
Keychains and magnets laid out to the paper he actually stocks, with a QR code so guests can add their own photos at the event.
The connective tissue
Check Cherry webhooks fire on a new booking and on a completed event, so the rest of it runs without him.
Then he started building
Most owners use the software. Dan wires it into everything else.
The turning point was mundane. He was following a pricing method that required copying numbers between two spreadsheets, and he asked himself whether it was faster to merge the spreadsheets or to write an app. He wrote the app. Then he wrote several more.
They all run against the Check Cherry API, which he reaches for often enough to sit among the highest-volume API users on the platform, measured in thousands of calls a week. The staff portal replaced a chain of spreadsheets and third-party automations he had been paying for and had grown tired of maintaining.
None of this is what we imagined when we opened the API. That is rather the point of opening one.
The AI connection changed how he thinks
Check Cherry speaks MCP, which lets an AI assistant read your bookings, leads, and payments and act on them with your permission. Dan connected his account from a desktop assistant, from a coding agent, and from a third-party client, mostly to find out where the edges were.
"When you released the MCP, it clicked in my brain. All my apps need to be MCP first."
He found the edges quickly, and told us about every one. No way to convert a lead into a proposal. No access to questionnaires. No way to create a discount code. He wants to stop reading and start writing, and he has been consistent and specific about it for months.
A desktop AI assistant
Day to day questions about the business
A coding agent
Building the apps that run against the API
A third-party client
Because he wanted to see whether it would work
Two or three years ahead
Every product needs a handful of customers who are further out than the rest. They are not always comfortable to have around. They are enormously useful.
Dan asks for multi-day events with different options per day. Four proposal options side by side instead of three. Deep links from a mobile notification straight to the event. Write access to more of the API. He read a security notice one morning, ran it past his AI assistant, and forwarded us his analysis before lunch.
Some of it has shipped. Some of it is on the list. All of it comes from someone using the product hard enough to find where it ends.
What this means if you are shopping
You are not evaluating a demo. You are evaluating what happens in year eight, and year nine.
It has to last
Switching platforms costs you history, templates, and a month of your life. Dan has not had to do it since 2017.
It has to grow with you
Three brands on one account, a deep add-on catalog, multi-day events with different options per day. The account grew as the business did.
It has to open up
When you outgrow the interface there is an API and an AI connection waiting. You do not need to be a developer to start.
About GoBooth
GoBooth is a photo booth rental company serving Ottawa and the surrounding region, run by Dan Goneau. Rated #1 on ThreeBest Rated from 2022 through 2026, and a Platinum Award winner for Best Photo Booth Experience in 2018 and 2020.
gobooth.caStart the way Dan did
Get the next three events out of your head and into a system. Grow into the rest when you are ready.