Bill Bolton

Toby Awalt: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Skip the Line, Mashgin’s podcast on the tactics and technologies that make fantastic diningand retail experiences. I'm Toby Awalt, part of the Mashgin team, and today onthe show we have Bill Bolton, director of Retail Operations for MorrisonHealthcare at Cleveland Clinic. Bill, thank you so much for being on the showtoday.

Bill Bolton: Thankyou very much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Toby Awalt: So I'mgonna jump right into it here. I’d love to hear a little bit more about, whatyou do. What does your daily life look like as director of operations for sucha big healthcare account?

Bill Bolton: Okay, so we have in the main campus, we have multiple buildings with multiple different points of service, be it, an actual. Physical point of service with, a counter and we're, we're servicing people, over that counter or a grab and go options,or we actually have a significant number of delivery places that we deal with and, pick up orders at just about every single location.

So we have multiple [00:01:00]points of service, multiple points of sale throughout the total operation. I'mgonna say here on main campus, we manage. 10, 10 to 12 different operations andthere are still a number of, businesses that are in here as well that go beyondus. So that's pretty much what we do.

Toby Awalt: How manypeople are you serving at just the main campus? That's a lot of outlets.

Bill Bolton: My guestcount is running around four to 5,000 people a day relative to the day.

Toby Awalt: Man, thatis huge. And, and what percentage of that would you say are visitors versus,staff?

Bill Bolton: I'd sayit's probably close to a 60 40. 60 for staff, 40% for guests.

Toby Awalt: Okay. Socan you tell me a little bit about, the specific needs of both the staff andthe visitors, and how they might differ from other food service spaces?

Bill Bolton: So, thedifference is in the navigation really. So, the guests I'll use the guess term,meaning, the patient's, families, the patients, you know, they're coming inhere kind of looking lost. 'cause the Cleveland [00:02:00]Clinic is a vast operation. We quite literally go about, our entire campus isprobably about a mile. From one end to the other end. So it's relativelysignificant space. So they come in and are basically lost and are, and are, youknow, they're here obviously because they don't wanna be here 90% of the time.

So, they're suffering the challenges of finding . Where theyshould be able to go and eat, where their families are gonna be, and things ofthat sort. So they're learning the lay of the land as they come in., and again,with that number of people every day, they're trying to, there's a lot ofpeople trying to figure it out. So we do have people that kind of help directthem throughout the, throughout our operation, help navigate through this. Andnow the caregivers, they're here.

Every day. And so, they get menu fatigue, they get tired ofseeing the same thing every day. They come in here not knowing, just like if we,you go and, you're driving down the street, in your hometown saying, well,where do you wanna go to eat? I don't know. I don't know what I want.

So they're doing the same exact thing. So, we have to navigatetrying to create something that's exciting and different for [00:03:00] them on a daily basis, along withproviding those old favorite kind of things. You know, a burger.

Toby Awalt: Yeah,yeah. You got, you gotta have the classics, but, those are very differentchallenges for your two audiences. That navigation will be a really interestingthing to get through in a little bit. But just to kind of close out context,can you talk to me a little bit about, how you measure success in your role andwho do you typically report to on that success?

Like what are they looking for?

Bill Bolton: So, thepeople that we report up to are, the leadership of the clinic. They'reobviously very interested in how people feel about the experience that theyhave at the Cleveland Clinic. It's measured everday

in an official capacity that they have for patients and asomewhat unofficial capacity here.

the feedback that comesfrom our guest here in the dining area does kind of play a role in. Thefeedback that comes up through the patients that goes officially to the clinicas well as it actually goes to the, the government., and so that's one measurethat we use.

Another measure that we use is obviously just like everybodyelse, what are your sales? You know, [00:04:00]we can kind of tell, what's popular, what's going well based upon how well itsells in a, you know, every day and or throughout the week or whatever the casemay be . And so that's kind of the measure that we use.

Um. It's, it's kind of challenging. It's a li it really is adifferent experience here because we do have such a transient population interms of the patients' families and the patients that are here. So that's alittle bit more of a challenging way to, to look at just sales and say howsuccessful we are based upon that.

If you do a great job, they're not necessarily gonna come backtomorrow. 'cause hopefully they're, they don't have to come back tomorrow.

Toby Awalt: Yeah,that does make sales a little bit more hard to measure on the guest experienceside of things., how is that typically distributed? Is that like an appnotification? Is that a button on the way out of the cafeteria? Is it paper?Like how are we capturing guest experience here? I.

Bill Bolton:Unfortunately, we really don't have a great way to measure guest experienceother than those folks that are within the clinic that work here. We do surveysthroughout the [00:05:00] year, that we, wherewe try to measure that impact., and so that is something that the clinic doesonce a year.

And we also do our own, measurement once a year with that aswell., so it is a little bit more of a challenge to measure,, how successful weare with taking care of the guests. The one thing about the caregivers that arehere is that they happen to be, very vocal about how well we're taking care of'em.

So they let us know pretty much on a daily basis and an ongoingbasis, what they're looking for, what we can do for them better. And it's niceto get that feedback 'cause it allows us to, to pivot wherever we need topivot.

Toby Awalt: That'sfantastic. So, it sounds like when you're doing a good job, when you have avocal populace at least, the stakeholders know, right?, they're probablyhearing similar things, from the staff on the. Ground. So, that's good. Thatgood that they're at least, clear with you and clear with everybody else.

Bill Bolton: Yes,absolutely.

Toby Awalt: Getting alittle bit into your daily life, what have you found to be, your most commonchallenges?

Bill Bolton: The mostcommon challenge, is throughput. Because we're pushing four to 5,000 people [00:06:00] through a space that's not really builtfor that number of people. Throughput becomes a real challenge., and again, I'mgonna say something positive about your product here, that helps dramaticallyto help people get through in a very timely manner.

, you know, we do have those measures. On our standard POSsystem, and we have the measures obviously within, the Mashgin self checkoutswhere we can see what our throughput happens to be and how quickly we can getpeople through., one of the things that our caregivers say very frequentlybecause our caregivers are more likely to use, the self checkout kiosk more sothan the guests., one of the things that is very frequently, noted on is howquickly they get through and gee, this is magic. So yeah, so something positiveto say, but that is really the. Biggest challenge I have is throughput.

This is why mobile is such a huge push for us, because we haveto try to keep people off of our floor. these folks that come in here, whether,they are again, patients and their families and or the caregivers, they have avery limited amount of [00:07:00] time to comein here and, and navigate what to eat, and then to get through the lines. Andso what time does everybody eat? Everybody doesn't eat. We're not distributingthose four to 5,000 people and you know, from, from six 30 in the morning tillseven o'clock at night, which we're open. No, they're very much coming betweenthat eleven o'clock and one o'clock hour. So we have thousands of peoplewalking through. It's, it's a very actually daunting thing to be up on thefloor throughout the peak periods because there's a lot of people up there. Ifyou have agoraphobia, it's not where you want to be. And so again, throughputbecomes one of the. Biggest challenges. How do I get people from one end of theentrance to, to the exit in a quick manner and an efficient manner? and, safe.

Toby Awalt: That'sawesome and I really appreciate the plug for mashgin there. Besides, ourtechnology, are there other things that you've utilized to attack this problemof getting throughput in this, really tight eating window? I.

Bill Bolton: We buildour menus around, a quick, amount of [00:08:00]selection. So, for example, if you're going up our entree station, we have anentree station that changes concepts every single day. We literally, we brandit every single day, with its own marketing materials and its own decorations,et cetera.,, you're gonna choose an entree, a starch, and a veg, and you'regonna go. It's not something where there's a significant amount of choices thatyou're gonna be able to navigate. Think about a subway, right? When you go upto a standard subway, which we do have a subway here, but that subway line getsvery long. Having. A significant number of different spaces that has like 20 or30 different items in it becomes very challenging. And so we try to limit thatto, to, oh my burger place, you have five or six options that you can choose,from the burger place that we have. And again, that try trying to get peoplethrough quickly., that's really what we do is menu selection, a proper menuselection.

Toby Awalt:, I thinkthat was shown by like a Harvard Business Review many years back. It was likethe jam experiment of, the more choices you had, the more people said theyliked the experience, but the less they bought. [00:09:00]Whereas if you had a much more, tight set of menu, it worked.

And, that's a great thing, to live by. I'd love to dig a littlebit more into how you logistically handle changing those menus every singleday, how far ahead of time are you preparing this stuff so that your team cankind of come in, either is it the end or the beginning of the day?

You know, how do you tackle this creation of variety that youdiscussed as a, as a key metric for your long-term staff?

Bill Bolton: WithinMorrison, we have a set number of concepts. So we have, I wanna say 30 to 40different concepts . That we can choose from. so those menus have been, youknow, they've done those menus before.

Now, from a prep component, they're prepping most everythingevery day. . But the menus are simple to execute. There's nothing to where it'sa 20 step process. It's a rice bowl kind of a thing.

Toby Awalt: Yeah, togive, Morrison's processes a plug here., that's a great way, of having kind ofa central understanding of what generally is good, tastes good and [00:10:00] sells, and making it something that's easyfor your teams to combine into something interesting throughout the year.,that's an important thing for a buyer to understand of, Hey, we've alreadyfound a solution for both the, variety and efficiency parts of the equation.

'cause we know that that's gonna be something that, thatdoctors and nurses and other healthcare staff care about.

Bill Bolton: Mm-hmm.

Toby Awalt:, gettinginto maybe earlier in your career, I'd love to hear if you have any advice orhard lessons that you learned much earlier, in dining spaces that you wouldgive as advice to a new,, GM of a single cafe or district manager.

, someone who's just come into the responsibility for a spaceor several spaces. What were either hard lessons you learned, or just reallyuseful things you've picked up along the way?

Bill Bolton:, one ofthe changes that coming out of, being an individual contributor to ., leading ateam are, how do you provide that hard feedback? You know, how do you saysomething that's uncomfortable, but it's something that somebody really needsto hear and not be afraid of doing that, [00:11:00]holding people accountable. Again, that's something that you didn't have to doas an individual contributor, but now you have to do it as a leader. And that'sanother thing that becomes challenging to do. And then building a team whereyou have that rapport and that trust where they, they, you know, where you'reable to establish yourself as a leader and then you earn the respect of theteam. It takes effort to do that.

Now, as a district manager, that's a little bit of a differentchallenge because you really have to think from beyond the day to day. You haveto think in a more strategic way where you're, building something over time asopposed to doing something in the moment or of that day., so you have todevelop consistency across all locations, having procedures, processes, andthen developing and supporting those people that are underneath you.

, and then another thing about building, those people is beingable to, balance the autonomy with the control., having, those folks that areable to basically act on their own and also being able to, have the controlsthat you need. So that's where you define those expectations and have thosedifficult conversations at time., and [00:12:00]also being able to have a strong emotional intelligence, where you really areable to effectively communicate, and build strong teams.

Another thing from a district manager standpoint, and, thisreally does apply to my role, is walking the floor with purpose and intention.

I'm gonna walk up there and I'm gonna look for this., you can'tsit there and see everything at once. But you know what? I'm gonna go look fordust now, or I'm gonna go look and I'm gonna check the temp logs, or you know,I'm gonna go check this particular operational standard, or I'm gonna go up andtaste everything, which is.

Which is a challenge, believe it or not. That's a challengeunto itself. Going up every day in a location like this and tasting everything,that's all. That's okay. I'm done. I don't need to eat anymore. I don't. Idon't need lunch.

Toby Awalt: Yeah, noteasy to come home for dinner and say, oh, I, I can't wait, honey. I'm soexcited. After you had to do the full floor.,

I'd like to go back a little bit into, holding peopleaccountable . That's probably a really hard one to learn.

How do you successfully [00:13:00]hold people accountable without creating, bitterness or Ill will.

Bill Bolton: Youknow, to me it's, it's having regular conversations with them. Meaning what wetry to do here, is have one-on-ones with all, the different managers, and havea sit down so that you can ha take that time one-on-one to be able to level setexpectations. To where they have an understanding of what you're looking forand how you expect it to be executed. And I think that's really probably theone best way is to just, take that one-on-one time instead of trying to addressit in a global setting or with everybody else around is taking that moment,taking those moments and, addressing those things that need to be addressedimmediately then in an individualized setting.

Toby Awalt: Yeah, andjust clear communication and expectations. Making sure that what you said isheard, you know, get it repeated back to you is, is such a powerful tool inmaking sure that people understand what's going on and what's expected of them.And I think that's a lot of everyone's stress is what is actually [00:14:00] expected of me in any given moment.

Moving out of kind of, the new world into the everyday, do youhave any tips that you think any individual outlet, or maybe you know, at nowyou're at the higher level, like what would, what is a day-to-day tip or trickthat you use to help make your life easier?

Bill Bolton:, oh,that's an interesting question. You know, to me it's constantly trying to thinkof the better way not being satisfied that this way is the right way. This wayis the way we should be doing it., one of the things that we're doing now iswe're taking over an event space that the, uh, clinic had run and they had beenrunning, this event space a certain way for the last 20 some odd years.

And so we're going into this space new and we're saying, why doyou do it that way? And so they never thought to say, oh. You know what, thatmakes a lot of sense., it's not being satisfied with the status quo, butconstantly looking for the bigger, better way to do something, whatever thathappens to be.

Whether it be a new menu item, whether it be a new way toexecute that menu item, whether it [00:15:00]be, how do we add a particular technology to make our, make our lives easier,or whether it be, you know what, maybe we need to rethink how we're putting ourfood away at the end of the night. Stuff like that.

So, innovation.

Toby Awalt: Yeah.,and it's not necessarily easy 'cause it's very, easy to fall into routines andnot necessarily question and say, okay, I've come up. Up with the process. Ihaven't revisited this in six months. What if I took a look again? What have Ilearned? What can I do differently?, and thinking through that it's extra work.

And it kind of leads into my next question, which is,, in orderto be constantly innovating, you need to understand and see trends in tacticsand technology and just guest choices.

Have you seen anything along those lines, that you're seeingbegin to uptrend now or have just kind of started to become a trend and do youthink they'll, stick around long term?

Bill Bolton: Yes.Some of the things that I've seen, and I think we saw this during the pandemicand it's kind of kept up a somewhat, and that's the rise of like ghost [00:16:00] kitchens or virtual brands. So you'll seewhere you go to a Buca di beppo they don't just have Buca di beppo they havefive other brands besides that. They do a wing thing, they have a pizza thing,they have all sorts of other things, and, that's brilliant. You have theability to make all sorts of different food. Why do you need to set withinthese very specific, narrow parameters that you put yourself, where you're justthis particular brand? And so that's the one great thing, and we've kind ofbuilt upon that ourselves here, where we can change brands on the fly, we canchange brands, literally every day we do. And it's a trend that I think we'regonna continue seeing, 'cause people really do focus on a brand. They do lookfor, the McDonald's, they look for, KFC for chicken, but gee., why can't youdo, chicken at McDonald's.

You have a deep fryer, right? So you can do that. Of course youcan. So I, I recognize there's differences in the preparation, but you get,what I'm saying is that, you can create brands within brands within brands.

Another thing I think that we've really seen is this veryhyper-personalization where people want the [00:17:00]MTO experience where they're made to order, where, they can go to a subway andget a subm made exactly the way they want. They can go to a burger place andget it exactly the way they want. The hyper-personalization of the diningexperience, I has. really, become, a significant thing. People are also morefocused on sustainability and ethical sourcing.

, that is something that, they've come to, to look for as well,to make sure that you're, getting from a, an ethically sourced food, whether itbe coffee, whether it be chocolate, whatever the case may be. And then as wellas something that is, more sustainable,, in the manner in which you go and dothings.,

automation. Is also a big thing I think that guests are reallylooking for, again, talking about your product here. Automation is somethingthat I think people are looking for and we in this space, and I know in ourspace and our, our clients and us as a, as Morrison are definitely looking forways to automate, you know, the, labor continues and will continue to be achallenge.

And so we need to find smarter, better ways to do something tobuild a better mousetrap. And so that's something that [00:18:00]we're definitely looking at, whether it be a robot to deliver food or whetherit be a robot to build your coffee, which, you're seeing more and more of. So Ithink that's something that people are looking for.

And they're also, again, people are always looking forconvenience. So the blurring the lines between the retail. And food service.,that's something that we do. We sell things up, in our dining area that aremore aligned with something you can find in a grocery store. Well, why not? Whydon't we sell the pizza sauce that goes with our pizza? Yeah, it's pretty darngood sauce. Let me sell you the pizza sauce with it. Why not?, things alongthose lines. Hey, the sauce that you have on our burgers, why don't you justsell that sauce because I'd like to have it at home. It's an additional saleit's something that, your guests are, are looking for. And I. think you'reseeing more of That in the stores where you'll see, uh, if you're familiar withFamous Dave's, you'll see famous Dave's barbecue sauce, in your local grocerystore.

Or you'll see Chick-fil-A sauce. That's a great example whereyou see the Chick-fil-A sauce now for sale. So why not? Make something extra.

Toby Awalt: That is [00:19:00] so brilliant to think through. 'cause youhave the data to know what's worth productizing. So you say, all right, our,one of our hero meals that we bring back every week is ribs on Thursday.Probably has something to do with the sauce. What if we offered for $7 a bottleof the sauce and you're actually, you're being like way better with your foodconservation, right?

Because, you know, how long does it last? Does it last the nextThursday? Maybe not. It's really freshly made. And so being able to let peopletake that home, then give their kids like an extra tasty burger, is a reallycool add-on

Bill Bolton: Mm-hmm.

Toby Awalt: in therobot world. You caught my attention, with like robots to make coffee.

We have Cafe XI think in the San Francisco airport andoccasionally, I'll have that thing make me a latte just, you know, I see thelittle robot arm at waves at you. And have you seen implementations of those,in your career line? Have you done any of those?

Bill Bolton: Yes, wehave. So, let's see. Within our brand portfolio, we actually have a lot of [00:20:00] different, offerings of that sort.Started, well four years ago, where we had Sally, the robot, Sally, the saladrobot. And that was kind of cool where it was basically you took a salad barthat would, you would typically have in a portrait mode and you put it in avertical mode. So what it does is it would spin around and it would drop yoursalad topping. You would say, I want this. Go. And it would basically spin anddrop the toppings in there and it would make your salad for you. We have thisthing called tea bot and it's really interesting.

So it basically will take, you can choose your different teasthat you might want and you say, okay, I would like this tea with this and thismuch, and I'd like to add a little bit of peach flavor to it. And so it'llbuild a tea sachet, and it'll actually drop the tea into this little funnel,and you'll see the tea drop and go into this funnel that'll make a sachet.

And then they'll fill the cup with water and boop. There yougot some, now you got your own house made tea. So those?

are a couple different things. And we actually are about to doThis thing called Just Baked. [00:21:00] Um,we're working on it right now and just baked is, basically you say, okay, Iwant hot food, so how am I gonna get hot food?

So let's, I'll just use a Hot Pocket as a bad example, so youhave a hot pocket or you want macaroni and cheese, or you want a pizza. So youactually go up to this machine and you go, okay. I want a pepperoni pizza hotpocket. You hit the button and then it actually drops the hot pocket. It warmsit up for you and it comes out nice and hot. And so that's something that we'regonna be, we actually are probably three weeks away from implementing that.

How can you solve for the problem of having hot food in a spacethat you can't really afford to have a full-time operation there where you'restaffing it with people, where you're prepping food, where you have all to keepthe licensing, going for that area.

So how can you have food in an area where you have maybe three,400 people? And how can you feed them in an efficient manner? And this is,these are the types of answers that you look for. We have a coffee robot thatwe have on house right in-house right now, and [00:22:00]it is actually owned by Coke.

It's called Costa Coffee. And it is, really a cool conceptwhere it's basically a barista in a box so you can choose exactly. it does 200.Plus different types of recipes where it can build these coffees for you. Andit's pretty darn good coffee too. It grinds and brew right there.

And it's, it's adding different types of flavors and it addsmilk and it's pretty impressive. So

Toby Awalt: Just tomake sure I've got this concretely for our listeners, these are bestimplemented in say, smaller buildings next to larger campuses where you couldeither go all the way to the main cafeteria for lunch or if you're really in arush, as we know, a lot of people in healthcare do not have very long breaktimes.

You can stop by this in the lobby of your building, get yourhot made to order thing, and continue on your day without having to crosscampus.

Bill Bolton: Yeah,that's pretty much it. Yeah, you'd, this is not something you're gonna wannaput in a high volume area. For example, you'll go into airports at times andyou'll see something called a farmer's fridge. And yet, if you actually went upto that farmer's fridge and tried to click on it, it's [00:23:00]mostly empty. That's because they're putting something like that in arelatively high volume area. So you're, you, these are areas where you wanna.Be able to service a population, but it's, the population is not quite enoughto, to justify a full service operation. So that's, you're right, it's for asmaller building and we have 150 buildings on our main campus, and so everybodydoesn't wanna necessarily walk the half a mile or have the time to walk thehalf a mile.

That's not an exaggeration to go get something for lunch. Andso these are the answers that we try to come up with for these types oflocations.

Toby Awalt: That'sjust a really good framing of the scenario is when do you go after a highclass, vending experience where you can provide something that, can stand in onthose days where you just don't have that time. So that's gotta be reallypowerful for a lot of, the recurring staff, right?

They're stuck. 10minutes is not enough time to go half a mile and get your food, even if youreally like the food.

Bill Bolton: Yeah,Yeah. And especially if you have to wait in line, which again, on our [00:24:00] campus, there are 15,000 caregivers, everyday. And we're a 1400 bed hospital, plus we have outpatient facilities as well.So there's multiple thousands of people that are on this campus, probablycloser to, 25 to 30,000 people on this campus every day. And, how do younavigate trying to, to get them all fed, when everybody's hungry at the sametime, you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Plus snacks how do you navigategetting them all fed in a timely manner without them having the wait to halfhour in line that they don't have?

Toby Awalt: Yeah,that, that is bringing it back to throughput as your core challenge. That makesa lot of sense.

Bill Bolton: Yeah.

Toby Awalt: You don'tget to tell when the hospital's extra full. Right. So being ready to absorb abig flow of people in say like an adverse weather event or something whereyou've just

a bigger population coming in, being prepared for that has gotto be a big and powerful challenge.

Bill Bolton: Mm-hmm.

Toby Awalt: kindaspeaking of being prepared for it, we talked a little bit about developingtalent earlier. Staffing hard across the industry has been for years. Can youtell me a little bit [00:25:00] about, what youdo to find and retain really good people and that, that could be either at the,the frontline level or I know today, you're kind of managing managers, you knowhow you find and select a really good manager.

Bill Bolton: Well, alot of it has to do with being clear above the expectations right up front. Soyou know, too many times you get stuck in a position where you're trying tojust get somebody hired. But being completely clear about the job expectations,so you attract the right people right off the rip. Offering, competitivecompensation that's sometimes challenging. It's sometimes something you cannotnecessarily do. So you have to try to find the different ways beyond thecompensation to try to create a good, culture. That, that'll make it. So thisis a place that people wanna be. Those are the three biggest things I think is,being clear about what they're gonna be walking into, being as competitive asyou possibly can be from a pay standpoint. And then creating a great culturewhere you have these different special days.

You have, events that you hold. We, we actually have. And, andthis may sound silly for adults, [00:26:00] butwe have coloring days and it's amazing how people. Engage with coloring days.Not something I can do. 'cause I still can't color inside the lines even afterkindergarten. But, you know, those are things that people engage with just forthe sake of you're doing something, whatever that something might be. Providingopportunities for growth. The one great thing about an organization the size ofours is that they, someone can actually start here, in any capacity and theycan proceed forward all the way up to being the CEO, which actually. Uh, ourcurrent CEO started out, I wanna say he started out on the front line.

I could be wrong if he's, if he's gonna listen to this, Iapologize. Um, but, you know, it's starting out at, at a level and then movingforward. The one great thing again about our organization is that there areopportunities quite literally all over the world to proceed forward and, youknow, all the way from, east coast to west coast.

There's there. You can just look up a job and you can find togo wherever you want to go Here.

Toby Awalt: Yeah, ifyou're hungry for growth, you're hungry for a challenge or new places, [00:27:00] you've got just so much room to move. AndI, I do bet that that's probably really powerful when you're interviewing aplayers, the people you know are gonna grow and become solid is like, Hey, youdon't wanna work in this state anymore?

I got a ton of states. You don't work in this country. I got aton of countries. If you don't like this job, I got a ton of jobs. Right.There's just a lot of options there, uh, that, that gives power into like, Hey,no, this, this isn't just a job, this is a career and there's an opportunityfor you. And that's awesome to hear, about, from your perspective.

So moving from staffingback to efficiency, I know you talked about different ways of line busting andwe talked about some of the ways that you measure. Your business, have youseen, as you improve lines, improvements in total sales and improvements in theresponses from frontline staff?

Bill Bolton: Ahundred percent. There's definitely a causal of a causal relationship betweenhow quickly we can get people through and the sales that we see. A hundredpercent. Cashiers you know, they get sick.

So I'm down a [00:28:00]cashier. I'm not capturing those sales because the lines get extreme. You canimagine, again, we're pushing several thousand people through in a very shortwindow of time. The lines can get extremely long. And so you could definitelysee a correlation between the throughput and the sales that come in here.

Toby Awalt: Yeah,that's something that we observe across industries. We also work in conveniencestores,

Bill Bolton: Mm-hmm.

Toby Awalt: Which isa fun one. And there's a study out there from 2022 where if a line was threepeople deep. In a small retail concept, you lost 54% of sales out the gate. Itwas just, just a crazy stat that that is the level of energy quick visitorshave for small spaces.

I can't imagine you'redown a cashier, your line is 10 people long. That's gotta be really tough, in alunch hour.

Bill Bolton: MoreThan, it's more than 10. Mm-hmm. There's times where it's 20 people, 30 peopledeep. And again, to plug your product . Just being able to call people over andget 'em through that quick it is super powerful. I keep tell, I keep tellingthe clinic that I, I'm [00:29:00] ready formore Mashgin, so, have someone come and sell that to us.

Toby Awalt: I willmake, I'll make sure our team hears that part. Getting to what I hope iscontinues to be rosy for the Mashgin side, as a power user at this point. Imean, you've got almost 30 kiosks across many buildings. What would you say aresome learnings in terms of, making it really easy for the guests and healthcarestaff to adopt as well as your own team?

Like what have you done to help them understand how, oh, thisproduct's here to help you and here's how you utilize it. I.

Bill Bolton: Itreally does come down to, training, having, having people be comfortable andfamiliar with the product. 'cause with the guests you really do have to, helpthem to be comfortable with that, you know, with 15,000, again, caregiversacross the campus, they're, very comfortable with the use of it. But havingsomeone on site, being able to address situations in the moment, is somethingthat's really important and really necessary. As far as my staff is concerned,it was a very, [00:30:00] it is such a simpletool to use.

I'm not trying to sell your product, but it really, it's sosimple to use it, it's so user friendly that I don't have to really think toomuch. It's transparent technology and I think that that's really it. 'causepeople, you tend to overthink it as you're going up to it.

You might wanna, oh, how do I, how No, just set it down. itdown, you're done. That's it. Having a clean, strong menu in the backend whereyou're really good at. You know, whenever you do get a new item that you poseit a number of times.

If it's not something that's already built into the system orthat's your really have, you know, and here we have. We've gone and usedour.codes rather extensively, and we actually have taken it to a, to a placewhere we actually build our dot codes into our labels. And so, you know, havinga really strong, we have 94, 97 dot codes that we utilize here on campus, andthat has allowed us to have a, such a broad, extensive menu of things that arenot necessarily have barcodes to them, [00:31:00]or, it's in a container, et cetera. And doing that hard work in the front end,which is not terribly hard, but doing that work in the front end to be able tocreate a clean menu and clean experience for, for your, for the guests.

Toby Awalt:Fantastic. Well Bill, that is all the questions I have for you today. I really,really appreciate you being on. It's been a fantastic conversation and I lookforward to seeing you again sometime.

Bill Bolton: allright. Thank you very much. Have a great day.

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