Micro Market Training 4

Micro Market Training 4

Terry Smith:So, this is Terry Smith with the National Association of Blind Merchants. And on behalf of the National Association of Blind Merchants, a division of the National Federation of the Blind and our President Nicky Gacos and the board of directors, I welcome you to the fourth installment of the micro market training. I know from my perspective, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback thus far and that participation has been very, very good. And so, we hope you are finding it worthwhile and informative. We welcome back Steve and Patty, who at this point don't really need much of an introduction. We'll remind you that all of this will be available to you online after for you to go back and review. If somebody happened to miss the last session and you want to get caught up before our final session on Friday. If you email me at terry@merchants-nfb.org, we can make sure that you at least get the link so you can listen to Tuesday's training so you're caught up. But with that, I would like to turn the program over to Steve and Patty Closser with Translucent.

Steve:All right. Terry can you hear us okay?

Terry Smith:Yes. Hear you fine.

Steve:All right, great. Here we go. So today I'll kick it off and then Patty will do a fair amount of talking. It's kind of the lesson number four. It's about what the future is, what the progression of the markets are. And we'll do the same thing we did on Tuesday. We will go for a little bit then stop and take questions. So, I'm sure Kirby will pop back on and say, "Hey, send us your questions," and we'll kind of go through that same process again and then proceed on through, so that way we have a little interaction here. So today we're going to talk about marketing promotions. We'll spend a fair amount of time talking about promotions. It's one of the things that we stress a lot in making this not vending on a shelf, but it really is a retail experience.

Steve:The decor. We're going to talk about why picking out the right fixtures or look, and I want to think about it in a different way about what your image is going to be as a business. A lot of you buy the same machines because you like the way they look, the way they operate. Well, the micro markets work the same way. And your image will say a lot about what you are and what you have for your customers. And then product trials and how to roll things in and out of that. So, with that being said, Patty, anything to add?

Patty:What we want to talk about is it's going to take you awhile to get your first market going, get yourself established, and then once you have had it operating for a year, even though your business is moving on or you're building new and you're moving forward, for those first customers with that first market, what are you doing to keep it interesting for them? And that's what we're talking about as far as the promos, the marketing. Even when we talk about decor, even though your fixtures are done and they're built and they stay the same unlike a vending machine that always looks like a vending machine, in your market, you have the opportunity to change things up, to keep it fresh. So, you'll have to remember that you have new possibilities that you don't have. Again, I say think outside the box of the vending machine into the shape of your store and you can change up and put right now a pretty pink basket because it's spring next to the kiosk with the gum in it or come summer, some red, white and blue decor to celebrate our nation's independence.

Patty:So little things to keep it interesting for your consumers because it is a retail location, it's not a vending machine. And that's what we want to ... most of today's discussion is thinking about once you get it built, don't fall into the routine of just doing the same thing every day because to your consumers, then you might as well be a vending machine.

Steve:So, one of the things we want to kind of start talking about is as we all know, millennials and I think it's generation X after them are becoming more and more of the workforce. By 2023, they will be in excess of 60% of the workforce. And by 2025, which is tomorrow and the way most of us go it will be 75% of the workforce. And those folks, those men and women have never not had a cell phone in their hand. They had been marketed to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so, you need to take advantage of that and adapt to that. So right now, if you think about it, with the vending business, we only market to the people that come into the store. So, if you want to run a new product, you're only selling it to the people that are in the store, that come into the vending machines, that come and come into your area.

Steve:We have to break down those barriers and go outside of that. So, with the phone app with 365, we can send notifications out through the app and it'll pop up on the phone. Very similar to what you may see with McDonald's and Starbucks and Chick-fil-A and other exciting phone apps out there. They can send you deals. Well, with the 365 phone app, we can send you deals. We can push things out and say, "Hey, come see our new gummy bears and save 50 cents or this week it's buy two sodas and save 75 cents." Whatever you want to do, just tell them hi. We just did a big push out today for one of the customers, just telling folks, we hope everybody's staying safe and look forward to seeing you when you get back to work. And we got a lot of response back from that.

Steve:So just think about ways that you can push things out. Use social media. I will tell you that to the best of your ability, LinkedIn is great and so is Facebook and don't be ... you just become more comfortable using them and how that goes. And just other internal sources within your client's space. Get with them and find out how they communicate to their folks and ask how you can become part of that because we are no different. We're an employee benefit. I tell everybody we are a benefit to their employees. So, all the communication they get about their health insurance programs, we should be able to get just as much communication because we nourish their employees, we keep them going. And so just use that power and ask how you can and how you can do more and be creative and don't be afraid to use it.

Patty:Along with the LinkedIn and Facebook, the majority of the gen Z’s that are just starting to enter the workforce, a majority of them are still in college, but they will be here in the next couple of years, actually do not use Facebook. They primarily use Instagram or Twitter and there's even the new TikTok. So, you have to keep yourself current on marketing. And as you're looking at those platforms, also look at what's being marketed to them. What are they buying? Because that's where they're buying from. If there's a new flavor of KitKat out there, if you can get the new flavor of KitKat into your market because they've been watching ads and if you can have what they've been watching ads for, they'll buy it from you. So, pay attention to what's out on those channels so that that way you can utilize the marketing other companies are doing to sell product.

Steve:And we mentioned this Tuesday about your rep either from Vistar or Core-Mark or McCain's, get them involved in your promotions. Don't let them come with a whole bag of stuff that is the current stuff you already have and you just end up taking it home or eating it yourself or your employees eat it or what have you. Get them to bring the things that they're pushing. Have them bring their reps along. Get on the phone and find out what those reps can do for you. A lot of times, not only do they have free product, but they have a lot of brochures. And companies like Mars and Hershey's and Frito-Lay spend millions and millions of dollars on marketing. Well, use it. Don't be afraid to go in and use it.

Patty:No.

Steve:You'll see a lot of things that you can do to help about pricing. Most places around the country are now pushing a little bit over $2 for bottled soda in the markets. So, in the convenience stores, they’re at $2.09 give or take $1.99, $2.09 is pretty much commonplace around the country. But one of the ways they combat that price is they say buy two bottles and two bottles for $3.50 or two bottles for a different price, $3.49, whatever the case may be. The same with candy bars. The same with that kind of stuff. Don't be afraid to employ that because that kind of gives the customer that feels like they're getting the deal and allows you to keep your price at the maximum that you can. And it also allows you to reward them on different ways.

Steve:So, for example, the phone app with 365 has loyalty points. So, you get a penny for every ... or one point for every penny that you spend and then after you accumulate so many points, you get money off. And again, if you think about that, you say, "Well, how does that work for me?" And I'm saying, well, here's the deal. Credit card companies make ... A lot of people choose their credit card by what their points are. And so, they made a commercial off of it. If you remember, not long ago, there was a commercial about taking somebody to lunch and they'd bought lunch and they say, "Oh, I'm just using you to get the points." People like to feel like they're getting deals. And so just play off that marketing aspect of that and just run to it, don't run away from it. And again, we talk about pushing new items out the market, get signage, rotate the signage between your different stores. So, you can have a sign made and rotated between the different stores.

Steve:And also by doing marketing, what you'll find is that you'll see your total per person purchase rise very, very quickly. And so, get comfortable driving those numbers because again, like we talked about the first day, vending is a singular transaction event. Well, when you're doing the markets, and again, about 80% of the sales, actually closer to about 85%, it was a latest number that just came out, is credit card or account driven, which means they're not exchanging cash. They spend more when they use their credit card and they're very comfortable doing that. So again, just market, market, market, market, market. Have deals going all the time. People just really like that. Patty.

Patty:And as you're doing that, as we're bringing this topic up, this is something that you need to, as you're making your technology decision, look at the different platforms out there and see if they're going to do what you would like to do to aggressively keep your market continuing to grow and interesting and moving towards the future. All of them work perfectly well as a point of purchase, but how many of them are going to take you to the next level; to give you the ability to market, to give you the ability to do promos, to do loyalty ... So as you're making your technology decisions like we talked about on the second day, these future things we're talking about are things that you need to look into and weigh your cost in what you're going to gain in the future by looking at future technology.

Patty:The Heinz Company was actually the very first company in the 1800s to build a factory with electricity. And people thought he was crazy because he was messing with magic. And here we are decades later and how big is the Heinz Company? And everybody uses electricity. So, think about the future, don't just think about what can this do for me today. Because if all you worry about is today, you're never going to realize your full potential for tomorrow up. I bet you a majority of you in this room wish you had gotten into the markets five, six years ago instead of now. If you've seen the success of the competition and the other people who are running markets, you would be wishing that you had joined it already. So, don't get stuck in, you're already behind and getting into the market gain and set yourself further behind by not making good decisions and making sure you're ready to have your market grow to the next level.

Steve:And then just a little bit more on marketing then we'll go to some questions here - Kirby just one second. I try and equate marketing to things that excite me when I'm a consumer. I'm a shopper, so Patty and I have a little role reversal. I love to shop. I don't mind it one bit. You'll see a lot of things with marketing that are buy four, get one free, buy five, get two free or whatever. We have found those over the years not to be successful. And I'm not saying they're not maybe in instances or in specific locations that they're not successful, but people don't like to have to buy the same thing to get a free one. They like the freedom to buy what they want to buy and then spend those points, spend their rewards, whatever the case may be, however they want to spend it. So just be careful not to get caught into a trap to do that. Just think about your marketing when you're doing those things and how you like to be marketed to. So, now's a good time for questions.

Kirby:At this time we'll take questions from the audience. To ask a questions go ahead and raise your hand by clicking the raise hand next to the chat button on your computer. Or if you'd like to use shortcuts, if you're on a phone, you can hit *9. On a Windows device, you can hit alt Y and on a MacBook or an iPad you can hit option Y. We have a couple of questions here. The first question comes from area code 512 and ends with 906. You're unmuted, go ahead and ask your question.

Kristin McNabb:Okay, so I was listening to what you were talking about. Again, I'm sorry. My name is Kristin McNabb. I was listening to what you were speaking about with rewards and marketing and whatnot. And you're saying people don't want to ... like if you buy six Cokes, get your seventh Coke with your points or something like that. What are you suggesting more like if you spend up to a certain threshold, you'll get a $1.50 towards a purchase or whatever. Is that what you mean?

Steve:Yeah, let them buy what they want. So, in other words, you want to let them kind of track their own. The program that's out there right now that talks about this, it doesn't allow the customer to track it. So, on the phone app with 365 and they're co-sponsors, so I'm just going to ... They've made it very easy to look. Like your credit card when you log in, you can see how many points you have. Every time I log into my Southwest phone app to book a flight, it tells me how many points I have and where I'm at with my rewards. The same thing with 365 it tells you how many points you've earned and how you're progressing to earning money back for you.

Steve:So, you as an operator don't want to try and say, "I want you to buy a Cokes." If you want to buy Cokes, buy two, save money, like the convenience stores do. That's just my advice. So yeah, don't make them ... And by the way, they won't remember what they bought the last time they came in. Most markets have over 200 selections in them. Customers come in and they're almost overwhelmed with all their choices. So, don't make them try and remember what they bought the last time, if that makes sense. Hope that answers your question.

Kirby:We have another question from area code 202 and the phone number ends with 107. You're unmuted. Go ahead and ask your question.

Speaker 6:Ah, yes. Good afternoon everyone. My question may be a little unique in relationship to urban areas. So, I'm calling from Washington, DC and if I were to operate a micro market with no storage, how can I run that as a manned micro market. So here in DC we have micro markets that's being operated by third parties. But I live in an apartment and if I ran the micro market with no storage space, how can I man that place myself?

Steve:I guess if you had vending machines you wouldn't have a storage space, and so I would do the same thing. I guess you're saying you want someone there to monitor it when it's open?

Speaker 6:Yeah. So, I'm willing to do that myself. So I have no storage and I understand that micro markets, one of the things they point out to us, if I have 12 Mountain Dews in my case or 24 and I fill 12 and I need 12 instead of ... and I want to put 12 Cokes and six Mountain Dews and bring in eight bags of chip. I have no storage on premise, so how would I manage that?

Steve:Well, the system generates a picklist for you that you can bring it with you when you come in the morning or go get it in the afternoon to restock so that you know how much to bring. You could set it up to where you would have enough stock to make it through the day and then just replenish either daily or as often as needed.

Speaker 6:Right. Again, I live in an apartment so I would have to ... if I sold 24 different products of Coke, I would have to have those in my apartment and when I need six of any one of those products, I would put it in the house. I would carry a piece of luggage. That's my only option is to bring it from wherever I'm storing it. If I'm lucky enough to have a garage, I can bring it from my garage. But if I don't have a garage and I'm using my second bedroom, that's my only option.

Steve:Yeah.

Patty:Unless you want to run it out of a ... I mean, there are people that are still running micro markets out of a van, like the traditional-

Steve:Yeah. And use a van as a warehouse, that's true.

Patty:And another possibility is there are people that are actually just renting a square storage space and using it as their warehouse because that's a lot less expensive to rent a storage space than it is a warehouse.

Kirby:Okay. Any other questions? It doesn't look like we have any other raised hands at this time. So, Steve, go ahead.

Steve:All right. Patty, want to talk about some of the seasonal products and some of the things we talked about?

Patty:Yes, you want to keep it fresh. As Steve gave you the numbers earlier of the changing workforce, those same people in the workforce that have always had a cell phone in their hand have also always had a choice of 50 channels and think of all of the possibilities that they're exposed to every single day compared to the older generations in the workforce. So they're used to constant change and excitement and new things. That's their normal and so in order for your market to meet that normal, you cannot just sit back and leave it be the same 30 things like you had in the vending machine. So again, going back to new KitKat or the new flavor of Mountain Dew. And that doesn't mean you have to carry that flavor permanently. You need to leave spots in your market for rotation of seasonal items or limited time items there.

Patty:And within that, market those items. Do push notifications because you have a new item out there, or if you have a Facebook or Instagram or whatever, put a picture and look what's available in my markets now. Get the word out so that, that way, you're constantly in the forefront and they're thinking about purchasing from you. In a past life I ran a food service operation that was in multiple buildings. Whenever I had time, I would go over to the building that was several blocks away and actually walk around the floor and just say hi to people. And by exposing myself to them, I saw more of them come in and come get food for a while. So, what I did was I got in front of them to remind them that we were still over at this other building, come get food.

Patty:You don't have that personal touch you can do here, but if you can get a new item out and just remind them, "Hey, come down and get food from me." You want to make sure that you have that constant interaction and you don't want to just keep pushing out notifications only; come get a Coke, come get a Coke, come get a Coke. So, keep things interesting, new and exciting and send your notifications out about the new exciting things. In the summer, summer salads. Fall, pumpkin spice. Carry the Starbucks pumpkin latte that comes out every fall.

Steve:Yeah, I mean, a lot of you may have food service operations as part of your portfolio, change up the sandwiches. Just introduced new sandwiches. We have an operator in Australia that she did a lot of Mother's Day packets in her market. Had huge success with them. It was really kind of surprising. So, the things that you see in the stores, don't be afraid to sell those things for eight, nine, or $10 or sometimes they can go 15. She had a lot of success with anything under $20. And instead of stopping off and getting something, they got them from them. And also, you may have ... And Patty, I can't remember the name of the group that came in at the one large restaurant that we had that they had ... there were some underprivileged kids that came in. Kids from the inner cities.

Patty:The Heartstrings.

Steve:Yeah, Heartstrings. There are probably groups in your town that employ people that have different kinds of disabilities and they're always looking for ways to come and sell their trinkets. And I would encourage you to befriend those folks and market the day that they come in and they can sell their product, you can get a little piece of the action. But it gets people and let you know that you're involved in the community in a special way. And a lot of times, if they don't have time to come in say, "Look, sell it to me for X, I'll give you a premium on your sell, and then you can make a little bit of money on that by just promoting that." It's all about taking the blinders off and really thinking there's really nothing you can't sell. You can barcode anything and sell it.

Steve:And if you don't want to put a barcode on it, we can put a button on the screen for you so you can buy it without having to do that. But we prefer barcodes just because it specifically tracks a specific product. And it's also very easy to use when someone goes to use their phone app as a kiosk, which I again, with all the COVID-19 stuff going on, I think you're going to see folks using their phone almost exclusively going forward. So again, don't forget to do seasonal decor, decorate for the holidays, for Christmas, for Easter, for 4th of July, Memorial Day. And I encourage you to do a lot of stuff around with Veterans Day and the different holidays. If you can help do that in your market, it will become a destination point for folks. It will really make them feel like they're coming to a store and not to a vending area.

Steve:We talked a little bit about testing new items, switch flavors around. If a new Gatorade comes out, if you see something being advertised on TV, go get it. If you see a new buy flavor coming out or new teas ... I think most of you probably know this, but in 2017 was the first year that carbonated soft drinks fell below 50% of the sales for the two largest soda vendors in the world, Pepsi and Coke. And that's why you see all the other flavors and all the other teas and all the different drinks styles and energy drinks coming out. So, you got to, again, use your suppliers to tell you ... make sure that you're on the cutting edge of what's coming out.

Steve:And I'll give you a good example. Water, we talked about water in one of the earlier sessions. You might think, well, I'll carry Dasani or Aquafina. I would encourage you to carry the things like the Fiji Water or the Premium Waters, the Core waters. You're going to charge and you'll be surprised how many people will pay anywhere from 2 to $4 per bottle of water. And again, remember you're going to say, well, they would never do that in the vending machine. You're right, they won't. But they will and they do buy that water from your convenience store so you might as well sell it and do the same thing that they're doing.

Patty:Our Millennial children all buy Fiji or Smartwater. I never see them with a bottle of the less expensive water. They're half of your buying group now. What you have always done is going to continue to work, but you need to do more than what you've always done because you're purchasing ... people buying from you are changing. So, you have to adapt to be prepared to sell to them as well. At a location where a guy always said that on the vending machine, their top selling thing was 75 cent water's so we put the 75 cent waters in the market and add Fiji and Perrier and multiple of the name brands that he thought for sure weren't going to sell and those collectively were selling more than the 75 cent waters. He was quite stunned to realize that the whole time he could have been making a dollar every time he sold a bottle of water instead of 40 cents.

Steve:Yeah. And by the way, that's another reason to sell those premium waters is again, we talk about this and you'll see as you read through the materials again after the calls, and hopefully there's a lot of questions about this on Tuesday, the margin that you want to sell things for, it takes the same amount of effort as it does to move a Snickers Bar as it does to move a bag of Snickers Bars. So, it is no different efforts. So, you might as well make as much margin as you can by selling things. And don't worry about percentage of cost. That's not where this is at. It's about making money for the margin on that item. So today usually there's a lot of questions with marketing and things like that, but we were ready for some more questions and then we kind of wrap it up from here.

Kirby:Okay. At this time we'll accept additional questions and let me remind you, if you're on a phone, you can press *9 to raise your hand, on a Windows device it's alt Y and on an Apple device it's option Y.

Steve:Hey, Terry before we take questions, I want to say one more thing real quick and I apologize. We talk a lot about the future and what's kind of happening. And some of you, hopefully a lot of you have food service as part of your portfolio. I think the model of food service as we've known it in the past is going to change a lot. And I would encourage you ... and this is where we're going to offer a lot of health to folks sometimes just with ideas. The idea of a market, and a scaled down food service option is about half of what we do. So, you don't have these cafes that have a deli and a grill and an entree station and a salad bar, which I don't think we're going to see salad bars for a long time. But there's a way to do a grill and a deli together with a market and you can ... Self checkout is the way to go. Think about this as how it can help all other parts of your business. So anyways, I'm sorry, Terry, go ahead. Or Kirby, I apologize.

Kirby:No problem. Our first question comes from area code 917 and the last three digits are 375. You're unmuted. Go ahead and ask your question.

Menashe:Hi everybody. This is Menashe Collette from New York city, Manhattan Federal Court. And my question is what is the benefit for signing up for a 360? Let's just say we want to go with 360 out of the other competitors. As an operator, what are the benefits of choosing 365 over let's just say, Three Square or these other models?

Patty:365 has 24X7 support. If you sign up with them as an exclusive partner, they actually have business materials to help you market. But the bottom line is they have the best phone app currently. So, if you're wanting to move your market towards the future where more and more people are going to use their phone rather than the kiosk, then 365 is the one that has by far the best phone app. It is the best for the consumer. Hands down the best phone app. And they also have the highest security rating for credit card processing.

Steve:They're PCI certified, not just compliant. There is a large difference. And the other thing is, and it might be something you'd check with Nicky or Terry about if there's any kind of special ... we kind of stay out of the finance part of it. But I will tell you that they have a team of people that all they do is sit around and think about what's coming up next. And we work with all of them so don't ... We really won't have a dog in the hunt, so to speak, for lack of a better word, but they are the only ones that are doing that. It is amazing, the stuff that they are just dreaming up and their backend software is very user friendly. Look, when you go to use the software, that's a big deal. And because they're now your collector of money and so you don't want to mess with that. And I always said, I wanted to feel comfortable about the people I did business with that are now going to control a large portion of our money. And so, we felt really good about that.

Patty:If you're looking to go to one of the, as Steve was mentioning, the future where you're combining food service with a market, their kiosk actually allows you to build a menu for the consumer to pay for a cheeseburger or pay for a French toast. It's not as interactive as ... but if you upgrade to their ready touch system, their system, which they all run on the same back technology, they actually have a system where you can actually use it where somebody can place an order 100% and even pick the kind of cheese and this, that and the other. So, they are also integrated into the restaurant POS system also. All using the same software so that you could learn one set of software and use it in both applications.

Kirby:Okay. We have another question from area code 512 and the last three digits are 846. You're unmuted. Go ahead and ask your question.

Carla Martinez:Hi, my name is Carla Martinez, Health and Human Service Commission in Texas. I have a question, in my sub service operation has been this big trend as you say, with the millennials for all that raw natural stuff, kombucha and overall keto. Is there any way that in a micro market you can have a predestinated section, say keto area where you can have bar protein drinks or special salads? I mean, is there any way that you can combine or they need to be separated by drinks here, sandwiches here? Is there a way that you can do something like that in a micro market to be more specific [crosstalk] you can.

Patty:Of course you can. You would just need it to be the drinks and the food in the locking refrigerator. But absolutely, there are actually hooks that you can get even that have a second peg on them that's actually for a price tag. And instead of using that as a price tag, you could use it to hang a sign that says that this is a keto friendly item. So that even your things hanging on a peg or there's-

Carla Martinez:Uh-huh (affirmative).

Patty:Yes, absolutely. 100%. It is a very trendy thing and take advantage of that to sell them products because a lot of those products actually have very high margins on them and they're willing to pay the price.

Steve:Well, and that's where marketing promotions each comes in. You could say if you buy three keto products, you save 10% on your purchase. The software allows you to set up a promotion that if somebody bought a kombucha and maybe a Y-bar and some other keto ... maybe a salad that's a keto salad and they bought all three of those-

Carla Martinez:Yeah, like a club salad.

Steve:It would automatically trigger that 10% promotion. And then what's neat about the software is with 365, you can track that and see how well your promotion did. And then you can also attract the folks that only bought two of the promotion items and didn't buy three and you can go back and figure out why they didn't buy the third one. You can really kind of dig down into the marketing aspect of this, and it really pays huge dividends for you. Trust me.

Carla Martinez:Okay. Thank you so much.

Steve:Your welcome - thank you. That's a great question.

Kirby:Okay, we have, let's see, one more question and it's from area code 202 and the last three digits are 107. Go ahead and ask your question.

Speaker 9:Yes. The 365 system, does it do more than one or multiple transactions at one time? So could I have someone at the kiosk and on their phone at the same time?

Steve:Yeah. We've tried it with 30 people on the phone at the same time and someone at the kiosk and it works fine. We've never tried more than 30 at one time. It's just the maximum amount of people we've had in the market at one time. It was a large market. And so it handled it just fine and there was no delay or anything. No. That's what's so cool about the phone app is that you ... as this thing kind of goes on, you may not need to spend the money to buy a kiosk down the road. You can buy a smaller version. We're doing a lot of testing right now where there's no kiosk whatsoever. I'll be honest, it's a little slow. The testing is a little slow, but it's starting to pick up because people are becoming more and more comfortable with it. We haven't seen the limit yet, so yes.

Kirby:Okay. We have another question from area code 917 and the last three digits are 375. You're unmuted. Go ahead and ask your question.

Menashe:Hi. So, it's Menashe Collette again. So right now, in my current setup in the Federal Court and the DMV, I have two stores. We were using Square POS and I see that Square is implementing this thing with gift cards. I was wondering, do these micro markets, can they offer our clientele gift cards? So, let's just say for like Christmas or Thanksgiving, you want to give your buddy at the office a gift card for ... or somebody just had a kid or something like that. Do they ...

Steve:Yeah, so you can do it one of two ways. You can sell them gift cards X amount and yes, you can. In the restaurant side of the 365 software they have ... you can generate your own guest pass it's called ... And you can generate it for a specific dollar amount and sell it that way so you don't even have to buy the cards. That is being tested right now on the kiosk side. But yes, you can do that.

Menashe:All right, thank you.

Steve:And also, just one more thing. If you want to customize those cards with your company logo on them, we have a company that we work with, we'll just send you the name of it and you can contact them and get your own card so you can even customize it to you.

Kirby:Great. We have another question from area code 512 - the last three digits are 906, you're unmuted. Go ahead and ask your question.

Kristin:Hey, this is Kristen McNabb again. I'm curious regarding as far as finding out the hot products, I realize you can look at Instagram and Twitter and the like, but when I spoke with my contact at Vistar unfortunately he's just not been the most amazing. If I say, "Hey, what are the new trendy items?" I mean, yeah, you get email sometimes, but he's like, "Oh, I don't know. I mean, we have 5 million items and this and that." They're just not always that helpful. I was wondering, is there like a publication that you could subscribe to like an e-newsletter that discusses new products that are available? Already I get email from 365, but I was just wondering if there was any other publications that talks about new and hip items that people want.

Steve:There is and there isn't honestly. If you're ever in that kind of trouble with your Vistar rep, you've got our number. Send me the information, I'll call his boss. We do a lot of work with Vistar. That is their job - period.

Patty:I will tell you that actually one of the ... A friend of mine who actually works for a marketing firm in our segment of the industry, they market to vending micro markets, et cetera. One of his tricks he told me for research is because they've shown that, especially in cities, like in larger cities; New York, Chicago, et cetera, that a good chunk of the millennials and gen Z’s actually shop at Walgreens and CVS. So, he will go into Walgreens and CVS and see what new things are there and he'll just ask the cashier if they're selling.

Kristin:Okay.

Steve:I think we had mentioned earlier too, the convenience stores are going to be your new place to hang out. Walgreens, those are a great idea, Patty, because in the large cities, a lot of times they are the convenience store as you're walking home. But yeah, I mean, you're going to have to do some of this on your own, but this ... And also, I don't know if you get the digital Vistar book every month when it comes out? If not, ask your rep for it. Either the first pages or the last few pages are all the things that they're kind of promoting. But don't be afraid to say, "Hey, look, I want ..." Send them an email and say, "Hey, I want your contact for Mars for Hershey's," and just go right to those people and send them an email.

Kristin:Okay.

Steve:I mean, they will market it and tell you what's kind of ... because they've got that stuff done a year in advance. Like right now, well, I'm sure that Mars and Hershey's are working on what's going on in 2021. 2020 is set. That product is already made somewhere and ready to go out. So just use the tools that you have. I will tell you that it's amazing, but that person should be doing a better job.

Patty:There's emails that you can sign up for that they will send you too and I'm trying the link I saw…

Steve:Patty is trying to find something that she saw the other day. So, what's the next question? I hope that answered it. Sorry.

Kirby:Okay. Are there any other questions for Steve and Patty? Let me remind you, you can hit *9 on a phone to raise your hand, Alt Y on a Windows device or option Y on an Apple device.

Steve:Somebody raised their hand.

Kirby:We have a question from area code 202, last three digits are 107. Go ahead and ask your question.

Gerome:Yes, I'm a Gerome Walker from DC. And you were telling me that at one time you had 30 persons on the phone and one person at the kiosk? Fortunately for us that most people are honest than dishonest. So how can you regulate ... So, I have a manned micro market in DC and sometimes my employee, she can note that the customer didn't finish the transaction before they walked out. So she's able to call them and tell them ... call them back and let them know that they didn't finish the transaction. Has that or did you find that to be a problem or is that a possible problem with using telephones?

Steve:So, I'm going to give you a long answer to this question. The theft rate in the micro markets for almost all the micro markets, and look, you're going to hear different numbers from different people. The reality is ... and there's always that one off or two off or what have you. And we all talk about the worst possible scenario when we say these things. But the reality is that for 99% of the micro markets out there, theft is not an issue. And the theft rate and it a lot of times it's not theft, it's shrinkage. There's a lot of things that go into that that are technology errors and things like that. Just some of them you mentioned. It runs between 2% and 3%, which is the same that it runs in the convenience store business. That is one of the reasons why your product has to be priced at the correct price because you're going to price some of those mistakes in.

Steve:And what I will tell you is that 99% of the people in the country, you're good. And make your living and focus all your efforts on the 99 and not the one. So, there will be things and she will find, your attendant, he or she will find that there are times that people didn't complete the transaction correctly. It's a lot less likely that we have found that they complete the transaction better on their phone than they do on the kiosk. And the only reason that we ... there's no logical reason that we can think of why, the only thing we can think of that we believe is when you're on your phone, it's you and your phone and you feel like ... whether you feel like you're being watched more or you can figure that out. There are cameras that they can watch and see and you can know if someone did that. But really I would encourage you to spend all your time and spend it on the 99%, not the one. That's just my take.

Gerome:All right. Thank you.

Steve:You're welcome.

Patty:I'm going to backtrack to that prior question. There is a company, it is a website called smartbrief.com and within it you can sign up on what type of newsletters you want it to email. You can say that you want food service, you want retail. And they send you emails. You do get a lot of emails from them because I signed up for a bunch of different ones because I like to keep track of lots of categories. But they will automatically send you emails with basically news stories, links to various news stories including those news stories will include if you sign up to the retail one, it'll talk about ... it's not retail, grocery. There's a grocery one that I've signed up for and it will talk about new grocery items coming out. There's all kinds of actually business information within it. Period. It's actually a resource I use a lot to just keep up-to-date on what's going on in the business world.

Steve:So, what's the url address again in case-

Patty:It's smartbrief.com.

Steve:So smartbrief.com might help you with ... That's another good avenue. Any more questions, Kirby?

Kirby:At this time - we have no further questions.

Steve:All right so everybody get questions together about overall what your ... I tell everybody, the more questions you ask, you're helping all your fellow peers that are going to be on the phone next Tuesday. We'll probably have a little kind of first 10 or 15 minutes, maybe kind of a summary of what we talked about. Maybe not even that long, but we'll kind of buzz through the first part of it and then we'll take questions the rest of the time next Tuesday as much as anybody has.

Patty:And it can be specific to your business because even if it's specific to you, somebody else may have the same situation and be able to learn from your question.

Steve:Sounds good.

Kirby:Terry, did you want to say anything before we close?

Terry Smith:Yes. First of all, thank you Steve, thank you Patty. I do have to say a little disclaimer here. We truly appreciate 365 being a sponsor and I think they have found this to be a good investment on their part. In NABM doesn't officially endorse any of these. And we are working, Nicky and his team, accessibility team in particular, have been working with the other micro market companies as well. So, we are happy to work with any of the companies but truly do appreciate 365 and their participation in this. I failed to mention when we got started that Nicky Gacos, who is our president had a conflict and wasn't able to be on this particular session. But this training was all Nicky's idea. And judging by the reaction that we have gotten, it was an outstanding idea. So, we appreciate your participation and we hope everybody returns on Tuesday, same time, same station. Thank you everybody.

Steve:Thank you.

Kirby:Thank you.

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