So, Rich, we're just looking to understand more about the experience of working with Grover at Holy Cross as we shared.

So, if you, I know you stepped into working at Holy Cross when mobile ordering kind of was already up and running at most of the units.

So, do you want to share a little bit of history as to how things have gone and what things look like today?

Absolutely.

So, when I got here, I'd say about 80% of our transactions, if you want to call them that, were out of the residential dining location.

So, this has nothing to do with mobile ordering.

But it was too many people frequenting that one space.

There wasn't enough seating.

There was congestion.

Parents were complaining.

Students were complaining.

So, how do we get some of these folks, how do we get a better balance on campus?

How do we push them to some of the retail locations?

So, after a lot of thought, we decided we were going to change some menus around.

We were going to take a look at how we were doing mobile ordering.

We were going to make sure that we marketed that better for all the freshman students that were coming in.

And then we immediately realized that, wow, mobile ordering is starting to go up.

These students are starting to frequent the other spaces more.

We're making it easier for them to be able to get the products.

A conversation I recently had with a student was, we were talking about mobile ordering and the student's comment was funny.

He said, you've made it way too easy for us.

It's just so easy to get food and beverage any time now that you don't have to wait for it anymore.

That you can just be in a class or you can be in a locker room, you can be at your workout, you can place your order and you can just come and pick it up.

So, then what was happening was, as you know, the campus our POS system was just horrible here.

So, the campus wanted to change out the POS system and then part of that POS system they were talking to us about unlimited.

And then that's when I thought, okay, we're going to go unlimited, we're paying all this money for GrubHub.

The campus wanted to include the unlimited.

So, I gave Christy a heads up and thanks to GrubHub came back and said, well, we can do unlimited too.

So, that was great because now we didn't have to switch our students from GrubHub to another platform.

But then, you know, Christy just helped us so much with maximizing.

I really, Christy, you have so much to do with us.

Just helping us maximize the opportunities to just utilize the platform more.

So, we ended up switching one of our locations to mobile only.

We still had a cashier station off to the side just in case some of our older folks would come in.

We can still bring them up.

But a little bit more hidden.

No complaints.

We doubled the volume in that one location and the staff loves it.

So, there's no more of that.

Unfortunately, there's no more of that interaction.

I was just showing this to my wife recently that we go into Starbucks, which I always use the Starbucks app, but this time we didn't.

We go into Starbucks and I ask my wife to time it.

She's like, what are you doing?

I said, just time this whole thing.

She's like, what are you doing?

Just time.

So, we place the order, exchange our pleasantries.

They write on the cop.

They go through the whole process.

We bring the thing up on our car.

They scan it.

Two minutes.

Okay, two minutes.

So, that's two minutes of production that was lost.

So, our students are the cashiers.

Let those students actually go on their phone.

They're the cashier.

They do the whole transaction.

It comes out of their dining dollars, comes out of their credit card, meal plan, whatever it is.

Now we have a printer.

It prints a little sticker.

You put it to the cup.

How many drinks can you make in two minutes?

Four.

So, you think about how you're tying up that cashier.

Then we completely change the flow of one of our locations where we now have those, correct me if I'm wrong here, we have two TV screens.

The orders populate.

I think our staff just kind of swipe some as they're coming in.

But looking at the footsteps that they were taking, the steps that they were taking before compared to what they're doing now, everyone is virtually staying still now.

Our staff is staying still.

They got the order.

It comes up on the screen.

They work in their space.

They put it up on the counter.

There's a receipt.

There's a sticker.

So, Christie really helped us work through that whole thing.

Go to Dunkin' Donuts.

They're brilliant.

They have that totally figured out.

They're dialed in.

We have that dialed in now.

Starbucks is the same way.

So, it has maximized our efficiencies.

Our staff does not complain that they're doing double the amount of volume.

They're actually saying this is so much better because they're not running around anymore within the space where the cashier would have to hand off the receipt.

They would have to go and make the order as you can imagine.

So, it's just far more efficient.

So, then mid-semester, and I hate doing things mid-semester, our grill, one of our grills in retail actually, Christie, it was you.

We were talking.

You're like, why don't you just go with mobile order only at this location.

I was kind of sweating a little bit.

I'm like, you know what?

Yeah, we're going to do it.

So, I told the team.

I said, you know what?

We need a week.

Let's get our marketing to roll this out.

Let the students know.

You've got to give people a heads up.

They actually didn't listen to me, and they rolled it out the very next day.

And I walked into the location.

It's mobile only.

I'm like, what are you guys doing?

They said, what?

I said, for a week.

They're like, you did?

I'm like, yeah, I did.

And it was so smooth.

No student complained.

No customer complained.

There was no prior communication.

These students today, this is what they want to do.

They want to order from their phone.

They don't want to order in person.

And that location is now doing double the volume at that location.

Starbucks we proudly brew.

I was scared to death of putting it there all day long.

So, we're doing like two o'clock in the afternoon until five when we were the slowest.

And we doubled the volume in the afternoon.

Now we're doing it from the morning all the way to the night.

And the supervisor there, someone actually much older.

And sometimes our older folks have a hard time with technology.

She's like, I love this.

This is just so amazing.

So, being able to take that time away from the pleasantries, the ordering, typing everything in, grabbing someone's credit card or their card and swiping it, handing it back, and then making the orders.

Just so much more efficient.

So, I don't know if I'm answering your question.

I'm kind of all over the place.

Now you're doing great.

This is gold.

I feel like we got a whole article right there just from what you were saying.

It's amazing.

I mean, feel free to use me if you want to.

If you want to anything that I'm saying here, you can utilize it.

Thanks, Rich.

Yeah, we've got, I'm sure Rachel's mind is spinning with the thousand questions she wants to ask.

One question I have, I know you're talking about some of the locations like doubling in volume, that sort of thing.

Is that something you'd be able to pull some hard data on and we'd be able to use that in this article or case study or whatever it becomes?

Yeah, sure.

That's easy.

Okay, great.

Rachel, I'll let you go next because I've got a few too, but I'm sure you're spinning with questions.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like the first thing on my mind is you mentioned some upticks, doubling orders.

If you had to just really kind of simplify the biggest challenge and the biggest benefit, how would you just kind of frame that so I can use that as a lens while I process all the information you shared?

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is talking people off the ledge, right, that we're going to do this and there's just this fear factor.

And myself included when you read this, when you read my article, I was really leery about mobile ordering 10 years ago when it all first got started.

How is this going to affect the staff?

Because I think people's head go, okay, we're not a restaurant.

We have this dupe machine, if that's what you want to call it, like in a restaurant.

If that thing just keeps going off and off and off and off, how are we going to keep up between the customers that are coming up in this dupe machine that is constantly going?

But it works.

You just have to trust it.

You have to trust the GrubHub partners, right, that we have.

You guys have seen it, seen this successful everywhere.

And the fact that we can take an entire location and switch it in one day with a completely different staff that has never experienced this before and see the sales double just within a few days, it just started to double.

It's just right there alone.

It's just you've got to trust the process.

You've got to trust the system.

The system works.

But I do like mobile order only even better.

I never thought that I would say that because it just takes those people out of the equation completely from walking up and ordering.

And our students love it.

Our community is completely fine with it.

I would say we probably have 100% of our students using it on a daily basis at least minimally once a day, sometimes twice a day.

And even our faculty and staff are fine with it.

So in the fall we'll have three locations, three entire locations that will be mobile only.

And that is just going to make us more efficient at those three locations.

Wow, that's awesome.

And in terms of obviously there may be some labor savings there or would you say you reallocated that labor because you were getting so many more orders that now you just were able to have more people fulfilling the orders instead of spending the time taking the orders?

Yeah, I never want to cut labor.

Everybody's different with that.

We're a non-profit institution.

We're not a for-profit like Sodexo or anything.

So what we did is we just took that same labor and just reallocated it.

And you were going to need it anyway with the uptick.

You're making it easier now so therefore you're going to get more orders.

You're going to need those people to now be kind of on that line preparing that food.

I wouldn't call it a labor savings.

It would be a labor savings I suppose if there was no increase in sales.

There's no increase at all in sales.

And you were doing the same exact volume.

But I don't think anybody that implements this and does it right would do the same level of sales.

I would say you're not doing it right or you're not doing a good job if you're actually doing the same level of sales.

I don't see how the sales couldn't go up no matter where you put this.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

So really just focused on the increase in sales and then that creates a more efficient operation.

Yeah, and ultimately it's bringing down your labor percentage.

I would say that.

If I'm doing $400,000 at this location with $200,000 worth of labor but now I'm doing $800,000 in sales with the same $200,000 in labor, my labor percentage just went way down.

That's always from a financial standpoint.

That's always how I've been trained.

Everything is really percentages.

Yeah, definitely.

And then I know you mentioned a little bit about student satisfaction but just to drill into the student experience more.

Is there anything you want to add in terms of, like, I guess the fact that there's more sales means more students are using it and likely happy with it.

But just want to kind of talk about that angle a little bit.

Yeah, definitely.

And this is where I'm going to tell you a little bit about where you might get pushback from some people out there.

So this might even help with your writing, right?

Some folks are going to say, especially in the for-profit sector, which I did for 16 years with Compass Group, right?

They're going to say, well, they're on a meal plan and if they're utilizing that meal plan more, like here at Holy Cross, it's an unlimited meal plan in the residential dining, then they get eight meal swipes a week in the retail, and they're able to use GrubHub with those meal swipes, essentially not costing the students any additional money.

So, our participation rate is something that we really focus on and it has a huge impact on our financials.

Our participation rate is probably somewhere around 62%, roughly.

If I look at it right now and I do the numbers, I bet you we're closer to 85%.

Now, people who are in the business, especially in the for-profit world, are going to say, oh my God, that's costing you way more money.

Well, yeah, it is costing us more money, but what's happening is our satisfaction has gone up tremendously and I would say a great deal of that is because of GrubHub, but our credit card sales are now much higher also.

That's new money, that's new found money, that's real money.

So now that credit card sales and those additional transactions that are above and beyond the meal plan, that's new found money.

So now you have a lot more faculty, staff, and guests that are actually eating with us that were not doing that once before.

So, we drove, like our sales year on year have increased by, don't write an article on this and quote me on this, okay, please, but our sales have increased by $2 million, right?

Year on year.

So, a great part of that $2 million is we're able to get people through these locations quicker.

And a lot of that has to do with GrubHub, right?

So, but also it's costing us a lot more money because we're spending a lot more money on the meal plan food because the business participation is a lot higher.

So, the net net is yeah, we're still in a positive place and again, being that non-profit, we're beating our budget, we're making our budget, but we're feeding a lot more people.

And it's really, it's a win-win.

So, I've always believed even if you put GrubHub mobile ordering aside, that if you go for the quality and you go for the consistency and you drive the program to satisfaction, you're always going to get additional organic sales that are outside of that meal plan.

That's always worked out really well for me.

And now doing it the way we're doing it, having the kiosks available for those non-GrubHub app users, watching parents all the time, watching groups come in, they're using those kiosks, where maybe before they would not have ordered with us because it was just long student lines.

But now they can actually place the order and they can get a text message saying when it's ready.

So, it's just a total game changer.

Amazing.

Super, super helpful insights there.

Christy, are there any questions you want to ask?

Yeah, I do have a few.

I think you touched on this one already, Rich, but you talked about at the beginning of the call how your all-you-can-eat dining hall was really overloaded and that you're kind of trying to focus on this push towards retail.

You know, in your you mentioned like you've had a big increase in sales and everything.

Do you think you've just spread volume away from the all-you-can-eat to retail?

Or do you think, is it a true net increase?

Oh, it's a true net increase for sure.

So, yes it's 50% are at Kimball Hall versus that 80% of those meals, but it's not the same number, not even close.

I mean, it's $2 million of additional revenue in those transactions.

I think, I have the number, I don't have it in front of me, but it was a ridiculous number.

I want to say we served like 250,000 more meals year on year.

So, and we would not be able to do that without a mobile ordering platform.

We might have been able to push it by 50,000 meals or something like that, but certainly not. $250,000, 250,000 more meals.

And again, a lot of that's being driven by meal plan, but still, it just shows you how much more efficient and the capabilities by utilizing the platform.

And Rich, I know something we've talked about before.

Can you touch on a little bit how GrubHub helps you at peak meal period?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

So, what happened before, students break out of the class and they run to these locations, right?

Some, I would even say it's a bit of a safety issue, the way they go to these locations because they want to get there and they want to be able to order.

But what they're doing, of course teachers don't want to hear this, is they're ordering ahead of time in class.

So, our staff, instead of preparing the food in front of you when you get there, we're now spreading it out through a much larger duration.

And this is where the double of volume comes in, right?

If I've got 1,000 people coming at me, it's going to be a very slow process.

I have that same 1,000 people sending in those mobile orders 15 minutes, 20 minutes before they actually get there, then we're able to accomplish that.

They all come in, nobody's waiting in line, nobody's going to the cashier station, they're grabbing their food, they're walking away.

Some are staying, some are going.

Thanks, Rich.

I have two more questions for you.

Have you found on campus that any of the students or staff miss the daily interactions or anything or is everyone happier with things in this setup?

I would say happier, absolutely happier.

They still have that opportunity to break bread, if you will, in the residential dining location.

They can come in there, they can talk to the professional staff, they can place their orders there in that residential dining experience.

But really for that, and honestly, that is the busiest meal period now for Kimball, is dinner.

That's where our mobile ordering goes way down, is that dinner experience, where the students are sitting together, they are having that interaction, that conversation.

But let's face it, our students, especially 25% of our college is athletes, D1 division athletes, they are busy, they are super, super busy.

So every minute counts, and we're able to actually give them back.

I'd say we probably give every student back at least 15, 20 minutes a day by not waiting in line now, and that is very valuable. 15, 20 minutes a day really adds up.

I'm just making up numbers, but just kind of an idea.

Now they can go to the library, now they can work out a little bit longer, they can do other things.

So even this fall coming up, we're taking our concessions over, it was outsourced before, now we're doing an internal, and we're going to be doing these post, we're going to be doing a post-workout breakfast out of the athletic center.

So once you're done lifting weights, you're done with your cardio, whatever, swimming, whatever it is you're doing, you can now use Grubhub, you can order it ahead, and you're going to pick up your protein shake, your energy bites, whatever it is that you're looking for, and you grab it, and you go.

So again, trying to save the students even more time where they were working out, they had a walk from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill, and Rachel, I'm sure you haven't been here before, call it a half a mile, right?

You're using a lot of time, and when I'm talking to the athletes, time is of the essence.

They're in there at 5, 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning, they want to be able to finish their workout at 7.30.

If they can place that order, and they can grab it and run, and go back to their room, shower, change, go to their class, it's huge.

So our athletes are just beyond over the moon that we're able to give them this platform, and do this out of the athletic center come the fall.

And we're doing it, we're going to be doing it at night too, so all of the sporting games that are going to happen, the biggest complaint from our guests, because the college surveys them, I don't, is the long lines.

It's the long lines at the concession stations, now they're going to be able to order via the two kiosks that we ordered for that location.

They can use it from Grubhub Mobile, and we'll have some QR codes in the stands so they can be able to scan it.

We are eventually going to create a section within the luth, which is where the basketball is, and the ice hockey is, where we are going to deliver it to certain sections.

So let's call it a premium section.

Someone can scan that QR code, they can place the order, and we are going to have weight staff that is actually going to bring it to you.

Then we're going to do the same thing down at the football stadium at some point too.

So that's more of the future.

So every decision we have now, everything that we do, it's all about the mobile ordering.

I'm not blowing smoke, I'm telling you.

When I frequent all of these, I'm just so energized by it.

I can't believe I've been in this business my entire life, pushing 36 years now.

I know I don't look that old, but 36 years in this business, and this is like the biggest thing that I've ever seen in the business that is just a total game changer.

I walk in, I was down the cave, and you see these ice cream shops.

There's one called Sunday School, and it's insane to see the lines at Sunday School.

They had Grubhub, this would fly, they would probably quadruple their volume.

It took me 45 minutes, 45 minutes to place an order for ice cream at Sunday School and down the cave.

It is, once you have seen the light, isn't it hard to just not out in public, be like, there's a better way.

Have you seen the mobile order only stores for Starbucks now?

Have you seen it?

I couldn't believe it.

I was in New York City, and this is going back quite a few months, maybe six months ago.

And I'm like, oh my god, that's just the mobile order only.

You can't, there's no store.

But it was the coolest thing.

And then I saw one actually in Boston recently too.

Yeah, it just makes so much sense.

Of all brands, Chick-fil-A is actually trying it out in New York City right now too.

They're a brand that's totally known for the warm greeting, interactions, but I think even they as a brand are starting to see that a way to warmly greet your customers to allow them to order in the way that they want to order as well.

That is another way of warmth and kindness to your customer.

Right, right.

Well, a lot of my friends, colleagues in the business who work at other institutions, I'm like, you're an idiot.

You need to use, you've got to use this platform.

It's just amazing.

Hopefully they jump on board.

But it's amazing how people are just reluctant to change.

You know, I don't know how to do business that way, but you just got to do it.

And it works.

And you start slow.

So that would be my biggest recommendation to anybody.

Start slow.

Start at one location.

Don't go, maybe don't go all in right away, but you test the water.

Then you try a mobile order only.

Or maybe you do a pop-up event in the middle of campus somewhere and you just do mobile order only to see how it goes.

And then you kind of start there and then once you start to see it and you start to trust it, that's probably the biggest thing is trusting the process.

Because you don't want angry customers.

For sure.

Yeah.

What we see is like one of the biggest battles, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is getting students to download the app.

Right?

Like, that's something that, you know, on your campus it's so critical that they download it.

It's like you're not going to be able to eat in several locations if you don't download it.

So because you all have gone so all in, so to speak, it almost makes it easy for you to talk to your freshman and say, hey, you've got to do this.

Right?

Like it's necessary to eat on campus.

And we work with several other campuses who work that same way too.

I'd say at the campuses that are more so dabbling in it, trying it at one venue, students don't really see the value in downloading an app when it's just one venue.

Right?

They might say, I'll just go to the one next door rather than sit here and download an app and mess around with that.

Good point.

Good point.

So it's interesting, it's kind of like those campuses that really dive in head first, students really understand the value of it because it brings so much value across the whole campus.

So that's kind of what we see.

How does that piece go with your freshman?

Like how do you share to incoming students the importance of downloading the app and getting set up?

Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, so much stuff is sent to them.

Actually, my son will be here very soon.

I already told him, I said, download the app.

And he's like, I need to download the app.

So these students, what's going to end up happening is we're going to message them, they're not going to read it, we'll have signs up, they're probably not going to read it, they're going to go to a location and they're going to go, oh, the only way I can get food here is to download it.

That's when they're going to do it.

So we need to make sure that we have some ambassadors out there, we will have the signage, but we know the first week or so, the retail locations are actually going to be slow because the students are going to be slow in getting that downloaded.

We know that residential dining, as I actually just talked about today with my team, we're going to be very busy in residential dining and then they'll slowly start to drift to those retail locations once they get that rub up figured out.

But we'll communicate with them, but everybody's communicating with them.

So they're overwhelmed when they first move in.

For sure.

And I feel like the overwhelm also leads to just go to the dining hall because that's easy and I don't need to start learning where the other locations are or how they work.

Exactly.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And something now that you have the kiosks too, and this is going to be your first back to school with the kiosks, I'd say other campuses that have a very similar setup to you where you lean into mobile ordering as the heavy way to do things and there's a couple kiosks around, you're going to see really long lines at the kiosks during peak lunch periods.

So the other campuses we work with with similar setups, they truly block out the first two weeks of the school year during lunch period to have a lot of their managers just go stand at the kiosk with the QR code and go download the app, download the app, download the app, just down the line just talking to the students because it's one of the most effective ways.

You don't have to get them to read an email, you can just talk to them and solve their problem while they're standing in it.

Absolutely.

That's our exact plan.

Yep.

Love it.

Absolutely.

Yep.

And the other thing too, I don't think you have on campus right now is we do have some of these signs that Melissa could order for you.

For your three mobile only venues just so you could have this kind of up near where the register would be.

Just to help students see the messaging.

I'd love that.