My name is Rob Bennett. I'm the director of food and beverage product strategy for AMC Theaters. AMC Theaters is the largest and leading theatrical exhibitor, not only in the United States, but also in the world. My role within AMC Theaters is not only menu development for our brands, but I also ensure that we're serving a safe product in all of our theaters. 

It's an incredibly competitive environment. The film you're going to see at AMC Theaters, it's the same film you're going to see at our competitors, so we really strive to utilize technology, utilize everything we possibly can to make that experience the best it can be for our guests. Choosing a technology partner to manage food safety, and when it came to the decision to look for a technology partner to manage our food safety systems, we looked at a lot of companies. Not only did we need a technology-based solution to ensure our food safety systems were being completed, but also provide a level of transparency, not only at the theater level, but also at a corporate level. It needed to be something that could be quickly picked up, so we had to be able to provide clear definitions within the app, clear corrective actions, whether it's a line cook and this is her first job, that we're able to ensure that we're serving a safe product. 

Prior to deploying SmartSense, everything was pen and paper. We had a packet that was printed on a daily basis that covered all of our food safety systems. If I remember correctly, it was anywhere from like 17 to 23 pages, depending on the theater and the day of the week.  And that was completed, collected, validated at the end of the evening and then stored in huge file cabinets for many years. It has made our kitchen managers’ day start easier. We don't have to print a bunch of paperwork. We don't have to keep track of that paperwork. It saved a lot from an accounting standpoint. On a weekly basis, there was a process of collecting the packets making sure that we followed up if systems were missed throughout the week. We're able to do that in real time with SmartSense.  

The cellular network is incredibly important to us because we don't allow third-party software on our network, and a lot of our kitchens exist underneath theaters that are encased in concrete and steel. So, SmartSense has been great to work on essentially theater level challenges to ensure that we're able to get a signal in our kitchens and still be able to capture the data.  

We have dozens of dine-in theaters, and each of them have their own staff. There's hundreds of staff and this is used by them all, every day, whether it's the line cook completing his line check before the start of the shift or it's the crew member receiving product and recording the temperatures in the receiving log. Or it could be the general manager or the director validating that the systems have been completed and following up on any deficiencies. User friendly dashboard. One of the best things about SmartSense is the ability to very quickly and easily review the data that's being collected by our theaters. We have area directors, our Vice President of Operations auditing. Any of these folks have access to the system and are able to very quickly follow up. coach the theater, and it's just, it's an incredibly user-friendly dashboard where anybody can go through. 

We create a healthy level of competition between the theaters to ensure that we're completing these systems. Not just to have them done but to ensure we're serving the safest possible product for our guests. We work very closely with the team at SmartSense to create standard operating procedures, training materials, and really honestly, through those we're able to train every user at every level to quickly pick up the system and be able to use it. One of the things that makes that very easy is it's very intuitive. If you use a smartphone, the app feels very natural. The dashboard is very easy to navigate. And it's very easy to get to the data that we need to review.  

Anywhere that there's a checklist that exists in our theater, SmartSense could be a solution for that. If I had it my way, we would eliminate pen and paper and clipboards in all of our theaters. And we could use SmartSense to solve for those.  

Absolutely. Our operations team, our food and beverage team are the ones that spend the closest amount of time with that but there's other folks in the organization, our auditing team comes to mind, as they prepare for theater audits, they're reviewing the data not only for compliance but also for any issues that may come out of it our third-party food safety audits that come into the theaters. They're reviewing that information and following up on that as necessary, so that's another level of protection that we have that Smart Sense enables.  

You know, a digital food safety monitoring system is, it's table stakes now. If you don't have the ability to follow up with your crew to ensure that they're serving the safest possible food to our guests, if you don't have the alarms in place that can alert you if a cooler goes down in the middle of night, it's detrimental to your business. And this is important in any other aspect of operating a food establishment these days.

What brought us to SmartSense was the cellular solution and the ability to customize the system for us. What has kept us with SmartSense is the customer service and the dedicated team that supports us.