[Brian Lair] Brookshire Brothers is a grocery company out of Lufkin, TX and we're employee- owned, and we have over 125 locations in Louisiana and Texas.
[Laura Edmundson] I think the mission of Brookshire Brothers is to be a good advocate for our communities, to serve our communities in the ways that they need and want to be served. We focus on providing good deeds, good service, good food to people. And in my case, good medication, good health care to people.
[Brian Lair] My name is Brian Lair. I'm the Vice President of Asset Protection, My role at Brookshire Brothers is to see the everyday security for the company, to make sure our assets were protected, and to make sure we're putting the safeguards in place to protect our company and our employees, and our customers to have a friendly shopping experience.
[Laura Edmundson] My name is Laura Edmondson. I am a pharmacist first and foremost, but I'm also the Vice President of Pharmacy for Berkshire Brothers. My role is to oversee our entire pharmacy operation. We have 72 community pharmacy locations, and so I help to provide support and oversight to our district management team and then our pharmacy managers at store level to ensure that they have all the things that they need to run our pharmacy smoothly and efficiently. Being in the area that we're in, in Southeast Texas and Louisiana, we’re very prone to hurricanes and tropical storms, lots of power outages. I think for us, from the pharmacy side of the business, the biggest issue that we had with our old temperature monitoring system was the lack of visibility when the power was out. Using a wired connection, when we experience power outages, we were kind of in the dark, like literally and figuratively, into like what the temperature was doing in our refrigerators.
[Brian Lair] There were several concerns that we had, especially after hours. You know, when we didn't have our employees inside the pharmacy. You know, basically with the batteries, we didn't know if they were on or not. We couldn't see that globally and that was really a problem for us. We were having a lot of service calls to our pharmacy refrigerators because the technology was not working for us. It's really important that when we make these decisions that our return on investment is there and that we're going to be able to utilize that technology, and not just for the day, but moving forward, and not just what the expense is, but also the overall cost to maintain that technology. We looked at about four solutions.
[Laura Edmundson] Key pieces that we were looking for when looking for a new vendor, a solution that did not have to have that wired connection. Something that was wireless, something that could have a cellular backup, something that was easy for our pharmacies to use, easy from a corporate oversight perspective in terms of monitoring, and that visibility into what's going on with those units.
[Brian Lair] We chose SmartSense, just the performance in our pharmacy and you know getting them behind it. I think it's really simple for them to look at it and see the app. And me and my team, we have a central monitoring station back at our corporate office and we look at you know, we see all the alarms coming through so they understand it. It's very easy.
[Laura Edmundson] The portal is very self-explanatory, it's easy for them to know what they're looking at and see, like the history of the temperature and all those things.
[Brian Lair] We're able to see it in real time, see what's going on and see what the issue is and give that notification to the pharmacy staff. I can do two clicks and I can see that store and be able to say, OK, what do we need to do?
[Laura Edmundson] The pharmacy manager is obviously able to go check their fridge at any time, see their readout, and know how their fridge is. But on the flip side of that, asset protection is also monitoring that remotely for them. That gives those pharmacists peace of mind knowing that, you know, they don't have to constantly be watching their refrigerator, checking for an excursion. They know that if something happens, they'll get notified in many ways, and that helps just to be able to stay on top of things.
[Brian Lair] You know, Brookshire Brothers is all about family, and when we go out and have a new vendor come in, we want to make sure that relationship is there. It was very interesting to see when SmartSense, their team came in. I feel like, hey, they're part of us. When I get emails once a week or something that's saying, hey, what can we do to help you? You know, it's really like I'm working with a coworker when I pick up the phone. Since we've had it in place, I think we're going on almost a year and we haven't had any issues from a connection issue. We have cut 99% of our service calls out. You know the service calls, the cost of getting someone out to the store.
[Laura Edmundson] So recently, much of our chain was affected by Hurricane Beryl, which hit the Texas coast a couple of weeks ago. And at any given time, we had over 20 locations without power, including the pharmacies within those. So of course we're kind of going into hurricane mode and watching the refrigerators, watching the temperatures. There were some instances where some locations were going to be without power for multiple days, not just hours, but days. So at one point we had to relocate product off site. So knowing that we could just easily remove the SmartSense sensor from the refrigerator, put it in the cooler with the product, take the read out, and move it somewhere, and still know what was going on—that was so important for us.
[Brian Lair] So I know we were down like four days. I was kind of really impressed on how long the system stayed up. After those four days, we still had 60% of our battery.
[Laura Edmundson] Having SmartSense in all 72 pharmacies, really, from a corporate standpoint, gives us again, greater visibility into knowing what's happening. It's great in a way of having us all connected and knowing you know what, what's going on with a unit at any given time. The Smart Sense solution provides peace of mind to your pharmacy teams, to our pharmacy teams, to our corporate teams. Knowing that we have that visibility into what's going on in the refrigerators and we have confidence in the solution that it will be working when we need it to work and alert us when we need to be alerted is very important for us and something that I think any pharmacy chain or pharmacy would find valuable.
[Brian Lair] It's a reliable product. Smartsense has gone above and beyond what I thought they would do for us.
[Laura Edmundson] If you feel like your current product is just not meeting all of your needs, especially if you're looking for a wireless solution. A product that you want to know is going to be up and running all the time, to just do it. You won't be disappointed.
