[John Paul Thomas] honeygrow is a fast casual stir fry and salad concept where you get to come in and create your own dish at one of our kiosks in the restaurant.
[Heather Sloan] honeygrow’s mission is to build lasting relationships with our teams and the communities that we're in by providing excellent service and challenging the norms.
[John Paul Thomas] I work with all the teams that directly support our operators, so our supply chain team, culinary, technology, guest response, training, catering. We have a lot of restaurants opening this year. We're looking to create opportunity for our team members and create new incredible dining opportunities for our guests in every new market that we grow into.
[Heather Sloan] I facilitate and plan all of our new restaurant openings. I make sure the teams are getting trained properly. You know, we had our thermometers and our line checks, and we were writing everything down, but that's just such an antiquated way of doing things that we needed something that was more cutting edge.
[John Paul Thomas] We're constantly looking at what it is that our managers spend their time doing and questioning is there a component of that that can be automated so that we can free up some of that time to then be turned on more components of the guest experience to provide a better meal for customers. Often in today's market, hiring more people just isn't an option. So, we've turned to technology to help these managers accomplish their goals and relieve some of that stress. It was really important as we looked at systems that the system that we picked was very easy to administer. Really easy to implement. Wasn't going to break the bank. And we really found that with SmartSense. We looked at 5 or 6 different solutions. SmartSense by far had the best equipment and lowest lift for us to manage and implement. Food safety already has to be important. Once you have made it important, then getting the right tools is what's going to make your program successful.
[Becca Ridgway] Smartsense really allows us to drive that home for our restaurant operators and make sure that we are continually serving safe food and it's easy to use. We have it in all of our restaurant iPads. We have it on the back of house computer. I can pull up my phone. I can pull up the back of house computer and be able to see in real time what the temperatures are in our coolers. And I'm working closely with the Smartsense team, so they're always super helpful with any questions that I have.
[Ady Mendez] Every single shift we take SmartSense temperatures. We use SmartSense to take temperatures four times a day. And it's an outgoing communication between the morning shift to the night shift.
[John Paul Thomas] It's a great tool for monitoring and observing the behaviors of our product and our team, to then turn around and use for coaching and development.
[Heather Sloan] When we arrive on site to start training our teams, we make sure SmartSense is already there because we want to have the users ready to use it from day one. We want them to feel comfortable with it, and make sure it's monitoring all of our food safety standards. It made my job a lot easier.
[John Paul Thomas] When we first initially launched SmartSense, there's a rating system that the SmartSense team rated all of our assets, or refrigeration units, whether they're good or poor units. And we had quite a few poor rated units and we've gone from I think 30 on launch day and then through troubleshooting just the setup and the implementation and changing behaviors we've gotten down to now a run rate of 0 poor units. We’re seeing for sure a lot less refrigeration repair calls, so there's savings on the equipment repair front, but also just less downtime, less frustration for our team members, less frustration for our guests and much higher confidence that the food we're serving is safe and delicious.
[Heather Sloan] As an operator, if you know of big storm is coming through and the power goes out in this area, you're like, “Oh no, what am I going to? I've got a whole walk in full of food. I've got bains full of food,” and having a technology that tells us exactly when the time went out, how long it was out, allowed us to make those plans to go forward.
[Ady Mendez] So having that little sensor inside that cooler really was a game changer, where it was very easy for the team to kind of just say there's an alert, let's go back, try to fix the cooler. Let's try to re-set what's happening and save the food.
[John Paul Thomas] What we've learned is that through teaching our teams to pay attention to the alerts and pay attention to the data that the system is recording for us, we can actually monitor those trends and avoid those after-hours incidents. We have quite a few restaurants, about 50 at the time of the roll out and a very small operation support team. And so understanding how we were going to get to all of these locations and get these sensors installed and train our teams was a big question mark and the Smartsense team answered that for us. They actually managed and completed the entire implementation for us, down to installing the sensors in each of our locations. So, it was a dream. And we absolutely have received a lot of positive feedback from our operators about SmartSense specifically surrounding the ease of use. And you know, going from a non-digital solution to a digital solution, it made it a lot easier, took them a lot less time to do the tasks they were already doing, so they were thrilled.
[Becca Ridgway] We need SmartSense. We need to be able to track all of the data. It helps us with compliance, with the health department.
[Ady Mendez] You know, the team loves the fact that it's very user friendly. We have iPads, we have temperature logs, and I think it's much easier to actually scroll the temperature up and down where we need it to be based on the temperature that the thermometer says versus a paper, like you said, you know gets lost, perhaps is not accurate.
[Becca Ridgway] It helps us control costs, run our operations more efficiently and maintain compliance with food safety standards.
[Heather Sloan] SmartSense has been great. It's been super great. It was very easy to get the teams on board. It’s been very reliable for us.
[John Paul Thomas] With our implementation of SmartSense, I think the team was actually excited to get it, actually felt like it made their lives easier, their job easier, and it did just that. And we take a lot of care to continue making sure it's never a hammer. It's not something that we're policing, but rather it's something to celebrate. It's something to make their life easier. There wasn't much training that was needed because when the team got in front of the app or the web version of the app, it was almost second nature for them to know how to explore and use the information.
[Heather Sloan] Quite frankly, it kind of runs itself, so they are all used to using different apps because we are a very tech focused company. It was very easy to integrate it into our everyday operations, and the feedback I've received and when we were rolling it out, the team was very happy with it because again, it allowed them to take a step back and they had that assurance that someone or something else was going to be there to help them if there were any issues going on.
[John Paul Thomas] It's not just a software solution, it's a software and an equipment solution. And to me that's proven to be incredibly reliable, and I believe it to be the source of that reliability. When you go out looking for a temperature monitoring solution, you honestly don't think about, “Oh, I need to find a company and a team with a great culture,” but it's really been a positive experience working with a company with such a great culture, and it's mattered more than I thought it would.
[Heather Sloan] It’s been such a relief to be able to take a deep breath and know that I have something that is working side by side with me to make sure that we are providing the best quality ingredients to our guests as well as making it easier for our teams to do their jobs every day.
[Becca Ridgway] It's been an amazing experience. I work closely with the Smartsense team. I meet with them bi-weekly, so I'm able to provide any feedback to the product team and make the product better for SmartSense customers and for our honeygrow operators.
[John Paul Thomas] Smart Senses has performed above our expectations frankly, which were already pretty high. They have a great team, from implementation to the person that you're going to be working with day in and day out. You really feel like you're supported and like it's a partnership and that's been a great experience all around.
