# [WEBINAR] Driving Convenience with Data Featuring Alan Meyer of Mach 1 Stores

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loU-eB8BLWg

[00:00] so um i'd like to introduce alan meyer of meyer oil that he operates the uh mach 1 stores here in southern illinois where we're uh sitting today and alan how about you take a take a few minutes uh tell the audience uh how you got to uh where you are today and uh about uh your organization
[00:18] absolutely thanks john i appreciate being here uh so my name is alan meyer i'm the ceo of mach 1 my role company dba mach 1 uh second generation my dad and uncle started the company now we are me my brother and cousin are have started to take over the process
[00:41] we are at 23 retail stores pretty much all operations no wholesale very little wholesales probably better way saying it and then within that we've got mostly convenience stores but we do have five truck stops and kind of our focus for the company has been
[01:02] we have a very broad liquor section.
[01:05] inside of our stores we do we're very big into car wash.
[01:08] i just mentioned the truck diesel we are now getting into food service.
[01:12] we have four little caesars.
[01:14] we also have a proprietary program called kate's kitchen.
[01:17] and we have a fried chicken program with champs.
[01:23] another thing interesting part of our business as i know a hot topic in the industry is self-checkout.
[01:29] we've got self-checkout at eight of our locations and our uh that has been a big focus of ours to bring that out to pretty much company-wide.
[01:40] last thing i probably touch on is pretty much all of our stores are new to industry.
[01:44] we don't really acquire stores.
[01:47] the typical store that we're building today is about 9 000 to 11 000 square feet.
[01:53] yeah.
[01:54] typically on the interstate and typically the truck diesel yeah thanks alan um.
[01:59] so um i guess just to start off um can you tell us about uh what are the most
[02:04] important things you think uh that mach 1 is doing as an organization right now um.
[02:09] can you tell us a little about some of the i know you're really into uh a lot of innovative areas of technology within the convenience store industry.
[02:17] can you touch on some of those things that you're doing today.
[02:21] i am a very progressive retailer uh a lot of the people in my company would say to a fault because we're constantly changing stuff.
[02:30] but the way i look at it is um in a vacuum a convenience store is a commoditized industry you know.
[02:40] most of our consumers don't really differentiate our fuel from our competitors fuel when you look at 95 of the products inside of our store that being grocery candy ice liquor.
[02:54] the bag of skittles inside of our store is the exact same bag of skittles that our competitor has so how do you differentiate a commoditized
[03:04] presentation to me that is about being progressive being leading edge using technology to make these changes.
[03:09] so i've referenced self-checkout to me.
[03:13] self-checkout is both a marketing tool and an efficiency tool.
[03:20] so from a marketing side uh self checkout brings a an experience by the customer that they know they don't have to wait in line.
[03:30] to me i'm a very impatient person so me as a customer really like self-checkout.
[03:35] i always know when i go to stores i have it i don't have to wait in line to go get it and then from a labor efficiency standpoint it's kind of self-explanatory that it really helps out with both ends.
[03:45] so that's been a big focus of ours to to find things like that.
[03:53] you know other things are a lot of fine-tuning.
[03:57] yes exactly.
[03:58] um broom on store delivery we're a very pro technological company.
[04:05] So, um, I guess the the title of today's presentation was, uh, you know, driving convenience with data.
[04:12] So what, what makes data so important to you as a retailer?
[04:15] So to me, how customer, how we can evolve our business is we have to make changes and that's the only way you can improve is to try out different things.
[04:30] We have tried a multitude of different marketing ideas, operational tools, and it has failed.
[04:35] But just because it failed doesn't mean you shouldn't try it.
[04:37] If you never fail, then you're not evolving as a company, right?
[04:41] But how do you gauge success or failure?
[04:43] And that is so difficult to do on any type of operational decision you do in your company.
[04:49] You make a change and so many times when I talk to peers in my industry is, uh, hey, I did this and it's working great.
[04:58] Well, usually my follow-up question is, well, how do you know it's working great?
[05:01] And is it good or you get a lot of really great?
[05:02] Yeah, you get a lot of great.
[05:06] answers that you don't really get an answer to your question.
[05:08] that's what data is.
[05:10] data is telling you how well you're performing both as a baseline and how well you perform when you make those changes.
[05:16] and data is ultimately telling you what your customers are trying to tell you.
[05:23] whether it's a operational decision a marketing decision a price elasticity decision the data is going to tell you if you made the right decision or not.
[05:30] but it's got to be available for you to look at.
[05:33] data drives the results that you the the decisions that operations makes.
[05:38] yeah yeah so i think uh in the ways we work together.
[05:44] um you know i think you know you probably agree that you know we changed the way that you look at data over the last question period of time we've been working together and you know the amount and the the organization of that as well.
[05:56] um but let's just first start with um uh why did you decide to work with tyga.
[06:02] yeah uh so um.
[06:05] got a cold call from tega tyga uh late.
[06:08] Last year, uh, didn't even know what you guys were selling, tell you truth.
[06:11] And, uh, don't know why I took the cold call, uh, but, uh, agreed to do it.
[06:16] And, uh, Bill was good enough to, um, do the webinar for me.
[06:23] And I think it was an hour-long webinar and, uh, oh man, I was, I was hooked, I was sold hook, line, and sinker at the end of that.
[06:31] And ultimately, what the message from Bill and the message from Tyga was is if you've got a source of data that that is in a place that we can grab, we'll grab it, throw it into a universal database that you could put in the context of all your sources of data.
[06:52] And then we will work with you on putting in a format that works best for you.
[06:58] Um, I have heard that sales pitch several times.
[07:02] I've been with this company for 16 years now, I can't count how many times I've heard that sales pitch.
[07:10] Usually it fails and it fails for one or two reasons.
[07:25] Either one the um the business intelligence ends up or the data capture ends up being very small in scope that they can only grab a very small interview with the one thing exactly.
[07:34] And in our store whether there are about 10 to 15 different things that has data for you to grab if you're only getting one of them there's no context of what you're grabbing.
[07:48] The other con the other one is the guy that does say you can grab all of it and it they fail mid-stream they never get to the finish line they can't organize it they can't structure exactly because it takes so long to grab these things from all these sources and to put in the format and then it just kind of dies on the line before it actually comes to fruition.
[08:03] When Bill told me in that first webinar that we will have your data within a week I didn't believe him but I said let's let's go ahead let's try it.
[08:08] So we we did we did one store and uh he didn't do it in a week he did
[08:11] it in like half a week it was like half.
[08:13] the time i was just mind blown on like that wednesday when i pulled up the portal and i thought well there's that story this data like holy cow.
[08:22] so we ran that for i think six weeks uh and then it was proved that this is this is the real deal this is our answer.
[08:31] so we ran it out company wide.
[08:34] how long did it take to run the whole team and that was uh greg was running that part of it and me and greg and our my it guy worked together.
[08:43] with in three weeks we had all of our company data in there and then not only do we have our company data in there our servers had about a year and a half data stored in those servers and so i wasn't just looking at the data that they are grabbing the day that you guys start pulling the data.
[09:03] i can go back to see how our company performs six months ago so you know to me metrics is gauged in two ways.
[09:11] over time in comparison across stores.
[09:14] uh you can do the comparison across stores.
[09:15] the second the integration is done.
[09:17] but it was going to take a very long time to add context for trends.
[09:19] not without that history but it was clearly that next day.
[09:25] i was looking at stores like man we really were bad in that month at that store.
[09:29] you know things that we never would have caught and you know to touch that just a circle back on the data part of it um.
[09:38] data isn't that an invaluable tool to gauge operations.
[09:43] the problem with data is the amount of it and you could spend more time analyzing data than you ever can actually doing something off that analysis.
[09:55] what you need is speed.
[09:56] speed is the key to data is grabbing it and then putting in a format and then telling telling the person looking at it this is what's important.
[10:04] this may not have been important last week but it's important this week.
[10:07] you need to look at this and we need to address this alerting them to what matters to them exactly and making it
[10:12] understandable that is what differentiate you know before we came on with you guys i had this report over here i had this report over here i'd have this report over here and we'd have people in in-house that could try to put into an excel spreadsheet or pdf or whatever you want to look at but it's still a shotgun amount of data that you have to comb through to find stuff.
[10:32] when it is in a interactive portal it's like that and it starts just screaming out hey you've got a problem here and that's the key to data.
[10:43] can you touch on how your your ability to react and then also the your depth of understanding of your data change from you know us working together um before i think your you know day and month reports and stuff like that what what's the difference about what you're working with with our store create platform and how it's organized it absolutely gives you a leg up so.
[11:05] we did we have a we had a daily sales report and then we had a monthly profit report and um
[11:13] it was done in a format where uh.
[11:20] our operations people so me i have a ceo.
[11:23] and then we have our dms and then we have the store managers and they were all getting some form of those daily sales reports.
[11:30] uh but it was not in the context of.
[11:34] it was really difficult to give them in one spreadsheet.
[11:37] how that compares we're doing year-over-year data but how what happened you know there's 11 months in between those two spreads right.
[11:45] what's happened more recently.
[11:46] is there a trend from this year like was the data from the pandemic is that even about.
[11:50] yeah exactly so yeah i mean there.
[11:53] and we actually um.
[11:56] so before we had a went with you guys last year i actually.
[12:01] we started doing we skipped a year so i said toss out 2020.
[12:03] that's minos so we're comparing 2021 to 2019.
[12:09] and i mean you're looking at these huge volatilities but all we had was two.
[12:14] numbers well you start trying to throw in more of that.
[12:17] especially when you get to the ops uh ceo or dm level right.
[12:19] these people are very busy people.
[12:22] they don't have time to be looking at spreadsheets all day to analyze stuff to execute stuff.
[12:25] what we need is what you guys provide us is let me look at it this month compared to last month.
[12:35] and if i see something okay well alright there's there's something there now on a couple clicks of a button you start putting more context and it can go store by store you can start changing trend lines.
[12:44] it's all right there you're not having to reach out to our accounting department say hey would you create this spreadsheet this spreadsheet this spreadsheet.
[12:53] because if it's not quick people say that they look spend time on spreadsheets and that they're going to do this and this is how we're going to improve.
[13:01] from my experience in our company is if you don't have quick access to it you can talk all day long about how you're eventually going to do it.
[13:09] you will never get these don't have the time you don't have the time that's the biggest thing.
[13:12] i mean retail operations is a big time.
[13:14] suck and so it's more about efficiency.
[13:17] than anything else.
[13:21] um i think you mentioned uh the the next categorization being able to have apple's apples across your store.
[13:26] absolutely can you talk a little bit about how you're using that uh within uh within mach 1 and then also uh maybe we can talk a little bit more about uh some of the things you're doing uh with your your check out self-checkouts or and labor and balancing customers yes.
[13:41] absolutely so.
[13:43] uh first on your question on the uh nax standard yeah.
[13:46] uh so we have our internal departments that we have for any given category and that this snack grocery same thing most people have but what we call it may not be what you call it may not be what this retailer calls so it's very hard for us to compare from a 10 000 foot view at the category level because we don't know if we're even comparing the same thing.
[14:05] right.
[14:06] without us doing anything.
[14:08] you guys said well that bag of skittles go max says that bag of skittles is this that monster is this we didn't do.
[14:15] anything and now all of a sudden we can speak the language of what next tells us we should speak of which other peers in the industry who are doing the same thing now we are on a now we are talking the same language we know we're it's so hard when you start saying well you're doing really good in that and i'm really bad at that but are we even talking about the same thing so you got to spend all the time to get that out of the way before you even try to address what you're originally looking at and feeding off of that you know i'm in a peer group called study groups and uh we have 12 retailers in my group they are some of the most phenomenal people i've ever met in my life and most of them uh i try every day to be a little bit better so i can be as close as they are because they're just a phenomenal group of people but you know we spend two days in a room saying okay you do really good at this you do really good at that but
[15:15] how do we understand what you how to get there and what are we even talking about
[15:21] you're taking all that out of the equation so we can all talk the same thing and it just saves so much time uh
[15:26] now i've digressed enough i forgot your second question on that oh and uh so
[15:31] yeah i probably should have asked them separately but uh uh the same type of thing but only only focused in on uh
[15:36] you're doing a lot of things with you mentioned earlier with you know you're rolling out self-checkouts oh yeah yeah
[15:39] yeah um uh you're doing doing a lot of things to optimize that
[15:46] you're also doing a lot of things optimized labor and customer service how are you using uh the real-time customer traffic data and those sorts of things to help you in those areas so uh
[15:57] self-checkout i know that is a very overwhelming experience for retailers and it was and is a very overwhelming experience for us
[16:04] you know you've got a lot of moving parts there and you need the customer to buy into that experience you need the employee to buy in that experience
[16:11] it's all about completely changing how
[16:15] you go to market at one of these stores and before we were with you guys.
[16:22] uh well i guess how i gauge the success of self-checkout is a overall transaction counts.
[16:27] how do they perform relative to the other stores in our company.
[16:33] our transaction accounts going up or down when you try to take out everything else involved in that.
[16:41] um that given the volatility of price of fuel price of everything and koved so much volatility in transaction accounts in general.
[16:49] so trying to look at it from your spreadsheet that really takes out some of the noise to try to gauge that performance on that.
[16:58] the other part about that is percentage of transaction counts on self checkout as a percentage of the standard checkout.
[17:06] so how we typically do it is three self checkouts one traditional register.
[17:13] and i know based on our transaction counts.
[17:16] that those self checkouts aren't getting used
[17:18] that we are too busy of a store and we've got really long lines to try to do all that on one register
[17:26] so we have set standards on what our expectations are for the percentage of transactions that go on self checkout
[17:33] before we signed on with you guys was uh somebody mainly me logging into that store's back office pulling up each individual cashier report looking in the self check i was treated as a cashier saying okay that one did 52 transactions that one did 75 transactions that one did 100 transactions plugging that into a little spreadsheet and then it shows the percentage at the bottom of it
[17:58] using the formula that is not a very easy thing to execute on a wide scale over a long range
[18:05] you guys are able to have that at two clicks so i can pull up
[18:09] so every morning every morning when i the first thing i do is i go in the office and the first thing i do is check better gas prices because that's just what we're in the second thing i do
[18:18] Every morning is pull up your guys's website, my portal.
[18:21] And I've got four or five things that I always want to look at on how we did the previous day.
[18:28] Yeah, one of them is self-checkout metrics, which is based on the live customer traffic feed like you're talking about.
[18:37] Where are some of those other ones?
[18:39] Uh, so overall sales, um, so overall, um, so fuel inside sales, fuel sales, diesel sales, uh, category sales by, um, uh, category sales by how it's done this day versus the same day four weeks ago.
[18:59] Then you start looking at things for, you know, what do we not sell any of?
[19:04] So, uh, car washes being a big one.
[19:07] If we didn't sell any car washes, well, that probably wasn't car wash.
[19:11] Yeah.
[19:14] Yeah, and, uh, so things that we didn't sell any of or
[19:18] things that we underperformed on that you typically sell this much and now you're you're only sold this much those types of things so it's mostly um operations.
[19:26] because i'm sure everybody that's in retail on this webinar knows it is more difficult today to execute operationally than i ever thought this would be the case in it uh before copen uh from a staffing training turnover perspective.
[19:44] you have to try to as best as you can stay on top of stores to make sure that it's getting executed the way it is.
[19:51] how the bigger you get the harder that is.
[19:53] you just you have to have the data there to look at it.
[19:56] i think uh one of the things that bill talked to you about early on that you were you know you know helped drive your decision was no concept that we have a tag of our versionless platform.
[20:08] can you kind of talk a little bit about um what it's been like as an idea partner with with club with uh with tyga.
[20:15] absolutely yes absolutely so one thing um
[20:21] you know i guess let me talk about that
[20:23] lead that into a broader conversation of
[20:26] of what i think how tega stands out um
[20:30] in the industry one
[20:32] uh kind of like i touched on before
[20:35] you were already well i don't i think i
[20:37] may have been your first customer with
[20:39] our point of sale
[20:41] and then we worked through that like i
[20:42] said in three days to start getting the
[20:44] data
[20:45] i remember calling you guys and saying
[20:47] hey i've got this com data smart desk oh
[20:50] yeah and saying hey it'd be great if i
[20:53] could get your that data into you guys
[20:55] as well so we just start looking doing
[20:57] that because we're mainly pulling that
[20:58] information so i sent that off to greg i
[21:01] mean six weeks after we started with you
[21:02] company why it's not like that
[21:04] i mean it wasn't once i showed him where
[21:06] the data was which that took us about
[21:09] three weeks to figure out where to tell
[21:12] him once greg knew where it was i mean
[21:14] it was two days and that data was in our
[21:16] portal showing us our diesel sales
[21:18] i mean just the ease of grab once we
[21:21] have data to give you it's just been
[21:23] phenomenal
[21:25] now
[21:26] uh
[21:27] what i always tell people because i'm a
[21:30] big believer in your platform obviously
[21:33] what i always tell people is what's the
[21:34] most exciting about it for me is
[21:38] tyga has proven that they have the
[21:40] ability to grab the data and they have
[21:43] this base model of how to present to you
[21:47] the data that they're grabbing and how
[21:49] to create decisions off of that
[21:52] but whether it be matt whether it be
[21:54] bill whether it be john whether it be
[21:56] greg
[21:57] you guys constantly are hitting up okay
[21:59] what else can we do for you what else
[22:01] can we create what what do you want us
[22:03] to do
[22:04] and
[22:05] uh with greg i remember i sent him a
[22:08] report one time and said hey would you
[22:09] do this this this and 24 hours later
[22:12] that report was in there
[22:14] um
[22:16] i
[22:17] i think of you guys what i say is you
[22:19] are kind of like a mold of clay you've
[22:21] got this
[22:22] you've got this
[22:23] company
[22:25] that has got this base
[22:27] and how far down the rabbit hole it goes
[22:30] i'm really excited i'm i can't believe
[22:32] where tyga is today but man where tiger
[22:35] can go
[22:36] it's just absolutely phenomenal and i
[22:38] talked to people in your company about
[22:41] ideas that other people smarter people
[22:43] people smarter than me on where you guys
[22:45] are going with them like oh my god that
[22:46] is a great idea i said yes go do that
[22:49] and
[22:50] the best part about it is it's all
[22:52] web-based software it's versionless
[22:53] software so you go find someone way
[22:55] smarter than me that comes up with
[22:56] something i wake up one day go on there
[22:58] i'm like oh hey look a new report from
[23:00] tiger and i pull it up like oh wow that
[23:02] was that is a great way to look at it i
[23:04] never would have thought of that
[23:06] and you start going to the rabbit hole
[23:08] of whether it goes to user groups or
[23:10] context man it uh
[23:13] i just can't believe the road map of the
[23:15] vision what i think you guys
[23:17] are going to be even beyond what you are
[23:19] today i like it
[23:20] yeah
[23:22] so
[23:23] i think uh just one more question before
[23:25] we before we get to the q a portion here
[23:27] yeah i guess um if there was one thing
[23:29] you could say to uh
[23:32] a
[23:33] colleague in the industry about uh you
[23:35] know why they should work with us yep uh
[23:38] what do you think that one thing is
[23:40] about tiger that makes us different
[23:43] so um
[23:45] the
[23:46] the biggest difference the biggest
[23:48] difference i i personally feel is
[23:52] so i work with companies of all sizes
[23:54] yeah and uh some really big some wrote
[23:57] some really small
[23:59] and they obviously have pros and cons to
[24:01] both
[24:02] uh what has blown me away is um
[24:07] you know the
[24:08] the key decision makers of tyga i know
[24:11] all you guys personally and
[24:13] i've known you guys from the from the
[24:15] day we signed up i mean i met you
[24:18] uh literally i think the next day after
[24:20] i signed that contract oh yeah and
[24:23] we basically said okay here's what we're
[24:24] going to do i met bill in the webinar
[24:27] you know greg i spend most time with
[24:29] craig and greg is constantly saying all
[24:31] right what can we do for you what can we
[24:32] do for you
[24:34] the level of service uh not only
[24:38] from the entire company that is
[24:40] unbelievable in itself but the people
[24:42] that have the power to to decide on how
[24:45] this company's changes that you want to
[24:47] make whether it be from a reporting
[24:48] standpoint from a data graph standpoint
[24:51] the culture that you guys have and and
[24:54] the ownership group it um
[24:57] i take a lot of pride in the fact i'm a
[24:59] family-owned business and what i always
[25:00] tell our employees our associates our
[25:03] customers is man give me a call whatever
[25:05] it is we'll get it figured out and
[25:08] i've said that since the day i started
[25:09] this company
[25:10] that is a mentality that i've
[25:13] you guys practice more so than any
[25:15] partner i deal with oh thank you
[25:18] absolutely i really appreciate that
[25:20] so
[25:21] um
[25:22] for the sake of time i think we should
[25:24] probably hop over and
[25:27] see what we have on the question portion
[25:29] here
[25:33] all right
[25:36] so
[25:37] all right so
[25:37] [Music]
[25:39] uh first one that we have here um
[25:42] kind of looking at return on investment
[25:44] for uh tiger storkeep uh so alan how
[25:48] would you compare the return on
[25:50] investment for storekeep to
[25:53] other uh
[25:54] c-store technology absolutely absolutely
[25:57] um so
[26:01] the um
[26:05] one of the things that
[26:08] i look at today um
[26:11] you know
[26:12] what does my business model look at look
[26:14] like
[26:15] with
[26:16] 550 gas on a very small margin
[26:20] and
[26:21] where
[26:22] what am i able to do by to maintain
[26:24] profitability
[26:28] there's increasing sales
[26:30] uh both gallons and non-fuel that is
[26:34] pretty much an impossible task when you
[26:36] are asking them to give you 150 at the
[26:38] pump all right our non-fuel sales have
[26:41] absolutely gone down since uh
[26:43] fuel prices have gone where they've gone
[26:46] so let's take increased sales out of it
[26:48] now it's uh
[26:50] increased margins or
[26:53] lower
[26:54] operation costs
[26:56] uh
[26:58] when you talk about roi on tyga
[27:00] the the
[27:01] biggest thing today for me is analyzing
[27:04] elasticity of product by category so
[27:08] there's no question we have to maximize
[27:11] our margin by product
[27:13] and
[27:14] to to capture more margin dollars to
[27:16] maintain profitability but
[27:19] the elasticity of a product the
[27:21] elasticity is not the same by category
[27:23] or even by product
[27:25] you know if you got an item that is a
[27:27] very it's got a very high loyalty and it
[27:30] doesn't off and you don't have a lot of
[27:33] differentiation
[27:35] or
[27:36] your competitors don't offer nearly as
[27:38] much car wash being another big one of
[27:39] those if take an extreme example if
[27:41] you're the only car wash in a small
[27:43] market well now you've got a pretty
[27:45] uh pretty inelastic product there that
[27:47] you can maybe maximize marginal dollars
[27:49] right the
[27:51] bag of skills is obviously the exact
[27:52] opposite of that uh tobacco's obviously
[27:55] another big focus that you have a really
[27:57] tight margin because people as a very
[27:59] price conscious shop shopper we got
[28:02] you know our typical store has 5 000
[28:05] skus in it so
[28:07] uh to try to
[28:09] you know really have room to clean you
[28:10] don't really have room to guess there no
[28:12] you don't yeah you need that timely data
[28:14] yeah to try to mainly go through
[28:16] velocities like you know we'll go to our
[28:19] uh vendors and say and they'll give us
[28:21] velocity reports but it's not timed
[28:23] price changes you know there's and then
[28:26] you start trying to do the math of that
[28:28] to margin right you're not seeing the
[28:31] margin dollars without spending a lot of
[28:33] time to doing a lot of math what you're
[28:36] what you guys are able to do is say
[28:37] here's the new price and here's what
[28:40] your profit is by you doing that here's
[28:42] how much more money you make right so
[28:44] elasticity i think is a big thing today
[28:46] in today's world for roi on tyga two is
[28:49] efficiency so i touched on the
[28:50] self-checkout but even if you're not
[28:52] self-checkout labor efficiency
[28:54] the cost of labor has gone up 28 i think
[28:57] on the last next article so every labor
[29:02] hour you have in your store is costing
[29:04] you 28 more than it did pre-coven
[29:07] the
[29:11] when i look at labor i
[29:13] inefficient labor when you can't re
[29:16] react to changes in the marketplace with
[29:18] labor you got to do one of two things
[29:19] you're either over staffed and providing
[29:22] great customer service but you're
[29:23] overstaffed at a huge cost of the bottom
[29:25] line
[29:26] or you are running really tight on labor
[29:29] and providing a bad experience for your
[29:31] customer base the only way to change
[29:33] that is to constantly stay on top of the
[29:35] data and adjust your scheduling based on
[29:38] the
[29:39] sales that you're seeing at stores
[29:41] you can't make that a long process to
[29:43] grab that data before you
[29:45] can adjust the changes you're seeing
[29:47] okay
[29:48] uh we got uh there's another similar one
[29:51] here that kind of touches on some of the
[29:52] stuff you were already just talking
[29:53] about there uh but uh
[29:56] uh also
[29:57] any uh any fun stories or insights uh
[30:00] from
[30:01] your
[30:02] more near-term analysis of like price
[30:04] elasticity and those sorts of things
[30:06] like uh you mean what uh any interesting
[30:10] stories i've found from the data yes
[30:12] operationally uh yeah so um
[30:17] uh for one um so self checkout it would
[30:21] be probably the first thing that i would
[30:22] show so
[30:24] the
[30:25] just delivering the bland message of you
[30:28] know we got to push stuff check out we
[30:29] got to push self-check out so on and so
[30:30] forth you know it was really hard to get
[30:32] that needle to move
[30:34] um giving
[30:37] the people at store level access to the
[30:40] data and then make it competitive and
[30:42] then we actually
[30:43] incentivize them yeah
[30:45] to hit certain kpis and then give them
[30:47] access to see it
[30:49] it is amazing when you give
[30:53] lower down level so whether that be
[30:56] store level associate store manager up
[31:00] access to be able to see their own data
[31:01] and put in the context
[31:03] uh it's amazing how fast uh things
[31:06] change when they when you put it into a
[31:07] data format
[31:09] um
[31:11] the uh
[31:13] another in a more specific interesting
[31:15] story
[31:16] my ceo was at one of our stores uh
[31:20] yesterday and there is a
[31:22] there was a vp of a menu very big
[31:26] manufacturer of a product inside of our
[31:28] stores inside of everybody store that's
[31:31] on this and he wasn't it wouldn't even
[31:32] play a meeting they just happened to
[31:33] bump at each other and he introduced
[31:35] himself and said i'm the vp of x and i
[31:37] don't want to say who x was
[31:40] and uh my
[31:42] ceo introduced himself
[31:44] the vp instantly went over to his space
[31:46] and said why is myspace only x and my
[31:49] competitor is three times x yeah he
[31:53] pulled up tega and said
[31:56] you're only 15 of the sales and
[31:59] pulled it up and literally on that
[32:01] spreadsheet says
[32:03] if you want your sales up he goes let's
[32:06] figure out how to do it but why should i
[32:07] give you more space yeah you know when
[32:09] you start talking to
[32:11] vendors and manufacturers
[32:13] and they kept trying to tell you how big
[32:15] their product is or how much sales they
[32:17] do or
[32:18] how valuable they are to our store
[32:20] you know exactly your ceo has said it
[32:22] multiple times i don't want to we're not
[32:25] going off for your data we're going to
[32:26] go off on my date
[32:27] and here's what my data says and how
[32:29] valuable you are
[32:31] that's a really good story
[32:34] um
[32:38] uh this one i think you answered a
[32:39] little bit like during our talk earlier
[32:42] but uh access to old data within the
[32:44] platform um can tiger access and use old
[32:48] data we already have in in our databases
[32:51] and use that in conjunction with new
[32:52] data absolutely
[32:54] so when we talk specifically about data
[32:57] and and alan's talked about a variety of
[32:59] different areas um
[33:00] a lot of the data sources that we pull
[33:02] from are
[33:04] um trying to get as close to the real
[33:06] source as possible so we like to pull
[33:08] directly from point of sale we like to
[33:10] pull directly off the atg and
[33:13] directly off your price book and sources
[33:15] like that
[33:16] in real time and so we're pulling full
[33:18] basket level detail from
[33:20] uh the point of sale including all the
[33:22] promotions all the
[33:24] all the individual item sales any
[33:26] discounts uh you know everything about
[33:28] that market basket and then we're doing
[33:31] that across pretty much every uh
[33:35] point of sale platform that's out there
[33:37] same thing with atg's same thing with
[33:39] the price book and those sorts of things
[33:41] and so it doesn't matter if you have one
[33:45] vendor at five of your stores for point
[33:47] of sale and another vendor at ten of
[33:50] your stores and then a third one and
[33:51] another store or uh allen mentioned
[33:53] earlier he has you know uh com data from
[33:56] ncr and ncr so calm down
[33:59] on
[34:00] the diesel side in the store and then
[34:02] the ncr in that same store
[34:04] those things can be mixed and matched
[34:06] together once it gets into the tiger
[34:09] platform it's apples to apples in the
[34:11] next category standards down to the
[34:13] individual item individual skus so you
[34:15] can say okay how am i performing on
[34:17] mountain dew and the promotions related
[34:19] with 20 ounces and their tick rates
[34:21] um all the way up to
[34:24] how is uh you know my package bev
[34:26] category performing across all my stores
[34:29] or you know how you know how is my
[34:32] package uh my my cold uh cold package
[34:34] bev performing against my uh my
[34:37] alcoholics uh set in my cooler
[34:39] um so i hope that helps stands for that
[34:41] yes we can pull from uh
[34:44] uh
[34:45] you know if you have different systems
[34:46] and different different fuel brands
[34:48] different uh different store profiles it
[34:50] doesn't matter
[34:52] we work with all of them and integrate
[34:54] well with all of them
[34:57] uh see
[35:00] um
[35:01] see oh and uh also on top of that that
[35:04] the you know the old data alan answered
[35:06] that earlier on in the discussion yeah
[35:07] for me when it pulls it in and we got
[35:10] two years back for you uh yeah uh it so
[35:13] like for us we're ncr so there's a site
[35:16] server that stores all the old data as
[35:18] long as it starts over running once the
[35:19] hard drive gets filled but so whatever
[35:22] we had you guys grabbed and then
[35:24] whatever
[35:25] you know john talked a lot about there
[35:27] and then you can talk about product
[35:28] relationships and all that was
[35:29] anything you're one to look at there is
[35:31] a uh drop down that you just click on
[35:34] say uh yesterday last month last year
[35:37] year to day
[35:38] started doing comparisons
[35:40] i couldn't even tell you a week after
[35:42] what was old what was new other than the
[35:44] fact that you looked at the date at the
[35:46] top
[35:49] let's see um
[35:52] uh how do you see this changing your
[35:54] business five you talked about how you
[35:56] see you know us growing over the next
[35:58] you know five years and stuff like that
[35:59] but how do you see this changing your
[36:01] business and how uh how you operate over
[36:03] the next five years where do you think
[36:04] it's going to take you oh uh to me uh
[36:08] this webinar was gonna have to take
[36:10] another 30 minutes uh so there's a lot
[36:12] to that so what i so right now um
[36:17] we're mainly focused on tyga from a
[36:20] key decision maker level but that's not
[36:23] where i ultimately see this going i want
[36:25] this all the way down to the store
[36:26] manager level and then start broken out
[36:28] and so they can start looking at their
[36:30] own before you know you take a
[36:32] a
[36:33] great
[36:34] motivated highly skilled
[36:37] store manager and you give them tools
[36:39] like this
[36:41] man
[36:42] that's like what you're doing
[36:46] yeah exactly i walked i did a i did a
[36:48] drive
[36:49] yesterday i went to six of our stores
[36:52] and
[36:53] you know they started going into and
[36:55] they taking the display and they say hey
[36:57] go look at this display that i built and
[36:58] there and it's
[37:00] they're so proud of it and they want to
[37:01] you know show that
[37:03] our sales are doing this this and this
[37:05] well for them to be able to go and say
[37:07] we created this liquor display we
[37:08] created this novice player look what we
[37:10] did with our food service side to be
[37:12] able to just have instant access and not
[37:13] wait for our
[37:14] accounting partners to send our report
[37:17] you know you get that you get the right
[37:19] person and they are
[37:21] consumed about proving what they thought
[37:23] was going to work right worked
[37:25] and giving them the tools to be able to
[37:27] see it and then prove to themselves of
[37:29] what they decided so that's first and
[37:31] foremost two
[37:33] um
[37:35] we talked about the mac standard and the
[37:37] comparison tools you know right now i'm
[37:39] looking at trends over time and trends
[37:43] across stores
[37:44] what i want what i want to see from
[37:46] tiger is user groups where we're getting
[37:49] together with your top performers and
[37:52] and we're having conversations and
[37:55] you know there is not a single thing in
[37:57] my stores that i thought of myself
[37:59] almost everything is i've stolen from
[38:01] somebody smaller than me
[38:03] and said that's a great idea i want to
[38:05] do that and uh
[38:08] i mean that's what tyga is it is
[38:10] me you're a retail owner like i am we
[38:13] start looking at stuff
[38:14] you look at me and see what i did do
[38:16] better you i look at you and see we do
[38:18] better and then we both the tide rises
[38:20] for both of us right that is what i see
[38:22] for a five year vision for tyga that's
[38:24] what gets me excited
[38:28] all right
[38:30] um
[38:30] so and alan d uh uh
[38:33] we're kind of running up on time here
[38:34] but i just wanted to take a second do
[38:36] you have any final thoughts would you
[38:37] like to share with the audience before
[38:38] uh before we uh calling into the session
[38:41] yeah uh you know the one thing i would
[38:43] take away is um like i said i referenced
[38:47] the cold call
[38:51] it's one thing for us to sit here and
[38:52] talk and you guys
[38:54] just hear 10 000 foot view
[38:57] it's a whole other thing to see the
[38:59] actual data and to say
[39:02] holy cow what could i do with that there
[39:04] is i mean the rabbit hole on
[39:07] tyga and what it can do for you is so
[39:08] deep we could spend three days talking
[39:10] about this and we wouldn't cover
[39:12] everything you guys could do
[39:15] the what the my biggest takeaway from
[39:18] a
[39:19] peer in the industry on what i should do
[39:21] i said go spend 30 minutes with them and
[39:23] they'll show you and then where your
[39:25] mind goes with it is way beyond what i
[39:28] could tell you to do because what's
[39:29] important to me may not be important to
[39:30] you may not be important to somebody
[39:32] else on this webinar but the great thing
[39:34] is if it's if it is a data point that
[39:36] can be measured you can start wherever
[39:38] you're focused you will provide them
[39:40] what's important to them
[39:42] it's tailored to the customer that that
[39:46] is probably the biggest point
[39:48] start where you need absolutely
[39:51] i'd just like to thank you all for for
[39:53] joining us today thank you alan for
[39:56] taking the time out of your day to uh to
[39:58] talk with me i i hope it was really
[40:00] informative and entertaining for
[40:02] everybody and i appreciate everyone's
[40:03] time today hey thanks guys all right