 Okay, we're back for the two o'clock block. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is stink tech. We're talking about restaurants now. Restaurants Hawaii with Cheryl Matsuoko. She's a Hawaii Restaurant Association and she has brought a friend with her. That's Chris Jankowski and he is with triple, what is it? T triple F. Triple F. Okay, which is a restaurant supply hotel and restaurant supply company. So Cheryl, can you take the moment on behalf of Hawaii Restaurant Association and introduce Chris? Yes. Chris Jankowski is the president of triple F Hawaii and triple F Hawaii is a huge supplier, not only to restaurants, but to hotels, to the Department of Education. You know, all those school lunches, Jay, all those trophies, all those, yeah, all the forks and the napkins, that all is supplied through Chris. And just like Chris, a lot of our suppliers, the reason for today's conversation is a lot of our suppliers, because restaurants and hotels are not at full capacity and some hotels not even open, right? Our suppliers are also hurting. So it's kind of that trickle down effect that we talked about, Jay, where it's not only restaurants, you know, we keep our suppliers and our vendors very close to us. They are in this, you know, in this business together with us. So when restaurants aren't opening up at full capacity, then our suppliers are not supplying at full capacity. Our vendors are not, you know, producing at full capacity. So that's the whole conversation today. And Chris is a very, very good ally of the Hawaii Restaurant Association. So I thought he could share the story of how the suppliers are being affected during this pandemic. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show, Chris. So tell us about your relationship to restaurants and hotels, your relationship for that matter to the Hawaii Restaurant Association. Sure, sure. Well, we're a member of the Hawaii Restaurant Association. I'm also involved with Cheryl on the Hawaii Restaurant Association Education Foundation. So we kind of work together a lot on that and as well to try to help, you know, young chefs mentor them to stay here in Hawaii and go on in the industry. But we basically supply Jay any hotel, restaurant, mom and pop shop, you know, the cafes, the bars, the grills, all of those folks to our customers, the shave ice folks, the food trucks, anybody who's really buying a disposable paper good such as a clamshell or a straw or plastic cup or a foam cup or any of those kind of items, that's pretty much what we specialize in. And then we have this bar side where we provide everything in the bar but the booze. So from the glassware to the napkins, the straws, the little mini umbrella that goes in your pina colada, that's kind of our niche as far as we're concerned. And we service all the islands. We've got locations and physical warehouses in Maui and Kona, Hilo and Kauai and here in Oahu over in Pearl City. And we have sales reps that interact and kind of manage our customers inventories as well. So they're out there on the street face to face, you know, listening and seeing and suggesting to our customers, you know, what's going on and what the trends are and how we can help them. Wow, you sound like the 800 pounder. I wear how it feels like it sometimes. Well, right now. So if I want to start or for that matter, operate a restaurant or a bar, what are my options? I could either come to you or what go to Amazon? What can I do? Certainly to go to Amazon, you know, there's the Cisco's and why Hadas that are out there. The bar greens, we're all sort of friendly competitors. I would say our niche compared to those folks is we do purely disposables. So no food products at all, nothing perishable. And that's kind of the biggest difference between us. You know, they don't like to, they like to put more protein on their trucks and we like to put more paper on ours. Paper lasts longer. Shelf life. Shelf life is longer Jay. I've been on the other side of that for a long time in my career. So I'm kind of glad to be in the disposables now. Yeah. You know, you talked about how you watch their inventory and I'm assuming you have a website where they can order sort of like Amazon and a package of things, a number of things that can keep them outfitted for a while. Is your website, what is the name of your website, by the way? It's just triplef.com. Okay. So in that case, somebody could order whatever they need right on the website and you will deliver it at that point. Is that right? Correct. Correct. Yeah. Most of our customers tend to work via fax or email or direct with our sales force. So a lot of like I said, a lot of our folks are out there in the field day to day taking the orders and suggesting things that will help the customer. So we have had to transition from, you know, kind of a food supported distributor and to more of a COVID supply house. I mean, we have sold container loads of gloves and mask and disinfectants, anything COVID related to monitors, which we never sold before. So that part of the supply chain for us has really shifted. And we've done that to kind of stay, you know, healthy. So we saw, you know, a need for that. Of course, now I think it's getting a little bit saturated out there. But there's a huge supply chain sort of gap with gloves right now. Nobody can get gloves. Gloves have went from $30 a case to $100 a case in months. And it's just, it's kind of yeah, it's kind of like the Clorox wipes that you keep seeing on the news that they don't have the wipes to put in the bottles to ship out. It's that kind of thing in all of this COVID is huge right now. Cheryl, are you going to say something? Yes, it's supply and demand, Jay. As you know right now, everybody is right class, the disposable gloves, the mask, the hand disinfectants, you know, right now everybody's looking for it. So as they're looking for it, the price, the cost goes up, unfortunately. So this raises an interesting question, Chris. I mean, if there's a gap in the supply chain, take for example masks, they're so easy to produce. You could get a bunch of people who maybe lost their jobs and some sewing machines and material. Are you manufacturing anything like that? Are you a manufacturer also? No, we're not. Where do you get your stuff? You know, a lot of it comes from overseas, anywhere, Vietnam, China, Cambodia. A lot of those PPE items come from overseas. So then you've got the delay in manufacturing over there right now because the supply is so huge. It has gotten so crazy, Jay, that people are doing what they call proof of life. So there are suppliers asking you to stand in front of your product, hold up a newspaper for that day, almost like a ransom, to prove that you have that product on that day behind you. So funny. Funds that you can actually pay for what you want to get. And so what is happening is these transactions are so large, they never end up happening because the supplier overseas says, you know what, we're only going to sell a million units of this. If you want to buy that, great. And you don't know if they're telling you the truth or not. And they don't know if you have the funds or not. And so all of these deals that are out there, you know, unless you've got, like us, we've got suppliers who we've had for 30 or 40 years and we trust each other. Everybody else who tried to kind of jump in this game is hamstrung right now because neither side's closing the deal. So it's really an interesting dynamic. Yeah, very challenging. Sometimes, you know, for example, in the case of thermometers, just for example, if you haven't sold them before, then you have to establish a new relationship with whatever whoever the supplier is. And you may not have to go on cheat with that supplier. So now you're going to have to learn to trust him and he's going to have to learn to trust you in a time when these things are in short supply. We've been lucky that a couple of our large suppliers on the paper goods side who were importing already had the links and contacts for those items and we ended up bringing a lot of that in through them and we trust them, they trust us. So that worked out to be a good partnership. But yeah, there are a lot of problems in that supply chain right now. So Cheryl, are restaurants in general having trouble ordering things? I mean, part of this is do they have the money to order things? But what are you hearing? What I'm hearing is, you know, when you do your inventory forecast and your cost forecast, you're going to inventory like you're looking at your food costs, well PPE, disinfectants, hence we're not part of that, that original budget. So you didn't allow to have budgets for masks and gloves and all of the things that you need now. So what I'm hearing are the restaurants number one didn't have it in their budget, they have to get it by the Department of Health, they have to now have every employee in the restaurant, including the cooks, need to have a mask. And as you know, you know, you're going to go through a couple of those a day gloves, you're going to go through them, you know, throughout the day. So I'm finding that yes, number one, right, they don't have the revenue, because they don't have the dining room at full capacity, the revenue that they had set aside in their budget to buy food and to pay for everything else now is going to PPE. So it's between a rock and a hard place, you don't have the income but yet you need to provide the PPE or you can't open. And as we talked about last time, the Department of Health, if they walk into a restaurant and they don't see the hostess and the servers with mask on, they could give you a warning the second time they walk in and you don't have that mask on, they're going to give you a red placard and shut you down. So, you know, I get conflicting thoughts about this, Chris. I mean, some the guys who are still doing business, they need things they didn't need before. And that means assuming you're carrying those things, that means more business for you. However, there's a lot of restaurants that A, have slowed down their volume and B, or B, going out of business entirely. I read that Nobu's shut down permanently. Oh, one of my favorite places. It hurts me in my heart. So, you know, so which one prevails? I mean, some things you must be doing better, other things you must be doing worse. And in general, you're probably suffering. Tell me how it works. Yeah, so a good example that Cheryl kind of talked about earlier, we know we supply the DOE with all their lunch containers. Well, when the, when school went on spring break and then kind of shut down, we had three containers on the water headed over here that took up a lot of space in our warehouse. Those lunch trays are large cases. So yeah, we're still setting on those. So there are a lot of items that basically just stopped selling completely. We shifted to a lot of the PPE items just to keep the cash flow going. But a lot of the, a lot of the to-go containers have still kind of maintained, I think they've switched to a different type of container for us, a different product mix a little bit. And we have adapted, like I said, just to kind of keep the doors open. You know, we're hurting like everybody else is. And, and it's, you know, the thing that's difficult right now, Jay, is, you know, we have buyers at all of our locations and it's tough for them to figure out what to buy because we used to keep 30 to 45 days on hand worth of inventory and your customer here expects that because you can't run them out of a key ingredient. You can't run, you know, somebody like High Steakhouse, if you're a meat provider, you can't run them out of flaminion. And that's kind of what we run up against in the disposable as well. You can't run these folks out of stuff. So buying has become very difficult. You can't make full loads anymore with certain vendors. And you don't meet their minimum. So it's definitely a challenge that it just kind of trickles down in all parts of your business. Yeah, are you running out of stuff? We are running out of a few things. Certainly some of the PPP items, right? You know, when when COVID really kicked in the wipes, as I mentioned earlier, the Clorox wipes, and we have several different brands, they just went, you know, blank, nobody could get wipes. Bleach went through that for a while where nobody could get bleach as well. Gloves have been sort of hand to mouth. We're getting gloves, but we get them just about the same time that we run out of them. So again, it's been tricky. We've had to call on different suppliers to try to substitute those items just to keep our customers going. And our sales staff, Jay, you know, they're out there telling the restaurants and the cafes and that here's what you need to do to reopen. Here's what you need to do to stay compliant. And so we really try to be a resource to them. We show them how to clean. We show them the different items and hand them, you know, flyers that, hey, when you open up, this is the the five things that you need to have as PPE when you get started. So, you know, we're trying to be that resource. And it's, you know, and everybody's struggling like Cheryl said, they didn't plan on this in their budget to they have to buy these extra items that have since gone up in price. Yeah, I'm sure, you know, it's valuable, Cheryl, to be a resource like Chris is. I'm sure the Restaurant Association does the same thing. They come they come to you with tears in their eyes and they tell you they're not sure they can make it next week. And they say give us some advice, give us some at least console us. Tell us we're not alone in this. What do you tell them? What do you do for them? We thankfully have members like Chris. I have stories, Jay, of small little restaurant mom and pop. Basically, they just they can't even afford the signage or the PPE. Luckily, I have other restaurants that have a little extra. So we've been able to ask them for donations, ship it to the restaurant that that needs the PPE and the signage because signage is so critical today, Jay. People, you know, they're still trying to figure it out, right? And just like, don't forget, wear your mask. Only when you're eating or drinking do you take your mask off when you're in the restaurant. Other than that, if you're standing up and you're walking to the restroom, you got to put your mask back on. Signage is so critical, not everybody can afford it. So we're lucky and we're blessed that we've partnered with, we're a resource. So we've partnered with a few companies that will make the signs for them. I have other restaurants and people like Chris who will say, what do they need? A pack of gloves, some mask. They just give it to them. Very nice of you. So Chris, are you flying everything in? I mean, or do you have to wait on containers? It's just, it strikes me that in these difficult times, when you have to make deliveries on a critical basis, you're probably going to have to fly things even when you might not otherwise do that. Am I right? You know, we can fly stuff in, we usually don't. Most of the stuff does come in over the shipping units, but we've flown in a couple of disinfectant type items when COVID first hit and there was an immediate need and people were scrambling and we carried, you know, maybe, oh, I don't know, a 10 day supply of a certain type cleaning item. And then all of a sudden, you know, they wiped us out. There's been a lot of that going on. You can tell even some of our competitors will call us and vice versa. If we see someone who has something that we might be out of, we may go over and try to purchase it from them. But typically, we try to stay away from air shipping just because of the cost, because we have to pass that along as well. And we try not to do that to kind of make that, to keep the pricing structure kind of flat. We try not to inflate it by doing, you know, air cargo. Yeah, sure. Sure. You know, I want to talk about creativity. And to start that conversation, I want to tell you about Hawaii Building Maintenance. Hawaii Building Maintenance has, you know, hundreds of employees downtown and they go and they, you know, clean up the offices after people are done. Well, a lot of offices are vacant or if not vacant inactive now. And so, you know, the question is how, you know, what can they do to remake their business? What can they do to follow the action? And just like you, Chris, you know, bringing in thermometers and masks and gloves and all those PPE things, the Hawaii Building Maintenance, they were on the show a few weeks ago. I was very impressed. They actually clean the place, you know, in an anti-COVID way. I mean, they really sanitize it. It's not just emptying the trash is what they customarily do, but they actually clean. I have a team that goes in and clean the place. And I wonder if this kind of thing is happening in the restaurant business, where you have A, a team that comes in, whatever their iteration might be, and gives it a full tilt COVID cleaning and or B, access a certifier and say, you know, we have credibility and we are, this is clean and they're following all the rules and the public can feel confident and the public can come in and that would encourage business, obviously, in the restaurant. So is this happening? And if not this, what is happening to reimagine the industry? Because the industry, and I'm sure you've noticed it every day, is changing some restaurants that are going out of business, not to come back, or the restaurants, you know, are pretty creative. So how do you adapt yourself to that? I think the first part of your question, you know, in Hawaii, building maintenance is one of our customers as well, because we sell a lot of chemicals. So we do chemical toilet paper, paper towels, kind of everything that goes along with that side of the business as well. And you see a lot of folks like them who are doing that deep cleaning, they're coming in with foggers or misters and disinfecting the entire operation, we're now selling those foggers where we didn't before. But we've kind of, you know, shifted to sell that as well because we have customers asking for it. And I think what's happening is you see a few pop up businesses that are trying to go into the restaurants and office buildings and say, hey, we'll come in for X number of dollars and disinfect your whole place or we'll do it every evening or what have you and almost created this new industry of sorts that's kind of popped up out of this whole COVID thing. The problem is, is that a lot of the restaurants don't have the money to pay for that service. So they're wanting to do it themselves. And that's kind of where we come in and teach them, you know, what kind of disinfectants to use, what kind of PPE to have and that kind of thing. It's not really as difficult as it might sound. I think it's just consistency. And I think our restaurants for the most part because of the placard system do a good job cleaning anyway. But Cheryl, Cheryl might want to talk about, we've seen the businesses shift from, you know, the in room dining to take out big time and a lot of them are making more money on the takeout side. And so I think, you know, what does the future look like? I think a lot of that looks, you know, like it's going to shift to a more takeout only type business. And I think that's why we've seen some smaller new guys jump into the business because they didn't really want to do a full size restaurant and a full service restaurant. But the takeout was really what they were looking for. And this is played into that. So I'll let Cheryl kind of Yeah, your investment in capital is less. Cheryl, talk about it. Yes. So many restaurants, as Chris said, because the dining rooms were closed, all had to switch and redesign their menus so that they could do more takeout. Because as you know, Jay, some meals really don't travel well. They don't look appealing when they get to the other side. So number one, their whole takeout has revamped their whole menu selection and how it's going to now travel well is revamped. Number two is freezing meals. So as you know, a lot of people freeze meals. So you know, I'm just going to mention like zippies, my daughter's favorite, we buy the chili and the little pack that's already sealed in the plastic bag. Well, many restaurants has now gone to sealing and freezing. So and that's to think, Jay, if there's another pandemic or heaven forbid the volcano, it happens again. A lot of people didn't have meals. But if you pre freeze them, you can send the frozen meals over, people just have to heat it up and they've got food. But it's another revenue for the restaurants, right? So the other one is family packs, where if you're going to have a passionate Mother's Day, Father's Day, we're coming up to Thanksgiving, you're going to see those family meal packs everywhere. I know restaurants that sold out on Mother's Day like they had X amount of meal packs they were going to make. Well, you got to know, come Thanksgiving, a lot of people are going to be ordering those Thanksgiving. Yeah, Thanksgiving coming soon. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So reimagine, redesigning, recreating, restaurant tours, you know, to begin with, you know, we're creative people because we create meals, right? We take a piece of chicken and we make a beautiful feast out of it, right? We make a turkey and then we make a beautiful feast out of it, a whole meal around it. And it's all those little cranberries and stuffings and gravies and the breads and the desserts that you can really make an attractive family meal pack that'll feed four, six, eight. And that's going to be very popular. Come Thanksgiving. Well, you know, it strikes me, Chris, that you're instrumental. You talked before about the foam containers, the disposables, if you will. You can make a foam container that would turn my appetite off for a week. Or you can make a foam container or some kind of container that would make me hungry, you know, 10 feet away. So have you changed your products? Have you, for example, have you put branding on some of these containers where it says, the bad example, but this is from Nobu's. Here's a picture of something that we offer, you know, some kind of particular dish that we offer. And when I look at the picture on the foam, I say, wow, I want that. I mean, are you tracking on that sort of thing and your offerings? Not right now, just because, I mean, right now we're, the supply chain is so strained, we're lucky to get what we get. It's funny that Cheryl mentioned that because I had a meeting with our team this morning and we talked about getting ready for Thanksgiving. You know, we've got to have the turkey boxes ready to go. And we've got to be out there talking to our customers, seeing if they're going to do it this year or if they're not. There's another item that you could bring a bunch in and nobody does it and you get stuck with it. Or you don't bring enough in and everybody wants it and the last minute you're scrambling and then you might have to fly those in. But yeah, no branding as such right now, but those, the microwavable containers, which are a plastic black bottom, typically clear top, sometimes they're a clamshell, the number one item that has spikes since COVID because nationwide, almost everybody is out. It's kind of, that's another hand-to-mouth kind of item that our suppliers keep running out of. But the interesting thing about this, and it's a whole other segment for another day, is that next year in 2021, you're trying to outlaw a lot of these plastics and go through a biodegradable. Because it's plastic. Right. So right now, that is the number one item. And like Cheryl said, you just can't put anything in a certain container. It doesn't look appealing. It doesn't ride well. It doesn't hold up. You can't reheat it. And that's a lot of the things that ourselves and the restaurants have had to adjust to pretty quickly. Well, what about the, one of you mentioned the notion travel well, whether these containers travel well. And it seems to me, if I get a container, after say an Uber delivery, where all the food is sloshed to one side, it's kind of a mishmash. That's not really exactly what I had in mind when I made my order. And so is there a way to deal with that? Is there a way to pack this stuff? And can you offer paper goods that will allow the restaurant to pack it in such a way so that when the Uber driver takes it out there, it's in decent shape? You bet. From a small souffle cup that has a lid on it with your sauce in it, Cheryl kind of alluded to it earlier in that the restaurants have had to redesign their menus, because not everything that they were making before will travel well. And so a lot of them have maybe picked two or three items and then kind of looked at it. How well does this plate in an eight inch microwaveable container? What's it going to look like when it gets there? And I think they've taken a lot of consideration and thought that through and tried to really keep the different liquids, if you will, separate when they're traveling. So I think for the most part, unless you've got a bad one, Jay, most of them I think are doing a pretty decent job of trying to keep that in mind. Of course, you can never get a nice crunchy fry anywhere, right? In my house, you can't. So Cheryl, where is this all going? I keep thinking that these creative moves by restaurant tours and the restaurant tours are opening new restaurants that are smaller. It's going to change the industry. It's going to change the whole sector. People in Hawaii and maybe all around the world like restaurants now, more than they ever did. Up till the end of 2019, the whole global population was spending more time, more money in restaurants, eating out more often than ever imaginable. But the question is, how is that going to change now coming out of COVID? What do you see as the prevailing model or the model that has learned by COVID as we come out of it? As we come out of it, you're going to definitely see a lot of more safety measures. You're going to see more of the disinfecting, more of the hand sanitizers. You're going to definitely see changes in menus, right? Things that like you say, like I said, travel well. Jay, I know that a lot of people miss going to restaurants, including you, right? I do. Yes, yes. And so people are just, and square barrels, remember? And so people are going to go back and they're going to remember, you know, how it was when you go there with your friends and your family and have a celebration, right? It's nothing like going to a restaurant and having a celebration. People miss it. I'm just going to ask the public to support restaurants. If you have a birthday gift or an anniversary gift or a thank you gift, buy a restaurant gift card, because that's going to help them. That's a good idea. That's going to help the restaurant immensely at Christmas. When you're buying that Christmas gift for someone, consider a restaurant gift card, because the restaurants really need your support. If the restaurants are strong, suppliers like Chris will be strong. You know, we supply, you know, we work with our suppliers like our triple-Fs, like our vendors, like the air conditioning guy or the guy who cleans the grease trap. All those people are depending on the restaurant survival. You know, Cheryl, the Hawaii Restaurant Association could really step in on that. You could offer a restaurant card that it can be used at multiple restaurants. So I wouldn't have to worry if my particular favorite went out of business. I always know that I could go to another one, right? I wouldn't have that risk. So Chris, for you, one question is, you know, all of this has to be very challenging for you to try to chase a moving target, a moving market, where you don't know where it's going to wind up. You don't know what the governor's going to do on a given day. You don't know what the COVID numbers are going to, you know, and the political reaction to that. My God, I mean, you know, I don't have to ask you what you think about it at three o'clock in the morning. I already know. But the question, the question is, how are you changing? How is triple-F changing? What is it going to look like? How are your systems, how's your place in the market going to change as we come out of this? You know, I think Cheryl sort of hit it on the head. First of all, the PPE stuff is not going away. I think we will sort of step up our sort of chemical side of the business. I think it was a, it was a sort of our smaller portion of our whole makeup. And I think we'll continue to focus on that a little bit more because we definitely don't think it's going away. Cleaning and sanitization has been brought to the forefront. It's here to stay. People need to know how to do it and how to do it safely without making themselves sick or getting burned with some type of a chemical or anything like that. So I think we've got to put a lot more effort into the chemical side and the education part of that. And then, you know, I think we're just going to continue to adapt with the different types of containers that work better for different customers. They're built, they're constantly coming out with new widgets, if you will, where you've got a built-in dip portion area in your clamshell container, where you've got a fork that is sort of melded into the plastic container and you pull it off the top and then you eat your salad with it. So they're constantly innovating. And I think, as this whole thing goes along, I think the takeout is here to stay. I think it's going to grow. People still love to go out to eat, and I think they'll continue to do that, but I think the takeout is going to expand from here. Yeah. Okay, Carol, we're almost out of time. So take a minute and summarize what we've learned today and how much of what Chris said you agree with. Oh, I agree with 100% of what Chris said. I knew you were going to say that. And you know me, Jay. And the restaurants need the support so that we can support businesses like Chris and all of our vendor partners, because our vendor partners is part of our restaurant family. So please go out and, like I mentioned, purchase gift cards. Hawaii Restaurant Association is the voice of Hawaii's restaurants and food service industry. We're a resource. If anybody has any questions, please reach out to me and let us know how we can help. Thank you, Cheryl Matsuoka, Chris Jankowski. Thank you very much, you guys, for joining us. It's been very educational, very helpful to talk to you. And see you next time, Cheryl. Thanks very much, you guys.