 My name is Sheryl Matsuoka. I am the executive director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association and welcome to today's Think Tech Hawaii segment, Restaurants Hawaii. Today's date is August 10, 2021, and it's lunchtime in Hawaii May. Today we're having a conversation with a Maui restaurant tour, and Siobhan Garcia, who is our executive assistant for the Hawaii Restaurant Association. Siobhan, could you please introduce Greg? Yes, Siobhan. Welcome back, Greg Ames. He is the vice president of operations at the Maui TS Restaurants. Welcome, Greg. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be back on the show. Thanks, Greg. Now, Hawaii is thrilled that tourism has returned after a very rough 2020 due to COVID-19. And to our visitors and local guests, restaurants really need your support. So please call and patronize your favorite restaurant, order a takeout, or dine in. Even though we've seen business has increased in restaurants in the current weeks and months, restaurants are still in a very big financial deficit due to COVID. The state of Hawaii had no tourism in 2020. So today we will be Maui focused, and you will hear from our Maui restaurant tour what they are doing to currently help our tourists and visitors get through the challenges as everybody's trying to figure out our new normal. So we want to talk about what restaurants are doing and what restaurants are asking of our visitors and locals. And we'll be discussing breakfast best practices. So it's been really a rough couple of weeks as everyone knows the Delta variant has now created a second wave of COVID positive tests. So we are currently seeing our numbers increase. And with that, you know, the same awareness, but more focused. So now, what is Maui's, Greg, what is Maui's restaurants current COVID mandates? So our visitors know what to expect when they come to Maui. Sure. Right now, the restaurants on inside dining are our number is 75% of our former occupancy. So there's a constriction there. However, we can only space our tables while our space, I'm sorry, our space is the space between our tables needs to be a minimum of six feet. So that really doesn't allow us to add a whole lot more seats for our guests. By following the mandate, we definitely are trying to stay within the parameters that our government thinks are proper for the safety and health of our visitors as well as the people on our islands. However, the recent change really hasn't changed that much. Our outdoor dining is completely unrestricted when it comes to occupancy. However, the outdoor dining does still need to be six feet apart. So that still has some constrictions as well. So when you're asking, you know, what to be ready for, please plan ahead when you're coming to Maui. There's a lot of wonderful things about our island that you can still enjoy and in Hawaii in general. However, if you want reservations at restaurants, if you need a rental car, a lot of those things, planning ahead is definitely a great idea. Always it's a great idea, but especially in this time when we don't have all the capacity that we have in the past. Very good. Great. Thank you for bringing us up today. Each island has different mandates. So we want our visitors who are coming to Maui to understand when they look in the dining room, you know, six foot distancing so you may see an empty table in between of two tables. So let's discuss some of your safety protocols that you at TS restaurants have implemented throughout all your restaurants and what would you share with our listeners where your restaurants are in Maui? Sure. Our restaurants are all here on the west side. Let's start there before we get in our nuts and bolts. We have Kemos down on Front Street, which is our first restaurant that was opened up in the 70s. We have Leilani's and the Hula Grill at Wheeler's Village and then we have Duke's Beach House at Hanuakai Hotel, which is a little north of there. So we have four wonderful restaurants on the ocean all within not so many miles, about 10 minute, 12 minute drive between the farthest two. As far as protocols go, we identified that there was going to be a challenge when we reopened back when we were frankly still shuttered. And our executive team with some input of others following CDC guidelines. We created a COVID playbook. Gosh, I think it was March, not of this year, but the prior year. So most of our restaurants were still shuttered at that point. And it's 16, 17 pages of documents of all the rules we were going to follow. And we took that upon ourselves with CDC guidance. I'm really proud of what came out. We have a restaurant with a lodge attached to it up in Lake Tahoe that's called Sunny Side Resort and Lodge. So we needed to not only think about the restaurant front, but even on the lodging front, which gave us sort of an overview umbrella perspective of it, which I think was helpful. You know, the practicality part of it, you know, obviously our employees are all wearing masks. You know, our guests need to wear masks until they're seated at their table and then anytime they're walking through the restaurant to restaurants. We temperature check at the beginning of every single shift. If you see a single employee, if you see them in any of our restaurants, we know they're not running fevers, which is one of the major indicators of infection. We have a zero zero zero tolerance policy of anybody coming in feeling at all under the weather. We, you know, we just don't allow that to happen. So even if a manager notices that, even if the employee hasn't recognized, hey, I'm not feeling great today. If somebody's moving slowly, they're going to go up and talk to them and say, how are you feeling today? Are you okay? And then we'll send them home. We also have a really effective contact tracing plan in place. Our directors of HR, if we do ever have a positive case, which fortunately here on Maui, they've been few and far between. We have a really good protocol in place where they will call any employee that possibly could have come in contact with them. We have many different scenarios of quarantine versus testing. And we're in really close communication with the Department of Health to make sure that we're following the most current. So, you know, it's sort of a suit to nuts plan. We hope we're kind of going across hopefully all the gamut there to make sure that everybody's safe. I feel very safe in our restaurants. I feel our employees feel safe. And I hope that translates to our guests as well. I think it does. It definitely makes me feel more comfortable. As I mentioned, my favorite one there is Leilani's right there on the beach. So it's pretty wonderful. Yes, yes. And it sounds like you have everything like you said, covered all bases. So that's great. Yeah, I left quite a few things out so I didn't drone on for the entire show. Wow. Well, see even more. You know, one of the challenges I've been experiencing in my restaurants that I don't know if you've experienced it, but you know, we have people who make reservations and then they don't show up Greg. So I set a table for 10 because that's what the reservation was for. And I'm texting them, I'm calling the number because you know, we ask everyone to please leave a number so that we can, you know, get in touch with them. And we're calling them and texting them five minutes after nobody's picking up. It's not getting replies, the table's sitting there. As I've got a line out the door of people that are saying, Hey, you know, I've been standing out here and I see an empty table what's going on right so I don't know what the situation is on Maui. Have you seen a lot of people who've made reservations and don't show up for those reservations. It's definitely something that happens. I understand the frustration that a lot of our visitors have that they they come and, you know, they're concerned that they're not going to be coming to be able to come in and get a meal. However, it does pose some problems for the restaurants, as well as the other visitors to the island. And, you know, here in Hawaii we talk about a lot. So, you know, if you're going to make that reservation and you need to cancel it you're not going to use it, spread a little a lot and let the restaurant knows so they can accommodate some other folks. We have a, especially difficult situation down at whalers village where we have our two restaurants right next to each other and then another larger restaurant. So people will walk and put their names on all three of the list, and then whoever calls them first like bingo you went. So in that case as well. We just ask everyone to please, you know, think about think about the other folks that are trying to come in and have some dinner and, and please let us know. We're happy to make the accommodation. We just need to be in the loop because we definitely don't want you showing up for your reservation. And we get in your table away because we didn't know if you were coming anymore, and you were just running a few minutes late versus needing to cancel so we're trying to do the best we can, and a little helping hands great. Nice. Thank you. Thank you. Now the other side of it is we all are short staffed. So what is your situation, you know your vacant positions that you have open because the message that we've been trying to get out there is, for our patrons and our guests to please be kind and patient, you know our staff, we're short staffed, and they're under, you know, a lot of pressure because they're trying to juggle multiple balls at the same time so what is your experience I can tell you right now we're down like eight positions. We're down a tremendous number of positions. I say candidly to others that we probably could between our four locations higher 100 people today. It's severe. We had pre COVID we had 700 employees here on the west side and when you consider the population of Maui I think we're about 150,000. We're a pretty large employer here on Maui. So getting all those folks back into the positions was has been challenging and in our industry. We tend to have a younger demographic for a lot of positions. And when our restaurants for shuttered here I was, I was one of the few employees left here on the west side unfortunately. And one of the things that I did was to try and stay on top of unemployment claims for our employees that were out and working with our HR director and what I saw over that time is that we went from all Hawaii unemployment claims to a few from California than more from Texas than more from Washington. So, you know, I pretty firmly believe that a lot of our workforce just couldn't make it for nine months, and they were younger and they had other options whether that's I'm going to go back to school or gosh you know mom and dad still have the room waiting for me. Or maybe this is a great time for me to go travel because I can't work anyway. So, I just feel that disruption has really impacted our ability to get back to full staffing levels. On top of that, having the Department of Education Schools closed last year to in school learning. I'm going to put a big strain on on families that had working parents. I'm not by any means disparaging the decision to keep the schools closed. I'm certain the Department of Education and the governor did the best, made the best call with the information they had. However, when you have a seven year old that needs to distance learn I can promise you that you're not trying to do that and trying to hold down a full time job. Exactly. And you know, many the message is out there that you know restaurants is a really great place if anyone out there is looking for a career or a new job or a change. You know restaurants is always a great place to start or maybe make a career change. You know you work in a team and it's always great to work in a fun environment with other people. You'll learn customer service skills. And if you enjoy, you know, working with guests and it'll teach you really quickly that you can get up the ladder really fast. If you if you're dedicated and you work hard, you know a restaurant is a really great place to be some like you said great some people you know during the day are taking care of children or they're in school, but in the evenings when they can, you know, take shifts with the loved ones or take shifts between spouses, you know, restaurants is a great place to work so if anyone is looking for a new career, email me at info at what restaurant dot org and if you're Maui I'll be shooting those emails over to Greg because he's got a few positions. Right great. I have a couple thoughts to fill. It's a really fun place to work and people enjoy it you work around people when they're having a good time right so anyone out there looking for a career or a job. Let us know. So now she won do you have any questions for Greg before I go on. Yeah, you know, I think Greg and I have spoken before, you know, there's a lot of first timers to Maui. There's also a lot of returning visitors. What would you say to those who are feeling a little discouraged with what they've experienced recently what would you say to them to encourage them to come back. Right, you know, at the beginning of this reopen. I really, I saw it firsthand and and I felt it and I thought about the family that maybe saved up all their money to be able to take a once in a lifetime trip to Maui. And they saw that, you know, I can get a decent deal and boy this was on my bucket list. And then they got here and they're only dining options were not the ones they were looking for. And that is is slowly changing. But back to what I said before if you do plan ahead. We can still check those boxes. However, there's a lot more to Maui and to Hawaii than just restaurants and pools and those other things. You know, we have some of the most beautiful vistas in the world. Our beaches are gorgeous. I mean, you look around I'm very fortunate to have a little view of Molokai out here off off my office window. So, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot to do here. And I would just encourage them to focus on all the wonderful things they, they can do, and then plan as far ahead as they possibly can, and just bring their patients along with them. And they can too. And know that the visitor industry in Hawaii wants them to be here needs them to be here and are grateful that they're here. And we're all trying our best to deliver on the brand promise that Hawaii has as a state to be the state of aloha and welcoming. So that would be my advice. Very good advice. Okay, I've had a few travel agent agents call and reach out to us and I forwarded it to you because a lot of the travel agents, you know, they don't know what the situation is over there on Maui, you know, they visited Maui years ago but they don't know currently. And so reservations, you know, as, as, as you know that gal was trying to recommend where to make reservations and where is opened, you know, which restaurants are shuttered still closed. And, you know, because they don't know what's happening, you know, as of today, right, August 2021. So, thank you so much for doing this today because this has really been very informative for people who are heading this way. We anticipate our tourism numbers to keep increasing. And of course, Maui is a big island that has a lot of tourists going over there and you know we welcome everyone to come back. So, yes. So now called that taught us a lot of lessons right and so we all had a few months to when we're shut it down to think about okay what could we do to improve our businesses and what kind of technology or, or systems can we do was anything that you did over there on Maui to improve your dining experience so that our viewers can hear some of the creative things that you've implemented, whether it's technology or processes. Sure. Quite a few. You know one of the things we began to focus upon more here in this last year is giving more options to our guests. So we've really ramped up our to go and take out program which has been extremely well received. We looked at new packaging that holds our food better we looked at items specifically to cater to folks that are looking for something to go where they may not be eating it immediately out when it comes out of the kitchen. Well, you know when they travel back to their hotel or down to the beach. We've adopted some new technologies that are restaurants that that help us improve the guest experience and and we're doing this really what I think is this really cool concept has changed at Leilani is actually that you brought up earlier where our upstairs has not changed our upstairs is full service dining exactly what everyone's used to the downstairs. We've converted to Leilani beach bar which is we used to call it the beach side grill so Leilani beach bar, very casual but really embraces technology. You can take your phone you can bump it on a little tile in the middle of the table you can place your entire order, your entire order goes to the kitchen and goes to the bar. If you're ordering an alcoholic beverage a server is going to come by and make sure that you're of age. And then things will be delivered to you and you can dine at your pace if you're looking to go quick you can get in and out of there I went in there with my boys the other day. So we had a lunch start the finish in under 30 minutes. That is the TS still has the TS feel it's definitely the TS quality of food. But we were able to get in and out quickly and some people are looking for a full experience. So that's the Leilani experience watch the sunset and others want to get back down to the beach or get back to their hotel room because they're a little worn out the kids are cranky. So now we have we have that as an option for our guests as well and that that technology has been a really interesting piece. We've added up and go at all of our locations which is a way to pay at your table. So hopefully it's time for the check. Let's go. We've learned a really interesting thing too about the spacing between our tables. We would like to have restrictions that are a little less constrictive restrictive in the table spacing but we've decided that that maybe things were a little too aggressive in the spacing in the past. And our intention when we come out of covid is we're still going to maintain a decent space between our tables to make for a more gracious dining experience needs are easier access for our employees so you know technology lessons learned you know guest experience lessons learned it's been a difficult process but it definitely an enlightening process. And we're just going to keep plugging away at it we've made more taken more risks and made more changes in this last year and a half and I think we probably have in the last 10 or 15 years. And we're better as a company because of the changes that we've made definitely would like for covid never to have happened. However, I'm really proud of what our teams have done our managers are general managers are our dishwashers are busters, what they've done to move our restaurants forward I'm just really proud of their efforts. I've heard and yours seems like a very, you know, top of the grade experience where you've taken covid and looked at things where you can better your guest experience and that is that is wonderful. You know so many people didn't take that time to look at it so I'm so happy to hear that it's the touchless experience people are still very nervous about you know transferring things so a touchless experience is, is, is excellent. Shevon do you have any other questions for break before we wrap up the show. No, I just wanted to, you know, he obviously touched on the point and that is, there's so many options other than just dining in. You know, for those people who want the experience want to eat at the TS restaurants there's so many other options that you can still experience the great amazing food that they offer and they really should take advantage. So Greg is there anything else you want to say about the TS experience, or anything else that your company has implemented. We've got a few minutes before close. Sure. You know, TS is is a family owned company I don't know how much all of our viewers know about us we have what we like to call TS super fans who definitely know all of our restaurants and have been all. However, we are a restaurant company that's a family owned company that Tebow and Saxton families to us on the vast majority of our company. We were founded here in Hawaii, our first restaurant Kimos like I mentioned earlier is on front street opened and is still to this day doing such wonderful things with the space that we have allocated for us. We have restaurants on all the islands so we, well, I'm sorry, we have the restaurants on three of our. We have four here on Maui we have to on a wall who we have to employee. And then we have restaurants back on the main when we have five in California, including the lodge and restaurant up in Lake Tahoe so there are a lot of different places that all have really great sense of place. That's always been really near and dear to our heart as a restaurant company and our founders identified that very quickly is that our restaurants really need to fit into a community not be forced into a community. And we always want to have locations where we would want to live. So our federal managers and our employees are going to come from that community. We're going to support the nonprofits and other organizations that need us in those communities. We're going to be working with vendors that are going to be working really hard to deliver the best products within those communities. So that that concept of sense of place and making sure that we're honoring that has always been very important to us so it doesn't matter if you're at the lodge on Lake Tahoe and restaurant in Lake Tahoe called sunny side or whether you're down here at Leilani switch sounds like you're a fan of Cheryl. But the sense of place is still going to be there. And, and what else that's overarching is that sort of TS magic that comes from our employees and putting all those elements together. We were talking the other day about when we when we look at how we run our company and the decisions we make what would be the question you would ask yourself to validate whether that's a good decision whether it's continuing an old practice or beginning a new one. And our two founders, they were, they were Sandy Saxton and Rob Tebow the sex and the TMS. And what was decided was, would Robin Sandy be smiling. And I really love that it would our two founders be smiling when they saw what we were doing as a company and where we were upholding those values and traditions that are so important to our company but also important to our business and important to the state of Hawaii and, and, you know, it's California as well. We're very fortunate to stand on the shoulders of giants over here in TS restaurants. And yeah, we're just a lucky bunch. But we're really to finish. We're really excited the travelers are back. We're really excited that we get to host them and share some experience. Exactly. So, in closing, Greg, thank you so much for being here today. It's been a pleasure again to see you. You know, you and I have only met virtually one of these days are going to make face to face. Right. One of these days. One of these days and tour visitors, we are so grateful that you have selected Hawaii as your vacation destination, whether it be Maui, Oahu, Hawaii or Hawaii Island restaurants will always continue to focus on creating a safe and memorable dining experience for all of you, our guests with the yellow spirit. So with that, thank you everyone for joining to us today. We really appreciate it. Hello, everyone. Thank you, Cheryl. Thanks, Siobhan.