 Hi, I'm Jay Fredial, it's the four o'clock clock here on The Given Monday, exciting. Here on Think Tech, and we're doing Restaurants Hawaii. We want to follow the restaurant industry because we know how important it is, not only to our economy, but to our lifestyle and our culture here in Hawaii. We've been known to have great restaurants and a great diversity of restaurants. And a lot of people here, they need restaurants. They need them every day. It's the way they live and eat and all that and entertain themselves and do social connection and restaurants. So Cheryl, Cheryl, the executive director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association. Cheryl, can you tell us a little bit about the association so in case anybody forgot they reminded? And can you introduce Dave Douglas and Greg Ames to us today? Absolutely, the Hawaii Restaurant Association is the voice of Hawaii's restaurants. We represent 3,600 restaurant on all islands. And so I'm excited to introduce two gentlemen today. Greg Ames, as you said, is the vice president of Operations for TS Restaurants. And also Dave Douglas, who is the owner of Cafe Cafe Maui. Are you stuttering? You say Cafe, Cafe Maui or was it Cafe Maui or possibly Cafe, Cafe, Cafe Maui or Cafe, Cafe Maui Maui? Take it away, Dave. I will tell you, there's a little story behind the Cafe, Cafe and when we purchased we actually purchased the business and I did not like the name. I did not like it at all, but I got to looking at our traction and the social media and there was a little bit going on and Google said, well, if you want to change the name, you're gonna have to start everything from scratch. And having gone through Silicon Valley a few times and knowing what it's like and the challenges to get that traction and to develop a brand I decided to just stay with Cafe, Cafe. And now we love it. It's actually a name that it's easy to remember, that's for sure. And I think the stuttering part's pretty funny, but it is true, it's just Cafe, Cafe Maui. Funny enough, there's different places around the world that are called Cafe, Cafe and there's one fairly popular restaurant chain in Israel that is Cafe, Cafe. And so when we have Israelis come through they kind of, they're a little surprised that we don't have the same look and feel and brand and drink selection that they're Cafe, Cafe. Maybe you ought to consider that. Could be. Okay, well, what's your menu like? What's your operation like? What's your facilities like? Well, you know, Cafe, Cafe is really more of a coffee. We're big on coffee. And I'm the vice president of the Maui Coffee Association. So we really want to represent Maui. We feel like Maui Coffee is one of these underrepresented coffee islands of Hawaii and everyone knows Kona. And sometimes what I do is kind of do a comparison that Maui is the Sonoma of Kona because everyone's heard of Napa Valley but Sonoma is just right next door. And now people are really starting to hear about Sonoma and all the great wines that come out of there. And I think Maui is the same in the same position that we have amazingly great coffee. We've taken first place numerous times in competitions in the state of Hawaii and as great as Kona is, we feel like we're right up there. So- We're staying away from the Sonoma fires though. Right, yeah. We don't want any fires here. Yeah. Well, let's go to Greg. TS restaurants, talk about that. What kind of a restaurant is, how does it compare with coffee, coffee? And have you considered calling it TS, TS? No, we haven't decided to make that switch. You know, our name of our corporation is because of the Tebow and Saxton families and two really special men, Sandy Saxton and Rob Tebow. So messing with that name is just not a starter with us. You know, we are in a different boat from Dave. We have large businesses, large footprints and you know, we've been fortunate enough to be around for 43 years. So we're playing in a different sandbox, but we're definitely appreciative of what Dave's doing in his organization and promoting Maui and the local agriculture here. I think that's very special. So we're definitely supportive of what Dave's doing even though people may look at us as competitors. I don't see it that way. Well, how many restaurants do you have? We have four restaurants here on Maui. We have Kimo's, Leilani's, Dukeson, the Hulu Grill. I'm happy to say that we have three of the four open and the fourth will knock on every piece of wood I can find in my room opening in the next two days. We have 13 restaurants company-wide, eight here in Hawaii and then another five in California. So we've been very blessed to have a long-term relationship with a bunch of different communities. And I feel really fortunate to be a part of the organization and the community, and that's for sure. What's the secret sauce for TS? I mean, the restaurant business isn't easy, even in good times, you can fail any time. So how does TS do it? What's the secret sauce? How do they keep going? Jay, it's culture all day long. I think it was Peter Drucker, culture eats, what is it? Culture eats systems for breakfast, something like that. But our culture within our organization has always respected our employees, respected our communities, respected our vendors, really done all the right things for all the right reasons. I was very fortunate before Sandy Saxton's death for him to become a mentor and a friend of mine. And prior to TS, I owned my own restaurants and I sold them and I told him on many occasions, if I had been as smart as you, I'd still be in business for myself. But they figured out that secret sauce, Jay. Yeah, maybe the non-profit video business. Maybe, maybe, who knows? It doesn't make any money at all. I wanna be clear about that. So how are you doing? One of them you had to close because of COVID and now you're reopening. I mean, what's it been like for you? Frankly, Jay, we had to close all 13 restaurants. And the restaurants here on Maui have been shuttered for almost seven months. Wow. We've come back online, one restaurant at a time. It's sad to say, but we had to lay off 700 employees on the West Maui. Wow. And company-wide, it was over 2,000. So it was a major impact. We're opening back up and with the restrictions that are keeping our Island Health not trying to argue they aren't the right restrictions, but it has reduced volume of the restaurants. And when volume drops, you can't have the same amount of staff. So we're hiring back and we're hiring back as quickly as we can, but our need for the same staff and ability to bring them back in a way that allows us to have long-term longevity, it's just different now. And we're looking forward to a time where we can make that 700 become a thing again, and hopefully more. Wow, I'm sure you've aged in the past year. Why aren't you certain about that? This last seven months has been the most, as far as business goes, has been the most difficult seven months of my business life. Yeah, I understood. Well, I'm gonna come back to you and get into the details on that, but Dave, can you compare your operation with Greg's? It's smaller, obviously. Not at all, no comparison. No comparison, okay. We're a tiny little cafe, and I'll tell you, when we bought the place, it was really for basically my retirement out of Silicon Valley, I had been there for ever. Right after they invented the wheel is when I went to Silicon Valley. And so I've been there a long time. Right after the wheel, eh? Right after the wheel. You know, you look younger than your real age. What can I say? But this really, this was supposed to be my retirement, and funny enough, I had never run a small business. I've run fairly large businesses before, but nothing like a small outfit. I just jumped in with both feet, didn't know anything about coffee. But I'm passionate about anything I do. It doesn't matter if I'm laying sod, I get extremely passionate about it. Well, presumably you know about computers and hardware and software and the systems and the like. A little bit. Did you use that knowledge in order to improve this restaurant operation? 100%. I, if I had come into this without my 35 or whatever, however many years in Silicon Valley and starting from an engineer working my way through CEO, I would not have known what to do. The interesting thing about, I think about a small shop, any business actually, is that it doesn't matter how small it is, it needs the exact same systems and the exact same management that a large business has. And we have our standard operating procedures and we document every single little tiny thing. I didn't think I was going to need to do that until I was about three months into it. And it was like, oh my gosh, I'm good. Where's my HR people? And, but we literally, as soon as I realized it, we really needed to have documentation and standard operating procedures. Again, just went out at full tilt and started documenting everything. And so, and then also strategically, it's really made a huge difference. I think just having some business experience under my belt, at least for me, really helped me deal with and attack this COVID challenge that we had before us. And I may not have done everything. 2020 is a great way to look back on things with a 2020 vision is perfect, but I may not have done things exactly right, but one of the things I did do was just don't stand still. Evaluate, adapt and overcome, evaluate, adapt and overcome. And then just fall and catch fire. If you stop, you catch fire. Yeah, stop, you catch fire. Exactly right. Don't be here in the headlights. Don't be too shocked. Just recognize it for what it is. And then do you have to close or cut back? Yeah, we never closed. We stayed open every single day. And I'm a little stubborn in areas like that. It would have made more sense financially to shut down without a doubt. But I moved to Maui to be part of the community. And I realized right when things started going crazy, I remember on the 23rd of March, and it was scary. Nobody knew anything about this crazy virus. It could have been H1N1. No one knew anything, but the staff was awesome. And they said, hey, let's try and keep things going and see what we can do. And on March the 23rd, I drove down Front Street. It was completely empty. It was very apocalyptic. It felt like a bomb had just gone off. And there literally were no cars, no people on the street, no dogs running around, no cats, no birds. It was just crazy. It was so strange, but we stayed open. And then we stayed open another day. And then we were open a couple of two or three and people started finding us. You must have drank a lot of coffee. A little bit. What I really did though is I put signs everywhere and it's not very polo to have done that. And like in normal days, I would never ever disrespect Old Town Lahaina by putting up signage that's not part of what the county authorizes, but these were weird times. So we had to get the word out that we were open because people had no idea. They thought everything's closed. And so what happened was we became like a local watering hole and people would come in and they would get their coffee and they would be like, thank you, thank you, thank you for being open. Oh my gosh. And I realized early on that what we were providing was a sense of normalcy because things were really crazy the first three to four weeks. I mean- Like any changes? Scary. We did. At the cafe, we had it where people could come in and there was seating. We immediately moved everything to the front and we have this sliding door or accordion door. We opened that up and just moved everything to the very front and put away all of our patio seating and just put the X's down and had it where people could line up. We also implemented curdside pickup immediately. And then I did basically a 48 hour no sleep implementation of a mobile application. And then we connected that to a text service. So basically they could text the word coffee now to 21,000. And if they did that, they would get a link and then they could order their product and it would be ready to go and we would go out and do curbside pickup. So we did that within a matter of about seven to eight weeks. So those things are largely permanent, eh? Yeah, and it was funny. It was always on my list to do, but it seemed like it always fell to the back burner, fell to the back burner, fell to the back burner. And then when COVID hit, it was like, okay, front burner. And so we got it done and now we have this really great mobile app. Yeah. Okay, well, you know, you must have made some changes too, Greg, you know, over the closing and the opening. And now I'd like to know about the changes and how you see them unfolding or continuing going forward. Oh, absolutely. What we've realized as a company is we've had success for many, many years and we're so grateful for it. What COVID and the shutdowns has caused that we put everything into hyperspeed. So we've been looking at contactless payment for five years. Well, it's done. We've been looking at virtual menus and now it's done. There are so many things that would have, you know, the emphasis on takeout or on curbside service or a lot of those things that Dave was talking about, they were important and they were things that we wanted to move forward. But all of a sudden in six months we did what may have taken four or five. So, yes, there have been a lot of changes and they've happened very quickly. And I don't believe that our ability as a company to be nimble is going to go away. Being a nimble organization that can shift quickly when market conditions change is not going to go away for a company even that has 43 years of history and systems and all those other things. And it's, there's no way that anyone would have wanted this event to occur. But if you wanna look at creative destruction we've seen it in the last six months. And we as an industry are going to benefit from it as horrible as it's been. Yeah, well, you know, there's an interesting consciousness through this adversity. By the way, if you don't have a mobile app to help you promote and do business I can put you in touch with this programmer guy in Maui who might be able to write up that app in 48 hours or less. Maybe less. He may do it for a discounted price too. Whoop. I think I might know that guy. Oh my gosh. Well, let me get to the core point of the show and Cheryl, this is when you come in and explain it. We need to have incentives. We need to have incentives like special things to incentivize people to go out again because they're scared they don't go out and they're not gonna go out and great numbers until we've dealt with COVID and there's a success story about the vaccine which is not yet even though there's news. But what kind of things are we talking about? And then let's frame some questions to these guys about what they're doing and how we might incentivize our customers. Go ahead. Sure, so one of the things that we were talking about earlier Jay was the Hawaii restaurant card. And as you know, the Hawaii restaurant card was launched three weeks ago. So the stats three weeks ago was, I mean, I'm sorry, the stats as of Friday was basically $58 million has been loaded and $26 million has been spent. So how do businesses incentivize those people with that $500 card to come into the restaurant? And sorry, Jay, you didn't get one. I'm not going out just yet anyway, so. And one of the things that Greg and I were talking about is how do they get more bang for their dollar? Because these people are the unemployed people, right? And so one of the things Greg's going to talk about is how he really wanted them to maximize and get more value for their Hawaii restaurant card. So there's the Hawaii restaurant card, which is, as you know, the first time that's ever been implemented, something like this in Hawaii. Well, tell us how it works. What are the mechanics? How does the money get in there? How does it get spent and so forth? So the Hawaii restaurant card is CARES funds, and I want to give a big huge mahalo to Governor Ige, who allowed the restaurants to be able to be the beneficiary of the Hawaii restaurant card. So basically 160 million cards were sent out so far 105 have been, I mean, sorry, 116,000 have been sent out, 105 have been activated. So the CARES funds right now, what they're looking at is all of the CARES funds for the 58,000 has to be spent by the end of December. So instead of giving it out in other programs, the governor approved it going to the restaurant industry. So Greg has a program that he's gonna share about, which is how he's incentivizing these people with this $500 card that's CARES funds to now come to his restaurant. And then that way he can bring back his employees, he can now order from his suppliers, he can support the local farmers because as the restaurants get busier, now we can bring back that staff that Greg talked about laying off and now it trickles down to the farmers and the suppliers and all of our vendors and then now everybody now has more of a thriving industry, right? What a great segue, Greg. Why don't you talk about what you're doing with it? We see the restaurant card and the increased business in our industry is being forced multiplier from the restaurant to the fish monger to the agricultural sector. And so what we've decided to do as a company is that anyone that comes in and pays with a restaurant card, we're going to give them a 20% discount on their bill. So if you have a restaurant card for $500, we now have increased the impact on that for the local economy by 20%. And we're more than happy to take that, that small cut in order to continue to support not only the people that are unemployed and are in difficult situations, but also allow us to support the fishermen and the farmers. And I'm really excited about that program. I feel like it's just such a positive for our entire island. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that we have to do, we meaning the state, and for that matter, the federal government, we have to do this in order to grease the wheels, get the economy going again, incentivize people to come back and actually do more than they were doing before. For some people, I think this is going to increase their restaurant patronage even more than they were patronizing earlier. So Dave, are you doing this too? And can you also talk about what incentives you think would be appropriate to get things going at a higher rate than before even? Yeah, we're doing something, we actually have a 15% comma Ina that we've been holding in place no matter what. And funny enough, there were folks who might be stuck on Maui, they're not really comma Ina, but they may be stuck in quarantine and this was back, whatever. And I would say, oh, are you comma Ina? And then we say, comma huh? And I would say, well, you're here with us, you're riding the storm out, we're just gonna give you comma Ina. So it really got out that we just across the board was giving everybody 15% discount, didn't really matter. If they're on island and they're struggling with us and suffering and all that, we just gave that discount. And one of the things that, and this is a little different and I don't know if it was more of a karma or I'm not really sure exactly how I can articulate what I'm seeing with the restaurant card. The local folks that we've been serving since day one, they are so happy to come and spend money at the cafe and they're tipping like crazy. And I'm saying, you don't need to do that. You don't need, don't tip that much. They're like, no, no, Silas is awesome. Daisy's been great. Courtney and they'll just say, we wanna help, we wanna help. And so it's a little different. It's almost like the restaurant card is a way for the local folks to show us, we love you, thank you for staying open. So that's really meant a lot to me because I know over the past seven months we've made a huge connection with the local community much deeper than I had envisaged at all. I knew that we were gonna get a little closer and that's why I was there every single day. But that's happened too. So the other thing that we're kind of looking at doing is we knew that for some folks it was gonna be really difficult to get out. They may be quarantined. They may be in a position where they really don't want to get out. They may be vulnerable. And so we went out and bought a delivery tricycle and we started doing local delivery on the train. And I've done a ton. That's how I'm trying to keep my little hamster-shaped body in check. And- Some guys will do it and stay in shape. But this trike has really been kind of cool. And people see it, we went out and got it wrapped with our old La Jaina coffee brand. And they know we're Cafe Cafe and we're tooling around Old Town La Jaina in the flat section. Trying to get up La Jaina Luna up the hill is a little tough for us. But we're doing local delivery and that's kind of making a huge difference too. I hope you have a big sign on the bicycle that you can. We do. It's huge. I figured that, yeah. So what happened to Cheryl when the CARES money runs out? This is one tranche you got. That's wonderful. And you got to give credit to the governor for that. It was a creative move because he had to spend the money before the end of the year. Exactly. Or it would have reverted back to the federal government. So what happens after it runs out? Because this is obviously, according to these guys, it's been a great thing for facilitating and attracting people back to restaurants. But is it enough? Is it enough after January? Is it enough when there's nothing left in the car? So the car will expire on the 15th of December. And once the car expires, we're hoping then the holiday spending will kick in, right? Because people are out there shopping and everything else. We're concerned. Come January, February, as you know, normally that's when sales drop anyway. So we are very concerned. But we just want to give a shout out to the local people, Jay, because it's the local people. And I'm going to start just like Dave. The local people that kept our restaurants open when we had no tourism. It's our local people that kept Cafe Cafe and TS restaurants going when we had no tourism, Jay. So now they're coming back. And so we welcome everyone to come back again. Does she care or what? Sure. So Greg, what are you going to do after January? You got a replacement system in mind. What's the plan? When the carer's money, the crunch of money that went into the restaurant card runs out, you're going to have to think of something else. What is it going to be? If anything, I mean, as Cheryl suggested, when you get to that point, there'll be enough activity, enough action. You won't need anything else. But what do you have in mind to deal with that at the end of the card, so to speak? Well, you know, we're really hoping that one, the visitor industry continues to pick up. And two, we're continuing to hope that our high standards and high levels of communication with our guests about what we're doing to keep them safe is going to continue to drive traffic. You know, we've been so fortunate to have great loyalty and we're so thankful for our successes. However, we need to continue the responsible behavior and safety, safety, safety. So I feel very confident in Maui's ability to weather this. This is the most challenging time I think the Maui's ever had from a business perspective. But I feel like the organizations that are doing the right thing and that are doubling down on the initiatives that will make our visitors and our local clientele feel comfortable coming into our restaurants is going to be the key to making sure that we're all successful. This is hard and there's no way that you can get ahead of a global pandemic, you know, through business practices, but you can definitely make the best choices that you can. And pivot, like David referenced earlier, when things don't work out. So that's my hope is that we can all work through this as an island. You know, that just comes to mind. You know, in the late 19th century, Maui, Front Street, Lahina, whatnot, they had bubonic plague there and it terrified people. And although, you know, we don't have details exactly how that affected business and merchants and restaurants, I'm sure it did. And the point I would make and ask you about is that this isn't the last pandemic. This is likely to happen again. So what you learn here and now in the way of holding onto the business and connecting with people and somehow facilitating, you know, the restaurant industry, those lessons will be useful even after this pandemic has been suppressed. I hate to use the word suppress right now. It doesn't sound like a good word. What's about that? What are your comments about that? Absolutely. We are looking toward the next issue that may arise. It's a shame that we're in this position, but to not take advantage of this situation and figure out a way that we can better prepare ourselves for the next would just be such a missed opportunity. I hate to call it an opportunity even. Thank you before. But you're right, Jay. We are going to have future issues we need to deal with and we need to be prepared for the next one. I couldn't agree with you. Yeah, but at the end of the day, we need our restaurant industry. It is part of our lives. It's an extension of our own homes. So, Dave, what have you got to add to that? Well, I think one of the things as Greg was talking, looking after the car, you know, once the car is over, that was the very first thing I thought about when I heard that it was coming out. It's like, well, it's only gonna be for a short time. So we're using that card as an opportunity to really reach out and connect with the folks that are coming who may only been to the cafe a few times. And we're doing, in the industry, it will be called a deep CRM. So customer relationship management, it's not platform-based. It's not, you know, like going out to Salesforce and doing all these various high-tech platform. We just have a little note and pad and paper. And it's pretty typical for a coffee shop to know the person's name and their coffee. I mean, that's kind of basic. But what I have worked with the staff on and what we're actively doing is finding out what's happening in their everyday life. Their kid is just starting up school. They're, you know, they're heading over to wherever they, to catch, you know, some special waves that are coming in because of a soft swell. But we're really finding out about what's happening with, I'll just use these names random to protect the innocent. But what is Jay up to? What is Fred up to? What's Cindy doing? And really understanding what's happening in their life. And when they come back, hey, how did everything go to their side? Okay. And it's not, we really care. It's not that we're just manipulating. We really, truly care about what's happening. They want to be a part of their family or an extension of their home. It's like the British pub, you know? People are as likely to go to the pub as they are to eat in the kitchen. We're out of time. Cheryl, you get a closing word on this. And I hope you recovered from your emotional reaction by now. We really appreciate it. And now you can tell us how you really feel and close on the show. We want to thank Jay Fidel and Think Tech again, Hawaii. Again, you know, the restaurants really need our local people to support by going out and enjoying. We were looking forward to dining with you again. So we also want to welcome all of our visitors back. We are ready to welcome our visitors back, come back and visit us. And we look forward to dining with everyone again. Thank you, Cheryl Matsuoka, Greg Ames, Dave Douglas. What do you guys agree? Thank you so much and all the best in these difficult times. Aloha.