Beck: Hey everybody, good afternoon, good morning, good evening. Whatever time you happen to be tuning into the ChatGTM podcast, we're back again with another exciting episode. Chad Horn and Michael Beck coming to you live from Boston, Massachusetts and Tampa, Florida, sharing the good news, sharing the to the talk of technology, where the industry's going. And today we have one that I'm personally vibing with because one was an early customer of ours back when we first started working together, Chad. And so that's an exciting one. But
Chad: yeah.
Beck: yeah, give us a little teaser and then of course I'll do my read in. What do you know about our our our well actually I'm going way too fast? How are you day, Chad?
Chad: Well, everybody should know we did we did c talk earlier today, so but I'm still well and enjoying the beautiful Boston fall weather. So every if
Beck: So do you
Chad: you haven't been anybody, what you've heard is true. This is the best time of year and one of the best coolest places in the country.
Beck: I just have this perpetual thing in my imagination that it's always Charlie Brown music playing throughout your neighborhood as people walk and the autumn colors are changing and kids are jumping in piles of leaves.
Chad: Yes, all that all of that is happening.
Beck: Well, yeah, so before I I kick off the reading about today's guest, and and Chad, you really don't have to tee it up now that I think about it, 'cause you and I have both known this guy. but for the sake of the audience, we're we're heading to a special event in Napa with a company called Cut and Dry. And today our guest is is somebody that is one, just an awesome human being we've gotten to know over the last couple of years, and two, he helps run part of the show there and they're putting together something really special for their clients. So to
Chad: yeah.
Beck: the readin'. So here's something I've been thinking about. We spend an awful lot of time in this industry talking about technology. Faster transactions, better data, smarter platforms, more automation. And don't get me wrong, all that does matter. But somewhere along the way, I think we occasionally forget this this this industry wasn't built on software, it was built on relationships, on people who show up before sunrise, make impossible things happen, and somehow keep an entire food service ecosystem moving while the rest of us are still looking for our first cup of coffee. And that brings us to cut and dry. On the surface, cut and dry is a technology company helping, helping, helping to modernize the way food service distributors and restaurants do business. But spend a little time around the company and something else starts to emerge. They don't seem particularly interested in just building a platform and collecting customers. They're building community and they're putting real energy into celebrating the distributors, partners, and people who make this industry work. That philosophy has come into life with reserve, a gathering in Napa that brings together their community around relationships, ideas, and a shared vision for the future, which raises a pretty interesting question. In an interest in an industry obsessed with digital transformation, could the most important competitive advantage still be something fundamentally human? Joining us to explore that is Hans Shots from Cut and Dry. Hans, welcome to the chat GTM podcast. I have to remember how to put them on stage. Show and session da da da da da da Ooh he's got the royal wave. Have
Chad: Well command.
Beck: you actually sat on top of a float? You got that down.
Hans: I may or may not have. don't don't go looking at my history to see where and why. That's right, that's right. No, it was before
Beck: We are now looking up immediate history chad.
Hans: social media was a thing. I've been doing
Chad: Ha ha ha.
Beck: Thank God all of our pictures living in what's that? I
Hans: this for a minute. So you know I I had history I have history before I could get in trouble, right?
Beck: l Yeah, I was I was saying thank God all of our our our history lives in probably s an aluminum tin somewhere filed away in a in a drawer that nobody's gonna find except our kids when they rifle through places they shouldn't go. That that is the lesson.
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Beck: so Hans, how you doing today?
Hans: Great. I'm great. Great to see both of guys. super excited to rub elbows making this the event you mentioned and making it just a a masterpiece.
Beck: Yeah, you guys you guys have pulled out all the stops, knowing what I know from behind the scenes and having seen some of the the content and the meetings and the and the and the people you're gonna bring to the table. This is gonna be hands down one of the best events I think I'll have attended this year for for this kind of thing. So, well let's let's get going. I know we lost a little time getting ready here, but you know, so Hans, for somebody who's hearing about cut and dry for the first time. What exactly do you do? Who do you serve? And what was broken in the food service dis in food service distribution that made this company necessary?
Hans: Yeah, this is great, great. Lot of lot of questions unpacked, a lot of points unpacking that question. It's a good one.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: So cut and dry, just in the simple description. We are a unified digital e-commerce platform that if you think about all the different things that can happen that you just borrow from our friends in retail, right? Amazon, Nike, Harley Davidson, Coco Chanel, Nordstroms, when you go look for something, it's very easy to s seek, search and find, right? Because there's there's incredible depth in the product specificity and definitions. Now you step over into food service and it's like blah, you know, it's it's it's
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Hans: not even a farmer's market, it's more like a flea market.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: And so it's a lot of disparate technology, a lot of disparate information, systems don't speak. One item from I just love I'm not picking on Tyson because they're a great company, but one item they make a four-ounce breaded chicken tender. whole muscle
Beck: Yep.
Hans: in a hundred distributors could literally be called a hundred different things off of that
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: that exact same SKU. So you think about an industry, how on earth can you have any kind of product community information of any kind when it's so disparate and fractured and broken, right? So the the so what cut and dry does is it it brings order to that chaos, right? That's a good way to put it.
Beck: Yeah, yeah.
Hans: And the whole company was built on structuring data. The AQ when the when the group built Cisco Digital Labs and Cisco Shop and were underneath that giant hood, the biggest hood in the industry, they saw there too, broken, broken information, broken SKU data. How do we how do we get all this through the system? Then how do we do really cool things with product information for the operator? and we right now we can't. It's a it's it's just Things don't go in there. So they're not stacked, they're not defined. We built this thing called Food Service product tech taxonomy, created this five levels of detail, kind of like in retail. So when you go look for a pair of green trail running shoes, you're not gonna get 500 choices, you're probably gonna get about a dozen, right? And some will be greenish or have a green stripe, but it'll all be a trail running shoe, it's got a harder bottom, and it'll list all the different companies that make them, and they'll have some form of green. So it brings that giant search down to You know, then you can quickly sort through and pick what you want. So we've brought that to food service. All right. We structured all that problem. We have two two point three million items structured. I'm getting a little tactical and a little technical right out of the gate, but it is the acorn or it is the the the the the the the genius that runs our platform. And we're the only ones that have that by the way. We got great competitors, friends with all of them, love the people, but we all built our engines a little different. So Why does that matter? And the reason why it matters we can build off this going forward is that it enables our our enterprise, that that unified digital e-commerce platform to do amazing things because that four-ounce breaded whole muscle Tyson chicken tender is the same description in every single distributor that works with us because we own we own that. Now think about all the things that can follow that, how we can promote, how we can build, the data sets. AI today, you know, you can't go to the bathroom without somebody talking to me about AI. AI only works if you have good structured data, right? You got
Beck: percent.
Hans: a disparate mess, you have all kinds of stuff that comes out and none of it's good.
Beck: Chat.
Chad: Yeah, Hans, I I want to ask you about this idea of inevitability because what it's of course, of course, eventually, right, this industry is going to get to benefit from the modern e-commerce experience that consumers do and other industries have enjoyed for a while. But another thing that was inevitable, I just read about the other day, open table. Of course, at some point in time, we were gonna get the ability to make reservations at restaurants on our computer devices, but They almost failed, right? So at the end of the day, somebody and a team has to do the thing, build the inevitable. So I'm curious how you guys think about that. Like you guys have to show up every day, do your thing, and what you're building, of course it's gonna happen eventually.
Hans: Well, I think it's interesting. It's a great question, Chad. Thank you. You you kinda threw me a nice softball. I appreciate that. You
Beck: Ha ha.
Chad: Ha ha ha.
Hans: go to these events, you guys go to a lot of them. I go to a lot of them. We see
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: each other at a lot of them. We go to some different ones. The the the future of the future of everybody talks about the future of. Cool. But what's happening right now? It is happening right now. It's not a future thing. It's not a future
Beck: Right.
Hans: side. It's not a well one week and maybe we and this could and this should and all. It's right now. And I think that's what, you know, the operator side of the business gets a pretty good immersion into what's happening because they have to. That's how they operate. They got a they got a f their own Frankenstack, right? And in food service, it's like, you know, you got these wonderful companies, legacy ownership groups, four, five, some six generations. Great, great Grandpa was selling chickens out of the backyard, and then it became this, and then it became that. Then now they're a $350 million regional family-owned food distributor that that that owns that part of the market, even though they've got the big guy Cisco and Young Foods and whatever in there. But they have that really nice personal touch relationship and they're part of the community. And and so, but it's like, well, we've been doing it like this for a long time. So we have to d when you take that question you're asking Is the are we talking future state things or is cut and dry building what has to happen right now? And the answer is yes. And what what's on the front side of what people see even right now with all the different things that we've got going on? And we're gonna pull the curtain back on a couple of things at our at our event in Napa in a week and a half. the the the there is so much coming behind it, and it's real time. It's happening right now, and it it will continue to bend that arc of how things are done. And the most important thing is that, well, we gotta have people like cut and dry and you know our partners that give us the resources that we can do what we do to build all this, then we have to have a marketplace say, I wanna hear more from you guys, I wanna understand this better. What do you can if this is gonna create value creation for me without greatly expanding my expense model, which
Beck: Hmm.
Hans: you know, districters costs a lot to run those things, right? they're they're huge capital, those warehouses are full of stuff that sits on a shelf, doesn't make a pit. Well it doesn't make you know, they say nothing's not nothing happens till the case is sold, so let's just hang our hat on that for now. So they've got to move that product out. So there's a huge capex. So anything we can do that can help bring the capex down, reduce expenses while speeding up trade, creating creating additional cases and gross margin, it's a huge win. And that's everything we do focuses on those outcomes.
Beck: So, Hans, let's talk a little bit about the distributors' reality, right? Do you have independent and regional distributors that face a that are really facing you know some enormous pressure from larger competitors, right? Changing customer expectations and the cost of modernization. So, where does cut and dry create the most meaningful competitive advantage for your clients and your partners?
Hans: great question. You guys, you guys did your homework. Thank you. well there's a couple
Beck: Well we're supposed to.
Hans: core areas. Of course you are. There's a couple of key areas. I'm just giving you some props while people, you know, like, that's pretty smart.
Beck: Yeah, yeah.
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: The number one is on just managing the sales cycle, customer order entry, input, customer act acquisition, margin growth. minimizing loss, all all of that is a product what falls out of a a really dynamic unified digital e commerce platform, right? 'Cause you get visibility. Again, we got all the data, it's all structured, so we see everything, right? And it's real time.
Beck: Right.
Hans: And so We just recently it's in beta right now, but we're we're t we're gonna bot to kick it out of the beta barn release because we have all this data and it's structured and clean, we can we can s we the whole string's connected, right? If there's not breaks
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Hans: in the string, it's if you want to use that old thing that we learned when we were kids. And so we can give the distributor and we have a tool called Yes Chef AI. We're a big AI company. We were using AI a decade ago before anybody, I mean it was talked about in movies. When it was like creepy, you know, like you know, terminating
Beck: Right.
Hans: and that. It it was the core of how we built cut and dry. So you're gonna see some of that at the event. We're gonna we're gonna reintroduce one of our original components of our company and let the industry know that, hey, we've been doing this all along and here's why it matters to you, and here's what it's doing for you. But back to this question: a distributor, purchasing operations, finance, sales, all the way down to sales we can go in and Ask this AI agent questions about where am I trending? What what did I what what did I not sell a week ago? What did I not sell this week that I sold a week ago? In 15 seconds, you have an answer. Where do you
Beck: Mm.
Hans: see trends with customers buying less over the last 30 days that I need to go in and shore up? And any question that comes out of that data, which we have all of it, in 15 or 20 seconds you have an answer. Think about that. The hardest thing in sales is looking forward. Everything's a lag lag indicator. You didn't get the shrimp this week. hey, Michael, you didn't buy you blah blah blah. You then it's everything's reactionary. So this
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: this so we're we're helping bend that. And then when you bring in the ability for manufacturers to communicate right through those distributors platform and do those operators through those things called order guides where they place orders
Beck: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Hans: and promote products and put banner ads and sponsor ads and even put put financial incentives right on the items when when Hans's special is placed in an order, I see it. Like it that's influencing me to buy that item instead of that item. I click on it and it's real it's like gamification. It hits the the digital wallet, end of every order.
Beck: Right.
Hans: Chad, you earned thirty dollars and fifty cents in your from your order today. It's in your digital wallet, it's right. And it's so it just reinforces that. So some people say, it sounds like a GPO. It does sound like one, but it's not because real time, it's right now and it's available the moment that the order is placed. So it's it's very different. And the operator gets to see what it is. So there's there's dynamics, there's big, big, big water running deep under the industry that you just see the ripples every now and again on the surface, but the water's
Beck: Mm-hmm.
Hans: slowing hard. And that the the these massive growth in technology and how it's driving how things get done. Distributors buy products, their warehouse products, they take orders for products, they pick products, they deliver products, they collect on the product, right? So you can boil it down to some really basic things. But there's there's a lot of key pieces in that that makes it super powerful, very difficult, declining or growing. And so we're trying to remove friction, provide simplicity. Nobody needs complexity on top of complexity, right? No. So reduce
Beck: No, no.
Hans: the complexity, simplify the process, make it very clear and easy, and really easy to ask questions to understand, so that that those amazing independent distributors and I I worked for one for years and years and ye for decades and I and I know hundreds of distributors around the country and I I know how hard they work. And listen, I have nothing against Cisco US Foods, Pidgeot, nothing at all. Big companies,
Beck: Yeah, yeah.
Hans: good at what they do, but they're behemoths, right? And and cut and dry was built to help the independent compete and in many, many, many different ways. So I don't know if I answered your question, Hadra I answered your question, but it's
Beck: I think it did. It definitely makes me think about Portlandian. Is it local? because you can work with those local distributors. But one last one one follow up question before I hand it off to Chad on this, because thinking about back office and how it interacts with just dist distributors, right? We send out the order, that order goes out to the distributor, the distributor, if it's a bigger guy, sends a you know, order received, right? There's telemetry, there's an ASN or advanced shipping notice that's created. That order's been picked, that order's in transit, that order is on your way to your doorstep. Are you able to and I hope I don't get us in deep water here asking this question, are you able to provide that same level of telemetry for your district distribution partners that are using cut and dry?
Hans: Yeah, it's another that that question does have a little depth to it. And so we'll we'll put our flippers and snorkel on. But we recently made an ac acquisition, Enterprise Cafe, maybe a company you've never heard of before. Friend of mine, I've known the founder CEO for many, many years. And we were doing some partner work together, then we're like, hey, that would be really cool if we could have and it's he'll kill me for saying this, but it's this really cool software set. and that fits that helps distributors manage that cycle. So you've got inbound POs, then the product sits in the warehouse and you have outbound invoices. Think about it like that, right? Inbound stay a storage outbound. So there's a purchase cycle and a sales cycle. A lot happens between those two cycles. And the purchase cycle you know the the all these independents, most of them belong to a buying group like a Unipro or Frosty Acres or Goldbond, three great companies. And they go out and as an aggregate say, Okay, if Chad, Michael and Hans all had our distribution companies and I we're all each two hundred million dollars, we're gonna have a heck of a time competing against a eighty eighty billion dollar behemoth like Cisco. But if we pool together, right, you know that you know the drill. And so
Beck: Yes. Buying power. Yep.
Hans: They so they on the buy-side, there's all kinds of buy-side deals that come from those manufacturers. How do you manage that? How does that sit inside when you have the storage part, which is a horrible word for the warehousing side of it? But when you how do you manage this this those promotional deals and cost and and you know all that? margin component, then you settle sales price, then you go sell it. Then on the sales side, you may have deviations, rebates, and coupons and one-offs and all these other things. There's a lot going on. So Enterprise Cafe manages that whole piece. Beautiful, beautiful company that Steve Schautzer
Beck: Nice.
Hans: built. So we acquired Enterprise Cafe. We're embedding it into cut and dry. Gives all of our distributors now clarity and simplicity, removing friction and ambiguity. and really difficult way to see did
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: I did we connect? Did we are we re are we billing back? Is this stuff happening? And and then it how when that item comes in and it's got these deals on it, they're properly, properly identified, they go in the system, they get they get recognized in the system right way, the right margin gets set, the right sell price goes out. If it's a manufacturer bill back, the billback's done correctly correctly in time. And now this clunky flywheel starts spinning faster
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: and getting bigger, right? Because it enables those distributors now, it touches some buttons to manage a process that was very, very difficult, labor intensive, and ripe with errors and mistakes, created credits and clawbacks to manufactur all these bad things like weeping and gnashing of teeth, like the old testament.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: And so this this this system that Enterprise Cafe built We're embedding that into cut and dry and then we're leaving enterprise cafes a standalone because they've got customers that work with our competitor, but we're giving them some agentic AI stuff that make what they do even better, faster, stronger, less friction, faster flywheel. So all those things are happening. That's just one example to the
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: question that you asked that how we're focused on going into the you know this this the distributor community, there are single with three flywheels, there are single most important flywheel that spins in the middle. And the more we can do to lift them up, accelerate their process, reduce the complexity, give them tools, train them on those tools, teach them how they work so they can focus more on the for the non-salespeople on the buy side and promotions getting that done right, and the salespeople, hey, how do I go out and and I use a term that gives me shivers because that we've been using it for decades. Mark, you just need to be a consultant for your customers. Well, what the hell does that mean? I have to take orders, right? And how am I supposed to be a consultant when I have forty-seven accounts and I'm like running from one
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Hans: so all
Beck: Right.
Hans: those things all those things are changing. Sales reps have a hard time with that. I get it. I used to be a sales rep back in the eighties. but I'm happy to have a system take the order so I can go in and say and do what I do and now become one of your one of your members of your board. You
Beck: Mm.
Hans: know, you're a member of your of your EBITDA, a a a proponent of your growth and and looking at the business that way. So it's a trend it is a transition. It's a mental transition, it's a strategic transition, it's an activity transition, but all that's happening. Early adopters are are bending the curve.
Beck: Love it. I a and I love it. I love hearing that there's the communication layer in there 'cause like literally getting ready for your event, Chad and I just bought a new booth, right? And our agenda and worry was, well, they're not gonna tell us when it's ready or when it's gonna get there or when it's gonna arrive. And fear, uncertainty, and doubt is the is is one of the most painful things you have in any business if you don't wanna what's happening next. And I love that you're creating that telemetry for your for your users. Chad.
Hans: Yeah.
Chad: So, Hans, I learned today that you guys have been doing AI longer than AI's been a thing. and and you should
Hans: Yeah, he's been around a long time, but you're right. Yeah.
Chad: you shared that something I find to be very, very true, which is clean structured data is unlocks all kinds of possibilities with what you can do with AI. So I'm curious, since you guys already have so many things you could do and the potential of what you could do with AI on top of your data. What's your guys' North Star for determining what gets built or what gets built next? Because everybody's got finite resources.
Hans: It's you a hundred percent correct on that. So we have a couple different ways that we build out our roadmap. One is we ask a lot of questions with our distributor partners. They give us a lot of feedback. Matter of fact, we're starting a council. And it's in the in the process of being developed right now, ten, eleven, twelve, great independent distributors, different, some broad lines, some specialty, some large multi multi-location produce, things like that. So we're getting all sides of the cube, right? We can see all the different dimensions. They're they're the same, but they're different, right? There's just nuance between those things. And so to provide feedback. And then when we're thinking of stuff, we get all excited internally and we run and we build this thing, we're like, da people are like, yeah, we don't want that. You know, so we have to be really smart about that because it's resource allocation, because nobody has unlimited resources. I mean Gentic AI, maybe some of those guys are doing their the stuff they're doing that we all read about and look at their look at
Beck: Ha ha ha.
Hans: their spend. It's mind boggling, gr you know, it's larger than the the a gross domestic product of you know small countries but so we we really lean into that so we get a lot of feedback number one number two we have really smart guys yeah our three co-founders Kevin Woo Jim O'Connor and Mani Calarusio they've been together twenty something years they've done a bunch of different things together they've had great success they've had some big exits they built one of the first cloud based point of sys point of sale systems called Cake probably heard of it. Cisco bought it
Chad: yeah.
Hans: That's how they met him and said, Hey, you guys are really freaking smart. This is a great system. Can you come help and digitize our company? Because we're an analog company. So that's really what all this is about. Is we live in an analog space and food service because I don't have anything on my desk. Okay, so maybe this loop bomb. Nope, that was a g that was a giveaway. But in retail, they got that little thing called a UPC code, right? So every time you You buy something, a gazillion people know who you were, where you bought it, what you paid for, what day it was, what the weather was, have you bought it before? When did you buy it last night? All that information, right? In food service, nobody has a freaking clue. And so that data is broken. Back to your question about structure, disparate. I mean, you've got Big companies like data essentials and technology, technomics, and NPD and Tastewise and others, menu data, all trying to go scrape and what's the operator doing, and what's this and that and the other, and but nobody has all the They
Beck: Right.
Hans: don't have the invoice data. So all the rest of the stuff, you make a lot of assumptions and guesses. You may say this is trending and this is on menus and this, that, and the other, but which is great for certain parts of the industry. Not great for the distributor, it doesn't really help them. So maybe we have an idea of what we need to bring in the stock, but our customers aren't asking for it, we're not gonna bring it in because we got a problem in the warehouse. We have no slots. So there's some really hardcore mechanics here that drive how this industry moves, right? And so so part of it is our smart guys, they're you know, our CEO is traveling in Europe right now, he's overseas. He's he's meeting with people with really cutting edge companies like And he's picking up ideas and seeing things that maybe we need to do some course correction on or we need to add this or delete that or whatever. He's constantly out looking at stuff. And so we've got we've got a very dynamic internal group. We have we have we're we're working on creating an even greater relationship, especially with those distributor partners that like they like to lean in, right? Not everybody does. That's okay. In in all customer relationships. Some are some are very emotional, some are very strategic, some are very transactional, some are just tactical. You know, you got all kinds of different relationships based on the company and their culture. And we've got enough we've got a a lot of amazing people we work with, and they want to tell us. We saw this, we heard this, we're thinking about this, we struggle with this. Wouldn't it be cool if you could do that? You know, those kind of things. So we're internalizing that and that And the third leg of that stool is we have
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: people like like you guys, like Wiggs at Starfish, that's F Fizma tr software program, and
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: on and on and on. They're like, You guys ever thought about integrating BBB? You know, like we're like, we have. This is interesting, let's talk some more. So we
Beck: Right.
Hans: can talk just like our conf our relationship with Enterprise Cafe, we ended up acquiring them. I don't know who had a handle with that, but we ended up acquiring them. And and brought some amazing capabilities into our company that'll be great for our our customers. Giving them some more capabilities would be great for the customers that aren't inside of cut and dry that work with other people through Enterprise Cafe. So it's three really big ways that that we do that. And they're they're one's not more important than the other. And I think that this collaboration with our existing partners and and even some potential ones, it it has and will continue to to deliver a lot of fruit because if you think about it, if Chad's distributing comes up with this great idea and we create it, goes on a roadmap, we create it, we do some we play with it in the in the in the sandbox with you, and then we deploy it. And then 75 other distributors are like, why weren't you doing this? This is amazing, right?
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: B because you live in that world and and you know, again, nuance is really important. We're not a distribution company. Several of us came out of distribution. We're tech company. We're
Beck: Bye.
Hans: an AI AI company. We're an innovation company. We're a problem solving company. We are a hey, how do we reduce friction and and increase speed company? So so all those little things matter.
Beck: So so Hans, when we first met, you had approached I'm not sure how we were approached, we ended up doing some some commerce around cut and dry, said we want to do a help our help our partners have a better presence. Right. In fact, we're going to go ahead and we're gonna give you guys your own website that we'll have made for you at our expense. that that was was created for your your your your clientele that had not so great digital storefronts, right? That was my first my first example. It
Hans: Yeah, that was a minute ago.
Beck: yeah. And then we went to
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Beck: the manufacturer's ball, the food manufacturers ball in in in Chicago. And you guys came with a truckload of shoes that you were giving to various partners and friends and you you made sure in advance you you were able to get everybody's foot size down and and get them all these shoes, right? And so here's what I want to under understand, because I think you have a strong community philosophy here that that is pervasive across what cut and dry is. And so my my question is, because cut and dry seems to invest an unusual amount of energy in its community, where did that philosophy or originate and why is it so important to the company's identity? Because it it's knitted. Like this event in in Napa even, right? You don't have to do all this.
Hans: Yeah. No. So I think that you know, we're seven year old company, six and a half, seven year old company, and again I told you a bunch of very, very smart people from the technology side of the world, but that had experience in food service at a very granular level working with with cake building cake point of sale system for operators and then getting in and doing the project they did at Cisco Foods. you know, they're again under the hood of the biggest the biggest player in the market. Like don't
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: like love hate whatever, it doesn't matter. They have a big
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: machine, right? You learn a lot from looking at big machines.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: So I think what the company had to learn through a little trial and error is that A, this is a freaking relationship first industry on the food service side. Period. Hard stop. B relationships first, business second. Right? You don't go get business and then build a relationship.
Beck: Right.
Hans: Probably not in many industries. We're we we we need up on a lot of industries, right? We're not just in food service. There's a lot of moving parts to that. And C if that's the case, how do you build, and I love your word community, it's a big word for me. How do you build that community? How do you storytell?
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: How do you get out in front? And honestly, I don't think we've done as good a job as we need to and as I want us to. And and because we're tech first company. We we have a hundred and fifty, sixty people, whatever the number is, it it it varies, hundred and forty-five, whatever the number is. 12 of those people on sales and marketing. All the rest are in engineering, development, onboarding. Now you think about that. Okay?
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: Small but mighty. But we also know that we've got to do, we've got to take things up a level and you know, and tip my hat to our biggest competitor. They've got 30-something people just in sales. And so we made the decision, and as a core part of what Got cut and dry where it is today, but it's even a more important part that's gonna take us to the next level is that we're gonna have the best operating system, the best machine that can be, and we're gonna invest time, energy, and resources into that. Now, would we have done some things differently a few years ago? Of course, but it's easy to look backwards, right? So we're
Beck: Right, right.
Hans: in today, we're living it today, we've got our arms around today, thinking about tomorrow, thinking about the day next week. And so coming
Beck: Right.
Hans: back to your question, so we go to a lot of events. we we, you know, when when what when I was fortunate enough almost two years ago to join Cut and Dry, I was like, Hans, what do you think? And I'm like, hey, you gotta show up. Cause if you're not on the playground, you don't get called to play. And so you gotta be on the playground, you gotta show up, and then you gotta lean in. You can't just stand in the corner. You can. You'll be the last person called to join the team. Sorry, I'm using silly childhood metaphors,
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: but everybody gets it, right? And so you gotta show up, gotta lean in, and then hey, you gotta You know, I we just had I run a board for a hotel restaurant school for one of the Arizona universities, and we had the CEO of Nothing Bunt Cakes come speak. He got an award at RLC, you were probably there, you saw it. Dolph, great guy. We got to know him. And we invited I'm the chairman of the board for the for that for the hotel restaurant school there. I've been on the board for about a decade. And I loved his message. He said, Everything I do in my professional career, I do to bring joy. I ran Top golf. I ran Dave and Busters. I ran Lucky Strike. I'm now running nothing but Kinks. I have a choice where I work. And they're all piggy piggybacks. But
Beck: Right.
Hans: I have a lot of choices where I go do stuff. I'm not going to do a job where I can't bring joy to people. All those concepts
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: did. Now, early in my career, I was gone that way, but I had to figure it out and I had to create my own North Star. So I loved it. And he spoke to our board, then he spoke to our students at night, and I had a chance to take them to dinner the night before. Fabulous guy. And the Dolph Burrow and Harvard guy. you would never know it. And so you take that. You take that, and I always tell the students in this industry, you have to have a heart of hospitality. You don't have to be born with it, but you have to create it because you don't have that heart for hospitality, you're gonna be miserable. It's the same for us.
Beck: Yeah.
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: Right? It really is. We gotta love people, we gotta love helping them, we gotta love this business, we gotta sort through all the weird things that happen and this. Credit's not going through, this go you know, all this stuff.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: Everything's being done to service the customer. We service the distributor, they service the operator, we help the manufacturer, help the distributor,
Beck: Right.
Hans: help the operator. Those are the three flywheels, distributor, manufacturer, operator. So all the stuff we do focuses on that. So when we build we can't just be a technology company. When we open a door, push out some stuff and close it, you know, close it, right? We have to be in the community, we have to be doing so I'm this you give me a short question, I'm making a long answer. But the the
Beck: It's okay.
Hans: the like eureka moment for us was I was with our our CEO. I got invited to meet the board after they had a board meeting they had dinner one night back in November, almost a year ago. And I had the chance to go meet meet most of the board at dinner with with Monty. and the next day we were going to do we had something we had to go do, and he's like, he's driving us. Well, he actually wasn't driving us, the Tesla was driving us. And he's
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: like, you know, I want to do. I want to do a food service event, but we don't want to do it like what everything else is. Because all these things are nothing wrong with them. They all serve a purpose.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: But you go in, you're in a room, and there's exhibit halls, and it's like, I want to do the Davos of food service.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: I'm like, Money, we can do that. Tell me more. So he dropped some ideas and said, and so we we played around with this for a few months. He then he came back to me, he says, the board loves it, let's go do it. I was planning it for June of 27, and he's like, no, no, we gotta do it this year. So You know, timelines got crushed and which is which you know from the backside of all this. But that's part why we wanted to do this event the way we're doing it, and we may have time to talk about it, but we want it to be highly curative. We don't want it to be like other things that go on in the industry. It's not an Ask
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: thing. Everything in the room doesn't have somebody's name on it. Not that we don't have great partners helping us put this on, but our intent is that we're gonna drop some information that's not being shared anywhere. Number one. We're gonna talk about some of that roadmap stuff with cut and giant. It's not a sales thing. It's not, you know, no, if you go to page two, you can see when you know the input button that's in green. None of that stuff. so we're gonna draw and then we're gonna we're gonna launch a couple new things that people there are gonna see it for the first time. And and then we're then we're creating this country club environment where it's pretty intense in the mornings, fabulous in the afternoons, incredible in the evenings for the specific intent of building. relationships, right? Hey, let's get to know each other. Yes. Bring your bring your plus one, boyfriend,
Beck: Yeah. And you built it to where they want to bring their spouse or significant other too. Yeah.
Hans: girlfriend, husband, wife, you know, whatever that is. And
Chad: Napa Valley in October. I've heard it's nice.
Beck: There's there's worse places to be. I imagine a lot of golden hour shots over the vineyard vineyards. Yeah. Yep.
Hans: And we got some fabu fabulous things planned. And you know, it will be perfect, of course not. Would it be amazing? Absolutely. And we're we're very stoked. We're very stoked.
Beck: Beautiful. Beautiful. Chad, one more question before we have to hit rapid fire and and and get on.
Chad: So yeah, I mean just one more thing on reserve. so who exactly is it for? Because you know, people might make assumptions based on the Davos of food manufacturing and and what like what's one thing you'd want them leaving saying, I got this from reserve that I've never gotten from another event?
Beck: Boom.
Hans: I'm gonna take some liberties with your question. So again, our our core flywheel, our number one focus is distributors. So the majority of attendees are distributors, and we're bringing them in, paying for everything, butting them up, all the events mills, everything. They all they had to do is say, Yes, I'd like to come, and then we took care of rest for the most part. And so they're there our core constituencies. Now we have some great forward forward-thinking manufacturers that want partner in this. We have some other people that are Not traditional people in the industry. as a matter of fact, quite untraditional. They're gonna have some roles in dropping some some really cool things on robotic automation and food biotech, and I mean just stuff that that I think that our audience is gonna go, damn.
Beck: Mm.
Chad: Okay.
Hans: this is coming. It's not a future, it's happening right now. And then we're gonna reveal a couple things that we're working on that are gonna be big value creators for our partners. Focusing first on the distributor, second on those manufacturers. When the the entity that gets to get all the goodwill resources from all that is the operator, and the independents need help. And we again we focus on independence. Our distributors are 90-95% independent based. Not all restaurants. It's all kinds of independent things, right? Lodges, camps, charter schools, private schools, casinos, country clubs, all that stuff. And you'll never hear me use the word mom and pop, because I think it's very demeaning. And most of the independents I know, they are unbelievable, fantastic operators, whether they have one or two or three locations, or they're in a big metro market or on a medium or might whatever, what they do day in and day out is nothing short of remarkable. And and so they're gonna leave going, these guys pulled it off. I felt honored, special. All these little details, I'm in the distribution business. We don't get invited to things like this. Yes, they do some trips with their buying groups and stuff, but that's not what this is, right? Because they have to
Beck: Sure. Right.
Hans: earn their way. And so, and little things that they thought about. Number one, number two, what a great environment. And I made some I'm I increased my network. I made real contacts that'll be meaningful on a personal level and a professional level going forward. And number three, I learned some stuff that. I A didn't know, B or didn't understand. And I'm either super excited or terrified, whatever it is, not terrified in a like I'm gonna go jump off a bridge, but how do we now understanding
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: that this is what's happening, how do we incorporate that in our strategic thinking going forward? Okay.
Beck: Amazing.
Hans: So and I there's nowhere I go where I got what I got here. And bravo, cut and dry. We are, if we weren't already, we're an evangelist and we're gonna be I You know, a a bullhorn for your company and the what you're trying to do.
Beck: Love it. And then they might bring home back a case of some wonderful vintage as they go through the wineries out there, too, I imagine. Love it. All right. So
Hans: Yeah. All that too. Yeah. By design.
Beck: we get we have a short amount of time for our rapid fire session we like to do. It's seven questions, first instinct, no corporate answers. Ready? Technology
Chad: Mm.
Beck: or relationships. You can only keep one as your competitive advantage. Which one wins?
Hans: Technology relationship.
Beck: Tirect technology or relationships?
Hans: you gotta have an ERP system to run your business.
Beck: Technology. All right. The distribu distributor superpower. If you could give every independent food service distributor one superpower tomorrow, what would it be?
Hans: The ability to grow their business without having to plant trees.
Beck: Love it. All right. Napa Valley or Vegas. You have to host every cut and dry community event in one place for the next decade. I'm guessing I know the answer. Which are you choosing?
Hans: Would not be Vegas.
Beck: Okay. I I'm with ya. I
Chad: Ha ha ha.
Beck: the industry myth. What's one thing Silicon Valley consistently gets wrong about food service distribution?
Hans: That it's a bunch of hillbillies that don't know what they're doing.
Beck: Boom. And your most underrated asset, what's more valuable? A brilliant product engineer or a distributor who's been building customer relationships for 30 years?
Hans: That's a well you you got all
Beck: Coss up.
Hans: of them have been building relationships, so that's like a gimme. So
Beck: Okay.
Hans: bringing the technology into them so that they can perform better, faster, less friction would be the be that super be that superpower. Yeah.
Beck: Beautiful. One dinner guest. You can only invite any you can invite any business leader, living or dead, to a private dinner with your distributor community. Who gets the invitation? okay. And finish this sentence. The future of food service distribution belongs to companies that blank.
Hans: Emb embrace a digital unified e commerce platform.
Beck: Boom, nailed it. Mic dropped by Mr. Hans. All right. Well,
Hans: Yeah.
Beck: we're going to wrap up. I know you got meetings to get to. You've already told you have a full day today. We're so appreciative of you. one, thinking of us to be part of your event and help support that. And two, being our friend in the industry. Every time I see you, I get a smile on my face. I'm not sure why. It always feels like you know a little secret that nobody else knows. but to our audience and community and the people that tuned in today, thank you so much for joining us. If you are a restaurant and you need To understand where to buy buy product, you probably want to reach out to cut and dry. If you're a manufacturer distributor, you probably wanna reach out to cut and dry to see if you can do a better job and remove that friction from your interactions with your restaurants and help move more product as well. But from what I know about the company, which I've known now for about three years, I they operate with integrity, they operate with extreme amounts of kindness and care. They they go over the over the over the top. To show how much they care about their partners is demonstrated by a couple of things we talked about here. And those are the only things that I've encountered. But you know, I highly recommend you give them a call if you're if some of these things are intriguing you, at least to find out a little bit more. But for now, it's Hun Shots, Chad Horn, Michael Beck, signing off with the Chat GTM podcast. And as always, and hence demonstrated this when he called us up and said, Hey, I've got an idea for something. Random acts of kindness, sprinkle that stuff everywhere. You never know who you're gonna whose day you're gonna make better. Thanks, guys, for joining us. We'll see you guys in the next one.
Hans: Love that. Peace out. I love you guys. Appreciate it.
Chad: yeah.
Beck: yeah, give us a little teaser and then of course I'll do my read in. What do you know about our our our well actually I'm going way too fast? How are you day, Chad?
Chad: Well, everybody should know we did we did c talk earlier today, so but I'm still well and enjoying the beautiful Boston fall weather. So every if
Beck: So do you
Chad: you haven't been anybody, what you've heard is true. This is the best time of year and one of the best coolest places in the country.
Beck: I just have this perpetual thing in my imagination that it's always Charlie Brown music playing throughout your neighborhood as people walk and the autumn colors are changing and kids are jumping in piles of leaves.
Chad: Yes, all that all of that is happening.
Beck: Well, yeah, so before I I kick off the reading about today's guest, and and Chad, you really don't have to tee it up now that I think about it, 'cause you and I have both known this guy. but for the sake of the audience, we're we're heading to a special event in Napa with a company called Cut and Dry. And today our guest is is somebody that is one, just an awesome human being we've gotten to know over the last couple of years, and two, he helps run part of the show there and they're putting together something really special for their clients. So to
Chad: yeah.
Beck: the readin'. So here's something I've been thinking about. We spend an awful lot of time in this industry talking about technology. Faster transactions, better data, smarter platforms, more automation. And don't get me wrong, all that does matter. But somewhere along the way, I think we occasionally forget this this this industry wasn't built on software, it was built on relationships, on people who show up before sunrise, make impossible things happen, and somehow keep an entire food service ecosystem moving while the rest of us are still looking for our first cup of coffee. And that brings us to cut and dry. On the surface, cut and dry is a technology company helping, helping, helping to modernize the way food service distributors and restaurants do business. But spend a little time around the company and something else starts to emerge. They don't seem particularly interested in just building a platform and collecting customers. They're building community and they're putting real energy into celebrating the distributors, partners, and people who make this industry work. That philosophy has come into life with reserve, a gathering in Napa that brings together their community around relationships, ideas, and a shared vision for the future, which raises a pretty interesting question. In an interest in an industry obsessed with digital transformation, could the most important competitive advantage still be something fundamentally human? Joining us to explore that is Hans Shots from Cut and Dry. Hans, welcome to the chat GTM podcast. I have to remember how to put them on stage. Show and session da da da da da da Ooh he's got the royal wave. Have
Chad: Well command.
Beck: you actually sat on top of a float? You got that down.
Hans: I may or may not have. don't don't go looking at my history to see where and why. That's right, that's right. No, it was before
Beck: We are now looking up immediate history chad.
Hans: social media was a thing. I've been doing
Chad: Ha ha ha.
Beck: Thank God all of our pictures living in what's that? I
Hans: this for a minute. So you know I I had history I have history before I could get in trouble, right?
Beck: l Yeah, I was I was saying thank God all of our our our history lives in probably s an aluminum tin somewhere filed away in a in a drawer that nobody's gonna find except our kids when they rifle through places they shouldn't go. That that is the lesson.
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Beck: so Hans, how you doing today?
Hans: Great. I'm great. Great to see both of guys. super excited to rub elbows making this the event you mentioned and making it just a a masterpiece.
Beck: Yeah, you guys you guys have pulled out all the stops, knowing what I know from behind the scenes and having seen some of the the content and the meetings and the and the and the people you're gonna bring to the table. This is gonna be hands down one of the best events I think I'll have attended this year for for this kind of thing. So, well let's let's get going. I know we lost a little time getting ready here, but you know, so Hans, for somebody who's hearing about cut and dry for the first time. What exactly do you do? Who do you serve? And what was broken in the food service dis in food service distribution that made this company necessary?
Hans: Yeah, this is great, great. Lot of lot of questions unpacked, a lot of points unpacking that question. It's a good one.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: So cut and dry, just in the simple description. We are a unified digital e-commerce platform that if you think about all the different things that can happen that you just borrow from our friends in retail, right? Amazon, Nike, Harley Davidson, Coco Chanel, Nordstroms, when you go look for something, it's very easy to s seek, search and find, right? Because there's there's incredible depth in the product specificity and definitions. Now you step over into food service and it's like blah, you know, it's it's it's
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Hans: not even a farmer's market, it's more like a flea market.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: And so it's a lot of disparate technology, a lot of disparate information, systems don't speak. One item from I just love I'm not picking on Tyson because they're a great company, but one item they make a four-ounce breaded chicken tender. whole muscle
Beck: Yep.
Hans: in a hundred distributors could literally be called a hundred different things off of that
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: that exact same SKU. So you think about an industry, how on earth can you have any kind of product community information of any kind when it's so disparate and fractured and broken, right? So the the so what cut and dry does is it it brings order to that chaos, right? That's a good way to put it.
Beck: Yeah, yeah.
Hans: And the whole company was built on structuring data. The AQ when the when the group built Cisco Digital Labs and Cisco Shop and were underneath that giant hood, the biggest hood in the industry, they saw there too, broken, broken information, broken SKU data. How do we how do we get all this through the system? Then how do we do really cool things with product information for the operator? and we right now we can't. It's a it's it's just Things don't go in there. So they're not stacked, they're not defined. We built this thing called Food Service product tech taxonomy, created this five levels of detail, kind of like in retail. So when you go look for a pair of green trail running shoes, you're not gonna get 500 choices, you're probably gonna get about a dozen, right? And some will be greenish or have a green stripe, but it'll all be a trail running shoe, it's got a harder bottom, and it'll list all the different companies that make them, and they'll have some form of green. So it brings that giant search down to You know, then you can quickly sort through and pick what you want. So we've brought that to food service. All right. We structured all that problem. We have two two point three million items structured. I'm getting a little tactical and a little technical right out of the gate, but it is the acorn or it is the the the the the the the genius that runs our platform. And we're the only ones that have that by the way. We got great competitors, friends with all of them, love the people, but we all built our engines a little different. So Why does that matter? And the reason why it matters we can build off this going forward is that it enables our our enterprise, that that unified digital e-commerce platform to do amazing things because that four-ounce breaded whole muscle Tyson chicken tender is the same description in every single distributor that works with us because we own we own that. Now think about all the things that can follow that, how we can promote, how we can build, the data sets. AI today, you know, you can't go to the bathroom without somebody talking to me about AI. AI only works if you have good structured data, right? You got
Beck: percent.
Hans: a disparate mess, you have all kinds of stuff that comes out and none of it's good.
Beck: Chat.
Chad: Yeah, Hans, I I want to ask you about this idea of inevitability because what it's of course, of course, eventually, right, this industry is going to get to benefit from the modern e-commerce experience that consumers do and other industries have enjoyed for a while. But another thing that was inevitable, I just read about the other day, open table. Of course, at some point in time, we were gonna get the ability to make reservations at restaurants on our computer devices, but They almost failed, right? So at the end of the day, somebody and a team has to do the thing, build the inevitable. So I'm curious how you guys think about that. Like you guys have to show up every day, do your thing, and what you're building, of course it's gonna happen eventually.
Hans: Well, I think it's interesting. It's a great question, Chad. Thank you. You you kinda threw me a nice softball. I appreciate that. You
Beck: Ha ha.
Chad: Ha ha ha.
Hans: go to these events, you guys go to a lot of them. I go to a lot of them. We see
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: each other at a lot of them. We go to some different ones. The the the future of the future of everybody talks about the future of. Cool. But what's happening right now? It is happening right now. It's not a future thing. It's not a future
Beck: Right.
Hans: side. It's not a well one week and maybe we and this could and this should and all. It's right now. And I think that's what, you know, the operator side of the business gets a pretty good immersion into what's happening because they have to. That's how they operate. They got a they got a f their own Frankenstack, right? And in food service, it's like, you know, you got these wonderful companies, legacy ownership groups, four, five, some six generations. Great, great Grandpa was selling chickens out of the backyard, and then it became this, and then it became that. Then now they're a $350 million regional family-owned food distributor that that that owns that part of the market, even though they've got the big guy Cisco and Young Foods and whatever in there. But they have that really nice personal touch relationship and they're part of the community. And and so, but it's like, well, we've been doing it like this for a long time. So we have to d when you take that question you're asking Is the are we talking future state things or is cut and dry building what has to happen right now? And the answer is yes. And what what's on the front side of what people see even right now with all the different things that we've got going on? And we're gonna pull the curtain back on a couple of things at our at our event in Napa in a week and a half. the the the there is so much coming behind it, and it's real time. It's happening right now, and it it will continue to bend that arc of how things are done. And the most important thing is that, well, we gotta have people like cut and dry and you know our partners that give us the resources that we can do what we do to build all this, then we have to have a marketplace say, I wanna hear more from you guys, I wanna understand this better. What do you can if this is gonna create value creation for me without greatly expanding my expense model, which
Beck: Hmm.
Hans: you know, districters costs a lot to run those things, right? they're they're huge capital, those warehouses are full of stuff that sits on a shelf, doesn't make a pit. Well it doesn't make you know, they say nothing's not nothing happens till the case is sold, so let's just hang our hat on that for now. So they've got to move that product out. So there's a huge capex. So anything we can do that can help bring the capex down, reduce expenses while speeding up trade, creating creating additional cases and gross margin, it's a huge win. And that's everything we do focuses on those outcomes.
Beck: So, Hans, let's talk a little bit about the distributors' reality, right? Do you have independent and regional distributors that face a that are really facing you know some enormous pressure from larger competitors, right? Changing customer expectations and the cost of modernization. So, where does cut and dry create the most meaningful competitive advantage for your clients and your partners?
Hans: great question. You guys, you guys did your homework. Thank you. well there's a couple
Beck: Well we're supposed to.
Hans: core areas. Of course you are. There's a couple of key areas. I'm just giving you some props while people, you know, like, that's pretty smart.
Beck: Yeah, yeah.
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: The number one is on just managing the sales cycle, customer order entry, input, customer act acquisition, margin growth. minimizing loss, all all of that is a product what falls out of a a really dynamic unified digital e commerce platform, right? 'Cause you get visibility. Again, we got all the data, it's all structured, so we see everything, right? And it's real time.
Beck: Right.
Hans: And so We just recently it's in beta right now, but we're we're t we're gonna bot to kick it out of the beta barn release because we have all this data and it's structured and clean, we can we can s we the whole string's connected, right? If there's not breaks
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Hans: in the string, it's if you want to use that old thing that we learned when we were kids. And so we can give the distributor and we have a tool called Yes Chef AI. We're a big AI company. We were using AI a decade ago before anybody, I mean it was talked about in movies. When it was like creepy, you know, like you know, terminating
Beck: Right.
Hans: and that. It it was the core of how we built cut and dry. So you're gonna see some of that at the event. We're gonna we're gonna reintroduce one of our original components of our company and let the industry know that, hey, we've been doing this all along and here's why it matters to you, and here's what it's doing for you. But back to this question: a distributor, purchasing operations, finance, sales, all the way down to sales we can go in and Ask this AI agent questions about where am I trending? What what did I what what did I not sell a week ago? What did I not sell this week that I sold a week ago? In 15 seconds, you have an answer. Where do you
Beck: Mm.
Hans: see trends with customers buying less over the last 30 days that I need to go in and shore up? And any question that comes out of that data, which we have all of it, in 15 or 20 seconds you have an answer. Think about that. The hardest thing in sales is looking forward. Everything's a lag lag indicator. You didn't get the shrimp this week. hey, Michael, you didn't buy you blah blah blah. You then it's everything's reactionary. So this
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: this so we're we're helping bend that. And then when you bring in the ability for manufacturers to communicate right through those distributors platform and do those operators through those things called order guides where they place orders
Beck: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Hans: and promote products and put banner ads and sponsor ads and even put put financial incentives right on the items when when Hans's special is placed in an order, I see it. Like it that's influencing me to buy that item instead of that item. I click on it and it's real it's like gamification. It hits the the digital wallet, end of every order.
Beck: Right.
Hans: Chad, you earned thirty dollars and fifty cents in your from your order today. It's in your digital wallet, it's right. And it's so it just reinforces that. So some people say, it sounds like a GPO. It does sound like one, but it's not because real time, it's right now and it's available the moment that the order is placed. So it's it's very different. And the operator gets to see what it is. So there's there's dynamics, there's big, big, big water running deep under the industry that you just see the ripples every now and again on the surface, but the water's
Beck: Mm-hmm.
Hans: slowing hard. And that the the these massive growth in technology and how it's driving how things get done. Distributors buy products, their warehouse products, they take orders for products, they pick products, they deliver products, they collect on the product, right? So you can boil it down to some really basic things. But there's there's a lot of key pieces in that that makes it super powerful, very difficult, declining or growing. And so we're trying to remove friction, provide simplicity. Nobody needs complexity on top of complexity, right? No. So reduce
Beck: No, no.
Hans: the complexity, simplify the process, make it very clear and easy, and really easy to ask questions to understand, so that that those amazing independent distributors and I I worked for one for years and years and ye for decades and I and I know hundreds of distributors around the country and I I know how hard they work. And listen, I have nothing against Cisco US Foods, Pidgeot, nothing at all. Big companies,
Beck: Yeah, yeah.
Hans: good at what they do, but they're behemoths, right? And and cut and dry was built to help the independent compete and in many, many, many different ways. So I don't know if I answered your question, Hadra I answered your question, but it's
Beck: I think it did. It definitely makes me think about Portlandian. Is it local? because you can work with those local distributors. But one last one one follow up question before I hand it off to Chad on this, because thinking about back office and how it interacts with just dist distributors, right? We send out the order, that order goes out to the distributor, the distributor, if it's a bigger guy, sends a you know, order received, right? There's telemetry, there's an ASN or advanced shipping notice that's created. That order's been picked, that order's in transit, that order is on your way to your doorstep. Are you able to and I hope I don't get us in deep water here asking this question, are you able to provide that same level of telemetry for your district distribution partners that are using cut and dry?
Hans: Yeah, it's another that that question does have a little depth to it. And so we'll we'll put our flippers and snorkel on. But we recently made an ac acquisition, Enterprise Cafe, maybe a company you've never heard of before. Friend of mine, I've known the founder CEO for many, many years. And we were doing some partner work together, then we're like, hey, that would be really cool if we could have and it's he'll kill me for saying this, but it's this really cool software set. and that fits that helps distributors manage that cycle. So you've got inbound POs, then the product sits in the warehouse and you have outbound invoices. Think about it like that, right? Inbound stay a storage outbound. So there's a purchase cycle and a sales cycle. A lot happens between those two cycles. And the purchase cycle you know the the all these independents, most of them belong to a buying group like a Unipro or Frosty Acres or Goldbond, three great companies. And they go out and as an aggregate say, Okay, if Chad, Michael and Hans all had our distribution companies and I we're all each two hundred million dollars, we're gonna have a heck of a time competing against a eighty eighty billion dollar behemoth like Cisco. But if we pool together, right, you know that you know the drill. And so
Beck: Yes. Buying power. Yep.
Hans: They so they on the buy-side, there's all kinds of buy-side deals that come from those manufacturers. How do you manage that? How does that sit inside when you have the storage part, which is a horrible word for the warehousing side of it? But when you how do you manage this this those promotional deals and cost and and you know all that? margin component, then you settle sales price, then you go sell it. Then on the sales side, you may have deviations, rebates, and coupons and one-offs and all these other things. There's a lot going on. So Enterprise Cafe manages that whole piece. Beautiful, beautiful company that Steve Schautzer
Beck: Nice.
Hans: built. So we acquired Enterprise Cafe. We're embedding it into cut and dry. Gives all of our distributors now clarity and simplicity, removing friction and ambiguity. and really difficult way to see did
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: I did we connect? Did we are we re are we billing back? Is this stuff happening? And and then it how when that item comes in and it's got these deals on it, they're properly, properly identified, they go in the system, they get they get recognized in the system right way, the right margin gets set, the right sell price goes out. If it's a manufacturer bill back, the billback's done correctly correctly in time. And now this clunky flywheel starts spinning faster
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: and getting bigger, right? Because it enables those distributors now, it touches some buttons to manage a process that was very, very difficult, labor intensive, and ripe with errors and mistakes, created credits and clawbacks to manufactur all these bad things like weeping and gnashing of teeth, like the old testament.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: And so this this this system that Enterprise Cafe built We're embedding that into cut and dry and then we're leaving enterprise cafes a standalone because they've got customers that work with our competitor, but we're giving them some agentic AI stuff that make what they do even better, faster, stronger, less friction, faster flywheel. So all those things are happening. That's just one example to the
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: question that you asked that how we're focused on going into the you know this this the distributor community, there are single with three flywheels, there are single most important flywheel that spins in the middle. And the more we can do to lift them up, accelerate their process, reduce the complexity, give them tools, train them on those tools, teach them how they work so they can focus more on the for the non-salespeople on the buy side and promotions getting that done right, and the salespeople, hey, how do I go out and and I use a term that gives me shivers because that we've been using it for decades. Mark, you just need to be a consultant for your customers. Well, what the hell does that mean? I have to take orders, right? And how am I supposed to be a consultant when I have forty-seven accounts and I'm like running from one
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Hans: so all
Beck: Right.
Hans: those things all those things are changing. Sales reps have a hard time with that. I get it. I used to be a sales rep back in the eighties. but I'm happy to have a system take the order so I can go in and say and do what I do and now become one of your one of your members of your board. You
Beck: Mm.
Hans: know, you're a member of your of your EBITDA, a a a proponent of your growth and and looking at the business that way. So it's a trend it is a transition. It's a mental transition, it's a strategic transition, it's an activity transition, but all that's happening. Early adopters are are bending the curve.
Beck: Love it. I a and I love it. I love hearing that there's the communication layer in there 'cause like literally getting ready for your event, Chad and I just bought a new booth, right? And our agenda and worry was, well, they're not gonna tell us when it's ready or when it's gonna get there or when it's gonna arrive. And fear, uncertainty, and doubt is the is is one of the most painful things you have in any business if you don't wanna what's happening next. And I love that you're creating that telemetry for your for your users. Chad.
Hans: Yeah.
Chad: So, Hans, I learned today that you guys have been doing AI longer than AI's been a thing. and and you should
Hans: Yeah, he's been around a long time, but you're right. Yeah.
Chad: you shared that something I find to be very, very true, which is clean structured data is unlocks all kinds of possibilities with what you can do with AI. So I'm curious, since you guys already have so many things you could do and the potential of what you could do with AI on top of your data. What's your guys' North Star for determining what gets built or what gets built next? Because everybody's got finite resources.
Hans: It's you a hundred percent correct on that. So we have a couple different ways that we build out our roadmap. One is we ask a lot of questions with our distributor partners. They give us a lot of feedback. Matter of fact, we're starting a council. And it's in the in the process of being developed right now, ten, eleven, twelve, great independent distributors, different, some broad lines, some specialty, some large multi multi-location produce, things like that. So we're getting all sides of the cube, right? We can see all the different dimensions. They're they're the same, but they're different, right? There's just nuance between those things. And so to provide feedback. And then when we're thinking of stuff, we get all excited internally and we run and we build this thing, we're like, da people are like, yeah, we don't want that. You know, so we have to be really smart about that because it's resource allocation, because nobody has unlimited resources. I mean Gentic AI, maybe some of those guys are doing their the stuff they're doing that we all read about and look at their look at
Beck: Ha ha ha.
Hans: their spend. It's mind boggling, gr you know, it's larger than the the a gross domestic product of you know small countries but so we we really lean into that so we get a lot of feedback number one number two we have really smart guys yeah our three co-founders Kevin Woo Jim O'Connor and Mani Calarusio they've been together twenty something years they've done a bunch of different things together they've had great success they've had some big exits they built one of the first cloud based point of sys point of sale systems called Cake probably heard of it. Cisco bought it
Chad: yeah.
Hans: That's how they met him and said, Hey, you guys are really freaking smart. This is a great system. Can you come help and digitize our company? Because we're an analog company. So that's really what all this is about. Is we live in an analog space and food service because I don't have anything on my desk. Okay, so maybe this loop bomb. Nope, that was a g that was a giveaway. But in retail, they got that little thing called a UPC code, right? So every time you You buy something, a gazillion people know who you were, where you bought it, what you paid for, what day it was, what the weather was, have you bought it before? When did you buy it last night? All that information, right? In food service, nobody has a freaking clue. And so that data is broken. Back to your question about structure, disparate. I mean, you've got Big companies like data essentials and technology, technomics, and NPD and Tastewise and others, menu data, all trying to go scrape and what's the operator doing, and what's this and that and the other, and but nobody has all the They
Beck: Right.
Hans: don't have the invoice data. So all the rest of the stuff, you make a lot of assumptions and guesses. You may say this is trending and this is on menus and this, that, and the other, but which is great for certain parts of the industry. Not great for the distributor, it doesn't really help them. So maybe we have an idea of what we need to bring in the stock, but our customers aren't asking for it, we're not gonna bring it in because we got a problem in the warehouse. We have no slots. So there's some really hardcore mechanics here that drive how this industry moves, right? And so so part of it is our smart guys, they're you know, our CEO is traveling in Europe right now, he's overseas. He's he's meeting with people with really cutting edge companies like And he's picking up ideas and seeing things that maybe we need to do some course correction on or we need to add this or delete that or whatever. He's constantly out looking at stuff. And so we've got we've got a very dynamic internal group. We have we have we're we're working on creating an even greater relationship, especially with those distributor partners that like they like to lean in, right? Not everybody does. That's okay. In in all customer relationships. Some are some are very emotional, some are very strategic, some are very transactional, some are just tactical. You know, you got all kinds of different relationships based on the company and their culture. And we've got enough we've got a a lot of amazing people we work with, and they want to tell us. We saw this, we heard this, we're thinking about this, we struggle with this. Wouldn't it be cool if you could do that? You know, those kind of things. So we're internalizing that and that And the third leg of that stool is we have
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: people like like you guys, like Wiggs at Starfish, that's F Fizma tr software program, and
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: on and on and on. They're like, You guys ever thought about integrating BBB? You know, like we're like, we have. This is interesting, let's talk some more. So we
Beck: Right.
Hans: can talk just like our conf our relationship with Enterprise Cafe, we ended up acquiring them. I don't know who had a handle with that, but we ended up acquiring them. And and brought some amazing capabilities into our company that'll be great for our our customers. Giving them some more capabilities would be great for the customers that aren't inside of cut and dry that work with other people through Enterprise Cafe. So it's three really big ways that that we do that. And they're they're one's not more important than the other. And I think that this collaboration with our existing partners and and even some potential ones, it it has and will continue to to deliver a lot of fruit because if you think about it, if Chad's distributing comes up with this great idea and we create it, goes on a roadmap, we create it, we do some we play with it in the in the in the sandbox with you, and then we deploy it. And then 75 other distributors are like, why weren't you doing this? This is amazing, right?
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: B because you live in that world and and you know, again, nuance is really important. We're not a distribution company. Several of us came out of distribution. We're tech company. We're
Beck: Bye.
Hans: an AI AI company. We're an innovation company. We're a problem solving company. We are a hey, how do we reduce friction and and increase speed company? So so all those little things matter.
Beck: So so Hans, when we first met, you had approached I'm not sure how we were approached, we ended up doing some some commerce around cut and dry, said we want to do a help our help our partners have a better presence. Right. In fact, we're going to go ahead and we're gonna give you guys your own website that we'll have made for you at our expense. that that was was created for your your your your clientele that had not so great digital storefronts, right? That was my first my first example. It
Hans: Yeah, that was a minute ago.
Beck: yeah. And then we went to
Chad: Mm-hmm.
Beck: the manufacturer's ball, the food manufacturers ball in in in Chicago. And you guys came with a truckload of shoes that you were giving to various partners and friends and you you made sure in advance you you were able to get everybody's foot size down and and get them all these shoes, right? And so here's what I want to under understand, because I think you have a strong community philosophy here that that is pervasive across what cut and dry is. And so my my question is, because cut and dry seems to invest an unusual amount of energy in its community, where did that philosophy or originate and why is it so important to the company's identity? Because it it's knitted. Like this event in in Napa even, right? You don't have to do all this.
Hans: Yeah. No. So I think that you know, we're seven year old company, six and a half, seven year old company, and again I told you a bunch of very, very smart people from the technology side of the world, but that had experience in food service at a very granular level working with with cake building cake point of sale system for operators and then getting in and doing the project they did at Cisco Foods. you know, they're again under the hood of the biggest the biggest player in the market. Like don't
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: like love hate whatever, it doesn't matter. They have a big
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: machine, right? You learn a lot from looking at big machines.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: So I think what the company had to learn through a little trial and error is that A, this is a freaking relationship first industry on the food service side. Period. Hard stop. B relationships first, business second. Right? You don't go get business and then build a relationship.
Beck: Right.
Hans: Probably not in many industries. We're we we we need up on a lot of industries, right? We're not just in food service. There's a lot of moving parts to that. And C if that's the case, how do you build, and I love your word community, it's a big word for me. How do you build that community? How do you storytell?
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: How do you get out in front? And honestly, I don't think we've done as good a job as we need to and as I want us to. And and because we're tech first company. We we have a hundred and fifty, sixty people, whatever the number is, it it it varies, hundred and forty-five, whatever the number is. 12 of those people on sales and marketing. All the rest are in engineering, development, onboarding. Now you think about that. Okay?
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: Small but mighty. But we also know that we've got to do, we've got to take things up a level and you know, and tip my hat to our biggest competitor. They've got 30-something people just in sales. And so we made the decision, and as a core part of what Got cut and dry where it is today, but it's even a more important part that's gonna take us to the next level is that we're gonna have the best operating system, the best machine that can be, and we're gonna invest time, energy, and resources into that. Now, would we have done some things differently a few years ago? Of course, but it's easy to look backwards, right? So we're
Beck: Right, right.
Hans: in today, we're living it today, we've got our arms around today, thinking about tomorrow, thinking about the day next week. And so coming
Beck: Right.
Hans: back to your question, so we go to a lot of events. we we, you know, when when what when I was fortunate enough almost two years ago to join Cut and Dry, I was like, Hans, what do you think? And I'm like, hey, you gotta show up. Cause if you're not on the playground, you don't get called to play. And so you gotta be on the playground, you gotta show up, and then you gotta lean in. You can't just stand in the corner. You can. You'll be the last person called to join the team. Sorry, I'm using silly childhood metaphors,
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: but everybody gets it, right? And so you gotta show up, gotta lean in, and then hey, you gotta You know, I we just had I run a board for a hotel restaurant school for one of the Arizona universities, and we had the CEO of Nothing Bunt Cakes come speak. He got an award at RLC, you were probably there, you saw it. Dolph, great guy. We got to know him. And we invited I'm the chairman of the board for the for that for the hotel restaurant school there. I've been on the board for about a decade. And I loved his message. He said, Everything I do in my professional career, I do to bring joy. I ran Top golf. I ran Dave and Busters. I ran Lucky Strike. I'm now running nothing but Kinks. I have a choice where I work. And they're all piggy piggybacks. But
Beck: Right.
Hans: I have a lot of choices where I go do stuff. I'm not going to do a job where I can't bring joy to people. All those concepts
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: did. Now, early in my career, I was gone that way, but I had to figure it out and I had to create my own North Star. So I loved it. And he spoke to our board, then he spoke to our students at night, and I had a chance to take them to dinner the night before. Fabulous guy. And the Dolph Burrow and Harvard guy. you would never know it. And so you take that. You take that, and I always tell the students in this industry, you have to have a heart of hospitality. You don't have to be born with it, but you have to create it because you don't have that heart for hospitality, you're gonna be miserable. It's the same for us.
Beck: Yeah.
Chad: Yeah.
Hans: Right? It really is. We gotta love people, we gotta love helping them, we gotta love this business, we gotta sort through all the weird things that happen and this. Credit's not going through, this go you know, all this stuff.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: Everything's being done to service the customer. We service the distributor, they service the operator, we help the manufacturer, help the distributor,
Beck: Right.
Hans: help the operator. Those are the three flywheels, distributor, manufacturer, operator. So all the stuff we do focuses on that. So when we build we can't just be a technology company. When we open a door, push out some stuff and close it, you know, close it, right? We have to be in the community, we have to be doing so I'm this you give me a short question, I'm making a long answer. But the the
Beck: It's okay.
Hans: the like eureka moment for us was I was with our our CEO. I got invited to meet the board after they had a board meeting they had dinner one night back in November, almost a year ago. And I had the chance to go meet meet most of the board at dinner with with Monty. and the next day we were going to do we had something we had to go do, and he's like, he's driving us. Well, he actually wasn't driving us, the Tesla was driving us. And he's
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: like, you know, I want to do. I want to do a food service event, but we don't want to do it like what everything else is. Because all these things are nothing wrong with them. They all serve a purpose.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: But you go in, you're in a room, and there's exhibit halls, and it's like, I want to do the Davos of food service.
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: I'm like, Money, we can do that. Tell me more. So he dropped some ideas and said, and so we we played around with this for a few months. He then he came back to me, he says, the board loves it, let's go do it. I was planning it for June of 27, and he's like, no, no, we gotta do it this year. So You know, timelines got crushed and which is which you know from the backside of all this. But that's part why we wanted to do this event the way we're doing it, and we may have time to talk about it, but we want it to be highly curative. We don't want it to be like other things that go on in the industry. It's not an Ask
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: thing. Everything in the room doesn't have somebody's name on it. Not that we don't have great partners helping us put this on, but our intent is that we're gonna drop some information that's not being shared anywhere. Number one. We're gonna talk about some of that roadmap stuff with cut and giant. It's not a sales thing. It's not, you know, no, if you go to page two, you can see when you know the input button that's in green. None of that stuff. so we're gonna draw and then we're gonna we're gonna launch a couple new things that people there are gonna see it for the first time. And and then we're then we're creating this country club environment where it's pretty intense in the mornings, fabulous in the afternoons, incredible in the evenings for the specific intent of building. relationships, right? Hey, let's get to know each other. Yes. Bring your bring your plus one, boyfriend,
Beck: Yeah. And you built it to where they want to bring their spouse or significant other too. Yeah.
Hans: girlfriend, husband, wife, you know, whatever that is. And
Chad: Napa Valley in October. I've heard it's nice.
Beck: There's there's worse places to be. I imagine a lot of golden hour shots over the vineyard vineyards. Yeah. Yep.
Hans: And we got some fabu fabulous things planned. And you know, it will be perfect, of course not. Would it be amazing? Absolutely. And we're we're very stoked. We're very stoked.
Beck: Beautiful. Beautiful. Chad, one more question before we have to hit rapid fire and and and get on.
Chad: So yeah, I mean just one more thing on reserve. so who exactly is it for? Because you know, people might make assumptions based on the Davos of food manufacturing and and what like what's one thing you'd want them leaving saying, I got this from reserve that I've never gotten from another event?
Beck: Boom.
Hans: I'm gonna take some liberties with your question. So again, our our core flywheel, our number one focus is distributors. So the majority of attendees are distributors, and we're bringing them in, paying for everything, butting them up, all the events mills, everything. They all they had to do is say, Yes, I'd like to come, and then we took care of rest for the most part. And so they're there our core constituencies. Now we have some great forward forward-thinking manufacturers that want partner in this. We have some other people that are Not traditional people in the industry. as a matter of fact, quite untraditional. They're gonna have some roles in dropping some some really cool things on robotic automation and food biotech, and I mean just stuff that that I think that our audience is gonna go, damn.
Beck: Mm.
Chad: Okay.
Hans: this is coming. It's not a future, it's happening right now. And then we're gonna reveal a couple things that we're working on that are gonna be big value creators for our partners. Focusing first on the distributor, second on those manufacturers. When the the entity that gets to get all the goodwill resources from all that is the operator, and the independents need help. And we again we focus on independence. Our distributors are 90-95% independent based. Not all restaurants. It's all kinds of independent things, right? Lodges, camps, charter schools, private schools, casinos, country clubs, all that stuff. And you'll never hear me use the word mom and pop, because I think it's very demeaning. And most of the independents I know, they are unbelievable, fantastic operators, whether they have one or two or three locations, or they're in a big metro market or on a medium or might whatever, what they do day in and day out is nothing short of remarkable. And and so they're gonna leave going, these guys pulled it off. I felt honored, special. All these little details, I'm in the distribution business. We don't get invited to things like this. Yes, they do some trips with their buying groups and stuff, but that's not what this is, right? Because they have to
Beck: Sure. Right.
Hans: earn their way. And so, and little things that they thought about. Number one, number two, what a great environment. And I made some I'm I increased my network. I made real contacts that'll be meaningful on a personal level and a professional level going forward. And number three, I learned some stuff that. I A didn't know, B or didn't understand. And I'm either super excited or terrified, whatever it is, not terrified in a like I'm gonna go jump off a bridge, but how do we now understanding
Beck: Yeah.
Hans: that this is what's happening, how do we incorporate that in our strategic thinking going forward? Okay.
Beck: Amazing.
Hans: So and I there's nowhere I go where I got what I got here. And bravo, cut and dry. We are, if we weren't already, we're an evangelist and we're gonna be I You know, a a bullhorn for your company and the what you're trying to do.
Beck: Love it. And then they might bring home back a case of some wonderful vintage as they go through the wineries out there, too, I imagine. Love it. All right. So
Hans: Yeah. All that too. Yeah. By design.
Beck: we get we have a short amount of time for our rapid fire session we like to do. It's seven questions, first instinct, no corporate answers. Ready? Technology
Chad: Mm.
Beck: or relationships. You can only keep one as your competitive advantage. Which one wins?
Hans: Technology relationship.
Beck: Tirect technology or relationships?
Hans: you gotta have an ERP system to run your business.
Beck: Technology. All right. The distribu distributor superpower. If you could give every independent food service distributor one superpower tomorrow, what would it be?
Hans: The ability to grow their business without having to plant trees.
Beck: Love it. All right. Napa Valley or Vegas. You have to host every cut and dry community event in one place for the next decade. I'm guessing I know the answer. Which are you choosing?
Hans: Would not be Vegas.
Beck: Okay. I I'm with ya. I
Chad: Ha ha ha.
Beck: the industry myth. What's one thing Silicon Valley consistently gets wrong about food service distribution?
Hans: That it's a bunch of hillbillies that don't know what they're doing.
Beck: Boom. And your most underrated asset, what's more valuable? A brilliant product engineer or a distributor who's been building customer relationships for 30 years?
Hans: That's a well you you got all
Beck: Coss up.
Hans: of them have been building relationships, so that's like a gimme. So
Beck: Okay.
Hans: bringing the technology into them so that they can perform better, faster, less friction would be the be that super be that superpower. Yeah.
Beck: Beautiful. One dinner guest. You can only invite any you can invite any business leader, living or dead, to a private dinner with your distributor community. Who gets the invitation? okay. And finish this sentence. The future of food service distribution belongs to companies that blank.
Hans: Emb embrace a digital unified e commerce platform.
Beck: Boom, nailed it. Mic dropped by Mr. Hans. All right. Well,
Hans: Yeah.
Beck: we're going to wrap up. I know you got meetings to get to. You've already told you have a full day today. We're so appreciative of you. one, thinking of us to be part of your event and help support that. And two, being our friend in the industry. Every time I see you, I get a smile on my face. I'm not sure why. It always feels like you know a little secret that nobody else knows. but to our audience and community and the people that tuned in today, thank you so much for joining us. If you are a restaurant and you need To understand where to buy buy product, you probably want to reach out to cut and dry. If you're a manufacturer distributor, you probably wanna reach out to cut and dry to see if you can do a better job and remove that friction from your interactions with your restaurants and help move more product as well. But from what I know about the company, which I've known now for about three years, I they operate with integrity, they operate with extreme amounts of kindness and care. They they go over the over the over the top. To show how much they care about their partners is demonstrated by a couple of things we talked about here. And those are the only things that I've encountered. But you know, I highly recommend you give them a call if you're if some of these things are intriguing you, at least to find out a little bit more. But for now, it's Hun Shots, Chad Horn, Michael Beck, signing off with the Chat GTM podcast. And as always, and hence demonstrated this when he called us up and said, Hey, I've got an idea for something. Random acts of kindness, sprinkle that stuff everywhere. You never know who you're gonna whose day you're gonna make better. Thanks, guys, for joining us. We'll see you guys in the next one.
Hans: Love that. Peace out. I love you guys. Appreciate it.
