Host Mike Graen continues his conversation with Tyler Davis from Woodman's and Mark Shake from Badger Technologies focused on the impact of the robot on pricing discrepancies, out-of-stocks, and incorrect products.

The robot identifies issues like wrong products and out-of-stocks, saving labor by organizing tags by location and improving online order fulfillment. It also helps in inventory management, reducing shrinkage, and ensuring accurate product placement. The robot's data is used across the business, from district managers to buyers, and it has been well-received by store employees. Future plans include integrating RFID technology for better inventory tracking.

The conversation emphasizes the importance of leveraging technology to automate routine tasks and improve overall store efficiency.

So awesome, Tyler, we double clicked on the pricing

part of that. When we watched that video, a virtual video of

the robot going down. It said pricing discrepancy, and I'm

assuming that's the price at the register versus the price at the

shelf, the two are different. But also some things I saw, some

things that said out of stocks and incorrect products tell us

the difference between those and specifically, how did you check

that before you had a robot, versus how do you do it now that

you have a robot?

So an out of stock is truly it's an out of stock

product. Before the orders would walk up and down the aisles

looking for empty holes in the shelf, and then they'd scan and

it'd be, yes, it's in stock. No, it's not. And they'd order their

products. Now we can use the out of stocks created from the robot

to glue into the lists at the warehouse of what is truly in

stock at the warehouse, and create lists of items that need

to be ordered. We can also then take that list and compile it

into days throughout the week, and we can use it as almost

scorecards to be able to see, you know, is the order

consistently missing these areas. Are we missing items that

are in stock at the warehouse, which is helping our warehouse

partners be able to move their product through faster, and then

wrong products are when the wrong product is stocked in

front of a tag that it doesn't belong. So if chocolate's in

front of vanilla, it's going to let us know that during covid,

we would what we called landfill, or we would take

product and fill it into out of stocks that we can't fulfill at

that point in time, to keep the shelves at least looking full,

the robot was able to identify these items, and quickly, we

were able to fix it with the inventories from the warehouse

based on the wrong product in the robot, we would say, Oh,

this is now valid product that we can order, let's get the

product reason to fill the spot out and put the right product

back in. So

prior to bot, I understand the pricing thing.

You scanned every label. You said the wrong matches, etc. How

did you do that for the out of stocks that you have to go and

have them scan holes, and then how did you do the incorrect

price or incorrect product?

The incorrect product, a lot of time was just

left until the incorrect product ran out and it was reordered

because there was a hole so it could take the even though the

warehouse then had its stock fulfilled, we might not actually

see it on the sales floor for a long period of time afterwards,

if no one went through and physically saw, Oh, that tag is

not correct. It was this kind of a whole gap in procedure

that big. Yeah. And actually, when you think about,

I mean, I've never quite thought about this before, your scan,

your shelf label and your register could be completely

100% in sync, but if the wrong products there, I think I'm

buying the few dollars, but it's really priced at $4 it's not a

pricing issue with somebody plugged. We call it a plug or

incorrect item. So, so, so what you're saying is this robot's

basically going around autonomously and giving you a

set of, hey, we just scanned aisles number one, two and four.

Here are the five things that we got to go fix. We're saving the

associate from having to go physically scan all this and

collect all this data. Is this the big is that the big win?

There's so many big wins. locationn data was

honestly our probably biggest win, the location data allows us

to organize the tags by location. So instead of having

pricing hang up, you know, 1000 sale tags in a day, and they're

all organized by UPC, which is spread out across 23 aisles in

the grocery department, they can now print their tags by

location, and they can start at one end of an aisle, go down one

side, up the other side, down the next aisle. So that was huge

labor save. We do all of our own order picking for online order

fulfillment that is picked up at the store. Those pick lists are

organized by the location provided by the robot, which is

a huge save in time and efficiency for our online

fulfillment. Clint had taken the original robot locations and

sent them back to our one of our wholesalers, and said we would

like it if these items could be put as close to location as

possible, to at least group together so we're not breaking

down pallets as far as we have to. We can maybe run a pallet

out to an aisle instead. So location is huge. Another thing

just knowing it's there, if we have, you know, 360,000 ish UPCS

on file at Woodman. So if you tell me to run a, you know,

sales movement on a category. So I can run sales moving on the

category, but everything that's a zero, I can say, well, it

doesn't sell, but is it on the floor? I don't know. In that

past six months now, the robot can say, I've identified that

tag. It exists on the shelf. The product has not sold in X amount

of time. So that's another thing that we use a lot, just knowing

exactly what's there.

So I spent about 25 years with PNG, as you probably

know, and then one of the big things that the suppliers talk

about is this thing called distribution void, and that

basically means I'm supposed to have 20 cans or flavors of

Pringles in the store. That's back when PNG owned Pringles.

They sold it to kelanova, and that's been sold again as of

today, which is amazing, poor Pringles. But anyway, Pringles

are supposed to have these 20 flavors of Pringles, but there's

only 18 labels representing Pringles. Which are the two that

should be there or not? Are you actually using the robot to go

these are the one these are the 100,000 items we should see in

the store. And what is the robot seeing? Is there some that are

missing? Because not only the products not there, but the

label's not there. Do we? Do we use it for that as well?

Absolutely. We send back every file collected by

each store's robot independently to the office, and we combine

them all together, and then we compare each store against that

list and find all the missing items and identify. And a lot of

our buyers have gone to auto shipping those items to the

store to make sure that fulfillment is there. Um, they,

yeah, they pass it on to our wholesalers that and wow, they

deploy there. Look, need be, yep,

wow,

huge, huge. So here's a here's a question, you were you were

associate in the store. You came over and saw this robot. You

were skeptic. You got asigned the project. What are the rest

of your store employees reaction to this was, was this a man?

This looks like it'd be helpful. Or when I've seen kind of stuff,

the initial reaction they're trying to get rid of me, and

they're trying to automate my job with the robot. What's some

of the reactions?

At first, it was skeptical, kind of like I did.

They weren't really sure what was going on where employee owns

so whenever the company does something, they always look at

it like, oh, well, that could have been retirement money or

somewhere, you know, allocated somewhere else. So everybody was

very skeptical the minute that they started utilizing the

locations and seeing the accuracy, it has been

overwhelmingly support for the robots. They love it. I can

vouch for that. We just did a remodel on one of our stores,

and the robot has been just taking a break and had the

summer off for about past two, maybe three months, they have

been chomping at the bit to get that robot back in action, left

and right. I get a text message or an email every day. What is

it happening? When is the robot going to be back? When? When is

he joining the team again? So, yeah, it's uh, they do they

actually give

it? Do they actually give them names? Like it so that

they love to

they do names, um, we actually have the robot at

the store that we share a parking lot with wrapped, um,

our Clint. Phil clint's Dad is on the robot. Philbot, they have

it named

we finally some. We finally found something for the

owner to do

exactly.

I love it. I love it. Mark for other customers

that we're dealing with outside of Woodmans. Are you seeing

similar skepticism by some of the store associates? Or is it a

short term thing where you see some skepticism and then you go,

Oh, I don't have to do that anymore. That's awesome. Or are

there somewhere there? My god, they're going to get rid of my

job. Because that's a real concern that people have

Gotcha

Oh, absolutely. And I think you bring up a good

keep it as well.

point, right? I mean, this is a very disruptive it's a different

way of doing business for a retailer. And obviously folks

who have been in that retail space, whether it's a grocery or

hardware store, have been doing that product for some time,

especially some of the longer, you know, tenured folks, and

they are skeptical So, and that's really why one of my

primary responsibilities is working with partners like

Woodman's and ahold and others here in the US around the change

management and adoption. Because this is not a sell a widget,

walk away. This is really us, you know, offering a solution,

becoming a partner and vetting us, our solution within

architecture and infrastructure, the customer, the retailer, and

how they, at the end of the day, are serving their customers. So

we work with the retail teams on, you know, participating

stand ups to ensure that, hey, the robot is not, you know, gray

folks with brand their beard like me think they hear robot.

They think, oh, it's taking my job. Well, most retailers today

have a now hiring sign, right? So that's no longer the case.

So that's, that's the store side of that, and that's good. You

Robotics back in my day. Growing up is much different in

manufacturing facility compared to a robot who's in store today

collecting data. So it's it's really intended to offload those

routine tasks from that team member working in the store so

they no longer have to do that type of work. So I think of

those skeptics, you're going to win some over you're always

going to have some that are probably not going to be happy

also have some skeptics, but over time, it's like, I didn't

with it. But at the end of the day, our reception, our the way

want, I didn't really, so it was like Tyler was saying I didn't

the robot is perceived and and received in the store, has been

very, very positive. It's really become a branding and as as the

Philbot would attest, and as other retailers using our

solutions have attest is it becomes a branding opportunity,

really, for the marketing folks, and to leverage that with the

future customers that are going to be walking in the store. Kids

love robotics. They're not intimidated by technologies.

Younger generations so but, but we're a part of that change with

our retail partners, and dealing with the change management and

how that's it really can be customized to the individual

retailer, but we're excited about stuff Woodmans is doing.

We love the Philbot. I think there's also opportunities you

could have Heinz ketchup bottles running around the store. You

could have a PepsiCo bottle or whatever. So there's some

opportunities there.

enjoy doing all that scanning by hand. I'm the exceptions. What

about customers? Now, you said, You guys both kind of mentioned

the younger generation is probably more receptive to that.

And I've literally seen a couple of videos where young children

are trying to feed the robot, which is hilarious and adorable,

but but talk to us about the customers, and you've obviously

got very, very young people. You got very, very elderly people

that are shopping in your stores. Tyler, what's their

reaction? It's like, oh my gosh. What is going on here? Or how do

they react to it?

Lots of questions. I think we got Lucky by the fact

that we deployed ours during covid. A lot of people didn't

just kind of assume they were shelf cleaning robots, and they

just kind of let it be. But now they see them still out there

after covid, and they do ask a lot of questions. They never

really know what it is exactly, but once you stop and explain it

to them, a lot of people of people are very impressed by the

fact that it does all that it does. And they were like, I had

no idea you could do things like that now. So it's really neat.

You hear a lot of times ordering robot, they kind of just assume

too that's safely it's probably what it's doing. Yeah, that does

so much more. Yeah.

I think one of the big things for right around

those folks is, when you're it's simple talking point for that

Woodmans team member of the store answering that question,

because it's normally not mark in there, right? It's, that's

why we've got to work with those teams. But when they're

answering the question, you know, the robots here to ensure

the right products on the shelf at the right time, at the right

price and as well as to make a clean, safe environment for the

other piece of the solution, right? So, and I think they

quickly understand why, you know, why the robot is there,

yeah, and Tyler, here's, here's an interesting

segue that I've never even thought of before. But forget

about Woodmans for a second. If you go into any other grocery

store and they don't have 100,000 items, maybe they have

50,000 items. If you went to the store manager and said, Could

you tell me within the last two hours, what percentage of your

50,000 items are actually available for the customer to

buy, they wouldn't have a clue. I have no idea. They go to an in

stock report that shows them on hand versus sales, and they

guess, oh, well, we're probably about 92% on shelf. They don't

know. They have no idea. You literally have a machine, very

friendly machine, very tall machine, very quiet machine that

literally is telling you last within the last two hours, we

can tell you that we have the 100,000 SKUs we have, we have

99% in stock, on shelf, available for you, and we know

the 1% we don't. Nobody else can do that, nobody, there's no

retailer that can do that, right.

Not without the assistance of a robot.

What they do, and this is interesting, and not to

get on this topic. What they do is they use their online picking

they said, well, our customers have ordered this. Our

associates went to go pick those 10 items. They couldn't find two

of them, so we're 80% on shelf. That's the only way they can do

it. Based upon the fact that they've got pickers picking the

products. Well, you're letting your disappointed customers

drive your replenishment, which is really not the good way of

doing it, right? So props to you, because you can answer the

questions that people can't do. So let's talk about some of the

future stuff. So on shelf, availability, pricing, accuracy,

certainly spill detection all those are really good. A lot is

going on retail right now about retail shrink, shrink. Retail

shrink is basically unaccounted for inventory, and everybody

booms those people who are stealing power tools at Lowe's

or Home Depot or whatever, and I'm sure that's part of it, but,

but do you believe that, and not only specific numbers, right?

But do you believe that just having a physical robot in the

store, automated going up in the aisle will potentially deter

potential theft in your stores,

possibly. I mean, as you know, if they don't know

what exactly the robot is, I can see that being something I'm not

sure.

Do think that that? Do you think shrink is, is, is

an opportunity for, for, I mean, shrink in general is higher than

it has been in most retailers. It's growing, right? I don't

know about your stores, and again, I don't want any specific

numbers, but most retailers are coming to me and saying, it used

to be somewhere between 1 to 2% of sales. Now it's creeping up

to 3 to 4% for a lot of different reasons. Right? Do you

think the robot has a play in the identification of shrink, or

do you think a use case that we need to have other technologies

doing?

No absolutely. We currently use it for to help

combat shrink in a couple different ways. I have had LP

departments reach out to me and ask for the most up to date

picture that the robot has gone through on that shelf to say,

okay, there was product here at 10am this morning and now. And

it looked like it was full in this image, but now it's all

gone, and there's no sales through the point of sale today.

So that was that we also use it again to know things around the

shelf. As we go through the shelves, we say, hey, we

identified this tag. We look at this last sold date of that

item. This item hasn't sold in a year. Is that even the right

product behind it? Or did the UPC change and we're just got a

wrong tag? Or, hey, this product needs to be rotated. The dates

need to be checked on it, verified as we have now begun

moving into the frozen and fresh departments with the robot and

scanning indoors, we're going to start looking at Dairy items I

haven't sold in the last two weeks. Is Is there an out of

stock? Okay, we don't care. But, oh, there was no out of stock,

and there was no wrong product on that, and the product hasn't

sold in two weeks. Does that need to be reduced in sales now

to help move it along before we have to take a total loss on

that product or reduce it even further than it needs to

necessarily be. So we are going to start looking at all

different ways to combat shrink with the robot and just being

able to know that that truly exists, that it's not just

another UPC that doesn't show sales on the computer.

Wow, that's huge. That's huge Mark. I will put

this question on you. We're starting to see with grocery

items, computer vision be that primary way to know if the

products on the shelf or not. A lot of the stuff that's in

Woodman cereal, cans of soup, etc, etc, etc. There's a lot of

retailers out there who also are in the, what I'm going to call

the apparel and general merchandise space that are

starting to use other sensor technologies, like radio

frequency identification to do that. Does it? Do you ever see a

day where a potential robot could actually consume those

RFID tags in addition to computer vision, or is that even

on your roadmap, or other people doing that? Anything you want to

comment there?

Yes, the answer would be yes. Clearly, we do

have a roadmap for our solutions, and it really does to

your point, Mike, it's driven by, you know, being compatible

with other sensor type technologies, as well as

development of additional sensors within existing

solutions. So, you know, there's ways to integrate our existing

robots in with fixed cameras, per se. There's also ways to

leverage in the robot to really begin collection of RFID type,

you know, inventory when stores have the appropriate tagging in

place with with their products. So, yes, we we've got a very

defined roadmap, some some of which is made public. Other, you

know, is yet to be developed. But clearly there's a vision for

us and where we're going with this solution, tying into,

again, you know, we've got a fully autonomous roaming

computer that's leveraging AI computer vision today, so it

makes total sense for us to continue to leverage on that

platform, if you will. Of this additional sensor type

technologies, and RFID is clearly one one that's at the

forefront right now because of its renewed popularity, I should

say, with retailers really beginning to adopt it.

Yeah, and that not to, not to divert us at all. But

Tyler, one of the things you should be aware of is there are

retailers out there that are actively looking. For the

implementation of RFID technology for food,

specifically like bakery, to be able to because the robot today,

we talked about a lot of stuff the robot can do. One of the

things the robot can't do is count. I can see the box of Pop

Tarts, but I can't read behind it. If you start putting RFID

tags on things like bakery and other produce items, etc, that

thing can actually count as well, which is extremely

powerful. And with the RFID technology that's out there, you

can actually embed the date that you bake that product, and so

you can know that three days from now that has to get marked

down. And all that data collection could happen with

potentially robot. I'm not trying to oversell it, but Mark

and I have been talking about the other use cases that I think

retailers would take a look at. So in addition to that, let's

just we got a couple more minutes left. I want to I want

to give you guys a chance to share any closing comments.

Obviously this is really good for the wall, for the for the

w\Woodmans Associates in stores, because it helps automate their

process. Are there other, re other interested parties, things

like suppliers or direct store delivery people? You mentioned

the the asset protection people that might be interested. What

are some of the other use users of this that potentially might

be interested in this kind of data? Because I don't believe, I

don't know Mark of anybody who's literally giving realogram

information real time or not real time, but close to real

time, like this solution does, is there other people out there

that could be interested in taking advantage of this data as

well.

For us, we use it at all levels of our business.

The district managers can use the images collected, or we also

run an aisle totals. So everything that's scanned is

counted by the robot. I can tell you how many items are in an

aisle, how many items are in a section, so they look at that.

Our buyers utilize the pictures a lot of times, the scorecards

for different department heads, as we're spread out across the

entire state of Wisconsin and and through a lot of Northern

Illinois, it's just takes a long time to drive to a store. So we

do use it throughout the entire business, not just at the store

level, but I think that there is something for other companies as

the data is collected and ways to monetize some of that and

utilize it across the industry to kind of help, you know, maybe

the brokers who are sending people out to the stores to say,

is this product on shelf? Is this product not on shelf? Is it

in the warehouse? The robot being able to provide the

reporting would be useful? Could be useful,

yeah, so Tyler's okay. I was just going to add to

that, to Tyler's point. I mean, we are working three sellers

today just to stand up, really, what we're referring to as a

Supplier Success program, if you will. It's right giving you

know, obviously, at the end of the day, suppliers supporting

Woodmans want to move more of their products out of their

stores, and I'm certain that Clint Woodman and Tyler want to

move more of the products out of their stores. So why not get

visibility and help this supplier become more successful

by giving them visibility to this same data that the robot's

collecting? And we've been able to start that program up with

Woodmans team and their support, really with the test testing of

it for some time, but then we're in deployment of that now. So,

and we've seen some legs with that with some other retailers.

So really, it's a retailers program that they can stand up

in partnership with Badger to make for successful retail

supplier relationship. So

Well, I would think, I would think a couple things.

Number one, I've been on the supplier side of PNG and then

the retailer side, working with Walmart for a total of about 40

years. But I spent a couple years with a company called

Crossmark. They're a broker like an Acosta or an Advantage or

folks like that, and we would literally send people to a store

in the first of the time in the store, if they did a one hour

call for PNG in the store. The first 45 minutes were taking

pictures and doing surveys and collected in store conditions.

Well, this data, I would, literally, before I walk into

the store, know exactly I'm walking into. And I would, I

would certainly think Tyler with your direct store business, your

direct store is the cheese and the milk and the Pepsi guys and

all that kind of stuff, that knowing exactly what that store

looked like before you ever get out of your truck would be

enormously helpful, just as it is for for your own associates,

right? Absolutely.

Yeah. How much help do I need to divert to that

store today? Are their reports looking better? Are they? You

know, maybe this side of town's a little busier than that side

of town. So, yeah, here's a lot of the information around labor

that I don't even think has been completely explored yet.

Yeah, well, let me, let

me kind of wrap this up. This has been incredible

conversation. Thank you guys, and I really enjoy the

opportunity to have a retailer and a solution provider sit

together, because you get both sides of it. And that's why I

was kind of picking on you guys a little bit, making yourself

What was your side of the story? Because, because there's always

two sides to every story, sometimes you hear these

podcasts and it's just about a solution provider talking about

their great stuff, and you just want to go, I wonder if their

customer thinks it's as great as they I mean that this gives us

an opportunity to say you had an opportunity, you had an ongoing

business that was successful. You're spending a lot of time in

labor, doing things that, frankly, we should have

technology doing, and you delivered it. So my closing

question, I'll start with you, Mark, and then I'll let Tyler,

you kind of close us out. But What questions did I not ask you

that I should have or in other words, is there a closing

summary of something that we haven't talked about, that you'd

like to point out as we kind of shut down this this discussion.

Great question, Mike, you did a good job of

covering it all. First, I'd just like to stop closing just say

thanks to Tyler and Clint Woodman and all you know for

agreeing to do this, and Mike you, and the conversations on

retail team, for putting it together and inviting badger to

be a part of it with Woodman. So, you know, I think really

it's to if I could close on any one thing, it's bringing the

operations in multiple groups, different silos within a retail

establishment together as they evaluate these type of

technologies, because there's multiple use cases beyond just

what that particular department might be interested in. You

know, most often, when investments made with the

solution provider like this, you have to stand up an ROI in order

to prove out that investment, right? So when doing so, you

typically key on maybe 123, things at the most that we're

going to drive that ROI. I would encourage retailers to open that

up right as they evaluate different technologies, because

there's greater uses for the data above and beyond what Mike

just where, where they're focusing on today. And you've

heard it firsthand from Tyler, the way their their business,

they took the information we were providing and then they

leveraged it in different ways we never envision. I have other

retailers doing the same thing. So that's what I would encourage

more than anything. Maybe, as others may if you listen to this

and you're inspired to go out and give it a try, is to bring

those other stakeholders to the table, whether it's operations,

it marketing, merchandising, as you're evaluating these type of

technologies?

No, that's great. Great advice. Great advice.

Tyler, same question to you. Any any questions I should have

asked that I didn't, or any kind of closing comments that you'd

like to share.

Only got to jump on the same, same bandwagon as

Mark. Don't look at it as a cookie cutter solution. Think

outside the box. You know, talk to your different levels of

employment and say, you know, what are pain points? What if

the robot could do something for you? What would you like it to

do? Ask that question. I ask that a lot, and they say, you

know, this is where I struggle, or this is a pain point or.

Somebody's always getting after me about this. It'd be nice if I

could know. And a lot of times, if you really think about it,

you have if the robot's not providing you the direct answer,

taking what the robot's providing you and adding it to

something else you already also know you're going to have your

answer. So just really dive in and see. Don't let any

restrictions kind of around this project, you know, let it go.

Test it out. Try it out. Combine what you can and

I think the fact that you came from the stores

and had that store mentality and came in with this negative

perception, this thing's just money. We don't want to do this.

We're just a good grocery store that's trying to provide value.

We're employee owned, all those kind of things. And then

suddenly it's almost like, it's almost like handing somebody,

after they've been doing long division forever. A calculator

go, oh, man, this and do for me. Yeah, I do like that. I don't

want to go back to long division again. So the favorite question

I asked the people in the store is, is really, really basic one.

What are you spending your time on today? That's important, but

you'd rather not have to do it

exactly. That

Great question

a good question. It just just as a sidebar. We did

that when we were working on the RFID program at Walmart. We

said, What are you doing today that you just it's a really

important work, but you absolutely hate doing it. And

their answer was, real quick, quick, which is doing inventory.

I gotta scan it item, and I gotta count every item, and I

gotta update the on hands. I know it's important, but Oh man,

that takes forever, and it's so embarrassing. I'm in the middle

of a whole stack of clothes, and a customer comes and asks me a

question, which I want to be receptive to. But I go answer

the question, I come back. Oh crap, where was I right? You get

it all? I kind of so we implemented. RFID technology,

which means I just want it, and it counts everything for me. And

after we did that for a while, I said, Well, what else do you not

like doing? Well, that, since you did that, anyone who don't

like which Tyler, which you just referred to, which is, I hate

having to print pricing labels. I'll leave on a Tuesday night,

come in on Wednesday, and I've got 500 price changes to do. I

got to take these out and take the old ones out and put the new

ones in. So in one store, we installed electronic shelf

labels that literally automatically updated and gave

the associates the ability to say, I'm stocking this item, and

the light blinks, and I put the product there. Now we're going

and you'll see these in Walmarts or, as you're seeing, a lot of

their stores now have electronic shelf labels. So it's all about

it's not about the tech. It's about asking the question, how

are you spending your time? And while you know it's important,

you'd rather not have to do this task, because you'd rather spend

more time working with customers and taking care of them, and,

frankly, taking their money, right? So guys, thank you so

Thank you, Mike, thank you, Tyler

much. This is a great success story. I am really, really

excited about the both sides of this thing. And I think, you

know, the sky's the limit. I think the robot outcome more and

more important part of it. When they start putting name badges

on the robots and disguising the robots like our owner, etc, that

tells you you got something there. They feel like they're a

part of the family, and that's really, really a good story to

me so guys, thank you very much for your time. We really do

appreciate it, and hope you have a great rest of your week.

Thanks, Mark. Bye.