Expo 2023 - Thursday, 12/7

In this episode, Karey and Justin breakdown the upcoming 2023 FHW Kitchen Equipment Expo.

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Hello, everyone, welcome into a special episode of the food service for thought podcast. Podcast connecting the foodservice industry. I am Justin. That is Carrie Carrie Happy Holidays, and happy Expo time of the year. Expo time. I know it's commingled with Thanksgiving and Christmas and I was talking to boy the other day and he said, asked me about Thanksgiving next week as like late
next week. That's hard to believe. Yeah, thanks. Next week. Every year everybody says like all the holidays get here so fast and everything. And that's true. But I honestly feel like this week someone went in to Microsoft Word or Microsoft calendar just deleted two weeks out of November it. Yeah, it does. I know. I wanted to do some kind of get together before the holidays, with some friends just like a happy hour. And
I don't know when that. I don't think it can happen. Yeah. middle of January. That's when you'll schedule I think so. And then January, you're all bummed that it's January. It's dark out at 330 in the afternoon. That's right. You're just miserable for another two months. And then finally the sun comes out and around mid March. So yeah. Which is also wrong. My birthday coincidence, I think not know, I don't know how old you'll be to write. But we're not here to talk about my age here. We're here to talk about the 2023 Forbes Eva and Wallace Expo. I'm so excited. I love this theme, mostly because of the food that we have the caterer doing and Matt with Matt's catering again, and we'll see how they
will see how they pull that off. Sorry for those viewers or listeners. I don't know if you can hear that giant drop. I'm going to assume that I don't need to call 911 for someone they're building a deck next door and yes, you're having you're also having a piano grand piano moved inside the office repeatedly throughout the course of this podcast. Because everybody knows what a great piano player I am. I'm wonderful. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. State Fair but FA R E not FA IR so Oh, yeah, get it? Haha stay. Yes. But we're still doing
fried everything. I think fried everything. Fried everything. That's great. And balloon animal artist, which isn't going to appeal to everybody, but it should because that is the skill. Our balloon animal artists is Dr. Squeak. You may know him Dr. Squeak, squeak. I'd like to see where he got his doctorate from. Okay, give that he's like an AP math teacher for high school.
Not kidding. Me moonlights as the superhero Dr. Squeak where he makes balloon animals for adults. Yeah, that's why we're using Dr. Squeak because who knows what his he probably has his excuse for not being in school that day. We don't know. We don't know. But I don't think he calls in sick that day. Substitute Teacher
was even better at balloon animals. How is this possible?
Dammit, now what if I had to pick between the two in AP math teacher who was excellent at balloon animals or a substitute teacher who was excellent at balloon animals? I would lean substitute teacher why we're happy to have Dr. Squeak in the house. But why the substitute because if you have the like all the time, but he's probably doesn't do balloon animals. A substitute is free to do balloon animals. But there's more. There's more wiggle room in the schedule. more wiggle room. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so we're gonna have a ton of fried food we're gonna have a balloon animal person there. What else are we have? That's Do we have any actually work related things? Anything kitchen and food service related? Not really. We're gonna have makeovers. We're gonna teach how to teach. You know how to make your own reef at home from your grass clippings that you've been keeping all your
gift wrapping station?
Yes, and intermix Imagine, imagine a really sad mall in the late 1990s. And that's what we're going for right here. Total Life. Yeah. Total Life. Yes. Luckily, you and I aren't the only ones working on Expo. There are people who are more serious than we are. Yeah, I'm super excited. I was talking to Jim this morning about the panelists for the AI IoT and automation speaker session that we're having that's moderated by Joe carbon era, who's the director, editor, editorial director at fdns. Magazine, and then restaurant plus Design Magazine. And Dan Hartline, with in Tunis.
Is he? I mean, I love talking to him about this session. He's so passionate now all I want to do is learn AI. Well, I don't want to learn it. I want to know it without learning it, if that makes sense. Yeah.
But,
but that's true of everything. I would also like to do that with a lot of different things. Yeah, I would like to be an expert in something without having to go through any of the actual pain or work of becoming the expert. Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's gonna be really interesting conversation. And it's one of those things where you hear AI taught tossed around a lot, and you hear chat GPT, and an automation and all these different kinds of things, I think it's hard to make sense of it, of what it means because it's different for different industries. And for our industry, it can mean robots, bringing you you know, your your drink order to your table. But in a more practical sense, it can also mean just faster production in the back of the house, or different ways of transporting food from point A to point B, and different ways of of optimizing your, your workflow and your labor and your food, waste, and all of that kind of stuff. So I think it's really interesting to hear all the different ways that you can overlay the concept of AI or automation or something on to food service, whether or not you're a QSR, a full service restaurant, or a school or anything like that. Yeah, I am interested to hear I'm gonna try and be in that session, we're also recording it. And so we'll be able to share that with people. But what Dan's bringing with him, so he's talked, you know, in tune his works with every QSR ever, like, if you're a chain restaurant, you work with him tuna, and he's got some information that he's been allowed to share. But from some of those, the big people like that we go to all of us go to once a week, kind of folks, you know, he's gonna share some of that cool stuff that's happening. And then, so I'm not gonna say who our other panelists are yet. But but
one of them is Elon Musk, everyone, congratulations.
The creator of open AI is going to be here. Oh, my God, you know, Justin, there's this little bitty part of me who thinks now I should reach out on Instagram, I mean, LinkedIn, to Elon Musk and be like, an ex, ex, ex. Twitter. That's what he renamed Twitter. So yeah, if you're gonna reach out to him on a on a social platform, I would suggest the one that he owns would probably be
on LinkedIn is that it's just more professional kind of deal. But I hear what you're saying.
So do you think that takes us from zero chance to like 80% chance if I go to I think it takes us from 0.0% chance to 0.00%.
What else do you want to make sure everybody is aware of because I want to make sure we talk about spinning the wheel. But
what else do you want to get to? Well, so we've got two speakers from the TDA. Coming to speak, Mary and Anwar coming to talk to us about the K through 12, procurement changes that are really kind of wreaking havoc with some directors just because it's kind of really confusing. And anybody who wants to send in questions to me certainly can we've been collecting questions from districts. And some of the questions, you know, it's just proof that there's so much to learn from our child nutrition directors and how many different hats they have to wear. So I think this the attendees for this from our from our registration, so far, our K through 12, dealers, so restaurant suppliers that call on K through 12. And then consultants, I guess they want to hear kind of what, what the K through 12 industry is dealing with right now. So that's interesting. You know, and as always, we have valet parking in case the weather's not fun.
It's catered all day, we have the aforementioned balloon animal artist. And
I think what's really cool is for attendees, we don't have name badges, so they get to visit with the either Regional Sales directors or the VPS. And in some instances, the owners of companies are here. They that That, to me is really valuable. We're really important in the supply chain and process I think, but it's nice to talk directly with who you're working with and not in like a NRA or nafems setting where it's just, you know, a squash up you really get to have some valuable conversations and I like that so all those live
Product Demos, it'll be interesting to see like what Tony at Cresco was cooking. Or
well, oh my gosh, and server products has a new, a new really cool automated dispenser, but everything from all of our manufacturers and I wish I could list them all. I'm really excited about, like Flexi server be there with I don't know how many pieces of equipment they're showing off. So yeah, that's neat. Yeah, I think there's gonna be some some genuinely new products, and not just new for us, but new to the industry. Right? Yeah, I think that's gonna be really neat. And I think for a lot of our customers, they haven't had the chance to see a lot of this stuff in person, maybe they've seen spec sheets, or we've sent them a link to something online or a video or whatever. But to be able to actually kick the tires on it, I think is really invaluable. And just like, you guys, as a consumer, on the residential side, right, if you're gonna make a purchasing decision, something larger than, you know, a water bottle, you probably want to be able to see it in person and make sure you're satisfied with it. So I think it's cool to be able to do that as well. Like you said, without without the name tags, I think that's great. Because there's no, there's no pressure, there's nobody kind of, you know, I knew sizing you up here and trying to try to run over and make sure to have the conversation you just kind of free to roam. And it's sort of a free flowing. And you know, and you can kind of be kind of quiet and just do your own thing. Or if you want to engage with people, you're able to do that. And then we'll all be there kind of, you know, shuffling around making sure everybody's
got what they need. And we'll have like you said, it's catered all day, we got plenty of non alcoholic beverages waters and sodas and juices, and
we'll be videotaping those sessions. That's going to be excellent for people who can't make it. Everybody that's over the age of 100 that says videotaping please raise your hand. Oh my gosh. What do I say? Recording? Oh, okay. We'll work on it. Yeah, really? Look, here's what I have to say. I was here first. Dammit.
So there, okay. Real funny story. When I moved to Dallas, this was probably 2006 2007. My mom loved her to death.
Me, yes. sent me something in the mail. I was excited. I opened it up. And it was a VHS tape. And I called her and I was like, Hey, Mom, did you mean to send this to somebody else? And she said, No, no. Michael Jordan was on Oprah. And I recorded it for you. sweetest thing in the world, right. And so this is, you know, and I was like, well, thank you. But I don't have a VCR. DVD player. So I was not able to watch it. And it was still kind of pre YouTube explosion. So I couldn't just hop online and watch the thing or stream it or whatever. So I'll have to try to go back and find that but you just made me think of that. So well. I'm so pleased that I made you think of that. I asked my daughter this has been a few years ago, but she told me to quit talking. Quit saying Carphone. I remember this. This was our phone. This is I don't know how many years ago but I guess I guess long enough past when one says car phone. Yes. Now was your car phone. Did you have the bag phone? Or was it mounted in the car? I never had one of those. Okay, I was I saw him a little. No, I didn't have one of those. I did have I did have a beeper.
Oh, all right. And every time I say beeper do you think of like hangover wins I
probably get this a lot. Cesar, he's an actual live here.
Oh, Lord. Yeah. So that's that's it for Expo. And I'm glad that this is our first video podcast and that
that we're going to kick off the season, which is a little late in this format. So don't screw it.
Yeah, so I'll try not to mess it up. Also, before we get out of here, can we just mentioned the the spinning wheel thing real quickly? Absolutely. Yes. Totally forgot.
You mentioned Oh, I'll do it. Okay. Sure. That's a what the best thing you can do on a podcast is just be silent for an extended period of time. Really good stuff. Okay. Listen, Conan gets away with that crap, right? You're on a first name basis BT Dubs. See me in Conan? I can do that. Yeah, the charity wheel or the spinning wheel has five different charities on it. And these charities are impactful to the ownership team at FH and W for one reason or another.
And it's I wish we could show it here. So that wheel is super awesome. And it's got the five the five charities do you know the charities do you have them in for
Yes, yep, I have in front of me they are Feeding America marbridge
The Special Olympics splash in St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Yeah, yeah, those are all really wonderful charities. And if you look up their rating score, they
they're not so heavily weighted into admin costs. I mean, they're obviously our admin costs. But those are directed, I think, I think the donations are directed, this is our first time to do this. You know, we we do support, like here. At the holiday time, we have full hearts, full bellies in Houston. And we, through our donations and customer donations of food and toys support Texas Children's Hospital, and Sarah's house, which is a women's shelter. And that just really kind of awakened something. And as Did you know, when we started doing volunteer work there when we were for the company meeting, and I know that the inside sales team does as well. So that's that this was a great way to get back, I guess, you know, to give back and, and, and be a little bit more enthusiastic about marrying the corporate side of what Expo is with community. Yes. And I really liked the idea of the community engagement. And you know, I grew up in a small town, and you just kind of did those things. We didn't necessarily have big charities like this. But you know, there was always sort of that involvement, whether it was with school or through the church or just your local organizations or whatever. So the idea that you can, we can tie some of this back. And with meaningful ones, like you said, we're, you know, as much of the donations as possible go where they need to. I think that's, that's wonderful. So we're, we're excited to do that the wheel is pretty cool. I did see something online that was not related to this at all, but it did have a spinning wheel. And it was it was gravity weighted. So the one at the bottom was like it said, Drink bourbon. And then the other ones was like, go for a run or meditate or go to work early or something like that. But every time you spun the wheel, it just went to the bottom and said drink bourbon. And so like that's the kind of wheel I can get. For sure. But this one I can also get blind to that is a kind of a so what will happen Justin as customers, or attendees I should say, goes through Expo on the way out there's a spinning wheel and they'll have a chance to spend whatever charity they land on. Okay, a donation will be made to that charity. And
there is there there is places that if you don't land on the charity, there are like Starbucks gift cards. So we'll be giving out Starbucks gift cards, because I may be the only person who isn't going to drink a Christmas Starbucks coffee drink this holiday season.
Although I could be tucked into a frog A is that what they're called Prop A that like iced venti diabetes, okay, they're very yummy. Those are very, very yummy, direct, I could totally get behind that. But anyway, so yeah, we'll send people on their way with their heartful the random people from learning and their hearts will be full from giving and then
and their hands will be full from the balloon animals. Like there's just good. I know so much Stein, so much stuff. So anyway, yeah, I mean, and that's true. There'll be stuff. There's lots of stuff because the manufacturers, a lot of them, bring samples that they'd like for attendees to take with them and maybe try out in their in their kitchens or restaurants or food service operation. So anyway, we should probably let people know that the date of this is Thursday, December 7, doors open at 10am at the Forbes Heever and Wallace office and Test Kitchen culinary lab, and our address is 800 Freeport Parkway, Suite 300 and Capelle or if you're from Texas, you say Coppell. And that is it. So we will be there Thursday, December 7 10am. As Carrie said, valet will have food we'll have drinks, we'll have balloon animals will have
conversations about AI, and Internet of Things. And we'll have K through 12 discussions on procurement. And we'll have free flowing open equipment, spinning a wheel for charities, all sorts of good things. So please come and join us come and celebrate come and educate come and learn. And any parting thoughts from you carry? No, I'm just my heart is full that you remembered all the expert conversations we've had. Yes, just like osmosis if you just put put it on while you're sleeping, you're just some of it enough of it will absorb into your brain. So that's it. So thank you everyone for listening. Hopefully this video podcast was able to work and it's not just audio if it is just audio apologies.
But we're excited to be back
For a new season, and Carrie and I are going to be tackling some different things as a little peek behind the curtain. I think one of our next episode is probably going to be focused on the tipping conundrum. So we've all experienced that where you order a I do, we just did this, here you go, we just did this. The other day, we had a grocery order from target that was delivered here. And it was a whole bunch of stuff that we needed to get included. We had to buy some birthday presents for parties, and just a lot of stuff. So it ended up being like more than a normal grocery bill. And when you go back into the app, if you're going to place another delivery order, then it prompts you, Hey, would you like to tip the delivery person that that helps you for this order? And the answer is yes. Right. And it defaults to suggested tip amounts. 20% 25% 30%. And as I said, this was a pretty expensive bill, because there was a lot of other stuff on it. And the 20% was like $44 And I'm like, No, I'm not tipping someone $44 Because of this now, that's they didn't ask that. I can't say this conversation because my daughter worked for Instacart and I cannot I am ready to go. All right. Yeah, I'm ready to go. So we're gonna get into all the things tipping. So we'll see this might be an explicit episode. Explicit explosive. Right. Stay tuned.
Breaking news. All right. Thank you, everyone. We will see you Thursday, December 7 at 10am at the 2023 Forbes Hoover and Wallis Expo. Carrie. Have a lovely day and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. See in a couple of weeks.

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