Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 2: Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: I was out in California last week. I know you
Speaker 3: know that because you were filling in for Yeah, Carol
Speaker 3: and me here at the studio.
Speaker 4: It was super fun, actually good.
Speaker 3: It's always fun. It's a fun show. We have a
Speaker 3: lot of fun. We got a great team also. That
Speaker 3: makes it really fun in the control room right now.
Speaker 3: But we left the event Bloomberg screen time, and I
Speaker 3: was walking in Hollywood, on the sidewalks of Hollywood, California,
Speaker 3: with my brother, walking to his car, because that's what
Speaker 3: you do in La. My brother, Michael, he's funny. He's
Speaker 3: very funny. I'm glad you know him. He is very funny.
Speaker 3: And we ran into this little robot on the sidewalk
Speaker 3: and it was not something you see in New York City.
Speaker 4: So for me, did you take a bat?
Speaker 3: No, it's very rude, I know, but it's because there's
Speaker 3: no person inside of it doesn't mean you should take
Speaker 3: it back to you.
Speaker 4: Didn't put anything past an American anyway.
Speaker 3: He was I've seen him on those on the streets
Speaker 3: of Santa Monica before, but never Hollywood. So this is
Speaker 3: the first time seeing it on the sidewalks of Hollywood
Speaker 3: and it was delivering something to somebody. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: don't know if it was a robot from our next guest,
Speaker 3: co founder and CEO of Serve Robotics, Ali Kashani, who
Speaker 3: joins us from Redwood City, California, which is the headquarters
Speaker 3: of Serve Robotics. Ali, was this one of your robots
Speaker 3: that looked exactly like the ones that I see on
Speaker 3: your website? Was this one of yours?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they're very unique. I'm Katie, Come on,
Speaker 1: that's your first reaction hearing about robots.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. So for a little bit of context, I
Speaker 4: had Ali Kashani on the TV show a couple of
Speaker 4: weeks ago, probably a month or two ago at this point,
Speaker 4: and Ali, I did ask you that how often people
Speaker 4: attack these robots and you said not too often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, that's right. It's they're actually kind of like
Speaker 1: a mailbox at this point. They're just doing their thing
Speaker 1: and people just pass by. Sometimes people can be curious,
Speaker 1: especially the children, but overall they're very well received and
Speaker 1: accepted in the community.
Speaker 3: Well, that had a camera on it, and my brother said,
Speaker 3: you know, I think it's actually opera. I'm just looking
Speaker 3: for foot I think I took a picture of it.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at My brother said, you know, actually I
Speaker 3: think they're operated by somebody remotely. Are versions of these
Speaker 3: operated remotely? I know the current the newest thing that
Speaker 3: you announced today is not operated remotely. Are older versions
Speaker 3: of these operated remotely?
Speaker 1: So they're all what the call level for autonomous, which
Speaker 1: means that they can do a lot of things by themselves.
Speaker 1: So there's a good chance when you saw it it
Speaker 1: was actually navigating by itself. But if it actually needs help,
Speaker 1: it can ask for help and someone can help remotely.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, So it's a mix. It's kind of just
Speaker 3: like you know, you'd have the way they thought about
Speaker 3: driverless cars back in the day. They haven't implemented it
Speaker 3: yet this way, but it's like you kind of ring
Speaker 3: a bell if you're in a sticky situation. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: So talk to us about level four automation here, because
Speaker 3: I don't think general can you know Ed Ludlow, who
Speaker 3: covers this stuff all the time, understands levels one.
Speaker 4: That's like his bat signal basically, But.
Speaker 3: For the normal person. What are the different levels of autonomy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess the best pace to explain it is
Speaker 1: if you have a tesla, it's level two, which means
Speaker 1: you have to have your hands on the steering and
Speaker 1: eyes on the road. And then the highest level is
Speaker 1: level five, which is when the robot or the vehicle
Speaker 1: never needs any help at all. It can do everything
Speaker 1: one hundred percent by itself, which if you ask folks
Speaker 1: in this space will tell you is mostly sci fi.
Speaker 1: Level four is the holy grail where robots can actually
Speaker 1: move indepenality by themselves quite a lot of the times,
Speaker 1: but whenever they are outside of the comfort zone, someone
Speaker 1: can help them. And when you think about it, financially,
Speaker 1: there's a point at which automation doesn't make any more
Speaker 1: financial sense because let's say flight controllers sitting somewhere looking
Speaker 1: at hundreds of you know, planes, that's perfectly fine use
Speaker 1: of human intelligence, and it makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: to actually keep humans in the loop at that level.
Speaker 1: But the important things that the robots can do a
Speaker 1: lot of things by themselves, and that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of the leverage and automation comes in.
Speaker 4: I find this so delightful I know I made a
Speaker 4: joke at the very Star about beating them taking to
Speaker 4: these robots.
Speaker 3: But that's an interesting turn that you've had in such
Speaker 3: a short time.
Speaker 4: I mean, I just, you know, I find it endearing
Speaker 4: these little robots.
Speaker 3: There's cute eyes on them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're buzzing around, they're giving you food. I'm in
Speaker 4: New York though, you know, I've never seen one. Of course,
Speaker 4: I don't spend a lot of time in California. What
Speaker 4: are your expansion plans, I mean, what other cities are
Speaker 4: you potentially thinking about here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have plans to come to new cities next
Speaker 1: year as soon as in a Q two, we are
Speaker 1: going to have our next major market beyond La. First,
Speaker 1: they are going to expand in more LA neighborhoods. In
Speaker 1: Q one, we have two hundred and fifty more robots
Speaker 1: in Q one being deployed, and then by the end
Speaker 1: of the year, we're going to have two thousand robots
Speaker 1: and we're going to launch a few more cities, which
Speaker 1: we'll have more to share about that soon. We have
Speaker 1: recently discussed the fact that we'll be doing a pilot
Speaker 1: in Dallas with Wing, which is a subsidiary of alphabet.
Speaker 1: They make drones where are robots pick up items from
Speaker 1: restaurants and then hand them over automatically to a drone
Speaker 1: that would then bring them a few miles away, a
Speaker 1: distance that the robot can't do. So it's a really
Speaker 1: cool collaboration where robots do half of the deliveries that
Speaker 1: are short distance drones to the other half that are
Speaker 1: long distance. That's will be one of the next places
Speaker 1: you will see them.
Speaker 4: I dream of a future where I can just open
Speaker 4: my window and get my fries.
Speaker 3: Delivery in New York City.
Speaker 4: I don't want to go downstairs. Well, you know, I
Speaker 4: was going to ask about New York City because Okay,
Speaker 4: in New York City, I feel like one of these
Speaker 4: robots would get attacked, like immediately. And Elliott, the question
Speaker 4: I have for you is, I mean, what's your ideal city.
Speaker 4: Obviously these robots work in LA You're thinking about, you know,
Speaker 4: expanding to Dallas, which is the ideal make up both
Speaker 4: in terms of sort of the temperament of the people
Speaker 4: but also the geography of the city that would work
Speaker 4: for these robots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's really first and foremost
Speaker 1: the question of where are our partners mostly concentrated in
Speaker 1: so Uber is the largest player in LA, so it
Speaker 1: makes a ton of sense for us to start there,
Speaker 1: and LA being the second largest market in the country.
Speaker 1: New York is the largest market, so it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of time before you see robots there. But given
Speaker 1: the distribution effectively the partnerships that we have in place,
Speaker 1: we've started in Los Angeles, but most cities in the
Speaker 1: country would have a need for robots because restaurants are
Speaker 1: usually in very congested areas where you have, you know,
Speaker 1: more car traffic, more parking issues, and within that business
Speaker 1: couple miles at that business district, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of population, so they can benefit from robots.
Speaker 3: New York's a unique market, though we have the e
Speaker 3: bikes and the delivery people, so I don't know. I
Speaker 3: would like to see how it would would work here.
Speaker 4: If you get hit by one of those e bikes, that.
Speaker 3: Would hurt, hurt a lot more than getting hit by
Speaker 3: one of these robots. So then go seven miles an hour. Hey, Ali,
Speaker 3: before we let you go, very briefly, how much do
Speaker 3: these cost? We only have twenty seconds left, but give
Speaker 3: us the cost equation here.
Speaker 1: We don't share the bomb costs, but they cost half
Speaker 1: as much as the last robots be a building, So
Speaker 1: we bring that cost down and they cost less than
Speaker 1: a brand new car, the cheapest band new car you
Speaker 1: can buy in the US.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So they're pretty expensive.
Speaker 1: I would say that pretty cheap with all that smart
Speaker 1: the sensors, the computer computers on board, they're they're pretty
Speaker 1: reasonably priced.
Speaker 3: But I imagine they're going to be getting cheaper and
Speaker 3: cheaper with the technology, really cool stuff. It's a publicly
Speaker 3: held company ticker seer v uh. The company stock up
Speaker 3: four point five percent today. Ali Kashani, co founder and
Speaker 3: CEO of Server Robotics. This is Bloomberg. The hospitality market
Speaker 3: expected to grow to nearly five trillion dollars this year.
Speaker 4: I'd believe it, you do, Yeah, I mean Americans they
Speaker 4: love experiences, they love going places, and they love eating well.
Speaker 3: Several factors wellness, tourism, flexible booking options, sustainability initiatives, collaboration,
Speaker 3: and health and safety standards.
Speaker 4: That all sounds right, and they love going places absolutely.
Speaker 3: Longevity and senior living facilities also a factor. And that's
Speaker 3: where our next guest comes in. Let's get to Richard Shankle,
Speaker 3: founder and executive chairman of Restura Hospitality Group. It is
Speaker 3: looking to bring tech and innovation to senior living. He
Speaker 3: joins us from Walthnam, Massachusett. It's Richard, the founder and
Speaker 3: former CEO at Unidine, which provides food and dining management
Speaker 3: services across the country for senior living facilities, community hospitals,
Speaker 3: behavior health clients, corporate environments and more. Good to have
Speaker 3: you with us this afternoon. Richard, give us an idea
Speaker 3: of the white space that you see here because you've
Speaker 3: spent some three decades in the larger hospitality business, what's
Speaker 3: missing when it comes to senior living facilities at the marketplace?
Speaker 5: And thank you Tim, and thank you everybody for having
Speaker 5: us on right today. All the hospitality industry focused on
Speaker 5: senior living is about twenty years behind the times in innovation.
Speaker 5: And as we looked at the launch of Resstoer, we
Speaker 5: spent the last eighteen months with market research and really
Speaker 5: trying to understand what that act of adult lifestyle, community
Speaker 5: and senior living really wants.
Speaker 2: And what really came out is they want choice.
Speaker 5: As we go back in life, as most of us
Speaker 5: will remember airports, airports were probably the most stoic type
Speaker 5: of business where there was no freedom of choice. And
Speaker 5: now we look today, whether it's local brands, national brands,
Speaker 5: or things to do when you're in an airport, it's
Speaker 5: humbly very different. In our opinion. The same thing went
Speaker 5: on in the college and university market place back many,
Speaker 5: many years ago. It was just a board plan a
Speaker 5: you got, you've received three meals a day, two meals
Speaker 5: certain days.
Speaker 2: And that was it in one dining room and senior
Speaker 2: living has Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember when my parents dropped me off at college.
Speaker 3: They were like, oh, this is why tuition is so expensive.
Speaker 3: Why are they spending all the money on the dining
Speaker 3: hall and on the lawns and on the dorms.
Speaker 5: Right right, And if you look at colleges and university,
Speaker 5: some of the CNU business has some of the best
Speaker 5: reputations from a culinary perspective.
Speaker 2: Then you go over to senior.
Speaker 5: Living and I spent the large part of my career
Speaker 5: in it, and it hasn't evolved. There are three major
Speaker 5: competitors in it, and it's a very stoic, poorly innovative marketplace.
Speaker 3: Your point, I know from experience visiting my grandma.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, Richard, I'm curious. I mean, we'll get
Speaker 4: into what you're trying to do and how you're trying
Speaker 4: to change that. But why do you think that's the case.
Speaker 4: I mean, you bring up some great points when it
Speaker 4: comes to college, even when it comes to airports, for example,
Speaker 4: the dining options getting better. Why do you think we
Speaker 4: haven't seen that same energy being brought to senior living
Speaker 4: even though the population is aging.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: I think it was a couple of different things. Number One,
Speaker 5: the type of active adult that was prior in senior
Speaker 5: living was very comfortable with just one choice or two.
Speaker 5: I think as the market has changed and you look
Speaker 5: at the boomers coming in and just even active adults
Speaker 5: sixty five and seventy and seventy five, they're.
Speaker 2: A lot more sophisticated today.
Speaker 5: If you kind of look at the restaurant industry thirty
Speaker 5: years ago, it's very much evolved, and I believe right now,
Speaker 5: as these active adult and senior living continuing care or
Speaker 5: types of communities go up, it is a much more
Speaker 5: sophisticated consumer today that has an expectation. Research that we
Speaker 5: did prior to launch, only seven percent of the individuals
Speaker 5: looking at senior living active adult communities felt it would
Speaker 5: meet their food and dining needs. Ninety three percent felt
Speaker 5: it would never meet the mark of really great dining.
Speaker 5: That's a major disconnect.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering about the cost equation here and how that
Speaker 3: looks for senior dining, for senior living facilities. These places, Richard,
Speaker 3: as you know, can be incredibly expensive.
Speaker 5: That's correct, And I think given that, you know, we're
Speaker 5: looking at the marketplace and saying, why isn't there the
Speaker 5: opportunity to upgrade the dining services or for variety choice,
Speaker 5: you know, things like pop up restaurants, you know, with
Speaker 5: proprietary brands launching there to offer that what we'll call consumer,
Speaker 5: those choices and be able to keep them within the
Speaker 5: confines of that community by offering them that high level
Speaker 5: dining experience when they want it, but also offering them
Speaker 5: to other things besides high level dining.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting. I mean, I'm curious, you know, how
Speaker 4: tech plays into it, because you point out in your
Speaker 4: notes that when we think about, you know, this this
Speaker 4: shift from cafeterials cafeteria style when it comes to colleges
Speaker 4: to really tech forward experience, I mean, how do you
Speaker 4: incorporate tech into what you're doing?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, we spent the last eighteen months pre launch
Speaker 5: of October first envisioning what technology would be, and the
Speaker 5: industry is definitely a laggered in that area. Just imagine
Speaker 5: you walk into a dining room by a facility operated
Speaker 5: by Restore and by the end of the meal, we
Speaker 5: have technology that will allow that executive c suite as
Speaker 5: well as us, to know how we did, what they liked,
Speaker 5: why they liked it, and what they didn't like, and
Speaker 5: be able to immediately change anything.
Speaker 2: From a menu offering the next day.
Speaker 5: All but getting the results immediately of what we'll call
Speaker 5: consumer satisfaction and analytics on a dashboard for both us
Speaker 5: internally as well as our consumer there as well as
Speaker 5: the executive suite can be a complete game changer for
Speaker 5: those facilities. It's never been done. Today, we go in
Speaker 5: and get our car fixed, and I use the analogy.
Speaker 5: We get constant updates of how that car is getting fixed,
Speaker 5: what they're doing, and at the end, are you satisfied?
Speaker 5: In senior living. I can tell you nine times out
Speaker 5: of ten, a once a year survey of how the
Speaker 5: food and dining is is completed, and that's unacceptable in
Speaker 5: today's day and a from a consumer perspective.
Speaker 3: What's the technology that the end user has to interact with.
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about the executives at the place. I'm
Speaker 3: not talking about the staff who works there. What about
Speaker 3: the tech that somebody like my grandmother would have to
Speaker 3: interact with?
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, it's very interesting. We spent a lot of
Speaker 5: time and what we came to find out is, you know,
Speaker 5: the phone, whether we call on an iPhone or Samsung,
Speaker 5: a smartphone is what almost every one of them have
Speaker 5: in a facility. And we are very much involved in,
Speaker 5: you know, building out and we have built out the
Speaker 5: applications that will allow that person internally to be able
Speaker 5: to get us information as well as for us to
Speaker 5: push information to them. And it hasn't been done. We've
Speaker 5: done things like paper surveys. They are so outdated in
Speaker 5: today's day and age.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have to say, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think of my own grandmom, who's in her nineties.
Speaker 4: She was using an Uber up until a few years ago.
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, my grandma doesn't even have a smartphone.
Speaker 4: That's we have very different grandmother.
Speaker 3: But she's one hundred and two. Actually tomorrow's her birthday.
Speaker 4: Oh my goshdred and second birthday wew, no kidding. Well, anyway,
Speaker 4: we have different grandmoms. Mine's ninety five.
Speaker 3: So it's like almost yeah, yeah, that's so she uses
Speaker 3: a smartphone obviously.
Speaker 4: Because yeah, yeah, she loves emojis and stuff. A text
Speaker 4: her all the time. Anyway, that's awesome, Richard, I am
Speaker 4: curious talk to us about how how you make money
Speaker 4: because you think about your last venture in this space.
Speaker 4: For example, you point out in your notes that you
Speaker 4: delivered a nine hundred percent return to shareholders. Talk us
Speaker 4: through again. Obviously, we know the opportunity set here that
Speaker 4: you see and what you're doing about it. How do
Speaker 4: you make money?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's fundamentally on on site food service type
Speaker 5: of operations.
Speaker 2: We have two ways that we get involved.
Speaker 5: We operate on a cost plus base basis where we
Speaker 5: have different overheads and fees built in. And then we
Speaker 5: also operate a lot of the times on what we'll
Speaker 5: call profits loss arrangement, where we'll guarantee our operating costs.
Speaker 5: And obviously, if we operate the way we envision, there's
Speaker 5: profit and if we don't, we take risk on that end,
Speaker 5: and we make guarantees throughout our agreements. So it's pretty
Speaker 5: fundamentally a business that provides margin back to us.
Speaker 3: How hard is it to get into these facilities that
Speaker 3: have been working with incumbents for years and might have
Speaker 3: long term contracts.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, you know what I would say is,
Speaker 5: I'll give you some statistics about eighty five percent of
Speaker 5: the senior living marketplace, which is you know, thirty to
Speaker 5: forty billion, is not outsourced. They presently are self operated.
Speaker 5: The other fifteen percent is outsourced to competitors. So there's
Speaker 5: a huge amount of white space to be focused on.
Speaker 5: And you know how we look at that other fifteen percent,
Speaker 5: We don't believe we are building or have built restore
Speaker 5: to compete with the other companies. We think we have
Speaker 5: such a creative, innovative approach. We also know, as part
Speaker 5: of our whole value proposition, I've provided back to all
Speaker 5: of our employees over thirty percent of the company in
Speaker 5: equity to our employees. All of our employees are owners
Speaker 5: of the company. We subscribe and are a participant with
Speaker 5: ownership Works in New York City a not for profit,
Speaker 5: and I think we're one of the first startups that
Speaker 5: they've ever involved themselves in where a percent of the
Speaker 5: company was provided prior to the company being profitable.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, what's your outlook in terms of how you
Speaker 3: roll this out? When you roll it out? Just we
Speaker 3: have thirty seconds left. Give us an update on timing here, right?
Speaker 5: We started October first, after eighteen months in stealth mode.
Speaker 5: We are in constant communication with prospective clients. Now we're
Speaker 5: coast to coast from the east to the west provider,
Speaker 5: and we envision that over a very short period of time,
Speaker 5: we already have many prospective clients that we are moving
Speaker 5: forward with. And as I said, we have just spent
Speaker 5: the last eighteen months making sure our systems, technology and
Speaker 5: culinary resources are in place. Executive team has been hired,
Speaker 5: and we're right now already involved with some clients.
Speaker 3: All right, Richard, come back visit us again. Richard Schenkel,
Speaker 3: founder and executive chairman of Restoa Hospitality Group, looking to
Speaker 3: bring tech an innovation to senior living, joining us this
Speaker 3: afternoon from Waltham, Massachusetts.