Reimagining Beverage Training for Today’s Workforce

Crystal Hamilton [00:00:00]:

All of the research shows time and time again that two things. One, staff want to feel it's not just about money for them, they want to feel invested in. They want to feel that they're part of something, part of the solution. And number two, that the more that we empower our teams with confidence, which you can only get through education, the better they become at their jobs.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:38]:

Welcome to another episode of WISKing It All. We're here today with Crystal Hamilton, the CEO of Knowbie. Crystal, thanks for joining us.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:00:48]:

Hi, thank you for having me.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:50]:

Of course. So first things first, can you just tell people get more into it, but high level, can you tell people what is Knowbie?

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Crystal Hamilton [00:00:58]:

So Knowbie is a educational platform that trains restaurant and liquor retail staff on the fundamentals of how to sell and talk about alcohol. Because it's such an important part of the business, I wanted to build something that actually would resonate with the employees of today. So we're an app based platform that really gamifies and provides a turnkey solution for businesses to use. Instead of the PDFs and other things we've been doing for decades, we're actually moving to technology to, to put training on the go.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:35]:

I love that and I like to understand how people got into this space. So I know you have quite an extensive, excuse me, background in hospitality, but you know, from server to sommelier to wine sales to education. But love to hear from you what originally got you into the hospitality space and love to understand your kind of trajectory to the idea or the inception of Novi.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:01:57]:

Yeah, that's a great question. And you know, there's, there's kind of the basic answer and then there's the real answer. And you know, the real answer is that the hospitality industry really provides a space for anybody to enter into. And that's the thing I love about it, is that, you know, we welcome people of all genders, all backgrounds, all everything, all economic status to come into the industry and we provide a place for them. So for me, I joined the industry because I really didn't have a lot of other options. I grew up very poor and didn't have the opportunity to go to post secondary school. And so I got a job in a restaurant and you know, being a go getter, I just did really, really well at it and I loved it and fell in love with really the opportunity that it gave me to meet people and really advance my own career. And so through just kind of going from job to job to job, I ended up falling in love with the world of wine.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:03:04]:

And putting myself through school and becoming a sommelier and getting a diploma in wine studies. And that was really where my career moved from being just a server or a manager to really falling in love with educating people and training people. Because I found that that was what worked for me. Like, I knew what it felt like to not be trained, and then I knew what it felt like when I trained myself. And so I fell in love with. With training people. And so I started, you know, different wine schools and things at the restaurants that I worked at. And that was really what guided my experience and my passion for.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:03:42]:

For education and training.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:43]:

That's really cool. And so from that kind of experience of, you know, living that what was kind of the. The. The turning point where you're like, I want to build an app, you know, like from idea and I like educating to. Then it's time to build something specific.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:03:59]:

Yeah. So I think it was from living the experience of seeing what training and education can do for a business, for a person, for an employee, and for the customer. So, like I mentioned, I was a sommelier, so I created a wine education programs at the restaurants that I worked at. And I experienced firsthand what it was like training people. So, you know, you schedule everybody to come in. You've got the wine rep coming in, or you're doing the training, you get the samples, and then only half the people show up because, you know, half of them are actors or half are in school or whatever it may be. And that's challenging and frustrating. And then you have the turnover rate.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:04:40]:

Right. So you've got, you know, everybody's moving around in our industry or it's seasonal. You do your training that you've paid for and you've brought people in for, and then three months later, those people leave and you've got to do it all over again. And so I experienced that. But later, when I became a wine agent, I watched my friends who were restaurant managers and owners go through the exact same thing. And I remember a moment I was doing a training at the Joey's Restaurant Group, which is a really popular restaurant group here in Canada, and they've moved into the States too. And, you know, similar story, I went in to train them about Catena Alta Chardonnay, which is a really beautiful Chardonnay, and half the people showed up. So only half the people were there.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:05:25]:

And then of the people that showed up, half of them thought that there was peaches inside of the wine. Half of them didn't know what oak was like. There was all this varying degree of really understanding. And so I would have to, like, dumb down my training to meet everybody at the very beginning and train from there. So I wasn't really training about Catena Alta anymore. I was training about, like, what is chardonnay? And it's vitis vinifera grapes, not the grapes in a grocery store. And, you know, really kind of taking it back to basics. And so in that moment, I thought, why is there not something that a business can use that really standardizes, like, the level of understanding and training that an employee needs to really just be effective at their job to have better quality conversations, like, why are we doing it this way? It doesn't work.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:06:22]:

And there wasn't anything when I went out and looked for it. And so that's really what inspired me to want to build something. And Angelo, let me be clear. I am not a tech person. I'm a wine restaurant person. But I had to become one in order to build a solution that I felt was going to help the people of today. What we've done in the past hasn't worked. So we need to meet our staff where they're at.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:06:48]:

That was really what made me move towards an app and not web based because restaurants are deskless. Like, the minute the doors open, you're on. There's no sitting down and doing your training. So I was like, it's got to be on the go. It's got to be something that people can do on the bus or whatever on their way to work. And it had to be fun. And it has to, like, you know, kind of take away the snobbery or the fear around alcohol, whether it's, you know, I started in wine because that was my background, but we cover spirits, beer, you know, lots of little micro classes. Like, I really wanted to build it to be relevant to the people of today.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:31]:

It's really neat. I love, I love it when, when entrepreneurs kind of, you know, do what they do best, which is solving real problems. And, you know, I'd love to. For people kind of imagining the app, could we maybe walk them through? They're maybe listening in. Like, what does the experience look like? If I'm working at Joey's or at another restaurant, what does it look like? I get a login. Like, just kind of walk me through it. Just kind of paints a picture of what someone maybe expect.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:07:58]:

Yeah. Well, I'll preface by saying that all of Knowbie, every element of it has been built from a restaurant operators like, mindset. So understanding that they've got so much on their Plate. The last thing they need to be figuring out is new technology. And I think that that's what stops people from, you know, moving into the space is. Is. It's fearful. They don't have time.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:08:27]:

So I pre in saying that because everything takes minutes. So as an operator, Angelo, if you signed up, you know, you're Joey's location, we would hold your hand through the situation of getting your team set up. So it always starts first with building awareness. So we've got to, like, you know, the managers have to talk to staff, we've got posters, we've got different things that go up in the staff area to really raise the awareness that the team understands something is coming. And, you know, this is what it looks like. And they can even download. Download the app themselves and just start playing with it. And then after a week of that, we.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:09:06]:

We basically add everybody to the dashboard as you, Angelo, would be the operator of it. And nobody takes over the rest. So we prompt them along. The app is built to encourage your learners and your staff to continue their education. And then it reports back to you the data so you get to see where people are at, you know, how they're progressing, what chapters they're completing, what their test scores are, all of those types of things. But the idea of Knowbie is not something that I'm not trying to build sommeliers, I'm not trying to build cicerones. I'm really trying to empower the staff of today with knowledge that's going to help them do better at their jobs and sell more and feel more confident. So it's built to be simple.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:09:57]:

And as a learner, every little chapter takes minutes to go through. So, you know, if you're learning about chardonnay, that chapter, that whole experience will take you three and a half minutes to do. It's not meant to frustrate them. Even the tests are not meant to frustrate. There's a little quiz. It's meant to help them to progress through and get to the end result, which is certification and getting something that they can put on their resume and that they can take with them. So, you know, instead of thinking, like, maybe staff are not going to stick around forever, but when they leave your restaurant, they're going to leave better than they arrived. And that's the goal.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:39]:

That's awesome. And you quickly touched on a point that I want to dive into a bit more. It was, you know, the education piece and then ultimately helping them sell more. And so I want to kind of double tap on the. On the sell more. Tell me a bit about that side of it. How. Because I'm sure you lived it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:57]:

But how does it help them sell more? I can probably extrapolate, but I'd rather hear from you. So, yeah, just walk, walk. People listening through, you know, we have a lot of restaurateurs listening in. They're probably okay. They, you know, especially the ones that have a strong beverage program are thinking, this sounds interesting. You know, so now I think it's a great time to maybe get into how does education in this case or using Knowbiel tied to increase in revenue.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:11:23]:

Yeah, sales. Good point. To, to kind of tie it back to. So, you know, the idea of education and training, it's really fluffy and. And sometimes it can feel like not a necessary thing that people don't need. Right. It kind of becomes. And even when I was a manager, right, it's the last thing on your list because the bus are called in sick and you know, the dishwasher's breaking, you know, all the other things you have going on.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:11:56]:

But the data shows, and all of the research shows time and time again that two things. One, staff want to feel it's not just about money for them. They want to feel invested in. They want to feel that they're part of something, part of the solution. And number two, that the more that we empower our teams with confidence, which you can only get through education, the better they become at their jobs and the better they become at their jobs, they're selling more, they're having better conversations because they can actually navigate questions. So we've shown through case study after case study that the direct results of onboarding with Knowbie after two to four weeks shows a 30% increase in average check through alcohol sales. Yeah. And I think I shared the story with you at that time about a server at the Arbutus Club, which is a private members club.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:12:56]:

And you know, members come in and they know what they want and they say, well, I'm going to get the oyster based Sauvignon Blanc or I'm going to get whatever it was. It was a Sauvignon Blanc of some sort. And because that server had gone through Novi, she had the confidence to actually start to engage in conversation instead of just having like a receiving, like just taking an order. Yeah, she actually made a suggestion. So she says, well, did you know we actually have a really great bottle. I know you love drinking Sauvignon Blanc. Have you ever had a Sancerre before? She had no idea what Sancerre was before she Took Knowbie. She didn't even know how to say the word.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:13:37]:

But now she could identify that this regular client or customer liked to drink Sauvignon Blanc. And she felt confident enough to suggest that the customer said no. Actually, I've never had it. She goes, well, you know, she gives a couple points that she learned in the Knowbie app. You know, it comes from the Loire Valley and blah blah, blah. The customer said yes and she was able to, to create that. It's almost like you create that trust bond with the customer because now you're leading them. Yes.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:14:08]:

So they said yes. They had a bottle of Sancerre which took that average check from a $30 bottle of oyster based Sauvignon Blanc to a hundred dollar bottle of Sancerre. That is pure profit.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:22]:

That's awesome.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:14:22]:

And that right there paid for Knowbie for the whole month. Just that one transaction. So you know, if we look at that as just one example, we have numerous of them. We know that training our staff and empowering them with that language, that knowledge and making them feel like they're part of the solution and team is direct result in sales.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:46]:

That's really cool. You know, you know what you should do? I was thinking of a cool experiment, but it'd be too hard to actually do because I think if someone wanted to do this, they would just train the whole staff. But imagine if you train like half the servers on Novi and half didn't and then looked at their average check size. It'd be super cool to see the end results. But this is great. And, and I'm curious like ultimately and I think about it even just from a consumer standpoint, it's like when you're in a restaurant, at least for me, some people, they go in, they just want to order the exact same thing. For me, I'm going out. I gen well depending on the type of place, but usually if it's the, the right type of place, I, I prefer the experience of like what do you recommend? I want something like this guy them a bit but like you tell me like, you know, you guys work here.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:27]:

What, what do you recommend between this and this? Or I want something with a tequila base. What do you recommend? You know, like not too fruity, whatever. So I'm a fan of like getting that and it's kind of a bummer when the, the waiter or waitress doesn't know. So it's like, oh gosh. It just kind of kills the vibe because you're there and you're like, what do you recommend? I like something smoky. I like this, I like that. And it's just like. And then it's the vibe.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:15:53]:

Exactly, Angelo. And especially in today's market, everything's more expensive.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:58]:

Yeah.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:15:59]:

You know, incomes are lower because every, like the, the discretional money that we use, there are more restaurants than ever. So consumers have more choice, they have less money to spend. And there's a little bit of a third point. There is consumers are more educated than they've ever been. So they know what they like. They have a bullshit meter. They know when they say, oh, you know, you know, what's the difference between these two sauvignon blancs? And you don't know how to answer it, or, you know, you lie your way through it, which so many people do. Oh, this one's very popular.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:16:37]:

Everyone likes this one. They can tell. And so what happens is you lose that credibility and it impacts your restaurant, it impacts the way that people feel about your restaurant, and then it impacts the customer lifetime value. And this is a thing I think I've shared with you before that I don't feel that people talk about operators, managers, business owners talk about enough with their staff. Is the lifetime value of customers. It is not one transaction. If anybody has been a great server in their life, they understand the power of a regular customer. And that is what makes or breaks businesses.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:17:17]:

A lot of the time it's a lot easier to keep a regular customer than it is to make new regular customers. It costs way more money in marketing and advertising and all of the things than it is to train our staff how to build regulars. And part of that comes from having this consultative relationship and, and you touched on it. You know, diners, when they go out and I'm the same way, like, I want, I'm coming to your house.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:48]:

Yeah.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:17:50]:

I want to be treated. You are the expert. You know your menu. And even if you don't know wine as good as I know wine, you should know your wine list. And so these are the things, or your cocktail list. Or when I say, you know, I want a smoky tequila based cocktail, you should know on your list. But we've lost the investment. Like there's.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:18:13]:

And we can get into it more. But, you know, there's a shift that's happened in the industry and we've replaced institutional knowledge or the knowledge of our jobs with sampling, with, I don't knows, with just this kind of like. And making our customers have to be the experts so that that power shift has to come back. And I think that's what really Guides, great guest experiences.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:41]:

I love that. It's funny because I think about, you know, some of the best experience I've had. It's been the server who, who knows their stuff. And I'm sure there's a bunch of tricks and tips, but it's funny one I noticed that works well. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but I feel like fitting from a sales lens, it makes sense. So I imagine it translates to servers, but is when they tell you something they don't like, I trust them more, you know, So I find that such a great tactic, like, oh, what about this? And if they're actually like, it's okay, but to be honest, I wouldn't recommend it. It's a bit small and blah, blah, and it's not our best idea. And it's like, all right, I trust you now because it's the person who, everything's great.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:18]:

Our menu is awesome. Everything's great. Then I'm like, this is. I don't trust you now. Oh.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:19:24]:

The one that gets me is when they say, well, this one's really popular. I'm like, ah, exactly.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:31]:

I'm like, what does that mean? I don't care. Yeah, exactly like, yeah, I'm with you there. One thing that came to mind is like, you have, you know, being in the, in the education side of the hospitality business and now kind of, you know, obviously know me building know me. You've seen a lot of training. What is it from your point of view that's kind of broken about the way most restaurants train their team?

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Crystal Hamilton [00:19:57]:

A lot of the time it's not the restaurant's fault, it's that the systems are broken, it's expensive, it's time consuming, and when you have right now it's 84% turnover rate, it's impossible to stay on top of. The only industry that has a higher turnover rate than us is car salesmen.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:18]:

Wow.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:20:19]:

Or salespeople.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:20]:

Right.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:20:20]:

That's the only industry that has a higher turnover rate than us. So it's. It's impossible for them to stay on top of it properly and thoroughly. And I think that this is where, you know, we have to look at. I get asked all the time because I'm in tech, and you probably do too, Angelo. Like, you know, they always want me to talk about tech in the hospitality industry. And I think that tech needs to become this invisible kind of supportive player in hospitality because I don't ever want technology to replace the human element. That's why people go out to restaurants this is part of our DNA and our history and our heritage is coming together in these social gatherings and having this experience, but using technology to become, to put standards in place and standardize these repetitive tasks.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:21:19]:

So we look at tech to standardize, like you, you know, inventory, that's a repetitive task. Training is also a repetitive task because your bottles are turning over as fast as your staff are these days. You know, you're replacing your tequila almost as fast as your host. I think that standardizing that so that Knowbie, for instance, Knowbie becomes that trainer that is always there. So even as your manager turns over and your host and your busser and all these people turn over, Knowbie is always there. So you have a standardized learning protocol. Everybody that comes into my restaurant does Knowbie. And then I can trust that every single person knows the difference between a lager and an Alex, period.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:22:06]:

That's important and that's peace of mind for an operator. So I think that that is where technology lends itself. And the other thing I'll just highlight that I think is broken in, and I hate to say that word, but you know, that could be improved, is we need to look at our businesses and the people that are inside of our business, all of our staff as valuable. And I mean to say that, that so often businesses and managers, they just want to train the revenue generating employees like the servers and the bartenders. But if we want to create an environment where people want to stick around and we want a culture of promoting from within, then we need to train our bussers, our bar backs, our hosts, our dishwashers. Anybody who wants access to education should be able to have it. And that's why that's where technology can come in play. Because like, something like Knowbie allows everybody to take it.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:23:14]:

Because maybe that busser wants, or, sorry, that dishwasher wants to become a busser one day and then he becomes, or she becomes a busser and then she wants to become a bar back. Well, she, all of this knowledge is going to help her. And so looking at our business through that lens of like, let's create a culture of promoting from within. Let's create a culture that everybody deserves to learn and educate and lean on technology to become that standard for us.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:42]:

I love that. And you know, you talk a lot about empathy, storytelling in leadership. How do you think about bringing that into, you know, building Knowbie? Like, how do you build, how do you think about, I guess, just putting that in the product.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:24:00]:

When I went to school, as I said, to become a sommelier, and you learn lots in school and you get your diploma and you taste lots of wine. But where I really like, where my career took a turn was when I became a wine agent and I was a sales agent. And the thing that changed my knowledge base and my confidence and my education and everything was spending time with the storytellers of the industry. So spending time with the winemakers, the vineyard directors, you know, going and licking rocks and smelling soil and, you know, having that hands on experience and hearing those stories because those stories are what you're able to repeat to your guest. So the importance of storytelling, those are the things that stick the, the knowledge of, of, you know, malolactic fermentation, which I never say in Knowbie, so don't worry, but, you know, those don't stick. But talking about how Chablis was once an oyster bed during the Jurassic period, and that's why the wine tastes the way it does because there's calcified oyster shells in the soil. That story, when you're selling a bottle of Chablis at the table and you can tell that story to the guests, like, did you, have you ever heard the story of the origin of Chablis of the region? No, I've never tell that story. And the amount of like credibility that you build with that guest goes like way up.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:25:37]:

Because now you have something to share with them and they're going to take that story and tell it to somebody else and. Somebody else. Somebody else.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:45]:

I didn't know that in my head. I was like, oh, I'm gonna tell us.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:25:48]:

I know exactly.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:48]:

I'm doing it right now.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:25:50]:

Yeah. So this is what we've put into Knowbie and this is what we put into even our blogs. And anything that we do within the company is like, how can we translate these little bits of information to the front line so that they're able to build that confidence and, and bring it forward to their guest experiences.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:11]:

That's amazing. And I, I forgot to ask you this, which is gonna, you know, I should ask you this probably at the, the first two minutes of the podcast on now, but better late than never. How'd you get the name Knowbie?

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Crystal Hamilton [00:26:21]:

Ah, great question. So it was a play on the word newbie. So in the industry, you know, like, oh, we got this newbie starting, blah, blah, blah, they're a newbie. And just when I was playing with the word, the K N O W, like knowledge, you become a Knowbie. And you know, in all truth, and many of the operators that are on this call can probably or watching this podcast can relate. You know, when you're trying to choose a name, you got to choose something that, like, isn't taken number one that will stick. So nobody was a word that didn't even exist. So I just grabbed it, trademarked it, and boom, off to the races.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:02]:

It's really cool. I got. I got one. I know we're slowly coming out on. Tag on one or two. Two more good ones for you. One that comes to mind is advice. What advice would you give? You know, we spoke about turnover 84.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:15]:

That's even higher than I thought. And it was high. I didn't know it was that high. But what advice would you give to an operator who's constantly, you know, hiring, training, and burning out, you know, their team, and they have that kind of rotating door. Like, it's tough problem to solve because it's kind of a general problem happening to everyone. But any wisdom you can share that may help them.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:27:36]:

So I think there's. I'm going to answer it in two points. One is, is that change takes time, first of all, so when you decide, you know that you're going to change something inside of your business, people resist change. And so you. You need to continue to kind of hold that flame and be patient with it. The way that I even approach it within my own business, like, I have employees, and I have employees that turn over and leave for other jobs. And I mentioned it earlier, the thing I always say is if turnover is just, you know, part of our business, we know that I want every single one of my employees to leave better than they arrived. So having leadership opportunities for them is really important.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:28:25]:

I like to put my employees into situations that they don't even themselves think that they can handle. So, you know, we talk about, like, personal growth, right? So having personal growth opportunities for everybody in your business, having pathways for everybody in your business. There was this amazing study that came out from Ernst and Young, and we can even link it somewhere. It's an incredible study about the hospitality industry. And they interviewed, I think it was 14,000 millennials and Gen Z's about what was important to them. And management was not important to them. They didn't want to become, you know, CEOs or managers or owners or anything, but they wanted to feel that they had a pathway to leadership. And what does that pathway look like? Money was also not the number one thing that was important to them.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:29:18]:

You know, belonging and feeling like they're part of a solution is really important. So, yeah, adopting a culture of personal development for Everybody. And it's, I know it's hard and it's, I even struggle with it with my own business. But it's the key to longevity is giving people the feeling of being invested in and you know, giving them. I know this incredible operator that shuts his restaurant down once a year and he gets the back of house.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:57]:

Yeah.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:29:58]:

To serve and the front of house to cook.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:02]:

Oh my.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:30:03]:

And they play restaurant but they switch roles and you know, those kind of experiences build empathy, understanding, compassion, camaraderie amongst the teams. And yes, it's expensive to do, it costs a whole day. But I can tell you that the benefit far outweighs the cost and expense of doing that for your team.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:28]:

Yeah, that's a really cool. I never heard of that. That's, that's clever because yeah it's, you know, we're all, we all see our story through our own eyes as normal. It's human behavior. So it's, you know, as a server it's like you don't know what it's like. You know when a customer is yelling at you and then you know, in the kitchen you're like, you don't know what it' like when you give me a ticket and then change the ticket. So that, that's a really cool one. I never heard of that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:51]:

That's a great, yeah, great one. Really cool. As we slowly come to an end, the one of the last questions I have for you is the future of Knowbie. Where are you guys at, let's say today? It sounds like you have a working app. People are using it, training up their staff, increasing sales. What's next? Is there your evolution coming with no me? What's like on your horizon? Anything you can share?

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Crystal Hamilton [00:31:16]:

Basically, yeah. I think two things, which has been my theme. Two things. Two things are one, we've developed Knowbie to be compatible for other companies learning systems. So let's say you know, you're a company that has 10 to 15 locations or however many locations, but you already have your own system. Yeah. So we've taken our, you know, award winning content and our whole learning style and created it so you can plug it in. So again, you know, I understand how long it takes to build this kind of comprehensive training and how much it costs and how much it is to maintain it.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:31:58]:

It's, it is a feat and lots of restaurants and businesses want to do it for themselves. This is a plug and play solution. Turnkey. You literally plug it into your system and it's yours. So we've just recently launched that which is really exciting for us and opens up other opportunities to work with bigger enterprises. And then the second thing is building more community around Knowbie. So doing more to keep them engaged, monetizing, you know, prizes, things like that. We have a.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:32:35]:

Right now we, we have a trip to Australia. So we've got a module inside. We partnered with Barossa Australia and it's free to anybody to access and they can download the app, go and do it and enter into the contest. And we have a trip for two to Barossa Australia where they host you, you go for five days. Yeah, download the app and do it and enter in. It's pretty awesome. But doing more of those things and bringing more reward and recognition to the front line because it's difficult to stay on top of it as an operator. And one of my kind of driving and principles has been to elevate the front line.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:33:18]:

So as I mentioned at the top of the call, like this industry has given me opportunities that no other industry did and I believe in it so fully because I think it contributes to economic mobility and it gives single moms and immigrants and all of these people a leg up and they can really become anyone that they want to. And so I believe in, in elevating that and elevating the people in the industry. So doing more for them and bringing them more together as a community is, is really the future of where we're going to go.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:52]:

That's awesome. I love that. Last but not least, I want people to be able to find you and find Knowbie. So before we wrap up, just I want, we're going to put it in the links but you know, for people listening, where can they find Crystal? Where can they find get Knowbie, LinkedIn, websites, whatever, feel free. This is your chance to just plug away.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:34:11]:

Yeah, thanks, Angelo. So you can find us on all the social media platforms at Get Knowbie. So G E T K N O W B I e. We're on LinkedIn, you know, Instagram, Facebook and then our website is getKnowbie.com so you can reach out to us there and you can reach out to me directly anytime.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:31]:

Awesome. So for people listening, especially if you know, you have a reasonable beverage program, you know, you heard it here, you want to increase sales is a great way to do it. Pretty low risk too. So getknowbe.com that's k n o w b I e. So thank you, Crystal for joining us. This is great. I appreciate you having on the episode and then we'll catch you in the future for an update.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:34:59]:

Awesome. Thank you, Angelo. Thank you, everyone.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:03]:

If you want to learn more about WISK, head to WISK AI and book a demo.

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Crystal Hamilton [00:35:10]:

Sam.

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