Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 240. How To Help Supermarkets Better Understand Refrigeration

Transcript

Episode 240. How To Help Supermarkets Better Understand Refrigeration · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 3: Talking about system maintenance or system repairs, this is something that is so key that's not done enough in industry because. Some people feel intimidated about it. Some people feel that the customer may think they're trying to rip them off or sell them parts or this or that, but you know, that's not what you're trying to do.
• 0:01
  Help them understand, do you know why you're getting all this ice in this product, see how all this crystal stuff here now you can't sell this, you're trying to sell this on a discount of 30 or 50 percent, you can't sell this because it's non usable product now, and this is all because this temperature changing all the time and what you need to do is show them how they can save the money. Thank you. How they can make money from it. How can they save energy from it?
• 0:02
  How can they sell more products? And you've got to change the conversation. Help show them the effects on how the refrigeration side of the business system can help them sell more product. They have product that will last longer. A good example would be meat. Meat goes bad, like it starts to go bad a lot quicker if you don't have a nice, humid, uh, case.
• 0:03
  Put the meat in, and if it's really dry, it starts to dry out really quick, it gets light really quick, and then they have to, they have to sell it really fast. And I see this all the time in stores, where they just gotta wrap them in packages, and they gotta put it in place. It'll deteriorate quicker. and you gotta, you gotta teach and show them some of these tips and tricks.
• 0:04
  And then there's different examples as well, keeping the product lasting longer, for example, like bananas or tomatoes or whatever it is. If they can last an extra two days on the shelf, that's an opportunity for them to make more money because so many stores, and I remember back 20 years ago when I first got into refrigeration or, or in supermarket 15, 20 years ago, I would go in and do a reno and they would have a box.
• 0:05
  And I mean, massive pallets of just groceries. They're just thrown out just piles of food. And this still happens today, we waste so much food globally. But we just wasted because of improper maintenance, improper temperatures in walk in boxes or walk in cases, improper setup of systems, um, not paying attention, you know, just things like this, just education, even the customers.
• 0:06
  And there's, there's a lot of things that are out of your hands that you can't do anything, but you got to educate. It's all about education, and you got to talk to each one of them differently. Maybe some of them are on a tight budget. Okay, and they can't really afford to do a full maintenance or whatever.
• 0:07
  I was doing a training last night, um, a compressor master class. And one of the, the students in the, in the course had a good idea. We were talking about, uh, The suction line not, , not being insulated or being on the roof and it's 120 out and it's 150 on the roof and the suction line is really deteriorated.
• 0:08
  So if it's really deteriorated and the insulations broke down, heat penetrating in that suction line causes the compressor to heat up. Do more work and then lead, you know, start potentially the, the breakdown to oil, and then start to lose efficiency of the system, and then potentially lead to a failure.
• 0:09
  So, one of the, the students had a great idea. He's like, well, take a flare gun or take the, , a thermal imaging gun. Put a brand new piece of insulation on versus the old and take a screenshot from I thought that was great and then you got to help them understand Do you see that this one here is 25 degrees hotter now that's going back to your compressor now This is costing you more groceries.
• 0:10
  You got to sell more groceries to run this system You know, you got to talk to them in their way because they understand how they're gonna move product so ice cream would be another one. So when you get the case and it's all iced up and it's all crystals in there and they're losing They're losing sales, that's how you got to talk to them.
• 0:11
  You got to get them to understand how, how it's affecting their bottom line. , a good one I talk about in some of my efficiency courses is if you're doing on a rack system or even condensing, it's going to be about 20 tons and above on a, on a refrigeration condensing, you're going to do something called low condensing.
• 0:12
  If you're cold climates. So you run the head pressure low or you increase the suction, whatever way you can squish down that compression ratio, you're going to save. Save bottom line money for that customer. And so if you go in with a plan, you do the sizing, you get all the information on, you got to retrofit the system.
• 0:13
  They might have to add some VFD, some ECM fan motor, some electronic valves, some digital or variable speed compressors. And this does cost money. A lot of places there's incentives for that. So maybe you have to. Maybe you have to do an incentive or you do that introduction with the power company because you're trying to help the customer.
• 0:14
  Does this take extra work? For sure. Do you not get paid for some of this work? For sure. But you know what? It'll lead to more sales down the road for you, more work down the road. And that's what you got to kind of be thinking, because you want to try to help them. Some of them don't think you want to try to help.
• 0:15
  But that's why building the relationship with somebody at that place, that owner, say, say it's a small mom and pop shot. You build that relationship and you talk to them. Every time you go in for a service call, you try to build, like, build a relationship with them. Try to be. Friendly with and try to understand their issues because they're dealing with all the other they're trying to keep the lights on they're trying To keep the store running.
• 0:16
  They're trying to keep their employees there so they don't lose them They're trying to hire employees. So they got a lot of other stuff going on besides the refrigeration Even though the refrigeration was costing them the most amount of money That's something that's not really in their mind, they're only thinking about that when you're there, or there's a problem, when they're losing product, so you got to build that relationship with them, so you can have that conversation with them, and over time, you can have the deeper and deeper conversation, and, and show them, get them, because one of the big ones is, I've seen them so many times, it's like a case, 20 year old case, Someone's doing a reno.
• 0:17
  They want to keep these old cases like they're leaking. They don't hold energy. You know, they don't hold in the, the heat and the cooling, depending on, on what they want, you know, what you're using it for. So pulling out, , the case and they're like, no, they look good. They seem fine, but really. They're not.
• 0:18
  They're soaked. They're logged with, uh, water, you know, they still freeze up and they're energy hogs. So, doing that education with them to show them the value of it, even if they did it in steps, and then sometimes they want to do all the cases and they don't want to do the rack, but they're not educated properly.
• 0:19
  That's the problem. A lot of them aren't, Whoever's selling them the stuff, sometimes just trying to sell them the stuff. That's why you see people selling refrigeration equipment that probably shouldn't be selling refrigeration equipment. They're paid by what they sell, and they don't really understand refrigeration.
• 0:20
  Okay, let's sell a bunch of these cases. Or let's sell a bunch of this. Or sell a bunch of that. When it's not really bringing that customer value. They need a rack over new cases. That's going to save them bottom line money, but this is how you, you build that relationship and you educate them at the same time.
• 0:21
  But I think more importantly is building that relationship because then they'll start to trust you. And then when you offer suggestions, they will take that into account if they can put it in the budget. The big thing is planning a couple of years out. So right now you have equipment, you know, it needs to go today, but maybe you start planning for next year so they can start budgeting.
• 0:22
  You give them the numbers. This is what it is. You know, this is how we, how the steps we're going to do, we're going to start with what this one condensing unit. We replaced this in about eight months. you're going to get about 50 percent or 25 percent ROI on that system.
• 0:23
  Cause it's so old. This is how much energy it's pulling. There's so many different options out there for the end user, but sometimes you got to put the work in because they don't want to do it. They got other stuff on the time line and they don't want to, they don't want to deal with the refrigeration.
• 0:24
  So if you can provide that service there, that's going to be. Huge for you. Maybe it is partnering up with a energy auditing firm. Maybe it is partnering up with the power company, whatever it is. Think about different ideas that may be intrigued them
• 0:25
  the biggest thing is having the conversation with them. Having those scary, tough conversations with them about their equipment. Once again, some, some are, it's not going to matter to them. They are just struggling to keep the lights on. So they're going to just push that unit until it doesn't work anymore.
• 0:26
  And it just stops. And that they're forced to, to purchase either new or used equipment, but maybe that's an option too. Maybe you go find use equipment for them and not have to buy new, but the used equipment is better than their equipment. So maybe that's, that's a potential option. So there's, think of it different ways.
• 0:27
  And this is where you could build relationship maybe with other companies. I've seen it lots of times where we go and tear out stuff and the stuff could still be used, it's just not good for that store and then they just, sell it off on, a platform or sell it off to another company or just decommission it, throw it right into, , the landfills.
• 0:28
  And I didn't really understand this stuff, but I've seen cases that, let's say seven or eight years old. And they're, they're chucking them out. Those seven or eight years old still might have another eight to 10 years on them, depending on how they were used and they were taken care of.
• 0:29
  And there are refurbishing, uh, companies where they'll refurbish cases or they refurbish, , racks. And so this is thinking a little bit differently. You know, so maybe you can get a better, a better price advantage versus, uh, buying something new if they can't afford it.
• 0:30
  So just thinking different, finding new partners to work with and deal with. So there's different ways to really do it. But I think the first step is having those conversation and preparing them. To understand that I, I've been doing my best for the last two years to, to keep this running. And I, it's, it's gonna, there's going to be a massive issue.
• 0:31
  I had a student in one of my last supermarket course, and this is exactly the conversation like Trevor, these, these systems are from 1980 and they are leaking everywhere. Then they've got a major issue. They don't want to do anything. They don't want to change any of the coils. They don't want to change any of the units.
• 0:32
  He's like, I'm working on these things and we're getting these calls all the time and evening on the weekend and just so frustrating. Sometimes you have to fire the customer. And people don't like hearing that. Well, that's a money for the business.
• 0:33
  It's not money for the business. If you start losing technicians, because they have to go out and do these calls and you give the recommendation for months and months and years and years, and they don't want to do anything. You got to fire some customers. And that's just the bottom line that some customers you don't want to work with.
• 0:34
  And that's something you got to bring up with your, your service manager, your boss. This might be the real hard conversation with your service manager, but you tell them over the last six months, here's all my calls. I spent 150 hours on call, weekends away from my kids and evenings, and they do not want to take any of our recommendations.
• 0:35
  This is actually causing pressure and stress on my life. I can't go to this customer anymore. We need to come up with a solution, either someone else on the team needs to start taking these calls or that we need to think about not having this customer. And this was a hard time because they're like, this is money.
• 0:36
  What do you mean? No, you're going to go do that job because that's your responsibility. But now you gave them that first, that first conversation with your boss. If you continue to happen on, listen, I talked to you about this two months ago that I said, I don't want to do these calls anymore. And now I said, this is it.
• 0:37
  This is my last, my last stand because there's a lot, if you're willing to do that, there's other companies that want to bring you in because there's integrity, there's honesty, there's value that you're bringing. And any contractor is going to be like, holy smokes, he's willing to show it and do the breakdown and tell us why, why this customer is not a very good customer.
• 0:38
  There's other customers out there. There's lots of customers out there. It's how do you bring them more value?
• 0:39
  And that's it. But if you're driving around, you're thinking about this, And you're thinking about how to communicate with the customer, how to bring more value. The first step is have that conversation with them.
• 0:40
  It'll be uncomfortable, but talk with them, talk with them again, about them, remind them about them, get in their face so they recognize you. They remember your name. You know, that relationship, when you fix a problem, explain in detail why you fixed the problem and what, how it could have been avoided. And not to blame or criticize them, just explain, well, this solenoid here was, is a 15 year old solenoid, uh, and the problem was with it that something got stuck in it because the oil was broken.
• 0:41
  Broken down because it's been running so hard for 15 years and that's why the why it uh, that's why we wrote it up The last time I was here and I recommended a replacement and I just want to do that recommendation again Um, if you don't want to go ahead, that's okay, but I want to make sure detailed in here so you understand So when we come back you can look at this And then we can get a better understanding on the situation and how we can go forward with it
• 0:42
  Okay, I want to thank you all for taking the time today and I'll see you again tomorrow and let's get a conversation going everyone.