Welcome. I am Mike Hendrix from SMB golf and my guest today is Chad Pettingill.

from The Ledges Golf Facility in St. George's, Utah. Chad, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Mike. Appreciate it. Well, I really appreciate your time and it's going to be interesting to talk to you guys because you have a unique operation in golf in that you're really quite the golf packager as well. And so with that, I think comes lots of different technology needs. And so I'm looking forward to talking about all that and exploring it with you.

Yes. Yeah, we have a lot. Well, before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to the Ledges, but also like, you know, why you're a PGA professional, et cetera, et cetera. Sure. Yeah. I, you know, some of my earliest memories as a child are from the golf course and, it comes from, you know, my dad taking me out golfing and being able to go with him to work.

at the golf course and hang out. My dad was a 35 year director of golf at a golf course here in Utah called Valley View Golf Course, very good public golf course. And he was there for, you know, like I said, 35 years. And I was able to spend a lot of my childhood at the golf course, hanging out with him, having some, you know, some dad time, but also just playing golf and getting to know the game and the business and

And it's just kind of what I've known my entire life and, thought it was really cool to, you know, my dad's making money by hanging out at the golf course. This is cool. So I decided that was what I wanted to do. That's good. And so you're, you're really second generation PGA. that, is it right to think of it that way? Yeah. And, what about your family? have a family, you know, sons or daughters that are coming up in golf?

You know, I do. My family's heavily in golf. I have another brother that's a PGA professional and then working in an off-course retail space. And then I have a couple of my kids are interested in golf. So we'll see where that goes. But you know, got to, it's in the family for sure. Right. Right. Well, no, that's great. Cause I think that's a great story for the PGA of America. So that's really cool.

It makes the listener understand like there's a lot of credibility coming from you. This is this isn't your first rodeo. You've probably seen the evolution of the business of golf as well as anybody. And so I think that probably leads to one of the reasons why you're a big adopter of technology. When you look at your website and I think you use a local vendor for your website.

But when you look at your website, it becomes clear you guys are doing a lot more than just selling tee times. You really are a player in the golf packages space all the way to the point where you're controlling a lot of the lodging. think a hundred plus units of lodging that you all are facilitating reservations in. We are on property here at The Ledges. have about 168 vacation rentals and they vary in size from a condo that's three bedrooms, three baths.

to a home, a vacation home that we call the California house that sleeps like 24 people. So we can accommodate groups of all sizes and whatever their needs are, whether they want it, it's a group coming in and they each want their own condo, we can do that. Or if they want a big home and they want to have a nice, fun party atmosphere where they're all together, we can do that as well.

It's been nice and all those units are here on property so they can walk to the clubhouse, have dinner, walk to the golf course, hit driving range balls. Most of them are very close to the property. Overall, how long has the business been doing that? Since the day it launched? We've been doing the vacation rental part for about five years now. Okay. years. It kind of started as a way to actually kickstart the property.

with building homes and getting people kind of up and around the Ledges. So they built a golf course and then just wanted a way to get people here and thought, Hey, you know what? We need to build some homes as well. Why don't we rent them out? And that kind of kickstarted it. And it's kind of exploded from there. How long was the course there before that was happening? It's been here since 2006. So, you know,

What is that 10 years or something like that? Yeah, I mean, close to probably almost 15 years without any packaging or, you know, just just kind of a standalone golf course. Yeah. Maybe a little less than 15. But yeah, okay, great. And so I think people are interested to know, I said to you off camera, you guys reminded me a little bit of Tobacco Road in the in the Pinehurst area. But I think people would be interested to know, I'm sure you're using some

reservation technology that golf courses wouldn't typically use because of all this lodging stuff. Just without going too deep in the weeds just talk to us a little bit about the reservation technology you to use for lodging. Yeah. So, you know, if someone could make a technology that encompasses all this stuff, they would make a lot of money. Yes. Yeah. We tried to do that a long time ago at GolfNow. We tried to do that through Guest Desk, but we never quite cracked the nut, I would say.

Well, go on. But we have to, know, so we're using more of a it's it's a vacation home property management system called Escapia. And we use that to and it's owned by one of the big one of the big I can't remember what it's called. Expedia Expedia. Yeah, sorry. Right. And it's owned by Expedia. And so, you know, it's it's nice for us to have that software that we can put all of our units into that software. And then just

distribute those to, you know, Expedia you and all the other platforms out there that they can rent Airbnb and whatever. And so we have we have our units out there being advertised and people can rent their there as well, or come, you know, directly to us on our own website. We have everything on our own website as well. We use that that that software for that. And it really helps us to rent the units. Also,

You know, we kind of do golf packages and that's, that's kind of become our bread and butter in the last few years. let me just, just for the listener, because a lot of technology people listen to this. They might not be totally familiar with golf, but very often a golf package includes more than one golf course, because that group wants to get some variety or whatnot.

And I believe in your case, you don't actually own the other golf courses you work with. You have a business relationship and you send business their way and they probably send business your way and you all use some technology to kind of help simplify that. We do a little bit, you know, and so we're trying to develop something to make that even a little bit better right now. But yeah, we

You know, we book our own golf course and we book the other 13 golf courses in the area between St. George and Mesquite, Nevada. And so we have a group of 14 golf courses that we book and we'll put packages together that are two, three day, four day, five day. And it doesn't matter the group size either. So we can, we can house them here and get them to the golf courses and, and you know, and we've created some really good golf packages that people, you know, really, really like.

And I think one of the unique pieces of tech you're using that helps with the golf package is you all are are able to let each individual golfer pay his or her bill, so to speak, because of some of the tech you're using. think I have that right. Correct? Yes. Yeah, that is correct. But talk about that a little bit. Mention that technology because

There's a lot of golf properties, I think that would like that and aren't able to do that today. So I think that was going to be one of the interesting things we were going to pull from this podcast was understanding exactly how it is you were able to kind of figure that out. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, when we're doing golf packages, you know, we might get a group of 16 to 20 guys that want to come in and do a golf package and we booked them in their units through Escapia you and we booked the golf courses and we put all those fees into Escapia you.

You know, so it's into into one kind of portfolio there. And then either, you know, one guy has to pay for everything or we have to call every single person, all 16 or all 20 guys, if they want to split it up and get payment from them. And that becomes a challenge, especially when, you know, we're when we're doing the number of rounds that we're doing. think we sent out it was about between 25,000 and 28,000 rounds of golf.

to other golf courses, not counting the Ledges. That was the rounds we sent to other places. And so when you're talking about that number of rounds and people coming, trying to get their payments is really difficult, right? So we were using a software in our golf department called Golf EMS, and it's Golf Event Management Service. And it helps us to just to be able to collect fees for golf tournaments online.

pretty easily. mean the system tournaments not necessarily packages for tournaments. Yeah. And that's kind of why we did it to start with was is we have, you know, our amateurs and we have our senior amateur and we have our club championship and some other events, even food and beverage started using it a little bit for, you know, some of their parties that they would put on like,

Wine Tasting or something a wine tasting dinner. it through a ticket system or something. Yeah. And our couples night. It's great for we use it for our couples night that we do once a month and and they get on they sign up they pay and so we know who's coming. It's prepaid. So you know we don't get the no shows and the cancellations and stuff like that. And it's just really streamlined our system in the golf department. Well as we were using that kind of a light bulb went on one day that hey you know what.

this could work with our golf package system. And so we've now incorporated that with our golf package system and we're able to take whatever the package is, put it in the Golf EMS, split it up however we want to split it up and send out an email to the group contact and say, hey, have your guys all pay. then it's on him that send it out to everybody. And all they have to do is get on, put their name in, put the thing, it splits it out evenly.

the costs are all in there. And when the payment when, you know, when someone makes a payment, we'd get an email, we can also run a report to show each golf package and exactly who's paid and who hasn't and where we need to collect funds and nice. Just made life so much easier. Sure. Yeah. So it's called Golf EMS And I'm thinking it, they must be very strong on forms almost like custom form functionality or something so that

you the operator can create something for a wine tasting. You can create something for a golf package. You can create something for, like you said, an amateur tournament. So they must have the form functionality must be pretty good is what I'm guessing. It is. Yeah. And you can, you know, you can get onto their system and they have, you know, they have defaults in there and you can select the ones that they have in there. And they've made it very easy to create a form. And you can, I mean, you can put a tournament together and a form and everything you want to do.

with extras, with rental clubs, if you'd want to do that. you want to, know, whatever extras you want to do, skins games, you can add it on and as add-ons and, and, and send it out and get it done really easily. I mean, we're doing it right now for our senior amateur that's happening in November. And we've had almost a hundred people sign up for it. And, you know, we just, don't have to take phone calls in the golf shop anymore. And it's just, it's seamless. It's excellent since that's happened.

And where it's prepaid and it's even refundable. mean, the system even refunds it very easily. if there's, someone needs to cancel, it's just a one click. You can refund their credit card. So they made the process very, very simple. Nice. And it's customizable. So if we want to do our own buttons or whatever that they haven't thought of, we can change that. And that's kind of what we've done on the golf package side. Okay. So you're using essentially Expedia, Expedia tech, right? For lodging.

Yeah, you're using Golf EMS to collect payment and do some other things in your golf packaging business and tournaments and events and that type of thing. Let's get into the core of the business a little bit. Are you using the same company for tee sheet and point of sale? we're using Lightspeed for our tee sheet point of sale system.

But is, mean, you have a pretty legit F&B operation is Lightspeed doing the whole F&B side of the business as well. It is. Okay. So that's nice for you all. It's, simplifies it, right? You're like one, yeah. One system across the board or have you moved to Lightspeed payments? Are they your payment processor? Okay. That makes sense. Does Golf EMS

interface to Lightspeed? It actually does. And that's one of the things that actually I didn't even know when we started this. And it was just kind one of those, this is great kind of moments to where, if we, know, if we're doing our, like our amateur tournament that we got our senior amateur coming up or a couples, when they sign up, the money is actually just transferred in the Lightspeed into a house account bucket.

And it just kind of sits there until we decide how we're going to divvy it out. then we just ring up food and beverage rings up to the house account and golf rings up to the house account, gift certificates, merchandise, however it is rings up to the house account. And it's just seamless. how that works. so it just makes it makes working with events and you're not having to move money around and do that kind of it just it's it's really nice. nice. So

In our main business, Chad, we actually track the vendors that golf courses use. We've been tracking it for years. So like we, looked it up your account last night. I know back in 2022, you guys were using foreUP I'm guessing at some point late 2022, early 2023, something like that.

You all switched from foreUP to Lightspeed. Did you go to anybody else in between or was it straight from foreUP to Lightspeed? was straight from foreUP to Lightspeed. Okay. And listen, foreUP would be the hometown favorite, right? Where you all are located there. They're out of Utah, right? And they're South Jordan, Utah. think if I recall. They are. Yes. They're, they're a hometown grown business. How long were you with them? With the club was with them for a really long time.

I don't know how long exactly because it was kind of done before I got here. And that's the system that was here when I got here. yeah, they were with foreUP for quite a while. One thing I did notice about you guys is, and again, we have records where there was a time you were available on different tee time marketplaces.

It looks like you've kind of pulled that back now. I only really see you available over on on Chronogolf Yeah, we we you know we used to be on GolfNow and be on a couple different sites wholesale sites that you could you could book the tee times and you know, just found that booking directly with us and having full control over our tee sheet has been the best decision for us Got it and so we especially when we're doing it with our golf packages

we need that availability to run those golf packages and to be able to have, you know, that access to our own golf course and be able to manage our tee sheet better. So that's why we've done that. And it's worked out really well for us. Yep. A hundred percent. get it. you also were using Sagacity and the way I know you're using Sagacity is they actually have a small marketplace. A lot of people don't know about called Daily Deals, dot golf. And I actually,

You all have a listing still today at dailydeals.golf. that's how we kind of were able to figure out that you guys were using Sagacity. But that tells me, and I don't know how much you know about me, but Mike is a mentor of mine and taught me a lot about golf. Mike Loustalot I should say. So I'm a big dynamic pricing guy, right? I have been a huge fan of dynamic pricing and I've helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of golf courses adopt whether it's revenue management or just dynamic pricing.

I actually built the first dynamic pricing module at GolfNow. So that came out of this bald head here. And so I'm a big, big fan, right? You, nobody has to convince me that dynamic pricing works. Are you, at least were using dynamic pricing. If you were with Sagacity, do you continue to dynamically price your tee times today? We do. Okay. And so straight through the Lightspeed module, I'm going to guess it is. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons that we decided to go with Lightspeed is, is

the just the integrated, all the functionality that they had that was integrated within the system that I didn't have to pay extra for. then I could manage, know, Sagacity did a great job for us. But I saw the need to kind of manage that ourselves and being able to do that at a Lightspeed and not have to pay the fees that we were paying to Sagacity and be able to just manage that amount of myself and be able to navigate that has been

really good for us. And it's, it's, it's proved to be just a home run in the last couple of years. What if you had to, just kind of take a, take a bit of a guess anyway, what do you think just gross dollars? What do you think dynamic pricing is worth to you in a year?

Probably, probably a couple hundred thousand. Yeah. Yeah. It, you know, when, when I would talk to operators about dynamic pricing at the end of the day, I was really selling change, I was, I was trying to, and change really freaks a lot of people out. So I'm super respectful to people that haven't gone to dynamic pricing, but I know in my core, if you adopt it and you do it right,

there's a lot of money to be made in golf. If you do, and so for you guys to make, you know, over six figures additional is essentially what you're saying. I'm super happy for you. And I just, I guess I just say that almost as a public service announcement, think more golf courses should be using dynamic pricing, you know, it would be good for the business, think. Yes. I think the two things that has helped us the most here at the Ledges since, since I got here is, is dynamic pricing and being able to manage that, you know, how we want to manage it.

and prepaid tee times. making the guests pay in advance for their tee time. And we were kind of the first to do that here in St. George. And it was, you know, it was scary. We were worried about it a little bit. We didn't know how, how, you know, people were going to take it. No one else is doing it. Why do I got to pay and, that kind of thing. But it has been

something that I would, I mean, I would never go back. So let's talk about that for a second. Cause I think that that's a whole nother amazing subject to talk about. so you're saying like just a standard operating procedure for the Ledges today, you require prepayment. Will you take a tee time? This is always the, the great little cut. Will you take a tee time over the phone? We do. And do you require prepayment over the phone? We do.

Okay, so you're one of these, you know, there's a lot of operators in America and Canada today. They want to do prepay online, but if you actually call the shop, they won't make you do prepay. And so I think for prepay to work the right way, it's got to be across the board all the time. And you get to figure that out. Yeah, it does. Or all you're going to do is everybody that was booking online is going to start calling the golf shop. That's right. Make the golf shop just not much more busy. So

We do it, you we do and we get that we get people to get on get online and they want to book a tee time and they go I got to pay so they call the golf shop and they're like, hey, can I book a tee time? I you know, I was online and I don't want to really want to pay for it and we're like, yeah, we can book you tee time. You have to pay for it here as well. So yeah, and you know, it was it was rough going there at the very beginning. But you know what it it it quickly was okay. Yeah, you mean a few of our locals, you know kind of complained about it a little bit but

But after they figured it out and stuff, was very simple. Well, you know, I think one of the friction points there is that you have to pay for your friends too. Yeah. And that can be, I don't know, frustrating or whatever you want to say it, but it can be a bit of a challenge to have to pay for your friend as well. Yeah. Well, and I think without programs like

Venmo and Zelle and some of those things that people can just transfer funds around pretty simply. I think it would be maybe a little bit more challenging, but where people have gotten into that just, know, hey, I'll pay you for this and that, and that they can do it just through Venmo. It's made it really simple. right. And do you, you know, I think MemberSports do you know who MemberSports is? Because I want to see them in Utah as well.

They are. Yeah, they're out of, I think they're out of Alpine, Utah. Okay. Yeah. So MemberSports, think has built that functionality. What I was going to say was we need more of our tech vendors to solve for that particular problem, I think, right? To make it really simple. listen, the Ledges is not an inexpensive golf course. And so, you know, the proposition of putting a Saturday foursome on your card, it's a lot.

actually. And so if a vendor can solve for that, think, frankly, all the vendors should solve for that. Ultimately, I think that that would be a big help in the space. They should. Yeah. And I, and I know there's a couple of working on it I think MemberSports is, is one that's, that's trying something. and I, and I don't know much about them, but I've just heard that, that, you know, they're trying to make it to where, you know, the guy books it and then he can send out an email goes out and Hey, we got a tee time pay here.

everybody can pay their own fee. That's right. That's right. You don't have that functionality right now and they have to pay their own. know, somebody's got to pay for the whole thing. sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when we joke with people on the phone, when they do that, they're like, I got to pay the whole thing. And, know, last Saturday, we were were 200 plus, you know, per round. And so that, you know, guy has to drop 800 bucks. And we just tell we just told him that, hey, you know, we joke around with people and just say, hey, you know, charge your buddies a convenience fee.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And now for everybody listening, you can tell Chad is a true dynamic pricer because the way he just positioned that only dynamic pricing people can say that he just said last Saturday where we were 200 bucks. Well, that is a tip off that like, because the business warranted it and you were able to actually raise your rate some last Saturday and make more money than you would have made if you weren't dynamically pricing. that's, that's great. Okay.

let's talk about, Do you book your own tee times very often just to see how the golfer experience of booking a tee time is at the Ledges? I do. Okay. Because this was one of the things I learned. used to cover the business in Ireland and all the golf course operators in Ireland were very particular about how the front door looked, what the walkway looked like coming up to the front door.

And I would come back to the States and I would say to operators, you should think about your own website and the booking experience the same way operators in Ireland think about their front door. You should be very particular about what the golfer experience is when they're booking online. And obviously most people book mobile today, right? You don't get a ton of desktop bookings, but I thought it would be cool to show.

the viewers how people book a tee time using Lightspeed at the Ledges. So I'll share my screen real quick and we'll, and we'll do that. Okay. But, but there's some things here that I think are different about Lightspeed than what some of the other vendors offer.

And that's why I think this, some of this stuff gets interesting. Right. So again, to my point earlier, right there is your, is your lodging widget. You're making it very clear. Like we would love for people to stay here for two or three days, which I think is brilliant. So, no issues there. Then you've got the typical, Lightspeed, booking widget that you find in the bottom, right. That you find with all, Lightspeed customers.

which is, which is great. think a ton of people love that. but let's go here because you all do something that I actually believe is a best practice, something that I would recommend more golf courses do. You have framed the booking experience into your website, right? And and I think that that's a, the right way to do it. You want to control the branding and the experience of the booking as best you can. And so putting it in an I-frame I think is, you know, it works well.

Yeah, we wanted the, we wanted the, the booking widget on there and it floats on every screen. Right. doesn't matter if they go to look at real estate or the restaurant or weddings, whatever the booking widget floats on that screen, but we also wanted just a dedicated page for booking a tee time. And so that's why we kind of, have it in two spots on the website. sure. then, know, your, web analytics benefits from that too. You actually can start to see, how are people booking and are they, do they prefer the book?

tee time page versus the widget. And so there's a, I would just recommend for any Lightspeed user to do what you all do have a unique page as well. Cause I think you get some, some benefit out of that. Okay. So let's, we're going to pick Halloween 18 holes, throw three people in here all at the public rate. don't know. You guys maybe have visitor rates or something, but just for the sake of time, we'll hit continue. I think I'm going to already be.

logged in here. Let's pick 11:30. It's going to cost us. I think that was like 160 bucks or something. let me hit continue. So here's one thing that we don't love about the Lightspeed experience, even though you guys had done this amazing job of framing it in, it does bump you out to a new tab. Right. And so now, yeah. And so now the golfer is exposed to chronogolf.com. Yep.

Not the best, right? Some operators will say to me, Mike, I don't care. And that kind of stuff. But, but best case scenario, we want to own the experience from A to Z, right? We don't want anybody else's brand being introduced to the golfer. We want this to be about the Ledges. so anyway, then the Lightspeed does a really nice job of allowing me to put guest information in here, which makes the check-in quicker. If we want to do that, I can obviously do,

promo codes and etc etc. There's a lot of good functionality here. But again, they're all, you know, they're like, and by the way, if you manage a golf course, can I introduce myself to you? You know, it's a little it's a little odd, right? Yes. Yeah, there are a couple things on that page that I don't necessarily love. Right? Right. You deal with what we deal with what you have to deal with sometimes. I agree. I mean, look, at the end of the day, that's what you're tasked with.

I got to do the best Mike with what I've got, right? I'm going to do the very best I can, you know, with what I've got. If I, if I click here, I can actually, you know, like, geez, I thought I was going to book at the Ledges and now I'm getting exposed to a Hidden Golf Club or something like that. Right. So again, it can, it can get a little funky. and certainly we know there's other people out there that, that don't do it quite this way. Now, one thing that's interesting,

about Lightspeed and we can stop sharing now. We'd go back to one thing that's interesting about Lightspeed is Lightspeed. Just like you have this good integration with, Golf EMS Lightspeed also has a good integration with Pitch CRM. Are you familiar with pitch CRM? Yes, I am. Okay. And so that's Del Ratcliffe out of Charlotte. and, and he's built this, do you guys use Pitch CRM? We do not. Okay.

When we do use another vendor for what pitch does, and we use a vendor called Metolius.

I know, of course, sure. they're a golf, know, Ross Liggett does a fantastic job with what he does. And they integrate with Lightspeed and I have my own Metolius dashboard that shows me, you know, all of my Lightspeed information, plus all of my social media and website information all in one place. so, you know, that system has been has been great for me to kind of bring everything together with social media, email, all my communication.

with all my reports as well and kind of see all that in one spot. Now with Pitch, and I'm not here to hawk Pitch, they're not a customer or anything like that, but with Pitch, I'm thinking Pitch CRM is the outbound communication to the golfer. Yep. So what do you use for the outbound? Just the core Lightspeed functionality? So no, we use the system that the Metolius uses. so Metolius actually does do outbound comms now to golfers. They do. And they use Active Campaign.

Is the program they use. it's a CRM plus an email marketing platform. Got it. And we use that with them in, and it's been working fantastic. do you, you know, because your business is a little different, do you use Active Campaign or Metolius or however we're supposed to say that? Do you use that even to, in your golf package business? We don't use it in our golf package business, just because of how different the golf

you know, the golf world is on the golf side, just golf tee times versus the golf package and how we have to book everything. And we're using two different systems for with Escapia for the golf packages and Lightspeed for the golf tee times. And so we use a different program through Escapia, for the golf packages. So that, that is one of the things I, you know, I'd love to bring those, those things together, but right now at the moment, there's no way to do that. So I,

So I actually have two databases, one for just golf and, kind of food and beverage, and then one for golf packages or slash just rentals. mean, cause we do a lot of, you know, we do a lot of just, just rentals and people come up here and just stay up here just in St. George. We're very, excuse me. We're very close to snow Canyon State Park. There's a lot of other things to do around us. And so we get families just to come down and rent units. And so does Escapia Give you a.

customer comms platform like that's built into Escapia you. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it. All right. So that all makes sense. Let me ask you about a couple other items. So, Lightspeed or Chrono, they also provide your, your app for the golf course. Are you happy with that? are. And we try to get the majority of our people that are, that are locals or, know, that come quite often regulars. We try to get them on the app because the app platform is much, much streamlined.

And it's way quicker to make a tee time on the app. Good. Okay. So that's, so the app's working well. I know you use Golf Genius. We don't have to go too deep into that. A lot of people use Golf Genius. I am interested to know, are you using any technology on your golf cars? we do. We have, we have E-Z-GO golf carts. So we have pace GPS. Pace GP. Okay. how does that work for you?

Do you have Rangers enforcing or how do you guys manage that? We manage it in two ways. We manage it from the golf shop a little bit to by Senate notes to each individual cart if they're slow play or or concerns. We also have player assistance on the golf course that go around and manage pace of play. One of our key aspects that we really focus on is pace of play. And we really do try to keep our pace of play.

you know, under, that five hour range. I mean, we're, we're trying to go to that four, four 20, four 30, if we can just to provide that experience. Right. So, so, you know, because you guys are such a full service operation, anything unique with FNB as it relates to the golf course, any, are you using any of these newer apps or anything like that to get food out onto the golf course? not yet. we have plans.

to do to do some of that stuff. But we've we're just, you know, we've made so many changes in the last two years. Because I think every piece of software that we're using today, we weren't using two and a half years ago. And so even from I mean, our website, all the way up through our POS systems, t sheets, everything is is different. And, and we've really consolidated a lot of things, which has been really nice.

And so it's running a lot more efficiently and smoothly. And that's one thing about technology that I love is being able to run things more efficiently and provide a better experience. When we're talking about even prepaid, mean, just something simple like prepaying your tee times, Sometimes you may not think about this, but our check-in experience is fantastic with prepaid because golfers walk in, they've already paid.

And so they walk in to check in, they check in, we say, hey, you know what, you're all checked in and good. Here's, you know, here's where our restaurant is. Here's where our snack bar is, you know, where you guys from. We actually can talk to them and communicate instead of, instead of having to do that, that fee collection. maybe there it's busy and there may be all of a sudden there's a line and we're just trying to herd people through, but we never have that anymore. And it's just, we're able to help people with merchandise and,

answer questions and just talk to people. And that I think that's really improved our customer service. that's, and that's one, just one thing that's come out of a prepaid. And is there any, anything specific the golfer does need to do to check in? Like, do they need to show you anything on their phone or what's that look like? No, they just come in and basically just, you know, name what the tee time was under and the tee time. we, you know, and we're, and

99 % of the time it's already paid. You're going to go. Do you have a starter with like a, with a tablet outside? Like, could you theoretically just check in with the starter outside? We could. I mean, they typically mean they don't even need to come in the golf shop really. But you know, we like to know who's here and, stuff when we're calling people to the tee and that kind of thing. And we do have a starter that,

coordinates the first tee as well. So, but yeah, that check-in process has become, I mean, our golf shop guys love it because they can just, they can just talk and have fun with guests now instead of there being this, this line and mad rush. And you know how golfers are, you know, they got a 10:10 tee time and they're showing up at 10.05. And so, then they hit everybody down.

What about golf car responsibilities are in like that? Is there any virtual check-in for like, you know, waiver signing or anything like that? Do you require anything like that? We do not. Okay. Okay. Yep. Well, it's, sounds, it sounds awesome. I mean, to me, I love the fact that you had a plan, you know, and you said, look, we're going to simplify this thing. We're going to go all in with this vendor. It does sound like the Golf EMS thing is kind of a cool add on and they, and, look,

You can't you can't hold it against Lightspeed for not having this really sophisticated form option that can do golf packages and wine tastings. I get it. Like there should be some vendors that bolt onto the main system that can really help you with their specialty. That's like a Golf EMS. That makes sense to me. But I also think it's cool that you do lean on Lightspeed for a lot of what you need. Right. Because that simplifies your life. We do. Yeah.

And we're going to be leaning on them more. You you talked about the restaurant. I we're working on a process to be able to use more of an app like ordering system for our snack bar and for maybe even in our bar and getting food out quicker. So there's things that we're working on in there that is part of Lightspeed. And that was one of the reasons that we switched over to Lightspeed was because of all the functionality that they had.

and the open API access that we can bolt things onto it that integrate with it and make life simple. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. That's great. okay. So it's Lightspeed, Golf EMS, Metolius. We didn't know that one. So Metolius that's pretty cool. E-Z-GO, Golf Genius. Yeah. Sounds, sounds good to me. Yeah. It's worked out really well for us. When will the season end for you, Chad? we have, we got about

three more weeks right before Thanksgiving we slow down a little bit and then it does get cool in St. George, you know like it does in the desert and so when we were still open and and we'll have busy weekends St. George is known for it. I mean we have a baseball tournament or a soccer tournament or something. It seems like every weekend throughout the winter. So our weekends will still be pretty busy even though the weather is a little bit, you know, highs maybe in the 50s and right sometimes in the 40s, but.

We'll stay open all year round. may get, we make close a couple of times for snow. We're just high enough that we do get snow maybe one time a year for a couple of days. But, and then we're open pretty much 365 a year and then we'll ramp right back up the end of February, early March. it that soon? Yeah. You're so you've got quite a long season. That's nice. Yeah. And then our season goes, and then our spring season goes from March to June.

Well, listen, thanks for joining us on the Tech Caddie. It was good to spend time with you. It always is very affirming to me when I find an operator that really does adopt technology, right? You like you're not afraid of it. You're going to lean into it. It's going to make your business better and it's going to make you more money. So I think that's cool. Yeah. Sometimes change is hard. And that's, think that's been my biggest hurdle. What technology is getting the buy-in. But I think once, you know, once you can show

staff and people that it really does work and it's gonna make their life and their job easier. It's easier to get that buy in. And we've done a really good job here and everybody's really happy with the way we're going. That's good. That's good. Okay. Well, again, thanks. Have a great weekend that's coming up here and hopefully we'll stay in touch. Yeah. Appreciate it, Mike. Thanks for having me on. All right. Thanks. All right. We'll see you later.