Welcome. am Mike Hendrix from smbGOLF. And today my guest is Chad Wright from Deer Ridge Golf Club. And this is a Tech Caddie podcast. Chad, welcome to the show. Good to be here. Well, well, really glad whenever a golf course operator, can be on with us because, ultimately it always comes down to you guys, right? What technology decisions are you making? What are you thinking about in the future?

and then in, in the case of, of Deer Ridge, you're in Ohio, your, I've known your golf course for a long, long, long time. and so when I saw that you guys were doing some things kind of different than everybody else in golf, I thought this would be a good conversation to have. So I appreciate you coming on. Sure. Absolutely. How has the year been for you, you all, of course, if we're in Ohio or in November, we're definitely winding down now, but give us a recap on the 2024.

Yeah, weather was great this year, so didn't have a ton of rain, didn't have a ton of rain outs or canceled days and you know, kind of had a nice long year. Spring was a little rough, but had, you know, the dry, I think the driest October in county history. So we had a great, great last month at full rates and now we're kind of, like you said, winding down, just finished airfying and everything else. So it's been.

It's been another great year. it's really since COVID it's all been all been on the up and up for us. So that's right. That's right. Yeah. obviously COVID the terrible thing, there were a couple of silver linings in there and golf certainly was one of the great beneficiaries of that situation. so you, you did recently go through a technology change and it's something that I've actually been writing about for, I think over a year, I knew this was coming.

and been watching to see when it would go live and, and really you're one of two beta courses that are live today. why don't you, why don't you fill the listeners in on the change you made? You guys were using foreUP, but you obviously made this change that frankly, hardly anybody has ever made, because you are in this beta. Why don't you fill us in a little bit on what you guys are doing tech wise.

Yeah, so we made a switch from foreUP over to Sagacity and Toast for our point of sale system. Basically, we had just constant issues with foreUP having outages and deposit problems and various other things that we felt weren't. Weren't being addressed and felt we needed to make a change because.

There just weren't really any options for if, if something was to go down, we were just stuck. I mean, it was just, your operations just ground to a halt for the hole day and you couldn't, you couldn't do anything. And it was just kind of twiddling your thumbs waiting for them to fix the, fix the problem. So we, ask, and I totally get that. can hear the stress in your voice. So I totally empathize with that. Do you know how long you had been using foreUP?

Yeah, so we started, I believe, it was around 2018 or 2019. OK, so five or six year run, really. Yeah. Yeah. And so we had changed over from, believe it was GolfNow and that kind of software that we're using beforehand. I wasn't around very much before around then, so I can't speak too much to it. But when we were looking to change around then, we were looking to.

find a point of sale system that did everything well. Because the chef at that time wanted to switch to Toast because it does the restaurant stuff really well and da da da. But you know, obviously golf is, you know, over half of our business. So we couldn't make a decision just based off the restaurant and then get another. just wanted one thing that would do everything. And I think a lot of people are in that same boat. They would like to have this one system that can do it all. So I definitely hear you on that. Yeah. Yeah. And so

worked okay. I mean, it was, it was okay. It was one of those things that you kind of had to take it with a grain of salt that it had its limitations, but you know, it's what we had and we knew how to work it. And it was, you know, it worked, again, until they started to have these outages and problems that were just, it ended up just being to a point that we started to look into getting something else in. And we wanted to make the change around a month, around a month ago.

but foreUP anybody that anybody that's listening that would have had foreUP this past summer knows that they had multiple nationwide, outages that were just, like I said, ground to a complete halt. And we're just to the point that, we wound up actually changing mid season. We changed in, I started the process. So I got married, August 3rd and we.

started the process about two weeks before that to try to change just as soon as possible. And I worked around the clock before I left for my wedding and honeymoon to try to get everything set up. Didn't quite get it off the ground before I left. We just stuck with foreUP for another two weeks while I was gone. And when I came back around August 20th or so, we went ahead and made the change. So we, in the middle of the end of summer and

September, it may be the way things have been going may as well be another summer month for us now. And we were able to get everything switched over and with minimal really minimal problems. So, right. And so I think as I understand it, this is this because you've shared this with me a couple days ago, you all reached out to Toast, you didn't reach out to Sagacity.

only Sagacity only had at the time two customers in Ohio, Stone Ridge up by Bowling Green and Marysville closer to me here. but you reached out to Toast and it was Toast that actually said, Hey, we have something new that we think would satisfy your needs. Right. yeah. So, at least around us, I can't speak nationally, but I mean, I've been on a couple of trips recently, throughout Ohio and,

anywhere you go. mean, I always look because I'm in the business, but anywhere you go in the food industry world that isn't, you know, your massive chains like Texas Roadhouse or something like that, that has their own specific design software, almost everywhere, everywhere is run and Toast now. it's, it's a great, it's a little more expensive. mean, it's, it's, it's it's a little more expensive than we were paying, but I mean, it runs, it can run and they have different

options where you can do as little or as much as you want. And I mean, it, does everything. And I don't know if you know, Chad, but Toast actually has many ex GolfNow employees. And so actually at a senior level, Toast knows golf, frankly, better than any non golf POS company that there is. So I don't know if you knew that, but there's a little advantage that Toast has over somebody like a spot on

or a clover or something like that. Toast actually understands golf. Yeah. And they seem to. I mean, they kind of, we called them because like I said, we see it everywhere and we think if everybody's using this, it must be pretty good. mean, you know, I mean, that's one of those things that there's no real hard evidence behind it, but everywhere you talk to, I mean, they have the little tablets out and that's how we would like to run ours so that there's not

you know, everybody has to go back to a single spot and there's lines that we would like to be able to send the food from the table to the. And we just think from a restaurant operation perspective, we thought that that would be the best option. And the more we thought about it, the tee sheet integration part of it doesn't have to be.

that complicated, if that makes sense. It's like, you you've seen one tee sheet, you've pretty much seen them all. I'm sure there's one out there that gives somebody such fits that they'll, they could talk to you for a half hour that, you know, something doesn't work or something around there doesn't work. at the end of the day, you know, you got this many tee times and you could kind of be able to block them off and book them online and pay. mean, you know, if it does all those things, then goodbye me. And then it becomes, there's, you know,

hundreds or thousands of things that the restaurant POS has to do for the restaurant to operate. And so just for the listener, I think people just want to hear this out loud. If you ring up a sleeve of Titleist golf balls right there in the golf shop, right? You're actually using Toast to ring up that sleeve of golf balls. and you're, and you're cashing them out through Toast. And then in a similar way, if someone buys a tee time, that tee time,

purchase or whatever, know, whatever you call it. It actually flows into Toast I think you said it comes in as if it was an online order but kind of a right as long as it comes in So you sell a tee time that also flows through Toast from the Sagacity tee sheet or what they call Quick18 And it also flows through the the Toast POS. That's correct. Yes. Yeah. Yep So yeah when you go and you click if there's a foursome that comes in

you just click, however many of them, you say, hey, you paying for one, if they say, yeah, I'm paying for one, you click the button, hit tender check-in, it moves the sale over to your Toast hardware. So you actually have two screens, which gets a little, mean, implementation and teaching of people that are used to something else was a little tricky, but for the most part, mean, we really, once they...

have a little bit of repetition and stuff like everybody's everybody's good and on board now and it's actually surprisingly I can check in a foursome on this in a part you know a small portion of the time that it took me to check them in on foreUP I mean it's it's lightening quick it just yeah you click it on the desktop computer and it shows up on your Toast thing you tap it and you you can pay cash card credit whatever you need right and so let's just talk about that so because I think I heard you say

You are using then two screens in the pro shop. Is that right? Okay. Yes. So there's a, a, we have like a desktop computer desktop computer that you run the tee sheet on. And then there is a piece of Toast hardware that is, essentially something you'll see at a bar where like they can like flip the screen at you and say sign on the screen here. It's something like that. And you just, you can just tap it and then that's, what you run the sale through. Got it.

That's how I would explain it to when I was teaching people how to do it, I would explain it to people that it's that that portion of it is essentially the sales screen of like, if anybody's used foreUP you run the t sheet. And when you hit the sale, it takes it to a different screen. That's like where you make the sale and you can add different things to it. Right. But that all stays on one machine. Right. For up. Yes. But it would Toast it sends it to another screen. And that's where you make the sale and you can add, you know, range balls,

golf balls, beer, whatever you need to add, you can add on that second screen. Got it. Okay. And so we don't, yeah, we don't run any sales through Quick18. Like it's all through Toast. And, so, we'll get into some other things from, Sagacity here in a second, but this is actually the second interface that Sagacity has with a more of a typical restaurant POS because they also have clover.

and, but the Clover interface does require two screens, just like the Toast does. so that's, that's where the maybe one hiccup would be for some operators. Right. And, and if you're a big foreUP fan, might say, yeah, but I prefer this one screen. And so I, you know, I could understand that, but what's interesting to me is that Sagacity has said, listen, we're a key sheet company right now. We're also a dynamic pricing company and we do some marketing services, but we.

but we think the business runs through the tee sheet. And so what Sagacity has said is, so we're going to start to do interfaces with point of sale companies. And that's just a different approach than we've seen from others. And we'll tell if it works or not. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll say, mean, you know, just with the experience we had just with foreUP and trying to have everything in one, it's all great to have it all in one place, but only if it works. the right to set so many problems where it was like, this is.

This is just something that we can't sustain anymore. I totally get it. And it is cloud-based. So you can still get to your tee sheet because that was one of our concerns. We didn't want to only be able to access the tee sheet on that one computer, goodness. Yeah. Yeah. So it's still cloud-based. I can still at my house pull up the tee sheet and see how many people are checked in, how many tee times we have for the next day. I can still do all that. And then I can still, obviously, through the Toast stuff, I can check.

sales and it also will track, you know, once we start getting data, I can, it has comparisons to, you know, previous years and things like that. And okay, how, were the sales on this day last year? And all that, mean, it has a lot of things like that, that are just far more advanced than what we had. I did notice. So Toast has also become your website provider and you all have a nice website and you can tell that,

certainly F & B is a bigger piece of your business than maybe some other courses, right? You you're, you've got a real food and beverage operation running there, not just a snack bar, I guess is one way to say, so, so they've become your, your website provider. I also noticed this. So Toast pretty recently finished off their credit card surcharge capabilities. In other words, where the golfer or the customer pays like a 3% surcharge.

to help an operator like you offset expenses. It looks like you all are doing that. And am I right to think that that's running through Toast, right? That's a feature provided you. Yep. Yes, it is. And were you doing that with foreUP or is this new? We were we were doing with foreUP with foreUP. It allowed us to do it with credit and debit cards. But according to Toast, there's some and it might be a national

There might be a state by state thing where they don't want to mess with it. But Toast only allows us to do it with credit cards. You're breaking some here, Chad, just so you know. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not an attorney, but my understanding is no one is supposed to be able to do it with a debit card. So if foreUP was allowing that to happen, that's a little cringe worthy, right? Right. So there was no difference, differing between that with foreUP.

But anyway, that was an option with them, but with Toast, and it did take them, they had us wait a month, which it was like they said to like Toast signs and stuff and like, we're coming from one that we already had it. But they didn't, they just said it's a, you you had to wait a month either way. So, but yeah, now it's live now and it just automatically goes on anytime somebody uses a credit card. And so you've been doing that, you've been a, let's

just make up a name, a credit card surcharger or whatever we call it. You've been doing that then for a few years, I'm guessing. I believe we started before last season. Okay. Two seasons. Okay. So almost basically two full seasons. Let's, let's talk about this a little bit because this has been a topic in the golf industry of should you do this or shouldn't you do this, et cetera. What's been

What do you hear from the customer? What do you hear from the golfer? I think that that's ultimately such a big part of this. Are you getting pushback or just talk to us a little bit about that? We got a little bit of pushback. I think for the most part, the comments are more while you see that everywhere. I mean, there's very few places you go into now and don't have a convenience fee associated. So a lot of people will bring cash.

That is the option. that's, know, anytime somebody gets a little bit more in depth with it, I always say, you know, there are people that would just rather you just raise your prices 3% to cover it. Yes. And I don't, I don't understand that because this way I can, I can have this without having to raise the price for everybody. And then, then, you know, next time, okay, I'll just bring cash. And then now you've saved that 3% and I don't have to charge it to everybody. Agreed. So it was more of a

Do we want to, because we had to just with inflation and everything, we've had to, you know, increase prices several times. And it was like, do we want to do another increase because of these, the fees that the credit cards are charging us because they just keep skyrocketing? Or can we kind of account for this with a surcharge and not have to increase prices for everybody? And then that way we get more cash. And that's

Cause that's what what's happening is I believe the credit cards have gotten to the point where they know they have a lot of people red handed in that they're going cashless. So then they can charge whatever they want for the surcharges cause that they don't have the infrastructure anymore to take cash. we're like, we can still take cash. So we'll just charge a fee. And if they, people want to save the money, they can either bring cash, you know, check whatever they want to do. That's right. And you know, there is pending legislation on this federal legislation.

I think it's yet to be seen. Ultimately, how this hole thing is going to shake out. We've written about it on our consulting site. You know, now that there's an administration change coming, it might not be as hot topic. know in the Biden administration, it was a big deal. They were trying to remove junk fees, they called it for consumers. But I guess we'll see in this new administration. Talk a little bit about. So you've got a driving range, which I

A million years ago, I sent you guys 1200 free driving range golf balls from last minute golfer. That's how you guys became a customer. A million years ago. Anyway, you've got a driving range. got an 18 hole golf course. You got a full service restaurant. You actually have, I mean, heck, you've hosted like high school reunions of my wife's graduating class and you hold chamber of commerce meetings. So you've got a full on kind of banquet center, if you will.

You also do have at least one simulator there golf simulator. Talk a little bit about how big a piece of that your business is. And I'm also interested to know what is the tech? What golf simulator do you have at Deer Ridge? So yeah, so we just got a Uneekor launcher. It was just last month. We wanted to get it earlier in the year. This has been the year of projects that were supposed to start in June and July that ended up. That's the life of an operator. Right? Yeah. So but

We got it all installed last middle last month. I can't remember exactly when it was, but we had talked with Trackman and them ultimately went with the Uneekor just as a. It had more options for different courses and. Trackman was more. We felt it would be more beneficial for somebody that's running kind of a. Training facility.

to try to help people improve their game and stuff. And that's not really what we're aiming for. We're aiming more towards the entertainment side of things. So, but with the weather being as good as it's been the past month, we haven't seen a ton of traffic on it yet, but we're hoping to get some leagues going and things like that going into the winter. wanted, like I said, we wanted to have it. We actually had a cage installed. I want to say it was, it was like the last week in July, they had it installed.

And we were looking at it and we're like, I don't think that's the right cage. And sure enough, we, we measured it and it was the cage was, I can't remember six feet shorter than the one we ordered. So they had to tear it all down and they put it away and then had to wait on a part and then install dates didn't line up. So it was about a three month delay. I was hoping to get it in before the end of the summer, for visibility and for people to know, Hey, this is here before we lose traffic. so.

Now it's just kind of trying to get it out there. Well, you know, one thing, so I think I mentioned to you that we're trying to provide free services to Ohio golf course operators that join the Ohio Golf Course Owners Association. It's it's a hook, right? It's a hey, we're trying to get membership up. And so we're offering some free services from my consulting business to get people to sign up. I just say that because one of the services we provide is essentially

helping operators to manage their Google profile. And your profile is really good. You don't need a lot of lot of help. You guys are pretty good at that. Chad, you have over 1000 reviews on Google, which is kind of unheard of, especially for a course in not even one of the big three cities in Ohio, right? mean, you for people that don't know, Deer Ridge is going to be like between Cleveland and Columbus. Okay. And so it's Amish country.

lot of farmland there, et cetera, et cetera. And for you to have that many reviews, is really impressive. One thing we did notice, just a tip I'd give you go back into your categories in your Google profile and add Indoor Golf, because now that you have a simulator, one of the, one of the categories or subtypes is what Google likes to call it. One of the available subtypes is Indoor Golf. And so our recommendation would be.

add Indoor Golf to the Deer Ridge profile and you'll get a little more traction that way. At the end of the day, I think, well, I shouldn't say every golf course, the majority of golf courses from Kentucky and North probably need to add simulators. That's the impact I've seen of simulators on people's businesses up in upstate New York, Binghamton, Elmira, Rochester, they all have a simulator.

Yeah, because they're competing with bowling leagues in the winter. I mean, that's what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. And so and so for you guys, you want to string together as many leagues as you can. You want to sell as much beer as you can. Right. And and the simulator is a good solution for that. I wouldn't be surprised to see at a second one in another year or so. Yeah, that's we're hoping that it goes well. We kind of space wise. It's I mean, you've been here. It's in our old

actually where the Pro Shop was when we first built the building. So back in there, not a hole lot of space for a second one unless we reach into our basement where the event center is and stuff. So, it is something that we're looking into and that's as the event, you know, business is changing, it seems to be less weddings and more meetings, which is fine. But

you know, we're losing a lot of those big ticket items with the weddings to places that, I found a barn in my backyard and if we insulate it, we can make it a wedding venue. You know what mean? mean, there's, so much of that. Yes. And we're just losing some of that business. So we're kind of trying to get ahead of it and kind of see how this goes. I mean, we, kind of have a couple different ideas of how it could expand if it does really well.

Well, know, Deer Ridge you all have a wonderful place too for outdoor weddings. mean, forget about the barn for just a second. mean, the right, right. You all can do some of those outdoor weddings is, is, is really nice. Let's talk about your deck a little bit, because you've got this massive deck. If people haven't seen at the clubhouse, it's right for me to say the clubhouse was built by an Amish group. Correct? yes. Yes, it was. Yeah. And so there's a big Amish contingency in the

Belleville, Mansfield, Lexington area for people who don't know. But the deck is wonderful. I'm curious to know the Toast POS system, think would work on the deck, correct? That that server can walk around and go wherever they want to go. Yep. So yeah, they have their little Toast. Toast go is little tablets that they have and they can go from one end of the deck to the other and still and still use them. We did recently upgrade our internet to fiber based internet.

to help with that. And then you just have to have as long as your signal works throughout the deck. mean, they have no problem doing that. Well, and that's what I wanted to get to talk about the Toast go device and beverage cart. is it what's the situation on, you know, hole number 14? Sure. What how's that work? So okay, so we don't usually run a beverage cart just on a day to day basis. Our nines they do both pass

the clubhouse. it's just kind of, you know, load up with six packs and then you'll pass this again. For outings, we do have, we have two pavilions out there that we have two shelters that were made in there actually perfectly in the middle of the course. there's, at between four and five, there's a shelter on the front and then between, 13 and 14 on the back. it's basically every four holes we set for outings, we set up a,

a beverage pavilion outside. So that way we can tell the golfers, because whatever, what inevitably, especially with outings, what happens with carts is when you send a beverage cart out is what are you here every single time? You know, never saw the bad part. Yeah, there's always three groups that say they never saw them. And it's like, okay, well, let's we're going to put them in a stationary place. Every four holes, you'll have another chance to buy more beer in this. So then you don't even they know where it is. It doesn't move. They can't you don't even mean they can't somebody can't be bought.

where they're just following this group around because they're giving them 20s or you know, whatever. it's just, everybody knows where it is. And for those, those Toast go tablets are perfect. And anybody that would be using a beverage cart situation, you can run your credit card transactions. And this is for, if we had a power outage or which we have a generator, we have all these contingencies to prevent things like this from happening. However, if it was to happen,

you can still take your credit card transactions on the tablets and then they just store them. So the credit card will be charged, but as soon as it gets back into the signal, so when the people come back in from the pavilions, they come back in as soon as it hits wifi, it sends all those transactions up into the ether or wherever it goes. And then those sales process and it great.

Yeah, the only the only thing is if you happen to have a new item that you have to add or something like that, all that needs to be updated before they go out. So I always just have them sign in to the tablet while they have internet connection. And then as soon as they do that, it's like, all right, you're good to go. And then it operates in what's called offline mode. And then, like I said, it doesn't it doesn't charge the credit card till it gets back to an internet source. But once it gets back to the internet source, it's good to go.

It would also operate off of a, you know, a mobile hotspot or something like that. If you really wanted to make sure the sales were finalized, you could do that as well. since it worked, that's what we used to do with the, if we wanted to take credit card sales out there, we would take a hotspot out and that worked fine. But it's really nice to just send them out with those. I mean, like I said, it works the same as it does in the restaurant. then those little, those little tablets have the same capability as we have.

at each at the pro shop and then at both bar stations that we have, we have a larger display that that the bartenders and the pro shop people use and but everything that you do on those can be done on the little tablets. So it's all the same. Let's let's Let's let's go back to Sagacity if we can. And again, for people that are confused when I say Sagacity, you might call it Quick18 You might call it Omnitech.

Yeah, I mean, there are many names that the Sagacity tee sheet kind of lives under. But what I'm interested to know is Sagacity is kind of core being the way people identify Sagacity is as a pricing technology, right? That they strongly believe in dynamic pricing. They want to help you analyze your performance from years past and then build revenue forecasts and price off of that, et cetera, et cetera.

Are you using any of that or is really Sagacity your answer because it talks to Toast and that's all you cared about. I'm curious to know. That's the latter is more of the truth than the former. We haven't implemented dynamic pricing yet. It's something that they can easily add on obviously to their own thing. It is more, you know, a month and everything else. then that's something that we are interested in in the future, but haven't done so yet. Yeah.

But I'll say with one of my first conversations with them, they said that because they work with, integrate with foreUP and everything else that they said, well, if you know our, we probably know foreUP better than their own support people know foreUP. And I said, well, that's not a super high bar because of all the issue I had with the support. But I'll say that for their part,

I can, I can email my guy with Quick18 Sagacity. And I mean, he will do all the changes for me. Yes. Is your guy, is your guy Jason? Yes, he is. Jason's great. Yeah. Yeah. Jason. So Jason's a lot, know, you probably know this, but Jason was an operator at Star Fire in Arizona. So the guy knows golf inside and out. and he's probably one of the best, so

He's way more than support. I don't want to right He's probably one of the most attentive. Yes, the customers that I've ever encountered in golf and that's about as high a praise as I can give Jason. So yeah, yeah, no, he's he is great and he will hop on a call at, know, pretty much the drop of a hat to show me how to do these things because it always makes me especially just with my experience before I want to know how to do everything myself because. You know who knows what it's going to be?

coming down the road. I kind of like to know how to do everything. But I mean, truly, if you know, he will literally just build the whole thing for you and run it day to day if you want him to do that. That's right. That's right. Okay. So you're so it's interesting. You're not so you're not a dynamic pricing guy. And just, you know, so you know, I am a dynamic pricing guy, right? I'm a big believer in it. I'd be happy to come have a cup of coffee with you any day and talk to you about the virtues that what but what is what really

different is the fact that you are doing surcharging and not doing dynamic pricing. So in other words, surcharging is a forward thinking way to operate a business. There's a lot of people that are so I don't want to be involved with that, cetera. Dynamic pricing is a forward way of operating a business. And so we talked to all kinds of operators in my consulting business. You're you are in an interesting lane where you do one, but you don't do the other.

And look, I tell people all the time, there's no right or wrong way to do all this stuff. It's ultimately whatever works for your business is what's right. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, it's something that we're interested in. It's just not something we've done as of yet. We kind of the surcharging in our brain is easier to implement than the dynamic pricing and not from a, I'm sure.

from a tech standpoint and things like that, I'm sure they would have no problem putting it on and having a, but what do you tell somebody when, because you always got to think about it. You got to train, you know, or a, sure. That's 78 years old. You know, they've got to, they've got to learn how to, okay, somebody calls me and says, what are your rates on Saturday? It's like, well, that's a very loaded question. It depends on when you book it. know what I mean? As a, as a person that was,

early in this world in golf and whatnot for dynamic. The way that we always would recommend people answer that question is CURRENTLY Mr. Smith, it's $79. Like You use that word currently, right? And you're starting to kind of put things in people's heads of like, Hmm, wonder why he said currently. And then there's messaging you put on your website that talks about here's how we price things. You know, we price our tee times the way Ohio state football prices their tickets. We price them around demand and you give

the customer relatable instances where others do it. So the customer can kind of connect the dots. But listen, it's a big move. If you do it, it's a big move. The last podcast we did, Chad, we the the operator is out in Utah. He says dynamic pricing is worth $200,000 a year to him. Sure. And add it in that and I can see that. Yeah, and I can see that. And it's just from our standpoint, you know, we're more

We're closer probably to trying to do something in the way of automatic charges on no shows and things like that. we feel we'd lose more there. Then you know what I mean? We would rather just get the price that we want from everybody. Then you know what I mean? If you could do all the dynamic pricing you want, if they say they're going to show up for a hundred bucks around and then they don't show up, you still are.

you're still out 400 bucks, you know what mean? So it's like, we're probably more concerned about that. But it might that anyway, that's has its own issues to is how many got to get a credit card from every single person. And yeah, so you're one of two golf courses today, in the United States, that's live with this integration. Are you do you know who the other one is? They're in Arizona, I believe, right? I can't remember which one. That's the ranch that listen to this chat. This is interesting. So it's called Augusta Ranch.

And the owner of that golf course just became the President of the PGA of America. So you're in good company, right? President of the PGA of America, Don Rea and Chad Wright are the only two golf courses in America that have this integration right now. So that's, that's pretty cool. Listen, I think you're the first two of many. If I had to bet, I think you're going to see a lot of people do this. We track a lot of data in my business.

We know there's over 200 golf courses today that use Toast without an integration, right? They just were using Toast in their restaurant operation and using something else for golf. And so that's 200 easy layups right there. And then you're to have people that hear podcasts like this or this one and they'll start to move. anyway, I think it's cool that in Belleville, Ohio, we've got one of the first in America doing something.

fun. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I'll say, you know, our biggest issue with foreUP was ultimately the support. I mean, the the day to day shutdowns were not great. But the day to day support was the biggest issue, I feel. We just wrote an article about why golf courses are leaving foreUP. Yeah, we build a map and whatnot. And support is one of the detailed items in there where we literally got quotes from operators like you.

you know, saying X about support. so the support seemed to me to be a bit of an issue there. And that, you know, that with Toast, even the, when the salesperson came through and said, you know, what are your biggest issues? And like, what's it now? It's like, well, you've already got a leg up on, on who we have right now. Cause I've been doing this for five years and I've never, I don't know if I had to say it's like, you know, you just, we just went over this with Quick18. It's like,

Jason, I know the guy's name. You know what mean? I I know who I need to talk to. I've never, I never met a person from foreUP nor did, and then there was through all these problems. Somebody finally said, would you want us to get us into you in touch with your account manager? was like, I have an account manager. You know, I've been doing this for five years and I didn't even know. That's right. So it's funny you say that there's a country club right off the road from you, Westbrook. Yeah. And Westbrook actually reached out to me today. I'm not going to name any names, but Westbrook reached out to me today.

and said, do you know who our ForeTees rep is now ForeTees is not the same as foreUP ForeTees is more in the private space, but very similar instance, right? Why, why is Westbrook calling me looking for the ForeTees reps phone number? You know, it's not, that's not a good sign. Yeah. And so, I mean, I know like that in there, it is a huge, Toast is huge. and they have many levels, but I haven't had any troubles with getting ahold of eventually getting hold of somebody that I, like I know

my salesperson so can call them and say, who do I need to call? And they will tell me. And day-to-day support wise, a lot of it's based off of an AI search engine that they have, which at first I was a little skeptical of, but I'll tell you, it works pretty darn well. And it knows when to give up and say, okay, I don't know this. I'm going to connect you with somebody. then you get right, mean, I've every so far, and again, it's been since August, but you have to remember we completely changed the point of sale system in the middle of golf season.

Right. So far, the issues that we've had with that are very minimum compared to what we were dealing with for with what we had for, you know, we ran it for six years. And well, I that's your point of when you go around town and you see Toast everywhere, right? That's kind of you're saying. You can't get to critical mass like Toast has with bad support. Yeah. Yeah. From what I understand, Toast can be a little expensive.

Right? No one's saying that Toast is the cheapest option. Right. But I think operators like you are saying, yeah, I actually would pay a little bit more if I just knew support was always going to be there. Right. Or if I just knew the tech was going to work, I would probably pay a little bit more for that. Yeah. And the tech works. The tech's great. I mean, and it's easy for people to learn, like, especially since it's at almost at critical mass, like you're saying.

We haven't seen this yet because we haven't had to hire, but in the spring when we hire new servers and things like that, I guarantee at least half of them are going to be like, yeah, I was at a restaurant. They've used this. I'm good. I don't even know. And even if you do have to train them, I mean, it is the easiest from the restaurant perspective is the easiest to run that I've ever seen. I mean, it's it's it runs itself. That's great.

Yeah, and for people that have contactless stuff and if they're just ordering like with kiosks, I mean, they have all kinds of options. And really, I mean, it is expensive, but there's different levels and different things that you can add things on as you need them or don't need them. And you could make it manageable. then the way I was viewing it is I'm paying X for foreUP but it does this. I can get

I can get that amount of things from Toast for this price that's this much more and justify it, like you said, just by that it works. And then there's all these things on top of it that foreUP does not do. And do we want to pay for that on top of it? But it's an added thing. You're not comparing apples and apples. You know what I mean? You're comparing. So I did a price breakdown of like, OK.

What does foreUP do? If I do that with Toast, how much would it cost? I just stay, because they've got payroll, they've got this thing for the chef that they can scan their invoices and it does all the inventory for you. mean, they've got a variety of different levels and things that you can, and like they have a reservation system that we chose not to use because we have a cheaper one that does, to us, does relatively the same thing. it's like, how many of those things do you want to add on?

and compared against the price that we have because it's like, well, that forum doesn't do that. You know what mean? It doesn't it's not the same thing. So when we did that price comparison and just did the base of what foreUP did against Toast the price difference we accounted for with just it being reliable and having the support and having, you know, ease of use. Yeah, yeah. Now you mentioned reservation software.

And obviously, you mean for tables, not for tee times right? What is what's that software that you're using? It's called Tables Ready. It's like 70 bucks a month versus I think Toast Toast was like 110. And so like, that was one of the things that we were like, it might be better. But like, at end of the day, you're reserving tables, you know what mean? It's not like, right.

I mean, and to their point, you get the customers information and you get their, you know what mean? There are some things that you can add to your database and things like that, but we get so many emails and stuff through online booking and of the course and things like that, that it's just not something that we thought immediately was. Yeah. Yeah. And as you get to know Toast, maybe you turn it on, maybe you don't, right? Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, the one thing is you can't go back.

So we did ask them that we said, you know, can we try it and then just say, we like the other one better. And they were like, no, once you, once you pay in your kind of. Yeah. That's how HubSpot works too. HubSpot is similar. So I'm curious because we know that emailing golfers is actually important to golf courses to generate, you know, promotions or to spread the word about promotions. Who, what is your email tool, if you will, to talk to golfers? Is it Sagacity or is it some one-off?

It's actually so Toast does that as well it so I've run a couple email campaigns off of it in importing our database through Toast wasn't That was like one of the only things that wasn't super seamless But I'm trying to think how that by eventually anyway It eventually got imported and then I can just send and the nice thing about is that it's unlimited I can send as many because I know foreUP I had a max it was it was a

big max, but I mean, there was a max amount of emails I could send a month and then those automated emails that went out saying, Hey, thanks for booking your tee time. Those counted towards it. Right. And so, then I guess it would be on you to create some golf course, template emails, right? Yeah. Okay. And there can be automatic ones set up and then Sagacity also does the, does that, I mean, we could, we could set up automatic emails through them. And Jason has helped me get a couple of those going, but you can get,

get stuff set up through through Quick18 Sagacity as well. So we have a couple options. That Sagacity needs to put a little effort into updating that email tool. It looks like it's from 1999. You know what I mean? But it looks like works. it is when you're using it, you're thinking, you know, so yeah, so that's why I mean, like I said, we have the option to just use the Toast ones. And so that's what that's what when I'm sending out my stuff, I just send it out with that. it's got it. Yeah, you can send out all kinds of I mean,

Again, once we get our database more organized and stuff, mean, you can do targeted ones. can do, can be, Hey, this person hasn't been here in, in a month. Like, you want to, do you want to send them an email to kind of remind them about you? You could do that. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of stuff you can do. Chad, before, before we let you go, what would you do if you wanted to have an app? Would you use, would you have Sagacity build you an app? Would Toast build you an app? What would you do in that situation? I think.

They both mentioned it. Just haven't looked into it a ton. And look, maybe where you're located, maybe an app isn't something you need to spend money on. Right? Yeah. mean, the website, which is just another shameless plug of Toast over foreUP. But the new website, super easy to operate, super easy to adjust things on. And I'm very happy with the website. So now that it's kind of one of those things that

we were talking about earlier, where like now that that's handled, I might start looking more towards things like that. like, it was kind of, you know, beforehand to think about having an app when our website was kind of not, I mean, it was, was fine, but it wasn't the most, you know, like updated modern website that could be, it's kind of like having an app on top of that would just seem kind of silly. But yeah, yeah. I can tell you,

Stone Ridge up in Bowling Green, Ohio. I believe they use the Sagacity app. So if you go, if you want to go see what that would go to the Stone Ridge app. And I think that's a Sagacity app. Cause like I said, that's something that, that Jason had mentioned before and things like that, but that, you know, we just haven't, we haven't gotten to that point of, of wondering if we need that or not. so part of the reason I'm asking these questions, obviously I'm, want to put out as much information for the listeners I can.

This is the kind of conversation that used to happen within the Ohio Golf Course Owners Association, right? Operators helping operators sharing information back and forth. And I think that that can exist again today if that membership grows, right? mean, today that membership isn't as big as it should be. It needs to get up to 200 owners, 300 owners, something like that.

And then using some tools like this podcast or the stuff that we write, using some tools like that to help you all talk to each other, right. And to help, you want the people at Tannenhoff to be able to learn about what you're doing, because if it's good for your business, it can be good for their business up in Stark, Ohio, or you want the people in Cincinnati to know about this. And so, that's part of the reason I'm trying to help the association with membership is

I do think if everybody was able to then talk a little bit more together and typically you need some kind of a platform to facilitate that conversation. But if you guys were able to share a little bit more, I do think the golf course business in general would get stronger in Ohio. So hopefully this will be the beginning of making that happen. Sure. Yeah. And that makes sense. I mean, it would have been nice when we were looking to make this change and stuff. There was a couple,

instances where a network like that could have been beneficial, you know, just because like there, there, we did look at, know, three or four other options and I tried to kind of call around and see people's experience with different things. But obviously, again, we were trying to do this mid season and I would have preferred to not have done that, but just to be able to pick people's brains and kind of see, you know, especially people that went from foreUP to something else. I kind of wanted an idea of what

how things could be and things like that. I'm happy with where we ended up, but it would have been, it would have been cool to, you know, kind of pick people's brains like you're talking about. Right. Right. Well, hopefully we can, we can get that going again in the future. I'm happy that you're happy. You know, I think ultimately that's what matters the most is, is the operator satisfied with their choices and then is the technology supporting the growth of the business. And it sounds like, I know it's early, but it sounds like this is working really well for you. Yeah.

Yeah, it seems to be. I said, it's, it was definitely an adjustment period for everybody. mean, again, you know, trying to do it in, in August was just not something, not something that we wanted to do. It just kind of was forced upon us. but I mean, everybody, everybody handled it pretty well. know, my brother was more involved, when we changed from, GolfNow to foreUP. And I remember hearing his horror stories of, getting it switched over in, and we just didn't have that experience this time around.

That's good. That's good. And you mentioned you mentioned GolfNow. You're not available on GolfNow. You're not available on, I think, any tee time marketplace. You got to come to Deer Ridge to buy tee time, which is I think that's great if it's if it's working for you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just something that, you know, the discounted rates and stuff. that's that's something with like if we start running a dynamic pricing that we can kind of put a floor on and we can kind of control more. But it's just kind of one of those things that we

had too much discount, too much discounting led to people wouldn't pay full price. Right. an erosion of your overall rate, right? Which is understand. Exactly. And that's, yeah, like I said, nobody, why would you pay full when you can get it for partial? So we have a new guest on the podcast. That's great. Yes. Yes. This is Olivia. She's our, you're fine.

Okay. Well, we're to let you go and get back at it. I'll swing by the next, I think I'm, I'm, I'll be up for Thanksgiving. but I'll try to swing by and say hello and, we wish you all the best at Deer Ridge. You guys are a great golf course. are classic, small business operators and we're rooting for you guys every day. So thanks for coming on Chad. All right. All right. Thanks Mike. All right. Bye.

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