The Outsource Advantage

Derek Kissos (00:03.129)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Outsource Advantage. I'm your host Derek Kissos. I'm really excited for our guest today, Megan Mokri with Byte Technologies. Megan, thank you so much for coming on board the show today.

Megan Mokri (00:15.923)
Happy to be here, Derek.

Derek Kissos (00:18.285)
Great. Megan, for those who aren't familiar with Byte, I'm very familiar with it, especially in the healthcare space. I see you guys all over the place. Can you talk to me a little bit about your role as CEO of Byte, but also just Byte in general?

Megan Mokri (00:33.422)
Sure, absolutely. So I'm Megan Mokri, I'm CEO of Byte, I'm also one of the co-founders. Company is turning 10 this year, which is pretty exciting for us. But what Byte does in a nutshell is we create unattended kiosks, ambient cases, coolers, now freezers, that can be used in hospitals, workplaces, college campuses, really anywhere you wish to sell food completely unattended. And the company really started

our mission was really to make the most convenient choice a healthy choice. So when you typically look at vending, you've got, you know, bags of chips and Snickers bars, and we wanted to see sandwiches and salads and, you know, hummus cups. So that was the why for how we got started.

Derek Kissos (01:17.753)
Thanks, Megan. You know, it's funny. I'm a weirdo. I love pop tarts. And so I try to find vending machines with pop tarts. It's becoming very, very rare to find that. And so I'm always unhappy. Um, but can you talk to me a little bit now coming up on, on your 10 year anniversary, you know, what really started you, you and, um, the team to create Byte? Um, and where did that desire to kind of launch it come from?

Megan Mokri (01:28.782)
Ha ha

Megan Mokri (01:37.09)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (01:40.878)
So we've had an interesting path to get to where we are today. We actually started, when we first started the business, we were doing meal delivery. So we didn't look anything like what we look like today. But when we were delivering healthy meals to homes, we really found, yes, people want convenient access to healthier food, but delivering it directly to the home is, in most instances, not financially viable unless you're at incredible scale.

And so we really rethought, where are these people spending time during the day? They're at work, you know, they're going to school, they're, you know, in, uh, community centers and whatnot. So we really thought, okay, how do we embed storefronts where people are spending time away from home? And that was the original impetus behind Byte and these unattended storefronts. Um, we spent like the first.

half of the company's history actually operating these kiosks ourselves. So we had deliveries on the road, we sourced all of our own product, and we really understood the nuts and bolts of operating this at scale. But ultimately, we found like, let's get this into as many people's hands as possible so that we can be powering this platform across the United States. And so that's how we really transitioned to being a technology platform, as opposed to.

just an operator.

Derek Kissos (03:06.669)
Was that a tough switch? You know, you always hear stories on either it's really easier or it was culturally a tough shift. And so I guess two part question of, you know, changing a business model like that can have its challenges, but what was the toughest parts about that when you made that switch to kind of go from you guys doing everything to now using channel partners, being more of just a technology platform, those types of things?

Megan Mokri (03:19.158)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (03:30.642)
Yeah, it was, there was about a year period where we had to split our, our team into two different teams. So we have one team that was really operating, the business was called Byte Foods. So operating the kiosks in the San Francisco Bay area. And then we had our technology team and sales team. And we, yeah, it was challenging because we really did have to think, okay, now we're a technology company. Let's think of Byte Foods as just as

another customer among many. But ultimately it was the right decision because it allowed us to get this tech and really fulfill our mission in a much faster way than if we had been rolling out market by market.

Derek Kissos (04:14.169)
Does Byte Food still exist?

Megan Mokri (04:16.374)
It does, it's no longer Byte Foods, it was purchased by another food service operator in the Bay Area.

Derek Kissos (04:21.001)
Oh wow. Oh, that's great. And how about your meal delivery? Do you guys still do any of that in pockets or is it now solely into just Byte technologies?

Megan Mokri (04:29.599)
solely by technology. Meal delivery is a thing of the far, far distant past. Ha ha ha.

Derek Kissos (04:35.312)
That must make your role a lot easier. Well, not easy, being a CEO is never easy, but at least you don't have all of these different swim lanes. I would call it, I'm gonna say, I don't wanna say vending, right? Because I think Byte technologies is, okay. Is it, okay.

Megan Mokri (04:39.13)
For sure.

Megan Mokri (04:43.187)
Exactly.

Megan Mokri (04:51.166)
No, you can say vending. I think it's fair, Derek. I've struggled with this over the years. It is vending. I think that's what people, that's what we all know, right? We know what a vending machine is. This is a vending machine for, initially for fresh food, but now we have freezers, now we have ambient cases, but you can say vending. It's not a dirty word anymore. Ha ha ha.

Derek Kissos (05:07.489)
Right. Okay, great. I appreciate, you know, I think of vending, I think of the skittles and other things in the machine and, you know, which is why I always caution myself on that because this is so different, right? You're getting fresh goods in there. What are the things that for Byte technologies you feel are differentiated with you versus the competition out there?

Megan Mokri (05:31.926)
I think of kind of three pillars. First and foremost is that it's completely unattended. It's an unattended store. And so you can place it anywhere and have a storefront selling product 24-7. The second piece is that it's checkout free. So for the consumers actually going to buy a sandwich or a drink or snacks or whatnot, once they...

present their payment in order to unlock the kiosk, they can grab whatever they wish, grab multiple items. And then once they close the door, the kiosk is intelligent. It knows what was taken from inventory and charges that customer accordingly. So from a consumer perspective, we're always told it's the most seamless and delightful shopping experience for that end consumer. And then the third piece is just, it's a very small footprint. So these kiosks are two by two.

I think of them as Lego building blocks. So if somebody wants to set up a proper retail experience where they've got several Byte smart coolers and smart freezers and ambient cases, they can do that. Or they can simply deploy a single kiosk within an existing location, because it can basically be put anywhere that has an outlet.

Derek Kissos (06:49.641)
Yeah, that's great. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, I love the aspect of yours and I use Apple Pay with your devices just because it's so much easier. But you know, my favorite thing about it is being able to do that and opening the door and grabbing what I want and not worried about those little spiral things and doesn't get stuck in traditional vending, right? But how does that what's the back end technology on that? And I'm not meaning to get specifics, but there's multiple different ways people do that. And so how does Byte do that in terms of understanding?

Megan Mokri (06:56.222)
Nice. Yeah.

Derek Kissos (07:18.337)
You know, when I opened that door and shut that door, what products did I take to accurately charge?

Megan Mokri (07:23.582)
Yes, so we, Byte uses RFID technology. So basically every product has a small RFID tag that's placed on it. And that provides the operator that all kinds of information. First and foremost, it allows the kiosks to know what exactly is in inventory. And we know down to the granularity of how long each individual product was in there. It allows you to do some really intelligent things. So from an...

From an operator perspective, it's very easy because when you show up and you want to restock products, you simply open the door as a restocker, remove any product that you need to remove, add any product you need to add, and the kiosk does all the work to count it. So there's no cycle counts, there's no manual updating of the kiosk to know what's in inventory. And then let's say you're selling very fresh product because you know how long a specific salad has been on the shelf and you know it's

you know, the system knows the shelf life days, you can get into some advanced discounting based on shelf life, where if that salad has one day or less left, I wanna discount it by 50%. The system can automatically do that. It helps you as an operator minimize spoilage and waste.

Derek Kissos (08:34.677)
And I'm assuming this is all done in the cloud correctly. So there's not, okay.

Megan Mokri (08:37.386)
This is all done in the cloud through our online dashboard. Yep, exactly right.

Derek Kissos (08:41.165)
That's great. And then for as an operator, um, I don't know the nuts and bolts of how this works. So pardon my questions. Um, are there alerts that get sent to the, the staff who are refilling these or if there's going to about to be expired goods, can you just explain a little bit on how that goes into some early warning notices?

Megan Mokri (08:59.626)
Yeah, so the dashboard is kind of home base for getting all the reporting and data that you need on the kiosk. Alerts can be set up for kind of more health safety concerns. If a kiosk is out of temperature, we can set up automatic lockdowns. If a kiosk is over temperature, any issues from a technology standpoint, our operators can be notified. And then of course you're able to see, I'm out of stock of sandwich, these...

turkey cheese sandwiches, I need to get out there and restock it.

Derek Kissos (09:31.949)
Yeah, that's great. And also on that dashboard is all the retail sales numbers, right? So that is kind of your whole one-stop shop.

Megan Mokri (09:37.206)
All, yeah, exactly right. So you see all your transaction data. You can have historic visibility into what products were actually added to the machine, what products were removed as spoilage during restocking. That's where you can set up all your discounting. You can create coupons. If you wanna create coupons for like new employees, for instance, you can do all kinds of stuff all through our dashboard. Yeah.

Derek Kissos (10:03.893)
Wow, that's interesting. You know Megan, how did you get to Byte like even Byte foods back? But what's your background that kind of led you to be a co-founder in this exciting business?

Megan Mokri (10:11.02)
Yeah.

Megan Mokri (10:15.606)
I have no background in food. So I really came, my background was in online advertising. I had worked at a few startups at Yahoo, but really nothing related to the food space. I'm just very passionate about food and healthy food and the impact that it has really on our well being on our communities. There's no space that you can be in and more positively impact the world in my opinion than in the food space. So it was it was a kind of a

a naive, they always say entrepreneurs naively get into these spaces and I fit in that category.

Derek Kissos (10:52.509)
Yeah, that's fantastic. You know, I didn't have a ton of healthcare experience before coming to HHS and it's, you know, people always ask me, oh, you know, have you been doing this forever? And I said, no, I've been doing it for four years since I've been at HHS. But that's interesting. Yeah. That's right. Exactly. You know, one of the neat things I think about on Byte, I think, is that, you know, I think

Megan Mokri (10:57.959)
Oh, interesting.

Megan Mokri (11:02.414)
It... That's amazing. Well, sometimes not having that long history, and you're able to look at things a little bit differently.

Derek Kissos (11:17.385)
In contrast to typical vending, you know, you kind of have those sterile vending units. Yes, there are some different ones out there, but typically they're, you know, much bigger than a two by two footprint. They're wide and kind of that sterile branding. Some of the things I've seen with you guys is really neat in terms of, you know, every Byte machine can look drastically different based off if you're going to have a, an operator's logo on it, a facility's logo on it, or just something that's.

Megan Mokri (11:29.454)
Mm-hmm.

Derek Kissos (11:44.041)
I'm trendy or generic in general, not about an operator or vendor or a facility. Can you talk to me what led you down that path? Has it always been that way? Have you gotten feedback and to how you design it? But I just love the creativity that you guys could do from an overall branding of the machine. And was that always in place or is that something that you guys are looking to do even more?

Megan Mokri (12:05.834)
Yeah, Derek, I can't take credit for this. This is like the creativity of our clients, really. There is a lot of space on the kiosk itself to brand and a big, nice glass front. And it really is the creativity of our clients that makes them look beautiful, not only with the branding and the skinning of the kiosk, but also with the products that they're stocking. So that's all of our clients.

Derek Kissos (12:30.389)
That's great. So pivoting from that but in the same line, talk on research and development. You know, from my vantage point, you guys are great in getting feedback. You know, we leverage your product. What's your typical R&D path? Like where do you get your feedback from mostly? How does that make it way into new versions, technology, features, et cetera?

Megan Mokri (12:36.438)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (12:42.359)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (12:52.99)
Yeah, we have R&D really on three fronts. There's the hardware itself. There is the software that's actually operating on the kiosk itself. So for instance, how we actually know what's an inventory, how we know what to charge individuals, how we monitor the health of the kiosk itself. And then there's software on the backend. So like the online dashboard, how you create discounts and reporting and whatnot. We host now quarterly kind of customer summits.

and where we are, you know, we're talking about what we're working on now, what's coming, and then we're getting direct feedback. So we are very much a customer led organization where we're listening to what our customers want. That's why we launched Freezer is everybody said, we've got to get a freezer. Um, but that's really how we think about what to be working on and when.

Derek Kissos (13:43.913)
Yeah, that's great. So then taking that a step further, anything interesting coming out in the near future? Obviously only what you can share. I know R&D roadmaps are sometimes for obvious reasons secretive, but are there any big next steps? I know Freezers was a recent one or at least relatively recent, but anything new coming down the pike that

Megan Mokri (14:02.924)
Yeah.

Megan Mokri (14:06.85)
Having, I think the most recent one is our full lineup of kiosks. So ambient cases, coolers, of course, that's our bread and butter. We now have extra large versions of both of those. And then the freezer. We've partnered pretty closely now with several leasing partners that have really brought the monthly pricing down. So these leasing partners can not only bundle the cost of the kiosk itself, but then the license and connectivity fees.

where instead of paying for something upfront, you're paying 250 to $350 a month. Really opens up the attractiveness for people. And then on the dashboard side, it's a lot of work around reporting and then just exposing our platform via APIs. So for some of our more advanced partners, they can actually pull data themselves into whatever software they might be using.

Derek Kissos (14:59.609)
Reporting is always a tricky one because no two customers want it the same way. And so you've got to find that sweet spot that at least you get to the vast majority of it. When we're talking about technology, I have a little bit of a background in technology. And when I'm talking to organizations like yourselves, I always like to find out what's been something that you as a co-founder and CEO have found as one of the biggest challenges, I'd probably say just over the last five years since you've pivoted.

Megan Mokri (15:04.942)
Very true.

Megan Mokri (15:09.175)
100%.

Derek Kissos (15:29.197)
kind of full stack into technology. What's been the biggest challenge or series of challenges in life today as we know it with bike technologies?

Megan Mokri (15:40.334)
Specifically from a technical perspective or as an organization. Yeah, COVID.

Derek Kissos (15:42.941)
No, in general, just since, yeah, just in general, after you, well, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, that's a great answer.

Megan Mokri (15:49.026)
COVID, that's an easy answer. I think it was March 16th, right, when everything shut down. That next day, our transactions dropped across the fleet and like 75%. It was fun times, but ultimately, it's made our organization much more robust. It's really, pre-COVID, we were largely in workplaces. And so we were even more acutely impacted. And now we're in just such a much more diverse set of locations.

with our customers. So it's been, it was a tough couple of years, but ultimately to the benefit of the organization. What's the saying? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yeah.

Derek Kissos (16:31.885)
That's right. That's right. You know, funny story about COVID is as you referenced the March date, I actually joined HHS February 28th of that year and I'm scheduled to go to some travel to meet with, with some folks. And that's when the world shut down. And I look at my wife and I go, Oh my goodness, what did I just do? Right? Luckily it ended up working out, but yeah, such a crazy time. So, so flipping that on its head a little bit, moving to challenges,

Megan Mokri (16:41.507)
Ha ha!

Megan Mokri (16:51.058)
Yeah.

Megan Mokri (16:56.075)
It really was.

Derek Kissos (17:01.533)
Obviously, in your purview, this could go in many different directions, but what is one or two things that as CEO and co-founder you're most proud of over the last five years? It unbucketed in this to the last five years when you guys have made that pivot, but don't feel constrained by that. But I always think it's interesting to hear from some C-suite executives like yourself, what are the things that you're really proud of that your organization has done?

Megan Mokri (17:27.842)
There's, I'd say there's two. First is the team that we've built. We have, I think the average tenure at Byte is like approaching four years, which in startup land is quite a long time. So really, really proud of the team. And then second is just, it's the customers that we work with. And organizations like HHS, which are so impressive in terms of the work you're doing to like juice shops in Marfa, Texas that are selling.

Derek Kissos (17:37.218)
Wow.

Derek Kissos (17:40.599)
Yeah.

Megan Mokri (17:55.49)
thousands of dollars worth of juice a month out of our kiosk to a pie shop in Alabama that's selling like $10,000 worth of pies every month out of a bike kiosk. It's just the stories and use cases that we see every day are, they really fire me up and the team up too. It's really cool to see what our customers are doing with the technology.

Derek Kissos (18:05.421)
Cheers.

Derek Kissos (18:18.217)
Yeah, that's really neat. One question I ask all my guests if they're similar to you is we come across a lot of entrepreneurial spirits, a lot of people who are serial startup kings or queens, as I call them. If someone's out there and obviously you don't want a competitor to Byte, more and more of those popping up. But if they're looking to get into a space and are struggling, I think your story's unique where you had a model.

Megan Mokri (18:33.624)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (18:40.599)
Hmm

Derek Kissos (18:47.773)
You branched that off and then you really went all in on another. And it doesn't have to be about this, but could you talk a little bit about if there are any audience members listening to this who are thinking about getting into a new space or are their organizations at a pivotal point like you guys were a couple years ago. Can you give any advice to the listeners on either the intestinal fortitude to make a tough decision or how you balance that just in general?

Megan Mokri (18:50.902)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (19:09.558)
Hahaha

Megan Mokri (19:16.286)
I remember this was a long time ago. This was almost 10 years ago. I was in business school in some kind of entrepreneurship class and they had a founder come in. And he looked at the class and he's like, do not start a business unless you are willing to sign up for eight plus years of having your nose to the grindstone. It was like eight years. Come on. Sounds ridiculous. You're 10 years in.

So I think that in reflecting on that, what's really important is that you really have to be greatly tied to the mission of your business. And that mission has been like true from the meal delivery days to when we were operating the service ourselves to now being the technology platform. That is the through line on all of it. And that is kind of our cornerstone of what we come back to.

one time's get tough. So I would say you really gotta find a mission that you greatly believe in and are willing to put in the time to see achieve. Because it takes time to build a business.

Derek Kissos (20:25.485)
You know, it's interesting you said something that jogged a thought in my head. There's, and I don't know the legalities of what I'm allowed to do on these. This podcasting is all new to me. So I'll just give some generals, but there's a newer podcast out there and it's in the, it's in the basketball world. Um, and it's LeBron James and JJ Reddick. Um, you, you obviously probably know LeBron James name. If you're not a basketball fan, may not know JJ Reddick's name, but they were talking about, um, you know, how do you go from a NBA player to a great, right? Like.

Megan Mokri (20:39.82)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Derek Kissos (20:56.129)
All-Star Hall of Famer and LeBron said something that I thought was so critical not for the sports and athletes but for business owners and entrepreneurials which was not only like the love of the game and the passion and all those things. I think we can all equate to that but he said it's the sacrifice that your family and friends and those have to be comfortable with. And you know I think about that every day now and I just listened to this podcast but you know when you said it's eight years of grinding.

Megan Mokri (20:57.73)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (21:16.011)
Mm-hmm.

Megan Mokri (21:22.976)
Mm-hmm.

Derek Kissos (21:23.501)
It's not just grinding in the business world, right? It's grinding on all aspects. Like that has to be your sole focus in life. And so I respect greatly people like yourself who do that when I'm just in a corporate office, didn't start anything myself. And can you talk, not personal sacrifice on that front, but just how difficult that that's been for the last 10 years and staying focused, even if times get tough, especially through the pandemic and just how you've kind of dealt with that.

Megan Mokri (21:43.233)
Yeah.

Megan Mokri (21:51.634)
Yeah, I think it's that when you can stack up kind of consistently showing up day after day over nearly 10 years, you can build something. And so there's kind of that element of discipline of just continuing to show up and do the work. And some days are grinds, some days are not. I mean, after a certain number of years in instability, there is some reprieve. But

Kind of it's just doing the work as with anything, right? You know, you wanna build muscles, you just gotta go to the gym. You know, so it's just showing up and doing the work and delivering a consistently great solution for our customers. And that's allowed us to be at the place where we are now. And I still feel like we're just getting started to be honest.

Derek Kissos (22:25.258)
Yeah.

Derek Kissos (22:28.999)
That's right.

Derek Kissos (22:44.513)
Megan, I got a weird one for you. Where is the most interesting, either business or place, you guys have a bike technology machine today? The pie shop's a good one. So I'm gonna ask you, yes, I wanna try a pie from a pie shop.

Megan Mokri (22:53.65)
Yeah, the pie shop's great. It's in it. It's okay. It's in it, but it's in a town of 11,000 people. This is a very small town in Alabama and it is selling that much in pies. It's remarkable. I don't know if you've ever heard of Marfa, Texas. Marfa, Texas is okay. So it's that's right. You're in Austin, right? There is okay. So there is a

Derek Kissos (23:07.014)
Jeez. Yeah, yeah.

Derek Kissos (23:13.694)
It's about six hours for me, I think if I'm if I'm accurate, yeah West

Megan Mokri (23:21.25)
It's called Little Juice and they have a kiosk in what looks like an abandoned warehouse. And it's just, it's beautifully merchandise, beautiful product, loyal customer base, and they're killing it. We have kiosks in San Quentin Prison in the Bay Area for their employee base. That employee base has very high rates of chronic disease and getting out of prison and going somewhere, it's not a possibility.

So having fresh food there is really important. So we got all kinds of odd ones.

Derek Kissos (23:58.477)
I'm going to have to get with you offline and figure out where this pie shop is. I'm a, I'm a very large pie fan. And so the next time I'm in it, you said Alabama. Okay, perfect. No, that's fantastic. Okay. So, so switching, we talked about if entrepreneurs are out there listening, if there are customers, partners like ourselves, et cetera, who are out there looking to either bolster re-imagine or, or get into this space and they're looking to leverage a company like by

Megan Mokri (24:04.115)
Okay, great.

Derek Kissos (24:27.841)
Byte technologies, what are the things they should really be asking, you know, as they're evaluating because they may not just come to Byte, you know, a lot of the times people do the role of threes or they want to get, you know, information from three different companies. What are the questions that, you know, occasionally people may not think of to ask to get to the actual solution they want?

Megan Mokri (24:47.982)
That's a good question. I think, you know, really considering the location and the needs of the location. So if you're looking at a healthcare campus or a hospital, what we oftentimes hear are like the needs of second and third shift, having healthy options when the cafeteria is closed. So really thinking about the needs, thinking about the product that you're already producing if you're running a cafeteria that can very easily be slotted into kiosk. It's kind of a starting point and that gives you a sense of your need for

Are you going to be doing one cooler? Are you going to do a rollout of several coolers, freezers, ambient cases? So get a sense of your needs and a sense of the team that would be operating on a day-to-day basis. And then when you're talking with potential partners, not only I think that understanding the technology and the operations of what it will look like using this on an ongoing basis is important, but talk to them about onboarding and what that experience looks like.

probably the most important part of the engagement is like how your team is trained on setting up these kiosks and really thinking about how these fit into your existing operations. Cause it shouldn't be off on an island over here where only one person knows how to use it. It really should be thought of as this solution is now part of the overall retail experience at this location.

Derek Kissos (26:11.881)
Yeah, that's great. And you know, it's funny and I'm bouncing all over here. So thank you for just being patient with me. But I had to ask someone the other day, what does ambient cooler mean? I had never heard that term before in my life and they explained it to me, which I think is great. So can you explain the difference between obviously, cooler and freezer people may know, but if you're not in this space, you may not know what ambient means. And so do you mind just kind of explaining those range of products?

Megan Mokri (26:17.728)
All good.

Megan Mokri (26:31.445)
Yes.

Megan Mokri (26:35.75)
Ambient, yes. Yeah, an ambient case is basically it's held at about 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So you can sell any shelf stable items in there. We have clients that are selling more retail type items in there. Basically anything that doesn't need to be refrigerated or frozen can be sold through an ambient case. Whereas a cooler, you're selling kind of fresh product, temperature sensitive product, freezer, you know.

frozen meals, pizzas, ice creams, novelties, et cetera.

Derek Kissos (27:08.409)
That's great. So Megan, if people wanna get in touch with Byte Technologies, what's the best way for them to do that?

Megan Mokri (27:16.43)
You can either go to our website, Byte and reach out to us there, or email me directly. I'm Megan, without an H, at Byte

Derek Kissos (27:31.449)
Great, and I'll make sure that the team links something, however they do their magic, to make sure people don't have to get their pen out. I'm gonna ask you something here that I try to ask all my guests. Tell us something about you that's interesting or a fun fact, hobby, et cetera, that might be unique.

Megan Mokri (27:35.864)
Perfect.

Megan Mokri (27:50.63)
I am a huge gardener, so I've got like 50 fruit trees and like 10 raised garden beds at my house. I love gardening. So it's springtime, although winter has not left California at this point. So I'm getting ready to print out, put out all of my veggie starts and whatnot.

Derek Kissos (28:09.993)
Oh, that's exciting, especially in the line of work you're in now. No, I appreciate that. That's the first gardening response I've gotten. So you're first on that front. Yeah, it's not, but you know, it's very difficult. Um, I've, I tried to garden a little bit a few years ago and the only thing I've been able to grow is peppers and the only time I can grow peppers is if they're in a pot and so I've given up on it. Um, I've just said, I have, I must have a brown thumb, not a green thumb. So it's much harder than it looks.

Megan Mokri (28:16.326)
Nice. Okay, good. It's not that exciting, but it is a fun fact, I guess.

Megan Mokri (28:26.743)
Mm-hmm.

Oh nice.

Okay, great.

Derek Kissos (28:39.713)
Well, Megan, you know, appreciate you having on any parting thoughts that you have for the audience here that you'd just like to end on.

Megan Mokri (28:47.354)
Oh gosh, let's see. I mean, consider Byte. I got to always be selling. Consider Byte. We're here and happy to have discussions and brainstorm on how we can be the right solution. So I appreciate you having me on, Derek.

Derek Kissos (28:49.461)
Not to put you on the spot.

Derek Kissos (28:53.645)
Hehehe

Derek Kissos (29:00.209)
That's been wonderful. Yeah, I really appreciate having you on. I think the world of your product, I use it every day in our corporate cafeteria here, makes my life a lot easier. And then, Megan, I ended but you know, one question just popped into my head that I'm going to ask you. You know, how do you envision Byte Technology and how do you envision yourself and the company kind of

Megan Mokri (29:06.946)
Thank you.

Megan Mokri (29:20.084)
Yeah.

Derek Kissos (29:28.669)
either changing the landscape or influencing the industries you're in different directions. Do you think you guys are doing something that's going to leave a mark on the industry or just be kind of not just be but be kind of a different nuanced way to go or do you think there's going to be some changes in the industry because of the success you guys are having?

Megan Mokri (29:48.27)
I certainly hope so. I mean, I'm seeing it. I can state with very strong conviction, I think there's going to be unattended retail solutions in every hospital, on every college campus, and all the workplaces. And we're one of the longest standing, completely unattended checkout free solutions with the ability to do that. So I think we are making a longstanding impact.

Like I said, I think we're on the bleeding edge right now. So we were at a conference over the last couple of years, we go to a large higher education conference for food service professionals. And two years ago, we had to explain what we do. And this past year, it's people coming up saying, oh, we're looking at implementing an unintended solution, smart fridges. So I see that shift already happening, but we still are in the early innings.

Derek Kissos (30:47.233)
Well, you can tell I'm not a podcast host by trade because I'm going to ask you one last question. Apologies. You know, you brought something there about the higher education. Have you guys started to get into coolers, freezers, etc. for the larger academic institutions that have big sports programs? I know with health and wellness with...

Megan Mokri (30:52.454)
No worries.

Derek Kissos (31:11.074)
athletics out there in that world that is a huge component and so are you guys doing stuff in that realm as well in the higher education space?

Megan Mokri (31:18.194)
Yes, absolutely. Higher Ed and healthcare are two fastest growing segments. Within Higher Ed, I think there's the need of students. Students are night owls and they need to eat whenever they need to eat. There's special dietary needs where clients are putting the special dietary needs food within Byte kiosks specifically. There's athletic departments.

Derek Kissos (31:27.266)
fantastic.

Megan Mokri (31:49.203)
There's kind of an endless list of use cases within higher education.

Derek Kissos (31:58.041)
Well, I appreciate you not to end now for a second time, but Megan, thank you so much for coming on and you guys are busy, so I appreciate you making the time. For all those out there listening, please reach out to Megan and her team. I think their product's great, even to have a conversation. If you haven't done it, please subscribe to see when this and other future episodes are gonna come out. And everyone, Megan, thank you for joining. Listeners out there, thank you for joining the AllSource Advantage, and I hope you have a great rest of your day, Megan.

Megan Mokri (32:27.126)
Thanks, Derek.

Derek Kissos (32:28.557)
Thank you, ma'am.