57. Bear Robotics- Overcoming Resistance and Busting Myths about Robotics in Senior Living

In this episode, we talk with Aaron Mayer, Director of Sales at Bear Robotics, about the integration of robotics in senior living dining operations, highlighting the benefits and addressing common concerns. The key points discussed include:

• Current Challenges in Senior Living Dining
• Overcoming Resistance to Robotics
• Implementation Process
• Myths and Realities

Bear Robotics continues to innovate in senior living dining, aiming to elevate service experiences through thoughtful integration of robotics and automation.

Learn more about Bear Robotics on their website.

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Transcript

Amber: Welcome to Raising Tech Podcast. Today, we have Aaron Mayer, who's the Director of Sales for Bear Robotics. Welcome to the show. 

Aaron: Hey, Amber. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Amber: Yeah, I'm really glad you're here. So we have done a Bear Robotics podcast. It's been a minute. So I connected with you, Aaron, at a recent conference, and we talked about how we have to get you back in the podcast.

Robotics is blowing up. There's so many new things coming out with staffing crisis and workforce. I know that the workforce is a big topic at multiple conferences I've been to. So I'm really excited to talk to you today and dig a little bit deeper into Bear robotics. and specifically talk about introducing robots. 

Aaron: Yeah, awesome. like I said, thanks for having me on. I think the biggest thing that we're seeing in the senior living industry right now is that a lot of operators haven't snapped out of the COVID slumber. They're still doing heavy room service, buffet style service. They have adapted their dining rooms and most of them are [00:01:00] just empty.

And dining is such a critical point in all of these communities, especially independent and assisted living. There's not many times that the residents get to socialize with one another. They look forward to these meals every single day. And the biggest part here also is we're having these staffing and labor shortages.

It's hard to retain good people. It's hard to drive the operation and keep it going. At the same time, costs are going up and the expectation is rising for these customers, these seniors that are moving into these very luxurious establishments. They've traveled the world, they've dined in very nice restaurants, and they come in after they're footed with a big bill and they expect To be wined and dined and they should so we need to find a way to deliver on these expectations.

And I'm excited to get into it today. 

Amber: So Aaron, tell me a little bit more about you first. So to set the [00:02:00] stage for the conversation we're going to have today.

Tell me about your background. Where did you come from? How did you end up at Bear Robotics? What's your journey? 

Aaron: I'm a classically trained chef. I was born and raised in the kitchen. I did it all. I started as a dishwasher. You hear that story all the time, but it's very much true for my situation.

Went to culinary school. I got the formal degree. I actually majored in nutrition worked in hospitals and I found myself nuzzled in senior living dining operations. I've worked with some big contract food service companies managed a bunch of high level like dining operations accounts.

And three years ago, we actually ended up deploying these robots in one of my communities that I managed. And it was right in the middle of COVID and it saved my operation. That's the truth. I was able to restructure my staffing patterns and my labor force. To accommodate these automation tools and the residents were all about it.

We were able to level up our dining [00:03:00] experience. So a lot of times today when I'm talking to new customers and dining directors or executive directors or COOs, CEOs, presidents of these large organizations, I like to challenge them to think outside of the box to level up their dining atmospheres as well. A lot of people think that these seniors might not like these robots or the perception might be off.

But it couldn't be more wrong. They love seeing people in a dining room and they love engaging with their favorite servers three times a day. They love seeing them. They love chatting with them. And when we can keep those servers on the floor to be more attentive and provide table maintenance , floor presence equals perception of service that's elevated.

That's what we're doing here. 

Amber: I want to go back to what you said. You said that Bear Robotics saved your operations. That's a bold statement. Tell me more about that. Give me some specific examples of how that worked at your community. 

Aaron: Yeah, so I'll get very [00:04:00] specific. We had about six servers for a 50 table dining room.

And this was actually back in the middle of 2020. When we were in the thick of it, we were actually were just coming out of the the first wave where we thought we could reopen dining rooms with social distancing. And the president of my company was nagging me to try. I was the Guinea pig for all new tech operations.

And he was saying, Hey, try these robots. And I'm like, absolutely not. I have limited staff, I'm being pulled in a million directions. Finally, I agreed to do it. And we implemented two of these robots at my establishment. What I did was we lost three servers, three servers came down with COVID.

And we were operating at 50 percent staffing pattern. We actually luckily just implemented a point of sale system where we had handheld tablets on the floor. So what we did was we restructured how we went about our dining service. [00:05:00] I kept two people on the floor just to take the salad, soups, beverages orders.

They were just on the floor ringing in these tickets and that's all they did. And I told them, do not go back into the kitchen, just stay on the floor. We were able to service two times the amount of tables per person when we leveraged those two technologies together. So we were ringing in tickets from the dining room and we were having a robot run the food and beverages and soups and salads out.

So with those two working in harmony, we were able to operate as we were full staffed with three servers and two robots. 

Amber: I love that story. And I love that this came up because there's two points I wanted to speak to based on what you said. So first of all, you said earlier, you were really resistant to the idea of robotics and I go on site to a lot of sites.

I was just at a community last month. And I was talking to the dining staff and same conversation. What'd you guys think about robotics? And I was really shocked. There was so much [00:06:00] resistance still. There's people that are in positions that are younger, you think would be more open to this.

The woman I was speaking with was like, absolutely not. I will never have robots here. I don't want to take away from the personal touch. So I want you to speak to that, but also on the same token is what you said earlier, that a lot of people also have a perception that the residents are against it.

But I also have heard. Complete opposite. So the communities that have implemented robotics that residents really like it, they get excited, they like to brag about it. So can you speak a little bit to those two points? 

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought it up. First from an operator's perspective, you hear robotics and automation and you're like, I don't have time.

I don't have time to do this. This is a huge lift, big implementation. 

Amber: Can you explain that more though? What, what takes the additional time? Like, why are people thinking it's more time? 

Aaron: I think because we've been trained to inherently like senior living moves slower to adopt new things.

We see that all over the place. When we were at that CCL event, you were talking about wifi [00:07:00] infrastructure and how daunting it is just to put that into play. And we've been trained to think that way whenever we're implementing a new call system, POS system EMR, like anything like that, it's just a big project.

And now I can't speak from any other organizations, but we make it really simple. Our product is installed and ready in two hours, and then we're just sitting there observing and training. So it's not a multi week phased rollout where there's plugs and tapes and all this construction. It's quite simple.

Everything's in house in our product. So it's really easy to implement our robots just to even test out for a short amount of time. to address the bigger part of your question, I love when I'm faced with a customer or someone, even a resident saying I like our servers.

I don't want to get rid of them or we want to increase human interaction, not reduce it. Because it gives me like perfect platform to shoot right back and say, are you [00:08:00] crazy? What? It's quite the opposite. When I talk about server presence on the floor, I really mean it.

And I tell a story all the time and everyone can relate to it. Like how many times are you out dining with family, friends? And you're looking around on the floor for your server. Maybe you want another glass of wine. Maybe you're ready for the check and you can't find the server. You're looking over your shoulder.

You're trying to make body language, eye contact, whatever it is. And you can't find them. And in your mind, what happens at that time? You start to perceive the service going down because I'll tell you what that server is doing. I've been in the kitchen. I've been a server before. They're juggling a million plates.

They're checking on their other tables. They're in the kitchen, waiting for their food to be ready. They're making sure that this person's checked out. They're doing all these things, but our robots keep them on the floor. We don't deal with many people that want to eliminate humans on a dining room.

They just want to provide a tool to help them. And that's what we do best. 

Amber: Yeah, I think when a lot of people who aren't [00:09:00] that familiar with what a solution like Bear Robotics can actually do, and when they hear robots, they're thinking that's taking away from the customer side, and you're really talking about more back end operations.

So can you walk us through, what does a community look like that has Bear Robotics fully implemented what are the roles that the servers are doing, that the robots are doing. Can you just talk through that? What's the experience like for a resident? 

Aaron: Yeah, and I'll do a full circle journey.

A recent client of ours we did this virtual white paper with and we tried capturing the full cycle of What we do and how we do it. And it all starts with kind of just a phone call and a consultation. How do you see these robots helping your community?

What are some of your pain points in your dining operation now ?These guys particularly the dreadful four to eight shifts, if anyone's listening that manages dining or nursing operations, and it's a hard shift part time you have the college or high school kids working [00:10:00] it and it's really tough to keep staff.

They were struggling with that. And the biggest show of the night is dinner. The residents really look forward to having dinner. And like we talked about earlier they have a really high expectation of their service of dinner. They want their food coming out quick. They want it hot.

And they want to be able to chat with their friends and have a good meal experience. What we did was we actually came out we did a little walk through we qualified the site, made sure that there's no barriers for success, like stairs or big bumpy flooring, which we never really see in senior living in general.

And we actually attended the resident council and food committee, where most people have monthly or bi weekly, And we presented the idea of robots to them first, before we implemented anything, before we went live we let them ask questions, we let them touch and feel the robot, see how it moved around the dining area and the space, and we quelled all concerns up front there actually wasn't in [00:11:00] this particular instance, there wasn't one person that was curious about us eliminating staff, which we weren't.

We were just supplementing and adding in a, an extra set of hands. 

Amber: Can I ask you a question before you go on to the next part? But I was wondering the back of my head while you were talking, it sounds like it wasn't the case in this community, but have you ever been brought in where maybe the CEO is we got to get robots and I'm super excited.

And everyone else hates the idea and how do you overcome that? 

Aaron: All the time we deal with C suite or owner operators, people who are not operators, people that are very removed from the actual operation.

And they say, I love the idea of it. This will work perfectly. They sign up for an agreement, they get a handful of robots. And then the worst thing that happens is we come out to deploy these robots. And the dining team doesn't know the residents don't know and then all of a sudden they see this big [00:12:00] white thing that's moving around their dining room.

And they're like, what the heck is that? Whose job is it replacing? So to your point, it's really important to touch all layers of the operation and we're very careful not to deploy robots until everyone's prepared to receive them.

Amber: I love your idea about letting people just interact with them. And it's just a unstructured way so they can ask their questions and see what it's like. And I think a lot of times, just with robots is people have this like idea in their head of what it's like, and that's where the fear comes from.

But when you actually see them, It's totally different. Okay. So keep walking me through it. So you've come on site you've started your implementation. What is the rest of the implementation go live look like? What do you need to do prepare? What kind of training is there?

What has to change on the operational side? And then maybe you can talk about what does this look like once it's actually in place? 

Aaron: Yeah. So from this example, we held the resident council. We allowed them to ask questions. We solicited feedback. And then we prepared them [00:13:00] for their first night of service.

We said, look, you're going to have a new friend in the dining room today. It's going to be helping out those hardworking servers that bust their butts every night to get you your food quick and hot. And there was a lot of excitement around it. We try to engage other departments as well. I love working with activities departments and and just anyone who's deals with resident engagement.

A lot of times we do an activity where over a month span as we prep for the robot to come, we have the residents participate in a naming event or a gender reveal. However you want to do. We've seen it all. Quick disclaimer. 99 percent of our senior living communities. named their robot Rosie because they basically resonate with the Jetsons because that was their time.

And 

When I say it takes two hours to install that's really all it takes.

Our engineer comes out, we do a map which is basically all internal. We mow this robot around, capture the walls they have 3D cameras on the robot and LIDAR, which basically [00:14:00] bounces a signal and it's just depth perception. They're not like video or picture cameras.

They're just depth cameras. And then we get this map and then our engineers design it to work towards a workflow that we use. So as we go, we're working with the dining team, the front of house managers, the dining directors whoever's hands on in that operation. And again, to your earlier question.

This is why we need everyone involved from the start to know that we're coming in. Many times when we deploy these robots, this sounds like a big process, but I'm just spelling it out. Many times we actually know what we're doing before we get in. So we can just be in the background doing this whole process.

And then we just we prep for a huddle or a standup right before service and we train everyone live there. So fast forward to actual service, our first run we do an in depth training with all the staff. We make sure everyone knows what buttons go, where the purpose of the robot. The purpose of staying on the floor and [00:15:00] engaging with the residents and not crowding in the kitchen.

Anyone who's listening that is in dining operations. They know it's a big issue where people congregate in. And we don't like that. They're always saying, Hey chef, where's table two, or I'm waiting on four. We want them getting the heck out and staying on the floor to entertain the guests and make sure they have everything they need.

So we do a lot of that. We try to make sure things are going smooth and then we take the training wheels off. We walk away we monitor the data and reports. We share them with the operations team and the people on site. We can see how many deliveries we make per shift per day. What does our operating time look like?

How much weight do we carry? How much distance did we travel? A ton of KPIs that we can measure that can just be translated into return on investment. 

Amber: I didn't know about the KPI and reporting side. That's interesting. It's something I hadn't thought about to have that information. Does that also help you determine ROI [00:16:00] and like labor hours, save, things like that?

Yeah. 

Aaron: And it's quite complex because we don't get too involved. We've done a couple of case studies where people have been an open book to their labor pattern and their staffing and wages and all that good stuff. But a lot of times we don't ask the questions cause it's personal to the operation, but you can surmise ROI capacity.

Our robots cost 19 bucks a day. So depending on what Metro city you're closest to, if you're in, if you're on the West coast or even like DC area, New York city area, you're already paying 15 an hour. And one thing I talk about a lot is calculate the robot and operating time. If you have John, the food runner that works from four to eight, you're paying him from four to eight.

You're paying four hours of labor. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean he's running food four hours straight. He's taking bathroom breaks. I'm sure he's sitting on his phone for a few minutes checking Twitter and going through Instagram and it just happens. So we calculate [00:17:00] that in robot operating time.

Even if we do five deliveries in one hour, that's an operating hour that you would have been paying a human. And again, this might sound like I'm suggesting we're replacing staff. But our proposal is use John the food runner to become a server or have him run other things that the robot can't, or just be in a dining room and be more pliable with your workflow.

That's what we want to encourage people to do. 

Amber: Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Can we talk about some robot myths and maybe bust some of those myths and I'll tell you some of the ones I've heard, and then you can maybe add some you've heard, and we can talk through them to dispel them a little bit.

And some of them we did discuss already. Of course, the fear that people's jobs will be replaced the loss of customer service. But I've also heard some operational concerns just around floor layout, building layout, where the kitchen is, where the dining room is how applicable is this in places like the assisted living and skilled nursing dining room?

So those are some of the ones I know, maybe we can talk about [00:18:00] those and then also add any that you're aware of. 

Aaron: Sure. So some of the big ones are our dining rooms too tight. We don't have the space. And that's that myth is busted. Big old busted stamp. We only need around two feet to move around to get through pathways.

There's no dining rooms that are too tight in senior living. Even if even if you have one, I I say prove it because we have wheelchairs, rollators, walkers, we've got all these assistive devices, but if a human can get through it, so can our robot. The one thing for us, we deal with a lot of restaurants, of course and when we have people standing up, like a college bar or a big bustling, like sports bar, something like that's a challenge for us because you have, you don't have people sitting.

But in senior living, you have people sitting during meal period. Of course, people are getting up coming and going, but for the most part, people are sitting and when that is the case, we can get to and from anywhere we really need to go. The other thing is floors and [00:19:00] pathways. Our newest robot survey plus, which is directly behind me.

And you guys can find it on our website. It's our most marketed robot. Basically our second generation, we can go over really bumpy floors, big thresholds that are almost a half inch wide. We can go up and down ramps. The only thing we can't do is stairs. Of course, I like to joke. We can go downstairs, but we can't go up, back up.

And the good thing is we don't see a lot of these uneven flooring or ramp kind of situations in senior living because they'd be a tripping hazard anyway. So the climate and environment is really conducive for heading these robots. The last thing that we hear a lot of people do is talk about is door access.

My door is really close to the dining room. I can't leave it open or fire code says that we can't do this with the door. That one's busted as well because we have a product that opens and closes doors now that communicates with the robot. And likely people have these in their communities already.

There's numerous brands. [00:20:00] We have a product that we use that works directly with the robot, but also works when a server tries to kick or push a door. So it's manual and automatic. And that's actually something we just implemented with a couple of robots that are the latest deployment that did the white paper study.

 It's been a game changer for us. We definitely. That's a big thing for senior living. What happens in a kitchen should stay in the kitchen, except for the plate.

Aaron: We don't want the noise the clanking, all that stuff in, in, out in the dining room. Some people have the space and they have open kitchens. A lot of new designs are open style, which is great. Definitely more conducive because this door opener we have is an added product and it's a separate integration.

But when you get it all to work together it's really harmonious. 

Amber: One more myth I want to bring up, and I've heard this more with the cleaning robots and maybe like the lawn mowing robots and things like that, but is there any worry of a collision? Are people scared of that?

Aaron: They're always scared of it. And it's funny cause when you're at these [00:21:00] deployments, residents like sticking their feet out or putting their hand in front of the robot. And I always laugh and I go over and talk to them and I'm like, I told you it's not going to hit you. The only thing that could happen is a resident could bump it like if they're not seeing it or something.

But that's never a very violent interaction. The robot is bottom heavy, so it's not going to tip over. It'll just wobble. We have really good detection. Our engineers are really good at creating pathways where we don't hit anything. If something were to jump out really quickly and startle the robot.

It would stop on a dime. We're really good at doing that. So it's something that we're confident in. 

Amber: Aaron, one last question I have for you. You have so much experience, working for a community before being in the culinary industry and all the different clients you get to interact with through your position.

Now, do you have any general tips and tricks you can just share to elevate dining operations? 

Aaron: Yeah, I would say the biggest thing is [00:22:00] be more adaptable and think outside the box and welcome new types of tech. Welcome the new P. O. S. System that your servers can take orders with tablets out on the floor.

Welcome. Automated tools that could bring food to the table. Eventually we'll be able to bring food for room service up, up multi levels. Go vertical you in order to consistently deliver on the expectation of elevated dining experiences. You need to implement these tools. Because the labor market's not going to get any better and you're good people.

They won't stay forever. So you need to leverage automotive tools. And when you can have a whole suite of automotive tools that aren't that expensive to work together, to really get the most out of your staff. It's a great thing. It really is. And you could deliver that expectation and you could have a really awesome dining program.

One that your residents and customers talk [00:23:00] about and people come just for that. 

Amber: Yeah, I think that's a great. No to end on. And really you can take that and apply that to really any area of senior living that more automation, more process efficiency is something we need in so many areas. And, robots are a pretty cool way to do that.

Aaron: They are 

Amber: well, Aaron, where can our listeners find out more about bear robotics? 

Aaron: So you can go to bear robotics. com. We are all over the place. We market a lot. on Google, our home website. We also are at some major conventions. We'll be at leading age this year. We'll be at the big ones.

So you will see our robot roaming around the floors and you could find us there. 

Amber: Thank you so much for joining me today. 

Aaron: Thanks for having me, Amber.

Amber: You can find us online at RaisingTechPodcast. com where you can see all of our episodes and contact us to provide feedback or submit an episode idea. We are on social media everywhere at Raising Tech Podcast. If you enjoy Raising Tech, please leave us a review and share with a friend. Music is an original production by [00:24:00] Tim Resig, one of our very own Parasol Alliance employees.

As always, thank you for listening.