The Grocery Concierge Changing the Game for Hosts!

Hi, welcome to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, most importantly, the confidence. So you can go out there and get yourselves direct bookings. Today's guest, we've got Connor Patton. He's the CEO of Notable, the grocery concierge, which is transforming guest experience. So stay tuned to listen how you can boost your reviews and also importantly your revenue with this guest. Guest first upgrade. Welcome along, Connor. Thank you for joining me today.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat all things short term rentals, upsells, and, you know, whatever comes in between.

Lovely, lovely. So what do you want people to take away from this episode?

Yeah, I mean, obviously there's a lot that we'll, we'll dive into, but I can give like a brief synopsis of, of knowledgeable. But I think one of the big takeaways that I'm going to talk about that's not pertaining to just notable, but in general is the importance of how you market your guest experience in upsells. And actually, rather than just picking up cells like noshable to offer being a little bit more creative in the way you offer them to guests based on your property's adr, based on the areas you're in, I think creativity is one of the biggest differentiators for property managers, especially in today's day and age where it's very, it's very democratized. Like, if you want to offer Noshable, there's lots of people who don't, but you could. Right. It's very easy. And so I want to talk a little bit today and kind of have the takeaway be how you can actually market upsells, drive revenue, better guest reviews by doing it in a creative way that pertains to your market, to your operations and kind of your unique value proposition. So that's one of the big takeaways that hopefully at the end of this podcast, people will have a better concept of an idea of where to start going for their own operations.

100% people want to be able to stand out. There's so much competition in many areas in the market at the moment. So being able to stand out is absolutely key. And we can do that through what we offer and the guest experience. Right. So I guess a great question that people will be wondering is what is most people and how does it work for guests and for hosts?

Yeah. So I've got a background in real estate property management, and I think one thing that has kind of continued to grow and evolve is just the need for a better guest experience and standing out like you just mentioned. And so I wanted to build something that was, I hate using this word, but like fairly democratized, something that any family could use or travel or on vacation. So there's lots of private chefs and all these types of services. You can rent, you know, skis or a jet ski, depending on the market. There's all these cool things. But I grew up in, you know, a middle class family. We got to vacation fortunately. But at the same time, we would cook food at home, we would go out certain days. We were on a budget still. And so there really is no national solution for grocery concierge. There's lots of mom and pops that are generally very expensive. They only service one zip code. And then there's Instacart. But it's not tied to guest experience. Right. And it's very much something you do in the here and now, the day of travel, trying to time it, and it doesn't necessarily protect you from delays. So we wanted to take the best of both worlds and basically build a national grocery concierge. So it's similar to Instacart. We integrate with major retail grocery stores, full transparent pricing and inventory. But we actually also integrate with PMSS and other guidebooks and softwares so that you can order your groceries up to a year in advance, ingrained in your booking or planning process. And then those groceries are actually going to be stocked in the accommodations ahead of your arrival so that you don't have to worry if your plane is delayed or you want to make a road trip. Stop driving down to, say, Florida from somewhere, you know those goods are going to be kept safe. The cold chain is preserved and it's just a great amenity to offer. And it's very affordable and something that any family can kind of try out. And it provides a little bit of that like Disney magic. Right. And so that's essentially what Notchable is in a nutshell.

That's amazing. And definitely I get the value add, especially for families and people who are traveling. Right. And is there kind of a, an avatar like is it families or is it work travelers or is that just like across the whole market that people need this sort of service?

Yeah. So that's being a startup, you're always trying different markets. It's like a spaghetti on the wall thing. Right. And we found validation in pretty much every market. Today's day and age, people are paying more and more for convenience. I'm guilty of it. I use services like Uber all the time. Right. And so we've actually gone as far as to find places where we're in hotel styles like boutique hotels and stuff, where there's only a mini fridge, there's not even a kitchen for them to cook, and they'll order to have their favorite type of coffee creamer and some of those other types of things that just make it feel like a little bit of a home that they might want there ahead of their arrival. So. And then we have families that are ordering $1,000 worth of groceries and on ski trip or on a big beach house. So it really is kind of across the board and like I said, democratized. And there's a use case for everyone. You can go as far as to order things like floaties, goggles and sunscreen outside of just groceries too. So there's a wide way to use notable and it really varies. And we can get into this based on your market and how we should be marketing this service depending on where you are.

And it reminds me of a quote from Alex Hormozi and I'm probably going to butcher this, but it says something along the lines of convenience beats price. At the end of the day, if you can have something convenient and quick, then you often happy to pay more for it. I mean, I do it with a lot of the streaming services. We pay a little bit more, we get rid of the ads. It's a little bit, you know that.

Yeah. And to kind of counter back with that. Another quote here that I might butcher as well is Harrison Ford said if I asked the people what they would have wanted, they would have said faster horses. Right. And so oftentimes in today's society, when you're building a company, they say there has to be a need, like people need to have this. Well, at the end of the day, convenience isn't always a need. It's not part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs like shelter and water and things. But at the same time, when you're on vacation, the people who are staying in short term rental properties are, they're taking pto, they're spending discretionary income, they don't have to be there. Right. And so it's really a good way to understand like giving them these type of options that provide convenience because their time is the most valuable thing. A majority of people don't have the freedom or autonomy to just vacation whenever. And if you can give some of that back, it often outweighs that kind of the scale of price versus convenience. Right.

100%. It just means they can spend More of them times enjoying themselves as opposed to having to worry about stuff. So it sounded to me as though you've got a history. You mentioned property management and that side of things. So where did this idea come from? And talk about the history. What did you do before this?

Yeah, so as far as my background, I've worked in high growth startups, venture capital and kind of a variety of different industries. Actually my real estate license as well, and particularly at a company called realpha which has since pivoted to an AI real estate agent platform. At the time I was there, we were buying a lot of property in Miami and other markets and trying to democratize short term rental investing, allowing people to buy a small portion of it, but also do it in a fun way where it actually feels like you have true ownership, getting blackout days to use the property, etc. And so as we were building a brand, one of the things that we wanted to make sure we did was great was guest experience. We thought of ways that how can we stand out? Do we paint all of the doors green? That was our logos color so that you can always find a real for property. You know, we were looking into all these different technologies and I through that research, I never actually found anything in the grocery concierge space. And it wasn't something that we wanted to build at the time. Like it just didn't make sense and it just kind of is its own beast itself. Right. There's lots of guidebooks that offer all these other upsells, but no one wants to handle it. And I thought it would just be a great solution to float on top of the industry. And there was a need for the market and I knew people would pay for it because I myself would have paid for it. I hated grocery shopping and you know, especially in crowded markets where you're not familiar with the layout and then you just want to get to the beach. Or you, if you're me, you want an ice cold beer. Candidly so sounds good to me.

The ice cold beer, definitely. And like you say, there's definitely a need for it. And when I was thinking before we done this interview, I was thinking, well, I can't think of another competitor who does exactly what you do. And it's a great way to stand out for hosts and it's ideal for guests. So this is really exciting. So how are some of the hosts out there using notable to enhance the guest experience? What are they doing to stand out?

Yeah, so it really then this goes kind of this overarching concept. I want to talk about, we have done a good job of working directly with hosts one on one. So rather than just having an onboarding call and kind of taking you through how you market know, et cetera, we have this separate ideation call that's optional where we talk to you, we look at your properties, their adr, if you're willing to kind of share information on your goals. Right. As an operation. And then we also look at your market and we think of ways and brainstorm with their team and offer free resources from us as far as graphic design goes, promotions, et cetera, to try and drive more conversion. So for example, one of our favorite property managers, not to have favorites, but like one that we work with a lot and has done a lot of job and been successful with promotions is called Reunion Resorts in Davenport, Florida. And they have some very large homes where they're like 17 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms. And so for them, the service itself is just very helpful because someone has to go shop for generally thousands of dollars of groceries and that's a big trip. Whereas we have other property managers who have very small properties, smaller adr, and we can think of creative ways for them to still leverage the service. So down in Florida, we have concierge cottages who has decided this spring break to pay a hundred dollars for each person's grocery delivery order. And you have a mix of people who will place a 98 cent order and they just really want the free 100 bucks. And then you also have a mix of people who place like $300 orders. But regardless, people are loving that service and they're starting off their spring break at this season, kind of, like I said, with an ice cold beer. So we've done a lot of different types of promotions and I think it's one of those things where it's customized to the specific property manager. We just onboarded properties in NOLA with a company called Book Nola and we'd missed Mardi Gras, but we're already talking with them and planning some sort of special Mardi Gras promotion for next year because it's big there. So I think it's really important to understand your market, your ideal customer profile, who that is, and how you can like market this service in a unique way to them to really drive engagement and make them happy. So it's. I know that was a bit ambiguous. There's a lot of different examples, but we really custom tailor it, if possible, to each property manager.

That's very cool. I mean, there's, there's tips and tricks that I'm picking out. I mean, first of all, in your previous answer where you say about painting the doors green and standing out, I just love any. Money follows attention. Right. And anything that gets attention is great. But especially for what you're saying there about spring break especially, I can see the type of guests who are going to want, they don't want to be ordering groceries, right. They want everything there. So that is a genius promotion from that company to include that as, as kind of the value add. And it's a point of difference, right. How many places can people say, hey, I went to this place and they gave us a hundred dollars towards, you know, grocery and, and to get everything in. And that was there when I arrived, which is really cool. Do you get feedback from the guests as well using notable. Have you seen any kind of memorable moments from the guest?

We get it all the time. And like I love to be candid and I'll tell the ups and downs, right. Because there's lots of different experiences. But just this past week, Book Nola, who we just onboarded, reached out and they had their first grocery delivery and the guest gave them a five star review. And the second half of the message on their Airbnb was booked direct through them mentioned how they had this really cool service where they didn't have to grocery shop and they were there when they arrived and they're like, I think that really bought them in. Not that they weren't bought in trying it out, but it makes you get excited and want to think of other ways if, if you just generally are marketing it and then there's ways to market it better towards your particular market. It gets you excited to see those type of reviews. So we're seeing guests actually mention that service oftentimes pretty often. And then we also have, you know, guests who talk to us about support on our own noshable side. So outside the property manager, we handle most of the communication with guests. So it's very interesting to see how guests interact. And so we, we try to take feedback very seriously from PMs as well as guests. So last week we had a guest who placed close to $1,000 grocery order in Deer park for a little bit of spring skiing. And they said they loved the service, everything went really smoothly, they will use it again. But they spent almost an hour having to place a grocery order because we have a very similar experience to Kroger Publix Instacart where you type and you search for specific goods and you add them to your cart. Well, when you're shopping for 30 people. That gets timely. So we took her feedback and by Thursday of this week, which is about like, you know, I think like a seven day turnover, we've built the ability now through an AI agent to shop based on prompting on our website. So you can say, I have eight people in my party. Find me a taco recipe and add all the ingredients to my cart. And with a matter of seconds, you know, maybe 15 seconds, it thinks, and it will build you a cart with potentially hundreds of dollars of goods and 50 items that you don't even have to worry about. And then if new people join the trip, you can go into the cart and say, can we make sure that the taco recipes serve another four people? And so that's some of the feedback we've gotten that we're excited to release. Just to kind of again, give time back, whether it's in the planning process or when you're actually on vacation time is very valuable.

I hadn't realized that AI is even in groceries, do you know what I mean? Which is it will make shopping easier, won't it? It's going to literally get into all of the nooks and crannies of life and make things easier for us. So you mentioned that obviously guests, sorry, owners can use this to, to create more revenue. So I guess one of the key questions is, is how do they use this to, to make more revenue? What is the, the value add for, for the owner? And I also see lots of hosts who have, I mean, there's one host who's got bikes and things like that available and they're like, they never sell. And I'm like, well, how do you, how do you market them? How do you get the best out of this upsell? So how would you. First part of the question is how do guests, how do hosts even get the, the extra revenue? But also how can they really make the most of this opportunity? Who have you seen do this?

Well, yeah, and I like to think of it and we do this when we have this marketing call and this ideation call, depending on the host. You are, you want value. At the end of the day, it's all about value. It's not necessarily revenue or like five star reviews. Like it all kind of ties together in some way, right? If you have a bunch of five star reviews, more people will book and then you make more money anyways. Or if you make more money then you can spend that on other things. You can get more properties to manage. Like at the end of the day you're trying to create value. So we work with the property managers and we see what value looks like for their particular guests. And I think if you haven't done this before, it's very important to understand your icp, your ideal customer profile, who are you trying to market to through your direct booking site on Airbnb, etc. What are the types of families that are coming in or, or travelers, whoever it is, and how can you best service them? And you can even break those into different archetypes and maybe you have a couple different groups of people. It's the traveling business group or it's the spring breakers. And at that time of the year, we help to market to them in particular. And the way noshal works is we charge a one time onboarding fee of $500. That includes a $250 practice delivery. So you can use that for your own staff, you can keep those goods or you can even use it for like a second homeowner who's staying if they want to try during the practice thing. And we're flexible if you're a smaller pm. And that's like a big scary number to you. This is more just so you have a little bit of skin in the game and you actually take the time to market. And we don't charge monthly fees. So after that it's all kind of in the profit from there. When you get orders and we rev share because we mark up the goods, We Rev share 5 to 8% on the marked up grocery total for all the goods. So that's where the money comes from. So ideally as a guest, you're spending a lot of money and that makes the property managers as well as an OSHA more money. And so that's one of the things that we try to do is we'll say if you're in a beach market, well, maybe they don't want to pack goggles and floaties and a pool noodle, but that's something that they can order. So how do we market that and make sure we're putting those type of items in front of them. And so I think it's, like I said, very important just to understand who you're marketing to rather than just this broad approach of oh, they can rent a Tesla, they can rent bikes, and they can have groceries in their, their fridge when they arrive. That that works, but it's not going to convert very well. And in fact, I might be going against myself here, but I do feel groceries are a pretty kind of common staple for most people. Sometimes you have to pick a couple upsells and put those because people have very short attention span. So by putting 20 upsells in, you might be converting less than just having two or three that you market correctly.

Definitely I 100% agree with that. Sometimes less is more and doing it well is so important as opposed to trying to have thumb in all pies. So obviously we talk a lot about direct bookings on the Boostly podcast. Where in the journey would you expect noshible to pop up? So is it after a guest books or is it mentioned before? And how does a host manage the different booking channels? So you know where is it mentioned say on Airbnb versus a direct booking website?

Yep. So there's kind of a few options here and eventually we'll go direct to consumer where guests can order in advance regardless and separate of the property manager. But for now, the property managers that do integrate with us and are onboarded, we connect to a majority of the major PMSS. So think guest streamline, etc. And so ingrained in their booking process, they're going to have a custom link before that you can mention noshable that it's a grocery concierge that you offer. No one can actually order yet, but they can know about it and it could be a selling point. And then once they've actually booked and they're booking confirmation, you can do designated email templates. We send out graphics. For example, Reunion Resort has a graphic that has little groceries and explains that they can order. And they have a custom link that is tied to the PMS and it auto populates with that guest reservation information. So when they click that link, unlike Instacart or other services, they don't have to enter in all their address, their name, their check in time. They just, it pops up with all of that info already and they just confirm and hit yes. So it feels very tethered to their property management booking process and then they begin to shop from there. Now here on Thursday they'll have the ability to just pick some recipes and build a cart in a matter of minutes and check out and then it's actually stocked in the fridge ahead of their arrival. So that's kind of the, the holistic journey and process for, for those guests. And then we're eventually going to take that one step further and offer even in home grocery delivery for those guests when they arrive back home. Because they've likely cleaned out their fridge ahead of arrival. Because if you have milk and stuff and you're going on a week long vacation you want, you don't want that to spoil. So not only can they arrive and have a stocked fridge, but they can arrive home, start their work week after, you know, a great vacation with all the things they need to make their kids lunches, for example.

It's really cool and I just love the fact that this is something which is something the market needs and you're providing this solution. What, what has been some of the challenges along the way and how have you overcome them or how are you planning to overcome them to grow this, this new, you know, sort of business?

Yeah, there's a lot of challenges and this will go more entrepreneurial focused here. But one, it's like working with property managers. Oftentimes they try new services and we're very affordable, basically free. There's no monthly fees so people don't take advantage or market correctly. And that's something we're really trying to push. We don't want to just be another upsell that you throw in and kind of see if it converts or not. Like if you take it seriously, a lot of guests will use it. So that's a big hassle of trying to convince people and show people the value and marketing the right types of upsells and marketing them correctly and taking the time to do that. Another issue is just like you're trying things out right as a, a startup and so funny story, we actually early on accidentally broke and entered into somebody's home which you how does this happen? Right. So one of our trusted fulfillment providers originally we didn't have an sop, a standard operating procedure to take a picture of the home before you like go in. And they actually went to the wrong short term rental. It was next door, it was D4 instead of D5. And our guest was staying at D5. Well, D4 was a completely different property manager. We didn't have a relationship with them. And our person stocked 350 worth of groceries in that home because their cleaning team let them in and they just assumed they're at the right place. They then leave. The place is locked, clearly. And we're like, well we have a few options. We can send them back to try and deliver the groceries next door. But that could be breaking and entering and they could get arrested. There's not a chance that the lock would even work or we can redeliver the grocery or those groceries again, eat the cost, make sure we can get the guests them as soon as possible. And then we'll have to figure out who owns that property and let them know hey, you might have some free stakes, but you probably want to get those out sooner versus later. You know, those might not be edible. So we've gone through and, you know, you learn things little by little. But that's one of those funny stories where you might have committed an accidental crime.

That's, that's so funny. And I mean, ultimately, like you say, every business has its challenges, especially starting something as, as cool as this. So in a moment, we're going to be sharing your details. But before we do, what do you think the future of this industry is going to be like, the upsells and specifically anything around either the grocery sales or, or. Or any upsell in hospitality?

Yeah, I think everything is going to move to a convenience factor. One of the things that I think you can hate it or love it, but you have to kind of get with the program is AI is going to start doing a lot of things for people. Right. And so you have to understand people might book a whole vacation by prompting a chat with AI and they're going to pick who they book, whether it's direct, it's going to scan the Internet, it's going to find the best deals based on people's preferences. And this is why I said it's very important to know your market because you're going to use keywords similar to search engine optimization, which is something you should focus on. If you have a direct booking site, you're going to use keywords to find people that would want to stay. Like, let's use New Orleans, for example. If people are wanting to stay in New Orleans and they're going to want to try certain foods and different things like that, you're going to want to match that experience so that AI chooses your property over someone else's. So I think that's something that's super important. It's really going back to understanding who you're marketing to. Because humans aren't going to make decisions anymore. It's going to be a lot harder to just pay to be the top search result. People might pay to be a search result in AI, but at the same time, there's a lot of reasoning that's going to do based on how people prompt. So understanding that is going to be important. And then I think still like the guest experience, the convenience side of things, people. And this has already happened. I'll admit it. I've gotten lazier as there's a lot of things in life that I don't have to do as much anymore. Whether that's through AI or Just technology. As it advances, we've continued to get easier and easier to do a lot of daily tasks. So as AI continues to advance, people are going to be much lazier too. They're going to want the convenience, whether that's grocery delivery, that's a ride service that you offer. Anything I think that takes away from people's like wasted time is going to be very important. Internally at Noshable, we have this whole memo that's groceries don't matter, memories do. We're not a grocery company for the short term rental space. We're a memory company that happens to provide groceries. Right. And so I think if you have that same mindset as a property manager and you can give people their time back, you're going to win in this kind of new era of marketing and AI and guest experience.

Thank you so much. I mean this has been great fun learning about Notable and to just dive into the whole upsell side of things that what I want every everybody to listen to this and take away is ask yourself as hosts, what are we doing to stand out from the rest of the market? And if you're not offering services like these or upsells, then really start to consider it. Do some research, go and find out, go and find out about Notable and see if it's something that you can do. So I'm going to throw open the mic. Conor, how can we come and find out more?

Yeah, so you can just go to shopnoshable.com feel free to, you know, book a demo with someone from our team, check out our software and service. There's actually a place even on there where you can hit, I think it's called Viewshop Shopping Experience. And you can even see hopefully here the next few days it'll release the new AI search and just see what the guests will see without having to book a demo. We try and be super transparent with that kind of stuff. And then you can also check me out on LinkedIn. Connor Payton I'm very responsive there as well. So always happy to talk with property managers even outside of Noshable on how to help with upsells and some of the experiences I've seen in the data that I've been able to collect through Notable so well.

Connor, thank you so much for sharing Notable with us today and for talking us through upsells and everything about hospitality. And this is exactly why we love doing these kind of podcasts is finding out about new services and shining the boostly spotlight on things that hosts need to know about. If you are Listening to this and you've really enjoyed it and you want to find out more about this or direct bookings, then make sure to go over to Instagram or YouTube and subscribe to ostly uk. We have lots of various information on there. But also, most importantly, we have events, free, short stay, sorry, free book. Direct summits, which we do every few months, which are amazing, where you get a lot more information where you can increase your direct bookings. So thank you for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. I'm going to hand things back over to Connor just to take us out. Is there a mantra? I think you mentioned it before, but if you can give us a mantra to leave us on a positive note, that would be amazing.

Yeah, I mean, so noshables was the whole groceries don't matter, but memories do. But I think mine that I love and a lot of business owners, property managers can relate to. I think that's important is there's this Japanese concept called ikigai and it basically means like a meaning or a reason to mean. And he breaks into four little Venn diagrams. And it's what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for and what you're good at. And I think all the things that you focus on or like your main purpose, right. A purpose to live. That is that central point of that, those four circles called ikigai. So that's something that is my mantra. And the time I spend, this limited time I have, I try to do on those type of things where we're building something the world needs, like noshable. But I love to do it. I hope to think I'm good at it and I'm able to make some money off of it too. So that's my internal mantra and kind of something I live by to make sure I'm focused on the right things.

Absolutely Epic. Thank you again, Connor. We'll see you on the next one.

Bye for now.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee. Like Bruce Lee.

Cause it's so hard and the tea.

Is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.