Navigating Inventory Challenges in Vacation Rentals | Ep. 26

Hi, I'm Rachel Alde and this is the hospitality break room recorded weekly in our actual break room at the of both Luxury Rentals offices in Park City, Utah. This season on the podcast, the founder and CEO of Inhaven, Ashley Chang, and her teammate Megan Myers will be joining me for the 10 full episodes. Our theme this season is "Certainty Served Weekly Within Inhaven". This is your inside look at how local property managers are setting new standards and vacation rentals. Each week we unpack the real challenges behind the bed, bath, kitchen and beyond, offering practical solutions, myth-busting truths and tips from the field. Whether you're a seasoned property manager, vendor, owner or just curious about getting into the vacation rental space, this series shares the real life tools and stories that bring more consistency to every stay. Powered by a boat luxury rentals in Inhaven, built for those who want to do things better. Hi, and welcome back to the hospitality break room. I'm Rachel Allday, and I'm here with Ashley Chang and Megan Myers for Inhaven. We are still in our season of "Certainty Served Weekly Within Inhaven". Today we're going to be talking about inventory management, which is a topic I'm not an expert on, but guess what? That's okay because Megan and Ashley are experts on it. Ashley, do you want to kick off? Or let's kick off with a fun story. What is the wildest text or request you've gotten from a housekeeper? Oh gosh. I mean, I always say that our housekeepers are the spies and that we always train them to send pictures of anything weird, anything that's suspicious, so that we know what's going on in the houses, so that mostly means that we get pictures of bloody towels. But sometimes we get pictures of guns or drugs. Is that exciting? I don't know. Lots of guns and drugs. Not together usually. Generally, it's guns or drugs. When I was a property manager, we had like a $10,000 piece of art stolen off the wall. And that was pretty rough. That is rough. We haven't had that. And then we've all had like some crazy parties. A lot of guns and drugs, I would say. Yeah. I feel like the quantity, because we're in higher end stuff so the rates are higher. I'm mostly shocked. This isn't for me to let people know that are listening that I'm cool with drugs. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is I have seen drugs in my life because I'm 47 and I have lived for a long time. And I was not always a big rule follower. I'm still not a rule follower. But what shocks me is the quantity of drugs that we see in the houses we manage. Because I think these people are super wealthy. And sometimes it's just the quantities that you're like, whoa, could that be what that is? Because that's a lot of that. And like, I'm not sure that's possible. And then it is that. You know, I don't know. Like, I'm never the one to determine if it is this or that. But people on my team will tell me, I don't know how they bring out. And then to me, if you want to go into the crazy story, it's like, what do you do with a giant bag of whatever? Yeah. Like, you're not, you can't flush it. That's not good. You're not safe. You know, you can't like, what do you do? Right? What did you do? What do we do? Okay. So this is like, it's not like it happens all the time. But usually, like, I always tell my team not to put it in their car and drive with it because they don't want them to get in trouble. And I say, don't flush that down the toilet. And then I mostly hope that it disappears. Because like, I don't really know. Because I had thought for a while that we should take it to the police, honestly. But then I do worry. Because a lot of times, like, you know, you guys have said, like, housekeepers are finding things. And so then I don't want them to take it to the police for, you know, reasons we can infer. And so it's, yeah, it becomes really complicated. So a lot of times I will be like, is that's not still at the house, right? And everyone's like, nope. And then I'm like, great. And then I just mostly don't want to talk about it. Is that terrible that I'm saying that publicly? I don't know. Like, what, what would you do, Megan? We used to call the cops. The biggest thing was guns for us. Guns for sure. We call the cops. We find drugs. Yeah, drugs were just, it wouldn't be large amounts. So like, you could vacuum it up. Right. Yeah. And so we would just like clean it, throw it away. And then any like large amounts, we would call the cops. But it's wild because a lot of times, it's the affluent guests that are spending a lot of money that feel a sense of just entitlement. And so they almost find that and work. Right. Yeah, it's almost like more trouble. Like, what do you want me to do with it? There's like this big misconception that guests that spend more money, treat homes better. And it's very funny because owners, it's like a misconception on the owner's part. And we used to have these conversations of, hey, I understand that you think that someone that's going to pay $200 a night is like cheapening your home or they're going to come and ruin it. But like, these are often the people that can't afford to take vacations and that do save up money to spend what little money they do have to take a vacation. Like, they will treat your home well for the most part. And the homes that we found that were very trashed were people that had spent like all this money because they feel entitled. And I don't, I like, I haven't seen that consistently. I will say, I don't think there's like a great way to make the rule one way or the other because I've seen people be really disrespectful on both ends. So I think the point is like, you can't base it just on the nightly rate. Like, if you think someone's going to be nicer, I do tend to feel like when people are spending over $5,000 a night, usually I feel like they are living in a nicer home. So they are, especially when you're not allowing too many people to pack in. They generally like have a nicer home where they live. So they're understanding respecting something nice. But there's all kinds of variables like with how old the people are and, you know, whatever. And I do think with drugs and guns, the really interesting thing, especially with guns to me was like, we one time did have a gun that was left in a house and the guest called us two months later. And so there, we didn't find a gun. We didn't know there was a gun left in the house. And it turns out that maybe it wasn't. But what happened is that a guest called us like two months after they left the house and they said that we left, we left our gun in the house. And we were like, oh my gosh, there's been other guests in the house. And like, we never found it. And they said, oh, it's up in the bunk room. They had like, they weren't, they didn't have any kids with them. And I guess they had like, put it away somewhere in the bunk room. And so we work, of course, like we were floored and horrified and we were like freaking out. So we're searching the house. We can't find the gun. We go back and search multiple times. We call the police because now there's like a gun that's missing. So we have, we found out, okay, we have to call the police. And we call the police. We get the police to come check the house. We did so many checks in so many different ways we never found the gun. And we were so afraid that it was somewhere there and it wasn't. And so it was really uncomfortable because like the guest kind of was like implying that they left his gun that they totally forgot about and then remembered it and like someone stole it. We're worried that there's a gun floating in the house somewhere and some guests is going to get their hands on it. So to me, it's like some of this stuff that sounds like scary, funny stories is like way more serious than, you know, like we like joke about it now. Like, oh, guns and drugs. But yeah, it's, I don't know. And the gun is really scary. Yeah, because like out west, a lot of people are carrying guns. And so it's not that uncommon that people have guns, but then the ramifications of some of that can be like incredibly, you just wouldn't think when you go into property management that that's like what you're going to be working with. So in inventory, you guys obviously don't want guns and drugs. Yeah. So tell me, I mean, and maybe Rachel, this is like painting the picture now, like at what point paint the story of like inventory and how it's gotten or what point it got so crazy that you realize like we need to change. Yeah. So like how it's rather than them guns and drugs, like talking about inventory of say with linens, like for us, that's probably the part of our inventory that's been the most complicated. And you know, I think for a lot of people on vacation run, I was like, you get started, you know, if you're like me and Rob, and I think a lot of people, you don't have any background in this. You just start doing it because you had a house that you run to gown and then you take on more and more. And so it's not like you had, you know, knowledge about say inventory or linens, which we've made the run, you know, previous episodes. And when we started and for most of the first, you know, 15 years, like there was no inhaven, there was just like a guy that would come to our office sometimes and sell us linens. And so our inventory process was like hopefully once a year, but probably not quite maybe every other year. And we would do a count. But like we didn't rob and I never had time to do account. So we would have like our cleaning person or people that were doing the washing be counting linens. So we'd be relying on someone else counting the linens and you're talking about someone who's maybe not as high of a hourly wage. And so we were relying on people and that, you know, hoping that then we were doing calculations based on all the bedrooms and beds in each house and the bathrooms and trying to come up with a math to determine how many pieces of each, you know, pillowcase, flat sheet king, fitted sheet king, flat sheet queen, you know, the whole thing, each type of towel. And we were trying to do the math on what was in our storage and then what was in the houses and maybe like what was currently what we thought was being washed. And so we never had really solid inventory counts like we're talking estimations. And so that was stupid probably and not a good way. Because that thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars hundreds of thousands of dollars in linen inventory that we had no handle on. But we just did not know that there was a better way. And so that's just how it always was. And we didn't know anything else like we no one had ever proposed a different way to do. it. So we were just figuring out as we went like the rest of the business. And it wasn't until we started working with in Haven and it was proposed to us like, Hey, we can help you with inventory management and how's this QR code process and we, you know, had these discussions on our options. And we were literally like, Oh my God. So we could actually know how many linens we have. Like, because Megan, when you talked on the last episode about like trying to be profitable with your linens or housekeeping or whatever, it's like, from my point of view, that was never possible because I could never have good data. And I know this probably sounds dumb to people that have started in the last few years and have had access to software since they started. But, you know, for some of us, when we didn't, and we maybe didn't have a big enough team or people on our team that were, you know, super mathematically inclined and like great at data. Yeah, it's like really kind of embarrassing to admit this. And so, you know, I always say like how in Haven has been this like amazing catalyst for us at a boat and like for our whole team in all these different ways. But this is just another way like it's like, I'm really not making this up like all these years, we didn't know how much lin we have kind of did, but not really. And so we could never be profitable because it was all just an estimation. And so now, just now like we are finally in the coming weeks working on knowing how much lin and that we currently have and comparing that to like the, you know, what our bedroom count or bed counts are so we can really have like a solid par and make sure that our current inventory matches what we need and then move forward to profitability. And I probably, I think some people would probably tell me that I shouldn't admit all of this, but I can't help it. I think you perhaps that's a great point. I mean, inventory management is so much more than counting. You just brought up so many amazing things. Can you talk a little bit about that Megan from your perspective? Yeah, of course. I mean, the big, the first time that I realized it was a problem that we didn't have an inventory. I was working for 360 blue and we were actually in the process of selling. And the buyers came, which for anyone that is selling their vacation rental company or thinking about it, your buyers are going to ask you for a list of assets. And we didn't have one. We had no inventory of anything in the office. We didn't have any linen inventory. We didn't like, we would put in a linen order twice annually. And we just kind of based it off of what we thought we were losing, which we had like a rough attrition number. And I remember getting this list of like due diligence items and it being like a full linen inventory. And then everything in your main is a housekeeping warehouses. And I was like, Oh my God, this is going to take forever to get. And throughout the process as we were counting, it is just I remember thinking like this could have helped us with forecasting. So, so, so much. If we had an understanding of we typically go through ex-light bulbs a month. And we could have an accurate attrition number of linen, which we never really had just this kind of rough percentage that we would use in the budget. And this process was really helpful because it was months and months prior to actually selling. But during this time period, we were able to really better plan for the upcoming year and honestly set the buyers up for more success. And it just, it was hard that we got all the way to the end of the company as we knew it before selling before getting a good inventory count. But I mean, the way that we got it was literally counting and putting it on a spreadsheet. Like there wasn't another option for us. And so I'm really excited about the inhaven inventory tool for obvious reasons. But I think just from a forecasting perspective in general and planning for your losses and budgeting. And it has so much to do with your income and expenses, which, you know, I say on every episode when we do this, the margins are already so small. So anything you can do to increase those, I think is really important. And understanding like a pattern of what you're going to be spending and when and then you know what you can stock, which is also really helpful. Like we had so many different types and sizes of air filters, like standard air filters that we, and we would just kind of guesstimate how many we needed to stock at any given time and prior to the summer. We would just like completely stock up. But knowing like exact numbers or as close to it would have been extremely helpful. So Megan, really interesting. So you, you know, you were getting this company ready to sell and you realized you needed to kind of get control of your inventory and your assets. Then you went to Jackson and worked for another large vacation rental management company. You know, what sort of best practices did you bring to your last vacation rental company that you learned from that sale? So the first thing when I started like probably my first week, I said, do we have an inventory? This is one thing that I've learned is really, really important for forecasting in general and if we ever plan to sell the company. And there wasn't an inventory. And I think a lot of this was because asking any frontline employees to do any additional work outside of like housekeeping is a hard job in general. And so was being a maintenance technician felt very overwhelming to the company in general. And so we actually had our office employees, our operational office employees go and take a full inventory of all of our linen, all of our maintenance items, housewares and even like our down to our office stuff like computers and the VIN numbers. That's not right. That's a car. Yeah, you're all the numbers. So and desks everything that we owned as an asset as a company and that just became something that was routine to us. And we would do it on a quarterly basis. So we knew what was on hand at any given time. And we would communicate that then with the housekeeping and the frontline team. What we had, what needed to be ordered. And it actually made their job a lot easier because when things were running low, we often wouldn't know until we had 10 of something left. And they would reach out to us with their hair on fire and say, Hey, we only have 10 of these special types of air filters left. And we were like, Oh my God, we have to order those. And it's going to take 10 days to get them in because we live in Jackson. And this helped them become more prepared. And we were able to print out these inventory lists and say, like, Okay, here are minimum quantities. If we ever drop below X, call us, we'll make sure that we get these ordered. And our office team just kind of added that to their quarterly routine. And it was really helpful just to understand what was on hand and really helped us dial in the budget, especially from an expense perspective and planning those expenses because so much of the vacation rental industry in general, being a property manager is managing cash flow. And we all know this from just the balance of escrow and operating funds and making sure that you have accurate cash flow at any given time. And so being able to predict those expenses at the exact months they were going to occur and what those were going to look like was huge for us from a cash flow perspective. It was the you bring up forecasting because we work actually really closely with Julie on Rachel's team because, you know, as you guys expand and you need to replenish, you know, your dinner plates and your flatware and your lastware, we are providing those forecasts to our manufacturers to make sure that they bet inventory reserved for you when you need it. So this data is used well beyond just stocking your own, you know, vacation rentals. It's ensuring that there's stock available for those peak seasons, you know, when she's preparing for the season to start, we've got the right numbers in place to be can ship them to you. So, you know, I think there's just so many benefits to to having the Sakura data or as massive. Yeah, it's massive. Like to me, this is something that people probably don't talk about like property management company owners and managers probably don't talk about quite enough because I think honestly, it's embarrassing, right? Like if you're running a business and like Rob and I, you know, the amount of revenue, the amount of millions of dollars of revenue that we do a year as a business is, it's really, it's a lot. It's mind blowing to me as someone who started it, you know, from nothing. And when you think about that it's a business of that size and then thinking about admitting that you don't know your inventory and you don't really have a way to get a handle on it, that is not something that most people would want to admit, especially not on a podcast, but for some reason, I have verbal diarrhea and so it doesn't matter to me. But anyway, no, I feel like I'm just really confident. I've done a lot of therapy and I have a lot of confidence now. So I'm like come at me. But I think, you know, that's hard, it's a hard thing and I can tell you even with all my confidence and whatever. Like it's kind of, it's embarrassing and it feels, it makes you feel silly and like maybe like you mess something up. But I, you know, I have to always remind myself like we did not have tools. There existed no tool for my industry to do these things. We had spreadsheets. Yes, that's what we used. And we probably could have, you know, looked for some sort of inventory management tool that exists for some sort of, you know, procurement company and utilize that. But that was probably too expensive and big for us anyway. And so we were all in this industry for so long. We were just making it up as we went because we had to. And, you know, so I try not to like, hate on myself too much or to be too embarrassed. But I think it's good for people to be able to like own up to, okay, this is a really hard thing. We have not had a tool. And then it's a, it's a really great, you know, the gang in the gang of that, like the, the other side of it is like, hey, in Havens, now this tool. And they have created these processes. So we can stop being embarrassed and start just, you know, working into those processes to actually have good inventory management so that we can do the things that, you know, like say 360 blue, where they had a lot of people that were really, you know, data minded and were, you know, ready and willing to start doing some of these things that now we can match that. And we don't have to be, you know, running a business in a way that's just not as complete. 'Cause when you talk about profitability, I can sit here and tell you that, I don't think I'm profitable with my linen program or my housekeeping. And I can tell you that we try to have a two par, but I'm admitting to you up until now. I don't know if I exactly had a two par. - Yeah, which I can, you know, like a normal. I think that's not probably the overwhelming majority of property needed. - I think this should be like a group therapy session is what I'm saying. It's like, hey, if you're listening and you feel like you're like, yeah, me too. Like it's okay, you don't have to hide it anymore. - Right. - We also call Ashley and Megan. And like, you know, you could just let it out, be sure and tear it, it meant what we've done. And then we can solve it and move forward. There's many other things we've all been doing wrong that we could do better over time. So. - Yeah. And we've been talking about a lot of, I mean, about and 360. These are large, large, vacation mental companies, but you don't need to be large in size to benefit from having these types of processes in place. You know, so I think it's really for everyone. Everyone can kind of get control or inventory no matter what kind of size business they have. So. - It's such a sense of security, you know, you know, that you can do it. Like for me, it feels like just as you guys were talking Megan or, or either of you, it's like, I'm thinking as you're talking like, wow, I'm going to be able to actually have these numbers. Like for the first time ever, that's just such a relief. - Yeah. - You're going to like your budget with rush eyes soon. (laughing) So, you know, one of the questions we get asked, you know, especially from our larger property managers is, okay, Ashley, should I invest in RFID with my linens? Rachel asked, you're not the only one. A lot of people have asked. And, you know, RFID technology is quite expensive. First, you have to chip the, or have, you know, the threads added to all of your linens. And there's different types of RFID chips. One's that are like acted, that they're constantly providing information or others, they're more passive that have to go through a machine to get the count. So you kind of have to decide what you want. And then not all those chips are lifetime. So they sometimes break and whenever and don't work. But then you have to buy the machinery to pass that through or the ones that you have your team, you know, using to count the inventory. But what was surprising to me was the software cost alone. The software, just the annual software cost were just so high. And typically what it ced your normal attrition rate of 20 to 30% just that cost of linens having that software. So, you know, we've always recommended it, at least until now, just because of the cost perspective, then it's just not worth the vacation rental industry investing in this type of technology. You know, just, that's just my thought. But what do you guys think? I don't know if I'm a deep. - I mean, but it's just, to me, it's like, you're better off just having someone manually count it. It's really not, I mean, the time that it's going to take to get everything set up to invest in it, the money that it's going to take, like you'll spend less money just having an employee kind of sheets. And I mean, that's obviously still not the way. But we looked into RFID six, seven years ago, probably for the first time. And there was never an ROI that made sense on it. And to be honest, I think it overcomplicates something that doesn't have to be very complicated. - I mean, okay, so from my standpoint, I was really hot to trot on RFID. And if I'm honest, even after everything you said, like I still wish that I could do it. And I guess that's because of my own, like why is everything that I say, why does it all have a therapy span, you guys? But okay, I did have a lot of fun. - Same on the floor. - Same on the floor. - But anyway, so the thing is, like I have baggage on this, but we have had housekeeping scenarios where we have found out that the housekeepers are like using linens for another, other houses that they clean or whatever. And so in learning that, we have realized that, okay, we don't have great inventory and we don't have a way to know if our linens are going missing, not very well. And so that's costing us a lot of money, surely. And so to me, RFID has sounded really good because of the concept of being able to theoretically scan it as it comes into the linen processing and scan it as it goes out so that we really know, like what exactly came in and what exactly went out? Because if there's some sort of, you know, this much went out, that doesn't match up to the houses that we were, you know, putting linens into that day, then we would be able to do some math and know that they were missing linen. Like, so for me, the RFID was really about shrinkage and not from like linens that were stained or ripped or whatever in the laundering process, but like I might be losing linens to, you know, theft. And I know that not every company would be dealing with that. But I do think it's somewhat common that like, especially if your linens are being processed like by like a big linen processing company and you know, you're delivering their dirties to them and they're giving you them back. And you know, you often get other companies linens mixed in and you're losing linens. And so I still think RFID would be this really good way to, because your linen inventory is such an expensive, massive, you know, products that it would be cool to be able to really keep track of it because it's money, right? It's worth money. But I do think after talking with Inhaven and we're gonna, you know, now we're going with the QR code based inventory. And for us, from where we've been going to QR code, I feel like it's a huge jump and it's perfect for us. But I do still kind of dream of RFID. - Yeah, you know, when I was talking to some of the manufacturers about this, one of the things that they said was you could, you know, chip a couple of items just to kind of scare the linen facility or just to put them on warning that you're chipping some, you know, maybe 10% of your assortment and that you're scanning just to see how often you're losing that part of it. That's a way to just, more as a scare tactic. It's just the software expense was so. - You see how? - Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. You guys, like to me, this is just another example of like, when you stop and remind yourself, like we're talking about the vacation rental industry. And it's like, you can go down so many crazy ass rabbit holes. And then you have to remind yourself, like, wait, I'm actually in the business of renting houses out. But then I have to also understand RFID tags versus QR codes and the software. It's like, what other industry is like that? That has like this manny, crazy maze rabbit holes. Like, it's kind of crazy when you think about it. I don't know, maybe that's just me, but. - I love it. - I love the conversation. But it's like, you know, this feels like this little tiny part of the whole business. But yet it's so important and must be understood. - Yes, no, you're exactly right. And there are a thousand topics just like that in the industry, it's wild. - And in two weeks, so I'm going out to Park City to work with Rachel's team to implement this QR code system. So we'll have lots to talk about. But after that, but I'll actually be in, I think I'll be in Park City for our filming that week. If you're filming works that week. - Yeah, yeah, I think it will. - I'll see. - Yeah, anyway. So we'll have lots to chat about about, you know, how it's working with bringing things in the QR code and taking things out of the laundry facility. - I think it's going to go really awesome. I'm super excited. - Yeah. - Like can you imagine, we've never, we've never known what's coming in and out. And I was trying to weigh that, that's like, no. Now we're going to actually know like a re-account based on like actual, this is seriously. I know this probably, I mean, I don't know. I know you guys keep saying a lot of people probably are in the same boat, but to me, it's just like, it's so crazy when you think about the value of these linen going in and out of the linen processing every day and how there just hasn't been a way to do it. And now you're like, oh here, let me show you this QR code process. And like, we'll have it. And it's only been 17 years. (laughing) What? - You're a lifetime. - It's a long time coming. - I think you're not. - You're a lifetime. - So let's just switch about, talk about a little bit about inventory. And you know, we've talked, we're talking right now about just like, the operational and the data that it's going to help us improve our operations. How do you guys think it's going to just improve? Let's look at the other key stakeholders that the owners will start there. - I think just from a overall owner experience perspective, you never want to get on the phone with an owner and tell them that you're out of something, right? Like that is part of what you're selling to the owner in the very beginning of the conversation is hey, we keep all of these items stocked for you. If an owner is in town and something breaks, like a refrigerator, we want to be able to bring them a owner, refrigerator immediately. And without having an inventory and not having those items stocked appropriately, it can look really bad when owners are in town, which is all the time, if something goes wrong. - Yeah, I mean, obviously you're gonna, to me, this is like selling your level of professionalism too. You know, like there's a difference. And I think that, you know, about, I think we're pretty small company, right? Like in San Valley, the only manager, I think 13 homes right now. And in Jackson, it's under 50, you know, in Park City, it's like more like 150, but that's not a lot compared to most companies. And so to me, any size company, but especially when you're smaller, you wanna be able to prove to your homeowners that you are a professional, that you know what you're doing. And me just saying how many years I've been doing it, you know, that doesn't really cut it for a lot of people. And so I think being able to talk about our inventory process, and I can say like even with, you know, one of my other favorite companies, Breezeway, you know, when Breezeway came into the game with us and we started using Breezeway, and we had the ability to use their inventory process when we, you know, on board a house, that was a game changer. And when I would tell homeowners that I was gonna use this inventory software to keep track of everything in the house, then. that really, I could see it in the homeowner's eyes that they felt like, oh wow, okay, that's legit. And then as we've started working with in Haven and we have these more improved processes now with inventory, inventory within our business and everything that we're keeping stock of for at the offices and then also being able to properly inventory at the houses and be able to replace inventory like we've talked about with plates and whatnot. When I explain that to homeowners or when my team that's talking to homeowners is explaining that, you can see it in the homeowners face when you're meaning face to face if that's what you're lucky enough to do. That like, oh, okay, like there's such a relief that they know what to do. I think there's huge value in that. I mean, just I think back to my girlfriend who has a place in Sun River, you know, she was looking at various suffocation rental managers and the one she chose, she was like, they have a linen program because they have a linen program. I don't want to deal with, you know, she's good saying and I'm ready to replace it. Like I need to know that my vacation rental manager is on top of that and is able to replace it without me if it get involved. These processes and systems, I think can be a huge selling point too. Those owners that just that need that want that expect that type of support. Yeah, professionalism is like so important. And I think, you know, like I said, at any size of company, you're going to be wanting to exemplify your professionalism in the different things that you're talking to your homeowners about, but inventory is a huge one. And then like Megan said, there's a big difference between either one of guests is at the house or a homeowner and like a coffee maker breaks or whatever. And it's, you know, let's say like in Utah, a lot of stuff is closed on Sundays. And so like it's a Sunday and something happens and it can be harder for us to get something or like if you're in Jackson, it can be really hard to get things sometimes. And so yeah, I think having that inventory within your own business like at your offices and always knowing that you have something on hand to solve a problem again, it's just showing whether it's your guest or your homeowner. It's showing professionalism. It's also showing your homeowners, you know, that you're a solid enough business model that you have, you know, revenue and capital that you can stock these things. And I know that sounds silly, but you know, a lot of vacation rental companies and we were like this for so many years, you don't have that much extra money, you know, and the idea of stocking some stuff like a fridge or even like a couple mini fridge and like some coffee makers and some of this stuff. Like, you know, that was something that we could do in the very beginning. And then when we could, it was a wonderful feeling to be able to do that. Now, if I was, if I would have been able to combine the fact that I finally had the ability to stock some inventory in these items, I knew we were going to need and we could also like properly account for it and keep track of it, you know, that's that really, there's no way that someone's going to say like, you know, I'm not sure if you're running your business very professionally. If you are able to do those things. Like, yeah, checking some serious boxes. Yeah. And then how about from the guest perspective? So, you know, how do you feel like inventory management helps from the guest? Oh my god, stocking is huge from the guest side. Like, everything to me on the guest side is how can you prevent the time between or shorten the time between a guest calling in with an issue and the resolution of the issue? And the resolution time is what we've always called it, it makes sense. The longer it is, the more unhappy the guest seems to get, right? And so, shortening the resolution time for any guest issues, stocking is a huge part of that because things break and vacation rules that are used over and over and over and over again, all the time for guests. So having back stock is really helpful for those cases. And I mean, for owners, right, it's like wanting to show this professionalism, which that is true on the guest side, but guests care way more about like, hey, I spent this money and I'm here for four days and I just want to not even have to worry about you being there. Like, I don't want to even think about my management company because I'm on vacation. I want to enjoy my vacation. And so, anytime that we can make sure that any issue they have, like, their coffee maker is broken or like, last week, right? Let's say they call and they want a curie, a girl in espresso and we bring that to them or the air filter needs to be replaced or there's a battery issue, whatever, right? Having that stuff on hand is going to shorten the resolution time significantly. And then again, to like anything that you can do to prevent them from picking up the phone with an issue in the first place is also important. So it's just kind of those are the two things that I always think of when I think of the guest experience because a guest doesn't ever want to encounter an issue, but when they do, how quickly can you solve it? Yeah, I mean, coffee makers to me, like, we talked about stocking coffee in the properties. I know we like kind of went over that, but it's funny how in our industry, and this is true for hotel and it's true for vacation rentals. Like coffee is really important, okay? Like people around the globe are addicted to coffee in the morning. It's a thing like you can say, like, well, I don't, you know, like I don't drink that much coffee personally, that much anymore. But this is like most people are drinking coffee. The majority of people are drinking coffee in the morning and the majority of people when they're on vacation, like I think it's normal that we all wonder how will I get my coffee in the morning, right? And then coffee makers are so they are, it's like, you know, hot tubs drive me crazy, right? Like hot tubs are my nemesis and like, I can't explain to anyone enough how much I freaking hate hot tubs. Also, they must be in every house, right? Coffee makers are like a closed second or third because you know how many years, so like we would have all these homeowners really nice homes and it'd be like a lot of those, what's the brand? It's a nice brand and it's like a stainless steel coffee maker with a stainless steel. It's a giraffe. Now, giraffe, yeah. But okay, before I want to say it was, I can't remember the brand. It was more expensive and it would grind too. Anyway, so that was annoying because then you have to clean that grinder and oh my god. But okay, the coffee, like so the craft is stainless, right? You cannot source that easily, especially when you're in like a resort market. Again, I think a lot of vacation rental companies were in resort markets. So we're not necessarily like in an urban location. We cannot just run to Target or whatever. Like there's no Target any of my work. Well, Jackson has Target now, right? But anyway, okay. So any who I digress. So like coffee maker to me is crazy. We had so many years where we weren't stocking. This is so dumb, but I'll admit it because I bet other people are out there like like me. We would stop craft. We would stock these cheap coffee made or coffee, Mr. Coffee glass craft because they were cheaper and they kind of fit with most coffee makers. So we would just stock those craft because we didn't want to buy a bunch of coffee makers just admitting the honest truth. So then we would have crafts breaking all the time and we'd be putting those Mr. coffee ones and it'd be like causing leaking and all this mess and the guests were like, so there'd be all these terrible ramifications because we didn't have an inventory process. We didn't have a way to like order things consistently the same thing, but we knew we could always get Mr. Coffee glass crafts. So we would do this like bandaid, you know, hacked thing so that we had some extra crafts for coffee makers because God forbid if someone doesn't have coffee, they're going to lose their mind. It's like if they don't have Wi-Fi. And so years went around where we tried all these back and forth ways where we would make sure that we had something on hand until we finally were able to feel comfortable spending enough money to stock decent coffee makers, but still up until we started working with in Haven, no inventory process. So now we finally had coffee makers that we were stocking, but like, I don't know, where do they all go? I'm not sure. Like no one really, you know, and so it's like a whole thing. And I think that you cannot, you cannot overstate the importance of like certain things and vacation rentals. And honestly, coffee is a big one and being able, like we could talk about inventory all day, but I bet you what would resonate with most vacation rental company owners is like, hey, you can inventory all that shit. You can inventory your, you know, your air filters and there's everything that's important too. But like, hey, what if you could keep stock of coffee makers? You could feel good about the money you're spending on that inventory. You know what you have on hand. And you would never have to worry about getting that call on a Sunday morning that somebody's coffee graph is broken and nobody can find one locally that's going to fit. And now we're all going to freak out and someone's going to have to drive an hour and a half to go get a coffee graph or a whole coffee maker for that person. So they don't write us a better view. So to me, the coffee discussion when it comes to inventory is like kind of like a good quintessential example, because when you're screwed in a situation with a coffee maker, like that can really be that can be a terrible review that can be someone wanting money back. And it seems like such a small thing that you could easily think of an inventory process. But if you didn't have an inventory process and no software to get behind it, you could literally get in a bad situation like that over something as simple as a coffee maker. I was in Vermont last weekend and stayed at the most amazing vacation rental. It was stock, it was like a near-mantester. And it was fully stocked. I mean, with, you know, all the same white plates, all the same, I mean, and the kitchenware was amazing. And in the bathrooms, you'd like open up a drawer to be like all these, you know, tampons and pads and all incredible, really nice shampoo condition. It was so thoughtful. And so I was thinking, I kind of want the link on that one. That idea like just surprises and delights you, right? Because I didn't expect it. We were paying a ton of money for this rental, but it just was like a nice surprise and delight. Wow, this owner is so thoughtful. The one thing, and I'm curious to see how you guys do this. We would, I went to go cut up some fruit for my kids and the knives were awful. Like I couldn't cut a straight line in an apple. And I want to like, send the owner of this vacation rental, like please buy this well-sharpening knife set, which now I think a lot of people are buying because they just say sharp all the time. But how do you guys inventory knives? And then like, what's the process there? Another really hard one. I mean, we never test the sharp tested the sharpness of knives unless it was like the annual inspection. It is like that's something the Airbnb I'm staying in right now. It's the same thing. all the knives are so dull. And actually my husband and I, we live in a short term rental that was turned long term for us. And our knives are so dull. They're horrible. We just like use our own job luckily. He's a chef. So we have a bunch of Japanese knives. But, um, yeah, we had never come up with a process for it, but it's interesting being on the guest side of things. And we would actually often have employees stay in our properties and have to pull like or put together a full report of like, it would be like a gift like, hey, we're gifting you this three night stay in one of our properties. Typically on the guest services side of things, who are the ones that are talking to the gas all the time. And, um, they would come back with these like full reports. And that's something that's really interesting to put on there as the knife, the knife issue. Yeah. We do test stays like when we sign a property on, we'll have team like a team member do a test day if the homeowner approves it. I would say with knives, when we do like an annual inspection, then that's when we're supposed to be looking for stuff like that. And sometimes we're not finding out that the knives are bad until someone complains. And I do, I think knives are really freaking hard because like with us with these more expensive homes, a lot of times the homeowners will have nice knives to start. They will. And so it's this whole push and pull again because they bought expensive knives. So they're not going to be as easy to talk into a new set because they're going to be like, well, I bought those like five years ago and they were like really sharp, you know, but in these markets where we are, um, knife sharpening, like when I grew up on the, you know, in the suburbs of Chicago, we had a guy that would like come around the neighborhood every quarter or whatever knife sharpening, right? And there were places you could take your knives to go get nice knife sharpened. But like, that's not very common in the places where we operate. And so like, what do you do? You know, what do you say? We have a couple of customers that actually do have an annual knife sharpening and they charge the owner and I'm sure there's a mark up in where. Sure. It's like another new, it's another revenue. Good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's, that's a really hard one because it's like an end to me. There's so many things in our business that are like this, but it's like, there's a really, that's a hard one to draw a line on because some homes are going to have really nice knife sets. And like if I sign a home and we do the full inventory, we tell the homeowner what we think they should do. If they have really nice knives, I'm not going to tell them get rid of those, right? We'll use them. But then at some point they will become dull. And then it's kind of a push and pull between, can these be nicely sharpened or like, maybe they're not nice enough to be sharpened and we need new, you know, like there's this whole and there's opinions on that. Like, you know, some people, I don't know, I'm not a knife expert, but I have become aware over the years. It's like when I got married the first time because, yes, I've been married twice. Okay. Oh my god. I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh my god. I want you to watch out to me from the world. We need to have like one final episode where, okay, this is I wonder why we never talked about. All right. I track it's very to be divorced before you're 30. Okay. I'm a little practice marriage. And I was divorced before I was 30 for sure. Okay. And I do think just for anyone listening, if you're thinking about a practice marriage, you should totally do it. I think it's worth it honestly, but long story. Okay. So I'm not saying, like, I'm not happy. Like I didn't do that on purpose. I'm saying, right. Once it was over, like, I can hand side, like upside of it. Yeah. Okay. But any who's a knives, um, wait, where were we going? Oh, okay. My first marriage, I got someone gave us like, who's off set of knives, right? Those are nice. But then at one point, I had them sharpened and like they did not sharpen that well. And those are supposed to be, but then as I got older, I found out like those aren't that great of knives. And there's like much better knives. And then those sharpen better. And so I do think, like, most people, me included and lot of my homeowners, we all don't know like what's a great set of knives. And especially people in vacation, right? I'll put most people listening probably aren't knife experts, although a couple are. And like, so you, you know, it's hard to know with when you're looking at these homeowners knife sets, like, should you push them to get them sharpened? Or will that just like ruin them? Is it better to push them to get a new set? Like, how do you make that call? I think you need a whole other level of expertise on knives. Like, I don't know what you're doing in having class on that. Yeah. Yeah. I highly recommend the hangals self-sharpening knives set. I've now invested in one for my own home. You're going to tell me about that. I've heard of that. It's so nice to have a sharp knife every time you go. We explain what that is because I, I you told me every time you pull out the knife, there's a, like, there's a sharpener inside the slit that sharpens it. Like in the knife block. In the knife block. So you never have a dull knife. It's like changed my life from a cooking perspective at home. I mean, it's just awesome to always ensure. Yeah. That's my volume. All right. So switching just to a quick round robin here. Rachel Megan first, you know, first one, first one with the thought can answer. What are what's one item you always overstock your irrigation rentals? Light bulbs or, you know, in your, in your, in your, batteries. That's two item. Batteries and light bulbs. Okay. Yeah. I would say it like paper towels. Like you're talking about what you keep extra up at the house. Yeah. Oh, at the house. Oh, that's in the warehouse. I was thinking your house. We could do both. So warehouse. It's batteries and light bulbs. What about at the house for you, Megan? Toil paper. I would say the paper goods. Yeah. Paper goods. Yeah. What about the warehouse? Wash cloths too. Yeah. pillowcases. Like pillowcases is just like, I don't know, they go all they just like, where do they go? Yeah. What item do you guys always forget to reorder? You talked about it before. I think it's that for me, it's like all the random and sizes of the air filters. Yeah. The always weird ones. I'm like, can we like make them custom? Like, can we get some kit where you just like buy the thing and then you can like cut it to fit and put the, and around it because it's like, why are there so many weird sizes? Why do we have to keep making new size like H back that needs a different size? Can we just make H back? You can't possibly keep enough of all these different sizes. Yeah. Like, once it gets custom, that's when it's super frustrating. I would say fire one. Oh, yeah. Yep. What about the biggest inventory mistake that you've learned from? Oh, not having one. That's a big pain. Yeah. Or like we have run out. Like we have been in situations where it's like, there's no, I don't know what it like, there's no bath towels clean right now. There's no bath towels. Like, it's like the busiest whatever and for whatever reason, like people got behind with the laundry and we didn't realize that we were like low on towels and it's like, we have literally had to go like, either get somehow like a last minute delivery. This hasn't happened for some years, but like it definitely happened more than once. And it was usually towels or pillowcases that the two where it's like, we've had freakouts where I'm like at bed, bath and beyond or like, I know it doesn't exist anymore, but I'm sorry, I'm old, but also like home goods or something. And I'm like trying to buy all the white pillowcases there because like that really, it is really interesting. Like I remember when I started at Outpost, this is how new linen would be ordered. The housekeepers would would put together a or the housekeeping managers would put together a cart on Amazon and also contact our linen vendor at the time. And they would place the order. And if it was over like $25,000, they would say, hey, we need to place a $40,000 linen order. And then we would just do it. And there was no like data to back it up. And that was a huge miss. And I am living in the world. Yeah, we don't do Amazon linens, but like I am not far off. Like we've, you know, just started working with in Haven. So we're getting better. And now we're implementing this good inventory process. But like, it is not many moons ago that we so our housekeepers would have placed the order, but they would be telling us, um, we need about this many of this and this many of this. And then we would order it. Yeah. Because when you don't have a data, but how can we say no, we don't know that much. Right. Right. Well, you can't say no, we don't need it. Because where are you working off of your estimate from two years ago? I started looking at the numbers. And that's honestly how I remember being like, this doesn't make any sense because it would say we needed like $2,000. But like 500 king flat sheets. And I'm right. Something doesn't feel right. Yeah. Just me and Rob to this day, like not exactly today, but like very recently, we'll be like, do we really? This doesn't make sense. And then you're just like, guess we have to. Yeah. And then you, right. But then the alternative, right? As a property manager, when you're just busy and you're trying to get through the next week, it's like, right? I don't want to run out. So you can't run out. You're like, okay, we have to say yes to a certain degree. But like we also need the solution where to me, like any invoice should be backed up, by the data to support it, right? Like if we're going to spend money on anything, this is exactly why we're going to spend it. And not having an answer to that question, I think is the problem. Well, and if you've been doing it that way for so long, it kind of gets easier. Like in the beginning, I remember being like, this is not right. We, this is a mess. You know, but then over and over, you're kind of just like, this isn't right. We're like, I don't know another. What else should we do? Should we maybe we should make a new spreadsheet? Like that was our option. Like should we make a different spreadsheet? Maybe we should have someone else count, but like, yeah, all right. And last one, most underrated supply that you swear by. I feel like my recent answer since our partnership with Antflow has to be like feminine care products. I think that's so cool. That is cool. We haven't like done that yet, but I love that. I want to get into that. Yeah. I mean, I would say probably, I don't think it's under by like other people in the industry, but I would say maybe people who aren't in the industry maybe wouldn't realize like the coffee maker thing. I feel like that has come up consistently over all these years, over and over and over. And everyone, people on our team, as they've moved up in the ranks and gotten like more management roles, they all seem to run into like, you know, it always comes up like, I have a new plan for having a way to have to solve the coffee maker solution. Like this, we'll use this metal crash now, or we're gonna, and there's like, to me that's like one that you feel like it's a coffee maker, like you can get ones, they're not that expensive, like you could figure it out, but somehow someone's always having to like, finagle a coffee maker for someone, and they'll every so often be a bad review from like, why is there this shitty coffee maker in this really nice house? And also, I just, I don't know if I told you guys this, but Sarah Bradford has been listening to our podcast. I don't know, you guys don't know what I'm talking about. I'm sure everyone listening. Yeah, because she's been consulting for us, and she's been listening, and she told me I shouldn't swear. I'm sure I can't believe it. I'm not to listen to my podcast. I don't know who I gotta be me, and I'm sweary. But she said I shouldn't, at least I shouldn't say the F word. So I'm really sorry, I don't know if I'm offending anyone, but I feel like authenticity is important. I'd say important, my work's for, to be honest. Oh, I swear a lot. But I just, to me, it's just like, I actually haven't seen, I haven't heard Rachel Sperr. I've been swearing on this whole episode. I love it. I haven't heard of any of it. But Sarah Bradford, people too, but. Sarah Bradford must have loved our last episode, because she was the one who asked me spices, or like, do you keep the spices, or do you trash it? Do you keep the ketchup, or do you, she's got a strong opinion. And I guess she does, she had her partner T. They had a podcast. My cast, they did, they did, like, on the next year. She believes that you should keep whatever the guest leaves. Yeah. Like, you can reuse it. Just like when you go into a restaurant, like if there's ketchup on your table, you reuse it. You don't worry about, you know, who was there last using the ketchup. I'm sorry, Sarah. I'm on the side of like air towards throwing everything out. But personally, like if I'm drawing a personal line, I don't know why we're back on this topic, but why not? To me, like, some spices are okay, but there should not be condiments in the fridge. I draw the line, it condiments in the fridge that curses me out. And I don't like, like, condiments in a pantry. Like a few spices are fine, but to me, I open a pantry and there's like, dry goods type condiments or something. Like, I just, that's gross. Okay, it's gross. And I just, I don't think it's right. So. Well, here's my thing. At a restaurant, you understand and expect that you are going into eat immediately after somebody else and that someone else is going to come after you, right? And you're only there to eat. You're not sleeping in a restaurant. You're not showering in a restaurant, right? Like, there's something about checking in to a clean home that is void of everything that you associate it with. There haven't been hundreds of other people that have slept in this bed. And like, that's what you want to guess to feel like when they come in. And so that's kind of where I stand on it. I mean, it's wasteful for sure, but we would always give those items to the house. Versus. Right, I agree. It's not like all going in the trash. It's like people can, yeah, this is, there's so many things like this in our industry. You see, and I always wonder, like, is it because this is my job and I've been doing this job for so long that I think like my job is so uniquely complicated. Like, I know that's a human condition in my, but I feel like, is that, is this just because this is what we do? Or is it really, like, I wish I could get some like, outside person to give me like a quantification, qualification on like how seriously complicated our industry is or not. Having come from the outside, like just corporate world, it's very complicated because you're, everyone's small businesses, they're in multiple hats. And you're managing to owners and gas, you've got all these different key stakeholders, your teams keeping, housekeeping on, I think it's just super complicated. I think hospitality in general is super complicated. Yeah, I think so too. So, hey, thanks for validating me. Yeah, yeah. You're my heroine. You're kind of, yeah, right. It's just me. I am your agent of chaos. Like, I feel like I have like no end to the amount of chaos and issues that we can bring to in Haven to help solve. Like, there will be no end to our relationship because we love something called one thing. We'll just find the next thing. Everyone, everyone's experiencing these. You're not alone. So, okay. That's nice. (laughs) He goes through everything on our list. I think we got through everything. I feel like this was our most efficient episode for you guys to think. These weeks they're flying by. You know. It's crazy. Is this five? I think it is five. I think we should keep a season, our episode six is secret because I think we need to discuss that. Okay. A little bit of mystery. We're not. But I'll do so on. We're doing ASMR. (laughs) We should put in all our drugs and dens. Yeah, right. (laughs) Certainty served weekly with drugs and drugs. Just to help us get to the point. Okay. Well, thank you to the millions and billions and billions of listeners that we have out there for listening to our fifth halfway through this season episode. And we hope that you'll come back next time when we talk about a secret topic. And until then, have a great next few days. And then hopefully you'll just be preparing until you can hear our voices or see our lovely faces. Again, thanks for listening to the hospitality break room with certainty served weekly within Haven. (upbeat music)