Carolyn Schnare:
Welcome to Convenience Matters. I’m Carolyn Schnare with NACS and I’m joined by my cohost…

Jeff Lenard:
Jeff Lenard with NACS.

Carolyn Schnare:
Well, Jeff, you and I have worked for many years with retailers to develop relationships within their communities. And we’ve talked with companies and brands that not only give back, but pay it forward, too. And today we’re going to speak with two guests from Kum & Go, who ensure all of those things come together. So joining us today, we have Emily Bahnsen, Philanthropy Manager at Kum & Go. Hey, Emily!

Emily Bahnsen:
Hi. Thanks for having me!

Carolyn Schnare:
And Meg Kayko, Waste Reduction Specialist. Welcome.

Meg Kayko:
Thanks!

Carolyn Schnare:
All right, so I want to just jump in. Emily, I’m going to send the first question to you. Emily, Kum & Go is incredibly involved with community partnerships and I know that’s in your title and your job and everything you do and you live and breathe. Can you tell me a little bit more about the company philosophy and why you do such awesome things?

Emily Bahnsen:
Yeah. Thank you for having us. This is a great opportunity for us to share some of the things that Kum & Go does for as long as Kyle Krause who is our past CEO has known, Kum & Go has given back 10% of our profits to the communities that we serve. And we do this through our grant programs, sponsorships, and just really ensuring that when we’re in these communities with our Associates, we’re able to give back and to really show up. One of the unique opportunities that we have as a convenience store is that we have product that we can give. So we’re able to show up with things like pallets of water in times of weather-related disasters or even just pizza and donuts for volunteers for different opportunities. So it’s a really cool way that we can not only give back philanthropically, but show up in person.

Jeff Lenard:
I love that you have that at your stores. I’ve seen it on coffee cups. I’ve seen it on your walls. It is a pledge that you have in every store. Did you start with 10%? Was it, was it something that right off the bat it was like, let’s do this or was it just more organic where somebody did something and said, well, this feels like a pretty good number and we really need to tell this story.

Emily Bahnsen:
You know, I have to be honest, I’m not sure historically how they came up with that 10%. The Krauses, between us, are very Catholic-oriented. So I don’t know if that was like a {inaudible} benchmark, but they’ve held true to that 10% through all of the companies that they do have. So all of the companies filter in to make sure that we’re being able to sustain and support the communities from all the businesses.

Jeff Lenard:
That’s a very cool element. And just one more follow-up to you, Emily. When you try to define…well you have 400 stores, so Kum & Go has this process that’s working quite well. you’ve been around for half a century. any advice before we start talking about specifics that you and Meg are involved in any advice for, for a smaller store for how they might get started in looking at what you’ve become? Are there one or two things that you would recommend that somebody look at or is it talking to customers? What might be the first step in this process?

Emily Bahnsen:
That’s a great question. And because I’m just one person and I can’t get to all 11 states, I actually really rely on the stores to introduce me to organizations that are doing really meaningful work in communities. They’re the people who are on the ground, who are saying hello to customers and to community leaders every day. And so they’re actually the experts in their own community. So one of the things I would recommend is to listen to the stores that are there and to the people who are coming in every day, the needs of the community and tell that story because they are going to be the ones who know the best and can share and help me make that impact for them.

Carolyn Schnare:
I would like to follow up with that too, because that was one of my questions was – how do you pick a charity? So, I mean, you are big, you’re in a lot of communities and obviously there’s some things that are, hyper-local like maybe a school or something, but then do you tend to favor nationwide charities, national-branded charities or organizations? Or do you often have one-offs in every community?

Emily Bahnsen:
For our grant and sponsorship program we really do rely on like a grant-making process, because again, I can’t get to all 11 states. But for those national partnerships, what we’re looking for is organizations that really support our philanthropic pillars, which are arts and culture, youth education, and then community betterment, which has a food insecurity platform. So we filter those partnerships through those three priority areas. But when we’re thinking of something that we wanted to do nationally, we really think – what are organizations that touch all of these communities we serve? So one of our national partnerships for example, is Habitat for Humanity international. We know that they’re providing safe and affordable housing for people, but also financial education. And these communities can benefit from an organization like that no matter where they are. So we don’t want to be so hyper-local in these national partnerships that certain states or certain communities wouldn’t benefit. But then for our grant sponsorship program, we can say what’s really meaningful to your community and what will really benefit those people that we want to support every day.

Jeff Lenard:
I really liked the focus that you’re looking at really long-term and short-term. And long-term is working with Habitat for Humanity. And it’s about building a house that allows somebody to be secure for years or decades. It’s about teaching people financial tools so that they can save money. They can create wealth and they can do these things where they can hopefully help somebody else down the road and Meg, this is probably a good point to transition to talking about what we just talked about, which was food insecurity, and that is much more immediate. That’s three times a day that people need to eat and they’re not necessarily sure if they will be able to, because of their resources. And that is an area where Kum & Go also plays a role. Can you talk a little bit about what Kum & Go does to address food insecurity and the groups that you’re working with?

Meg Kayko:
Yeah. So really when we were looking we’re a convenience store, so we’re in the business of making food and selling food. And with that, we have waste and we have a set standard for our stores or kitchens to follow of 20% waste. So that way we know our customers are being fed. So if we’re turning lunch at 11:00 AM, and that customer comes in at 10:50 and wants a breakfast sandwich, they have that available. So that’s first and foremost is our customers and what they want. And then we also have a set standard with our hot case items for Kum & Go freshness, they can only stay in there, the hot sandwiches, for two to three hours. But if you think about that at home if you’re making hamburgers for your family and you don’t eat them all, you’re not throwing them away.

Meg Kayko:
You know, you’re saving them for the next day or the next day after that. So we’ve really wanted to come up with some sort of program where Associates – we’ve all hated throwing this food away and it going to the landfill. And so coming up with this food rescue donation program was just one avenue where Kum & Go could help with these organizations and help with our communities. And really getting it started was it took some work. You know, it took a lot of conversations with Feeding America and how do we do it and what do we do? And so we decided to partner with the regional food banks in our area rather than go rogue and find agencies on our own. And there’s a lot of temperature testing of food to make sure it was cooling to the proper temperature within the proper time. And so really it’s been fabulous. I think right now we have 326 stores currently that are participating in the food rescue donation program and we’re helping so many different agencies. So the food banks find the agencies, so it could be Boys and Girls Club, DV shelters, homeless shelters before- and after-school programs, school pantries. So it’s going out to a wide variety of different agencies in our communities.

Jeff Lenard:
And for both of you thinking about the efforts related to reaching out to communities. So we know it’s extremely difficult out there in stores, there’s all these challenges that we all face and just keeping the doors open, keeping people, keeping sufficient staff, there’s even more challenges out there in communities. So are, are there any stories that either you can quickly share that demonstrates it’s working? Has somebody come in and said ‘I just have to tell you three months ago, you were there when I needed you, and I just want to come in and say, thank you today,’ or…I’ll start with you, Meg, do you have stories that you harvest like that? That show, this is why we do this?

Meg Kayko:
Absolutely. I love to call them my feel-good emails that I get all the time. It’s one of the benefits…it’s like doing a nonprofit job within a for-profit company, and it’s just amazing to see. And I just recently got an email from a store over in Omaha and just really thinking that store for everything that they’ve been receiving and getting, and especially during the pandemic, we faced this program faced some more challenges than it had been before. It was on one side, we had more items we could donate than ever because everything was pre-packaged from bakery and pizza. But then we really struggled with the volunteer side and I know Emily and I, at the start of the pandemic, we drove a food rescue route here in Des Moines, and I spent four months doing that. It was the first time I really got to see like what I’m trying to do, what we do, and go and pick up the food and deliver it to these…whether it’s low-income housing or the agencies. And it was really cool to be part of, to actually experience that firsthand. But yeah, we have so many of those feel-good stories I could probably go on and on about them.

Jeff Lenard:
Well, now you can add a truck driver to your resume. How about you, Emily?

Emily Bahnsen:
Yeah, I do. I actually…I’ve only been here for a couple of years, but right at the beginning I had the opportunity to go and visit a food pantry in a smaller town, about an hour from here. And one of the challenges that I saw when I was visiting was that we had the food to give, but they just didn’t have enough cold storage. And so I went back to work and I did some thinking and we revamped the grant program. So our community betterment pillar, we changed to a food insecurity real focus for that, so that these organizations that we want to give the food to have opportunity to also get financial assistance from us to be able to buy things like a refrigerator. And to me, that was so easy because a refrigerator is not that much money, but it provides so much more food for these communities. And so that was a really great way that we were able to say, ‘we want to partner with you and we want to make it easier, not a burden.’

Carolyn Schnare:
That’s really cool. We work with…Jeff and I have worked with several what we call Corner Store groups throughout the United States who are representing the small stores that aren’t sometimes thought about as convenience stores. They’re bodegas, they’re delis, they’re in the inner cities more often than not. And one of the things that they just want most as refrigerators for these stores, because they just don’t have the right coolers to store fruits and vegetables at the temperature they’re supposed to. Do you put this in the refrigerator now? They’ll just go put it in a basket. And then you’re dealing with a food safety issue, which is a whole other topic of a podcast, but a good question that I have. So Meg, over the years, I’ve talked with you many times on some of our calls and you have developed an incredible process for not only what to do with the food…

Carolyn Schnare:
Well, from the start, from where the food leaves, the…whether it’s the cooler or the hot thing…hot case, I couldn’t think of the word, sorry, and then makes its way to, maybe it’s backroom storage over to eventually the pickup and then eventually to wherever it goes next. There’s more to it than just what we might do at home when there’s a food collection, which is throw some cans and boxes of things that we might not be eating into a bin and take it somewhere. So can you detail a little bit what kind of process you’ve developed in keeping food safety in mind, but also keeping some of the same regulations that the food banks put on you and how they, they can accept such food?

Meg Kayko:
Yeah, absolutely, that’s a great question. So after our conversation with Feeding America, we really had to go back to the drawing table and put some systems in place. So for our stores, did we have the technology to scan the items out of our inventory? I had to temperature test food. Okay, does this breakfast burrito cool within two hours to 70 degrees? So we had to go through all of that and once that system was in place, and then we had to develop for our Associates, store operating procedures. So everything is written, they know exactly what to donate. So there was some front-end work. And then once that was put into place, super simple, right? We need programs that are easy, fun for our Associates. They do 20,000 other things. The last thing they need is something to be really hard and difficult.

Meg Kayko:
And so they take those items out of the hot case. They scan them out of inventory, they let them cool and then put them in the cooler. And we also want it to be really sustainable and easy with the volunteers that are coming in. So we purchased these reusable totes that the Associates can place all the food in. We don’t have to look for banana boxes or other cardboard boxes type stuff. And so then the agencies come in two to three times a week and they take the food and then they bring back their empty totes. So it it’s just like a revolving door that we wanted to be super simple. We have had issues with some health inspectors though. So health safety is very important to us, all our staff they’re ServSafe certified also. But when this program first took off, we had some health inspectors in different parts.

Meg Kayko:
Every county is different, I found out and some of them were like, ‘no, you’re absolutely not doing this’. And that is where Feeding America has been such a great asset to us to come in and help educate the health inspectors who were like, ‘wait, you’re going to donate fresh leftover food?’ Like this has been….it was kind of unheard of for a while, not many people were doing it. So it kind of got the stink eye for a while and it’s like, ‘no, no, no, we promise we’re being safe.’ So at the end of the day, we have all these systems in place and make it super easy, but we do have to follow what our health inspectors say at the end of the day.

Carolyn Schnare:
And there is just…we’ve talked about on the show before we had someone from Feeding America a few weeks…. many months ago on the show…a few episodes ago. And there is the Bill Emerson law that does cover it federally that covers donations, as long as you’re doing it with the best intentions. You’re not putting old food out there, just trying to get rid of it, you’re doing it with the intentions of getting it to people who need it and not wasting it. Then you’re covered with that. And then one other quick follow-up though, I know you mentioned once before, there are other rules and I’m just going into this for someone who may be thinking about a program, you have to label things that you wouldn’t normally have labeled before. And I mean, sometimes even like you can’t have the bags touching the floor because…just because. Are there any of those things that you wanted to point out as well?

Meg Kayko:
So all of our food, everything that you donate has to have a nutrition label on it and it has to state what’s in there for allergin purposes. So all of this stuff that we donate does already have that barcode on it, the ingredient label on it. We’re kind of discovering something. So we’re kind of shifting our food program and a couple of different markets, so we’re going more made-to-order, so that is loose ingredients. So we’re kind of working through that where, okay, if we have cheddar cheese say, and it’s not mixed with anything, can we package it. What it is and the best by date. So we’re working through some of that stuff, but we do not donate anything that a customer can touch, sneeze on, or anything that is not labeled. So luckily we already had that system in place and we were already doing that. So that was an easy win for us in that department.

Jeff Lenard:
Carolyn and I have been to a number of food banks. Usually there’s food donations tied to the NACS Show and we’ve gone to other food banks. What’s amazing to me when you go and I suggest anybody, who’s never been to a food bank, if you’re interested in a program like this, go to a food bank because you’ll see incredible passion, incredible organization, a lot of food, but most of all, you feel a sense of joy. You feel a sense that every day these people are coming in and what they’re doing really matters and you really leave in a very good mood. So for anybody that’s looking at doing some sort of food donation program, you’re going to feel pretty good if you check out these places and just say, “Hey, look, I’m going to get involved.” So, but beyond food there’s a number of other things Emily, that, that Kum & Go is doing in not just direct food donation, but various other donations working with groups like No Kid Hungry and some others. Do you want to talk about how you got into those areas and what it means to your company and to the communities?

Emily Bahnsen:
Yeah, so this summer we decided that we should be a lot more intentional with the vendor partnerships that we have as a company. We have these vendor partners who they want to partner with us to do really good things for the community, and they were coming and asking, how can we strategically do this? And how can we align our values with yours? So we took some time to think about what some of the needs were this summer. We know that COVID created tons of challenges, one of those being an increase in food security and kids specifically being out of school and missing those meals that were provided for them sometimes three times a day. So we thought, okay, what we really want to do this summer is provide support for an organization that’s going to help those kids this summer.

Emily Bahnsen:
So we did some research and I settled on No Kid Hungry, which was doing really, really great things, especially during the pandemic. And we took all of the partnerships. Some of them include Body Armor or Mars or Essentia Water and we took those charitable dollars and put them all together. So, you know how those work – buy one Body Armor, donate a dollar. And instead of making small donations to a number of organizations, we did one giant one. So we were able to donate around $85,000 to No Kid Hungry at the end of the summer and provide just thousands and thousands of meals to these kids and families in need. So it was just a really great way that we could align a lot of those values that these companies have and that we have to support the communities.

Carolyn Schnare:
That’s awesome. I mean, so you’re really just at that point – I mean, I know there’s a plan going into it – but working with your vendors, really working with the supplier partners who, like you said, Body Armor, or maybe Oreos or something, is giving back if you buy those. So, for a retailer who may not have quite the scope that you guys do, that’s really smart. Just look around you, watch them on commercials. You can see who’s donating. I think it was at the Super Bowl last year, Jeff, that really, you started to see all these groups that were donating to No Kid Hungry. And I mean, turn around, ask them if you can work with them on that in the store. So, even if you have one store that’s very, very possible. And then the other thing that you want to do besides giving back, is telling that story, because I’m sure, Emily, you might be able to address this first, that employees really notice.

Carolyn Schnare:
it’s a great recruitment tool in addition to retention, but employees notice and customers notice that you’re giving back and maybe feel a little more comfortable spending money at your stores. So how do you… well, I know how you tell this great story because you have an amazing sustainability report out there, but can you tell us a little bit about that? I think it was the second or third edition of the sustainability report came out for the Krause Companies and tell people where to get that too, because it is incredible to look at.

Emily Bahnsen:
Yeah, we do. We have a great Corporate Social Responsibility report that we’ve put out for the last couple of years. You can find the electronic copy right on our website. But some things that we do to get the word out, we’re really big into social. So talking about those partnerships is way more important than saying, ‘oh, we gave $5,000 to this organization.’ It’s really more about the partnerships and how we’ve been able to have really good programmatic support with them. One of the things that we want to do is to really work with them throughout the year, not just give them the check and walk away. So we look for ways that we can be meaningful partners with them and keeping that conversation on social media or through different news channels. One of the most important things to me is the awareness-building that we’re doing.

Emily Bahnsen:
So we’re driving awareness to the organizations, but also to the need. So again, for food insecurity, we know what that looks like. We see it, but we don’t always know how we can help or the impact that it really makes on children or individuals. So when we’re working with our Associates or with customers, raising the money is incredibly important, but that awareness and that education to me is almost more important because we all need to help. We all need to do our part. And by spreading that news and that education, we can make such a bigger difference.

Jeff Lenard:
And I just have one final question. We talked about stories that you know it’s making an impact. We know about how it’s making an impact in communities. I’ll start with you, Meg, on this one. How do you measure success? I know your title has waste reduction in it – is part of that looking at we were able to reduce hauling costs beyond all the good reasons for doing this. How do you look at it from the corporate side in saying, this is how we look at success?

Meg Kayko:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think we look at success more at the end of the year. How many pounds did we divert from the landfill, but more importantly, how many meals did that serve? And I think that’s where the true success comes in because honestly our hauling costs haven’t gone down. Because you get billed by volume, not by weight. So we’re still kind of paying the same with trash, so that’s a whole other topic I could talk about. But within the food rescue donation program or the food insecurity, we know that no town is immune to it, no city…if you’re rural, it maybe is a little bit harder, there’s a lack of agencies there, but so really it’s how many meals can we provide and that food that we would have just thrown away. And, our Associates know it. If they’re looking at the cold case and they see some fruit that it’s at the sell-by date and if they’re looking at it and they wouldn’t eat it, they know to throw it away. So they’re not…we’re not just donating everything to keep it out of the landfill, because that’s our number one priority. I mean, it’s a great priority, and that’s something that we take very seriously also. But I think the success comes from how many meals did we serve in our communities that we’re in. That’s, that’s the exciting part, I think.

Jeff Lenard:
Emily, any other metrics that you’d like to mention?

Emily Bahnsen:
Yeah. I mean, success for me comes in a lot of different ways too. A number of organizations, people are able to serve, but also just in having our customers and Associates know what we stand for, and that we are here to support communities is incredibly important to me. And if we can show up for people and have people choose us as a convenience store, because of those stands that we’re taking that success.

Jeff Lenard:
Carolyn that’s exactly what we hear from retailers is a lot of times people say we sell the same snacks, we sell the same drinks, but people tell us ours tastes better because they know when they buy it, something else good is happening besides quenching a thirst or feeding a hunger

Carolyn Schnare:
That’s for sure. I know. And that’s like when we led off, we talked about retailing with purpose or something along those lines, but brands, especially whether you’re a brick-and-mortar store, whether you’re an online store, whether you’re a candy bar, your brands are increasingly looked at for what they’re giving back or what their purpose is or what they’re not doing in some cases. So you know, you’re ahead of the curve on this one, and I love that you’re leading the way for the industry and you’ve been great contributors to a lot of things that we’ve done. And I just wanted to throw out a quick mention. We do have a guide on our website on convenience.org, I believe its under the Sustainability tab and I’ll put it in the show notes as well, that is a Guide to Managing Food Waste and Meg, you were very helpful in, in making sure that those guidelines were correct.

Carolyn Schnare:
We worked with Feeding America with that. We worked a little bit with Share Our Strength. We worked with reFED, which is another organization that tracks metrics for food waste and other waste. And we’ll give you – anybody listening, any retailers listening – a guide to moving ahead. How do you get started? How do you do it? How do you just make it successful, make a food waste donation program successful? So check that out. That’s in our show notes as well. And I certainly encourage you to check out the CSR guide that Emily mentioned, because it’s really cool. You have to…it’s, it’s really cool to look at either on your phone and I remember it even tells you, you have to look at it landscape, or you have to look it on a desktop because it’s just an amazing piece of art in addition to all the good words that are in there too. So I really thank you for taking the time with us today to talk through your program. If anybody has any questions,I know you guys are on both on social media. Let me know, I can get you over to Meg or Emily or through their website or LinkedIn as well. So Meg, Emily, thank you so much for talking with us today. We really appreciate it.

Emily Bahnsen:
Thanks for having us.

Carolyn Schnare:
And thank you so much for listening to Convenience Matters.

Speaker 1:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

show less