[
    {
        "tokenId": "t_5c729281b1aa",
        "text": "Erik Haviland  09:57:45  \nHey, taker, welcome to the party. All right, cool. Okay. Oh, let me go to Oh, it's Eric's note taker, late to the party again. I think that's more of a it worked pretty quick for me today. So I think that is more of a, more of a Google problem, not a clog, not a not an otter problem. So far so good, though, right? I mean, it's not too shabby,\n\nDavid Hodges  09:58:23  \nyeah. So far, so good. So what do you want to do? You want me to be Mike, and you pull it up, and we go, yeah,\n\nErik Haviland  09:58:28  \nor that's what we're going to do, yeah. So I'm going to go to log into the back end.\n\nUnknown Speaker  09:58:45  \nWrong code.\n\nErik Haviland  09:58:53  \nI'm mid size Mike, sporting an 82 right now. All right,\n\nDavid Hodges  09:59:00  \nyeah, that's pretty good. Actually. That means you spent some time with mid size Mike, so let me yeah. That was the first one I opened. That was the one I was really fine tooth combing for. So that shows that it works. I mean, the most engaged as that user,\n\nErik Haviland  09:59:17  \nabsolutely. Yeah, it looks like you spent quite a bit of time on the v1 source vault. Five minutes, 20 seconds, the central ordering platform. Two minute, two seconds, 15 seconds. Another one's okay, so that's cool. So I am going to get a, let's get the deck link. Let's get, let me copy the URL. I'm going to copy his URL. I'm\n\nUnknown Speaker  09:59:43  \ngoing to pull this into here. All right,\n\nErik Haviland  09:59:49  \nI would like to share screen with you. Mike, all right, yeah, pitch me. Pretty stoked about sharing with you all the cool things that strata has to offer. See my screen there. Mike, mid size. Mike, I can see the screen. Perfect, good. All right. Mike, here a little bit, just because I can or I can't. That's a bug because I have to fix them right mid size. Mike,\n\nDavid Hodges  10:00:22  \nit can't go past 100%\n\nErik Haviland  10:00:25  \nit can. It absolutely came. Something happened when I made these so that I could just kind of hide them. I took them out of the way, reduce opacity, rather than them being activated all the time. These upper buttons, like for the light deck and the dark deck. Anyway,\n\nUnknown Speaker  10:00:42  \nit's all good, actually, actually, maybe one\n\nErik Haviland  10:00:45  \nway. There it is, okay, so there's the problem. So it only happens when the decks full screen. It won't allow you to control it. Alright. So that points taken. I'm glad the Notetaker is going because that's a good thing to talk through. All right. Mike, well, thanks for joining me today. You Mr. Midsize dealer. Inc, Thanks for considering everything strata has got to offer. I'm going to flip through this deck pretty quick just to try to talk through some things. We can talk a little bit about what your needs are and all the good things we have to offer at Strata. Basically, what sets us apart is, on this slide, there's three reasons dealers stay why they came in the first place. We've got a bang and technology platform, not the least of which is, it's a very impressive pitch deck. I'm shocked showing you. I'm sure you're quite amazed. We are backed by private equity, unlike most and operational efficiency. Got any questions for me on this one?\n\nDavid Hodges  10:01:43  \nHow does the private equity help me?\n\nErik Haviland  10:01:47  \nOh, the private equity helps a lot. We're not taking money from a buying group and a board constantly taking money just so that they can pad their pockets. We basically are investing in all of our capabilities because eventually making a profit is exactly what we're trying to do. So we're all about that, and we're trying to make profit for you too. Dave, Mike, we love profits. Yeah, profits. We are big on profits, so let's move on, right? So we want you to have the best manufacturing partners, and we are backing all that with 30 plus years of foundation. You know, as you know, we went through a rebrand several years ago, but we have got now under the name strata. We bring in all of that history and all these great manufacturing partnerships and all the exclusive pricing that we've worked on with the proprietary technology we've built over the years.\n\nUnknown Speaker  10:02:43  \nAny questions for me? No questions there.\n\nErik Haviland  10:02:46  \nFantastic. Okay, good. Well, hey, I got a question for you. What would make the biggest difference for mid size Mike's mid size dealership this year, we got, we're really seeing or access to brands or tools that help you operate like a bigger deal.\n\nDavid Hodges  10:03:02  \nWe're really trying to grow, and we just can't get access to those brands, some of those brands. So I think, I think the middle option is looking at the mid size. Mike,\n\nErik Haviland  10:03:12  \nyeah, are you getting rejected? What, when, like, when in the conversation? Are you even getting the conversation?\n\nDavid Hodges  10:03:18  \nYeah, we're having a hard time even getting a foot in the door with the volume that we're coming to the table with.\n\nErik Haviland  10:03:23  \nOkay, gotcha All right. Well, let's just go ahead and we'll put a pin in that one, and we'll come back to that later. But Mike, we know this. We know that you run a real business, and your pricing should reflect that. So many times you're caught in the middle, you're not large enough to get that pricing, and every quote becomes a margin decision that you shouldn't have to make. We want you to be able to access those better tiers usually reserved for those dealers doing many times more than your volume, more dealer, many dealers find 50 to 100,000 in annual opportunities that they didn't know existed through working with us because of our collective buying power. And we want you to protect your margin Mike, because we know that competing on price without giving up those margins, that's going to help fund that growth to get you to that next level. We also want you to keep your relationships you know, we know you've got some good ones already, and we're not trying to take those away from you. We're just going to try to give you access to these ones that you haven't been able to unlock. Does that sound good for you? That sounds great. Okay, good deal. Well, as we're kind of saying here at the end, you know, you're building for growth, and your purchasing power should be growing with you. We're going to give you that purchasing power. All right, moving on, yep. Here's a slide talking about collective dealers built for leverage, all those things. Any questions? Very good. No questions. Move through quickly here. Yeah, this is the foundation of why we're doing what we're doing. We're going to have some pretty pictures in here later. Abby's hopefully working on that. Well, here we've got a platform, and we want you to understand that this member portal that we've got for you can include Bill Pay central ordering platform, which is getting rid of all those vendor platforms with a single access point so your people don't have to figure out how to buy the equipment that they need. Learning Management System to help get them up to speed on the latest trends and the latest best practices in the entire food service industry, rebate reconciliation, preferred partner program, that's that's where you're talking about that's going to really address that, that need that you've got in getting access to those preferred partners, getting those manufacturing relationships that you've stressed so many times. And I'm just re emphasizing it for the Notetaker, that it knows that this is a big hot topic for us on this one, and then the partner hub, where you can get ready to deploy assets for all of your own marketing. Any questions on that? No questions. Excited to learn more about those cool, cool, cool, cool. Where are we at in here? So we're we got a long ways to go, so let's burn through this thing. We're going to go rapid speed here. Mike, all right, but I'm going to pause on this one real quick, because Consolidates, there's a little thing happening on screen. Is that intriguing to you at all? That is interesting? What happens? Oh, yeah, all right, so Well, this is some hidden information that that I wanted to be able to share with you on this particular call, and it's got to do with bill pay. This way, you can kind of see a little bit about what our bill pay walk through is. So essentially, it's a one payment process. You see, this is from the strata vault. As you roll over, it does a little cool thing, so it's breathing. Look at that. Isn't that fancy? That is fancy anyway, one payment process so all the vendor PAYABLES consolidate into single flow, automated documentation and an audit trail built in. You want to ask me about any of this? Are we good? I'm good on this. Okay, cool. Now we're really going to burn through this SKU level real time. Yep. What it says rebate. It just really annoying. Bi weekly box man, got to think about how to how to fix that, maybe how to make that into one line. Maybe, maybe we can divide that up. Maybe we can push these things over a little bit. Definitely want to screen capture that. That's going to be a thing that is annoying, and it's been one of the banes of my existence for the last week. Keep talking about that. Moving on, right? Only buying group with a central Oregon platform. It's good stuff.\n\nDavid Hodges  10:07:40  \nNobody else offers\n\nErik Haviland  10:07:42  \nthat, huh? Just you. They do not. Incidentally, the arrow keys also work, so you don't even have to hit that thing. We can. We can float over here, but we can hit arrow keys, but yeah, oh yeah. Buying group with a central ordering platform, yeah. Do you know what? That is? No part of that. Yeah. This is, this is part of your big, your big problem that you're having. You want these bigger brands, right? Most manufacturers only work with the largest dealers, but you're dealing with multiple portals, and you still can't get the brand you want. Here's what we do. We're the dealer of record. We open access to brands that won't work with independents or even small or mid sized dealers. No credit checks, no accounts set up. So\n\nDavid Hodges  10:08:20  \nbasically, roll back over real fast. Is that a D at the strata logo the vault. Roll over the vault real fast. There's a\n\nErik Haviland  10:08:28  \nplatform. D Oh, that's a good it's a good note. We're going to fix that. I don't even know where the hell that comes from,\n\nUnknown Speaker  10:08:35  \nbut we're going to find it. And let's see. I'm going to do this. I'm\n\nErik Haviland  10:09:10  \nwe got a couple fixes here. See, I'm going to do that one on a time. We're gonna do that on three second delay. New I'm gonna go roll over now I can grab it cool. Of the\n\nSpeaker 1  10:09:57  \nmaybe something Abby's doing.\n\nErik Haviland  10:10:04  \nWhoa, I got a full new image manager built boy, I hope so. It's been driving me crazy that one's been a bit of a bane. All right, so I'm going to show you about that central ordering platform. Here you go. This is a placeholder slide because I think that for somebody like yourself, it would be really good to have this vault space reserved for a light central ordering platform demo walkthrough. Maybe it's a video that we can play. I've got a video button that'll be activated at some point. It should be popping up on here. But when we get a video that would be helpful, light box it, and it'll play a quick little video for you and show you how it is and give you an idea of what kind of vendor access we've actually got for you. Cool moving on, close the vault. Moving on platform behind your vendor access. That's a central ordering platform. As you can see, 50 plus vendors are already on the platform, going to save you five to 10 hours a week, and that's just dealing with multiple interfaces, chasing down dealers, chasing down dealers that don't have a good platform, no markups or fees, and full rebate credit, all amazing things. We also, because we're a preferred partner, and we extend that to you, you get all these wonderful terms beyond standard access, enhanced margin, price match protection, amplified marketing, dedicated inside sales team here at Stata. What do you think about that?\n\nDavid Hodges  10:11:32  \nI like that. I like a dedicated inside sales team as well as amplified Mark marketing to help me enhance my margin. Yeah,\n\nErik Haviland  10:11:39  \nso on marketing, what if you had a cool dashboard tool like this? Would that be something that would be of interest to you down the road? I would love to have, yeah, some presentations on the fly. Cool. All right. Well, we'll, we'll come back to that. We'll see what we can do with the higher ups at Stata. All right, 24\/7 vendor specific training. Yep, there's all kinds of things there. We know you're not worried about training. We're going to skip the, skip the thing there. Skip the vault access there. Moving on from that, we've got proprietary education, loads of amazing content. Look at that. Over 5500 completed courses, 33 proprietary courses. This is all of our IP and IP from around the industry that goes into building this, and it's been rated at almost 100% crying baby. Mike, what do you think about that crying baby in the background? And I got dogs and I got cats. All right, all your marketing assets. Here you go. Your DSR, you got a partner hub? They're all in the same place. Yep. Do you branded templates, design tools used to tracking an asset library?\n\nDavid Hodges  10:12:57  \nSuper easy. Sounds like a great resource,\n\nErik Haviland  10:13:01  \nlike someone went ham on Canva is what it sounds like. But let's to be determined. I haven't seen it yet. Have you seen it? Did you see it\n\nDavid Hodges  10:13:08  \nwith Andrew? No, did not see that.\n\nErik Haviland  10:13:12  \nWe got a lot we need to learn about strata. Hey, Jamie Wilson's got great things to say. And here is that vendor access again that you were saying was really important to you. These are the brands that your customers are asking for, and we aren't holding you to volume minimums because we are already we've already opened the door for you. We're the dealer of record. We're passing it on to you. There are no barriers, there's no credit applications, no account friction. You get full rebate credit that is for you, and your ERP stays intact so that your ordering process does not change. Basically, you're not competing on your volume. You're competing on the weight of the entire strata organization. What do you think\n\nDavid Hodges  10:14:01  \nabout it easier, right? That access a lot easier about you want those\n\nErik Haviland  10:14:06  \nmiddle B brands And they're not giving them to you. You going to are several logos underneath this one and but we know that. So Mike, another quick little question for you. Where does your team spend the most wasted time? Is it in managing the individual vendor relationships? Is it ramping new hires on product knowledge, or is it chasing down rebates and reconciling?\n\nDavid Hodges  10:14:46  \nI think we chase down rebates and reconciliation far too much. Okay, we've got some answers for you on that as well. We'll\n\nErik Haviland  10:14:56  \ncome back to that later. It's a weird spot for that slide, maybe well, at least for that answer, I wonder if you answer that, if it should initiate a next slide that would address that. What do you think about that? Dave Hodges, yeah, that'd be a good transition, if we could if that, if it could do that, if it could take you right to where the the area of need was, I think that would be good, yeah, so like an interruption slide. Um, I wonder how we do that, especially if we've already covered it, you\n\nDavid Hodges  10:15:28  \nknow? Yeah, I mean, that's, that's cop, isn't it, and the rebate reconciliation,\n\nErik Haviland  10:15:34  \nyep, yep. Okay, so that's a note for Claude, just to mine the deck building and the testing. We'll have to think about that. I'm not 100% sure we can pull that off yet, but I got to think about like the hierarchy, and how we could have maybe an alternate slide that's built that would address each of those needs, so that when you click on it, you get an immediate response based on the question, and then you go right back into the regular deck flow, so that if it comes up again later, the rep can go something like, Hey, we talked a little bit about this before. But here's, you know, another slide I have in here for you on that, yeah, way that they can recover, you know, the pitch and not make it feel too disjointed. So I got to think about that. But anyway, all right, back to role play. Strength in numbers here again, 125 plus partners, 15 specialty vendors. That equals 140, that's the number we were looking for on a couple other previous notes, preferred partners. Go further. We are investing our own resources to drive purchasing to key manufacturers delivering better programs in the categories that matter most to you. Again, that's not something that you get with typical buying groups. Let me show you the category breakdown. Here we go, heavy equipment, all the things that you can imagine, the specialty partners that's stuff like software, financing, marketing and insurance, maybe even opening up fuse, who created this bang and deck platform, SMALLWARES and supplies, all this stuff. Oh, janitorial and janitorial and sanitation, yep, yep, all that crap and other preferred partners. Another testimonial from Waco Restaurant Supply. We've seen a lot of these testimonials. Hope to capture some more of these at the end of the month, at your next meeting, next conference, you compete like a national account, but you're not getting paid like one. That's a challenge. Many people say, and I still don't like the formatting of this slide. Hate it. Hate it much like I don't I think these Oh little things down here are afterthoughts We could totally do. I a\n\nErik Haviland  10:18:11  \nsingle, small lines. Cool deal. All right. Moving on from that. We got to Buren, negotiate lots of things, all the things, more stuff. Clicking through Mike, you understand all these things. I'm not even spending the time on them. There goes another meaningless quote or meaningful quote. But probably I want you to know we've built this network for dealers just like you, with over 350 members, 97% retention and 30 plus years in the business are ranging from 1 million to 30 billion. So you see, we're not, we are not looking at just the little guy or the big guy, or guys like you mid size. Mike, you're not mid to us. Mike, you're you're as big as the biggest and as small as the smallest. Hey, what do you want to see in the first 30 days, immediate access to better pricing, a team that understands your operation or visibility into what you're earning and missing?\n\nDavid Hodges  10:19:20  \nI'm in growth mode, so I would like to see immediate access to better pricing.\n\nErik Haviland  10:19:24  \nNice. All right, that's great. I think we can do that all right. Let me tell you a little bit about where Strata's going here in 2026 we are expanding our preferred partner. We are also growing our vendor portfolio, and we are enhancing our platform in the central ordering platform. That one thing that is going to make you lot, give you lots of access to what you were talking about, that better pricing and etc, etc, hey, but we're not done building we're adding more AI powered insights. We're adding faster ordering, better\n\nUnknown Speaker  10:19:59  \nintelligence, smarter training. Any questions on that? That all sounds good. I've heard AI is pretty cool.\n\nErik Haviland  10:20:04  \nYeah, it is cool. 35 years of foundation, and now we are entering our acceleration phase. Okay, these last couple years, we have been accelerating all this new AI automation, the platform and the new member portal and dedicated dealer leadership. We are very different, as you can see, based on all of our tech and all of our acquisitions and the way that we spend our dollars to make more money and put money in your pockets, sounds good to you. Excited. We're excited to grow with you. Feels like growth. All right, we're close. We are built to invest. We are back to deliver again, that PE thing is a key differentiator. PE gets a bad rap. We take that wrap and we wrap it up and hand it over as giant rebates and growth. To you,\n\nDavid Hodges  10:20:52  \nthat sounds good to me. You've explained it well,\n\nErik Haviland  10:20:55  \nI never know. Thank you. All right. Other groups cut calls. We have capabilities, six platforms. I just want to recap all these great things, and this is how you can kind of see it roll out in week 123, and four. We're talking about just a month a month for limitless growth, and then all these wonderful partnerships behind the platform, all these associations. We've got to get some logos in here. It'll be more legitimate as soon as you see it. Hey, this is a simple four step process, if you want to really get going on this, thank you for the time. Today we need to have a 20 minute fit conversation. It's completely confidential. Learn more about your business. We want to review those terms. We want to kick off on onboarding, and then we start to give you your programs and your portal access is live all from day one, we're going to find your fit. I don't even know what's under here, but here you go.\n\nDavid Hodges  10:21:50  \nI'm in growth mode, so you've\n\nErik Haviland  10:21:51  \nidentified me. Well, here you go, right there, quick to expand, blah, blah, blah. Not even sure that this, not even sure that that little vault piece is necessary because it kind of has already been covered, but let's see. All right, schedule a consultation. Hey and then, thanks for sharing what matters most. Oh, that's the new version. There you go, already activated. So I appreciate you ask answering a few of those questions today, it's going to help be able to follow up with you in a meaningful way, and we'll, we'll get you some more information on those specific things so you can be better informed before we do that 20 minute consultation. How does that sound to you?\n\nDavid Hodges  10:22:38  \nThat sounds great. You really took the time to learn my needs today. Thank you. All\n\nErik Haviland  10:22:42  \nright, that's fantastic. Appreciate the time today. David No and Mike, mid, mid size. Mike, I will follow up with you soon. That's all for this call, and I will kick out the Notetaker if I can. Maybe let's see in call people or we just hang up and hop on another call. How about that? Perfect. That's fine. All right. Bye.\n\nTranscribed by https:\/\/otter.ai",
        "source": "paste",
        "created": "2026-03-06T18:49:09+00:00"
    }
]