Bridging Pharmacy, Nutrition, and Digital Wellness | Irina Pelphrey, Albertsons Cos.

Speech to text:

Mike Koelzer, Host: Irina, for those that haven't come across you online, introduce yourself to our listeners. 

Irina Pelphrey: I'm Irina Pelphrey. I lead health and managed care verticals within Albertsons and what that means is I'm responsible for traditional pharmacy benefit manager and health plan collaborations for, transactional dispensing and also for services, responsible for our digital wellness platform called Sincerely Health and also for our efforts in supplemental benefits in food as medicine. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Irina, now you mentioned Albertsons. [00:02:00] Now I'm in Michigan. I don't think, at least in our area, I don't know of any, but I know also that there's a large association, ? When I looked online at Albertsons, there's another seven or eight. different name brands that you're associated with. So if somebody thinks your job is easy, they can just multiply it by seven to find out what you're really in charge of.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah. So we do have a national footprint. We're in 34 states. Some of our banners that people may know, beyond Albertsons are Safeway, Vaughn's, Shaw's, Jewel Osco, Acme, Tom Thumb. So the closest to you probably would be Jewel Osco in in the Chicago area.

And Safeway is our biggest banner by far that's, most well known and it's

predominantly in the West.

So we have 2, 300 grocery stores and 1, 700 of them have pharmacies in them.

So majority of our footprint has some sort of either health care or [00:03:00] nutrition offering for our customers.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Wow. All right. Now we got to break down this word, Arena. You said vertical. And now some pharmacists, when. They hear the word vertical and PBM, which you kind of mentioned in the same one or two sentences, their ears pop up and say, we hate vertical integration with the big PBMs and so on, but I don't think you were going that route.

You meant kind of vertically within Albertsons. What did you mean by that vertical comment as far as your position goes,

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, I mean, you can use probably a word pillar or business line. The reason we have them Aligned separately right now is because within our PBM or managed care segment, we're working primarily with PBMs and, the work is related to top line securing top line and sustainable reimbursement for the long run. And within the digital space, we work directly with our consumers. So, we're [00:04:00] positioned right in the middle of our our e commerce app and our e commerce website. So, where people make their grocery orders or prescription orders is where our digital platform lives. And then food is medicine. is kind of a new concept that crosses over traditional e commerce but in service to health plan offerings because that's becoming more and more prevalent. Health plans and the government is thinking about nutrition and new ways to be able to support. Overall wellness and prevent disease or manage health care conditions.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I look at our customers and I know I have to put a big mirror in front of myself, but I look at my customers and I'm thinking how much could be solved by the customers that I'm talking to going out every morning for like a three mile walk, something like that. And you just think, I wish people would do that.

And it would be so much more individual ownership of things like that. [00:05:00] But. Certainly the eating part goes along with that too. And I give myself a big fat F for eating stuff. I get my walkout in the morning, but then I finish up with my like fourth bowl of cereal before I hop in bed.

But you look at people and you say, if people would maybe take a walk and they wouldn't maybe eat a little bit better, a lot of stuff in the U S might be in better shape. 

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah. Well, Mike, you should know that you're not alone and don't get discouraged. That's what our Sincerely Health platform, was designed. 

 We think daily about what small changes can be made to kind of improve overall outcomes.

So if for you not eating well we can give you first a view into how you shop.

So one of the

features we have within our nutrition portfolio is actually looking at your purchases and organizing them according to the dietary guidelines for Americans, also known as MyPlate. So, we can tell you based on your history in the last week or month if you purchased enough vegetables, [00:06:00] fruits grain, whole grain dairy and proteins. So, as a starting point, just having that information,

having that insight helps, ? So if you're eating three bowls of cereal, you probably are consuming enough grain, but probably not enough fruits and vegetables.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Excuse me. For.

Irina Pelphrey: Four.

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's after 6 p. m. and a couple in the morning. So we're up to 6 now.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah. So you're definitely meeting your grain intake. you're doing really well there. And

That's

another feature of how we approach the customer, ? No one wants to be told. Mike, you're doing

wrong. We want to say like, okay, you're doing well on grains, but how about you think about fruits and vegetables and maybe look at your lean protein intake and your dairy or your dairy substitutes. And the same goes for physical activity. We have sets of goals that are approachable for a person of any skill and level. You could be a triathlete or you could barely walk a mile a day and that's

okay. [00:07:00] Everyone starts in a different place but this notion of, does everyone have the agency to even get started or to even want to understand their baseline? We understand that human trait too. So that's why we, reinforce that maybe agency that doesn't exist in everyone with Some motivation and that motivation for us comes in form of grocery coupons toward healthy groceries and in form of gamification and point system that we offer to our customers. So, if you're starting from a very basic place, and you have a long way to go, we want to be your partner and we want to encourage you through those points and those grocery coupons. And only provide coupons for healthy foods because that. reinforces the

entire notion of a wellness

platform. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: That's really fascinating arena when you mention all this stuff I think the best ideas are the ones that seem the simplest [00:08:00] it's not simple because We're in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we've got some fairly high ranking stores in the area, I guess, different chains and stuff like that.

And I haven't heard of this before. It makes total sense though because when I'm at home, I'd eat better if my, I'm gonna blame my wife now. I shouldn't, but that's not even fair of me because. I'm going to blame her, but if she didn't bring the cereal home, the mini wheats and the honey bunches and all that stuff, I drop hints like, where's a cereal but I'll blame her right now anyways 

 getting that look from what people bought, it seems so simple.

I've never thought of it before. That's fascinating that you give this list. I take it at something that people sign up for. So you're not just coming down hard on them if they don't even want to hear from you on that.

Irina Pelphrey: are opting [00:09:00] into it.

And We see actually really interesting distribution of demographics. People of all ages are signing up to manage their health. we Do skew a little bit more female because that tends to be the primary shopper of the family and the primary sort of chief medical officer of the family who's managing prescriptions. But yeah, we do entice customers with coupons also to sign up because we recognize it's important for them to take that first step and be rewarded for it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: When I think of coupons, I'm always thinking of, I don't know, I guess that's maybe a lot of stuff in the grocery store. It's always stuff that's new and flashy and great logos and all that kind of stuff.

 It might be kind of expensive health food but it's probably not a lot of whole wheat bread and chicken and that kind of stuff. So it's really neat that you use the coupons to entice certain lines, or at least certain categories of food. 

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, one of [00:10:00] our most redeemed coupons is for produce. The second most redeemed is for seafood and protein. So, chicken, lean meat. It really resonates with customers, especially. It's not a secret, we had a, an industry wide inflation shock, 

so, so we're trying to really both motivate and also reward customers with these coupons because it, it helps them stick to whatever it is that they're trying to do. So, Mike, if you need to eat more veggies, we'll help you with that and stretch the dollar for you.

Mike Koelzer, Host: and Irina, are those, are most of those 

name coupons like Del Monte Bananas, or is it just more like general, like buy some lettuce kind of stuff? Is it Branded? I don't even know a lot of brands of produce.

Irina Pelphrey: that's a good question. So, CPG driven coupons to the extent they're available in our environment, we actually surface them to customers. So if there's a coupon, let's say for frozen [00:11:00] peas of a certain brand, we'll make that available but the coupons that customers get when they convert their healthy points, those are typically Either department or item level so, so it would be produce or it would be meat or it could be healthy beverages, things like that.

Mike Koelzer, Host: So it might be for a certain kind of frozen something and, the customer might have their own druthers of what brand they like because of salt content and things like that. And they can use it at the category level more than at a specific level of a, of an item.

Irina Pelphrey: Yep. Yep. Absolutely.

So, produce it's completely open ended. They can use our own brand. They can use national brands and, typically customers have their preferences for taste and they stick to them. We're not trying to change necessarily their brand affiliation. Yeah. But we do want to, over time, steer them to a slightly better product within a category.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Irina dipping a little bit back into some of your [00:12:00] history, it caught my eye that you went to Kellogg School of Management. My brother went there, too, at Northwestern. But I see that was rather recently for you, and also I know that you were at a another large retailer.

 What was the timing of that? And what was the impetus for change 

Irina Pelphrey: So the retailer that, that you mentioned is Walmart. Pretty long tenure there, working across different problems, different patient and customer problems within

health and wellness, specifically focusing on pharmacy. I spent a little bit of time also touching optical, touching Walmart health and other areas and I really. Started seeing myself as someone who could actually change patient outcomes and customer outcomes through well crafted programs, and knowing that any retailer Walmart at that time has a really large platform that really made me think, okay, I think with.[00:13:00] 

a little bit more education, a little bit better business acumen. Maybe I can do that. Maybe I can create programs that actually change people's lives. So that was my motivation to pursue an executive MBA program, which is what I went to Kellogg for. It was a wonderful experience. I have to.

Admit, I probably didn't sleep very much for two years because I actually worked as a director of managed care at that time for Walmart and went to school,

commuted from Arkansas at that time. But I do you know, feel more equipped to solve complex and strategic problems. And I'm with another retailer now with a very large platform to change lives as well.

So I feel like that education stretched me and also prepared me for the complexity that I'm dealing with now. Spanning different categories of health and wellness looking at how to stitch them all together in digital and in store [00:14:00] environment.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What was the job description for Albertsons when they hired you?

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, so my initial mandate was to stand up our digital wellness platform, which is now Sincerely Health. So at that point it was You know, a couple of presentations that were created and, my job really was to come in and collaborate with my product partners with marketing partners, technology to actually create a net new offering for our customers, which included transitioning pharmacy. App from an external vendor driven app to an internal app

that was integrated into our e commerce app then to bring that set of health and behavior change domains that didn't exist at all. So sleep, mindfulness, activity and nutrition, those were created. And then third was just to connect it to the customers. Normal flow. So if they're coming in for e [00:15:00] commerce to be able to seamlessly understand get them interested in this offering and then get them plugged in and get them using. So. We accomplished that within about a year, we launched the offering last year and we have a really large base of customers using pharmacy transactional elements, such as refills and vaccine scheduling. And we also have a large base of customers using what we call the health features. So, goals, activity tracking we have connected devices, currently fitness trackers. We have a really cool program with Apple Health where we award points for every time they close their rings. So, so that was the primary objective of what I was brought in to do. Some of the innovation, I would say that, um, we felt was really important to be opportunistic about as we're a grocer, ? And we have a foundation in in the clinical space with our pharmacists, ? So how do we bridge [00:16:00] the gap between that practice and an ever expanding, kind of sealing of what pharmacists can do.

 How can we bridge that with nutrition and bring in more insights from a dietician's perspective and really make customers lives easier? So that's, I think, that's where Food is Medicine work has expanded and evolved because we feel like it's not only a business opportunity for us as a grocer, but it's also an imperative, ?

If we don't do it if grocers don't do it, who's going to do it on behalf of the customer?

Mike Koelzer, Host: You mentioned like sleep and that's something that. It's important to everybody. It's a third of their life. And it's probably something that nobody really associates with a can I call you guys a grocery store or is that derogatory?

Irina Pelphrey: we are a grocery store.

Very proud of it.

Mike Koelzer, Host: And I didn't think it was derogatory, but I'm going to come back to that question in just a second.

But no one ever thought of like sleep and grocery. So in essence, they said Irina, combine these To show [00:17:00] people we care and show that we can solve some other problems through this and that, it's just Blending some of those things that maybe you didn't think of grocery store to blend before 

Mike: Mm

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, that's right. And, we have a particular way of looking at our role in healthcare. Our role in healthcare prior to adding Sincerely Health was really limited to dispensing medications and providing pharmacy services,

Vaccine point of care testing and the

like. We felt like there was more to it.

And the reason is because the frequency with which we touch the patient is much higher than, let's say, that of a physician. So a

typical physician sees their patient, about 2. 5 times a year.

Just in pharmacy we see our patients 12 times a year on average.

You add frequency of grocery shopping to that which we see our customers typically weekly.

So now you have 52 touch points per year. How much good can you do for the customer if you present them with the right [00:18:00] insights, with the right information? And it doesn't always

have to be just about their meds or about the food that they're seeing. So that's kind of where branching out into sleep, into activity made a lot of sense because our life is comprised of those things, ?

We sleep, we we walk, we go to the gym we intake food. And if you think about the current state of health care. Our physicians are not one equipped from a capacity perspective to go deep in any of those areas. Capacity is one, but also knowledge base, most physicians that are practicing now have very limited amount of lifestyle and functional medicine curriculum, 

so we want to fill in that gap where we address different components of your well being to be able to kind of paint the entire picture of your wellness. with things that may not be addressed during your typical healthcare visit. And we serve them up typically in form of insights. [00:19:00] You don't have to take these suggestions and they don't constitute medical advice or anything like that.

It's just general wellness intent 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I'm always concerned in my pharmacy. Well, let's get it out of the way. First of all, I'm lazy. I don't like to do a lot of stuff that I don't need to do, but a lot of the new services and pharmacy, I think sometimes pharmacies focus so much on them that they lose sight of what they're there for. And let me give you an example.

McDonald's now, they've got these fancy touch boards, with grape jelly all over them stuff. So I don't go to those. I'm not going to those until they give me a squeegee right outside that touch board that I can spray and squeegee off. So I'm still going to the register, but they've got all this fancy stuff and millions and billions and marketing and all that kind of stuff.

And I walk in there and I'm waiting like 40 seconds for someone to say hello to me, I just want a damn cup of coffee or something. And [00:20:00] I'm not sure the time, but let's say it's it's the amount of time for an old guy to get impatient.

That was how long they didn't serve me for. And I walked out and in my pharmacy, I have to be careful about this. I joke about laziness, but I have to be careful. We don't lose sight of things. And that's why I brought up the grocery store. Do you ever have to slow yourself down?

Or does anybody come to you and say, slow down? It's like arena, this is good, but you know, people feel they have to, you know, wear, uh, yoga pants . And these are the guys we're talking about. Do you ever have to stop yourself and say, okay, now wait a minute. Food is our number one thing and let's not confuse us.

And I'm sure there's a million ways you do it by, like you said, you offer it and it's on the app. I imagine people go in there and if they're not up on technology, they probably don't know the program even exists, so I'm sure it's there as an invitation. But I imagine it's something you have to think about.

Irina Pelphrey: We thought a [00:21:00] lot about how to take care of your body during COVID so that movement is continuing. People are thinking about wellness in different ways. It starts with food. It starts with activity. So, we don't believe we're departing from our core mission of serving the customer in the

grocery and pharmacy space.

All we're doing, we're giving them tools to use. That relate very closely to the things that we're already doing. So

pharmacy prescription management, and then nutrition tools and activity tools within the platform. We think of it they would probably go looking for those tools elsewhere, and then they would have a patchwork of apps that they have to navigate.

Maybe we cut it down by one or two apps

for them. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Thinking about adoption of this technology by different segments of our customers, and it used to be in pharmacy that you could say, Well, The old people aren't going to be on there as quickly. So you don't have to [00:22:00] do stuff as quickly and so on. 

But if you think about it, like our delivery system, and I guess I should say our pharmacy system in general, we send out texts to people when the delivery is on the way or when the prescription is done. And. It dawned on me, I'm sure more slowly than anybody else, but it dawned on me that almost everybody has text ability because even if they're less fortunate, they have the text because they don't have to have a landline phone, which is a lot more expensive.

So there's some shifts like that that happen and think about. Zoom meetings because of COVID, that kind of stuff. There's some shifts that happen pretty quickly. And I think these are a couple of them that really put technology quickly into the hands of a lot of people that five years ago, you didn't think would maybe be adopting it so soon.

Irina Pelphrey: Absolutely. I think I'll give you a couple of examples. One is, what we actually see in our data. I [00:23:00] was surprised by it. I expected over 60 population to be a small proportion of our user base, but we actually see that all of the demographic age cuts are equal. So about 20 percent for different age groups,

which includes this over 60.

So,

We see that population is quite engaged and are definitely leveraging the resources. And another example, I'll give you. If you think back to pre COVID, people simply couldn't schedule vaccine appointments on pharmacy property or through a physician. Like, you just had to pick up the phone and schedule that way. It's very widely used. Vaccine scheduling is one of our most frequently visited uh, features and it's both for seasonal vaccines such as COVID and flu and RSV and it's also for kind of other immunizations, Shingrix and things of that nature.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What kind of things have [00:24:00] changed with COVID and I'm talking grocery in general, not so much just pharmacy, but what are some trends that grocery is seeing that you maybe haven't seen before?

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, so I think, and this is not a new one, but it really definitely expanding during COVID is e commerce and how people shop. So more people have e commerce as part of their kind of monthly routine. For some it might be weekly. I personally order my groceries weekly through e commerce. For others, it might be once a quarter, but it's now part of their pattern, part of

 How they shop.

And getting that right for a grocer is really important because if that's how the general population wants to engage

we must give it to them. I think the tendency to prefer partially prepared or fully prepared options is also true. Customers [00:25:00] are looking for that convenience. And we have assortment of ready meals that are ready to cook or ready to eat or ready to heat. So, depending on whether you have an oven, or if it's just a microwave we have a. a large assortment of options there. and that can be both you're picking it up in store or you're ordering it through e commerce as part of your kind of meal planning.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Tell me the business model behind ordering their food on their phone, like my wife does. And some of them are either free or quite inexpensive, it seems 

do stores like that? Do they like to keep us old farts out of the aisle and have the teenager run around and do this stuff to shop for people? is that a trend that grocery stores like, or is it just added cost?

Irina Pelphrey: I think it's, I would say it's just the reality of how we must serve the customer these

days. The [00:26:00] economics of an e commerce order, are more tricky for a grocer, but we also understand that's one of the ways, your wife shops. And if we want her entire Basket if we want her basket when she comes into the store and her e commerce basket, we have to have those capabilities. So it's more of an omni channel play we look at the customer holistically that way, not in particular, what does the e commerce basket do versus in store, but. Are

we filling all of their needs?

Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, cuz I know in pharmacy like if I didn't have to have delivery service And if all those people came in the store It would be less expensive for the pharmacy However, I wouldn't pick up all that business. I might only keep 20 percent of the delivery business or 10 percent of it and the 90 percent would Find a different way to do it.

So you just have to kind of bend for what's out there.[00:27:00] 

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, pharmacy is a good example because you have you have acute

prescriptions and you have maintenance prescriptions, ?

Maintenance prescriptions are very well positioned for central fill or for kind of recurring delivery, which As a grocer, we of course want them to come in and pick up the prescription because they

can also conveniently pick up a few things that they need for the day or for the week. Acute, there is, almost no models, very limited models for how acute can be handled same day because you

literally need the medication typically within hours if you

have an earache or,

Need antibiotic. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: All right. Irina, your job sounds kind of fun to me. But it would not sound fun if I had to have anything to do with HR do you have to do anything with HR in your department or is that? Someone else.

Irina Pelphrey: I have a wonderful partner who [00:28:00] oversees all of our pharmacy operations.

So, our pharmacists and technicians have reporting accountability into our divisions directly and then a dotted line accountability to my partner. So my team and I serve a support function. So, we support them from a managed care and managed care operations perspective.

So, credentialing, enrollment, contracting, audit, things of that nature, 340B.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Gotcha, so you're doing that side, but You or somebody under you isn't Trying to find pharmacists to fill store 30 because you need somebody there. That's a different part of the operation,

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, that's a different side. That's, closely. working with store operations 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I've done that, working at the pharmacy and I hate it, but I guess it's job security for people. I mean, there's always going to be issues and reasons to have that part of the company [00:29:00] and somebody good at it who can wants to deal with it. 

Mike: Yep.

Irina Pelphrey: recruitment has been, A pain point obviously, ? With the demand during COVID and with kind of changes and in the scope of work, there's been a lot of challenges, but I'm really happy to report that we have NPS of 89 which. is a huge testament to the fact that I think we're taking good care of our pharmacists and technicians, and then they're able to take good care of their customers. This kind of NPS is unheard of in healthcare in general, and it's higher than average for what I would, imagine 

Mike Koelzer, Host: that's a satisfaction survey of some sort.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, not promoter score. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Gotcha.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, so, so to me someone is getting it right, the recruitment and retention and we have wonderful pharmacists that deliver wonderful patient care.

 Irina, 

Mike Koelzer, Host: what's the worst part [00:30:00] of your week where you say, ah, I gotta do that today. It's Wednesday and I hate doing this. What is that for you?

Irina Pelphrey: I would say. Okay. Administrative tasks that don't directly connect to either improving the lives of our customers or our associates are those things, ? Things that

you gotta do but you don't necessarily see a direct connection, so

typically those would be administrative things. But

you have to do them, uh, corporate, admin budget planning, things of that nature. There's a structure to this planning. You have to do it but you know, it may not have an immediate impact on our customers right away.

Mike Koelzer, Host: What is your surroundings? Like how many on your team, who, and how often do you report to someone who reports to you? What kind of head count are we looking at?

Irina Pelphrey: So my team is about 50 people spanning across those 3 pillars manage care is [00:31:00] our work with pharmacy benefit managers and health plans. That's the largest team because we support a very large pharmacy business.

Sincerely Health is our digital engagement platform. That team is small but mighty. We have a larger team kind of working on product and engineering efforts and marketing efforts to support

that, but they don't directly report to me. And then last, also small and mighty is our food as medicine team and team that focuses on. Healthcare payments such as flex cards and directed spend. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I thought it was a great idea with the food and so on.

I would imagine in a spot like yours, that when you're answering to people, you have to come up with some numbers of things and some data of things. So when you talk about this food pharmacy integration, did everybody just say, Hey, good idea. Give it a shot. Or did you have to prove something with numbers?

And then. After you've [00:32:00] done it for a while, do you have to show metrics of what you've done, or is it just, have fun?

Irina Pelphrey: No, there's, rigor, analytical rigor, and research rigor that we did both up front and then you know, once we launched the platform. So, before even starting the work, before a single line of code was written, we really thought about, well, what are the customer needs that we're trying to solve for, ?

You always have to start any endeavor with that in mind. So,

we surveyed close to 10, 000 customers, both Albertson's customers and those that

shop our competitors or use our competitors pharmacies and one of the key insights that we, gleaned was that especially customers who live with chronic disease, they have just a lot of cognitive load and just processing their daily activity. So if you take a diabetic, for example, they have to test blood sugar, they have to figure out which foods [00:33:00] are right for them, ? So that their sugar doesn't spike. They have

to stay on top of their meds. They have to keep You know records of what they ate around the time when their sugar spiked, ? So that's a lot on someone. Let's take a newly diagnosed diabetic. have a shock of a chronic disease diagnosis and then on top of that you have to have the agency to figure out all the, all of the things that you need to know. So there's education, there is in the moment insights. So, that 10, 000 person study actually gave us good view into how, think about chronic health care management, and then what we would call general wellness.

Maybe someone just wants to move a little bit

more, or wants to figure out if vegetarian diet can help them live longer. So, Those are two different types of problems that we're solving for, but the approach is the same, ? 

That's really kind of our, both the motivation behind the customer [00:34:00] need, but also the insight.

And we are seeing, We're getting verbatim comments from customers all the time. They actually do see us as a partner in health care. And to your earlier point what right does a grocer have to go beyond food and dispensing prescriptions? Actually, there is an unmet need that customers they didn't even know they needed us

until they started using the experience and started using the app.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Just before we got on here, I was reading an article and it said that, News sources online don't benefit by those news sources having social media Blips. In other words, some magazine or something, they don't do much better by having little blips about their stories and things like that.

In your programs. Do you have like A B testing, or how do you know when you're getting more successful in the things that you've done, whether it's a coupon versus [00:35:00] a, little article recommendation or things like that, , I imagine this is tracked somehow.

That's probably the beauty of some of the technology behind it.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, we are actually working on a more robust approach to A B testing and kind of testing different messages with different customers. Because, for you, maybe a message about fruit may not resonate, but if you talk about vegetables, it may matter to you.

So, yes, absolutely.

We test it and we actually use methodologies that compare customers that engage in our health platform with similar customers that do not engage.

So as our platform matures, we want to look at, what does this behavior change? Actually, what does it mean in the long run and

how is it changing both purchasing patterns and also Lifestyle outcomes or clinical outcomes.

Mike Koelzer, Host: The long range is so [00:36:00] important. Losing weight's not hard, but I always say, let's check what I'm doing three years from now, or check so and so three years from now, that kind of thing, because it's that long range stuff.

And to your point of making it easy for people, if they're not thinking about it, it's just happening, they're getting coupons and they're getting this and that it's made their life easier to do this instead of burdensome at all to do this.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, we're not here to support customers with quick fixes that won't work.

We really want to help them change habits for life. So one of the, one of the approaches and features that we have a very broad set of goals for wellness. So

if I take, let's say physical activity All of our goal sets are either set 7 day goals, or you can trial an activity.

If you like, biking, let's try it for a week. But we really

know that habit formation actually takes 21 days.

21 days helps you stick with something that [00:37:00] you may stick for life. So that's really the orientation. We allow customers to experiment and pick what they like. What they are interested in, but really we're trying to drive behavior change that's sustainable.

Mike: If 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I gave up my cereal for 21 days, I would have solved it because I'd be dead. Not taking my life. I just don't picture living if I couldn't have my cereal.

Irina Pelphrey: We would never say, Mike, don't have your cereal. What we might say, Mike, why don't you add some bell peppers as part of this dinner recipe? And why don't you add some strawberries with with 

your morning cereal? 

Mike Koelzer, Host: I know what would happen. I know what happened. You've got all this set up and it's going well, but for me, I'm coded as an intervention. So I would come in there with like a coupon or something and there would be twelve of you guys just sitting around saying, Mike, we need to talk to you.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah. Well, that, that's where experimentation comes in, ? [00:38:00] What would be the most appealing

message for Mike

and, 

There, there's no one size fits all.

Mike Koelzer, Host: I imagine AI is going to be really cool on this for you guys, because there's probably some patterns that you don't even think about. I'm just going to throw one out just for kicks. It might be people that park on this side of the parking lot and so far away, end up doing this.

 There's some things that you don't even know are going to happen. That'll just come out of this data that you have.

Irina Pelphrey: Yeah, for sure. We use machine learning already today in some of our product algorithms, so how we classify products, how we process information

around their nutritional composition. We're very careful in how we use our customers data, though. So, Very strict maintenance of

permissions, what we are to do with our personal data, because

it's both personal and it's also health [00:39:00] data.

So any analysis we do is always, of course, aggregated, but we can glean some useful insights and then be able to engage customers on the basis of those.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Irina, if there was something cool that you could have, like for pharmacy, I would like our deliveries to be the drone things, you know, coming down and dropping them off and things like that. Is there anything either coming down the pipe Or would just be cool that you're thinking of maybe another industry that would be really cool in your industry if you could get it going.

Irina Pelphrey: Maybe this one is not so futuristic, but we have a feature that combines grocery pickup with pharmacy order pickup. It's rolling out in a lot of divisions right now. I'm excited about it because there's a, As a mom, as a primary shopper, I'm the one who's doing prescription pickup for everyone, and it's typically

multiple trips, ?

I'm going on Monday to get the groceries. I'm going

on Tuesday to get the meds. [00:40:00] So combining that actually streamlines the caregiver's day. So I'm really excited about that technology.

Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah, that makes sense. In the pharmacy, maybe most of our listeners have it, where if there's a prescription here that was filled three days ago, when the person comes in, it connects those two electronically to say there's two bags here kind of thing, but how often we've gone to the store and you, need something and you forget, well, 

it's a cliche, you forget the milk you're there and it's two trips. So that's a pretty good tie in. 

 Boy, Arena, nice having you on the show. It's fun to go behind the scenes on this stuff. We get it. Often from the pharmacy side but not from the other side also the whole grocery food side.

So very cool tie in very interesting stuff. So thanks for your time, Runa. Thanks for coming on.

Irina Pelphrey: Thanks, Mike. And I really appreciate your customer perspective and your own feedback, you're a real customer, Who likes

cereal. So how do we sell for you? It was a [00:41:00] blast. Thank you,

Mike, for having me. 

Mike Koelzer, Host: Thank you. We'll keep in touch. 

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