Intent Data Is A Gift, With Edible Brands

0:12Erica Randerson: Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.

0:24This podcast is sponsored by Snap. Ditch your outdated marketing plan and spend smarter with Snapchat for business.

0:42I'm Alison Schiff, Editor-in-Chief of AdExchanger, and this is AdExchanger Talks. Today, I'm joined by Erica Randerson, Chief Digital Officer at Edible Brands, the company behind Edible Arrangements and a newly launched hemp-derived marketplace, Edibles.com. We'll talk about what gifting can reveal about customer intent, how to personalize without crossing privacy lines, and how Edible prepares its franchise network for the last-minute rush of Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. It's like their Super Bowl. In fact, Valentine's Day and the Super Bowl actually coincide this year. We'll also get into GEO, the very interesting origin story behind edibles.com, and how Edible uses AI on its site to analyze intent and personalize the experience as people browse.

1:29But before we get into it, spare me a moment to tell you about a very cool event we've got coming up. Join us in New York City at the Time Center on March 30th and 31st for CTV World, which will bring together more than 500 senior advertisers, distributors, and programmers to talk about all things CTV. If you want to master the new TV economy, then you need to be in this room. We'll see you there. Hey, Erica, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Allison. Thanks so much for having me. So what is one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know that I couldn't find out just by Googling you?

2:06Good question. And you could probably find it by Googling, but it'd be some deep searching. Yeah. Prior to getting into the digital industry and really, you know, landing my career there, I had a long career in competitive clogging. So I started a clogging. Excusez-moi. I know. It's my big fun fact of life. I don't think I'll ever top it. Tap it. Oh, there you go. Wonderful punning. Yes, but it culminated in an experience on America's Got Talent with my team and four national champion back-to-back-to-back-to-back titles. So that's my fun fact. The instant we finished this podcast, I'm going to go find that clip.

2:48I cannot wait to see it. Love it. So I guess after clogging, you worked at an agency and then at a beauty startup before Edible. What made you take on digital for a franchise business that's been around since 1999? Love the question. Yeah, I jumped into digital. I went to Georgia Tech for my undergrad and had a wonderful mentor there who, as she moved through her career, ended up at an agency. And I kind of stumbled into agency life working for her. And it was right at the brink when we were all learning what is Google Analytics and how do Google ads work and what's programmatic display. And I fell in love with it.

3:29I really appreciated this new digital lens to marketing. And I got the opportunity to work on a lot of cool brands, none in franchising, but a lot with similar models. So when this opportunity came up to jump into Edible, I was excited to go brand side. And I was also excited to jump into a company that was founder owned and I knew would keep up that fast pace of agency life that I really enjoyed. I want to make sure that our listeners know what Edible is first because you're a lot bigger than just fruit bouquets. You're the parent company of Edible Arrangements, started in East Haven, Connecticut in 1999.

4:07You also own, and I didn't know this, a Mediterranean fast casual restaurant chain called Roti that you guys acquired last year out of bankruptcy. And you have a marketplace for hemp-derived THC products called Edibles.com. I definitely want to talk more about edibles.com and the origin of that business because it is a fascinating tale. But first, a few more facts. You guys, edible brands writ large, you do close to 500 million a year in revenue. More than 80 % of the business comes through e-commerce, which I think is a lot more digital than most people think of when they're picturing a business that's so franchise forward.

4:46So with all of that going on, as the Chief Digital Officer, what are you responsible for? Good question. And thank you. So, so well articulated really what Edible Brands has become these past several years. So it is much more than Edible Arrangements, our legacy brand. But the addition of Roti and Edibles has given us a lot of fun avenues to play within and new customers to engage with these brands. But overall, my purview is everything digital, whether that's the front end digital customer experiences, the digital that we have in our stores to help our franchisees surprise, delight our guests, our restaurant visitors, and then the underlying technology that powers both the franchise system, the customer systems that they're engaging with.

5:32So overall, Edible Brands truly represents a national digital business that happens for the Edible Arrangements brand to be fulfilled through a franchise network. What does the portfolio mean? Like Mediterranean fast casual, the fruit bouquets and the edibles business in one portfolio. You know, our ethos has really revolved around bringing the wow, the edible wow, which we started with over 25 years ago, has really pivoted for us to be bringing joy and celebration in all of life's moments, big and small. So that joy and celebration could be your lunch break, getting to have a wonderful, healthy, vibrant bowl from one of our roti locations.

6:14that could be enjoying some of our edibles.com products that our tagline there is health, not high. So very much focused on the health side of how these products in this marketplace can help consumers better enjoy life. And then, of course, the natural tie in with celebration with edible arrangements and just being there, whether it's a Tuesday and you're trying to get over a haircut that didn't land right or it's your mom's birthday and you're excited to celebrate her from afar. I feel seen, Erica. For people who are watching the video and not just listening to the podcast, I have this really bad habit of cutting my own bangs.

6:48I've done this since I was a child. And I'd say one out of every 10 times, because yes, I've done it that many times, it works. And the rest of the time, I just deeply regret it. So I do need a little pick me up. I feel you, Allison. I have used edible many occasions for those self haircuts that should never have happened. And there's a question that every franchise brand deals with, I think, which is who owns the customer? I want to get nerdy now. It's a data question. So if someone orders on ediblearrangements.com and a franchise fills it, I would argue that both sides have a stake in that relationship.

7:26Who owns it? Who owns the data? Yeah, great, great question. And the way that we look at that is that edible arrangements, the brand owns the data. So we do a lot from the corporate standpoint to help empower our franchisees to focus on a couple of things. Operational excellence, ability to engage with their customers. So we'll talk a little bit more about that with the data itself, but then also delivering that wow experience that I just mentioned. Really for us, one of the biggest advantages that we have being edible arrangements is that we know both the person who is sending the gift and who the order is going to, which can be genuinely helpful for our customers.

8:04So think of that example where you sent your mom a birthday gift last April. We can remind you this April. Hey, sounds like you bought this last year. Is it time to send that again? So this is really where personalization benefits the customer, but then it also benefits the franchisee, right, too. So we're able to look at all this buying behavior and transactional behavior, pull that into a buy store level to really help our franchisees execute not just on customer retention and marketing, but also forecasting and ensuring that their stores are ready to handle demand as it's coming through. Can you tell when someone started out as a recipient?

8:40Because I imagine that people exist on a continuum for you. Sometimes they're the recipient, sometimes they're the gift giver. And all of that has to stay organized in your data set and impacts how you reach out to them and how you personalize the experience. Absolutely. And that is, you know, that's the hope is that every single recipient ultimately becomes a customer at some point in their life that we've given them that wow experience where they choose to do that. But to answer from more of like a data and privacy standpoint, we are maniacal about how that data is structured, the privacy and compliance governing each of those data sets.

9:17So there's the relationship that we have is built on the one with the purchaser. So we take a very conservative approach to privacy. We've got a team fully dedicated to compliance. We don't market to recipients. And a customer actually cannot even opt their recipient into communications. That mechanism doesn't exist. That said, we do feel and we hope that all recipients end up being purchasing customers. So the one thing that we include is with every edible product purchase, a hang tag is included. And on that hang tag is a QR code. And if the recipient chooses to scan that, they'll land on a page that offers them a free gift in exchange for their email address with full opt-in language and requirements there.

10:00So it's a choice that recipients can make knowingly, and we are happy to give them kind of like a free extra gift for allowing us to market to them in the future. But to your point, it's critical that we have those data sets separately and treat them differently. That would seem like a pretty clear opt-in, someone choosing to send themselves a gift. They become the gift giver and the recipient at the same time. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, we also see some interesting product mix changes when you're looking at that life cycle, whether you're starting as a recipient or starting as a customer. One fun fact that I'll throw at you that we've uncovered in our data more recently is that if a recipient's gift includes one of our cookies, so to your point earlier, we do much more than just the fruit bouquet edible arrangements, but if it includes our cookies, that recipient is much more likely to convert into a customer at a future date.

10:54So just some really interesting findings having two different customer data sets to look at. I feel compelled to make it very clear that we're talking about literal cookies that you could eat because you are on the Ad Exchanger Talks podcast. So everyone who has PTSD from the deprecation saga, we're talking about cookies that you can eat after you've had something from edibles.com. Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit more about getting creative with first party data collection. How else are you adding to that data set? Yeah, good question. I'll take the angle, if you're okay with it, of a little bit of how we've treated customer acquisition parties and how we're engaging with that for a first party conversion.

11:41So for us, Uber Eats, DoorDash have been huge wins in terms of new marketplace expansion over the past several years. But as everyone in e-commerce or retail or restaurant knows, that is not your customer, it's their customer. And so we've taken measures. We do a lot of hang tag marketing. I already mentioned our QR code conversion, but a lot of specific marketing goes into delivery when it is an order from Uber Eats or DoorDash or EasyCater. What's interesting for us too is that we often see that that product mix is very different for our customer shopping on a third party versus a first party.

12:19So for example, one of our top selling products on DoorDash is our it's a cone that's filled with chocolate covered strawberries. So very much like a self treat, not so much a gift purchase. Number one top selling product. We don't sell a whole lot of those on our website and our app. So we know that there's a different kind of service between each of these different channels. And what we focus on heavily is our ability through, you know, the means that we have able and a lot of that is more traditional marketing to get that person to convert to a first party customer. And things like loyalty and all of that obviously come into play as well.

12:54Do you notice that people are more likely to come back if they're a, say, DoorDash customer versus a direct customer? Because there is a lot of gift giving and people peg their purchases to specific events and occasions and those come around maybe once a year, maybe twice a year? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think transparently the closed loop ecosystem that an Uber Eats or a DoorDash represent does make it challenging to be able to understand the full continuum of that customer between the third party and the first party channels. Our customer frequency today for our first party channels is a little over one time a year.

13:37So to your point, we show up big for holiday, whether that's Valentine's Day or Mother's day, which between the two make up about 40 % of our orders throughout the year, or another, you know, calendar holiday, where we are really investing in as a brand. It's personalization, but it's personalization with the effort to be there on your holidays. So what is, as it looked to Allison's calendar, what are the holidays that you're celebrating? It's probably a loved one's birthday. It's maybe an anniversary. It's maybe a sympathy gift for someone that's experiencing a rough moment in life. So for us, we're looking to continue to expand our product line, who we are, and how we show up for customers with really the in-between the holiday moments and how we can grow and expand that.

14:22So sticking with data, I want to quote you to you. So you've said that gifting is one of the purest data sets for intent, but most brands aren't using it that way. We've touched on it a little bit, but unpack that for me. What makes gifting purer than other forms of data? And give me an example. Yeah. It's so true. And I'll give you a data point to kind of start the conversation in here, but then we'll flip to really the intent behind it. But the conversion rate on a typical e-commerce site, you're usually jumping up and down when you've got like a 3%, 4%, right? And with edible arrangements, especially if you're in one of these holiday peak times, it's not uncommon for us to have 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 % on-site conversion rates because of just the high intent that our customers are coming with us for.

15:16We deliver to 80 % of US zip codes within an hour. So we are that solution for you. Hopefully you're thinking ahead and, you know, if it's a birthday or a celebration or whatever it may be, you've put some time into that. But if you haven't and you're remembering it's mom's birthday at 5 p.m., we can help you make sure that day is still special. So for us, we're really thinking about how do we show up for our customer when they are last minute and moving through that way. I read a piece where you were interviewed, I think it was digital commerce 360 possibly. It was right before Mother's Day I came across it when I was Googling you in advance of our chat now.

15:59And you were talking about how customers are coming through the digital front door later than ever. And it's very noticeable comparing behavior now to behavior before the pandemic. like before the pandemic, Valentine's Day was whatever it was, like a week or maybe even 10 business days long sales window. And now, you know, you see this spike in the final 48 hours. Not that it wasn't always that way, but you'll get something like a million customers a day on the site right before the holiday. How do you manage that? It seems like a recipe for your site to just shut down? Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's, it's a management on two different fronts.

16:47It's a management on the digital and technology side. And then it's a big management on the operational side for our franchisees. So to your point, pre pandemic, when customers weren't so trained that everything could be instant, we did have a lot of that those orders coming in 10 days, seven days ahead of the holiday. And now, the majority of our orders are happening within a 48-hour period of Valentine's Day or 48-hour period of Mother's Day. So for that, there's a lot of load testing, a lot of pen testing. So there's a lot that goes on the digital side to ensure that our site is ready and able for those visitors.

17:25We also do something unique where it's both a digital and operational lever we pull where we shrink our catalog. So you will not be able to order all 350 SKUs that we sell on our site today for fulfillment on Valentine's Day. We shrink that catalog to a key 30, 40 products, plus or minus some add-ons and upgrades. And those are the products that are available for you as the customer to order for delivery on those high-demand days. So that helps us not only from ensuring the user experience on site is very clear and almost every customer can get into that happy path quickly, but operationally for our franchisees, it also helps them prepare and ensure you're not moving from creating an arrangement that looks like a unicorn to an arrangement that looks like a football platter to the next thing.

18:13So we're giving them a more clear set of operational guidelines. So leveraging a lot of our data to understand when it's coming, what's coming, and how do we best prepare our stores through stock inventory, even staffing to handle those periods of peak volume. As a last minute person, I do appreciate the attempt to help me with my choice paralysis. I went to my mother-in-law's dinner for her birthday last week and we were filling out the card like outside the restaurant, which is so bad. It happens to the best of us. It happens to me every Valentine's Day. I'll be, you know, at work morning of 2.14 making sure everything's functioning and then it's, oh my gosh, I forgot.

18:59I forgot to place my orders. So we are here for that and we're prepared for it. And just the realization is that we're not going to be able to change customer behavior across the industry and across all of what retail has trained them to be able to get so instantly. So the challenge for us is how do we get better and slicker as a digital experience to meet that demand? And one more before we hit a break. Demand is demanding. People can be very particular and they want what they want when they want it. They have been trained for that. And if the moment is a little bit fraught in that they need a gift, they need something right then, you have to serve that up.

19:43And the experience has to be good. And nothing is more fraught than Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. You mentioned Valentine's Day in particular. You're probably already just deep into Valentine's Day planning mode, even though it's October. You mentioned forecasting before and predictive forecasting to tell franchisees how much product, what kind of product to expect each day leading up to the holiday. You help them plan with staffing, including how many drivers each store needs. It just sounds like a heck of a lot of logistics. How do you do that? How does that forecasting work at the store level?

20:19What data is going in? And how does it change what a franchisee does during a very, very high volume occasion? Yeah. And you're right about the months. We're on the tail end of being in thick of Valentine's Day actually right now. This process for Valentine's 2027 started probably seven or eight months ago from our supply chain team down throughout the rest of the organization. So pretty much from the moment Valentine's Day wraps, we are on to planning the next Valentine's Day. But from a data perspective, we're looking at what products were ordered. Because so many of our systems are homegrown, I think we'll touch on that maybe a little bit later, but we do have the depth and the wealth of 27 at this point years of ordering behavior from customers that then ties directly into our product catalog.

21:12So as we're seeing shifts in what customers are purchasing, they're purchasing a few more platters this year than arrangements. We're seeing an uptick in cookies and bake shop. We're able to help our franchisees ensure that they are placing the right orders with our supply chain team, with our fresh distributors, that their inventory is ready to go. And then we've also had a lot of technology enhancements as it relates to driver logistics over the past couple of years. So we're not only helping stores plan for that in-person or in-store staffing, but also driver staffing, to your point as well.

21:46And we've partnered with a couple of different companies to help us leverage third-party delivery fleets, too, to really supplement staffing there, especially on those peak holiday time periods. So it really is drawing on the wealth of data that we have and the trends we're able to see, highly impacted by day of week. So we're constantly looking at the last time a insert Valentine's Day fell on a Sunday. I will tell you and drop for you, it is quite the data conundrum that we've had to make a lot of educated analysis around this coming Valentine's Day. It is Super Bowl Sunday. So heads up for the guys and girls that are very into football.

22:26You have to think about two things at once that Valentine's Day. But we're lucky that we have so much data we can lean upon and really help arm not only our internal systems, but our franchisees to meet the demand in those periods. So your Super Bowl takes place on the Super Bowl. You know, the stars have aligned this year, and I hope they don't align for many, many more years to come because it's been quite the stressful planning event. But yes, this year they've aligned. What's an example of scenario planning? you're just trying to make sure that everything's in place so it goes as smoothly as possible yes exactly and I mean you have the fun things to deal with like CPMs they're going to be high because people are buying media not just for Valentine's Day for Super Bowl and yeah there's a lot of different factors that are going to go into planning this Valentine's Day but we have a great team and like I said we've got a lot of data so I think we're kind of writing the playbook Look for, to your point, many different scenarios turning on and off as it relates to on-site creative, marketing creative, timing, fee structures, all of the things that we're just ready to react in very real time as we experience the holiday.

23:37You have to report back because that is going to be intense. I will. I imagine someone's going to pour a bucket of Gatorade over you at the end of this. All right. So we're going to take a quick break. When we're back, we're going to talk about edibles.com, AI search, lots of other good stuff. So stick with us.

24:06All right, we're back. And let's start with the origin story of edibles.com because it really is a very cool story. Edible Brands bought the edibles.com domain and launched it as a marketplace last year. And my understanding is that it started with search insights. Millions of people were typing edibles, the word edibles, into Google and landing on edible arrangements sites, but they were actually looking for THC or CBD products, not fruit bouquets or cookies. When did you realize that you were just sitting on this new business opportunity? You know, it really goes far earlier than that. Our founder and owner, Tarek Farid, and his daughter, who now leads the company, Somya Silber, had this insight five, six, seven years ago of just the opportunity to own this domain.

25:02We sensed, and as, you know, legislature was continuing to develop, that there was going to be an opportunity within this market that didn't exist at the time. But we wanted to be poised in a way where we could take advantage of that when and if the time came. So obviously the time has come. We've had the opportunity to launch this digital marketplace on edibles.com. Our president for the brand, Thomas Winstanley, comes from the hemp industry. Just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to operating in that space. And that's required 100%. It's building an e-commerce brand in this space is not like building an e-commerce brand in any other space.

25:38But we've been really grateful for the success that we've had thus far. We started out delivering in the state of Texas, and we have since expanded to the majority of U.S. where that trade is legal. And we're looking forward to continuing to build. And I shared with you earlier our tagline is health not high. So we focus on the benefits of our products and how it can help you with sleep or more focus or whatever that need may be. But yeah, if any of our viewers haven't checked out edibles.com yet, give it a whirl. We'd love your viewership and feedback. The domain edibles.com is like so perfect.

26:21And of course, you have an SEO advantage there. But search is changing so fast with AI overviews, people asking ChatGPT instead of Google. does an exact match domain still carry the same weight? And how are you thinking about showing up in AI answers for this category? Yeah, I won't claim to have the answer to your first question about does it hold the same weight? Nobody does. I was about to say, I think the jury's out. And I think just transparently, you know, the every e-commerce or industry event I go to, it seems like we're all still trying to kind of figure out like, what does agentic AI mean for my business?

26:59And will my website still be relevant in a year headline? I think it will be. But just figuring out this AEO, GEO landscape for us, and I'll speak a little bit more to the edible arrangement side, just because it's a larger sample size. We're still seeing about less than 10 % of our traffic coming in from AI platforms or LLM models. But that said, what's been interesting for us is examining the behavior of that traffic. and it is different than the standard or the average of the rest of our channels. So for our AI traffic, they're converting at a higher rate, and they're spending about$10 more than traffic from other channels.

27:40And a$10 jump in AOV is not insignificant. So it's clear that these channels are helping convert our customer before they get to us. And we haven't touched on this, but one of the big focuses for me and my teams over the past 18 months has been just a digital transformation of our underlying technology. Edibles.com was built on Shopify and we're currently in the process of moving edible arrangements to Shopify, which will be launching here in a matter of days, weeks. And part of that move for us was partnering with a platform that is so deeply embedded with LLMs and AI itself. So certainly in the viewpoint or the horizon for us is figuring out how can we show up even stronger and better for transactions within these AI platforms as well.

28:27And how do you decide what to build versus buy? I'm assuming you have a lot of tech in-house that you've made yourself. Yeah, that's it. You know, I think the philosophy that I have taken on is really understanding what do we want to be the best at and what is truly proprietary for us and being maniacal about examining every new opportunity within technology because I'm sure that everyone listening to this and you and I, we're full of new technology ideas and new digital experiences. And I think that really the rigor and the practice becomes, do I really need to build that or is there something out there that's like 90 % of what I'm dreaming that I could leverage and keep my hosting costs down or keep my tech stack simpler and just create the ease of operations.

29:14So for us, as we've been And along this digital transformation these past several months, we have leaned into a lot of off the shelf platforming, Shopify as an example, and then those things that are proprietary that we do very uniquely. For us, that's we're an e-commerce company that has not a 3PL, but a franchise network. So the way that we distribute orders and do order routing, that's proprietary. And it would be very challenging for us to find off the shelf technology that could replace that logic. So we've kept that owned and in-house and we'll continue to build around it. So that really has become like the distinguishing line for us of is it proprietary and is it special, special to edible?

29:53And if not, let's explore those off the shelf options. And back back to edibles.com. So you have this massive database of edible arrangements customers built over more than two decades, working on three decades. but the audience buying a fruit bouquet for Mother's Day isn't necessarily the same audience looking for Delta 9 sleep gummies, although they probably are the same people. So when I was getting ready for this, I was thinking, oh, I wanted to ask, like, how are you handling identity resolution and data segregation behind the scenes? Because I'm like, oh, well, those are going to be very different customers.

30:34But when I thought about it a little bit more, I realized there must be tons of overlap because people who use Delta 9 sleep gummies to hit the sack have mothers. Yeah, yeah. No, I think you're right in that we likely do see a lot of audience overlap. And at the same time, we've been very precise about how we store that data between the separation of those two brands and how the data does or does not more intentionally interact. And the reason for that is just from a compliance standpoint. We want to ensure that our edible arrangements customers who may not have interest in seeing things about edibles.com are not blasted with that unintentionally or without an opt-in and vice versa.

31:19But to your point, we certainly do have overlap in customer naturally. But we've been very careful from a brand standpoint to keep those brands separated. And I shared a couple months back, this is right when we first launched the edibles.com business. But we did a lot of training with our customer service team on the edible arrangement side because we knew we'd get a lot of questions and calls from customers. And my favorite one was just a very sweet woman who called in and just wanted to confirm that her grandson's order of an edible arrangement would have no THC-driven product in it. And of course, we confirmed immediately no.

31:57And completely different supply chain, completely different distribution. But it did highlight the real customer concern or that opportunity for us to ensure we were clearly educating to customers the difference between these brands. So while there certainly is customer overlap, we're very specific about keeping the identity of those brands and the data sets of those brands separate. I don't know why, but I thought that story was going to go differently that she was calling to make sure that her, I thought I was thinking of her grandson as being like in his 20s to ensure that his edibles.com order that she got him was going to be on time.

32:35I still think the ideal, you know, they don't put me in charge of marketing, but at some point we'll get Martha Stewart on the edible arrangement side and how wonderful of a host gift it is and then figure out how to bring Snoop in along with her. I was going to say both brands at once. You got to get Snoop. Also, I mean, Martha, Martha's into the THC. Absolutely. For data segregation and being maniacal about privacy, as you put it, do you use a data clean room? What technology do you use to make sure that you're keeping your data hygienic and as it needs to be? Yeah. I mean, the data process is really governed by three bodies here internally.

33:18So our data and AI team, our compliance team, and our legal team. So just from even a team structure standpoint, this is not a data room or a piece of technology that is owned by a technical group. It is really a shared service between all three parties to ensure that as we are handling anything related to customer or PII, it is in review and in ownership in some way and a racy amongst those three groups. So we use a ton of different mechanisms to do that from a technology standpoint, But I think the underlying message is that for us, data doesn't necessarily just sit with the data team. It's truly a partnership with our legal and compliance team as well.

33:59And I read somewhere that you guys use AI on your site to analyze intent as people browse. And that's also helped grow the average order value by something like$5 year over year. But the story didn't go into detail. What's the AI behind that? Is it third-party personalization tools? Is it a partnership with an LLM, something you built in-house? Good question. Yeah, we've partnered with Dynamic Yield, which is a MasterCard company, about two years ago. And so with this technology, we're able to coordinate with our CDP and really understand customer behavior as it's happening on site. So as Allison goes on to ediblearrangements.com, maybe you're browsing and you're really gravitating towards our bake shop items.

34:48So the first product you may click or the category you may go into has got a lot of brownies in it. So we take note of that. And as you're moving through the site, as I see you, you're really just not interested in flowers. We're going to show you less and less flowers and maybe more and more products that include that baked good element. Or if you've narrowed it down, maybe that brownie specifically. So actually real time as you move through our site, ensuring that we're serving you up products that we believe are most closely aligned with your intent. And then you must do tons of cross-sell.

35:18Yes, cross-sell and up-sell is a huge part of that as well. So understanding, okay, you have this in your basket. We know the perfect pairing with that is X add-on. So let's make sure that's at the top of the list. A good example and very obvious example would be we don't want our beautiful ceramic flower vases showing as the ideal add-on when you have no flowers in your cart. So some of it is very obvious. the way that we've done our mapping. And then some of it's a little less obvious and just based on the data patterns and trends that we've seen of what we may suggest to you to add to your card as well.

35:52And we talked about gifting a bit during the first half, but I have another gifting related question because gifting is obviously very occasion driven and people only buy a couple of times a year and then they disappear. But I want to go into more detail about how you get them to come back in between. Because, you know, you, of course, have the personal, you know, holidays. Sometimes there are things that people are grieving. Sometimes they just want to treat themselves. But you have to know how to reach that person with the right messages and for the site to reflect that experience that they're looking for.

36:27So it makes sense that you want to personalize, but the how of it sounds really challenging. Yeah, this has been a big initiative of ours for the past several years. And one massive milestone that we completed earlier this year was a complete redesign of our edible app. So the consumer app, and that included a complete redesign of our loyalty program. So the edible app, as we thought through this new experience, is very much focused on how can we add value to you as a gift giver, maybe a self-treater, but includes things like gift reminders, ability to curate gift lists, fun quizzes to help you understand like, okay, if I have a friend who doesn't like chocolate, but is gluten-free and loves this type of fruit, what are the perfect gifts that we can really serve up as ideas for that person?

37:14So it's much more of an experience to shop, but it also allows us to do things like help you remember you have provided us your contact's birthdays. It is so-and-so's birthday coming up.

37:27Erica Randerson: Do you want to go ahead and order that gift now to save yourself time later? So we found these opportunities to really drive value for our customer through this new experience. And then the loyalty component has been pretty big for us too. So prior to this redesign it was a little bit more of a punch card system and we've really adopted a more robust loyalty system that rewards customers for that more frequent shopping in much greater ways than we did in the past. So between those two things we've taken a lot of steps forward creating better digital experiences and paths for that repeat to happen sooner.

38:03And that continues to be an area of focus for us. So creating better digital experiences, of course, important, even though the world is changing because of how people are interacting with AI search. And I agree with you, I don't think websites are completely going away, although their function will change and the way people interact with them will change. Bringing people back is hard enough when you have a direct line to them, but, and this is a little premature, but I mean, more shopping could start happening through an AI agent instead of a website or an app. Meta has Muse. I'm being bombarded by ads for Muse on the New York subway.

38:43OpenAI has Dots. Anthropic has Duet. Are you already starting to plan for a world where someone can just tell their shopping agent, hey, send my mom something nice for her birthday, keep it under 75, and then they never actually browse one of your properties. Yeah, I completely agree with you. Just the function of websites are going to be much different and probably sooner than any of us are even willing to admit that will happen. For us, it's been about getting our foundation strong and ready for those evolutions. So part of this move to Shopify was taking a lot of our homegrown, you know, built most of it up to 16 years ago code detangling and ensuring we have a really streamlined code base that we can continue to evolve on as these opportunities arise.

39:31So that has been really the biggest area of focus for us is how do we have a data structure and also a code base that is ready to accept those changes. But yeah, very top of mind for us of agents we will allow and not allow potentially on site to shop for customer. I mean, the thing that I am most intrigued about learning more about and seeing how these agents get smarter over time is the more complex shopping experiences. So it's not just Erica's email address and physical address that you need to send this product. Like most e-commerce experiences, it's Erica's grandma's address that you need.

40:11And so it'll be interesting to see how, you know, these agents evolve over time. And I'm sure they will, but to really meet the need of a more complex shopping experience. And are you messing around with things like model context protocol, the universal commerce protocol, agentic commerce protocol? There's a lot of protocols. Lots of protocols. We are as it relates to ad optimization. So we've dabbled a lot in MCP as it relates to Google ads, meta ads, and just how we're serving marketing with much more to come. But yeah, highly interested there. We actually have formalized our data team to be our data analytics and AI team.

40:50And it's become a dedicated group and focus here at Edible. Again, when you have the amount of robust data that we have and the, you know, the digital platform that isn't a marketing channel, it is the whole business. You know, for me, it's important that we have a group that's wholly focused on how we're leveraging AI and importantly, how we're not leveraging AI and how, you know, as a company, we take a stance on how we are implementing AI and how are the what's ethical AI look like for edible brands and how do we operate in that way? What does ethical AI look like just in general? What does your gut tell you?

41:30Yeah, I mean, I think anywhere that we can keep humans first, the better. And that does not mean not implementing AI, not leaning on AI. It just means thinking about the human in that process. So one of the examples I absolutely love in a company that has done this right, I believe, is IKEA's story of they implemented AI in a lot of their chatbots and ultimately of their 10 ,000-person customer service team found that AI could handle about 90 % of the volume that that team was getting in terms of questions and customer needs for help. And rather than saying, okay, we found 9 ,000 people that we can lay off, what IKEA said was, well, these are people that are very educated on our product catalog.

42:14They've become these really valuable brand ambassadors. Is there an opportunity to redeploy this human capital in a way that can actually be additive for the customer and for the company? And they did. They turned that team into a design service team that ultimately is empowered by AI agents, but has generated, I believe it's at this point, about a billion dollars in incremental revenue for the company. Don't quote me on that. We'll have to look it up and be sure of that. Large sums. Yes, large sums of money. And so as myself and our AI leadership are talking, that's really the stance that we want to take is let's find ways to automate workflows internally, automate workflows for our franchisees, certainly implement AI in ways that is going to be more additive for our customer.

43:00But when it comes to those internal opportunities, let's also figure out, okay, if we've saved someone six hours of something they're doing all day, how do we redeploy those six hours into something that can be even more value driving for our franchisee or for the customer? So still in the works and still baking it out, but that's overall part of the framework that we're thinking about today. I hope that's where we net out. Yeah. That would be nice to have nice things. Penultimate question. Edible had this unplanned by you cameo on Sirens, that Netflix show, last year. Character dragged this giant fruit bouquet around and called it hot garbage.

43:39And you guys had a great sense of humor about it. You leaned in, you rewrote the product listing, which is very funny and posted a lot on social media, things like hot me, OMG, stop, but also go on, you know, hashtag not hot garbage. When something like that happens, do you see it on your end? Do cultural moments like that boost site traffic or sales? Or is it just fun? We do often see it boost site traffic and at times sales too. I mean, you know, as a brand, We were founded more than 25 years ago. Our brand font was Papyrus. SNL has not let us forget that over the years. And, you know, you just have to roll with it.

44:24I mean, how I view it is we have the opportunity as a brand to determine how we're going to engage and react. So to your point, that could have been taken super negatively. We were like, I mean, Netflix is featuring us and we love it. And let's reach out and partner with them and make this a moment, a really fun moment for our customers. And we've done that many times in the past with different media outlets that choose to share edible. So for us, you know, we're a fun brand. We're about celebration. We're about the joy in life. And that series certainly brought people joy. So how can we be part of that?

44:57You've got to have a sense of humor about yourself, too. Absolutely. Cannot be too self-serious. And if SNL is making fun of you, then you've entered the zeitgeist. So yeah, exactly. That's a positive sign. Exactly. Okay. So last question. You have to make an apology. You messed up, whatever it is. Do you send flowers or chocolate-covered strawberries or CBD gummies and why? Such a good question. I'm going chocolate covered strawberries for the reason we have the most adorable chocolate covered strawberry box where you can customize the letters. So, and I'm sorry is completely doable for us, but I'm also a chocolate girl.

45:42So you tell me you're sorry and give me flowers. Like I'm going to appreciate that for sure. Don't get me wrong. And the same with anything from edibles.com, but you give me some of those chocolate covered strawberries and you're forgiven before I've even finished the first one. All right. Listen up, guys. That's how we get to Erica's heart. I hope my husband tunes in. Does your husband listen to AdExchange Your Talks? Well, he's going to listen to this one.

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46:34Thank you.