Hey guys, thanks for coming in! I want to go over some changes we are making here at Tropical Sno. Some of these projects will make our lives easier, some are going to test our team’s strength, and others will be giving back to our community. Today I’m going to be going over the internal changes we are making, community outreach, and the how and why we are adapting to these changes. I’m really excited about the improvements we are making as a team, so without further adio, lets first see what we are going to change within our business. We are getting rid of our old ice shavers, and acquiring the Swan SI-100 Block Ice shaver. The swan SI-100 Block Ice shaver is not your everyday Walmart $20 snow cone machine. The reason I want to put so much emphasis that we are careful and know how to work it is because of how big of an investment it is. The retail price for the SI-100 is $2000, and a weight of 75lb. We are going to have a further in depth training session, but I will go over the basics now. We are going to be running the machine with a foot control, so that you are able to use both hands when working the machine and interacting with the customer. What you do Is put the block of ice in the machine, center the ice on the shaving disk, close the shield, turn the machine on, and step on the pedal. Turning the blade too high can make it ware down faster so watch out for that. When shaving the ice into the cup, hold the cup with the left hand and catch the ice with the right. Add your flavoring, and we have a snow cone. Now why is this new ice shaver so much better than what we have had in the past? Hold more ice, up to 7lbsquare, and shaves 4.6lb of ice per minute, which is going to help production when we have rush periods. Not only are we getting our ice faster, but the ice we are getting is going to be top of the line quality with Smooth consistency that absorbs flavor right into ice. So instead of having a Snow cone with a bunch of flavor at the bottom, the flavor will be perfectly distributed throughout the snow cone. Not only are we upping our ice shavers, but our distribution as well.

As for community outreach, I have two new projects this year: we will be providing free snowcones to our elementary, middle, and high school on the first day of classes for no charge and we are planning to expand our business by selling at all the Arkansas State football home games this season. Having our hand in the community is not just the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. We will be gaining brand loyalty through this, and what kid doesn’t love a snow cone? This will discourage other snow cone vendors once they see our hand in the community. We will be giving out roughly 1000 free snowcones. At a variable cost of .27 cents, we will incur a $270 loss, but we expect that we will gain enough customers out of this to earn back our money. Referring to the Arkansas St. football games, there will be 6 home games, and we will be at everyone. It is going to take a lot of effort from our team to setup everything each of those Saturdays. That means moving the truck back and forth, getting their early on game days so we can setup the power to the truck, and providing snow cones for upwards of 300 people. To give you an idea of how big of an increase that is from a typical day, we sell roughly 100 snowcones a day. We are attempting to triple our daily sailes. We are going to double the staff of a normal truck, so instead of two we will have 4 team members. That means we need prepare later in the weeks to start stock piling ice in our freezers. I cannot stress enough that without each and everyone of your help and commitment, I can’t do this. I can buy every ice shaver in the world, but if I don’t have dedicated team members to know how to freeze the ice, store it, and assemble the actual snowcone, this business fails. This is a lot of change, and our team is small. But I have no problem trusting that you guys will embrace and excel with these changes because of how loyle you are to our team and our pride for our product. I am happy to equip our team with these new machines because I think it is only fair that I match your hard work and ambition with the best equipment. Not only is it your hard work, but where we are going as an organization with this change

I have a question: When was the last time any of you went to Blockbuster? A week? A month? Probably years? Not many people know this but in 2000, Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, flew to propose a partnership with Blockbuster cEO john antioco and his team. Hastings was laughed out of the room, and Hastings was told that his idea would never work. Look today and Blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010 and Netflix is now a $28 billion dollar company, right about ten times what Blockbuster was worth. But how does this apply to you? Tropical Sno might be the only snow cone distributor in Jonesboro right now, but we should never settle and always look to challenge the status quo. Let’s say that we settle with our older machines, it leaves the perfect entrance into the market for competitors like Kona Ice or Shave the planet who have talked coming to Jonesboro. I will take the vast majority of the responsibility for looking for ways to expand our company and imply these new changes. How can you help me in this? I got four things :1. Have a positive attitude. Realize that this change is in the best interest for all of us, and get excited in the direction we are going. 2. Is becoming a team player. The Arkansas State games are going to be high volume of customers, and require require team work, coming together and helping each other. If one of us fail, we all fail. 3. Learn the new skills needed to work the machines, and always ask as many questions as possible. 4. Take pride in what you do. Believe it or not, I was in all of your shoes a few years ago, serving snow cones everyday. I got the job because I wanted some extra money. But I learn to take pride in my work because it gives me satisfaction in knowing that I gave something my all and left nothing to chance. It feels good when Im able to make things work in a desired manner where it helps someone or provides a service. For the most part, you have no idea who any of the people who come buy snowcones from us are. You don’t know what they are going through, and whats going to happen. But knowing that you can make their day a little bit better with our service is what you should be here for. Today we look at what is good enough instead of perfection too often, Not only is this a lesson for you guys to use here, but throughout your life, take pride in everything you do no matter what it is, and you will always come out better for it in the end. Put your best foot forward, aim for perfection, and make mediocricty a thing of the past. I hope you guys got a good idea of the direction we are going in, and see that from the management side I’m trying to provide the best workplace for you guys. To recap, we went over the internal operations of the new equipment; our community outreach of the Arkansas St. games, and how we plan on adapting to these changes.