Its still too early to know perhaps if anyone did. But would that document hold up in court . And what about Small Businesses . Can they ask you to sign a document before entering their place of business . What about your own employer . Can your boss ask you to sign a waiver before returning to work, promising not to sue if you get sick. You know what, what we need is a lawyer, and weve got one this morning. David barron is a labor and employment attorney. David, you are in texas. Im in california. There may be some slight differences state by state but we can talk in generalties this morning. Lets start with employers. Say my boss says i want you back at work in the office but i want you to sign something that holds us harmless. The first question for you this morning is do i have to sign it and would it hold up in court . The simple answer is no. And most businesses that i have talked to have thought about those types of documents but decided against it. Workers comp in most states would make those unenforceable. Employees have a right to receive workers comp benefits. To downside of doing anything like that outweigh any benefit that would come to an employer. What if im the customer . I know the senate talked about extending liability production to Small Businesses. It didnt get done. Im guessing the law already has some kind of protection to Small Businesses if they take reasonable precautions, right, if they do masks and gloves and that kind of thing. The law already protects businesses to some point. You have to prove that theyre negligent, for example. The issue with coronavirus is it is very difficult to say where you got it. Again, whether it is a workplace claim or someone who believes they got it by visiting a particular accompliestablishmen Grocery Store, the threshold issue will be how can you prove thats where you got it . Did that business do something negligent that caused you to get it . Those are pretty big hurdles. What sort of advice are you giving businesses and employees . Because this is something you have never run into in your legal career, pandemic. Yeah. It is something new and were in unchartered waters. What most employers are doing are trying to provide good rules of road. Maybe not having them to waive claims but certainly asking them to follow certain precautions, you know, not only the things from the cdc and local authorities but also new rules in place. Again, nothing wrong with asking an employee to sign off on a policy. And my employer has a right to do things like take my temperature before i come through the door, right . Yeah. No, thats definitely the case. You know, the federal government and the states as well have all pretty much unanimously agreed that employers have the right to take steps like that during a pandemic to keep employees safe. Again, you are in texas. Im in california and it can vary county by county. I suggest that everyone just participate in masks and whatnot. My local Grocery Store my whole county requires masks, but my local Grocery Store is taking my temperature as well. I know there are people who object to that, but, and again speaking generally, the store has the right to do as well, right . Because thats private property. Correct. As a Property Owner, they get to set the rules for entrance. In houston, our big program from the city was basically, you know, no shirt, no shoes, no mask no service. It is the same logic that as a business or Property Owner you get to set the terms for people coming into your property. What are the most common questions you are getting at your Legal Practice . Masks continue to be a hot topic. There is something about masks thats a new political issue. Its still very divisive. I think as testing becomes more widespread and available to employers, were seeing a lot of employers who want testing. There is issues there with privacy and asking employees to do testing. You know tesla called employees back before the local county lifted its shelter in place. What would you have advised elon musk to do then . I dont know that elon musk needs advice from me. Everybody wants to keep employees safe. I think that the counties and cities and states are doing the best they can with the rules and guidelines, and, you know, i think most employers want to stay within those guidelines if they can. Sure. Now we know whats happening here in california. Youre in Harris County in texas, in houston. Houston chronicle says you have more than 30,000 cases in the houston, Harris County area. Thats about seven times what we have in santa clara county. Now, houston is massive for people that havent been there. But still thats a breathtaking level. On a personal level, how are you doing . What are you seeing in houston . Describe the situation in your part of texas for me. Im doing fine. I will say that, you know, i have seen more issues with my clients in the last eight weeks than i have the last eight months so clearly the numbers are on the rise. Employers and families and businesses are dealing with it probably more than they have than at any point in the pandemic. So far most of the cases i have heard about with my clients have been people who havent gotten very sick. We just havent seen the numbers of deaths and serious illnesses that other parts of the country have seen. Whether that will happen in the next couple of weeks, you know, who knows . But so far i think we have been lucky. All right, david. Stay safe. Labor and employment attorney. We appreciate you being with us this morning. And press here will be right back. Welcome back to press here. Before the virus, i used to order a lot of things on amazon. Now im ordering even more stuff on amazon. But the big change for me is i am now buying from websites that i have never really ordered from as well as i do more and more ecommerce trying to stay home. A good example would be shoes, for instance. Sometimes the experience is good. Sometimes not so good. The reason amazon is so good so fast, the order is so accurate is because of amazons Fulfillment Centers. Robots and people working on the most modern of assembly line. Each bin and movement thought out perfectly. Maxs company take off technologies wants to bring those Fulfillment Centers to other businesses, notably Grocery Stores. He builds what are called micro Fulfillment Centers, scaled down versions of these amazon giants so the Medium Business can take an order, find it and ship it out in a matter of minutes. Thanks for joining us, max. It is really amazons biggest advantage, right . How they have thought out these giant Fulfillment Centers where you havent got one person paging through all kinds of shelves looking. It is happening just like that. These Fulfillment Centers are amazing. So, scott, you are spoton. It is about creating that magic in which the goods come to that human. And it is those robots and humans working hand in hand and creating that precise work that its very productive and its very Great Results to those end shoppers. So you are able to do this specifically with Grocery Stores. Though, one could imagine this would be for any type of business. On a much scaled down approach, a medium sized business would be able to afford this and fit it in their existing warehouse. Indeed. What we have designed these rebots is in the back room of a super market, you can actually install them and get really nice productivities, really nice tools to service those shopper demands in a really Cost Effective and viable way but also in a way that there is no substitutions and you are fulfilling exactly what that shopper wants to buy. Sometimes when im at safeway, and safeway is an enormous grocery chain, i will see a person with a special cart pushing it around there, clearly filling ecommerce, but the inefficiency there is they are shopping in the exact same way i am going aisle by aisle and then forgetting something, going back. I would imagine that the robots would cut this down by an enormous amount of time. You are spoton, scott. In fact, safeway is one of our biggest clients. Rather than shopping an open super market that its not designed for fulfilling egrocery orders, what we have done is we have created all the processes so the goods will come to a human picker and you are making that human picker 13 times more productive and many times more accurate given that you have full inventory control at all time on that facility. And 13 times is really needed right now because its gotten better. But whether its whole foods or safeway or whatnot, the wait for grocery delivery is very high as many of us do not want to go into the Grocery Store. A company that could speed this up could deliver that much more goods. Not only do we create a lot more throughput, which is assembling many more customer orders for that same store, but the secret sauce is this micro fulfillments are very close to where shoppers live. So we do not need to wait much for that order to be either available for pickup or Home Delivery at your doorstep because were in your neighborhood and were helping these retailers be in your neighborhoods. That window is very, very short. Now, could you see this . You mostly work with Grocery Stores. But there isnt any reason it couldnt work with other things. Amazon uses this at a huge scale. So a retailer that got enough orders in every day, this might be something they want to do. Youre spoton. There is many more used cases in these verticals. We have focussed on what we believe is the hardest category of them all, groceries. It is very low value items that weigh a lot and spoil within minutes. That is a hard logistical combination, and thats why we specialize with the right temperature control and the right capabilities. And lets face it, scott, this pandemic is only accelerating the rate your groceries will be bought online. Thats where we want to be great for our clients. We now have 12 clients in north america, in asia and in europe, so were really, really focussing on that one and getting it right for them. Sometimes when we think about robots, we think about job loss because the robot replaces the worker. In this case, with a micro fulfillment center, you are creating a whole different business for an existing business that would still require people to make it work. Its robots and humans working hand in hand. Scott, we are also automating the job that was done by the shopper. It was the shopper that was assembling that order with a super market cart and taking it to their home, to their pantry or their fridge. So what we have essentially done is we have created automation and robots that makes personnel from our clients assemble those orders and do the work that was done by the shopper before. Max is with the company take off technology talking about micro Fulfillment Centers. I appreciate you being with us this morning. Once weve got the order in the box or the bag, how do you get the bag that last mile to the customer itself . Well talk about that when press here continues. Were off next week to make room for nbc sports and back july 17th when we will take a look at voting apps. President trump doesnt want vote by mail, but the next step could be vote by phone. What is important, though, is that the vote be cast by an electorate that has an opportunity to be educated a lot more in realtime about what theyre voting on. And, you know, the technology exists today for evoting, to enable that. And frankly, the time for the evote is now. You can always find press here on nbcbayarea. Com press here. Welcome back to press here. Before the break, we were talking about how stores can compete with amazon using micro Fulfillment Centers. Lets talk about the delivery side of it. Joe is ceo of dumping, a Shopping Service that is like instacart, but i think joel would have an issue like. The key difference, they are independent contractors who set their own price and can manage their own client base. You find them on the dumping app. But otherwise joe and dumpling are pretty hands off. One, it brings deliveries to customers, obviously. Also, it seems like it is designed to avoid the ab5 law, the one that forces Services Like uber to consider drivers employees. Am i right about that . Yeah. I think thats a great question. And it certainly addresses a lot of the issues that the ab5 law is attempting to fix. And from the very beginning, we are attempting to take a very different approach to the gig economy by empowering personal shoppers to start their own businesses and really to be able to provide their customers a higher level of custodization and personalization to the services they provide. And, really, we think that a model of ownership addresses a lot of the issues that are currently kind of well documented in the gig economy. So youre not trying to get around the law for your own benefit, youre saying. Youre saying that these these you call them clients, the people that work for du dumpling themselves . We use the term Business Owners because we are a tools provider for them. What we do is we give them kind of the platform and everything they need to be able to start and run their own personal delivery grocery business. Uber drivers objected that they had no say in the matter, and thats why they wanted to be considered employees of uber. Youre saying your Business Owners definitely have a say in how they run their own businesses. That makes them independent contractors. Absolutely. So as a business owner, they are able to set their own prices, so they determine what they would like to charge their clients for the service of Grocery Shopping and delivering it. They determine which customers and when they want to work with. And, of course, they determine at what point, you know, their viability is. So theyre free to work other platforms. Theyre free to really invest and focus on growing their own business. And really it gives them all levels of control to run their grocery Delivery Business in the way that they want to. Now, i assume you are free to give them some kind of guidance or some kind of rules. You know, dont use bad words on our app. Or, no, you may not deliver the groceries in a swim suit, that kind of stuff. You do still have some way over what it is they do . Absolutely. What we do is we provide a lot of guidance. What we found is it is a very different model than going from working gigs and being an on demand app and having gigs given to you and being told to go and shop them and actually going and running your own business. We have an entire program. We have a Coaching Program that works with Business Owners that gives them guidance on the best type of pricing, the way to promote their business. You know, as theyre building up their profile, you know, how do you promote the benefits of using a local service like your own over the on demand apps. What we want to do is give them all the tools and all the support that they need to be able to launch and run and grow a successful Delivery Business. But at the end of the day, it is their decision. It is their business. So the way they want to conduct it and the way they run it really is up to them. Ultimately, one of the things thats really nice about this model is that the better job that they do and the Better Customer Service that they provide the better theyre going to be able to build their own business and really to be able to profit from the hard work. So when you have an on demand model, you are basically matching supply and demand and youre anonmiezing the worker. When it comes to food delivery, what we found is that food is very personal and that the person that is doing the Grocery Shopping makes a huge difference in the level of service that the clients ultimately provide. So by incent vising a personal shopper to really be able to do whatever they want to provide the level of service the customer needs, they will be able to grow their business through repeat orders as well as referrals. It is not just better for the business owner. It is also better for their clients. As were talking about food is very personal, so when you have a different person shopping for you every single time, a lot of times now clients arent comfortable ordering the things that really want to be picked out like produce and meat and Different Things there could be a difference in in the selection. Oftentimes, they will use a service to get the nonperishables, canned goods and chips and things like that. Then they will go to the stores themselves to pick out the produce and meats that they want. When you have a personal shopper thats running their own business and you get to know them and trust them and they get to know you and your pref pences, we found that clients feel much more comfortable having more and more of their groceries and the things they would pick themselves actually shopped by their personal grocery delivery person. Right. I went on the app, and i saw that, you know, one of the highly rated Business Owners charges about 20 of the grocery bill, which is fairly high. But i would pay it so i dont have to go to the Grocery Store myself. But thats during a pandemic. Do you think this Business Model will hold up post pandemic when im less afraid to go to the Grocery Store . You got it. Thats a great point. Again, Business Owners are free to really set their charges and pricing how they want. What we found is that the customers of Business Owners really are prioritizing shopping and spending their money with a local grocery delivery person in their community and theyre really happy having that money go to that person doing all of the work than to an out of town alga rhythm or app. At the same time, they tend to save time and money by shopping with a personal Grocery Service rather than the on demand apps. Thats for a number of reasons. One, the personal grocery delivery shopper can go to any store. So they can go to food markets. They can go to your local butcher and they can do that in addition to the big box stores. I think the other things is transparency is a really big priority for us. And being able to understand what you are paying for thats a grocery and what you are paying for for the Actual Service by the person doing the work for you is really big. Its been well documented throughout the big economy and the on demand apps that there is a lot of markups that go on the food at restaurants and groceries. With a dumpling powered business owner, you will always by the in store price. There is no markup on the items. So they can take advantage of in store sales. They can take advantage of coupons. All in all, when you net it out, clients tend to actually save money by using a personal shopper and at the same time, a lot more money is going into the personal shoppers pocket who is doing, again, a majority of the heavy work and lifting for them. Joel, you are coceo. You have two headquarters. I know you are a young company. And there are Big Companies that have done coceos. Is something thats working for you and is that something you see working longterm . Absolutely. My coceo and partner and i have been running the company as coceos now for three years and it works great. What we found is it is a lot of work to start a business and there is a lot of different facets and we work really well together. We have a lot of trust together and were able to kind of divide and kwon kwconquer. The way we run with different facets of the business is scaleable and its been huge for us to get to where we are so for. We appreciate you being here this morning. And press here will be back in just a moment. Thats our show for this week. My thanks to my guests. A reminder you can watch this show, if you missed anything or want to see older shows. Were doing a sister podcast which is a look into venture capital. Heres an example of this weeks episode of san hill road. What is the minimum amount of capital that we can raise at whatever our valuation is today that will get us to the next kind of step function unlock of value . It is the stance that you do between the entrepreneur and the investor where we certainly look to have a certain ownership percentage and a certain number of dollars put to work as all investors do. Thats sand hill road. It is available wherever you get your fine podcasts, apple podcasts, google, stitch or spotify or the rest. Thank you for making us a part of your sunday morning. Hello and welcome to comunidad del valle. Today latino inspiration, the new president and ceo of the arizona coyotes, a native of san jose opposite your comunidad del valle. Nbc bay area presents comunidad del valle, with damian trujillo. We begin today with whats been happening across the country and what its done to the Good Community work that Police Officers have been doing. Darrell cortez, a retired San Jose Police officer and president shop with a cop of silicon valley