ERS LAFA_WAVE 2 Generic clearance memo_Rev_07_20_23

To: Anthony Nerino, Desk Officer, Office of Management and Budget

From: Linda Kantor, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Via: Julie Parker, Clearance Officer, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Date: July 21, 2023

Subject: Request to Conduct Exploratory Semi-structured Interviews on Retail Food Loss under Generic Clearance for Survey Research Studies—Wave 2 (OMB Control #0536-0073)

The purpose of this memorandum is to obtain Office of Management and Budget (OMB) clearance for the second of two waves of semi-structured, exploratory interviews with food retailers to inform the design of a potential nationally representative study on retail-level food loss. This memorandum presents the approach and findings from the Wave 1 interviews. Additionally, some of the information presented in this memo was gathered from informal contacts established at professional meetings and conferences.

The memorandum begins by providing a summary of the findings from the Wave 1 interviews, including the revisions that were made to the interview guide, recruiting materials, and research plan based on what was learned in the Wave 1 interviews. Next, we provide a description of the research plan for the proposed Wave 2 interviews. The memorandum concludes with the burden estimate. Appendix A provides a redacted version (with no identifying information) of the memorandum that RTI International prepared on the Wave 1 interviews, including the data collection procedures, a summary of the information collected, and recommendations for revising the instruments and procedures for Wave 2, and preliminary conclusions based on the interview findings for the design of a potential national study.

Background and Purpose

To learn more about the nature of data that might be available to estimate food loss factors by Loss-Adjusted Food Availability (LAFA) commodity, RTI is conducting two waves of semi-structured interviews with food retailers’ corporate staff. The findings from these interviews will help the Economic Research Service (ERS) assess the feasibility of the original methodology for a nationally representative retail food loss study, including retailer recruitment, data collection, and analysis.

OMB approval for Wave 1 was obtained in January 2023. RTI began recruiting companies in February 2023 and conducted the Wave 1 interviews in March through May 2023. RTI contacted 62 companies (50 companies from the original sample and 12 additional companies identified through networking) and completed five interviews (see Table 1).

Table 1. Status of Companies Contacted by Interview Outcome

Interview completed	5
Interview not completed	57
Amenable to participating but did not participatea	3
Explicit refusal	5
Passive refusal (did not respond to contact attempts)	44
Unable to contact (e.g., email bounced back, no phone number) so replaced in sample	5
Total	62

^a The reasons we were unable to complete interviews with these three companies are as follows: (1) RTI’s contact at the company received clearance to participate but was not the best person to participate in the interview. The contact was subsequently unresponsive when trying to identify a more appropriate contact for an interview. (2) The company was initially willing to participate, but upon seeing the interview questions noted that because the company was transitioning their food tracking systems, it would be best to contact them later in the summer to schedule an interview. (3) A company agreed to provide written responses to the interview questions but was unable to provide their responses by the cut-off date for Wave 1 responses. RTI will attempt to recontact these three companies for Wave 2.

RTI followed the data collection protocol approved by OMB and used the OMB-approved recruiting materials (emails and phone scripts). RTI made up to four contact attempts to a company over a 2- to 3-week period. Five companies refused to participate with no specific reason provided. Most of the companies contacted by RTI (n = 44) were considered passive refusals in that they did not respond to any of the recruiting phone calls or emails.

Among the five companies that were interviewed, the contact was either introduced or referred to us directly or otherwise was a suggested contact or referral provided by someone with knowledge of the grocery industry, rather than by cold calling/emailing. The overall cooperation/response rate was 8% (5/62), thus we recommend a sample size of 125 for completing up to 10 interviews for Wave 2¹ Because cold calling alone was ineffective, it will be useful to leverage networks (such as the four contacts made at a recent conference by members of the ERS and RTI project teams) to facilitate identifying the appropriate contact person and recruiting them for an interview. Other approaches, such as establishing a connection with a company’s corporate communications/public affairs/government relations department to identify the target respondent within a company or identifying contacts using a registration list for a grocery industry conference, will be used as described in more detail below in the “Selection and Recruitment Procedures” section.

For Wave 1, RTI conducted interviews with one independent, single location grocer, a regional food cooperative, two regional chains, and one national chain. Two of the interviews were with two company representatives, and the remaining interviews were with a single individual. Because most of the companies that were interviewed have an active interest in food loss or waste or ongoing initiatives related to tracking or reducing food loss, the study sample suffers from self-selection bias. Self-selection bias refers to the bias that can occur when individuals are allowed to choose whether they want to participate in a research study. Because the companies that participated may differ from nonparticipating companies, self-selection can lead to a biased sample and affect the generalizability of the results. Thus, it will be important to interview several retailers in Wave 2 that do not have a strong interest in food loss to obtain their perspectives.

Additionally, because only one independent retailer (who was the owner of the company) was interviewed in Wave 1, we have insufficient data to determine the feasibility of the original methodology for a nationally representative retail-level food loss study among independent retailers. Thus, it will be important to interview several independent retailers (i.e., companies that own 10 or fewer stores) in Wave 2 to better understand how these retailers track and maintain food loss data. Approaches we will use to recruit independent operators are described in more detail below in the “Selection and Recruitment Procedures” section.

Based on the results of the Wave 1 interviews, RTI made the following changes to the data collection protocol for Wave 2:

• Revised the interview guide to add probes for two questions: (1) if the participant uses the word “shrink,” probe to see how their definition of shrink aligns with ERS’s definition of food loss and (2) when discussing nonmonetary incentives, probe to see whether some type of recognition from USDA would be useful for motivating participation.

• Reduced interview burden from 60 minutes to 30 minutes based on the actual average interview time in Wave 1.

• Simplified the text in the recruitment telephone scripts and emails, so it is shorter and more conversational.

• Removed the table from the list of interview questions sent to participants before the interview because it led some people to believe that we were collecting actual data on sales and shipments as part of the interview.

Research and Analysis Plan for the Wave 2 Semi-structured Interviews

Selection and Recruitment Procedures

Soft Quota Ranges for Recruitment

Consistent with the approach used for Wave 1, the unit for the Wave 2 semi-structured interviews is the corporate headquarters of a food retail company (referred to as “company” or “companies” for brevity) that owns supermarkets, supercenters, or club stores.² In this context, companies own individual retail stores or chains of retail stores (with the exception of independent operators that own 10 or fewer stores). As in Wave 1, RTI will interview staff at the company, rather than store-level, to learn about the data they maintain for estimating food loss and the level of the organization at which they maintain the data.

The study will continue to be limited to supermarkets, supercenters, and club stores because they account for 85% of food and beverage retail sales in the United States.³ RTI plans to interview retail companies with different organizational structures (i.e., independently owned, regional chain, and national chain). Additionally, if possible, RTI will interview companies from different geographic locations to provide coverage across the four Census regions of the United States (the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West).

Similar to Wave 1, RTI will attempt to use soft quotas with ranges for store type and organizational structure to ensure that we interview a diverse mix of companies (Table 2) (there are no quotas for region—we will purposively select a mix of regions). Because a small number of companies own supercenters or club stores, only one or two of these company types will be interviewed. In addition, because we are conducting only 10 interviews, we will not include all combinations of store types and organizational structures in the final set of interviews. The final number of companies within the soft quota ranges that is represented in each type and organizational structure category will likely be determined by company responsiveness. As previously noted, RTI will attempt to recruit companies that have not expressed a strong interest in food loss and sustainability. The total number of companies interviewed will not exceed 10.

Table 2. Soft Quota Ranges for Recruitment for the Semi-Structured Interviews by Retailer Type and Organizational Structure^a,b

Type

• Seven or eight companies that own supermarkets

• One or two companies that own supercenters

• One company that owns club stores (if possible)

Organizational structure

• Three or four independent operators (companies that own 10 or fewer stores)

• Three or four regional chains

• Three or four national chains

^a RTI will interview companies that have headquarters in different regions of the United States to provide coverage across the four U.S. Census regions (the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West); there are no soft quotas for region; we will purposively select a mix of regions.

^b Some companies may own multiple banners, which is a set of stores defined by a common name and unified advertising programs. For these companies, RTI will purposively choose one banner that aligns with the soft quota ranges because procedures for maintaining data for estimating food loss may vary by banner.

Sample Size and Expected Response Rates

We estimate that we will need to contact up to 125 companies to recruit 10 companies for the Wave 2 interviews. This estimate is based on RTI’s recruiting experience in Wave 1. Additionally, based on RTI’s experience with the earlier informal discussions⁴ and the Wave 1 interviews, we estimate that we will need up to an average of four contacts (with potentially different people) to identify the correct person for the interview within each company.

Target Individual to Interview Within a Company

Target individuals for the interviews are corporate staff who are knowledgeable about how product data are maintained across their company’s individual stores (e.g., someone in operations; supply chain management, procurement or a retail/supermarket buyer, finance or data/IT, depending on the company. As described in more detail below, RTI research staff will use scripted phone call and/or emails to identify the target individual for the interview, similar to the approach used for Wave 1.

Selection of Companies for the Interviews and Recruitment Procedures

Consistent with the approach in Wave 1, RTI will use Nielsen’s TDLinx database to select the sample for the interviews. TDLinx is a proprietary commercial database, which includes the name, address, and corporate owner of individual food stores with at least $1 million in sales and information on store characteristics and type.⁵ This list will be supplemented with three 2030 Champions⁶ that were not contacted during Wave 1, four people identified through contacts made by ERS and RTI at a recent conference, and the three companies that expressed interest in being interviewed for Wave 1 but did not complete an interview. Another source that will be used to supplement this list is the attendee list for a trade association’s trade show held in February 2023.⁷ RTI staff will contact sampled companies using the same general procedures used in Wave 1 (summarized in Table 3) and employing other approaches based on lessons learned in Wave 1.

For any regional and national chains, RTI will initially identify and contact someone within the company’s sustainability or waste reduction group (e.g., chief of sustainability, director of sustainability, waste reduction officer) to get their support for the interviews and then work with them to identify the correct individual(s) for the interview. Because independent operators might not have a sustainability or waste reduction staff/office, RTI will identify and contact the corporate director of operations (or similar title) as a starting point and work with them to identify the appropriate person to interview. RTI will search online for publicly available information (e.g., email and phone number) to identify the initial contact.

Another strategy RTI will try is to contact companies’ corporate communications/public affairs/government relations department, either by phone or email (e.g., some large companies have an email portal for submitting interview requests), to see if they could assist in identifying the target individual for the interview. Informal discussions with retailers at a recent conference revealed that some companies prohibit staff from accepting interviews without prior approval from corporate communications and/or the legal department. Such a rule may have led to some of the outright or passive refusals RTI received during the Wave 1 interviews.

RTI will work with a subset of the Wave 2 sample (e.g., initially release 50 companies and exhaust the subset before releasing another subset of sample) and try multiple recruiting approaches concurrently (i.e., attempting to directly identify the potential respondent vs. going through the company’s corporate communications department), with RTI staff tailoring the recruiting approach for the remaining sample. Additionally, RTI will ask the retailers that are interviewed in Wave 2 if they could provide referrals or assist with making connections to other retailers (referred to as snowball sampling).

Table 3 details the contact/recruitment procedures.

Table 3. Contact/Recruitment Procedures^a

Email address is not available

RTI will contact the company by telephone. Appendix B-1 provides the script for making the initial contact, with separate scripts for independent operators and regional/national chains. After the appropriate contact has been identified, RTI will call this person using the script provided in Appendix B-2 and, if the person agrees to participate, schedule a mutually agreeable date/time for an interview during the call or by sending a scheduling email (Appendix C-2). Appendix C-2 will include two attachments with additional information on the study: the informed consent form (Appendix D) and the informational list of interview questions (Appendix E).

Email address is available

RTI will send an email initially (Appendix C-1). If a response to the email is received, RTI will follow up by sending a recruitment/scheduling email (Appendix C-2) with the attachments, or if the email response suggests a phone contact would be preferred, then RTI will contact them by telephone using the script provided in Appendix B-2 and then send the scheduling email (Appendix C-2) with the two attachments noted above. If there is not a response to the email and a phone number is available, RTI will call this person using the script provided in Appendix B-2 and, if the person agrees to participate, schedule a mutually agreeable date/time for an interview during the call and then send the scheduling email (Appendix C-2) with the two attachments noted above. If the person prefers to schedule by email, then RTI will send a scheduling email (Appendix C-2) with the two attachments noted above.

^aConcurrent with these procedures, RTI will contact companies’ corporate communications/public affairs/government relations department, either by phone or email (e.g., some large companies have an email portal for submitting interview requests), to see if they could assist in identifying the target individual for the interview.

Follow-Up Attempts and Reminders

If a response is not received from the initial call or email within 3 business days, RTI will call again or send a follow-up email. Up to four contact attempts to a company will be made over a 2- to 3-week period. If both an email address and phone number are available, RTI will make two email attempts and two phone call attempts. If a response is not received after four attempts, the company will be coded as a nonresponse (Appendices F-1, F-2, and F-3 are scripts and emails for the follow-up attempts).

Companies that agree to an interview will get a reminder from RTI a few days before the scheduled interview (Appendix G). The reminder email will include the following attachments: the informed consent form (Appendix D) and the informational list of interview questions (Appendix E).

On a case-by-case basis, RTI’s recruiters may offer the option of providing written responses if the company seems amenable to participating but is too busy to participate in an interview. , In such a case, RTI will send the contact the informed consent and the list of interview questions for them to complete and return..

Interview Procedures

As in Wave 1, RTI staff will use an interview guide (Appendix H) to provide structure to the discussion. The guide contains structured probes so that all participants will initially be asked the same set of questions, but interviewers will probe spontaneously when further clarification is needed.

The interviews will be conducted via secure Zoom video conference by two RTI staff members, both CIPSEA agents; one person to lead the discussion and one person to take notes. The RTI interviewer will begin the interview by asking companies about their current procedures for tracking food loss. The interviewer will then solicit feedback on RTI’s proposed methodology (i.e., using data on product shipments and sales weights, adjusted for intra-store product transfers, and food donations) to calculate food loss coefficients for individual LAFA commodities or commodity groups. The interviewer will follow up with additional questions about how such data, if available, are maintained (e.g., by Universal Product Code or store department; daily, monthly, or annually) and about companies’ preferred methods for providing available data (e.g., by responding to survey questions, filling out a formatted spreadsheet, or uploading data). The interviewer will ask about the anticipated burden for providing the data. The interviewer will also request companies’ thoughts about giving participants in a full nationally representative study a benchmarking report that would compare their company’s food loss performance with an aggregated industry average.

Interviewer Training

RTI project staff responsible for developing the interview guide and procedures will conduct the interviews. Interviewers and note takers will train for the interviews by doing practice runs using the interview guide.

Incentive Payments

No incentive payments will be offered.

Informed Consent

Before participating in the interviews, RTI will ask the person(s) to be interviewed to electronically sign an informed consent using a FedRAMP-certified Qualtrics survey link (Appendix D). We will include the informed consent in the scheduling email (Appendix C-2) that we will send to everyone who will participate in the interview. Additional information about the procedures for obtaining informed consent is provided in the section below on confidentiality procedures.

Confidentiality Procedures

RTI’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviewed the Not Human Research Determination request for the study and determined that the proposed activity is not research involving human subjects as defined by Department of Health and Human Services regulations (Appendix I). Thus, RTI IRB oversight of this activity is not required.

Wave 2 will follow the same confidentiality and data security procedures that were used for Wave 1. RTI has assessed and secured its information systems in accordance with the Federal Information Security Management Act, which appears as Title III of the E-Government Act of 2002 and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). For information systems containing data protected under the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA), the security characterization reflects a moderate potential impact and requires that RTI store and work with any data in its Federal Information Processing Standards Moderate Enhanced Security Network.

Consistent with Wave 1, the informed consent form (Appendix D) will provide assurances regarding data confidentiality and security as described below. If multiple people within a company participate in the interview, each one will be emailed a copy of the informed consent form before the interview. If a person who has not previously provided informed consent will be participating in the interview, RTI will email them the form and have them sign electronically before starting the interview (i.e., in real time). Statement on CIPSEA protections: “The information you provide will be used for statistical purposes only. Your response will be kept confidential and any person who willfully discloses ANY identifiable information about you or your company is subject to a jail term, a fine, or both. This study is conducted in accordance with the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018, Title III of Pub. L. No. 115-435, codified in 44 U.S.C. Ch. 35 and other applicable Federal laws.”

• RTI’s Zoom platform is configured to meet NIST-moderate requirements.

• The interview notes (typed and saved in individual Word documents) will be saved on RTI’s Enhanced Security Network. Additionally, RTI will prepare an Excel file that summarizes responses to the interviews using a matrix format for organizing and summarizing the interview data to prepare a written report. The summary Excel file will be saved on RTI’s Enhanced Security Network. Any handwritten notes taken during the interviews will be shredded after the notes have been transcribed into the Word and Excel files.

• RTI will use the interview responses to prepare a summary report for ERS.

• At the end of the study, the interview responses in Word/Excel files and the Excel file used to organize and summarize the interview data will be transferred to ERS’s secure Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)-moderate cloud-based network using the FISMA-moderate Kiteworks file-sharing network. RTI will destroy the files on their Enhanced Security Network and provide documentation of the destruction to ERS.

Burden Estimate

• The total response burden for Wave 2 is estimated to be 49.56 hours.

• The estimated total response burden for the participants group is 11.24 hours, or about 67 minutes per company. The estimated total response burden for companies that go through the recruitment process but do not participate is 38.32 hours, or about 20 minutes per company. Table 4 provides a detailed breakdown of the response burden for the recruitment and interview processes.

• RTI’s previous experience with Wave 1 and similar studies suggests that participating in a recruitment call (Appendices B-1 and/or B-2) or reading the recruitment email (Appendices C-1 and/or C-2) will take an average of 5 minutes, and it may be necessary to talk to multiple people within the company (e.g., transferred to a different person during the call or asked to call/email a different person, which would count as an additional contact). We assumed that RTI will make a maximum of four attempts to identify the correct person(s) to interview within a selected company. For estimating burden, we assumed that all companies will require four contacts to reflect the potential maximum burden (Appendices F-1, F-2, and F-3 provide the follow-up recruitment scripts and email).

• For companies that agree to take part in the interview, we assumed that reading and completing the informed consent form (Appendix D) and reviewing the informational list of interview questions (Appendix E) will take an average of 15 minutes.

• We assumed that one company will go through the process of preparing for the interview, including submitting the consent form and gathering materials, but will drop out before reading the reminder email and participating in the interview itself.

• For companies that agree to take part in the interview, we assumed that reading the reminder email (Appendix G) will take 1 minute.

• The interviews will take an average of 30 minutes following the semi-structured interview guide (Appendix H).

Table 4. Reporting Burden

Instrument	Appendix	Sample Size	Freq	Respondents				Nonrespondents				Total Burden Hours
				Count	Freq x Count	Minutes/Resp	Burden Hours	Count	Freq x Count	Minutes/Resp	Burden Hours
Recruitment call and/or email contact #1a	B-1, B-2, C-1, and/or C‑2	125	1	10	10	5	0.83	115	115	5	9.58	10.41
Recruitment call and/or email contact #2a	F-1, F-2, and/or F-3	125	1	10	10	5	0.83	115	115	5	9.58	10.41
Recruitment call and/or email contact #3a	F-1, F-2, and/or F-3	125	1	10	10	5	0.83	115	115	5	9.58	10.41
Recruitment call and/or email contact #4a	F-1, F-2, and/or F-3	125	1	10	10	5	0.83	115	115	5	9.58	10.41
Informed consent, list of interview questions	D and E	10	1	10b	10	15	2.50	1	1	15	0.25	2.75
Reminder email	G	10	1	10	10	1	0.17	0	0	0	0.00	0.17
Interviewsc	H	10	1	10	10	30	5.00	0	0	0	0.00	5.00
Total burden							11.24				38.32	49.56

^a The sample unit for this study is food retail companies, not individual people. We assumed that RTI may need to contact multiple people within each company to identify the correct person (s) to interview, and each contact will take an average of 5 minutes and that up to four contacts will need to be made. Therefore, the minutes per response column reflects the amount of time required for the contact and not the number of people contacted within the company.

^b We assumed that one company will go through the process of preparing for the interview, including reading and submitting the consent form and reading the informational list of interview questions, but will drop out before participating in the interview itself.

^c Multiple people within a company may participate in the interview. Because the sample unit for this study is food retail companies, not individual people, the minutes for completing the interview do not reflect participation by multiple people.

• The estimated total number of contacts for the Wave 2 interviews is 125 companies. This number can be broken down into two groups: an estimated 115 companies that go through the recruitment process but decline to participate (i.e., nonrespondents) and 10 companies that participate (i.e., respondents).

The following statements will be displayed in the informed consent for the interview:

The data are being collected under the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act, otherwise known as CIPSEA. CIPSEA provides protection for information collected for statistical purposes under a pledge of confidentiality. CIPSEA-protected information is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. RTI will combine your interview responses with the responses from other companies to prepare a summary report for USDA, ERS.

Assurance of Confidentiality: The information you provide will be used for statistical purposes only. Your response will be kept confidential, and any person who willfully discloses ANY identifiable information about you or your company is subject to a jail term, a fine, or both. This study is conducted in accordance with the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018, Title III of Pub. L. No. 115-435, codified in 44 U.S.C. Ch. 35 and other applicable Federal laws.

NOTIFICATION TO RESPONDENT OF ESTIMATED BURDEN: Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 67 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions and completing and reviewing the collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The valid OMB control number for this information collection is #0536-0073. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Linda Kantor, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service (linda.kantor@usda.gov).

Contact Information

The contact person for questions regarding this data collection is:

Linda Kantor

linda.kantor@usda.gov

Appendices

• Appendix A: Memorandum on Wave 1 Interview Methods and Findings

• Appendix B-1: Recruitment Script (no contact identified)

• Appendix B-2: Recruitment Script (contact identified)

• Appendix C-1: Recruitment Email

• Appendix C-2: Scheduling Email—Participant Identified

• Appendix D: Informed Consent for Interviews

• Appendix E: Informational List of Interview Questions

• Appendix F-1: Recruitment Follow-Up Script (no contact identified)

• Appendix F-2: Recruitment Follow-Up Script (contact identified)

• Appendix F-3: Recruitment Follow-Up Email

• Appendix G: Reminder Email for Interview

• Appendix H: Interview Guide

• Appendix I: IRB Determination

1 Given that the contract for this work is scheduled to end in September 2023, it is likely that RTI will only be able to conduct up to10 interviews for Wave 2.

2 A supermarket sells a wide variety of food, beverages, and household products. It has a wider selection than grocery stores but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a supercenter or club store. Supercenters are large stores that combine nonfood mass merchandise with supermarkets. Club stores are large outlet stores that sell food and beverages in bulk and require consumers to buy a membership.

3 Muth, M. K., Kinney, S., Gargano, M., Looby, C., & Siegel, P. (2021, April). User documentation: Store weights for InfoScan data, 2012–2018. RTI International.

4 in 2018, RTI had informal discussions with seven food retailer companies and several trade associations to help inform the study design for the original project. Appendix B in the OMB package for Wave 1 provided a summary memorandum describing these discussions.

5 Cho, C., McLaughlin, P. W., Zeballos, E., Kent, J., & Dicken, C. (2019). Capturing the complete food environment with commercial data: A comparison of TDLinx, ReCount and NETS databases (TB-1953). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=92628

6 U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions are businesses and organizations that have made a public commitment to reduce food loss and waste in their own operations in the United States by 50 percent by the year 2030. United States Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions | US EPA

7 An RTI staff person had planned to attend the trade show but ultimately did not attend; however, RTI still has access to the attendee list. The searchable list provides the company name and a contact but does not include contact information such as an email or phone number, so it will be necessary to conduct Google and other searches to obtain contact information. The list will be useful for identifying potential contacts for independent retailers and may be more useful than cold-calling alone since we will have a specific contact name to start with.