Welcome, everybody, to episode number 109 of Underserved.

Joining me today is Kevin Krucher, senior director of technology operations at Grocery Outlet.

Let's get started.

Welcome to this week's edition of Underserved, the podcast for the rest of the tech industry,

where we focus on stories of tech industry leaders, their insights, and their lessons learned.

And now, your host, Andrew Jolina.

Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today on Underserved.

Thanks, Andrew. We're glad to be here. So way back in the day, mom and dad were in sales and mom hit some goals and got a prize. What was it? She got a computer. She brought a computer home. We set up a desk and she left it there, kind of left it up to us to jump into it. And what did you jump into? Were you into games?

Yeah, I was very much into games. The first set of games I got were a company named Sierra,

and they made a whole bunch of Kings Quest and Space Quest and a whole bunch of other different games.

And so they were kind of storyboard games where you would have choices of do X and you get Y or do A and you get B and they were fun. And so I would dive into those and I would spend hours and hours and hours. With the games, I think there was, I don't know, seven or eight discs. So as you were playing the game, you'd have to put in those floppy disks. And it was fun getting used to the technology, but more fun for me to play these games and feel like I was part of that adventure. The old floppy, swappy kids these days, they don't

know how good they have it with one giant hard drive. So any courses in middle school or high

school? You know, back then, there wasn't any computer courses that I recall. And then you had

some formative events in 97?

97, yes.

You know, I become an alcoholic and was drinking, you know, around the clock and that takes a toll on life.

And so through a series of events, primarily a family intervention, you know, I went into rehab.

Fortunately, and by the grace of God, you know, lick that problem, you know, and came out of rehab May or June of 97 with a few months sober. And I recall, you know, they call it a get well job. You know, the job that I had got was working at a pet store. Mom came down from Anaheim to Newport where I was, and we went to grab lunch.

And we were talking about next steps.

What was the future going to hold?

And she just made, I think, some offhand commenthand comment of you know you've already always been good at computers

and that sort of thing what do you think about going to school for computers at that point i yeah sounds

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