Mirus Reporter

Successful Decisions

In today’s competitive marketplace, restaurant companies are seeking ways to become more competitive, more efficient, and more able to anticipate and meet their needs and the needs of their customers. Restaurants with a holistic view of their company, suppliers, and customers, and how those different areas interact with each other, are in a stronger position to make more successful decisions.

The Challenge

Restaurant companies generate a lot of data on a daily basis from all the systems they have in place. How you collect, organize, combine, analyze and distribute that data can have a big impact on the overall success of the business.

The Past

According to a recent article, the top 10 oldest restaurants in America are:

1. McGillin's OldeLouis' Lunch (1895) New Haven, Conn.
2. Buckhorn Exchange (1893) Denver
3. McGillin’s Olde Ale House (1860) Philadelphia
4. Breitbach’s Country Dining (1852) Balltown, Iowa
5. Tadich Grill (1849) San Francisco
6. Antione’s Restaurant (1840) New Orleans
7. Union Oyster House (1826) Boston
8. Griswold Inn (1776) Essex, Conn.
9. Fraunces Tavern (1762) New York City
10. White Horse Tavern (1673) Newport, R.I.

To me, it is fascinating that these establishments are still going!

Most likely, today's restaurants evolved out of the Tavern where travelers could get a bed and a meal on their journey. I am sure that in the 18th and early 19th centuries most people would not think of paying someone to cook a meal for them. It required discretionary income and the 'middle class' would not evolve until later during the industrial revolution.

Access to data intelligence is changing the way business is conducted; It especially can change and benefit the restaurant industry. Restaurant executives can make smarter choices with regard to the growth of their business, given more powerful tools.

The decision to find a solution that delivers greater access to your restaurant data was slowly evolving. So why did you make that decision? Chances are, you had a system in place where your POS and maybe back office systems were providing you with some basic reports. Your restaurant executives wanted to get answers to pertinent questions. Their process was to merge all of that information in excel. But what we know from that method is it’s extremely time-consuming and often erroneous, due to human error. So you've decided to partner with Mirus to provide your company with a data warehouse that allows you to combine all of your restaurant data in one place.

Mirus continues to grow and because of this, we are currently looking for people who enjoy working in teams with:

Restaurant Theft

$60k of your hard-earned revenue may be going home in the pockets of thieves. The NRA estimates that, on average, Net Income (‘NI’) for most restaurant companies is around 5% to 6%. The NRA also states that loss due to fraud at the restaurant runs around 4% of sales CASH is KING. Assuming the NRA estimates for theft are accurate then it would be safe to further assume that a restaurant with $1,500,000 (‘$1.5M’) in sales could conservatively lose $45K or possibly even $60K in revenue due to theft.

Given the number of ways theft can occur, it’s no wonder the percentage (4%) remains as high as it does. It’s not my intent to attempt to try and cover each way a restaurant can be losing money, rather, I’ll focus on the most popular -cash theft.

2018 Mirus User Conference

We had a blast being able to meet with some of our clients this year at MCON! Big thank you to everyone who came down to our hometown in Houston, TX, especially the presenters and panelists. If you couldn't make it out this year, make sure to check out some photos on our Facebook page here.

I’m A Good Person. Most of the Time...

Have you ever stolen anything? Did you get caught? When you were caught, was it your first time stealing? Even the most ethical employees can make bad decisions when something is right there for the taking. There’s too much temptation, even for those who usually make the best decisions.

No matter how much you trust your employees (managers included), you MUST be able to check thoroughly on their daily activities to find potential irregularities. When your employees make poor choices why should YOUR restaurant business pay the price?

Whether you are a franchisor or franchisee you want each of your restaurant locations and its employees to make more money. Challenges being placed on already thin margins make it difficult to keep up with the increased demands from labor, food costs, rent etc. And in today’s competitive labor market the cost of locating and training new staff members just adds to the challenge.

If you’re a table service oriented restaurant and you’ve gone to tip pooling or even ventured into the no-tip territory you may have already seen a difference in employee motivation or lack thereof due to these policies where the excellent servers are now making less in tips while the mediocre server is pretty happy. So now you need to find other ways to put the spark back in your team.

This year we are pleased to be hosting the Mirus User Conference in our home town of Houston, and Everyone is invited! This conference is the best way to see how Mirus provides a powerful advantage to our clients for building customer satisfaction, increasing sales, and getting to the action plan quicker than is possible with spreadsheets or static reporting.

Is Food Delievery Right For Your Restaurant Business?

No topic is hotter in the restaurant space than delivery today. An amazing shift is taking place where customers want their favorite food, and not just pizza, delivered wherever and whenever. For me, delivery became a new reality and not just a fad when I saw McDonald's advertising during the recent World Cup matches that they would now be delivering food. This was no longer a test in a few US markets but now ready for prime time by a heavy hitter in the QSR realm.

There are people projecting that delivery will do to restaurants what Amazon did to retail. I think it is too early to tell for sure, and caution is wise. Nonetheless, I am seeing many restaurant companies testing delivery in select markets and many more are discussing it. However, before you make the decision to plunge into this new channel, there are a few questions you should ask yourself. 

Whose Customer Is It?

How are your customers going to request a delivery? Will you hire your own drivers and create your own e-commerce website, or will you use a third-party delivery service? The first option will take more time and money before you can start comparing to a 3rd party option. But, which alternative do your customers prefer?

Examples of restaurants who have built their own platforms include Panera and Domino's, and both efforts are considered successful, albeit expensive. It's simple, the customer goes to the brand website and orders. An upside to this approach is your customer sees only what you want them to see and their experience is directly connected to your brand. Another plus for this option is the ability to add other programs and services beyond ordering, such as loyalty and payment.