Mirus Reporter

As a restaurant CMO the areas of social media, guest feedback and planning the next profitable promotion probably take up most of your time. But what about labor? Wait, Operations is supposed to take care of labor scheduling and staffing not marketing. Before you pass this very important function off to the next guy you may want to see how labor affects the marketing department's efforts.

Labor is on the minds of many restaurant executive's these days and for good reason. The news of the Department of Labor's new overtime rules along with minimum wage increases has operators scrambling to keep labor costs down. Technology can play a big role in helping track labor and prevent overtime.

Slow Sales

With all the bad news in the restaurant industry lately about negative same store sales and traffic declines it may be hard as a restaurant operations executive to motivate your team and stay motivated yourself. Throughout history the one thing that has helped people persevere through tough times: Hope. One way operations executives can find hope in these hard times is knowing when profits are highest throughout the year and taking advantage of that knowledge.

Can We Talk

Restaurants today are about more than just food and hospitality. Technology has become a major factor, both customer facing and behind the scenes. Restaurant chains are being more efficiently run with the help of numerous systems from Point of Sale, Back of House, Labor Scheduling, Business Intelligence, Guest Loyalty and the list goes on. Each system holds valuable information that becomes exponentially more valuable when combined with other data. In order to take advantage of that value, restaurant IT executives are continuously faced with the challenge of making these restaurant systems talk to one another. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Getting data out of some of these systems can be pretty challenging. However, the push is being made more and more for technology companies to "open up" access. Enter the API.

As a restaurant marketer your job is to tell a compelling story about your brand that makes people want to come in and spend time and money at your restaurant. You've got two choices when it comes to writing that story: Fiction or Non-Fiction.

You can make-up all the facts and paint a picture of who you think your customers are, why they come to your restaurant and what they purchase OR you can look at the actual facts, really get to know your customers, learn why they come in, see trends in what they purchase and build a highly profitable marketing campaign around your loyal fans who will get excited and hopefully sing your praises on social media. This is where customer data comes in.

Executives running multi-unit restaurants use a number of different systems to keep track of the health of their business. Many times I've talked with restaurant executives that are looking for one system that handles it all. Unfortunately, that doesn't exist. Different systems are really good at different things.

Point of Sale systems are great at capturing transactional details, Back of House Systems are great at capturing things like inventory and Business Intelligence (BI) systems are great at pulling it all together so you can analyze the overall health of your restaurant company. But what information should you be pulling together and why is it important?

Our clients love us and we love them right back! We're constantly amazed by their ingenuity and accomplishments. Their ideas and requests are what keep us on the leading edge of restaurant business solutions. Each month we shine the light on our clients, their accomplishments and what they're doing to increase their restaurant profit margin.

Good things come in small packages. Well at least that was the hope when Dairy Queen launched their Mini Blizzard five years ago. Some worried that offering a smaller version of the brand's top menu item would cannibalize sales of their top seller and higher margin item, the 16 oz. Blizzard. For most companies that's where new products die. Someone voices a opinion based on past experience and their thoughts and feelings and the new product never makes it out of the marketing office. "That is not a good basis for making marketing and operating decisions," says Mirus CEO Dave Bennett. "You need data and facts to back up your decisions."

Managing a number of multi-unit restaurants can be challenging but put those restaurants inside an airport and you’re facing some very unique obstacles. Here are 5 tips on how to improve restaurant operations in airport locations. I will use OTG in some of my examples. OTG is a client of ours who specializes in airports locations. Make sure to check out the links in the article, we have some video interviews from our friends at OTG!

Taco Mac restaurants are casual, neighborhood restaurants serving delicious, genuine food, a huge selection of craft beer on draft, and the best sports watching environment anywhere. With 30 restaurants in three states, T.MAC was founded as Taco Mac in the Virginia-Highlands neighborhood in Atlanta in 1979. Today, T.MAC has become one the Southeast’s most beloved places for friends and family to come together and hang out. In every location they operate, T.MAC is dedicated to serving the communities that surround their restaurants.

I got to sit down with Lauren at our most recent user conference and learn about how her team is continuing to expand their use of Mirus.