Wings and Rings is a sports-themed restaurant franchise committed to giving customers the finest quality wings since 1984. Along with homemade wing sauces and customizable heat profiles, the brand also offers specialty burgers, salads and a number of other delicious menu items.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Wings and Rings Director of Analytics, Billy Johns, and Senior IT Coordinator, Zach Janzen, to talk about how Mirus helps them track a variety of things in their restaurants.
Billy: Mirus takes off my plate worrying about the data. I have confidence that the data is taken care of and it's going to be there. It’s an intuitive system, so when you have new people and they need to learn the system or you need to build something specific for them, it’s just very intuitive and easy to give them what they need at the frequency they need.
Zach: I use it a lot for tracking project progress. We have a pay at the table service that is currently being rolled out to our stores. Just seeing usage rates and being able to see it as a tender in Mirus and tracking overall to see is it being used, is it going well.
Billy: We have multiple POS systems in our brand. They’re feeding check level detail every day, labor. We use it for reporting out to our operations team. We use it for analyzing our menu, product mix (PMIX), marketing, tracking limited time offers (LTOs), billing royalties, a little bit of everything that we need to get paid, and know what is going on in the stores.
Billy: Mostly point of sale but we also have inventory integrated as well.
Billy: Inventory, we’re looking primarily at plate cost, theoretical cost.
Zach: We have Mirus roll up that cost so we can track what the cost of a food item, you know a burger and fries should be.
Billy: We have recipes built in the inventory system, and the costs of all the goods for that recipe feed and calculate what the theoretical plate cost should be. Then we can roll that up and look at things at either the menu item level, the category level, and also just overall compare the theoretical cost of goods to the actual cost of goods, what actually hits the P&L.
What kind of support do you get from Mirus?
Billy: Pretty much anything I need, I reach out to Anna and she’ll quickly tell me what’s going on. We have monthly calls so I let her know what is on the horizon, what we’re thinking about doing, any questions I might have. Sometimes she might shoot me a quick tip on how to do something that maybe I was struggling with or a better way to do something.
Tell me about your latest project
Billy: We just completed a project with ticket times. We’re tracking ticket times down to the check level, the item level, the kitchen station level, expo and just have a lot of data to see what actually happened. We can marry that data up with customer surveys and can validate what a customer is saying and see where the problem lies. Maybe a cook needs better training at a certain station or we're not properly staffed during certain times, those sort of things. It should help operations.
Where is the ticket data coming from?
Billy: It’s coming from our POS. It’s not in an easily digestible format in the POS. That’s where Anna came in. It’s always a little tricky because it’s not easy to see in the POS so there’s no tie-out report. So I had to create my own tie-out report what I thought it should look like and be like hey can you build this for me.
Have you been to MCON before?
Billy: This is number two for me.
Zach: This is my first time.
Billy: I missed last year so I’m just excited to get back and see the team. I had a great time in Houston a couple of years ago and met some people and learned some things. That’s exactly what I was hoping to get. It’s been a good week of networking, seeing what other similar brands are doing, hearing the presentations, and getting some ideas for things we can implement.
What did you think of your 1st MCON?
Zach: It was great! Love getting together with people in the industry. It’s always nice to talk shop with everyone. Everyone knows the common restaurant terms so it’s just great getting together with everyone.
Mirus provides services in data management and solutions in custom reporting for the restaurant industry.
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