Mirus Reporter

Time For Change?

Spreadsheets are one of the most popular tools used to organize data and manage restaurants. Why? Because when you’re starting out spreadsheets are manageable, cost effective and contain useful tools for manipulating data.

Over the past several years however, I’ve seen some pretty incredible spreadsheet usage leaving me dumbstruck by the amount of copying, pasting, calculating and linking of pages that, in turn, create massive multi-page workbooks not to mention the hours of work that goes into their care and feeding. And as a report consumer, if you can locate the information you need in one of these behemoths, it’s likely the information is out of date before you even received it.

Measuring Marketing Strategy Efficiency

How do you assure that your marketing initiatives are headed in the right direction? What are some strategies that help improve your restaurant business? Perhaps you offer coupons or special promotions to a select group or target audience. Maybe you create a social media campaign or an email blast with offers. And once you implement initiatives, how do you measure their success to assure increased profitability? Perhaps you generate reports afterward to look at the success rate. Are you getting positive results that show growth and a solid ROI?

In two earlier posts we discussed the Pros and Cons The Benefits Of 3rd Party Restaurant Data Warehousing and in another To SaaS or Not? That's the Question, we outlined where possible cost differences between Do it Yourself (DIY) and 3^rd Party Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. While I didn’t start with the thought in mind to create a trilogy on DIY I guess I just felt compelled to address the (cost difference) elephant in the room. Therefore, in what could now be considered post # 3 on this topic we’ll add the dollars and cents to see just how much a difference exists between DIY and SaaS solutions.

Successful restaurateurs need to have extensive KPIs and they must be able to quantify everything.  Data scrutiny and analysis is an ongoing process. Restaurant CEO's need to have their restaurant information distributed and analyzed by different personnel that will empower their businesses to increase revenue and improve customer service.  However, operators can be misled by information received solely from their POS systems (sales, reservations) or BOH systems (inventory, food costing, labor scheduling).  They need to be able to get a look at the bigger picture.

You'd think employees of restaurants know why it is important to collect customer feedback, right? Not to say that your employees don't care about customers in general, but I wonder if they understand that the data customers give management can be leveraged into profits and improve job satisfaction! Let's take a look at how this could be.

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.

Nowadays, the CFO in the restaurant industry performs multiple functions. In addition to finance, and regulating costs, the CFO is in charge of restaurant development and making tactical decisions ranging from marketing initiatives to growth plans. The modern day CFO has to have the ability to forecast market fluctuations, analyze restaurant benchmarks against peers, and have some knowledge of IT systems and IT investments, ensuring that there’s a return on these investments.

They must outline metrics so that restaurant data can be interpreted in real time to set business strategy and make intelligent decisions.

Restaurant Scorecards

Restaurant scorecards have long been used to monitor the success or struggles franchise locations may be going through at any given point in time. Similar to a grade school report card, operators can get a glimpse of unit sales, costs, execution, media spending, revenue bands, area demographics, and more.

Now days, there are systems that can take operating data and use that information to compare unit to unit or geographical area to area. It can be a quick and effective way to reward and offer assistance to franchisees.

So why is it important to scorecard each location to it's granular level? Below are 3 examples!

Are your promos being used to commit fraud?

The majority of restaurants have utilized some type of promotion in order to build revenue, introduce a new product, drive traffic or reward loyal customers. In short, your restaurant business is providing a coupon offer in return for more / specific customer interaction. This give and take process generally works well. However, while it may be increasing traffic and driving sales, your business may be losing hundreds, heck even thousands of dollars due to fraud and you may not even know it.