Mirus Reporter

No matter how many restaurant locations you operate, it’s likely that you have a set of ‘best practice’ directives used to keep your locations running smoothly. The question is - How well do your managers know what you expect of them?

Expectations

To put this into perspective, your restaurant managers are responsible for guest satisfaction, food orders, hiring, training, coaching and more. It’s important that your managers understand what you expect of them. You also need to keep in mind how important it is that you inspect what you expect of them. This action will help ensure that they’re planning and operating in line with those expectations. While you likely hired these managers because they have an inherent ability to connect with those around them, your restaurant managers will greatly benefit if they have easy access to reports that key on the metrics tied to your expectations.

It seems like, since forever, that Product Mix or PMIX as it’s known, has been a staple in the restaurant arsenal for evaluating what’s selling and menu performance. And while, PMIX does deliver some interesting information like how many of x, y or z did I sell over a day, week, month, etc., it lacks the details needed to see shifts in demand, which makes it a poor choice to use when you’re wanting to make critical decisions about menu changes. For now, let’s look closer at what PMIX can deliver.

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. Periodically we like to shine the light on our clients, their accomplishments and what they're doing to increase their restaurant profit margin.

PR Management Corp is a 63 unit Panera franchisee which operates locations in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. They've been a Mirus client now for over 6 years.

I recently had the chance to sit down with PR Management Corp's IT Director, Charlie Hecht, and although he loves Excel, he admits Mirus is better than Excel when it comes to restaurant reporting.

Since the inception of your restaurant business you’ve probably tried a variety of methods to engage, grow and retain your customer base because you understand that getting to know your customers and their behavior patterns is crucial for your business. And we know that it is more cost-effective to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. However, from the perspective of data, the check number is the only identifier for a customer’s activity. So unless you are using a guest loyalty program that identifies the customer’s name, email, phone, etc., you have no idea who the person is on any given check.

Menu changes occur all the time in the restaurant business. You might add an item or two, change the price of existing items, run a promotion, or limited time offer. All of these actions generate, hopefully, the consequences you intended. But, most of the time those actions cause other changes you did not expect. These are the unintended consequences. In this post, we give you three important things to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of a promotion.

Employee Spotlight:
Terri Pham Gonzalez, Manager of Account Services, Mirus Restaurant Solutions

If I had to describe Terri in a few words, I'd describe her as a hard worker, someone who is very driven and focused. Terri is the glue that holds the Mirus account coordinators together. The role she plays is extremely important because every client has a unique set of needs and the account coordinators have to keep track of it all.

Like many terms in the restaurant industry, "Restaurant Management Software" is widely used, creating a complex understanding of what it actually means. In this article, I'd like to briefly discuss why that is, explain what I have learned so far by studying its use in our industry and tell you how to get a clearer picture of what defines solutions that are classified as Restaurant Management Software.

What makes your customers happy when visiting your restaurants and what keeps them coming back? Is it the quality and taste of the food? Polite and speedy service? Customer fulfillment, or lack of it, will ultimately affect your restaurant business in a significant way.

Restaurant executives study reports pertinent to their specific departments (Finance, Operations, Marketing, etc.) but no matter their department, there are factors that overlap amongst these departments. One major issue is customer satisfaction. There are many variables that can affect customer satisfaction and by looking at the right information, restaurant companies can utilize a way to measure the key metrics important to executing a memorable dining experience for their guests.

The date has been set! Join us September 26-27th at Hotel Sorella in Houston, Texas for our annual user conference, MCON. Come grow in your restaurant reporting and analysis knowledge while enjoying several networking opportunities with like-minded restaurant industry professionals.

Even if you are not a current Mirus client, you will find value in attending. Learn techniques for using the wealth of data your systems produce to drive revenues and increase profits.

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. Periodically we like to shine the light on our clients, their accomplishments and what they're doing to increase their restaurant profit margin.

ThinkFoodGroup is the innovative company behind Jose Andres' restaurants, hotels, food products, media, educational initiatives and philanthropy. They have over a dozen concepts, each as unique as their creator himself. The overflow of data streaming from each unique concept and from a multitude of systems is what led ThinkFoodGroup to partner with Mirus.

I recently had the chance to sit down with ThinkFoodGroup's Elizabeth Geny, Operations Manager and Jessica Berman, Operations Systems Specialist to learn how Mirus is helping them consolidate and better use their data.