Mirus Reporter

Client Spotlight: Alamo Drafthouse

Alamo Drafthouse has been named the coolest movie theater in the world. Their mission is to provide good food, good beer and good film all in the same place. They currently operate over 40 locations and have more scheduled to open.

As a Mirus client for over 6 years they've added a number of integrations into their data warehouse including : ticketing point of sale, food & beverage point of sale, scheduled labor, guest feedback and weather.

I had the chance to sit down with Alamo Drafthouse's Integrations Manager, Jake Lawson, to talk about how Mirus helps him manage data and reporting for both the movie and food & beverage sides of his company.

Data collection is important but the quality of data for a restaurant enterprise is key to ensuring that it is used in the most productive way. Inaccurate and outdated data can affect overall productivity. When multiple sources of data are getting pulled into one database, duplicate and/or erroneous information can be inevitable.

Data cleansing is the process of finding and correcting flawed information from your restaurant company’s database. The process is mainly used where incorrect, incomplete, or irrelevant details are identified and then modified, swapped or cleared out. Data cleansing is important because it improves the quality of your data and in doing so, increases productivity, while simultaneously doing away with potential expenses, and helping to improve ROI. Managing and ensuring that the data is clean can provide significant business value and making decisions without being able to weigh them against a strong, valid set of data can hurt a restaurant business.

Restaurant Labor Theft

According to the American Payroll Association (APA) almost 75% of U.S. businesses are paying employees for time not actually worked. The APA also indicated that loss, due to time theft, can run from 4% to 7% of Gross Payroll. Assuming the APA estimates for theft are accurate and your cost of labor is running around the industry average of 30% then it would be safe to further assume that a restaurant with $1,500,000 (‘$1.5M’) in sales could be losing $18K to $31K per location on an annualized basis.

Employees Learn Quick

Voids, Comps, and other means to adjust orders in process, just placed or delivered are a necessity if you operate a restaurant. Let’s face it, employees can make mistakes while entering orders just as customers can change their minds and now want a different item or realize they don’t have enough cash and now need to pay with a credit card. On the other hand, if you just tendered a customer's order to cash, you’ll need to void the order and re-enter using the new tender type.

Of course, these are just two of many examples where voids are a requirement. Comps on the other hand are used in the restaurant business when the wrong item was delivered or the customer was unhappy with their experience. While these tools are available to make corrections and adjustments as needed – your employees learn quickly that they can just as easily be manipulated to their financial advantage.

On The Rise

Discounting in restaurants is on the rise, as measured by Mirus Index, and is about 30% higher than a year ago. Examining this trend, it looks like discounting started climbing in 2015 but was up and down until mid-2016. Since then the trend has been a steady increase in discounting, except for the traditional holiday spike in November and December.

Strategic?

The strategy of discounting is often debated among industry experts with some saying it is always a bad idea while others taking a more nuanced position that says discounting can be useful to achieve goals in specific situations.

We had noticed that Average Check has been increasing as well as Discounts. If you overlay the trend for Average Check against the Discount trend, you see that while discounts have gone up about 50% since the start of 2017, so has the Average Check, about 25%. Could the increase in discounts be related to the strategy of increasing prices?

The start of a new year means many people are focusing on getting in better shape. You may even be offering some healthier choices on your menu to meet the consumer mindset. Why do so many people vow to eat better in the new year? No doubt losing weight gives you more energy and confidence. As a restaurant executive getting your restaurant data into better shape can have the same effects on your business. Learn why you should resolve to whip your data into shape and how to successfully do it.

What do you think will be the most popular restaurant business trends for 2019? I recently had the privilege to sit down with FSR Magazine to briefly discuss this topic.

We discuss four prevailing predictions:

2018 was a busy year for Mirus. We welcomed new clients and worked with many of our existing customers on exciting new integration projects.

New Clients

• Sprinkles Cupcakes
• Kind Hospitality (Multi-brand)
• Ansara (Multi-brand)
• Wild Bull Services
• Ciccio's Restaurant Group

Development

The development team worked hard this year updating and streamlining our solutions. New features and functions allow for more personalization and improved workflows. We added chart drilling, enhanced dashboard performance, upgraded XLS processing and unveiled Dimension Maintenance 3.0.

We’re even testing out the possibilities of AI technology. Soon you'll be able to get restaurant performance information simply by asking smart devices like Amazon Alexa, "Hey Alexa, open Mirus."

The following content stems from a presentation by Dave Bennett, CEO of Mirus at the Mirus User Conference (MCON) in 2018.

Next Level Thinking

Every useful piece of data is connected to other bits of information in the restaurant business. All of the things a restaurant does every day are related to serving its customers. It makes sense that the data created in the process is also connected. Not all of the connections are clean and easily understood, though. Just the opposite. There are certain business artifacts that support this confusion of data. They are the final “systems of record” where everything ends up at the end of the business process.

Analyzing Customer Grain Details?

For the most part, restaurants in the past have operated knowing very little about their loyal customers. There are some exceptions, such as pizza delivery concepts, where they have been collecting detailed grains like customer's full name and home addresses.

However, today with the increased competitiveness and shifting preferences of a new generation, it's imperative the restaurants understand all they can about their customers. If the goal is to keep current customers while also trying to attract new customers, you have to leverage the data your restaurants are producing. That way you can understand what's working and what's not.

Customer grain details in restaurant reporting can help you do just that. Watch the presentation below to learn more about customer grain and how your restaurant leadership can use the information to make better business decisions.