Mirus Reporter

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.

Successful Decisions

In today’s competitive marketplace, restaurant companies are seeking ways to become more competitive, more efficient, and more able to anticipate and meet their needs and the needs of their customers. Restaurants with a holistic view of their company, suppliers, and customers, and how those different areas interact with each other, are in a stronger position to make more successful decisions.

The Challenge

Restaurant companies generate a lot of data on a daily basis from all the systems they have in place. How you collect, organize, combine, analyze and distribute that data can have a big impact on the overall success of the business.

The Past

According to a recent article, the top 10 oldest restaurants in America are:

1. McGillin's OldeLouis' Lunch (1895) New Haven, Conn.
2. Buckhorn Exchange (1893) Denver
3. McGillin’s Olde Ale House (1860) Philadelphia
4. Breitbach’s Country Dining (1852) Balltown, Iowa
5. Tadich Grill (1849) San Francisco
6. Antione’s Restaurant (1840) New Orleans
7. Union Oyster House (1826) Boston
8. Griswold Inn (1776) Essex, Conn.
9. Fraunces Tavern (1762) New York City
10. White Horse Tavern (1673) Newport, R.I.

To me, it is fascinating that these establishments are still going!

Most likely, today's restaurants evolved out of the Tavern where travelers could get a bed and a meal on their journey. I am sure that in the 18th and early 19th centuries most people would not think of paying someone to cook a meal for them. It required discretionary income and the 'middle class' would not evolve until later during the industrial revolution.

Access to data intelligence is changing the way business is conducted; It especially can change and benefit the restaurant industry. Restaurant executives can make smarter choices with regard to the growth of their business, given more powerful tools.

The decision to find a solution that delivers greater access to your restaurant data was slowly evolving. So why did you make that decision? Chances are, you had a system in place where your POS and maybe back office systems were providing you with some basic reports. Your restaurant executives wanted to get answers to pertinent questions. Their process was to merge all of that information in excel. But what we know from that method is it’s extremely time-consuming and often erroneous, due to human error. So you've decided to partner with Mirus to provide your company with a data warehouse that allows you to combine all of your restaurant data in one place.

Mirus continues to grow and because of this, we are currently looking for people who enjoy working in teams with:

Restaurant Theft

$60k of your hard-earned revenue may be going home in the pockets of thieves. The NRA estimates that, on average, Net Income (‘NI’) for most restaurant companies is around 5% to 6%. The NRA also states that loss due to fraud at the restaurant runs around 4% of sales CASH is KING. Assuming the NRA estimates for theft are accurate then it would be safe to further assume that a restaurant with $1,500,000 (‘$1.5M’) in sales could conservatively lose $45K or possibly even $60K in revenue due to theft.

Given the number of ways theft can occur, it’s no wonder the percentage (4%) remains as high as it does. It’s not my intent to attempt to try and cover each way a restaurant can be losing money, rather, I’ll focus on the most popular -cash theft.

2018 Mirus User Conference

We had a blast being able to meet with some of our clients this year at MCON! Big thank you to everyone who came down to our hometown in Houston, TX, especially the presenters and panelists. If you couldn't make it out this year, make sure to check out some photos on our Facebook page here.

I’m A Good Person. Most of the Time...

Have you ever stolen anything? Did you get caught? When you were caught, was it your first time stealing? Even the most ethical employees can make bad decisions when something is right there for the taking. There’s too much temptation, even for those who usually make the best decisions.

No matter how much you trust your employees (managers included), you MUST be able to check thoroughly on their daily activities to find potential irregularities. When your employees make poor choices why should YOUR restaurant business pay the price?

Whether you are a franchisor or franchisee you want each of your restaurant locations and its employees to make more money. Challenges being placed on already thin margins make it difficult to keep up with the increased demands from labor, food costs, rent etc. And in today’s competitive labor market the cost of locating and training new staff members just adds to the challenge.

If you’re a table service oriented restaurant and you’ve gone to tip pooling or even ventured into the no-tip territory you may have already seen a difference in employee motivation or lack thereof due to these policies where the excellent servers are now making less in tips while the mediocre server is pretty happy. So now you need to find other ways to put the spark back in your team.