Mirus Reporter

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.

The Data Is In

The word on restaurant sales has been out in the public for a while now. Same store sales are down for many segments. And for some of the most recent months, the industry overall is down.

Two factors lead to negative same store sales:  declining customer traffic, or customers spending less on each visit. It has been well documented that restaurants have been increasing their prices over the past few years. The National Restaurant Association measured price inflation at 2.7% in July 2016, while the average cost of ingredients fell -3.5%. The increased margin dollars have helped some restaurants cover the increases in labor.

Save Time, Save Money

Is time really money? I think so, you only have so much time in a day. If you could save time by making your job more efficient, then you can effectively save money. Improving business efficiency can be achieved through exception based reporting.

Restaurant Industry Scorecards

As a multi-unit restaurant operator, it's your job to know which locations are doing well and which locations need help. Scorecards can help gauge the health of a specific restaurants quickly and accurately. To start, you need to collect data from each restaurant location such as:

Managing a number of multi-unit restaurants can be challenging but put those restaurants inside an airport and you’re facing some very unique obstacles. Here are 5 tips on how to improve restaurant operations in airport locations. I will use OTG in some of my examples. OTG is a client of ours who specializes in airports locations. Make sure to check out the links in the article, we have some video interviews from our friends at OTG!

The first Dewey’s Pizza opened in 1998 in Oakley, in the City of Cincinnati, Ohio. With a reputation built on excellent service, hand-tossed artisan pizzas and gourmet salads, there are now more than 20 Dewey’s Pizza restaurants in the Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland, Columbus and St. Louis markets.

I had a chance to catch up with Jason at a recent conference and learn more about his experience with Mirus.

This is the first of a series of posts on the topic of restaurant food costing and perpetual inventory systems, which in most cases are two parts of a typical restaurant back office (BOH) system.  I'd like to collect your input on today's question:

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

Recently, Mirus hosted an executive panel webinar presented by Burger King, Carl's Jr. and Red Robin Franchisees. They spoke eloquently about what spreadsheets were not showing them and what kind of BI solutions they currently use to drive revenue and examine data.

One thing became clear as they presented examples of how far they've come ever since they ditched the spreadsheets; they all manage their restaurant businesses by exception and achieve extremely successful results in both, finance and operations by doing so.