Mirus Reporter

The news and social media are filled with stories about dramatic new technologies like Augmented Reality (AR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how these technologies are going to revolutionize every day life. Business Intelligence (BI) is part of those story lines, and the term suffers the same misconceptions and misunderstandings as AR or AI. These terms are broad categories of software, services, skills, and systems, but are not specific products or solutions. These terms are useful for discussing concepts and potential uses, but are not very useful to companies trying to apply them.

As the restaurant industry undergoes constant changes, the importance of operational execution becomes even more crucial. Clear visibility into the execution of operations is vital for long-term success. This visibility is derived from your capacity to convert data into actionable information, providing clarity for both you and your team.

The Roaring Twenties has a lot of similarities to what has been going on in recent times. In the early 1920's, it was a time of hope and prosperity. With WWI over, the economy was booming, jazz was all the rage, women's rights was a critical topic, and people were out spending lots of money.

At Mirus, the job of an Integrations Specialist, is to help restaurants figure out which systems should be integrated immediately and which systems can wait. It’s important to prioritize integration because the process requires a bit of effort and focus. However, if done right, the business will begin to gain reporting insights that will turn into actionable intelligence.

In this article, we will focus on the benefits of integrating financial data. The content presented here is meant to be an introduction piece dedicated to thinking about why it is important to integrate financial data and how restaurants can increase profitability and decrease losses through proper data analysis.

There are several reasons why integrating operational data for your restaurant is an ideal choice. From keeping tabs on sales and labor to essential reporting and more, integrating data is simply a must. For more insight on integrating operational data, we had a moment to catch up with Mirus Integration Specialist Kadiata Diop, better known to friends and colleagues as Jet.

What does integrating data mean and why is it beneficial for your restaurant? With Mirus’ services, it’s all about ease-of-use. “What that means is looking at all the systems a restaurant may have and deciding which data points they want to see, bring in, and integrate into Mirus so that they can run reports of analysis on that data all in one place, “ says Jet. Convenience is the name of the game and with professional data integration, reporting can be achieved all in one place.

In this post, I want to examine the differences between reporting and analysis. Why? Because they're fundamentally different. Yet, I never hear, "we're doing all the analysis we need." No, instead I'm hearing, "we have all the reporting we need." And I'm quite certain they do - what with all the systems used to run a restaurant. It's likely that they and you have hundreds of standardized reports available and many are likely helpful at telling you what happened; e.g., how many of this or that item did we sell, what's our percentage of labor, what's our gross / net sales in this or that store, market, overall, what's our cash over short, etc. See, all helpful until you want to understand why the cash is shorter than you'd like, why that item didn't sell as you expected, why labor in a market is higher or why that promo did so well but we wound up making less money.

To get an answer to 'WHY' something happened requires you to perform some analysis and that requires a solution that can help you knit together the pieces needed to get at the underlying answer. So let’s start with a high-level definition of Reporting and Analysis.

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.

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.