Insights that Ignite Growth - Case Study with American Grilled Cheese Kitchen

Overview

American Grilled Cheese Kitchen is a prime example of the enduring American spirit that’s lifting the country from the worst recession in generations. Two friends, laid off from their jobs in San Francisco’s tech industry, took a leap and opened a restaurant. With limited industry experience between them and a still fragile economic climate, it was certainly a risk. But this case study will show how Vivonet’s Halo POS system became an invaluable partner as the restaurant first opened, and continued to help as it skyrocketed to success.

Quote Excerpts 

“Halo is a wonderful product, with everything we need,” 

“It’s a full-serve POS system with every feature the others offered, but at a better price.” 

“It provides a real insight into the business; which sandwiches are selling, how much bacon we need, things like that,”

“It helped to plan expansion, forecast numbers and set goals,” 

To download the full version of this case study in PDF, please CLICK HERE. 

What Every Restaurant Owner Should Know Before Installing a POS system

The biggest mistake restaurant owners make when implementing a POS system is not allocating enough time to build the menu, train the staff and plan the launch. Chivann Kong, an implementation expert at Vivonet has seen too many owners struggle with their POS system because they try to do it all themselves. Chivann recommends that owners “identify one to three other staff members who can learn the system, help with the set-up, educate staff or answer questions when you’re not there.”

Chivann knows what it’s like to be a restaurant owner; he’s worked with thousands of them since starting with Vivonet in January 2008. This month Chivann delivered his 1,000^th POS implementation. He’s part of the professional services team, a group of specialists with restaurant and technology experience, who work with every new client at Vivonet.

Chivann’s focus is predominantly quick and full service enterprise accounts like Cherry Berry, Juice it Up, Yum Yum Donuts, and Opa. He understands the life of Franchise owner, the many demands placed on them, the limited time and the pressure to run a restaurant. According to him, there are four key areas every restaurant owner should know in order to successfully install a POS system.

Optimize the Menu

Every time Chivann builds a menu within a POS system, you learn something new.  Once when working with a 50 location sandwich chain, he noticed that each owner spelled menu items differently. This confusion, made it not only more time consuming to build each menu but he recognized the difficulty head office had in trying to make analyze the sales results.  Chivanns streamlined the menu and created one standard naming convention.

Once live, head office saw an immediate benefit, as information was streamlined and “a breeze” to view. The standardization also greatly improved data accuracy and franchise performance. Head office could now easily identify the top and bottom performing franchises and uncover what’s working or not working, then share findings with franchise owners to help improve their business. In the first quarter of this year, this company has increased revenue 10%.

Plan the Switch

Converting from one POS system to another should be scheduled and planned out to minimize disruption. For many franchise owners, the decision of a POS system is done by head office. Change can be difficult and it’s important that head office works with their franchisees for a smooth transition.  The best conversion Chivann has been a part of was with large donut chain, the head office identified one person to work with each franchise owner and Chivann. The result had stores switching over to Vivonet’s Halo POS in 1 hour. 

Budget the Time

Initially, owners should budget about 4 hours to set-up and adequately learn the POS system and enterprise reporting.  An additional hour should be allocated for each additional location that requires set-up. If you own 3 locations, franchise owners should then budget about 7 hours to get all the stores up and running.

Once you’ve been trained, additional set-ups will take no time at all. In one example Chivann worked with the owner of a multi location yogurt franchise. When that individual was adding another store, the time to work with Chivann was a 5 minute phone call.  The owner knew the system, the menu was already built and he knew how to set-up the POS terminal himself.

Don’t do it all yourself 

As an owner, you should identify one to three others to participate as part of a POS team to learn the system. In creating a team, your knowledge base increases. Having more people know the system helps with training new staff or addressing questions when the owner owns multiple locations or is not available to answer at that moment. 

Healthy Customers, Healthy Business

Our client, Jugo Juice was recently featured in a business magazine for “Leading the Charge for Healthy Option On-the-go.”  The article presented how Jugo Juice worked to “debunk the myth that eating in a fast paced world has to compromise health for convenience.” The company’s success reinforces this focus is resonating with the market. Since 2006 the company has increased sales by 138 percent and added 70 new locations. Today Jugo Juice has 140 owner-operated locations. Menu options played an important role in the recent success. During the economic downturn a couple years ago, instead of reducing price, Jugo Juice responded by developing new products and providing more menu options for customers.

Vivonet is proud to be the POS solution helping Jugo Juice succeed.  Whether your business is a single location café or multi-location enterprise like Jugo Juice, our mission is to help all restaurants succeed by turning sales transactions into business insights to make better decisions. Our terminals capture the transaction, but the power is in our Enterprise Manager that owners and operators log into with their PC to view the sales and operations reports of their location(s).

Vivonet is re-defining POS for the restaurant industry by combining cloud based technology with the Internet, mobile and social media. Learn how we can help your business by contacting Sven Winter at swinter@vivonet.com.

Saying Goodbye to your Cash Register? We can make it easy!

Throwing out your good ol’ cash register and upgrading to a sleek Point of Sale (POS) system may seem intimidating at first – however when you do find the right system it can act as a healthy heart pumping blood to your business. When it comes to what ‘matters’ the most in a POS system, Matt Landin an implementation consultant at Vivonet with 20 years in the restaurant industry says it depends if you’re an employee (i.e. restaurant owners vs. restaurant managers) and the type of restaurant (i.e. quick service vs. full service restaurant).  

Matt stated for many restaurant managers who moved from cash registers to POS terminals liked the ease of use for servers and ability to put the right order through quickly because of the clarity of the buttons on the terminals and how the system helps reduce mistakes with forced modifiers that are clearly identified on the kitchen tickets.

Restaurant and operational owners who were not always present on the restaurant floor were “wowed” by speed of pulling different reports from the POS system like sales reports, employee labor cost reports and the user friendly aspects of exporting data directly to accounting software like QuickBooks.

Matt also stated that one concern shared by both restaurant managers and owners in using a cash register is ‘theft control’.  On a recent report, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) estimated that employee theft is responsible for 75 percent of all inventory shortages and that they steal what amounts to 4 percent of sales in restaurants. If your restaurant sells $500,000 a year, that is $20,000 in lost revenue that could more than pay for with a POS system. With our system, there are multiple ways to reduce theft such as controlling user privileges for voids or discounts to ensure they are approved by a manager, tracking sales to ensure each dollar is accounted for and monitoring discounts to ensure privileges are being used appropriately.

Vivonet has the industry experts and POS system to make it easy to get rid of the cash register. Learn how we can help your business by contacting Sven Winter at swinter@vivonet.com.

Room to Grow - Case Study with Classic American

To download/view the full case study, please CLICK HERE.

Overview

Classic American Restaurant was in trouble. Despite all their hard work, the owners of this small diner an hour outside New York City were deeply in debt and struggling to survive.  They finally looked for help from popular TV chef Gordon Ramsay and his show Kitchen Nightmares.

And while Mr. Ramsay’s advice and publicity the show garnered certainly helped the restaurant, owners Colleen and Naomi credit the Point of Sale system gifted by Mr. Ramsay as making one of the biggest ongoing improvements. This case study will look at how Vivonet’s Halo POS system simplified the lives of the owners of Classic American and allowed them more time to focus on growing their business.

Quote Excerpts 

"They're (Vivonet Support) always there when we need them."

"Every dollar is now accounted for."

"I would absolutely recommend it (Halo) to anyone."

To download the full version of this case study in PDF, please CLICK HERE. 

Optimizing Your Menu to Increase Profitability and Reduce Waste

Whether you are opening your first restaurant or been in the business for 30 years, creating a menu with the right product at the right price is critical to your success. For many owner/operators, they go with their “gut” to guess what to sell and the price to sell it. Vivonet customers use our POS system to “gut check” their ideas with data that measures each menu item in a report called the “Itemized Sales Report.”The results help Vivonet customers to optimize their menu to increase profitability, reduce waste, and make better decisions to help their restaurant succeed.

The itemized sales report shows the quantity sold and revenue for every item on your menu, including modifiers (i.e. extra cheese, bacon etc).  By selecting the category of information, you can quickly rank items from highest to lowest. The results provide valuable information as to the menu items that are the most and least popular. With that information a restaurant manager can then determine why a menu item may be performing poorly (i.e. taste, menu location, price) and how to improve (i.e. change the product, launch a promotion, lower price, update menu position, adjust inventory).

The image below is an example of one restaurant and their “Itemized Sales Report.” In the report, “#1 Chicken Platter Greek” was sold 29 times making it the most popular menu item during this time period.  The least popular menu item is the “#5 Gyros Wrap Fries” sold only 9 times. As a manager of the restaurant, they can use this information to find out why the “#5 Gyros Wrap Fries” is performing so poorly (i.e. product taste, menu location, pricing) and what can be done to improve (i.e. modify the product ingredients, position the item more prominently on the menu, lower price, conduct a promotion).  Once the manager decides upon a direction to improve the product, they can view the results in the “Itemized Sales Report” and then decide whether the updates made an impact. If updates have no impact, the manager can then use the information to look at discontinuing the item and bringing on a new option.

The “Itemized Sales Report” is just one of the many tools in our POS system to help you succeed.

Vivonet is re-defining POS for the restaurant industry by combining cloud based technology with the Internet, mobile and social media. Learn how we can help your business by contacting Sven Winter at swinter@vivonet.com.

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