“During a time of rapid growth, We need to focus on working on the business not in the business, and RADAR lets us do just that.” - Eric Martino, COO, Beefsteak
(PRWEB) May 23, 2017
Beefsteak
Beefsteak, created by chef José Andrés and part of the ThinkFoodGroup, is a new kind of fast casual concept where farm-fresh, market-driven vegetables take center stage to create hearty, vegetable-centric meals packed with flavor and nutrition. To fuel busy lifestyles and the growing desire to eat well, the affordable and accessible concept executes good food, fast.
Business Challenges
Fast casual restaurants are one of the quickest growing concepts right now, and Beefsteak is creating their niche as an upscale fast casual group. With five locations already open, the concept decided to bring in Eric Martino as COO to hone in on operations as they gear up to open multiple locations over the next 3 years.
Beefsteak takes pride in offering vegetable-centric cuisine made with farm-fresh ingredients at affordable prices. While this may sound fairly simple, there are a lot of moving parts to always having the freshest, highest quality vegetables on hand. The foremost challenge faced by Beefsteak is the incredibly short shelf life of their ingredients. “We do not want the cost of spoilage or waste to be passed onto our guests, so we have to be smart and aware on the operations side to keep our quality high and our costs in-line”, says Eric Martino, COO.
The Solution
One of the first things that Eric noticed when he started working at Beefsteak was that they were not using RADAR to its full potential. “I had used RADAR in a previous company and knew the transparency and drill down capabilities it provides is a game changer”, states Eric. “The customizable dashboard allows us to see our key business drivers real-time, informing and teaching our managers to be strong operators and leaders. The configurable reports provide a scoreboard that compares our restaurants to one another. It provides a great opportunitiy to learn from one another and inspire friendly competition.”
The Results
Beefsteak is now using several of the modules in RADAR, and can see a difference in their operations that allows them to shift focus from the backroom to expansion of the group. “The time that we saved from both having mobile access from anywhere and the elimination of manual entries is incredible” says Eric.
“During a time of rapid growth, We need to focus on working on the business not in the business, and RADAR lets us do just that” he adds. Several recent RADAR updates are honed to monitor the specifics that are oftentimes too time-consuming for managers, who are busy dealing with new locations. These include the Shift Profitability Report and Location Comparison Chart, which offer quick comparisons of labor dayparts and sales metrics across single and multiple locations. Likewise, the new Suggested Ordering tools allow close consideration of forecasted item usage when making purchase orders, and Schedule Assist offers smart, automated shift creation, taking the hassle out of designing new schedules.
Beefsteak’s current RADAR modules include:
The General Ledger Sales module (GL Sales), which drives RADAR financial reporting. Pulling data directly from the point of sale, labor and sales information is automatically mapped to the chart of accounts and assigned GL Codes, eliminating manual data entry. Additionally, data from the GL Sales module is directly exported from RADAR to accounting software, reducing time and cutting down on error prone data entry.
The Accounts Payable (AP) module has been added to allow expenses and invoices to be automatically entered using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) at the store level, reducing the amount of manual entry needed.
Inventory shows inventory levels with complete transparency, so that educated purchasing decisions can be made. It also allows customers to drill down and track item performance throughout all of their locations.
Recipes uses the inventory items collected as ingredients in the recipes, which gives recipe costs based on actual AP data. Those plated recipes are then linked to menu items. From there, this web-based recipe management solution provides detailed insight into theoretical usage (beginning + purchases – ending inventory) vs. actual food costs, and how they impact the bottom line.