It’s impossible for a business owner to be everywhere at once, especially franchisors who often have locations in various states and countries. How does one know exactly what’s going on at a distance, you ask? Read on.
Entrepreneur.com reported many of today's entrepreneurs are recovering lost revenue with new technologies that track output down to the last French fry or drop of alcohol. Take BEVINCO, a company that curbs shrinkage by conducting weekly audits of drink inventories at bars and restaurants. Auditors weigh every keg and bottle while feeding the information to a laptop running the company's proprietary software. The software then plugs into the bar's sales system, revealing the difference between drink sales and inventory levels. The program even goes so far as to consider varying densities of different liquors into its calculations. For bar owners, the results can be a rude awakening.
"They are absolutely shocked. Most owners when we walk in say 'I've got everything under control,' and they're mortified to discover they're losing 30 percent,” says Vanessa De Caria, vice president of operations for BEVINCO. In the last six months, BEVINCO's sales have increased by 20 percent, De Caria estimates. Businesses that once declined the company's help have quickly become receptive. The lion's share of the company's customers are independents. "In these times, particularly in this economy, people are relying more and more on technology to solve some of these issues," she says.
Of course, plenty of losses occur from simple oversights, especially in high volume, low margin businesses like restaurants. Mitesh Gala, CEO of Altametrics, entered the restaurant industry as the operator of several Jack in the Box franchises, where he saved $50,000 a year when his homemade inventory program caught an over-portioning problem with the company's French fry containers. Now, his company's eRestaurant software helps restaurants track everything from inventory to shift schedules. The software is web-based, meaning that users need only an internet connection and a web browser to access it. eRestaurant tracks the amount of food lost to waste, portioning errors and theft. The software can suggest the appropriate number of employees to schedule for each shift based on previous sales, as well as compare sales to supply orders. The latter feature helped one restaurant catch a supplier error that had the restaurant paying for boxes of 20 hamburger patties but receiving boxes that contained only 18. All in all, most clients reduce their food costs by 1 to 3 percent of their sales, Gala says. Depending on the size of the restaurant, that can translate to a savings of $3,000 to $30,000 per year.
"Using eRestaurant you can see if a single slice of cheese missing at the end of the day," he says. At Altametrics, too, the number of new customers is growing, with Gala estimating that sales have doubled in the last year. Technology has offered businesses greater efficiency for some time, he says, but that offer was often ignored. Now, many companies can't afford to resist change. "There's a new level of urgency to these things," he says.
Photos from top right: BEVINCO president and CEO Barry Driedger performing an audit; Altametrics co-founder and CEO Mitesh Gala (left) reviewing eRestaurant's findings with Applebee's area director Vilma Tawil.
