Boston, MA—October 08, 2019— CrunchTime! Information Systems, Inc., the restaurant industry’s leading back-of-house operations platform provider, today announced that Hickory Tavern has lowered its food inventory level by 25 percent for a sustained three percent improvement in costs across its 34 southeastern U.S. locations. Hickory Tavern deployed CrunchTime to streamline its back-office food and labor operations and to capture the data and insights necessary to make sound operational decisions.
“CrunchTime helps Hickory Tavern improve operations and save money,” said Dan McKeon, Software and Operations Analyst/Regional Manager at Hickory Tavern. “With its real time inventory visibility and the invaluable data intelligence extracted from the system, CrunchTime helps Hickory Tavern make better decisions based on information and insights, and 99 percent of those decisions have worked in our favor.”
Hickory Tavern implemented CrunchTime to establish a more efficient and systematic back-of-house operation. With CrunchTime’s Suggested Order food cost management, the brand quickly began to optimize inventory, pricing, ordering, recipes, and back-end operations.
Simplified Daily Inventory – Each restaurant can monitor consumption and food waste on a day-to-day basis and then use that information to help improve operations.
Global Data Visibility – The management team tracks sales and inventory across all restaurants and uses CrunchTime’s advanced reporting to determine everything from menu design and menu implementation to flavor models and flavor tracking.
Lower COGS – Hickory Tavern lowered its Cost of Goods Sold by three percent company wide since implementing CrunchTime, and continues to lower overall food costs.
“With CrunchTime we’ve maintained that improvement in COGS, and continue to chip away at the actual vs theoretical gap, lowering food costs without the use of broad menu price increases or product manipulation. The improvement was entirely based on the insights we extracted from CrunchTime,” McKeon said. “We’ve lowered our inventory level by 25 percent across the entire brand, and as we become even more sophisticated CrunchTime users, we expect to reduce inventory by another five to ten percent.
Extending CrunchTime to Labor Management
Recently, Hickory Tavern expanded its use of CrunchTime to optimize the labor management side of its back-office operations. Using CrunchTime’s BizIQ business intelligence, Hickory Tavern was able to streamline the entire staffing process.
“Before CrunchTime, we had to wait two to three weeks after our payroll cycle ended to get the data from payroll reports,” added McKeon. “With BizIQ reporting, we can extract data immediately and make smarter scheduling decisions based on our findings.”
“In the restaurant industry, profit margins can be incredibly thin, especially if your food and labor cost variances are not optimized.” said Jean Fogarty, VP of client services at CrunchTime. “Our platform and mobile solutions will continue to help Hickory Tavern elevate their back of house operations while increasing team member satisfaction across all of their locations. We’re thrilled with the direction of our partnership.”
About The Hickory Tavern
Established in 1997, Hickory Tavern is a neighborhood social gathering spot perfect for lunch, happy hour, late night, parties, game day and other special events. Hickory Tavern’s purpose is to create craveable experiences for our guests and we do that by serving great food, cold beer and sharing our passion for sports, entertainment and good times! Hickory Tavern has 34 locations serving 16 communities across the southeastern United States. To learn more please visit https://www.thehickorytavern.com for up-to-date details on their specials, promotions and events, connect with Hickory Tavern on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
About CrunchTime! Information Systems, Inc.
CrunchTime! Information Systems, Inc. provides a comprehensive restaurant operations platform that simplifies and automates restaurant operations. By driving the flow of information throughout the organization, CrunchTime ensures operators make timely, fact-based decisions that help brands reduce food and beverage costs, drive labor efficiencies, and better manage the quality and consistency of their foodservice operations. For almost 25 years, CrunchTime has enabled restaurant chains of all sizes to scale efficiently and save money. For more information, visit www.crunchtime.com.
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Mike Schultz, Cavalier Communications, LLC
mike@cavalier-communications.com
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