Sharis reduces costs
Using Decision Logic, Shari’s Restaurant & Pies changed how they balance inventory with customer demand. The result? An increase in profitability.
This proven web-based solution enables Shari’s to:
• More profitably offer special promotions and new menu items
• Better leverage buying power across the organization
• Gain customers because of their fresher, high quality food
Situation: Known for its family dining and signature pies, Shari’s is the largest full-service restaurant chain based in the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1978 and operated by Shari’s Management Corporation of Beaverton, Oregon, Shari’s Restaurants includes 104 locations in six states and employs nearly 4,500 employees. Restaurants are open 24 hours, offering a full selection of breakfasts, salads, sandwiches, hamburgers, dinner entrees, desserts and specialty pies. As such, on-hand inventory and prep is critical to meeting customer expectations for high-quality, reasonably-priced meals and responsive service.
“We thought we had to have all this prep – bins of ham, turkey and three shelves of hash browns. It was
our comfort zone,” said Jacki Camacho, director of operations R&D for Shari’s Management Corporation.
“But Decision Logic has replaced our manual inventory process and we don’t have large bins of prep in
the refrigerator anymore. We decreased food waste and unnecessary prep labor, and we also have a
fresher product.”
Solution: The move to Decision Logic was part of an initiative to improve the use of technology throughout the organization. “We had used technology for back of office only – for cash and accounting, not to manage food,” said Camacho. “Today, we use it every day – for prep sheets and inventory, to manage recipes and drill down to details needed to operate more efficiently.“
Decision Logic has brought a degree of immediacy that wasn’t possible before with manual processes and inventory counts. “Decision Logic does all the math for us. We’re using predictive prep and ordering to generate prep sheets and produce production sheets based on the six-week average for same day sales,” she said. Hot item counts are another tool managers use every day to track ingredients that can be potential problems for a restaurant. It identifies items that managers need to focus on daily to keep numbers in line.
Instead of a manual inventory, counted every 28 days, Shari’s has gone to weekly inventories aided by Decision Logic’s inventory variance reports, accounting for every ingredient and the variety of ways each is used. This is especially useful at Shari’s, which maintains over 300 ingredients in its recipes – with 30 items in meats alone.
“Before managers would hear, ‘your cost of meat is too high.’ Now, we can say, ‘you’re wasting ten T-bones a week,’” she said. “Being able to drill down, even if it’s just on five ingredients can reduce food costs by half a percent or more.” The ability to measure the real costs of ingredients, labor and other variables in the creation of recipes has had an impact on how Camacho and the research and development team develop new recipes and evaluates their addition to the menu.
“As we make new items, we can cost out the ingredients to tell us what we need to know and how it fits into our menu mix. We can now determine how to build plates and price them,” she said.
Through Decision Logic’s inventory position report, Shari’s is able to plan and review inventory for limited time offers and special promotions, which has enabled them to reduce costs. “The report lets us see what inventory remains at every store. So we can make the best use of our buying power to hold off ordering more or to ship to other locations,” she said. “At the end of the promotion, it has meant the difference between having ten cases for the entire company instead of two cases per location.”
Results: Since the implementation of Decision Logic, Shari’s estimates it has been able to reduce waste from 2.4 to 1.7 percent per store. In addition to saving food costs, they eliminated extra prep staff in stores, lowering cost of labor.
Best of all, by preparing just what they need, Shari’s is delivering fresher, higher quality food to their
customers at a lower cost. And it’s this ability to deliver “a wide-ranging menu of quality food, made from
the freshest local ingredients and served at a fair price” that continues to fuel Shari’s continued growth –
and profitability.
The end result of partnering with Decision Logic is a better bottom line, fewer headaches, and the
sweet satisfaction of success.