Foodservice case studies

Blue C Sushi
Sushi restaurant enhances quality control, customer service with RFID technology
James Allard and Steve Rosen, cofounders of Blue C Sushi, built on the popularity of sushi restaurants by importing the Japanese concept of kaiten sushi, in which customers sit at counters or tables and are presented with sushi-laden plates that move along a conveyor belt. Allard and Rosen wanted to enhance quality control at Blue C restaurants and the efficiency of the chefs while also capturing data on customer buying habits. Working with solutions provider Kikata and Intermec, a leading provider of radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Blue C Sushi deployed a system using ultra high frequency RFID tags and scanners, plus Microsoft software, including BizTalk RFID, a technology component of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006. With the solution in place, chefs can more closely monitor what food items are on plates and when those items are removed or running low. The system also captures customer-buying data that can be used to plan operations more effectively.

Cold Stone Creamery
Ice creamery connects with customers, lowers costs with easy-to-use solution
Cold Stone Creamery® is famous for its ice cream Creations™, which contain any combination of fruits, nuts, or candy. It's famous, too, for its popular Birthday Club that provides member children with free ice cream on their birthdays. The company wanted to open the club to all customers, not just children, and move the program enrollment online. In doing so, the company also wanted to centralize customer information, lower costs, and streamline marketing efforts. Cold Stone Creamery teamed with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner TopLine Strategies to implement Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM, which provides the foundation for the online Birthday Club program. Today, Cold Stone Creamery has immediate access to customer information, increased program enrollment, and lower costs associated with the Birthday Club. The company also has an easy-to-use, familiar solution that it plans to extend to additional areas of its business.

Culver Franchising Systems, Inc. (CFSI)
Culver’s improves operations with Microsoft Business Intelligence solution
Though CFSI’s Site Operations system gathered a lot of data, the company lacked an efficient method for analyzing it. Getting the information needed to make decisions involved highly manual reporting processes that bogged down operational staff and franchise business partners (FBPs). The difficulty of analysis meant that many decisions were based on intuition rather than hard numbers –- which caused real problems when CFSI wanted to quantify the effectiveness of certain product mixes. CFSI turned to trusted partner RedPrairie, provider of Culver’s retail management systems. The company was impressed by RedPrairie’s powerful Performance Management solution, based on Microsoft® Business Intelligence (BI) technologies. The RedPrairie-Microsoft solution gives CFSI easy access to the data needed to make better decisions and improve store operations, while vastly reducing reporting time.

Darden Restaurants
Darden Restaurants cuts operational costs, speeds time-to-market with POS solution
Florida-based Darden Restaurants, owner and operator of Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and other popular casual-dining restaurants, wanted to replace an aging point-of-service (POS) system in its 1,400 restaurants with one that offered higher reliability, greater manageability, and faster deployment to new locations. That's what it has with a solution built on Microsoft® technologies. With greater visibility into POS status, automated self-healing, and proactive on-site maintenance, Darden has almost eliminated the time needed to service POS devices, has cut the time to deploy devices to new restaurants by half, and is saving millions of dollars per year in POS-related maintenance and deployment costs. Best of all, according to one executive, IT at Darden is now a driver of the company's continued business success.

Domino's Pizza
Domino's provides end-to-end pizza ordering in Spanish with Tellme services
Domino's worked with Tellme to release the first national toll-free service with end-to-end Spanish pizza ordering. The centralized ordering solution provides full ordering capabilities on a self-service basis, using customer data to make intelligent offers and shorten the ordering experience. And Tellme's integrated voice/IP network enables the transfer of caller information, phone order history, web order history, and order status directly to Domino's team members when a Spanish-speaking agent is needed, delivering a consistent customer experience. Full integration to Domino's point of sale and online ordering systems further improves ordering experience.

Friendly's
Ice cream shops serve up super server reliability with one directory "flavor"
Since 1935, families in the northeastern United States have visited Friendly's restaurants for delicious hot fudge sundaes, burgers, salads, and sandwiches. The company operates more than 530 company-owned and franchised restaurants and sells its ice cream through more than 4,500 retail locations. Looking to streamline its IT infrastructure, reduce server maintenance costs, and simplify remote access to the corporate network, Friendly's phased out its Novell NetWare-based file and print server computers and replaced them with servers running the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 operating system featuring Active Directory®. This move increased server reliability and reduced administrative work by up to three hours each week. It also allows remote employees to more securely access the corporate network and helped boost workstation performance by eliminating Novell software on the desktop.

Hard Rock International's
Hard Rock creates unique rock ’n’ roll experience online
Begun as an authentic American diner in London in 1971, Hard Rock International today owns restaurants, hotels, casinos, and live venues throughout the world, as well as an unparalleled collection of rock ’n’ roll memorabilia. Hard Rock wanted to reinforce its authentic brand and role as custodian to rock ’n’ roll history by sharing its collection of memorabilia with fans. Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Vertigo and design and advertising agency Duncan/Channon, Hard Rock used Microsoft Silverlight 2 to create a unique Web site that serves as a shrine to all things rock. Visitors use intuitive zoom technology to navigate the collection, investigate the stories behind each piece and share their discoveries with friends. Using Microsoft products and technologies, Vertigo built a content management system and infrastructure for the site in just 30 days.

McCormick & Schmick's
National seafood restaurant group finds the recipe for success
McCormick & Schmick's 39 seafood restaurants have increased in name recognition. This unique restaurant chain is adding restaurants each year at a rapid rate. Each one has its own regional flavor, featuring locally available seafood and original recipes of its chefs. Upscale but affordable, the restaurants have managed to capture the loyalty of local clientele. By the time McCormick & Schmick's restaurant count reached 14, the firm had outgrown its spreadsheet-based accounting system. Knowing it was positioning the business for future growth, the company carefully researched 50 different solutions and settled on Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™). Now, 25 restaurants later, McCormick & Schmick's likes the solution's flexibility and ease of use. The company has "grown up" with Microsoft Business Solutions, which helps it manage the growth it's enjoying in a time when other restaurants are struggling.

New Belgium Brewing
Craft brewer stays connected with its sales force
New Belgium Brewing, one of the most innovative and fastest-growing craft brewers in the United States, has long used information technology to help meet its commitments to environmental stewardship, employee empowerment, and the bottom line. To help keep a close eye on inventory sales and costs, New Belgium has extended the reach of its Microsoft Dynamics GP business management solution and incorporated Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to increase access to information and enhance communication and collaboration across the company. New Belgium credits its information technology solutions with helping it manage sustainable growth as it expands into new markets and introduces new products.

Potbelly Sandwich Works
Restaurant boosts revenues 2.5 percent by giving performance data to managers
Potbelly Sandwich Works is a fast-growing restaurant company. But the information on which Potbelly personnel made business decisions was limited in scope and available to only some of the people who needed it. To address the problem, Potbelly adopted a Microsoft® business intelligence solution that consolidates disparate data sources into a central data warehouse. Users access the analysis through scorecards and reports that enable them to drill down into the information. A pilot deployment immediately increased revenues 2.5 percent just by giving restaurant operators insight into the performance of their stores. Executives have visibility into company performance and can identify high performers and best practices. The decision to extend an existing investment in Microsoft software saves Potbelly a reported US$300,000 per year.

Sodexho
Sodexho gains keen insight into infrastructure through enterprise monitoring solution
Sodexho, the leading food and facilities management services company in North America, needed a monitoring solution that would give it a comprehensive view of its dispersed and segmented environment, enable customized real-time reports, help support granular role-based views for greater security and productivity, and provide audit collection service. That’s what it’s getting with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.

Starbucks
World's leading roaster and retailer of specialty coffees reduces costs and prepares for growth with server upgrade
To simplify its complex server environment while still supporting its growth plans, Starbucks implemented a new domain structure and upgraded to Active Directory® Domain Services in the 64-bit edition of Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise. As a result, Starbucks expects to achieve easier IT management, enhanced auditing capabilities, and cost savings.

Town and Country Fine Foods
Technology cooks up good results for specialty foodservice distributor
Town and Country Fine Foods (TCFF) is a specialty foodservice distributor that supplies the major, and most of the minor, players in the United Kingdom's catering and hospitality industry. With plans to enhance its customer services, TCFF found it was being held back by the restrictions of its Unix-based business accounting system. But after taking Microsoft Dynamics NAV business software live in March 2004, TCFF is seeing significant benefits in sales and customer relationships, as well as reduced business costs.