October 2004

B.R. Guest Restaurants puts EatecNetX to the test and sees immediate ROI
By H. Rae Gibbons

B.R. Guest Restaurants’ innovative dining concepts, which feature an ambitious range of cuisines from around the world, compliment its tenacious business outlook. The company, which opened its first restaurant in 1987, now has 14 locations in Manhattan, Scottsdale and Las Vegas, and has even ventured into the hotel business, opening the James Hotel in Scottsdale in January 2004. So when the restaurant group went looking for a back-office solution that could support its burgeoning business, it wanted a provider that shared its progressive vision of hospitality. That provider was Eatec Corp., who has supplied B.R. Guest Restaurants with its EatecNetX enterprise back-office solution and enabled the restaurant company to enhance operations and immediately see a return on investment.

Previously, B.R. Guest had been using a DOS-based inventory program, but because the company was growing so rapidly, it needed a Windows-based system that would allow it to export data and incorporate it into daily flash reports. Rocky Lucia, corporate director of IT for B.R. Guest and James Hotels, said that the company began looking for a solution a few years ago that would streamline the inventory and purchasing processes and eventually narrowed it down to two vendors. One of the main criteria the company was looking for was an easy interface for its employees, which is exactly what it found in EatecNetX.

Suitable solution
“EatecNetX provided a user-friendly interface that enabled the features and functionality we were looking for. We have all of the functionality that we had with the DOS-based system, plus much, much more — EatecNetX interfaces with our point-of-sale and accounting systems, so it allows us to go full circle,” says Lucia.

Lucia, who has previous experience with food and beverage companies as well as software providers, and who regularly attends technology tradeshows, is very familiar with the different products available in the marketplace. He says, “There were only three or four products out there that could possibly do what we needed, and Eatec has all the capability, plus the ease of use that we wanted.”

B.R. Guest began rolling out EatecNetX to all of its locations — 12 at the time — in May 2002, and within eight weeks they were live. The two additional stores that have opened since then are also using EatecNetX. Once the stores went live, the results were instant according to Lucia. “We immediately saw a significant reduction in food and beverage costs. And we’re now within half a point of our theoreticals all of the time.” Within the first year of implementing EatecNetX, B.R. Guest saw a full return on its investment.

EatecNetX’s core features include purchasing, inventory, recipe, forecasting, production and sales analysis functions. The system’s modular software structure enables users to configure the exact set of features needed. B.R. Guest is using all of the core features.

Lucia owes part of B.R. Guest’s success with EatecNetX to the positive reaction from the employees. “Everyone was a little intimidated by the technology at first, but once they jumped in, they were very excited about it. That catapulted us into the immediate cost savings because everyone was so into it.”

Take it easy
Lucia also notes that the company’s reporting capabilities were greatly enhanced with EatecNetX. “We have some folks in our company that are experts on Crystal reports, and with this system in place we were able to enhance the Crystal reports we had as well as write some new ones of our own to add to the extensive report library that Eatec already has in place. In addition, EatecNetX allows us to maintain control of our food and beverage costs, track waste and inventory, and cost out menu items to make sure we’re pricing things correctly. It makes it easy for new staff to come in and pick up the system. It also helps keep our vendor bidding intact — so someone doesn’t need to key in all the vendor bids manually.”

Lucia adds, “The system runs itself, and the fact that EatecNetX interfaces to all of our systems including accounting and POS, has been a major benefit. The invoices that get entered into EatecNetX import to our accounting system. And once someone enters an order into our POS, it flows into our inventory system, which streamlines the entire process because it eliminates a lot of manual labor.”

B.R.Guest is also using the AccuBar handheld system, which interfaces to EatecNetX, to simplify the beverage inventory process. Lucia attests that the combined system cuts the time it takes to gather beverage inventory by more than half.

With the huge success the company has experienced with the technology so far, Lucia is sure B.R. Guest would consider adding any enhancements that Eatec comes out with. “EatecNetX gave us the flexibility we needed, interfacing with every system we have. It has made our operation a true full circle system, and that is exactly what we were looking for.”

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