While bigger is better when negotiating to buy technology, that same size can present challenges when it comes time to deploy new technology or upgrade existing software or hardware.
Imagine maneuvering a huge ocean liner through the narrow confines of the Panama Canal and you’ll get a sense of how Red Lobster employees must have felt when they tackled a major point-of-sale system, or POS, initiative. There were a lot of potential systems and locations problems to maneuver around but not a lot of room for miscalculation.
The team at Orlando, Fla.-based Red Lobster would have had the sympathy of Rob West, vice president of restaurant systems and technology services at The Cheesecake Factory Inc. of Calabasas Hills, Calif. Cheesecake’s deployment of the HotSchedules application was another big-scale rollout without much room for error.
Red Lobster’s deployment of POS technology involved 680 locations during a 10-month period. The Cheesecake Factory campaign involved training more than 900 managers and 30,000 other employees.
It Takes a Village
There is an ancient African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child. For Red Lobster it took a “village” made up of many cross-functional teams within parent company Darden Restaurants Inc. to roll out the Darden Application for Service and Hospitality, or DASH. The effort began in 60 restaurants in 2006, with the bulk of the installations taking place between October 2006 and August 2007.
Red Lobster chose the DASH platform after looking at its old platform and determining what needed to be done to enhance the dining experience of the company's guests today and in the future. Dave Newcott, senior director of operations analysis, says that Red Lobster's focal point was on what they could do to improve guest service and to be guest-focused. The chain wanted to install something that would allow servers to spend more time at the table with the guest and less time inputting orders.
“Time is becoming more and more precious. Anything that we could do to help our servers get orders input faster and closed out faster was what we wanted from a POS system,” says John Wilkerson, senior director of operations.
Achieving this goal required constant communication and teamwork from the information technology, or IT, department, as well as from the operations, training and finance disciplines. DASH team members wanted software that could be put on any hardware platform. They got their underlying code from SIVA Corp., which since has been acquired and assimilated by Par Technology Corp.
Working with SIVA, the Red Lobster team modified the software to meet the specific needs of the casual-dining seafood chain. Newcott says the team was looking at the big picture and wanted something that they would be able to expand in the future to further improve guest services.
In fact, it was Darden’s satisfaction with the SIVA code and its flexibility that attracted Par’s attention and ultimately spurred the consolidation, according to Christopher Byrnes, Par’s director of corporate development.
Internal Collaboration
The Red Lobster finance and training groups collaborated to create a DASH deployment plan that incorporated blended training and facilitated instruction for directors and general managers by geographic region. The DASH team created a moving POS lab that went from city to city. Their goal was to bring as many directors and managers as possible together at one time from any given region.
Once in a new region, the training team would set up the portable POS lab in a hotel lobby and train each manager on the new system. Managers were put through a five-hour session where they learned how to turn on the system in the morning, ring orders, do other management duties and shut it down at the end of the day. Members of the DASH team say they felt that this training prepared the managers for success when they returned to their individual restaurants. Management training occurred up to four weeks prior to go-live dates.
To train their crews, the managers used meeting guides and online training materials. Crews received the majority of their training two weeks prior to their go-live dates.
The DASH team wrote all of the storyboards for training modules, which were adapted to an online platform by a specialized designer. The materials were made available to restaurant-level employees via POS terminals.
Newcott says DASH proved superior to the chain’s prior POS setup in that DASH supports simultaneous training by up to six servers.
“That particular benefit continues today. Each of those terminals doubles as an access point into the intranet for the crew to access training, and any [other] basic intranet functions, which is another huge gain for us,” adds Krista Rice, Red Lobster senior manager of crew training.
New hires have access to this same online training, and the trainers in the restaurant support it. Rice says that DASH has a very intuitive interface and that crewmembers quickly recognized that, as well as the new program’s overall benefits for the operation.
Red Lobster restaurants essentially had two POS systems in place during the final stages of the deployment. This minimized disruption of service while giving managers and crewmembers time to practice and train on the new system.
Wilkerson said he feels that multidepartment and even multiconcept collaboration was key to the project’s success. There were teams within the IT, finance and training teams to ensure that group-specific chores were completed on schedule and as planned.
The IT group created a team specifically trained on the DASH system to support the company’s help desk operations. Restaurant employees with a question specific to DASH were directed to one of these help desk DASH specialists.
Wilkerson says he is getting feedback from operations personnel about the ease and speed of use of the new system.
“We are getting to the terminals, getting orders input much quicker and getting away from the terminals and back to taking care of the guest, which is where we want our crew and managers to be,” Wilkerson explains of the changes spurred by DASH.
Trainer Rice says that it is much easier for the servers to split checks and move items around. This usually means less manager interaction, which gets the check to the table faster, she indicates.
The DASH team is finding that crews are adapting to the new system much quicker than they did to older technology. It is also seeing improved accuracy of orders to the kitchen.
Many guests have special instructions or requests with their orders. The new DASH platform makes it easier for the server to input those special needs and for the kitchen to read the instructions and prepare the meal to guests' liking, insiders say.
Wendy Spirduso, director of communications, says IT officials estimate that Red Lobster has reduced its average transaction time by approximately 25 percent to 33 percent, compared with pre-DASH days. The chain serves about 2.7 million guests per week, she indicates, so those improvements in speed of service, coupled with the enhanced order accuracy attributed to DASH, have the potential to greatly improve guest throughput as well as perceived levels of service.
One of Red Lobster’s goals with DASH was to create a technology platform that it could build on. The chain currently is testing tableside settlement functions, or pay-at-table capabilities, in two Florida markets. Such trials are made possible by DASH’s support of wireless networking and the use of handheld terminals that permit guests to self swipe their credit or debit card or watch a wait staffer swipe their card without leaving the table.
Tableside settlement puts the guest in control of the pace at which they end their meal. It also puts customers at ease related to payment card security, because cards never leave their sight, Red Lobster sources indicate.
“We find that you can eliminate anywhere from five to 10 minutes off a mealtime, especially for guests who are comfortable enough to handle the device [themselves],” says Wilkerson. “When the guest chooses to leave, the device is there, they can swipe their card, input their tip, get their receipt and go. They are no longer at the mercy of us having to come back.”
The DASH deployment team encountered some hurdles, but “we overcame everything that we encountered,” Wilkerson declares.
Ateam approach, collaborative spirit and the lessons learned from past rollouts all combined to make the DASH project perhaps the most successful of its kind in the chain’s history, some participants indicate. Newcott and Wilkerson agree that if they were rolling out another POS system five years from now, they would rely on the DASH deployment model.
From the beginning of the DASH initiative, Red Lobster knew that the most significant portion of the investment would relate to replacing old hardware. Updating the software gives the chain next-generation capabilities that will become more and more evident and increase the return on investment as new peripherals are added, Newcott indicates.
The goal when embarking on the DASH rollout was to improve the guest experience, and deployment team members indicate they never lost track of that mission. Notes Newcott, “We are in this business to take care of the guest, not to put new equipment in or have fancy software.”
The Cheesecake Factory
The Cheesecake Factory began its rollout of the HotSchedules scheduling application on May 12, 2007, completing the conversion to the Web-based program in the first 18 units by June 1 of that year.
Behind the rollout, Cheesecake Factory IT sources say, was a goal to improve the quality of life for the chain’s managers and staff. The HotSchedules system gives managers the freedom to forecast labor and prepare schedules from any Web-enabled computer. It also allows staff members to use a Web-enabled computer, a POS terminal or cell phone to check their schedules, make schedule requests, trade shifts and print earnings statements.
The HotSchedules rollout represented a milestone for 29-year-old, 150-plus-unit Cheesecake Factory, as it marked the first time the company attempted to deploy an application systemwide without sending IT or training personnel into the field. This decision resulted in cost and time savings, company representatives say.
According to The Cheesecake Factory, the company saved approximately $400,000, compared with their previous implementation approach. Sources there report that the HotSchedules rollout budget and actual expenses came in under $5,000. They also indicate that the virtual-rollout approach using network tools and computer-based and online training got the job done noticeably faster than would have been possible if trainers had been sent to each location.
With the old system, there was one computer available for all 11 managers in each restaurant to complete scheduling and labor forecasting for one or more work groups. In all, the management team of each restaurant has to schedule approximately 200 employees across 1,100 shifts per week. Using the PC-based scheduling application of old, managers found themselves waiting for long stretches to use the one dedicated scheduling computer — a situation that forced some to return to work on their scheduled days off to handle that part of their jobs.
Like Red Lobster’s project, implementation of HotSchedules was an extensive undertaking. The Cheesecake Factory’s IT department collaborated with HotSchedules representatives to develop a so-called “Meal Period Planning Program.” This program helped managers schedule appropriately during mealtimes in high-volume restaurants. It also gave them the flexibility to accommodate different states’ wage-and-hour and break regulations.
Once the software was ready for implementation, Cheesecake Factory and HotSchedules personnel teamed up to create multimedia training tools specifically designed for the unique, virtual rollout. The chain then replaced its old labor scheduling and forecasting system, meal period planning tool, floor map tool and manager communication tool with HotSchedules.
In the end, approximately 31,000 Cheesecake Factory managers and crewmembers were trained to properly use the new scheduling tool, and in the process the chain developed effective training materials for new-hires and remedial education.
Webinars were used in the beginning of the process to present managers and staff with information about the benefits of transitioning from the then-current system to the HotSchedules approach. This approach also was intended to spark some excitement among employees about the pending change.
The creation of the multimedia training materials for DVD distribution and online access was key to keeping things as easy as possible for managers and staff, deployment team members indicate. Unit-level personnel designated as a HotSchedules Education Resource for Operations, or HERO, also were considered an important part of the virtual rollout strategy.
Those tools and people, along with printouts of training information and a comprehensive, 20-day manager’s training guide, were the underpinnings to the successful HotSchedules rollout, the parties involved suggest.
Quick Success
Red Lobster and Cheesecake Factory both were able to roll out critical technology tools to all of their restaurants in a relatively short amount of time with the help of many different people or groups from within their "villages." Their team and collaborative approaches kept their metaphoric cruise ships from scraping the sides of the Panama Canal-type constraints that face any large, multiunit restaurant company attempting to deploy information systems systemwide.
But representatives of both companies would be quick to add that those efficient rollouts were only the means to the desired ends: the installation of systems that help restaurants run more efficiently and take better care of their guests.
— By Rebecca Roach and Curt Harler