Business View Magazine | November 2019

33 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2019 THE F I FTEEN GROUP Jenny Companion, Vice President of Eastern Canada Operations adds some technology details. “There are a lot of really specific things that are happening,” she notes. “What we’re seeing having the biggest impact is the integration between the items that restaurants are using. And where they’re having the most success is taking scheduling platforms and integrating them directly with their POS (Point of Sale) systems to be able to do post- sales and have the system help forecast what a day-by-day can look like, as well as get real-time performance on how they’re doing with their plan. “We’re also seeing the ability to completely integrate with their inventory systems to allow them to do all of their product ordering and forecast their usage that way. So now, smaller restaurant groups can work with different platforms that can integrate and give them the same type of information as the large corporations have, which is really helpful. What’s taking it to the next level is that there are now a lot of platforms where, fairly cost-effectively, restaurants can work with mobile app programs to train their staff. So much of what the staff has access to is on their phone, where we know they already live and breathe. So, it’s making all the information that they want their employees to have, completely accessible through mobile apps.” “There continues to be more and more products coming out, both in the kitchen and from a point of sales point of view that can help with the whole technology revolution,” Hopkins adds. “We opened a restaurant about two years ago outside of Vancouver that has a pretty complex menu. But it’s all done through sous vide cooking (the process of sealing food in an airtight container—usually a vacuum sealed bag—and then cooking that food in temperature-controlled water), which allows this restaurant to do a much higher quality food with less skilled labor and a really simple execution. That’s one example where we’ve implemented a technology technique to see if we can make the model better, both in terms of quality for the guest, but also for profitability for the operation.”