Friday, April 12, 2013

How SONIC Spokane delivered fast the coneys


Image source: northcoastdriveins.com

“America’s Drive-In,” SONIC has been giving 43 states the taste of efficiency in service from its carhops on roller skates, and of “carnival-like” explosion in the mouth with its classic fares of hamburgers and french fries, as well as hotdogs and coneys. Its rocketing success, however, is not a giveaway in the starter kit for opening branches. So when it opened in Spokane, Washington, the fast-casual food place was met with certain business challenges.

Management worried about handling operations with a seamless, integrated system. Owners were hard-pressed to obtain and track sales and labor rates as they occur. Personnel waited to be asked for areas and service issues they can identify. Long story shortened, Infor had to intervene. Always industry- and company-specific, the solutions it wrought were accommodating to the business being put up, and flexible in incorporating the client’s feature requests into the software it introduced: the Infor SmartSeries Point-of-Sale (POS) Systems.


Image source: toptenreviews.com

Since POS targeted food service operators, it’s been built to run smoothly even as minor tweaking, glitches, and significant reconfiguration arose. As attested to by Preston Hawkins, owner of the Spokane franchise, Infor is a company that concerns itself with client-related rough spots. Meanwhile, in the first 87 days of the restaurant, it earned a record of $1 million in revenues, a first in all SONIC drive-ins.

For the franchise, POS has enhanced prep statuses to improve kitchen management, strategized addition of orders to existing ones, sped up identification of stations in need of help for order preps, made problems detectable by areas to keep the flow of stall and drive-through service fluid, and provided management with immediate access to sales and labor particulars. Mr. Hawkins and the store manager, Selina Harner, are appreciative of the software solution.

See the case study for this branch here.


Image source: phoenixsmoothjazzblog.com

Under Charles Phillips’ mandate, Infor has been developing software solutions that work specifically for its targets. See how it’s done here.