QSR Automations, a leading provider of kitchen automation and guest management solutions, announced that McAlister’s Deli franchisee, The Saxton Group has doubled down on its commitment and confidence in quick-service restaurant’s kitchen display system — ConnectSmart Kitchen. As the largest McAlister’s franchisee in sales volume, and second in number of restaurant units, the group will upgrade to CSK’s latest software version to tap real-time dining data that targets improvement areas for customer satisfaction.
With 80 McAlister units in six states, the Saxton Group has been in business since 1982, and has achieved considerable success. However, extremely small industry margins necessitate constant monitoring and evaluation by restaurant management. “There’s not a lot of meat on the bone for improvement,” said Saxton Group VP of Operations, Stephen Lee. “We are trying to find pennies and fraction of pennies within the restaurant industry; constantly looking for the areas where a little here or there can make a difference.”
Before transitioning to the latest version of CSK, the Saxton Group had been unable to uncover those crucial improvement areas without access to real-time data. With this software upgrade, the Saxton Group will now see improvements in these key areas:
- Enterprise-level reporting — moving from a delayed reporting process to real-time
- More ticket display options — addressing off-premise dining increases by making packaging and labels more guest-facing
- Increased order speed and accuracy — cutting order time by using an on-the-fly model with order entries and enabling a kitchen call-out for certain modifiers like gluten-free or nut allergies
- Ticket text modification — ability to increase font size that aids in guest order pickup
“As the Saxton Group knows, speed is a big driver of customer satisfaction in the industry, and that’s why our ConnectSmart Kitchen software has been so impactful on operators who want to meet and exceed customer expectations,” said Lee Leet, CEO of QSR Automations. “We are delighted that McAlister’s corporate and its deli franchisees have counted on us for for the last decade, and are equally delighted to see them move to the next generation of our products that offer even more dining insights for improvements.”
According to the National Restaurant Association 2019 State of the Industry Report, improving customer service via easier ordering, as well as providing more takeout and delivery options are areas that consumers most want to see improved. While restaurant operators continue on a strong technology adoption path this year, addressing consumer expectations will be front and center. Operators are finding that access to real-time data is a quick way to capture the opportunities around those improvements.
“With our previous manual reporting process we were always a week behind and that’s a week I can’t get back,” says Lee. “This minute-by-minute reporting access with the CSK upgrade is expected to make strong improvements to our response time and bottom line, because picking up speed is picking up profit. The two, I think, are synonymous.”
