For decades, quick-service restaurants have handled cash the same way: employees count bills, managers prepare deposits, and someone makes the trip to the bank, sometimes multiple times per day. It’s a system riddled with inefficiencies, errors, and security risks.
“In the past five years, smart safe adoption has more than doubled for Loomis,” says Lenny Evansek, senior vice president of national retail business development at Loomis. “Operators are realizing one of the lowest-value responsibilities in a restaurant is counting and transporting cash.”
A recent time study conducted by Loomis found operators spend an average of 441 minutes per week on till reconciliation and 280 minutes on bank trips, adding up to more than 500 hours annually and costing operators over $10,000 per location in labor expenses.
Traditionally, employees deposit excess cash into a dumb safe, where it sits until a manager manually counts it, reconciles it against sales, and prepares a deposit. Mistakes happen. Deposits get forgotten. Cash shortages go unnoticed. At some point, someone has to leave to take the deposit to the bank.
“Before smart safes, cash-handling in quick-service restaurants was entirely manual,” Evansek says. “Most operators weren’t using armored car services. Just basic pickup and delivery. That meant every location was handling cash differently, with no real visibility at the corporate level.”
A Loomis smart safe changes that. Employees deposit cash directly into the safe, automatically recording each transaction; who deposited the money, how much, and when. The data syncs in near real time with Loomis Direct, a cash visibility portal that updates every five to ten minutes. At closing, managers don’t have to count and build deposits.
“The only thing left to do is print the end-of-day report and match it to the register,” Evansek says. “That’s it. No more counting, no more building deposits, no more bank runs.”
For larger franchisees and operators, the benefits go further. Without a smart safe, operators managing multiple locations often struggle with inconsistent deposit schedules, multiple banking relationships, and a lack of real-time oversight. With smart safes, cash-handling is standardized across all locations, allowing consolidation of banking relationships. Loomis has also developed franchisee purchasing programs, allowing franchisors to negotiate legal and pricing terms upfront and benefit from the purchasing power of the franchisor.
“If you own 100 restaurants and they’re each ordering $800 a week in change, that adds up,” says Evansek. “With Loomis’s Cash Exchange program—which is an adjacent solution to SafePoint—you don’t get debited in advance. You just pay when the change is delivered.”
According to Datassential, 54 percent of operators are planning to incorporate new technology into back-office functions, and 52 percent will devote resources to point-of-sale systems in 2025. As quick-service restaurants invest in new technology, Evansek believes many overlook fundamentals like cash automation.
“What we do might not be the flashiest technology out there, but the impact is immediate, measurable, and practical,” Evansek says. “It saves time, it saves money, and it gives operators peace of mind.”
To learn more, visit loomis.us.
By Drew Filipski
