Organization Name: CrunchTime!
Industry: Information Systems
Name of contact if available: Paul Molinari, Director Of Marketing
Web references: CrunchTime! PRWeb Twitter Facebook
Description of how social media is used for business performance:
In order to create and maintain a close relationship with customers in the supply chain, trust and collaboration are considered the core factors.
CrunchTime! Information Systems is a leading provider of enterprise solutions for the hospitality industries. Now, in its 20th year, CrunchTime back office solutions continue to help customers reduce food and beverage costs, drive labor efficiencies, and better manage the quality and consistency of their foodservice operations. CrunchTime’s customers include multi-unit restaurants, cruise lines, entertainment venues, hotels and foodservice management companies around the world.
CrunchTime! allows organizations to centrally set-up and control all data at the corporate level, ultimately ensuring your business rules and goals are in place across all restaurant locations. Moreover, their enterprise reporting allows you to gain real-time visibility to all operating data, including Actual vs. Theoretical, Profit and Loss, Labor reporting and more. Reports are both standard and configurable, and will allow you to dive deeper into processes across your organization.
The All-In-One Restaurant Back Office System creates solutions and tools for: Food Cost Management; Inventory Management; Menu Engineering & Recipe Costs; TeamworX Team Management Scheduling; Dashboards & Alerts; Forecasting & Planning; Restaurant Supply Chain; Production Planning; Enterprise Reporting; Xchange Vendor Management; BizIQ Business Intelligence and International Solutions.
When asked about the importance of building trust with the companies they work with, Paul Molinari, Director of Marketing for CrunchTime! replied:
Yes, we have built a strong trust with the companies we work with. These companies depend on CrunchTime to better run their operations, including understanding how much food they waste…
- Identifying inventory need
- Ordering product
- Confirming receipt
- Receiving goods
- Place in warehouse
- Outlet orders
- Deliver goods to outlets
- Consumption of goods
- Capture waste
Molinari went on to explain the balance between the companies use of social media and face-to-face interaction:
Social Media is used primarily for prospect education and brand awareness. We use twitter, linkedin, and facebook as well as YouTube and Vimeo for social media. We generally post articles or stories that we believe our customers and software users would value. Because of the depth and breadth of our software, to use social media for customer service would be rather useless because the people that use our software would prefer to interact with us through normal customer service channels.
In an interview with Restaurant Business Magazine, President and CEO of CrunchTime! Bill Bellissimo stresses the importance of alignment in the supply chain. As a recovering food service operator, Bill understands the ins and outs of the food industry and the back office systems. His experience allows him to navigate the issues and struggles that arise and helps him provide useful solutions and strategies to his customers.
Bellissimo says that some of the keys to supply chain success are:
- Making sure all moving parts are headed in the same direction
- Employees, vendors, suppliers and all systems are aligned
- Each person has the information needed to make smart/timely choices
- Products, people and process with the same mission
CrunchTime!’s intuitive back office system is providing solutions in many areas. Shared online recipe access from USDA nutritional database, to culinary teams, to serving staff allows accuracy and confidence at all times. Food cost tracking has proven to save big dollars with accuracy in matching contracted prices and actual prices. Comprehensive data on menu items makes room for strategic menu engineering. The strategies are endless and the success is real.
In February 2015, CrunchTime! launched CrunchTime! Maincourse, an online learning platform giving hospitality professionals instructions on how to apply their back office platform, CrunchTime! Net-Chef. This platform is used in thousands of restaurants world wide. With clear tutorials and easy to follow instructions, staff are trained to operate and perform tasks such as taking an inventory in under 10 minutes.
CrunchTime’s most respected brands leverage their expertise. A few testimonials say it all.
CrunchTime greatly simplifies the mechanics of Inventory Control for our theatre managers and quickly highlights areas of opportunity. Theatre managers can now quickly focus in on key areas that have the greatest impact on effectively managing the supply chain, reducing waste and improving overall efficiency of the Food and Beverage operations.
— Gary Suter, SVP of Purchasing and Procurement
AMC Theatres
Improved inventory processes, reduced food cost variance and managers spending less time on the computer and more time with customers are just a few of the ways Au Bon Pain has benefited from CrunchTimes! system. Cindy McClelland, Director of Food Cost Systems at Au Bon Pain talks about the positive experience her company has had with CrunchTime!
Au Bon Pain has also had success in tracking food cost management.
Lessons for others:
1 Effective applications such as CrunchTime have proven to be trusted to supply chain management.
2 When considering a back office system, find someone who will take the time to understand your company and mission.
3 Use systems that are accessible – quick and easy for staff to learn and implement. If training can be efficient and straight forward with systems that suit your needs, you will have staff that can focus on their tasks and show up in their work.
Submitted by: Lisa Fodor & Katelyn Wilson
To contact the author of this entry please email at: katelyntina@gmail.com OR lfodor3@hotmail.com – U of W, Social Media for Business Performance students.
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.