Archive for November, 2007

Early this morning (late last night), one of the TimeForge servers began experiencing some issues which disabled access to the server. We are very sorry if this caused any inconvenience - we were able to have the system back up and running within a few hours.

However, we are taking a few hours this evening (Sunday night, and Monday morning) to improve some of the TimeForge architecture, in an effort to provide a faster and more reliable program to our many users.

TimeForge will be down for 2 - 6 hours to upgrade the systems.

Thanks for your understanding.

Entitled A Look Into the Leading Chains of the Casual, Fast Casual, Quick Serve, and Family Restaurant Segments, Chain Store Guide (CSGIS) recently published an whitepaper describing Point of Sale (POS) systems currently being used by various national restaurant chains.

There is some interesting information in the whitepaper, which is an examination of the data that Chain Store Guide has been collecting for years, and makes available in some of their products. The paper looks at the average age of POS hardware and POS software in use at the top five restaurants for several segments of the hospitality industry, including:

• Fast Casual (Panera Bread, Chipotle Mexican Grill, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, Boston Market, Captain D’s, etc…)
• Casual (Applebee’s, Chili’s, Outback, Olive Garden, T.G.I Friday’s)
• Quick Serve (McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut)
• Family Restaurant (Denny’s, Cracker Barrel, Golden Corral, Bob Evans, Waffle House)

According to their data:

• The top 5 fast casual chains have Point of Sale hardware that is almost 7 years old, and Point of Sale software that is just over 5 years old (on average).
• The top 5 casual chains have Point of Sale hardware that is about 6 years old, and Point of Sale software that is right at 9 years old (on average).
• The top 5 quick service chains have Point of Sale hardware that is right at 4 years old, and Point of Sale software that is just over 3 years old (on average).
• The top 5 family chains have Point of Sale hardware that is just over 7 years old, and Point of Sale software that is more than 9 years old (on average).

You can read the full Chain Store Guide report here.

How long does it take you to make an employee work schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, grocery, convenience store, or restaurant.

Our employee scheduling product, TimeForge, has been featured on RunningRestaurants.com, a members-only sister site of RestaurantReport.com In the interview, I discussed some of the special features in TimeForge, such as the AutoScheduler, employee schedule alerts, employee requests, and setting up availability.

Thanks very much to Jaime Oikle and his staff for featuring our software!

Some of the topics that we covered included:

• Labor scheduling has been done on paper for years … why should a restaurant look at moving to web based employee scheduling?
• Do employees like to use labor scheduling systems like TimeForge?
• What are employee notifications, and do employee alerts help keep staff happy, and reduce turnover?
• Does a web based employee scheduling software positively effect employee turnover?
• In 15 seconds (or less), tell restaurant operators and managers why they should use TimeForge for their scheduling needs.
• How long does it take to learn a powerful labor scheduling system like TimeForge, and how much time do owners/managers spend with your system on a weekly basis to manage the schedules?

Feel free to let us know if you think we forgot something important!

You can read the complete article on RunningRestaurants.com

How long does it take to make your employee schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, grocery, convenience store, or restaurant.

In addition to the many, many, updates that TimeForge.com received this week - employee scheduling also became more secure. All of the pages in the TimeForge.com scheduling program are now equipped with the same 128-bit SSL encryption that many banks and credit cards require. You can be certain certain that no one will intercept usernames, passwords, pay rates, or other valuable information while you are on TimeForge.com!

How long does it take to make your employee schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, grocery, convenience store, or restaurant.

One of the newsletters that we receive at TimeForge is the excellent (weekly) Restaurant Report Newsletter. Two weeks ago, this question was posed in the newsletter:

“Inventory Control Programs - What would you recommend as the best inventory control programs that is easy to read, follow and upkeep with information. As well we are looking into a new computer system and program for the front of the house….what would you recommend. We are in Canada and service and maintenance of course is very important.”

Several years ago, we did a study of food-service industry inventory programs, and looked at the adoption and usage of inventory procedures in the marketplace. During this study, we also spoke with many of the “obvious” players in the industry - so we sent the poster a response to her question, which was published in this week’s Restaurant Report:

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As I’m sure you are aware, there are dozens of inventory systems on the market today, and even more if you consider systems which are part of the “back-office” software suites.

The interesting thing about inventory systems is that….few people use them. We did a study about 2 years ago of all of the major players, and how many people used their products. Less than 20% of the market uses inventory control (with a computer). That being said, there are some amazing programs out there that will help reduce food costs and/or track inventory.

Some of the main vendors include:

Eatec, MenuLink (part of Radiant), and Compeat are all “high end” systems. Expect to spend between $10k and $40k for your store to get started with one of their packages. Really designed for very large chains. These guys own about 3 - 4% of the hospitality inventory market.

iPro is (was) a one-man show, and is the “bargain bin” version of inventory software. I would stay away from this product, even if it’s only $99. They own about 1% of the market (mostly eBay purchases).

ChefTec is “the” independent inventory product in the US, and is based out of Colorado. Getting support isn’t always easy, but they are very knowledgeable about their product. About 20 employees (as of 2 years ago), and their product starts around $1k. About 2-3% of the market (on the high end).

Cost Guard is an excellent product, which was recently upgraded and a lot of new documentation was written for the product. The owner lives in New York, and runs a tight ship…but there are only about 4 employees at last count. Probably have about 1.3% of the total market. Given the opportunity, I would recommend Cost Guard over ChefTec.

Optimum Control is a Canadian company, and as of 2 years ago, had about 6 or 8 employees. They claimed to have 3,000 installed restaurants, or about .3% of the market. Pricing is around $1k.

If I was you, I would recommend that you give Optimum Control and Cost Guard a try, and see which one works better for you. I believe both of the products have online or downloadable demos.

Regarding the front-of-house…are you interested in a POS system, a reservation system, a scheduling solution, a marketing solution, a video surveillance system, bar and liquor control, or something else? There are all-in-one solutions (I don’t recommend them), and there are individual pieces to the puzzle.

Of course, if you need a labor management tool - please take a look at our software.

Hope that helps - good luck!

Anthony Presley
Founder
TimeForge.com: Restaurant Employee Scheduling Software
P: 866.684.7191

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After writing this, I was contacted by Kenny at Cost Genie, and am currently reviewing their product. So far, it looks like something you might want to review as well.

How long does it take to make your employee schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, grocery, convenience store, or restaurant.

On Sunday night, we released the latest version of TimeForge, the groundbreaking, simple and easy to use employee scheduling software. This new version continues to improve the TimeForge software, adding many new features so you can go home sooner!

What’s New?

Graphic Improvements. Many of the charts in TimeForge.com received an upgrade over the weekend. They look better, display faster, and can now be printed! To print a chart, right click on the chart, and click “Print”.

Colors! You can now change the colors of the graphs inside of TimeForge to meet your needs, based on the position being scheduled. To do so, click on “Employees” and then click on “Positions”. Click “Edit” on the position you want to change, and then click on the color box to pick a color for the position.

Reliable Text Messaging Alerts. We guarantee that our text messages will be delivered to you and your staff. We provide a high quality text messaging solution for our clients, and have partnered with ClickATell, a text-messaging pioneer, to ensure that your messages are always delivered to your staff.

Setup Wizard and User Wizard Improvements. These two tools enable you, and your management team, to quickly add employees and positions to TimeForge. They have been streamlined to include only the crucial information needed to build a schedule.

Free Schedule Entry. We have always offered Free Schedule Entry for you and your team. Fill out a simple spreadsheet, and send us two of your current schedules. We enter your schedules for you!

How long does it take to make your employee schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, grocery, convenience store, or restaurant.