About Einstein Noah Restaurant Group
Einstein Noah Restaurant Group Inc. is the nation’s largest operator of bagel bakeries and the leader in the quick-casual segment of the restaurant industry.
With the help of MonkeyMedia Software, ENRG has expanded the growth and profitability of their catering program with year over year double digit gains.
ENRG’s retail system consists of approximately 730 restaurants in 39 states and the District of Columbia. The group consists of three major brands – Einstein Bros., Noah’s New York Bagels and Manhattan Bagel.
ENRG is on the leading edge of the cultural shift toward food that is fast, but never tastes that way. Their offerings include fresh-baked goods, made-to-order sandwiches, crisp salads and gourmet coffee.
In a desire to bring a better accounting process and control to large average check transactions at the individual store level, Monkey Online Ordering and Monkey Catering were considered and implemented.
The goal was to work with the MonkeyMedia Software team to develop processes and systems to enable better accounting control through their software – ENRG saw that as a core requisite to solidifying their commitment to catering across their brands.
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The Situation
ENRG realized in 2009 that their catering order system was cumbersome for customers and large average orders were very difficult to track.
They also realized that growth in the number of catering orders wasn’t necessarily producing as high a profit margin as they would like.
While ENRG had worked very hard to build their catering revenue, they recognized that more economies of scale and profitability could be achieved through a software system with greater visibility.
Teaming up with MonkeyMedia Software
“MonkeyMedia...has contributed greatly to the realization of these advantages as centralized support implementation reached 100% of company owned restaurants at the end of 2011. It has led to configuring the program for roll-out to ENRG’s franchisee community.”
As the project developed, ENRG recognized the “size of the catering prize.”
The $18 billion dollar off-premise catering industry opportunity converged with their identified need to control and leverage company assets.
From this, a key catering revenue building strategy emerged and, coming into 2010, ENRG restructured its catering business.
The new ENRG catering strategy centered on a commitment to centralize support, which focused on introducing and leveraging these key advantages into existing company operations:
- Better and easier control of the Catering Business
- Greater consistency in order handling
- Higher rate of dependability in order
- Centralized operation devoted strictly to catering, allowing for easier and faster growth
- Convenience – 1.800.BAGELME exclusively for catering customers to phone in orders
- Greater restaurant efficiency by eliminating order processing and tracking at the unit level
Since putting the MonkeyCatering platform in place, catering sales have increased threefold, Wolfgram said.
The catering team has better tools and information at their disposal, and senior management enjoys greater visibility and control over the business.
“Having the software certainly contributed to our growth in catering sales. The back-office functionality alone saves us hours of effort each week, easily justifying the investment,” Wolfgram said. “We have much more accurate data for our entire catering business, and we’re able to make better decisions about its future growth.”
An additional bonus is that now more than 55% of the company’s catering orders come in online rather than over the phone.
“When the customers are inputting their orders, their order accuracy goes up tremendously,” Wolfgram said. “MonkeyMedia Software has proven its worth as a vendor, and they remain an immensely important partner to our business. I don’t think we would have been able to grow as we have without MonkeyCatering.”
ENRG has applied MonkeyOnlineOrdering/MonkeyCatering as a comprehensive platform to manage and measure their capabilities and the flawless execution relative to the following key points:
- Quality of Taste, Order Accuracy, and On-Time Delivery managed through a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that facilitates the capture and distribution of consumer feedback to Operations and Sales leadership. This assures a keen focus on the flawless execution required to aggressively grow the catering revenue stream. ENRG is now able to track, report, and communicate effectively to address and fix the root cause of any execution issues, while applauding and celebrating employee partners who excel.
- Ease of ordering has emerged as a consistent feature for development. The team at MonkeyMedia Software has enrolled in a continuous improvement strategy focused on aligning software functionality with fulfillment of consumer needs, such as convenience and ease of ordering. A recent restructure of the ENRG product order flow resulted in elimination of client frustration and enabled incremental revenue growth through the online ordering platform.
- Availability of Delivery is enhanced and communicated through an online presence. It conveniently allows customers to request delivery and understand availability in a “quick as a click” format.
The increased technological integration and cutting-edge tools from the MonkeyMedia Software platform now allow ENRG to focus on national catering accounts and to maximize revenue from this multibillion-dollar channel.
The Results
“Catering sales grew by 20% in 2011 and by another 19% in the first quarter of 2012. Catering now represents 7% of our menu mix and we expect that momentum to continue.”
As ENRG continues to build and expand its presence, the MonkeyMedia Software team will guide and support the ongoing catering strategy allowing maximization of catering revenue streams though constant innovation and expandable, scalable solutions.
“Working with these capable partners who know the business, understand our guests needs, and have so capably demonstrated alignment with our sales growth strategies has resulted in key contributions to double digit year over year sales growth, while enabling the foundation for doubling our catering sales over the next three years.” -Wayne Alexander, Director of Catering
