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Copper Cellar Restaurants have operated in Tennessee since 1975 with a clear set of goals:
- Serve Simple Foods
- Use the Finest Quality Ingredients
- Keep the Environment Clean, Organized & in Proper Working order
- Make Memorable Moments
- Work as a Team
Copper Cellar operates seven brands that include; Cappuccino's, Cherokee Grill, Chesapeake's, Calhoun's, Copper Cellar, Cumberland Grill and Smoky Mountain Brewery. With only the products from their own micro-brewery being featured on-tap at most of their Calhoun's and Smoky Mountain Brewery locations, twelve in total, the need for a beverage management system was top of mind for MIS Director, Mike Gaston when he attended technology trade show FS/TEC last year. "I had looked at flow metering systems before but didn't move forward because there were just too many manual steps," said Mike Gaston, MIS Director for the Copper Cellar group. "The systems we looked at before didn't provide integration with our Squirrel point of sale system. This meant that we had to manually combine the information from our Squirrel system with the information from the flow metering system in order to calculate our slippage information."
After seeing Bevchek at FS/TEC and reviewing its capabilities, Gaston and his team including Brewmaster Marty Velas, decided to implement Bevchek with SquirrelOne integration on a pilot basis at Calhoun's. Squirrel's open architecture platform facilitated the seamless integration that eliminates the manual steps required by the alternative systems
The three week long pilot began in December 2007 and was a well kept secret that included only Gaston and Velas. "We immediately saw that our slippage was, on average 20-30% with the more popular brands coming in around 25%," stated Marty Velas. "We were immediately able to identify trends that allowed us to link slippage results with other factors like time periods and staffing."
The pilot didn't stay a secret for long and as soon as bartending and management staff became aware of the test, results improved dramatically. "We're now seeing slippage rates of between 5-10%. In the longer term, we're setting our slippage targets to be less than 5%," states Gaston.
With a roll-out about to begin, Gaston and Velas had to deal with a skeptical operations group. "The manual number crunching that was required with the other products we'd looked at was a pain," says Gaston. "In the end though, they were very excited about Bevchek. All you have to do is logon to Bevchek and the information is there; up to the minute, in real time - no manual intervention required."
The roll-out is now in progress with an aggressive schedule in place. With a small IT group at Copper Cellar, the Brewmasters in each location are trained to work with the Bevchek system. "It's easy to learn," says Brewmaster Velas. "This allows us to get each location implemented quickly and acting on results in realtime."
The BEVCHEK System is a unique beverage management system designed specifically for the hospitality industry. It provides hospitality establishment owners with real time product sales from their Squirrel Point of Sale (POS) terminals relative to real time pours that are captured through Bevchek's advanced flow metering technology.
"The Copper Cellar implementation continues to generate extremely positive results", says Ronald Zien, President of Bevchek Systems Inc. "Our live data management system is an effective tool that allows Copper Cellar to manage their beverage consumption. By comparing actual amounts poured at the bar with the sales data from the Squirrel POS System, variances and slippage on a minute-by-minute basis is now tracked accurately. Copper Cellar can now account for every ounce poured and lost profits are now put back into the pockets of its stakeholders," says Zien. He continues, "The collective synergies between Squirrel Systems and Bevchek provide a vital value proposition for our respective clients."
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