Logan's Roadhouse

As its popularity soars, Logan's Roadhouse decides SquirrelOne is the perfect ingredient for continued growth

Introduction

Although Nashville may be best known for its musical tradition, one of its biggest break-out stars can't be found on the charts. It can however be found in ever more neighborhoods across the USA, with a dedicated and growing fan base that spans generations. It's Logan's Roadhouse.

Since opening its first Nashville, Tennessee, restaurant a perfect combination of delicious food and great atmosphere has helped Logan?s Roadhouse win converts in 19 states across the USA. Whether it?s the hand-cut aged steaks, ice-cold longnecks, the kickin' music or all of the above that is the secret ingredient to its success, the "All American Roadhouse" has been growing by leaps and bounds-currently operating over 141 company-owned and 23 franchised locations.

As the company continues to grow, so does its need to manage business in a more effective and efficient way. To help managers and staff deliver the best quality of service in a fast paced environment, the company decided to turn to technology for help.

Situation

With the knowledge that the ability to effectively manage the restaurants was a key ingredient to the company's overall success, Logan's Roadhouse began leveraging Squirrel Systems point of sale technology in 1992, upgrading to Squirrel Classic for Windows in 2002.

Squirrel technology helped the organization to not only obtain and analyze back office information but also to collect operations information from all of its restaurants for easy, real time reporting capabilities that made such tasks as ordering inventory and managing customer loyalty programs easier.

Having successfully leveraged Squirrel solutions for over a decade, the company decided to upgrade to SquirrelOne

Solution

Logan's Roadhouse decided to upgrade all systems to SquirrelOne Release 4 in September of 2005 because the solution provided the company with a flexible and stable system able to support growth but which was cost effective and leveraged the company?s existing technology investments.

Working with staff from Squirrel Systems as well as Squirrel reseller partner CRS Inc., the company's in-house POS management team carried out the upgrade. Planning for the upgrades included assessing each location to make sure all printers and terminals were in the optimal positions where they would be easily accessible but have a limited risk of damage due to spillage or traffic. Starting with a pilot group of 10 locations the upgrade went ahead at a fast pace, averaging four restaurants per week. By the end of August 2006, 145 Logan's Roadhouse locations were running SquirrelOne and IBM SurePOS terminals; the massive upgrade having taken less than a year to complete.

Logan's Roadhouse could rest easy that the SquirrelOne software and IBM terminals would perform seamlessly together thanks to Squirrel's participation in the Ready For IBM program. The program combines 30 years of IBM point-of-sale technology experience with leading vendor-tested products to provide solutions that optimally perform on IBM platforms, technologies and POS and Kiosk solutions.

The Ready For Program validates application compatibility with IBM platforms to help limit implementation risk and helps customers identify, and implement leading-edge solutions.

"The combination of SquirrelOne and IBM SurePOS terminals provided us with a solution powerful and flexible enough to support us as we grow but also easy enough to reduce training requirements which makes life much easier for front of house staff," says Scott Dever, Vice President of Information Services, Logan's Roadhouse.

Logan's Roadhouse can also take advantage of the Microsoft technology SquirrelOne is built on. The solution takes advantage of Microsoft's Smarter Hospitality initiative, a comprehensive solutions framework for enabling the next generation of hospitality innovation. Smarter Hospitality solutions leverage current IT investments and the familiar technologies in the guests or employees hands, to create more engaging and empowering guest experiences, while laying the groundwork for future innovations. SquirrelOne is built on the open architecture Microsoft SQL Server 2000 platform, which provides Logan's Roadhouse with the ability to improve data collection and corporate business intelligence gathering. Integration with IBM Director also helped the Logan?s Roadhouse to effectively monitor its IT infrastructure.

With the 32-bit client/server SquirrelOne application in place, Logan?s Roadhouse could now take advantage of the solution's ability to utilize powerful POS extensions to add POS software functionality and deploy custom applications. The complete solution includes TMx by Time Management for time & attendance and scheduling and Southern DataComm for high-speed payment processing.

"This solution is a great fit for our needs because it delivers a set of seamlessly integrated best of breed tools from industry leading providers such as Microsoft, IBM, Epson, Squirrel Systems, Time Management and Southern DataComm. These technologies help us take care of many day to day tasks within our organization in a way that is easy and efficient. It helps make our lives easier," says Dever. "Anything that helps our staff to spend less time on administrative duties and more on our number one priority?our guests, as this solution does, is a big hit with us!"

Benefits

Now fully deployed across the Logan's Roadhouse chain, SquirrelOne has become a star within the organization.

The ease of use of SquirrelOne has meant that training new staff now takes less time. The solution's human factor-based design means it also reduces order entry times thanks to design standards such as consistent screen layout, strategic use of color, constant feedback and graphic interface. The system is also highly customizable by users; not only allowing employees to configure the default screen to their preferences but even being able to change screen orientation from left to right depending on whether the server is left or right handed.

SquirrelOne's intuitive design also makes it easier to manage, execute and report on POS menu price and screen changes, cutting down on the time required for these tasks.

Managers also benefit from the availability of detailed and timely data in Microsoft?s SQL Server 2000. One of the key advantages of the SQL Server 2000 technology within SquirrelOne is that it makes transmitting information from individual restaurants and head-office and vice versa nearly effortless. With higher availability of invaluable sales and customer information, Logan's Roadhouse management is able to make better business decisions and support the company's continual growth. The presence of analytic and reporting tools within SQL Server 2000 also means that the organization has access to Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities without the traditionally high costs of BI software systems.

The flexibility to add custom applications to the system has also turned into a big benefit for the organization. Logan?s Roadhouse has integrated Trandata 2005, a custom-built .NET application into SquirrelOne. Trandata's ability to utilize SQL Server capabilities and XML means that the organization is able to quickly move the most granular level data from the restaurants to the head office very quickly.

"The TMx labor management system helps to improve security and auditing capabilities, as well as making it easier to mine labor data for reporting and labor management metrics," says Chris Plunkett, Sr. Vice President of Operations. "Having it in place means that restaurant managers have a much easier time with scheduling, forecasting and budgeting, so the solution is a big hit with them too."?

The company's IT staff is also benefiting from the upgrade as IBM Director helps to reduce the amount of time they are required to spend on monitoring IT systems. The solution automatically monitors all restaurant hardware and critical software applications, monitoring events to make sure all critical applications are running.

"Because the IBM Director system sends an immediate alert if any exceptions occur, such as an application or a hard drive being down or disk usage reaching critical limits, the IT staff can now have the piece of mind to proceed with strategic tasks knowing that should anything requiring attention occur we?ll be notified immediately by the system," says Dever.

Additional back end benefits Logan?s Roadhouse is realizing include:

• decreased help desk phone call volume and easier troubleshooting,
• updated operating system which provides a more stable and reliable software platform with enhanced recovery options,
• decreased service and repair travel and labor costs due to electrical and data certifications, as well as water-resistant outlet covers,
• standard networking topology which allows for local acquisition of replacement parts, such as cables, if needed and the availability of local technicians for faster dispatch,
• shielded cable and jacks which pull noise out of the system and protect the equipment.

"Our relationship with Squirrel is now over a decade long," says Dever. "We've been happy to see the technology perform and support our operations over the years and now with the upgraded system we can be confident in our ability to grow without having to worry about IT performance. It's a clear win for our company."