Logan's Roadhouse

Logan's Roadhouse

Faced with the problem of improving back-of-house systems and paving the way for next generation Squirrel enhancements, while protecting their front-of-house hardware investment, Nashville-based Logan's Roadhouse is working with Squirrel Systems to implement Squirrel® Classic™ for Windows NT® along with their own back office suite of restaurant applications.

Squirrel Classic for Windows NT, a member of the Squirrel Touch Tomorrow Family of Solutions, is part of a migration strategy that allows Squirrel's legacy customers to take advantage of the new Squirrel® for Windows NT® back office without having to reinvest in front-of-house hardware, software and training.

Company Profile
Logan's Roadhouse, founded in 1991 and head-quartered in Nashville, owns and operates 65 full-service restaurants in Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio and Texas as well as franchises in North Carolina, South Carolina, Augusta, GA. and Redding, CA. The chain succeeds by offering generous portions of moderately priced, quality food in a fun, casual setting that appeals to a broad range of customers.

Business Challenge
The Information Services Group at Logan's wanted a custom back-of-house solution in their corporately owned restaurants. The objectives were to create a more stable environment and reduce the time spent by management performing back office tasks.

The 65 company-owned Logan's are all equipped with the Squirrel Restaurant Management System. All restaurants use Squirrel's legacy point-of-sale software running on various models of Squirrel touchscreen terminals. The legacy Squirrel Classic system is DOS-based with a text interface at both front and back-of-house.

Almost half of the Squirrel terminals in use at Logan's restaurants will not run the Squirrel for Windows NT graphical pointof-sale application. These terminals were purchased before April 1997, after which Squirrel introduced the new terminal model compatible with the new version. Of the 450 total terminals installed, 275 are compatible with Squirrel for Windows NT.

Logan's had to make some choices:

• Replace the Squirrel Restaurant Management System in all of their restaurants for an estimated cost of $4,750,000.
• Upgrade to Squirrel for Windows NT by replacing the 175 point-of-sale terminals not compatible with the new graphical application for an estimated $1,325,000 including additional software and implementation costs.
• Create a back office solution with the existing platform. This was possible but left no reasonable migration path.
• Upgrade to Squirrel Classic for Windows NT for the cost of Microsoft product licensing, implementation and some hardware for an estimated $125,000. The license fees for this Squirrel software release are included in the cost of Logan's annual software support agreement.

Business Solution
The Information Services Group at Logan's Roadhouse decided to upgrade their restaurant systems to Squirrel Classic for Windows NT and to build their back office solution using the Microsoft® Windows NT® and Microsoft SQL Server™ platform. They are in the process of rolling this solution out to all of their company-owned restaurants within the next year.

Benefits
The Squirrel Classic for Windows NT solution provides the stable, custom, open architecture platform that Logan's wanted to improve back-of-house operations. This decision enriched Logan's original investment in the Squirrel point-of-sale system, which had been very functional and dependable, by significantly extending the usable life of this equipment without incremental hardware costs.

A Squirrel customer since 1992, point-of-sale at the 65 corporately owned Logan's was consistently Squirrel. The back office, according to Scott Dever, Director of Information Services for Logan's Roadhouse, was an inconsistent mix of software products for accounting, labor scheduling, purchasing and more with little or no automated procedures. "We were creating overtime situations where our managers had to spend needless time in the office rather than on the floor with our guests," says Scott Dever.

The custom solution designed by the IS Group atLogan's, is based on a platform of Microsoft Windows NT and SQL Server. This solution has resulted in minimal downtime due to the stability of the operating environment. In addition, most daily, repetitive tasks are automated which saves management time and simplifies restaurant operations. This platform change has also prepared Logan's for the next step in their migration at the front-of-house.

Logan's wasn't ready to replace the early model Squirrel terminals or to implement a new point-of-sale version. "We selected Squirrel Classic originally because it is easy to use, reliable and can handle a highvolume operation like ours," says Dever. He adds, "We are very excited about taking full advantage of Squirrel for Windows NT in the future. We expect that the human factors approach used in the design of the new graphical user interface will make order entry faster and will facilitate server training. Our plan is to phase in the upgrade from Squirrel Classic to Squirrel for Windows NT gradually, when it's best for our operations. In the meantime, Squirrel Classic point-of-sale software continues to perform in our restaurants."

Logan's decided to implement the Squirrel Classic for Windows NT solution. With this new software release, the Classic application runs at the terminal and the Squirrel for Windows NT application runs on the fileserver at the back office on a Windows NT and SQL Server platform. Automatically, at the end of each day, data is converted and restored to the SQL Server database.

Unique to Squirrel Classic for Windows NT is the Squirrel HTML Browser interface on the back office fileserver. This user interface allows Logan's to seamlessly integrate their custom, third party and Squirrel applications on a standardized desktop at the back office that is easy to learn, use and support. The design of the desktop supported a task-oriented process for restaurant managers to follow. By restricting access to non-restaurant related functions at the file server, the requirements for technical support were reduced and management productivity was increased.

Logan's still uses a variety of applications from several thirdparty vendors. Different software applications from many vendors, each with their own native user interface, is not a training, lost productivity, and support problem any longer because the restaurant managers work with one standard interface that Logan's developed using the Squirrel HTML Browser template.

Software products include Squirrel P.O.S., Squirrel TouchClock and Squirrel Tip Reporting. In addition, Logan's uses third-party solutions for Labor & Scheduling, Food Ordering, Communications, Word Processing and Spreadsheets. Custom applications are used for polling and accounting functions like inventory control, invoice entry and daily sales reporting.

"We've really set ourselves up for the future ...by going ahead with our new back office solution that includes the Squirrel HTML Browser and the SQL Server backend," says Dever. He adds, "This strategy allows Logan's to upgrade the point-of-sale hardware when it's best for our operations." Existing restaurants are now setup with an easy migration path to Squirrel for Windows NT that will require minimal back office training. New restaurants can be installed with Squirrel for Windows NT and use the same back office as the Squirrel Classic restaurants.

The end result of this partnership between Squirrel Systems and Logan's Roadhouse is a solution for Logan's that is both financially and technically compatible.