Zaxby's

Zaxby's Replaces Out-Dated Point-of-Sale with Squirrel® for Windows NT®

To improve management controls and speed up order entry, Georgia based Zaxby's have implemented Squirrel® for Windows NT®. So far, nineteen of the eighty-eight Zaxby's have replaced their outdated point-of-sale (POS) systems with Squirrel for Windows NT with a plan to continue the roll-out to the forty new franchises scheduled for 2001 and to retrofit the existing sixty-eight franchises by the end of 2002. Squirrel for Windows NT combines the powerful Windows NT and SQL ServerT software platform with a POS system, which is dramatically easier to use and customize to meet Zaxby's needs. The design for the user interface is based on advanced human factors engineering, making the system simple, intuitive and natural to use.

Zach W. McLeroy and Tony D. Townley founded Zaxby's (originally named "ZAX") in March 1990 in Statesboro, Georgia. The driving force behind the inception was a disdain for the reluctantly accepted poor quality products found at most fast food chains. The two, filled with the entrepreneurial spirit, quickly acted on their beliefs that the public was ready for something better. They were right and the rest is history.

Zaxby's prides itself on high quality food at affordable prices. The menu is designed around the "cooked to order" philosophy using the highest quality and freshest ingredients available. Fresh, hot, cooked to order real chicken. At Zaxby's, this is not just some three-dollar advertising slogan, but a way of doing business.

Zaxby's everyday fare includes creative menu items, enhanced with tantalizing marinades and delicious sauces. Choices for the health conscious include a variety of grilled sandwiches and an assortment of dinner-sized salads. 100% soybean oil is used for frying and only white meat chicken is used to minimize fat content. With the exception of chicken wings, all chicken is served boneless and skinless.

Providing a dining experience outside of the normal realm of fast food monotony is a recipe for success with today's ever-growing demanding public.

For an operation like Zaxby's, food quality and speed of service are paramount. The Zaxby's name is synonymous with high quality food and friendly service throughout the Southeast. The uniqueness of their menu can best be described as innovative and satisfying to the pallet. At Zaxby's, customer satisfaction is measured not only in the enjoyment level of the food but the entire dining experience from the moment a guest walks in the door of one of their facilities or up to the speaker at the drive thru.

"Offering a wide range of service options to our guests, we needed a POS solution that could efficiently handle high volumes and dine-in, take-out, call-in and drive-through guests alike," says Stewart Oliver, Operations Director at Zaxby's. "The solution also needed to provide us with timely management information that would allow us to implement controls but had to facilitate speedy order-entry by our servers."

Zaxby's undertook an extensive evaluation process in order to find a solution that could handle their operational needs today and would allow them to grow in the future. Zaxby's MIS and Operations groups teamed up to carefully define system requirements. They conducted extensive research of all of the major POS providers.

"Our objective was to build a 'Zaxby's Operating System', by starting at the restaurant level and then growing to our home office systems," says Tripp Sessions, MIS Director at Zaxby's. He adds, "We wanted our restaurants to drive our technology decisions. Home office would adapt and change to meet the needs of our stores."

A pilot with another POS provider proved unsuccessful because the system lacked flexibility. A subsequent pilot with Squirrel reaped immediate benefits, including a three percent reduction in food cost and a sales increase of approximately fifty dollars per day per store.

"We selected Squirrel as our POS provider because the server interface was fast and easy to learn. The Windows NT and SQL platform provides a path for us to stream-line home office functions in the future," says Tripp Sessions. "Squirrel's superior integration with best-of-breed partners provided the flexibility that we needed without having to deal with multiple vendors."

Squirrel's open architecture easily interfaces to other best-of-breed solutions. For Zaxby's, that means a solution that consists of the Squirrel for Windows NT Point of Sale and browser-based Back Office, partnered with FOOD-TRAK by System Concepts for inventory control and Kitchen Display System (KDS) by QSR Automations for kitchen video.

The FOOD-TRAK System is a complete back-of-house software package designed for the foodservice and hospitality industry. More than just inventory, FOOD-TRAK is designed to offer a host of related features from food usage and reorder reports, to menu planning and engineering.

"We chose FOOD-TRAK because it is the best food and beverage control system in the industry," says Tripp Sessions.

The restaurant managers at Zaxby's enter all invoices, including non-food and beverage items into the system. As a result, Zaxby's is now able to automate vendor payments by exporting invoice information to the corporate accounting system.

FOOD-TRAK is currently running individually at each restaurant but the plan is to add a Citrix server at Home Office in order to centralize inventory control.

The Kitchen Display System (KDS) by QSR Automations presents the most full featured kitchen display solution available anywhere. This system uses a number of innovative features to route, display, notify and report on the entire kitchen process. Four unique virtual displays are available.

Zaxby's goals in implementing a kitchen video solution were to replace their old paper ticket system, which was prone to lost or dropped tickets, with a solution that was easy to use, allowed them to route requisitions in their own format and provides the ability to track ticket times. Where a ten-minute ticket time was acceptable in the past, they are now averaging four-minute tickets. They attribute this to the fact that an order is displayed immediately once the server has completed order-entry. Doug Davis, MIS Coordinator at Zaxby's says, "The system is incredibly easy to use. You don't have to be a computer genius to enter information."

To facilitate Zaxby's assisted service format, they use Squirrel's 'check naming' feature and "paging" coasters. The coaster identification number is attached to the guest check and when an order is ready, the server simply alerts the guest through the paging coaster. This same feature is used to attach a guest name to call-in orders thus making it easier for a cashier to find and settle a call-in order when the guest arrives for pick-up.

As Zaxby's looks to the future, the plan is to continue rolling Squirrel for Windows NT into all new corporate store openings. The forty new franchise stores scheduled for 2001 will be installed with Squirrel for Windows NT. Zaxby's has a mandate to retrofit their remaining sixty-eight franchise stores by the end of 2002.