Lark Creek Restaurant Group
King’s Seafood
FoodBrand
U.S. Treasury – Dept. of Customs Services (USCS)

LARK CREEK RESTAURANT GROUP
With $10 million in annual sales, popular cookbooks in print by its chef, Brad Ogden, and a show on the Food Network, Lark Creek Restaurant Group is the very model of a modern restaurant enterprise in full bloom. The group consists of six restaurants, of which the famous Lark Creek Restaurant is the cornerstone.

When Lark Creek Restaurant Group set out to improve their corporate information technology, they had two seemingly conflicting goals:
1) expand its capabilities, and
2) simplify its operation.

Fast Results with R.I.S.
By implementing the R.I.S. Solution and its unifying architecture, Lark Creek Restaurant Group gained a hardware, software, and backup solution in one. They've been able to eliminate a great deal of extraneous software, along with the back-office systems and a number of technology vendors. And Lark Creek Restaurant Group currently requires no MIS or IT staff to run the R.I.S. system.

All data entry is done at the store level and done once, with reports available in real-time over at corporate headquarters in San Francisco. In fact, data entry is often as simple as entering the daily deposit amount, which frees the managers to spend less time at the computer and more time out on the floor managing operations.

But perhaps the most powerful statement of all is that Lark Creek Restaurant Group saw a return on its investment in only six months. Results like that make acquiring a new system eminently palatable.

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KING’S SEAFOOD
Back in 1945, King's Restaurant was a family operation with a dream. Fifty-eight years later, King's Seafood Company is a multi-concept chain with big-name successes like the Water Grill, Ocean Ave Seafood, i.Cugini, 555 East, Lou & Mickey's and the King's Fish House/King Crab Lounge establishments to its credit, and the King family is still its driving force.

With an enterprise this complex, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the information technology could easily become quite complicated, as well. But when Chief Seafood Officer Matt Stein decided to take a look at a more streamlined solution, the benefits of the R.I.S. Solution were quickly apparent.

King's Seafood wanted to be able to link its recipe items directly to inventory, and the R.I.S. Solution immediately made that possible. In addition, its vendors were able to begin invoicing King's Seafood electronically. When that occurs:
1) the invoice is booked to Accounts Payable
2) the line items are fed into the store-level Inventory
3) Menu Analysis updates Recipe Costing automatically.

Gaining Control Over Data, Costs
King’s Seafood is enjoying an optimal balance of control over information and costs. Whereas previously getting visibility into real-time, store-level information was simply not possible, now the restaurant managers can share their information with the corporate office in real-time.

Information from the point of sale feeds into the restaurant information, which is then available at headquarters. Nightly backups are done, and King’s Seafood can manage their own data directly. Their bookkeepers’ time has been cut in half, and there is no need for IT staff to run the system.

For King’s Seafood, the R.I.S. Solution is contributing to an expected $180,000 savings in inventory per year. For a company focused on delivering fresh seafood to America, that’s the choicest deal of all.

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FOODBRAND
Not many companies can claim a record of profitable growth from zero to 73 units in five years. Even fewer can claim to have ramped up that quickly without technological complications. FoodBrand, a Mills Enterprise company, can truthfully make that claim.

Foodbrand is a company featuring 20 different food concepts in mall food courts and airports in eight states. The company manages 73 remote units, 1200 employees, and 500 vendors. In order to support their intended rapid rate of growth, FoodBrand looked to R.I.S. for a solid and flexible technology infrastructure.

Low Labor, Even During Growth Periods
With R.I.S., FoodBrand can run their corporate operations, financial and payroll departments, while delivering data access to management from anywhere instantly upon its entry. FoodBrand enjoys no labor redundancy, and overall corporate labor remains low, even during growth periods. The company now has the ability to

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U.S. TREASURY – DEPT. OF CUSTOMS SERVICES (USCS)
The U.S. Treasury’s Department of Customs Services certainly doesn’t run a chain of restaurants. But it does process financial transactions at 300 locations in three countries, 48 states, and two U.S. territories.

Ron Newman’s task was to find a way to migrate the U.S. Ports of Entry from a manual “duty collection procedure” to a fully integrated and electronic collection system. The R.I.S. Solution was to develop a user-friendly application that would help port inspectors:
1) reconcile financial transactions
2) generate deposit slips for electronic transfer to banks
3) transmit reconciled data to the USCS mainframe.

Results: More Accurate Data, Immediate Access
Newman’s group implemented the R.I.S. Solution and quickly discovered the benefits of a streamlined system with a central data repository. Those benefits included:

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