CrunchTime! Information Systems, Inc., a leading back-of-house operations platform provider, announced that Romano’s Macaroni Grill has completed its implementation of CrunchTime’s Restaurant Management Platform across all locations, and in doing so reduced its food cost variance to below 2 percent. In three months, Macaroni Grill deployed the CrunchTime Platform with full integration to the restaurant’s point of sale system, vendors, and accounting, trained all of its managers and staff, and quickly began to streamline the brand’s operations

Macaroni Grill is a pre-eminent restaurant brand that began a business transformation several years ago. To ensure the brand’s continued success, executive management determined a technology investment in their back office system would yield greater insights and guidance for managing and controlling their food and labor operations costs. 

“CrunchTime may never have onboarded a brand as fast as it did for Macaroni Grill. The integrations were done at lightning speed with every restaurant up and running on the system in three months,” says Ken Hoffman, Vice President of Operations for Romano’s Macaroni Grill. “CrunchTime supported the process by allocating all resources necessary, which allowed us to quickly get an understanding of the various metrics being captured, including cost analysis insight for management.”

With CrunchTime up and running, Macaroni Grill finally had access to its core business data to analyze trends and implement informed action plans including how to drive sales, improve forecast accuracy, and eliminate waste

Because the CrunchTime platform allows Macaroni Grill to hold each restaurant accountable for their food cost and inventory management, the company’s cost of goods has been reduced significantly, and those savings have been sustained. Most notably, Macaroni Grill gained the ability to compare actual to theoretical food costs and identify the cause of any variances. Through simple online dashboards and reports, each restaurant manager can identify and eliminate their top food cost variances, resulting in tremendous cost savings across the board. Since the deployment of CrunchTime, Macaroni Grill has reduced its food cost variance by 100 basis points and currently sustains a variance below 2 percent.

“We’re efficiently managing Operations with CrunchTime, so we see a consistent return on our investment from a business standpoint,” Hoffman stated.  “The real difference with CrunchTime is the level of support we receive. With CrunchTime, we have a partner in the program. They helped us through onboarding and continue to provide assistance on a day-to-day basis,” Hoffman adds.

“Romano’s Macaroni Grill is an iconic brand and we’re thrilled to partner with them on their operations initiatives as their business continues to grow,” says Jean Fogarty, VP of client services at CrunchTime. “Our platform and mobile solutions will continue to help them elevate their performance while increasing employee satisfaction across all of their locations.  It has been a great partnership and we have learned a great deal from them.”