Sara Polon, founder, owner, and operator of Soupergirl, a Washington D.C.-based soup company, once protected her two retail locations and distribution plant with a traditional alarm system. It didn’t work. She recalls a slew of headaches, including getting woken up at 2 a.m. in the midst of a blizzard to come turn the alarm off—it had been triggered by a snowplow.

“It was a nightmare from the start,” Polon says of her traditional alarm system. “We typically have good employee retention, but we do have a lot of seasonal student employees who tend to have shorter tenures. Any time an employee would leave the company, we had to reset alarm codes, or collect their keys. We often had to change the locks—it was insane, and too much to keep track of. At some point, I just felt unsafe.”

So Polon looked for a better security system and discovered Brivo, a cloud-based access control solution that immediately helped streamline Soupergirl’s operations.

“As our business has grown and pivoted, Brivo has become absolutely essential,” Polon says. “My own productivity has increased—I don’t need to deal with the headache of exchanging keys and codes with my employees and delivery drivers. It really has been a game-changer.”

Here is a look at three ways Brivo has helped Soupergirl take its operations to the next level.

An Operation-Specific Solution

One of the biggest issues Polon had with her traditional security system was that it wasn’t made with her company in mind. It was instead set up haphazardly by the security company and she was told where the cameras would be placed and how the locks could be changed. Missing from this interaction was any understanding of her operational needs.

Brivo, on the other hand, in partnership with the security installation partner, sent a team of representatives who listened to her exact needs. They eventually collaborated to build a security system that checked all of the boxes for Soupergirl.

“Brivo is not a cookie-cutter installation,” Polon says. “They did a complete walkthrough, saw where cameras should be installed, and asked very professional questions about the specifics of what we needed and when we needed it. Then they installed everything and before we knew it, Brivo was an active part of our business.”

Managing Deliveries

Because Soupergirl does wholesale business, it has deliveries leaving and vendors arriving at odd hours. It’s a lot to keep track of, especially when vendors need access to the building when no Soupergirl employees are there.

“Now I can give a vendor access to just one door during certain hours,” Polon says. “If somebody leaves or quits from the vendor’s team, I can delete them from the system immediately. It’s done, I don’t have to remember who has keys or who doesn’t have keys. I can also see if and when the vendor arrived, or if they didn’t.”

Perhaps the biggest fans of Brivo are Soupergirl’s delivery drivers. “Our delivery team was so excited when we installed Brivo,” Polon adds. “The keys were driving everyone insane.”

Streamlining Operations

Of all the things Polon enjoys about Brivo, the one she talks about most is the time it gave back to her. Instead of constantly worrying about who had keys to certain doors and which vendors were arriving at her dock when, she was able to use that energy elsewhere.

“The pandemic has forced us to focus on what we do best,” Polon says. “We couldn’t do everything we wanted to do, we couldn’t be everywhere we wanted to be. We have to be disciplined and focused on becoming a nationwide soup company. We want to become the premier fresh soup in everyone’s refrigerator, and Brivo is helping us achieve that goal.”

For more on better managing your stores remotely, check out Brivo’s recent webinar.