Growing Burger King franchise owner yields 1.23% gap in food and paper costs when targeting theft with Next Wave, now a part of Envysion.
Harsh Ghai knows what it takes to run a quick-serve restaurant well. 67 restaurants to be exact. Ghai Management Services, owned by a father-son team, Sunny and Harsh Ghai, runs restaurants in 4 states (CA, OR, MO, and KS) and three concepts: Corner Bakery, Taco Bell, and Burger King.
REVERSING A CULTURE OF THEFT
While the Ghai family makes their success sound easy, Harsh explains, “Finding trustworthy people has been the most difficult task in operating our restaurants. As difficult as this task is, it is the cornerstone of our business. The quicker we identify the trustworthy employees, the quicker we grow as an organization in both our restaurant culture and bottom line.”
When the Ghai Management organization installed the Next Wave system in a few of their restaurants, they had two specific goals in mind. They were looking for a tool that would not only improve their food costs but also simplify the difficulties of labor costs. After the demo, Harsh was quick to tell Next Wave, “Next Wave’s service has far surpassed our expectations on all fronts.” Upon this discovery, Ghai Management signed a contract for all 56 of their Burger King restaurants.
SIGNIFICANT RETURN ON INVESTMENT
A couple months after rolling out the Next Wave system in all of their restaurants, Next Wave ran a financial analysis on Ghai Management’s food and paper cost numbers. The percentages speak for themselves: “[We found] a food cost gap of 1.23% between the 26 restaurants that we had addressed theft in […] and the ones that we had not! The restaurants where theft was addressed dropped by 0.58%. The restaurants that we had not yet addressed theft in increased by 0.65%!”
When Harsh saw this result, he realized he had made certain assumptions regarding his restaurants that were simply false. “ I assumed my restaurants in California did not have the theft culture I saw in the Midwest. I admit, I was flatly wrong. Even my best run restaurants have a theft culture.”
The benefits of the Next Wave system do not end with identifying theft. One of greatest benefits that Next Wave offers is the addition of lost food and paper costs to your top line revenue. Harsh explained that, thanks to Next Wave, he is able “ to reinvest capital into the wages of honest, hard-working, talented employees and keep them longer. It changes the very culture of our restaurants. Next Wave does not just help with food cost, it is also an employee retention tool.”