Arby's Franchisee: Labor Mgmt Tool Helped Us Weather Economic Downturn'

Arby's franchisee, The Restaurant Company, says that TimeManagement Corporation's TMx solution played a significant role in maintaining profit margins and controlling labor costs over the past 18 months. TimeManagement's TMx solution provides the hospitality industry with tools for forecasting, scheduling and human resources management.

"The national recession has required our managers to look even more closely at all of our costs," says Bill Lowe, president of The Restaurant Company. "With labor accounting for approximately 27% of those costs, the fact that TMx lets us maximize efficiency in this arena is a huge benefit. The TMx product has definitely helped improve our performance."

Optimal scheduling is a key piece of the TMx solution. Prior to using TMx, The Restaurant Company could take weeks to determine where to put labor hours; each store manager spent several hours every week preparing schedules. Using TMx, those schedules now are written in less than 20 minutes. "TMx clearly defines, very quickly, what hours you should schedule based on your forecast," explains District Manager Brandon Metts. "Better yet, for us TMx exposed areas where we could be more efficient, and today it helps us pinpoint the hours we need to meet our service expectations while keeping costs in check."

The Restaurant Company's executive team also appreciated TimeManagement's willingness to work with their operations team to optimize the product. While most in the hospitality industry base labor forecasts on a percentage of sales, The Restaurant Company uses productivity analysis and transaction data to make their forecasts, which the TMx system easily accommodates. TMx's powerful forecasting solution uses 15-minute actual totals that are imported from their Posera Maitre'D point-of-sale solution. "TimeManagement's business consulting services configured the system to meet our exact business processes, which helped ensure that our users fully embraced the solution while meeting our corporate business objectives," adds Lowe. "We appreciate companies that are willing to go the extra mile, and TimeManagement has certainly done that."