Panda Restaurant Group Improves Ops with Business Intelligence Software

Panda Express operates more than 2,000 stores globally under the Panda Express, Panda Inn, and Hibachi-San restaurant banners. Since it was established in 1983, Panda has remained privately owned and operated by co-founders and co-CEO, Andrew and Peggy Cherng.

“As an industry leader, Panda Express’s culture sets an expectation of best-in-class results,” explained Lyle Forcum, executive director of asset protection at Panda Express. “Accordingly, we needed a state-of-the-art business intelligence solution to provide us with truly actionable information. Intelligence we can act on is central to Panda’s business strategy, which focuses on meeting high standards through continuous operational improvement.”

Starting in August 2017, 3xLOGIC and Interface Systems worked with Panda Express to customize Trends to meet the company’s needs. Interface began system deployment in QI 2018 with the first location going live in March 2018. Trends is deployed at 1,960 locations and has been integrated with existing Interface video surveillance and alarm systems.

“It was impressive that we were able to integrate Trends so seamlessly with existing intrusion and video systems,” said Sean Foley, senior vice president of national accounts at Interface Systems, “and the entire solution was rolled out without a single technician visiting any store.”

Unlike other BI implementations, the focus at Panda Restaurant Group is not solely on loss prevention, but also on tracking and improving all operations at every store. Here are some of the key elements of store operations that Trends enables Panda to monitor, track, and improve:

• People Development. To set its people up for success, store managers are able to review all transactional behavior and address opportunity areas with employees within two days.
• Comparing Store Performance. The store managers’ Trends dashboard shows very clearly how the restaurant is performing compared to other stores in the region and to their prior month’s performance.
• Optimizing Store Efficiency. Trends visually displays how many people are working per hour, what job they are facilitating, and the revenue generated per hour.
• Monitoring Intrusion Data. Trends provides intrusion data, which shows in a very simple display when stores are opened and closed, deliveries are made, cleaning is done, and whether the store is being remotely armed and disarmed.
• Tracking Cash. Panda Express can track currency, how much is in the safe and when it was last counted, as well as petty cash spend along with scanned receipts for purchases.
• Custom Dashboards. The system provides an array of dashboards for all levels in the organization that give an at-a-glance or drilled-down overview of an employee’s priorities and responsibilities.