St. Louis Bar and Grill’s Transformative Tech Solution
At MURTEC Executive Summit - Canada, Aegis Brands' Trevor Sainsbury took to the stage to share the transformative impact technology has had on the company and its St. Louis Bar & Grill brand.
The Mississauga, Canada-based company operates more than 70 locations across Canada.
When Sainsbury started with the company in 2016, the company relied heavily on spreadsheets. The tech stack was "non-existent. When I say we had nothing, we literally had nothing," Sainsbury said. "It was a long road. We've implemented a lot of technology in eight years."
Sainsbury, who is now Vice President, Business Intelligence, and his team added food costing, scheduling and formed an exclusive partnership with SkipTheDishes for delivery. In those early days, the delivery orders were received via tablet and staff manually entered each order into the POS.
"We called it ‘being a slave to the tablet,’" Sainsbury explained. "They were no longer servicing the guests. They were making sure the tablet's orders got punched in quickly."
Witnessing the friction, Aegis realized it needed to simplify the process for employees and for operations. "We formed a direct integration with SkipTheDishes. We were exclusive, so it was an easy transition," he said.
Aegis stayed exclusive with SkipTheDishes for many years “based on what was good for our business,” Sainsbury added.
After the pandemic, Aegis added UberEats as a delivery partner. Being able to grow its off-premises business was essential.
"We needed the next solution to be integrated and consolidated into one place so that operators could update their menus in one place,” Sainsbury said.
It’s important for technologists to remember: "For people working in the restaurants, the technology solutions need to be simple for them to use,” Sainsbury explained.
Searching for an Integrated Solution
“Immediately, as soon as we decided to bring on another (delivery) partner, it was how do we integrate it, where do we integrate it, what are we doing, who are we using because there are a lot of solutions,” Sainsbury explained.
RFP Process
Sainsbury then began the RFP process, reaching out to numerous middleware partners.
"The biggest thing for us: we were looking for partners that are invested with us and are looking to help us grow our business just as we're looking to help them grow theirs,” he said. Other key criteria included support and stability.
Owning the Data
Aegis owns all of its data for any type of software it uses, Sainsbury explained. “I live in a data-rich environment. We live in that data every day. Being able to get the data out of whatever solution is important to us. As much as we like Skip and Uber, they control all the data and trying to get it out of them is not always that simple.”
To help identify solutions, Sainsbury and his team asked aggregators and their POS provider which solutions they liked, which one was the most stable, which one was the easiest to work with. “At the end of the day we made our decision based on all the demos that we saw, how the software works, the support team and the people that we talked to,” he explained.
Managing Change
"Change management is huge, especially in the franchise world,” Sainsbury said. “The anxiety around change is big.” However, this technology was “a little easier to adopt” because franchisees could see the challenges a non-integrated solution posed for their operations, he explained.
“The project was called Franchisee Freedom because we don't need them in the office working through different apps and tablets. We need them running the restaurants on the floor.”
Aegis selected Deliverect as its middleware solution integrating it with its Silverware POS.
In the end, Sainsbury said this was probably “one of the easier integrations that we've done. We had already integrated our proprietary online ordering software which uses a Sapient API connection. On our end and working with the Deliverect team, the process was fairly simple. We were literally up and running within three weeks of signing contracts.”
Bottom-Line Impact
St. Louis has been using the middleware integration for about two years at all 70+ locations.
“It's helped tremendously because they're no longer slaves to the tablet. Even the acceptance of the order is automated,” he explained.
The integration is paying off. "Being able to add different (delivery providers) helped us build top-line sales…Before the pandemic, takeout was 7-10% of sales. Now coming out of COVID, we are looking at 25% of the business,” he said.
And the integration has freed up employees to focus on dine-in guests.
“We're in the people business. We need our servers or our bartenders interacting with our guests.”
Since adding Deliverect, St. Louis Bar & Grill has added Sweet Jesus, known for its ice cream, as a virtual brand to all locations. The middleware allows St. Louis to run a complete virtual store with delivery, which has added to top-line sales.
Next on his tech to-do list is consolidation that will simplify and streamline the employee experience. "For us.... it is: How do we make things simpler?" he asks. “How do we use the technology to help (employees) be more productive without bogging them down?”