Barbeque Nation

LS Central for restaurants gives an expanding Barbeque Nation an end to end solution business application to overcome its operational challenges. By streamlining the processes of their restaurant business, Barbeque Nation can focus on successfully expanding its network to other cities across India.

Business case

Barbeque Nation Hospitality Ltd set up its first restaurant in 2005 in Mumbai (Pali Hill), through its owner, Sayaji Hotels Ltd. In essence, Barbeque Nation is a fixed price buffet restaurant with unlimited food and starters. The variety in the starters and the main course is rotated every day. The décor is modeled with large amounts of wood and exposed brick walls. The Sayaji Group plans to open a chain of restaurants in all major cities of India. After successfully opening the restaurant in Mumbai, Barbeque Nation opened in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Vadodra, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Gurgaon and Thane. The overall plan is to open 100 such restaurants throughout the country and abroad by the year 2012. The company also has three hotel properties situated in Indore, Pune and Vadodara. The company has been in the hotel business for the last 15 years.

The solution

LS Central for restaurants provides an end to end solution from POS to Head Office. LS Central for restaurants is a flexible solution for the hospitality industry, directly connected to the account/stock module – all within a single solution. LS Central for restaurants also provides the flexibility to customize the software as per a business’s requirements which is so very important to the dynamically changing business model of the hospitality industry.

Requirements and implementation

• Managing a single order across multiple kitchens which were in a hierarchical structure
• Extensive offers and schemes specifically for the hospitality industry
• Linking of table reservation to POS
• Data replication and consolidation in an environment where restaurants are geographically spread across India

Barbeque Nation has set up 1-2 POS machines in each of their restaurants. LS Central for restaurants and Microsoft Dynamics ERP provide a single integrated system for a wholesome overview of the business. The statutory and localization requirements are taken care of in a user friendly way and hence reporting is quick, online and reliable. At Barbeque Nation, the biggest challenge was to track consumption and wastage of material across all kitchens in a single restaurant. This requirement has been taken care of through the implementation of LS Central for restaurants. “From the day we implemented LS Central for restaurants and Microsoft Dynamics ERP we have been very pleased with the performance. The software is very flexible in configuration and user friendly for the entry level staff. The facility of defining account schedules, Inventory Analysis Reports as per the user’s choice provides a very strong tool for analysis of the data. The software is very economical and doesn’t need much hardware resources. The facility to define your own report is very helpful. Throughout the implementation DVS partner EBT has been very response and pro-active. They understood our requirements well and made the changes to suit our business requirements in an efficient and timely manner,” says Sandesh Khandelwal, Dy. GM Commercial & Project Incharge at Sayaji Hotels Limited.

Benefits

Key functionalities:

• Multiple Location Consumption Accounting – The accounting impact for consumption (negative adjustment) of an item is accounted in a single account for all locations. This requirement can be easily customized to post such entries for different locations (within a restaurant) in distinct account heads, which was done in this case. Account mapping was made with each location, which allowed the identification of consumption accounts for the same item posted in different locations within the same restaurant. Each kitchen within the same restaurant now represents a location.
• Replenishment – Replenishment system was designed to cater to the business needs of Barbeque Nation. The customization undertaken ensures accurate and timely generation of purchase orders and ensures there is no stock out of any SKU at any location.
• Meal Planning with Multiple Kitchens – The customer’s requirement was to define one restaurant with multiple kitchens. The head chef plans for the day and the plan is distributed to each respective kitchen on the basis of recipes. The respective kitchen chef will be able to see their plan for the day and immediately take any necessary action like production or transfer.
• Purchase Price Location wise – LS Central for restaurants defines purchase price at the vendor and item level. If, as in Barbeque Nation’s case, they have restaurants across multiple states, purchase price varies from restaurant to restaurant. After a small customization, Barbeque Nation can define the purchase price vendor/location wise and the system picks up the same based on the location and vendor selected in the purchase order.
• Reservation – Reservation has been linked with the POS module so that the POS user can view the reservation status at the POS itself. If the reservation exists for a table then the cashier/captain gets the notification on the POS screen for the same. When the cashier or captain logs into the POS, they get to see a dashboard of tables with or without reservations which helps them to allocate their tables effectively and efficiently.