Delivering Efficiencies
Improving customer satisfaction while trimming costs helps contractors retain clients
By Margaret Sheridan, Senior Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 2/1/2004
The promise of strong numbers on bottom lines wins contracts, says Lynne Jacoby at PricewaterhouseCoopers. But in order to deliver on guarantees made to win business, contractors call on an arsenal of tactics and services that many self-operated foodservice organizations are hard pressed to match.
Proven proprietary foodservice concepts and alliances with commercial brands are tools contractors have learned to leverage. By expanding use of Compass Group’s own brands as well as outside concepts at 18 sites, Ron Ehrhardt, director of dining services for Compass-managed Prudential Financial in Newark, N.J., over four years cut payroll by 40% and increased sales. He insists brands help reduce labor and increase efficiency. “A national sub-sandwich concept provides product and labor, I supply space and utilities. The new grill concept uses one cook instead of two,’’ Ehrhardt explains.
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When he examined labor costs of soup preparation, for example, he discovered that making it from scratch in house took one employee six hours a day per account. He now uses 22 prepared soup varieties from Au Bon Pain, a Compass-owned restaurant brand. Although he raised prices from $2.99 to $4.50 a portion, customers didn’t complain, perceiving higher quality.
Case by case
Major contractors’ in-house facility-design divisions often
are strong lures for potential clients. When Aramark two years ago
assessed the foodservice needs of Baylor University Medical Center,
it recommended replacing the hospital’s full-service restaurant
with a marketplace/ food court. The design of the proposed Atrium
Market would facilitate traffic flow and maximize accessibility
for the facility’s diverse customer base and 24/7 operational
needs. Eighteen restaurant employees would be retrained and reassigned
as market managers, cooks and counter assistants.
Aramark’s design played out well for Baylor. After Atrium Market opened, business increased from 250 customers a day to 1,000. Adding home-meal replacement items raised sales by 70% on Friday, when employees buy food for the weekend. Mitch Koger, retail operations director for Aramark, forecasts sales of $1.5 million for 2004 versus last year’s $1.3 million.
Centralized administration also allows contractors to develop proprietary research tools based on multiple-site experiences and share ideas among similar accounts. MarketMatch, Aramark’s college-foodservice research program, identifies distinct campus lifestyle subsets with their own foodservice requirements and develops solutions to meet their needs.
“We recognize that students don’t eat three square meals anymore,” says Naala Royale, vice president for marketing for Aramark’s Campus Services division. “They eat from five to eight times each day—some are snacks, some meals.”
For example, MarketMatch may suggest locating formal breakfast facilities near freshmen housing, since they tend to be stuck with more early morning classes. Upper classmen are more likely to schedule later classes and skip breakfast. Commuter students may need foodservice options where they park; students who work may want late afternoon grab-and-go opportunities.
“You have build a program to match their lifestyles,” Royale says. “It’s the only true way of guaranteeing satisfaction and increasing our share of what students spend on campus.”
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