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Overview:
Hideaway Pizza’s casual dining concept was created by Richard “The Big Kahuna” Dermer and his wife, Marti, in 1957 near the Oklahoma State University campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Dermer built his company on the premise that happy employees equal happy guests, a winning formula that over the years has built a highly devoted fan base that continues to grow.
Darren Lister and Brett Murphy purchased the company in Feb. 2006. Under their leadership, Hideaway Pizza has grown into one of America’s favorite pizza companies, employing approximately 1,000 in two states, and operating 21 restaurant locations. Hideaway serves starters, specialty pizzas, build your own pizzas, sandwiches, pastas, desserts, and a variety of beverages.
The Opportunity:
Tim Anderson, President of Hideaway Pizza, was looking for a replacement for his inventory and cost management system. The replacement needed to provide full inventory control, including transfers, recipe costing, and variance reporting. It also needed to interface with their Toast POS system and their Sage Intacct accounting system.
Tim reached out to COGS-Well and saw the features he was looking for. Tim also realized that COGS-Well could interface directly with his food vendor, Ben E. Keith, and Alcohol payments service, Fintech, to import their inventory item receiving detail automatically.
“The team at COGS-Well understands how restaurants operate and their product is designed so that restaurant operators can easily use and maintain their inventory system." Tim Anderson, President.
The Solution at the Restaurants:
The restaurants utilize COGS-Well to place orders and track inventory item receiving. Orders are entered in COGS-Well and exported directly to Ben E. Keith’s order entry system. Ben E. Keith later exports invoices for each restaurant, which includes the inventory item detail, back to COGS-Well. No manual entry of invoice detail is required.
The restaurants also use COGS-Well to request and fulfill transfers. Managers are alerted if they have a request to fulfill, or if a request they made has been fulfilled. The managers take partial inventory counts weekly and full inventory counts each period. COGS-Well tracks all inventory activity during the period and determines the item usage and cost of goods sold for each restaurant.
“COGS-Well is user-friendly. It provides us with lots of resources to control our cost of goods sold.” Michael Langston, District Manager.
The Solution at the Company Office:
Adrienne Horner, Hideaway Pizza’s Controller, administrates the COGS-Well system for all 21 restaurants. Adrienne built recipes for the Pizza modifiers (crust type, toppings, size, number of toppings, etc.). COGS-Well then developed a special interface to their Toast POS to capture the modifier detail from each order transaction.
The Toast interface combined with the modifier recipe creation allows Hideaway to generate very accurate theoretical inventory usage. Actual usage for each inventory item is compared to theoretical (what should have been used) to create a “usage variance” for each item. Management and managers know where to look for possible problems such as over/under portioning, waste, etc.
Adrienne also uses COGS-Well to streamline their accounting. The Ben E. Keith invoices are posted from COGS-Well to their Sage Intacct Accounts Payable system. At the end of each period, Adrienne uses COGS-Well to post inventory adjustments to their Sage Intacct General Ledger.
COGS-Well saves me time when reviewing financials, everything I need to research cost of goods sold can be found by running the various reports available.” Adrienne Horner, Controller.
Customer Service:
COGS-Well’s mission is to help customers be successful. In addition to training and support, the COGS-Well team works with Hideaway to help them get the most out of their COGS-Well system.
“The level of customer service that we have received, in addition to the knowledge of the entire team at COGS-Well, is a breath of fresh air.” Tim Anderson, President.
“COGS-Well provides excellent customer service. It is very reassuring to know that if I run into a problem, COGS-Well will help me resolve it swiftly.” Adrienne Horner, Controller.
Going Forward:
Adrienne thinks the managers will benefit from COGS-Well’s suggested ordering. For suggested ordering, theoretical inventory on-hand is compared to par levels to calculate a suggested quantity to order for each inventory item. The manager can accept or override the suggestion. Suggested ordering helps managers not over or under order and it saves time versus calculating reorder quantities by hand.
Hideaway Pizza is a great example of the benefits that can be gained when an inventory control and cost analysis system is used in harmony across an entire restaurant chain organization.
“COGS-Well truly automates the entire inventory process saving us a significant amount of labor hours compared to other products on the market.” Tim Anderson, President.
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