It’s been an interesting ‒ and perhaps a baffling few years in the restaurant and retail industries. A November 2017 CNBC news article reported that restaurant sales growth has been slowing at a puzzling pace usually seen in a weaker or even recessionary economy. Which directly conflicts with separate reports that consumers are spending more of their discretionary income on experiences, such as dining out with friends.
In an increasingly changing restaurant landscape that involves rising labor costs and shrinking margins, Cracker Barrel, like so many others, is continually being challenged to draw more and more visitors into your well-known, ubiquitous Cracker Barrel restaurants, and to find ways of turning them into return customers.
Of course, the unique store concept you have with the nostalgic, seasonal and local products, has always been a great way to enhance the customer experience (along with your sales). However, today’s consumer craves even more and businesses are having to come up with additional ways to bolster sales and keep customers coming back.
Retailers aren’t having an easy ride either: the rise of e-commerce, shrinking margins and an increasingly changing retail landscape has been tough on retailers. While many well-known brands are closing certain locations or declaring bankruptcy, others are being forced to find a niche market or become an omnichannel retailer that offers unique experiences and more product/service offerings.
To combat these challenges, both restaurateurs and retailers are turning to innovative technology to drive both growth and efficiency, improve the customer experience, reduce costs, and increase bottom-line results. And Cracker Barrel is no different. In fact, part of your growth strategy involves re-engineering stores processes to increase operating margins, among other things.
Whether it’s in your flagship Lebanon, TN, store or your more-recent location in Beaverton, OR, investing in intelligent technology that drives efficiencies, protects profits or enhances the customer experience can help your business thrive.
Cracker Barrel has an impressive growth strategy. Today, you have close to 650 stores/restaurants in 45 states. You’re attracting a new and different crowd through your Holler & Dash fast-casual restaurants; and providing consumers with the omnichannel experience they so crave through your online store.
But this growth includes not only attracting folks but converting them into loyal customers – and this isn’t always easy.
Today’s consumer not only wants – but demands – unique in-store experiences and personalized service. If you don’t provide it, your competitor will. And implementing innovative retail technology in-store would enable Cracker Barrel to offer an improved customer experience that could lead to increased customer loyalty and growth.
Retail technology comes in many forms of course. It’s not just the flashy in-store displays, beacons or biometrics that can help drive a better customer experience.
It’s also the technology that sits in the back office, behind the counter, or even in your head office. It’s the technology that helps you streamline processes, drive efficiency and automate manual processes. Because, it’s these innovations that free up your cashiers, and allow them to spend more time on the shop or restaurant floor, driving sales and providing a better customer experience.
With the help of Tellermate’s cash management technology at the point of sale (POS), Cracker Barrel can drive efficiency and provide a better customer experience – not to mention driving adherence to process across your growing portfolio of stores, reducing shrink and cutting labor costs. All this equates to saving money and increasing revenues.
How? Through LiveDrawer®, the intelligent cash drawer that builds Tellermate’s count-by-weight technology into the drawer itself, giving you full visibility of exactly how much money is in the drawer at any one time.
LiveDrawer can help Cracker Barrel simplify the traditional cash-management process by automating manual cash-management tasks such as reconciling tills or preparing banking deposits. With its transaction-by-transaction reporting, you can get a full audit trail of each and every transaction even when multiple operators share the same till. Not only does this allow you to pinpoint the perpetrators of cash loss, but it also eliminates the need for staff to leave the floor early to reconcile tills during shift changeovers. Instead, your sales assistants can stay on the shop floor, generating sales and interacting with customers, right until the very last moment.
Plus, with real-time alerts and pre-set thresholds your managers can proactively manage change levels and lifts & skims to ensure tills aren’t taken offline during their busiest times.
What’s more, LiveDrawer® Manager provides in-store and remote (read head-office) visibility of the drawer’s contents in real-time at all times. Which could help Cracker Barrel in numerous ways…
Shrink costs global retailers a whopping $123.4 billion each year. According to the 2016 Global Retail Theft Barometer, this represents 1.23% of retail sales. More worrisome, for the first time, employee theft now makes up the majority of this shrink – even more than shoplifting. And when it comes to internal theft, most incidents occur at the POS.
It’s no wonder then that preventing loss is usually high on the priority list of most retailers, and Cracker Barrel is no exception. Since you deal with large amounts of cash and are hiring more employees to staff new stores and cafés, loss prevention measures are likely on your mind.
LiveDrawer provides real-time cash counting, giving full visibility of the number of notes and coins in the drawer ‒ from anywhere. It knows exactly how much cash goes in a drawer – down to the very last penny ‒ not just how much the POS thinks there should be. LiveDrawer is so smart that it sends an immediate alert when a process is not followed or when an overage or shortage occurs. To sum it up, it makes stealing at the POS almost impossible.
But perhaps cash loss isn’t intentional? What then? Well, LiveDrawer also pinpoints which cashiers consistently make mistakes; and sends alerts when processes are not followed. From here, you can identify the staff or stores that could benefit from retraining.
Plus, the ability to view the contents of each drawer in real-time also allows managers and corporate offices to reduce the vulnerability of cash in the tills – firing alerts when lifts and skims are needed. Less cash on the shop floor means less opportunity for theft.
In fact, a large, multi-store retailer in the UK tested LiveDrawer during a six-week pilot at one of their problematic stores where employee theft was rampant. Prior to LiveDrawer implementation, the retailer’s cash-handling process consisted of managers placing uncounted cash in a safe and waiting for a third-party vendor to pick up and count it every two weeks. Once Tellermate’s intelligent cash drawers were placed in the problem store, the theft completely stopped because staff knew it provided visibility for each and every transaction.
And when LiveDrawer is used in combination with an intelligent safe at the POS, notes can be checked for counterfeits and securely stored until the end of day or when the safe is full. It’s a nimble but powerful alternative to bulky and often expensive cash recyclers.
All this means that cash loss can increase security, reduce shrink and provide greater profitability.
For almost 40 years, Tellermate have partnered with businesses similar to Cracker Barrel to help lower operating costs, reduce shrink, drive efficiency and growth, and gain better visibility of their cash. Our intelligent cash-management solutions help leading companies, including McDonald’s, Adidas and Michael’s. How? By helping them reduce the amount of time spent investigating cash loss and discrepancies, reconciling cash drawers, setting floats or counting deposits. Which gives them more time to spend with customers.
Tellermate are confident that we could help Cracker Barrel drive efficiency, reduce shrink and gain better visibility of the cash across your stores – all of which enables you to optimize your ongoing growth strategy.
We’re so confident, in fact, that we’d like to offer a free pilot of our LiveDrawer solution in your stores ‒ allowing you to experience the benefits first-hand and measure the potential ROI. Get in touch with us to learn more.
