Article

Cutting costs with kitchen technology

Zaxby's restaurants are enlisting robots to help trim training time and cut food costs.

March 28, 2007

Although the back-of-the-house manager at the Zaxby's restaurant in Monroe, Ga., is less than six years old, he never takes a day off. He doesn't come in late, doesn't complain, and no matter how the day goes, he performs his job with cool efficiency.

 

In fact, he performs his job so well that owner Steve Dailey has put Bob in charge of the four other Zaxby's he owns in central Georgia.

 

Bob is HyperActive Bob — a predictive kitchen management system developed by Pittsburgh-based HyperActive Technologies Inc. HyperActive Bob is currently used in more than 80 Zaxby's restaurants in the Southeast United States, including all of Zaxby's corporate-owned locations.

 

"HyperActive Bob monitors food consumption at various times of the day, learns when your peak hours are and how much product you use during peak hours, and tells you when to cook food before the orders even get back to you," Dailey said. "There is no arguing over what to do. When Bob says cook, you cook."

 

Using cameras mounted on the roof of a restaurant, HyperActive Bob counts the number of cars pulling into a restaurant's parking lot. Based on those numbers and previous sales trends, along with real-time demand, which comes directly from the restaurant's point-of-sale system, HyperActive Bob predicts which food items will be needed to fulfill immediate and near-term demand, and sends those predictions to touchscreen panels mounted over production stations in the restaurant's kitchen.

 

The touchscreen panels display cooking instructions to kitchen staff, telling them when to begin cooking certain items, and how much to cook.

 

Bob also keeps track of what items have been sold and subtracts those from the running total. Even during off-peak hours, Bob understands the difference between food that is to be cooked ahead and food that is to be "cooked to order," so that the food customers receive even during slow periods is as hot and fresh as possible.

 

What makes Bob tick is the use of "predictive technology," the ability of a computer to predict the future based on an analysis of current and past events. Although predictive software long has been used to project staffing needs in restaurants, prior to HyperActive Bob there was little technology available to predict cooking needs.

 

Moving out of the lab

 

The seeds of Bob were planted in 1992 when HyperActive Technologies co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Kerien Fitzpatrick was waiting in line at a fast-food restaurant.

 

Not only did Fitzpatrick, who holds a robotics degree from Carnegie Mellon University, have to wait for his food, it was cold when he got it.

 

The experience inspired Fitzpatrick to consider how robotics could be used in the fast-food world. The limited menu at a fast-food restaurant could be the perfect environment for a robot, Fitzpatrick surmised.

 

And why Bob, instead of something futuristic like the XJ-421 Kitchen Automation Droid?

 

"The way this product interacts with people, the company founders wanted something a little more personal," Bugay said. "When it was initially being tested in a restaurant, one of the restaurant employees started calling it Bob and it stuck."

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At Zaxby's restaurants, whose menu features chicken fingers, the company takes pride in cooking food as close to order as possible. The company, which was founded in Statesboro, Ga., in 1990, had begun posting signs in dining rooms advising customers it could take 10 minutes or longer to receive their order.

 

Unfortunately, the policy of advising customers they'd have to wait for their food was hampering sales growth in the restaurants, while trying to predict minute-by-minute needs during busy periods contributed to waste.

 

In an effort to combat the speed-of-service issue, Zaxby's began testing Hyperactive Bob in one of Dailey's restaurants beginning in October 2005.

 

Dailey saw an immediate impact on speed of service, he said. Rather than the kitchen starting to prepare an order when the customer placed it, preparation starts a few minutes sooner. In the end, the customer still receives freshly-prepared food, but more quickly than if Bob had not been involved, he said.

 

"We are only talking a few minutes, but in the industry we're in that's a big difference," Dailey said. Eventually, restaurants using HyperActive Bob were able to eliminate the signs warning customers of the 10-minute wait.

 

Savings all around

 

Dailey and other Zaxby's operators also saw the benefits of HyperActive Bob in terms of a lower and more consistent food cost and a savings in the amount of time spent training new employees, Zaxby's officials said.

 

"We haven't been able to put an exact figure on it, but we've been able to determine that the system has paid for itself just in product that hasn't gone to waste," said Lauren Gower, project manager for Zaxby's Franchising Inc. "We did an 11-store licensing test, and with those 11 stores we gathered the group together to get everyone's feedback; they all agreed that the time it takes to train a cook is cut in half."

 

Hyperactive Technologies also is testing Bob in several other quick-service operations, Bugay said. The company is looking at ways to adapt Bob's vision technology model to the drive-thru, accounting for cars in the drive-thru lane that haven't yet reached the menu board in order to minimize the amount of time customers spend waiting in line.

 

"The concept of HyperActive Bob has moved from being an academic project to being used in a commercial environment," Bugay said. "Not only does this work well on a white board, it works in a real-world environment."