Food & Beverage

The Secret Weapon Top Restaurant Chains Use to Win Back Margins

Top restaurant chains like Tropical Smoothie Cafe and Church's Chicken are pulling 2-8% extra margin by replacing spreadsheets & disconnected systems with unified back-of-house technology. This gives real-time control over food costs, labor & P&Ls, unlocking $20K monthly savings per multi-unit operator.

Photo: SynergySuite

September 22, 2025

Your Next 4% Margin Is Hiding in the Back of House

Margins in restaurants are tight. We’re talking 5 to 7 percent on a good day. So when you hear that brands like Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Quiznos, and Shipley Do-Nuts are pulling an extra 2 to 8 percent from their bottom line, it’s worth asking how.

Spoiler: It’s not a new LTO menu item or a flashy loyalty app.

It’s the part of the business most operators overlook: the back of house. More specifically, it’s what happens when you replace disconnected systems and manual guesswork with unified back of house technology.

The kind that gives you daily control over food costs, labor, compliance, and location level P&Ls, all in one place.

Their secret? Not a new LTO or a flashier loyalty app. It’s a modern back-of-house platform that replaces spreadsheets and “Frankenware” with one source of truth for food costs, labor, compliance, and location-level P&Ls.

Unlike generalist competitors’ platforms, SynergySuite was built by restaurant operators for restaurant operators, with faster implementation (<90 days on average), hands-on support, and AI-powered tools like suggestive ordering that drive ROI in weeks—not years.

The Real Challenge: Limited Visibility Into Operations

If you’re still juggling spreadsheets, outdated software, or “Frankenware” cobbled together from multiple vendors, your team lacks the visibility needed to optimize key operational areas.

Inventory tracking becomes inconsistent. Schedules rely on intuition rather than projected demand. Supplier price changes go unnoticed until month end. And all of it impacts your margins gradually and often invisibly.

This isn’t just inefficient. It’s costly.

How Leading Brands Are Getting It Right

Let’s talk specifics. Here’s what real brands are doing differently, and what it’s meant for their bottom line.

Tropical Smoothie Cafe

With over 1,100 locations and rapid growth on the horizon, Tropical Smoothie recognized they needed to evolve beyond spreadsheets and end-of-month reports. They needed real-time visibility into food and labor costs across every franchise location.

That’s where SynergySuite became their solution.

Charles Watson, their CEO, put it simply: “SynergySuite gives us the opportunity to look at food and labor costs in real time and forecast what’s next.”

With consistent reporting and forecasting, franchisees aren’t just reacting anymore. They’re proactively managing margin, day by day.

Church’s Chicken

Ampler Chicken, the largest Church’s Chicken franchisee with 90+ locations, faced the reality of operating with outdated systems and manual processes. Inventory counts were slow, scheduling was inefficient, and reporting lacked the detail needed to manage effectively across dozens of units.

After implementing SynergySuite across newly acquired restaurants, the results were immediate:

Improved food costs by more than 2%
Optimized labor deployment with better scheduling tools
Faster, deeper reporting that enabled quicker responses to issues

As Roger Menchaca, Senior Director of Operations at Ampler Chicken, explained:

“We have more capability of looking into the details on this system than we did with our previous system. Whether it’s food costs, labor, end of day, cash reconciliation—all those daily and weekly reports—you’re able to deep dive quicker and react much quicker.”

With SynergySuite, Church’s Chicken franchisees gained real-time visibility and consistency across all locations, turning complexity into control.

Shipley Do-Nuts

Shipley, with their impressive network of 300+ stores, identified a growth opportunity: standardizing their BOH systems to maximize each franchise’s potential. As a forward-thinking company, they recognized that different solutions across locations limited their ability to scale efficiently.

They strategically rolled out SynergySuite to streamline operations, consolidate reporting, and align everyone from local managers to corporate leadership on a unified platform.

According to VP of Technology Kerry Leo, “We needed a partner we could build with. SynergySuite gave us that stability and visibility.”

The Business Case for BOH Modernization

When brands move to a unified back-of-house platform, several positive outcomes emerge quickly.

They reduce inventory waste. They optimize labor spending. They address scheduling challenges before they escalate into overtime costs or compliance risks. And they gain real-time visibility into where money is being made or lost.

These aren’t soft wins. We’re talking about $20,000 a month in savings for some multi-unit operators. That adds up fast, especially at scale.

And unlike front-of-house tools that may improve customer experience but take years to show ROI, BOH tech drives measurable financial impact within the first quarter.

Why SynergySuite?

SynergySuite isn’t a patch. It’s a purpose-built platform designed by restaurant people, for restaurant people. It’s mobile-first, cloud-based, and integrates directly with your POS, payroll, and suppliers.

It gives your managers exactly what they need: real-time data, intuitive tools, and automated tasks, so they can stop chasing reports and start managing results.

Franchisees love it because it works. Corporate leaders love it because it scales. And finance teams love it because it protects margin, plain and simple.

Stop Operating with Limited Visibility

If you’re still relying on monthly reports to see if your margins are holding, you’re missing opportunities for optimization.

The operators leading the industry forward aren’t guessing. They’re using live data to make smarter decisions, faster.

And the technology they’re using to do it? That’s the secret weapon.

Ready to see what’s hiding in your margins?

Let’s run the numbers together.

Book a back-of-house efficiency audit and get a clear look at how much your operation could be saving with real data, not hypotheticals.Because in this business, a couple of points in margin is the difference between growth and guesswork. Schedule your back-of-house efficiency audit today and discover exactly how much hidden margin you could reclaim, before the holiday rush tightens the squeeze

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SynergySuite

SynergySuite helps multi-unit restaurants simplify operations and increase profitability with easy-to-use restaurant management software. Global brands trust SynergySuite's mobile-first software with inventory, purchasing, recipe costing, food safety, scheduling, cash management, human resources and business intelligence.

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