Reaping Benefits When Purchasing

Foodservice Equipment & Supplies - March 2006

By Daniel Barash

Creating and maintaining your competitive edge is the key to building a brand with staying power. Admittedly, concept, marketing, atmosphere and staff are all important in differentiating yourself from your competitor, but in the end it always comes down to one thing in our industry and that’s the food.

When purchasing equipment, you need to consider the ever-changing tastes of today’s consumer and whether your kitchen can use existing equipment behind the line to adapt to the emerging trends in the customers’ relentless pursuit of new tastes. Everything about the restaurant industry has changed, is changing and will continue to change. It is the nature of our game and the most successful players are the quickest and the best at adapting and staying fresh. From our end, we need to ask if the equipment we purchase today has the flexibility to meet the challenges down the road.

At Raving Brands, and any other multi-concept operation, the challenge becomes even greater when you factor in the requirements of seven different concepts with seven different menus and taste profiles. The good news is if done right, we leverage the combined buying power of seven growing concepts, which helps to keep costs down along with affording us relationships with vendors who are willing to invest in the promise of our brands through customized equipment, use of their R&D kitchens, and long-term trials of equipment.

That’s the good part. The tough part is taking advantage of all those benefits when you are dealing with brands that range from burritos to barbecue with Asian-fusion somewhere in between.

To maintain the growth experienced by our brands, we need not only to surpass consumer expectations but also meet our franchisees’ needs, as well. While opening restaurants on a fairly consistent basis over the course of any given year, decisions on what food equipment to use are essential in keeping build costs down as well as the quality of food and speed of service.

We use three simple rules when making a purchase. Is the equipment easy to use? Add-ons and extra features may sound like a good idea but what does it deliver to the operation and the customer aside from extra parts? Are training times increased, is the through-put time getting longer with additional steps and options, and are these extras just more things to repair? One-touch simplicity is the name of the game throughout our fast-casual concepts, which helps maintain efficiency levels during peak periods.

Second on our list is the quality of the equipment and its output. The least expensive equipment is not always the best choice when you factor in the output. Although we are a fast-casual operation, faster is not the goal. Faster is a by-product of developing a winning system using quality products.

This leads us to our third guideline and that is through-put. So far, the equipment is easy to use, consistent and of high quality but can it reliably serve the needs of 400 consumers amid a lunch rush? We aren’t in business to turn people away and our equipment has to be able to deliver.

With the possibilities narrowed a bit, you now need to find a supplier and get that one product that does everything you possibly need it to do, both today and a few years down the road. The most successful way to go about this is to build a relationship with your supplier and leverage it. When starting out, smaller operations are only looking at cost. Everyone wants to cherry-pick the equipment they use while keeping an eye on the bottom line. They’ll use multiple vendors and end up with a line that doesn’t integrate with others and has differing levels of through-put. Not a recipe for quality, consistency or speed and certainly not keeping an eye toward growth.

Additionally, to sustain your competitive edge you have to make equipment-purchasing decisions with flexibility in mind to meet future needs of your consumers and a growing business. The flexibility you prepare for is going to allow your operation to be menu-driven and able to meet the consumers’ expectations.

As our Moe’s Southwest Grill concept evolved, Raving Brands has effectively built a relationship with one industry supplier that allows us to bring opportunities to our new and emerging concepts that would otherwise not be available to smaller startups. By leveraging our relationship with this manufacturer, we were able to work with them on developing a specific piece of equipment for our barbecue concept, Shane’s Rib Shack. With custom technology behind the line, this concept is ready to deliver a quality food product that meets the expectations of our customers. At the same time, our franchisees enjoy a menu of benefits such as higher yields, less handling, ability to cook more than one food at a time with zero flavor transfer, and ease of cleaning all built into one unit.

Purchasing equipment is a big commitment and requires a lot of research and time. By building and maintaining a positive relationship with your suppliers, you streamline the process and get better results. We are in this business for the long run and that is the same attitude we should bring to our supplier partners. The more engaged they are in your business, the better the equipment and the more opportunities for cost reductions and customized equipment you will have.

In order to meet our growth and customer expectations in the fast-casual segment, we must constantly remind ourselves that in the end, it all comes down to the food, and the right equipment makes great food possible.