I was in contact with a small business (late night fast food restaurant) in Binghamton, and we agreed to a pro-bono engagement aimed to increase margins and grow the business.
We set out to accomplish the following:
- Identify sales trends and ways to increase margins (with menu mix being a point of emphasis)
- Look at labor allocation to see if reasonable reduction can be made
- Drive further engagement within the community and compile prospects for franchising opportunities
- One of the owner’s goals was to open a restaurant location on Binghamton’s campus. By driving increased engagement with students, this would generate the necessary interest to pitch the business opportunity to the governing organization
My friend and I completed this as a two-person team and met periodically with the restaurant owner to:
- Gain alignment on project scope
- Learn how to use PoS system to pull data
- Report findings / deliver recommendation
- Analyzed 24 months of sales data and determined appropriate actions to grow business:
- Sales channel (in-person vs. takeout vs. delivery) has become increasingly reliant on delivery – improvements to menu layout and promos on delivery platforms can increase margins
- Sales volume by day and hour – business shifted during covid away from almost exclusively late night and weekend business to more balanced throughout the week with a new peak emerging around dinner time – working with student groups and offering promos during this time window will increase top-line (catering for campus events in the evening on weekdays)
- Menu item performance – Determined which items can be cut from the menu to reduce COGs and to allow flexibility with inventory, and identified most profitable items which can be further incentivized through promos
- Assessed Labor data (employee shifts) to determine that there is room for reduction with respect to business volume during non-peak hours
- Created contact list of ~200 student groups (~15k students) and ~50 business / entrepreneurial groups within the tri-state area
- Shortlisted student groups to target groups with highest ROI (based on member count and meeting frequency)
- Compiled contact info for business / entrepreneurial groups, professional development centers, and school alumni associations given the business' customer base (primarily college students)
