BR Venture Fund Backs Restaurant Revolution Technologies

Student-run venture fund invests in emerging leader in restaurant order management technology

August 17, 2011 | Ithaca, NY | BR Venture Fund (BRV), an MBA student-run venture fund of the Johnson School at Cornell University, today announced that it has invested in Restaurant Revolution Technologies (RRT), a restaurant order management technology company that manages takeout, delivery and catering orders for restaurant chains.  BRV joins a group of investors in this capital round with an investment of an undisclosed amount.

RRT extends the four walls of restaurants and scales their ability to handle customers by managing all takeout and delivery orders for its’ restaurant industry clients. With the first technology solution to manage the customer process from the order through pickup, RRT provides an exceptional customer experience, increased revenue, and lower costs through using its centralized call centers and order management technology.   RRT’s current clients have improved revenue and operations with faster answer time, fewer dropped calls, more repeat customers, higher average orders and more satisfied customers – all at a lower cost than doing it themselves.

“We are excited to have BR Ventures participate in this financing, and look forward to leveraging Cornell’s deep expertise in the hospitality industry,” said Michael Dicks, Chief Executive Officer of RRT. “RRT is well positioned with strong technology and compelling results with our first customers.  BRV’s investment will enable us to expand to larger restaurant chains and bring RRT services to thousands of locations.”

“We remain in a time of ramped commercialization of technology and disruptive software that are vastly optimizing business operations.  RRT fits this mold, and is an exciting investment for BRV,” said Aaron Holiday, Chief Operating Officer of BR Ventures.

Zach Casavant, the BRV fund manager who led the firm’s investment in RRT, noted that “both engineering and hospitality are areas of expertise for Cornell.  We at BRV have enjoyed working with RRT’s management team thus far and we look forward to helping RRT achieve significant future growth.”

About BR Ventures

BR Venture Fund (BRV) is an MBA student-run, evergreen, early stage venture fund of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. With over eight portfolio companies spanning high-tech, healthcare, biotech and sustainable technologies, BRV’s investments represent the cutting edge research at Cornell University and rapidly growing businesses accelerated by organizations such as TechStars. BRV is committed to promoting entrepreneurship at Cornell and in the local community. It has several partnerships with prominent angel VC groups in upstate New York and with larger venture capital firms in Boston, New York, Menlo Park, and Seattle. For more information, visit http://brventurefund.com/.

About Restaurant Revolution Technologies

RRT extends the four walls of restaurants and scales their ability to handle customers by managing all takeout and delivery orders for its’ restaurant industry clients. With the first technology solution to manage the customer process from the order through pickup, RRT provides an exceptional customer experience, increased revenue, and lower costs through using its order management technology. RRT’s current clients have improved revenue and operations with faster answer time, fewer dropped calls, more repeat customers, higher average orders and more satisfied customers – all at a lower cost than doing it themselves. For more information, visit: http://www.rrtusa.com.

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All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Southern California Chain has RRT Handle the Phones for Takeout

August 16, 2011 | Cardiff, CA | Restaurant Revolution Technologies (RRT), an early stage restaurant order management technology firm that manages takeout, delivery and catering orders for restaurant chains, today announced that Rimel’s Restaurants has adopted and launched its technology.

“Rimel’s is committed to providing the best possible customer experience to all our customers – whether eat—in or takeout and delivery” said Matt Rimel, CEO of Rimel’s. “With RRT handling the phones, servicing the remote customer and delivering orders directly into our kitchens through our point-of-service systems, we have seen immediate positive results.”

RRT extends the four walls of restaurants and scales their ability to handle customers by managing all takeout and delivery orders for its’ restaurant industry clients. With the first technology solution to manage the customer process from the order through pickup, RRT provides an exceptional customer experience, increased revenue, and lower costs through using its order management technology. RRT’s current clients have improved revenue and operations with faster answer time, fewer dropped calls, more repeat customers, higher average orders and more satisfied customers – all at a lower cost than doing it themselves.

“We are excited to launch with Rimel’s – they are as committed to great customer relationships as we are,” said Michael Dicks, Chief Executive Officer of RRT. “We look forward to being able to showcase the results of the RRT system – including happier customers, higher revenues and lower costs.”

About Rimel’s

At Rimel’s, fresh meats, poultry, game and seafood are of the finest quality. We roast these to perfection over our mesquite, wood-fired grill and rotisserie. In order to bring you the best seafood, we buy from San Diego fisherman daily and catch our own local seasonal fish. Our side dishes and other menu selections are made everyday using the finest ingredients. Ask about our daily specials which include seafood, meats and game.

About Restaurant Revolution Technologies

RRT extends the four walls of restaurants and scales their ability to handle customers by managing all takeout and delivery orders for its’ restaurant industry clients. With the first technology solution to manage the customer process from the order through pickup, RRT provides an exceptional customer experience, increased revenue, and lower costs through using its order management technology. RRT’s current clients have improved revenue and operations with faster answer time, fewer dropped calls, more repeat customers, higher average orders and more satisfied customers – all at a lower cost than doing it themselves. For more information, visit: http://www.rrtusa.com.

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All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

We are all familiar with the perils of restaurant take-out — lost orders, wrong orders, someone else’s order, missing items, cold food, long hold times, dropped calls — you name it. Brett Harman of Restaurant Revolution Technologies saw an opportunity where the rest of us simply feel frustration, and decided to do something about it.

When I look at the fretboard on my guitars, I often wonder how artists still find new songs to write. In business, it also seems that sometimes all of the good ideas have already been developed. This week, I’ll spotlight a local company that has found a niche market and created a win-win for restaurants, patrons and itself.

Restaurant Revolution Technologies is the brainchild of Brett Harman, who is a bit of a pioneer in the restaurant delivery business. In the 1980s, he provided all of the pre-made food delivery services to the motion picture industry.

He learned the hard way how inefficient restaurants are at providing take-out, curbside and delivery service, or what is commonly referred to by restaurant operators as off-premise business.

Mr. Harman is an unlikely business owner and entrepreneur, having started his career in the entertainment industry as an actor and screenwriter. As is often the case, opportunities presented themselves and Mr. Harman’s natural ability to convert good ideas to good businesses took hold.

He founded the business in 2008, and it’s based here in Santa Barbara. RRT claims to be the world leader in off-premise brand and operations management solutions for the Full Service Restaurant (FSR) and Limited Service Restaurant (LSR) industries.

The company was started with the assumption that phone or online consumers deserve the same positive brand experience as walk-in customers. With this in mind, the company created a software package that allows a restaurant to offer the same level of service provided to dine-in patrons to their phone, mobile and online order customers.

In the past, restaurants have largely ignored or discounted the importance of off-premise customers, seeing this segment of business as trivial at best.

However, the take-out, curbside and delivery customer segment is growing at 10 percent per year, about twice the rate of the restaurant industry as a whole, during the period of 2005 through 2008. Operational failures in every step of the service cycle — from the first phone contact to the pick-up, curbside pick-up or home delivery of the order — cost the industry an average of 30 percent of off-premise sales annually. These lost revenues amount to something like $30 billion annually.

Things in the industry have obviously slowed considerably in the past two years, which is why it’s much more important for restaurant owners to maximize revenues from all aspects of their business, including off-premise orders.

(In next week’s column, I will expand on this a bit, looking at the changing trends within the restaurant industry and how these trends are affecting local restaurants. Another local company — Serena Bay Consulting — has partnered with UNLV to deliver the most compelling study on off-premise ordering to date. The results of the study will shock the industry when they are released later this year.)

Back to RRT, one of the services that makes its business model so efficient is the service call center. The call center, which is transparent to the customer, has dedicated representatives for each restaurant chain, each of whom knows the ins and outs of the restaurant’s menu, food preparation approaches and options.

These personnel can take the customer through the ordering process in a much more relaxed, quiet, polite and comprehensive manner. According to Mr. Harman, “Each CSR is thoroughly and continuously trained to maximize customer loyalty and provided with real-time prompts and updates designed to increase per-ticket sales.”

RRT also enables the restaurant chain to create an invaluable — and until now — a sorely need customer data base. This database contains customer contact information, product preferences and order history.

The company software and related services package is scalable for restaurant chains ranging from five to 2,000 locations. The software integrates with just about any POS (point-of-sale) system, including Aloha, Maitre’D, Micros, PosiTouch and Squirrel.

This is a critical and extremely valuable aspect of RRT’s service, because without POS integration, the system simply will not work efficiently.

The system provides restaurant operators with visibility into every phone and online transaction, and features robust reporting with customizable system permissions across all operations.

For example, there may be employees that the operator doesn’t want to have access to the ordering system for a variety of reasons, and the RRT package allows the operator to customize who can and cannot access the system.

The reporting features of the package allow the restaurant operator to analyze and evaluate many aspects of their operations. This can come in handy when using a promotion. For example, the restaurant may want to track the success of a particular buy-one get-one -free promotion for off-premise customers.

The system allows the operator to track every patron responding to the promotion, and to analyze specific information about the customer so that future promotions can be customized and refined to be more effective and therefore more profitable for the business.

This feature of the RRT application is particularly useful and important for larger operators with many locations, allowing the operator to coordinate and merge information from one, some or all locations. The restaurant might want to offer a promotion that is regional, or city-specific, or may want to undertake a national promotion. Under any scenario, the RRT package allows the operator to quickly gather all necessary information and organize it, so that actionable information can be organized and a decision can be made.

Mr. Harman notes that quality throughout restaurant operations, especially quality of service, is the key to maintaining market share and building and maintaining brand awareness and loyalty.

According to Mr. Harman, those restaurants that have moved to a low-price, low-quality approach have lost market share and profitability in the process. With this in mind and in light of the current economic environment, it is critically important that all aspects of restaurant operations, including off-premise order service, are of the highest quality.

As stated above, restaurant operators are quickly getting up to speed on the importance of off-premise sales, and are looking for effective solutions to improve their level of service in this area.

For single-location restaurants, the RRT solution is not yet available. However, restaurant operators of a single location or a few locations can still benefit from the insights gained from RRT’s approach. It is clear from their success, and from the increased efficiency, customer satisfaction and profitability for restaurants using the system, that off-premise service is a significant driver for any restaurant’s bottom line.

If the current trend of off-premise restaurant business continues to grow at twice the industry average, it will become increasingly important to the operating model for every restaurant — large and small.

In other words, those restaurants wanting to be successful long-term (i.e. maintaining or growing market share and profitability), will have to make off-premise service a priority.

Originally published in Wall Street Spotlight on August 21, 2010.

Craig Allen is president of Montecito Private Asset Management. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the News-Press. He can be reached at craig@mpam.bz.