If you live in North Carolina, South Carolina, Eastern Tennessee or Virginia, you are probably familiar with the highquality choice steaks, tender ribs and the warm, friendly atmosphere of Sagebrush Steakhouses.

Previously owned by the Claremont Restaurant Group, the Sagebrush Steakhouse restaurants were purchased by Jim Peterson in 2002 and are managed under his company, J.P. Steakhouses LLC. With more than 3,000 employees and an average volume of sales of $1.5 million, Sagebrush’s key ingredients for success are not all food-related.

Up until about 1999, Sagebrush’s technology infrastructure was extremely antiquated. Its primary technologies consisted of voice mail, fax machines and calculators, as well as a Micros 2700 Point of Sale (POS) system that was somewhat outdated.

At that point, with Y2K approaching, Ken Stone came on board as the IT director and was charged with getting Sagebrush technologically up-to-date and primed for the future.

Pioneering New Frontiers
Stone lassoed in CompuData to assist him with this challenge. The relationship began by jotting Sagebrush’s technology vision down on a napkin five years ago (while enjoying some juicy steaks, of course). Sagebrush has now transitioned from a company using antiquated business processes to a company pioneering a new technology frontier in the restaurant business.

CompuData has been Sagebrush’s outsourced network administrator and provided the migration path for all of its upgrades of hardware and software. It helped Sagebrush implement its first email system and is now migrating the restaurant chain to Exchange 2003 to provide even more robust communications between its central office and its 50 locations.

Rounding Up the Savings
The payroll for more than 3,000 employees working at 50 different locations in four states is complicated. Sagebrush needed a hearty back end to handle the migration to a new accounting package. CompuData designed and installed a technology infrastructure that allowed Sagebrush to bring its payroll processing back in-house.

“By eliminating our payroll outsourcing costs, we are saving the company approximately $200,000 a year,” explained Stone. “And, with the automated system, we were able to reduce our payroll staff from five fulltime employees to one part-time position, making our costs savings even greater.”

Effective Labor Management
In addition to the payroll challenge, controlling labor costs is another major issue for restaurant managers. Sagebrush selected the Time Management, Inc. (TMx) solution to control employees’ time in and out and to provide dynamic scheduling over the web.

CompuData helped implement the solution for Sagebrush and provided the secure infrastructure to ensure its critical files could be transferred electronically without compromising the data. Once the information is brought back into the SQL database, all the restaurant managers have immediate access to their information and can better manage their labor dollars.

“With this new solution, we are able to create dynamic reports for managing our labor expenditures and the knowledge these reports provide has enabled us to decrease our payroll approximately $70,000 a month just by preventing employees from clocking in early.”

Sagebrush recovered all the costs of this labor management system investment within the first year and now those savings are improving the company’s bottom line.

Controlling Inventory
Inventory control is another area that, if not managed effectively, can drastically reduce profits. In July 2004, CompuData consulted with Sagebrush and helped implement Inventory Xpress using NetScreen Security Platforms at all Sagebrush locations to provide a secure wide area network for higher performance and to ensure that Sagebrush’s data is protected.

“In less than six months, we should realize our return on investment for the inventory control system,” said Stone. “We are now able to identify excess inventory in real-time and allocate our financial resources more efficiently.” 

Technology Trailblazers
Sagebrush never replaced its Micros 2700 POS systems as originally intended, but instead focused on implementing a back-end that enables a real-time comprehensive enterprise-wide system. 

“Most restaurant businesses focus on investing in high-end POS systems,” explained Stone. “We’ve taken a five year methodical approach based on our vision to deploy cutting-edge technology without having to invest in an elaborate frontend system.”

Without the cow, there is no steak. And, without Sagebrush’s meaty backend infrastructure, there would only be a slow-cooked operation. 

High Quality Choice Partners
“Our ultimate goal has been to automate administrative operations to provide more information to our managers – saving them time and enabling them to manage their businesses better,” said Stone. “We want our managers to spend less time on paperwork and more time going from table to table shaking the hands of our customers and ultimately driving sales.”

“CompuData has managed all of our IT projects over the past five years,” said Stone. “They have understood our goals from the beginning and have been our most valued partner through this entire transition. The work that CompuData has done for us has increased our productivity and resulted in high returns on our investments – significantly improving our bottom line.”