Don Pablo's spices up store-level systems with a unified platform approach

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 8, 1999 by Ed Rubinstein

BEDFORD, Texas -- While it promotes its Mexican cuisine as being "The Real Enchilada," the Don Pablo's Mexican Kitchen chain recently realized that its store level systems were beginning to unravel and were in need of an upgrade in order to expand into the millennium.

"We have some year 2000 exposure at the point-of-sale and had to address some aging store technologies, some of which were up to 12 years old," maintained Keith Webb, director of information technology for Don Pablo's, a division of Madison, Ga.-based Avado Brands.

Furthermore, the casual feeder's existing point-of-sale system has what Webb called a "pretty antiquated data-file structure," which made it difficult to maintain store level databases, make price and menu changes in a timely manner, and manage its tax-reporting processes. For the upgrade Don Pablo's selected the 3700 point-of-sale system from MICROS Systems Inc., along with a suite of front- and back-of-the-house applications, called Enterprise Office and Management. The software products include Product Management for real-time ordering, inventory and recipe management; Labor Management for integrated employee data management and labor scheduling; and Financial Management for reporting and analyzing restaurant performance.

Webb maintained that the solution would allow the operator to compare better theoretical vs. actual food costs, schedule staff more efficiently and eliminate the expenses associated with unit level promotions and menu updates.

Describing the chain's customized back-office programs, Don Pablo's network administrator Steve Ellis said, We kind of invented our own ways of updating prices and changing menu items." Though that has served the chain well, Ellis added that there have been times when certain restaurants "were not charging the most up-to-date prices." But the operator is looking forward to changing those practices.

"Having the enterprise piece to manage all those databases from the POS will ensure that all units have the right items, at the right times and at the correct prices," Ellis added.

Another impetus for the sweeping upgrade, according to Webb, was to streamline and expedite the reporting of state sales taxes. Calling such experiences a "nightmare," Webb explained the situation: "Once a quarter we have to poll the registers to make sure we are collecting the right amount of taxes."

But the process can be difficult for some states, such as Florida, which has about a dozen Don Pablo's and tax rates that vary between foods and beverages.

"With the MICROS solution, we'll be able to tally and report those taxes every day if we want to," Webb added. "That capability will become even more important as we look toward international expansion."

While the company has not disclosed plans to take the chain overseas, Webb suspected that the "scalability of the MICROS platforms will serve us well once the chain opts for international markets," a direction he added that Avado "will certainly look toward."

To date, the parent company's international efforts have included a 25-percent equity stake in Harrigans, a London-based casual operator, and a 50/50 joint venture with Belgo Group PLC, also based in the United Kingdom.

Elaborating on the decision to opt for a single-vendor solution rather than take the so-called best-of-breed approach, Webb said, "We didn't want to piece together a system with P05 from one vendor and back office from another," a scenario he maintained can "compromise data integrity."

Don Pablo's already has installed the MICROS 3700 POS system and enterprise solutions at a unit in the Grapevine section of Dallas. 'Preliminary results are excellent," Webb said. "The kitchen staff was delighted, and the front-of-the-house staff picked up the new procedures faster and with more enthusiasm than we could have imagined," Webb stated. "And senior management wants to know if we can have it in all stores by next week" though that will obviously not be the case.

The chain will ramp up the rollout during the second and third quarters of 1999. All 122 stores should be up on the new platform by Thanksgiving.

On the back end Don Pablo's database and polling applications also take unified approaches, with SQL 6.5 as the database platform running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. End users can access the databases through a customized viewer, which was built using the PowerBuilder development tool from Sybase.

Nightly polling for all restaurants is accomplished through a bank of 14 modems with asynchronous connections, a process Ellis said can be accomplished in 20 minutes or less.

In concert with the store-level upgrades, Don Pablo's is taking an enterprise systems approach to aid store level decision-making by launching a data warehouse that will use the tools from MicroStrategy of Vienna, Va. Webb said that would "allow us to better analyze the effectiveness of our promotions" and integrate with the new point-of-sale and enterprise systems.