Texas Land & Cattle tech chief aims for zero defects

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 12, 2001 by C. Dickinson Waters

DALLAS -- An aggressive growth strategy and a corporate vision that strives toward a "zero defects" restaurant operation define the parameters of David Oden's job at casual steak-house chain Texas Land & Cattle.

Like many of his fellow foodservice technologists, Oden began his career in the restaurant industry on the finance side, moving from a position in the small-business services group at accounting firm Deloitte, Haskins & Sells to controller of Fort Worth, Texas-based Pancho's Mexican Buffet in 1989.

According to Oden, he "became immersed in IT right away at Pancho's, because we had urgent and pressing needs." They included replacing an accounting system that relied on a service bureau to process data with an in-house package from Oklahoma City-based Solution Ware running on a then-state-of-the-art IBM AS/400.

After a stop as senior vice president and chief financial officer of Silver Diner Inc, in Rockville, Md., Oden assumed his current position of executive vice president and chief financial officer at Texas Land & Cattle in 1997. In that dual role Oden said he has full responsibility for information technology and accounting and finance, as well as reporting responsibility for all areas except real estate and development.

Founded in 1993 by David Franklin and J. Aron Fogel, Texas Land & Cattle was created to fill "a niche between the casual steak houses & roadhouses and Ruth Chris' and Morton's," Franklin, company chairman, president and chief executive, said. Texas Land & Cattle has grown from one restaurant to a 20-unit chain.

"Being a young company, we have the advantage of being able to pick and choose from the latest technologies out there," Oden explained. "We don't have the disadvantage of a lot of legacy systems."

According to Oden, much of the technology at Texas Land & Cattle is of recent vintage. The company deployed Aloha Technologies POS for Table Service in August 1999 and rolled out Aloha Enterprise.com ASP data warehouse a month later. The company is "just scratching the surface of the benefits we will realize," Oden said.

"We went from an environment where obtaining basic information, such as consolidated product mix, was a tedious chore, to having a wealth of information at our fingertips," Oden explained. "Today [Aloha Enterprises] polls each of our stores four times a day over the Internet. By 2:30 p.m., I can pull up any lunch ticket in our company and tell you if the guest had butter on his baked potato."

Oden noted that "the key challenge now is harnessing all this new information to better manage our business."

Texas Land & Cattle deployed a wide-area network connecting all of its restaurants in 2000, a move Oden described as "the foundation of key technology initiatives over the next few years," including "credit card processing over IP networks and Internet-based training."

According to Franklin development plans call for 30-percent annual growth in units.

Such growth "makes it more challenging to push new initiatives," Oden said, but "we have a clear vision of what we need to accomplish."

Tops on Oden's list of technology priorities are initiatives designed to improve the dining experience for visitors to Texas Land & Cattle's ranch-style dining rooms.

"I think technology in the restaurant industry has been very focused on cost reduction," Oden said. "There has not been, until recently, as much focus on customer experience or on the marketing side. I think that's where the big opportunities are right now."

As part of a drive to become a "zero defects operation," Texas Land & Cattle is working with Aloha Technologies to develop table management and kitchen display capabilities, Oden said. "We envision real time alerts when service standards are not meeting targets plus after-the-fact reporting so we can monitor the performance of our restaurants," he added.

With an IT department staffed by only two people, it is not surprising that Oden proclaims himself to be an adherent of "a very strong partnership philosophy" who "would like to have one store-level, restaurant technology partner if possible."

Oden estimates he spends approximately 15 percent of his time directly on technology issues.

"With all the new technology, there are a lot of moving parts to manage," Oden said. "I am spread pretty thin and expect Twill hand off the technology baton to one of my subordinates in the near future though I plan to stay involved because I really I enjoy it."

A former member of his high-school tennis team, Oden said he still enjoys "getting onto the tennis court" in his leisure time. He also snow skis and water skis.

Oden met his wife, Eileen, at Texas Christian University. They have two children, 11-year-old Amy and 8-year-old Bryan.

Name: David Oden

Title: Executive vice president and CFO

Company: Texas Land & Cattle Steak House

Headquarters: Dallas

Date of birth: 6/22/60

Residence: Dallas

Hometown: Abilene, Texas

Education: Bachelor's degree in Accounting and Finance, Texas Christian University. Certified Public Accountant