Wendy’s Case Study
Wendy’s cash scale application in QSR/Retail
Wendy’s International, Inc. is the world’s third largest hamburger/restaurant chain. The handling of cash is a critical but time consuming element of restaurant operations. Company operations asked the Loss Prevention Department to explore opportunities to reduce the time that management and cashiers spend handling cash at the restaurant and to improve accuracy of cash handling during all day-parts. This included the testing of cash scales in company restaurants with a potential roll-out to the entire system.
As a result of this request, the requirements included:
- Find a cash scale that was robust and reliable for a QSR environment
- Ability to interface with POS systems for future technology expansion
- A measured reduction in time spent handling cash
- National roll-out with a seamless transition to scale use with training systems and customer support
- ROI of twelve months or less
- RFP’s were prepared and three companies were selected to perform market tests of their respective cash scales in company markets. The tests lasted for three months. During the tests, key learning’s about each machine allowed Wendy’s to update specifications and requirements that would be needed to produce a “Wendy’s” designed machine. This allowed Wendy’s to conduct a thorough needs analysis that involved in-put from Operations, Finance, IT, and Loss Prevention.
Initially, the thought process behind the introduction of cash scales was to reduce management time counting cash. While successful in saving approximately an hour per day on this function, cash scales also allowed a reduction of time that it took cashiers to count register and bank off their tills. Wendy’s also experienced a reduction in attempted scams from customers who said they were short-changed by operators, as the scales allowed a manager to accurately count down a register in a minute or less and resolve any dispute with customers.
During market tests, Wendy’s measured time saving on all cash functions that included:
- Setting up registers
- Banking on/off cashiers
- Cash pulls
- Audits of registers
- Shift change
- Store bank counts
All of the above time savings were converted into employee hourly pay because managers were still required to be in the restaurant even though time savings were realized.
Cash scales proved to be a product that yielded an ROI within five months. This was a conservative figure because the actual time saved was more than the hour that was removed from the labour guide when cash scales were rolled-out to the system.
The training and functionality of the scales are simple and efficient. Once trained on the use of scales, managers were reluctant to revert back to any type of manual system.
All Wendy’s corporate stores and the majority of Franchisee stores have scales that are now part of the standard equipment package.
