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How 3 Leading Restaurant Brands Are Winning at Food Cost Control

Controlling food costs continues to be one of the most impactful ways restaurant operators and hospitality leaders can improve their bottom line. At Crunchtime's 2024 Ops Summit, three industry-leading brands, Fox Restaurant Concepts, Herschend Family Entertainment, and Cypress Five Star, shared how they are using Crunchtime tools to drive real savings, process efficiency, and smarter operations.

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Fox Restaurant Concepts: Consolidating Data for Smart, Seasonal Menu Decisions

Speaker: Adam Yeager, Senior Cost Control Manager

A Crunchtime customer since 2018, Fox Restaurant Concepts (FRC) operates 50+ innovative dining locations under brands like The Henry, Blanco Tacos & Tequila, and Culinary Dropout.

Challenge:

As FRC’s portfolio grew, so did the complexity of managing food costs across unique concepts, markets, and vendors. The need for a centralized commodity reporting solution became mission-critical.

Solution: Monthly Commodity Reporting via Crunchtime’s BizIQ 

Using Crunchtime’s BizIQ, FRC developed a consolidated monthly purchase detail report that enables deep dives into:

  • Year-over-Year trends
  • Month-over-Month fluctuations
  • State-by-State pricing differences
  • Concept-specific product usage and cost impact
  • Velocity changes that influence recipe costs and menu mix

Example Insight: In one period, the cost of guacamole rose more than 3% above the yearly average, driven by a spike in avocado prices. Interestingly, in Period 4, the team purchased 16,304 more avocados than in Period 8, yet the total spend remained relatively flat, highlighting how fluctuations in both price and volume can impact overall food costs in different ways.

Results:

  • Proactive seasonal menu adjustments
  • Early identification of cost trends
  • Data-driven decisions that saved FRC over 1.3% in food costs between 2022 and 2024

“Using BizIQ, we established that we needed to come up with better reporting in a consolidated format so that we could see everything that was going on.” - Adam Yeager, Senior Cost Control Manager, FRC

Herschend Family Entertainment: Streamlining Procurement and Empowering Inventory Teams

Speaker: Heather Barnhard, Revenue Systems Manager

Herschend operates beloved family attractions like Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, and the Vancouver Aquarium. A Crunchtime customer since 2021, they rely on technology to support dozens of brands across parks and resorts.

Challenge:

Before Crunchtime, Herschend had limited visibility into product costs across its many locations, and procurement lacked consistency.

Solution: Bid Management & Contract Discrepancy Reports

Crunchtime’s streamlined procurement workflows empowered the team to audit purchasing trends across vendors and locations. One discovery: a park overpaying for trash bags. By sourcing an alternative, the company saved $3,000 in three weeks, projecting to $50,000+ annually on that item alone.

Festival-Ready Recipe Modeling

With hundreds of new festival recipes each year, managing food costs depends on accurate Recipe Modeling and collaboration between culinary and inventory teams.

Inventory Efficiency with the Counter App

Transitioning from manual inventory processes to Crunchtime has resulted in huge time savings.

  • Inventory time reduced from 12 hours to 5 hours
  • Roughly 90 hours saved annually per location
  • Increased accuracy and real-time reporting

Results:

  • Centralized, data-driven procurement
  • Increased inventory accuracy and labor savings
  • Compound cost of sales (COS) improvement of 1.8% since 2022

“One of the ways that we started to control our food cost was by implementing a streamlined procurement process. Prior to Crunchtime, we had no visibility of our purchases and product costs across the enterprise. Now we all order and receive through one system, which makes it easier to audit all the way from a company level to a location level.” - Heather Barnhard, Revenue Systems Manager, Herschend

Cypress Five Star: Powering Efficiency and Freshness with Suggested Ordering

Speaker: Jay Wilson, VP of Systems & Technology

Operating Blaze Pizza and Five Guys franchises across North America, Cypress Five Star has used Crunchtime since 2019 to optimize operations across 79 locations.

Challenge:

Managers were spending too much time on manual ordering, resulting in inconsistent inventory, waste, and missed guest experiences.

Solution: Suggested Ordering

Crunchtime’s Suggested Ordering tool automates the ordering process using historical sales data and par levels.

Benefits:

  • Reduces stockouts and excess inventory
  • Improves freshness and stock rotation
  • Frees up managers to lead teams and serve guests
  • Enables smaller store formats and lower rent costs

“Suggestive ordering allows us to take small, tight spaces and make them more efficient.” - Jay Wilson, VP of Systems & Technology, Cypress Five Star

Real Impact:

  • Canada: 20% reduction in inventory holding costs = $10,000/month or $120,000/year in savings
  • Oregon: Reduced delivery frequency = $500/month savings
  • Improved product freshness: Average stock rotation dropped from 11 to 7 days
  • Streamlined manager transitions: Ordering time cut from 60 minutes to 10

Crunchtime has always been truthful with the data it gives back to us, including suggested ordering.”  - Jay Wilson, VP of Systems & Technology, Cypress Five Star.

Key Takeaways

From theme parks to fast casual franchises to full-service dining, these three Crunchtime partners showed how a commitment to visibility, standardization, and automation is driving measurable improvements in food cost control.

Whether reducing waste with better ordering, uncovering savings through bid management, or responding to commodity trends with data-backed agility, Crunchtime continues to be the engine behind food cost excellence.

Want to learn more about how Crunchtime can help you control food costs and optimize operations? Contact us or schedule a demo today.