Crunchtime’s Ops Excellence Awards recognize those who have raised the bar in the industry. Each year, that bar of excellence keeps getting higher and higher, largely in part due to the amazing caliber of submissions we received from our incredible customer base.
With an impressive slate of nominations, narrowing the field was no easy task. Among all of the submissions, five brands stood out the most and earned their spot as finalists:
From this exceptional group of finalists, the attendees of the Ops Summit cast their live votes to name the 2026 winner.
2026 Ops Excellence Award Winner: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
Brand Snapshot
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is a premium dine-in theater concept that combines film, food, and hospitality. What grew from a single-screen repertory theater in Austin, Texas, has now expanded into a major national brand operating 40 locations. The brand is known for providing an elevated dining experience, with chef-crafted meals delivered directly to your seat. This model provides a one-of-a-kind experience to guests but also increases operational complexity.
Commitment to Operational Excellence
At Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, operational excellence means managing an environment that is uniquely multifaceted. It’s not just about running a great restaurant or a great theater; it’s about executing a synchronized, high-quality dine-in hospitality experience at scale across 40 distinct locations.
As the brand grows nationwide, its commitment to the guest experience demands an equal focus on supporting frontline staff. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema recognizes that exceptional hospitality begins with a well-supported team, and scaling successfully requires investing in the technology and infrastructure that empower staff to operate efficiently.
Operational Challenges
Running a cinema-eatery means coordinating massive guest volume while maintaining tight controls over diverse menu offerings. Before unifying their systems, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema was managing an astonishing 112 distinct menus. Dennis Ogaard, Senior Manager, Operations Services, explains the reality of managing their footprint:
"Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is by far the most complex organization I've ever worked for, with locations ranging wildly in size and structure.”
To make matters more challenging, managing inventory and labor required a heavy administrative lift. Restaurant managers were bogged down by 35 manual spreadsheets just to keep up with daily back-of-house operations. This operational style meant managers spent their shifts "looking in the rearview mirror," relying on delayed data while being trapped in the back office instead of leading their teams on the floor.
Alamo Drafthouse needed a modern operational solution that could automate manual work, build out accurate theoretical food costs across all menus, provide real-time labor forecasting, and, most importantly, give managers their time back.
The Solution for Smarter Operations
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema turned to the Crunchtime suite to completely overhaul and connect its back-of-house operations. By deploying Crunchtime Inventory, Labor, and Insights, the brand established a single source of truth capable of scaling across its complex corporate ecosystem.
With Crunchtime Inventory, the brand successfully integrated over 100 menus, instantly mapping out theoretical food costs and gaining immediate line of sight into waste.
“Our operation is incredibly complex, but by putting 112 menus into Crunchtime Inventory, we now have theoretical costs built out across all of them,” said Dennis. "Crunchtime Inventory enabled us to see that our top 10 products contribute to 60% of our waste. By focusing on those, we can make a significant impact on our cost of goods."
Crucially, Crunchtime changed where and how managers work. By replacing 35 manual spreadsheets with real-time mobile tools, inventory counting and invoice reconciliation were brought directly onto the floor.
"With Crunchtime Inventory, instead of being stuck in the office working through spreadsheets, everything is accessible on their phone; they can even reconcile invoices right there," noted Dennis.
Using Crunchtime Labor, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema was able to optimize its scheduling. Instead of relying on gut feelings or outdated spreadsheets, the team gained precise visibility into the exact labor hours needed for each unique theater location and showtime.
Dennis explained, “By using Crunchtime Labor, we discovered that we were overscheduling by thousands of hours per week. Now, we’ve been able to return those hours to the team and our bottom line.”
This transition replaced outdated systems (and gut feelings) with active, forward-looking insights. Consequently, the team gained the consistent oversight necessary to optimize operations across every location.
“Now we have clear visibility into the labor we need at any given time for each unique location with Crunchtime,” Dennis commented.
To tie everything together, Alamo Drafthouse traded in retrospective data tracking for real-time analytics. Crunchtime Insights helped the brand automate daily operations and eliminate the guesswork that usually comes with managing multiple locations.
“We stopped looking in the rearview mirror and started using Crunchtime to automate operations and move forward with real-time insights,” said Dennis.
Results Worth Celebrating
By moving away from siloed manual systems to connected, real-time intelligence, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has driven millions in annual impact. Their operational achievements include:
- Sustaining a 3% monthly COGS improvement for over 20 consecutive months
- Slashing inventory time from 10 hours with three managers to just three hours with two managers
- Reclaiming thousands of hours monthly across 29 locations through optimized scheduling and less admin
- Delivering hundreds of thousands in monthly savings across all locations, primarily from better food cost management
But for Alamo Drafthouse, achieving higher profit margins was only part of the victory. The labor efficiencies gained have allowed the company to strategically reinvest in its workforce.
“We’re realizing significant labor efficiencies each month with Crunchtime, and not all of that goes straight to the bottom line because we reinvest in our people,” Dennis shared. “Over the past few years, wages have increased substantially as a result, and we’ve expanded benefits to give part-time team members access to insurance they didn’t have before.”
Consistent Excellence in a Fast-Moving World
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema stands as a prime example of how operational excellence is achieved when technology meets leadership. By replacing administrative chaos with automation and reliable insights, they have empowered their leaders to do what they do best.
“By moving away from 35 manual spreadsheets to real-time intelligence via Crunchtime Insights, we’ve not only achieved significant savings in labor and COGS, but we’ve given our managers their time back,” concluded Dennis. “We’ve streamlined inventory counting, allowing our teams to get out of the office and back onto the floor to deliver the best theater experience in the world.”
Congratulations to Alamo Drafthouse Cinema for winning Crunchtime’s 2026 Ops Excellence Awards.
Ops Excellence Awards winners are voted on live by all Ops Summit attendees. Click here to learn more.
