AI clocks in: how bots are streamlining restaurant operations

Primanti Bros. wanted to improve its repetitive office processes by consolidating the manual work required to generate the daily sales and labor reports. Looking closely at the situation, the company needed a group of eight regional managers to pull daily sales reports for five locations each, taking at least 45 minutes per person to generate 40 reports by 10 AM each day, including weekends and holidays. The restaurant chain realized that automating such processes using AI would save on time and operational costs.

“You only have so much time every day before you start running the restaurant. You can get so bogged down in the process of copying, pasting, filling out and double-checking a spreadsheet, when you should be focused on actually looking at the numbers and what they’re saying,” says Stritmatter. “So, we wanted to take the busy-work out of the process to free up time for thought and planning.”

Process automation poses an array of challenges for companies, but Primanti Bros. met this challenge head-on. Working with IBM and IBM Business Partner Salient Process, Inc., a full-service process automation firm, Primanti Bros. mapped out a digital modernization plan that would use AI for its finance department. Through analyzing various software technologies, the Financial Planning and Analysis team found IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to deliver the highest return on investment (ROI) for automation use cases.

Jimmy Hewitt, Senior Automation Advisor at Salient Process, says: “I really like two things about this specific automation technology. First is that because it takes the bot no time at all to do work that took humans 2,000 hours per year to do, it quite literally gives you the gift of time. They say you can’t buy time. I say, yes you can! Second is how low the barrier to entry is for this capability.”

RPA provides an intuitive user interface, allowing almost anyone to build a bot to perform simple automated tasks. The IBM RPA bot is incredibly flexible. It can work across multiple platforms and systems to collect scattered information using AI. Primanti Bros. relies on IBM RPA technology to turn daily sales and labor reporting into a hands-free task with less room for error.

Within two weeks, the new solution was implemented. Three months later, Primanti Bros. reported that it had already paid for itself. Instead of sitting behind a desk, Primanti’s regional managers can now spend more time focusing on providing the best experience to their “fans” (their customers). With access to real-time numbers and data, the management team can quickly compare the trends and begin planning for the day.

“One of our regional managers said what a relief it is to not only have these reports already done but to know they’re accurate. Nobody else went in and mistakenly entered the wrong number,” adds Stritmatter. “As a data person, that puts me at ease. It’s error-free and I know they’re looking at the right stuff.”

Primanti Bros. now completes daily sales and labor reporting in record time. Instead of eight managers each spending 45 minutes per day on the task, the RPA bot takes care of it in three minutes. It saves management over 2,000 hours annually, with Primanti Bros. seeing a cost savings of USD 84,000.

As the restaurant moves toward more technology, the future of its machine learning and AI is uncapped. After seeing the automation bot’s capabilities, other departments within Primanti Bros. have submitted requests to apply it to their own reporting needs.

“We are also working on mapping out requests for the accounting and IT department. There could be hundreds of reports we can automate when it’s all said and done, but we are prioritizing what will have the biggest impact,” explains Stritmatter. “We have a long-term plan for continued growth by opening more restaurant locations. Looking down the road, we hope to get to a point where we need to hire someone internal just to manage our automations—past, present and future. There’s a lot of room to grow and we have no plans to slow down. The bot will be vital in keeping our business model scalable.”

Primanti Bros. (link resides outside of ibm.com), an iconic sandwich shop chain, was founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by Joe Primanti and his brothers in 1933. The famous chain is known for its signature sandwich consisting of grilled meat, melted cheese, coleslaw, tomato and French fries between two slices of Italian bread.

Having doubled in size over the last year, US-based Salient Process (link resides outside of ibm.com) is an IBM Business Partner and the leading hyperautomation services and solutions provider. Salient specializes in Process Mapping, Mining and Analysis, Robotic Process Automation, Business Process Management (BPM), Business Rules Management (Decision) and Automation Solutions, and maintains a healthy practice of on shore, near shore, and offshore implementation consultants.