This article was originally posted on QSR.
Cierra Miller, shop performance manager at Bahama Buck’s, estimates that she spends about 50 percent of her time on the road, visiting the frozen dessert brand’s 108 locations and evaluating operational competencies. She says the brand’s goal, however lofty, is to achieve 100 percent compliance across all of its units when it comes to the way products are prepared and stores are operated and managed.
Previously, Miller’s job was a little more intensive. The evaluation platform she was using during her site visits wasn’t cutting it—it was cumbersome and there was no way for her to know if her notes were being followed up upon. At the same time, the brand had serious growth goals, with the intention of doubling in size between 2021 and 2025. They knew that a key in reaching that goal would be to implement checks and balances that would uphold the brand’s values and performance standards across all locations. With such a heavy focus on the customer experience and ensuring it was top-notch at every single location, a compliance enforcement committee was formed. One of the first changes the committee implemented was to make the switch to MeazureUp’s Audit App, a digital site visit checklist that helps brands achieve consistency across an entire footprint. As a result, Miller’s job was made easier almost immediately.
“Our CFO, Eric Lee, stumbled upon MeazureUp and we immediately knew it was a better platform than what we were using,” Miller says. “It was the simplicity of the process that made everyone’s life so much easier. I used to have to get back to the office, type up an evaluation, send it to our franchisees and hope they opened it. Now I don’t have to do anything on my end but go through a digital checklist, make notes, and it is automatically sent to them.”
Pivotally, feedback from site visits is given in real time. This was a big change for Miller and her team. Whereas before franchisees might get an email a few days after her visit, now it is delivered straight to their inbox and Miller will be updated if and when any areas of concern are addressed. One feature that helps with this is that tasks can be assigned within the app and require a photograph to be uploaded in order for that task to be checked off.
For these reasons and others, not only does Miller and her executive team enjoy MeazureUp’s Audit App, but so too do franchisees and store managers. “I had a longtime manager email me back after I went to her store and she just said, ‘I love the new platform,’” Miller says. “She said, ‘I love how easy it is to look through comments and pictures so that I know exactly what needs to be done.’ I really haven’t gotten any negative feedback and I think we all appreciate that it’s a really intuitive platform.”
And while Audit App helps capture feedback for individual shops, it also helps the c-suite at Bahama Buck’s see where there are brandwide issues popping up. There’s a centralized dashboard that tracks these recurrent issues, helping the brand evaluate where new systems may need to be rolled out at more than just one store.
“It just gives us such a better snapshot of our brand,” Miller says. “That dashboard on the back end is a great way for us to see on a higher level what’s going on at all of our shops. Previously we didn’t have that aggregate data but now we can drill down and say, ‘Okay, these are the issues. This is where we need to focus.’”
To find out more about how Bahama Buck’s and many other brands better manage consistency across their entire footprint, visit the MeazureUp website.
