September 21 – 28, 2008 at various locations throughout Atlanta. For more information, visit www.greatamericandineout.org.

September 2008

By Joni House

When you’re helping lead a 50-year-old brand, you know that it takes more than a little cosmetic work to stay vibrant. Doug Pendergast is Church’s Chicken’s Executive Vice President and Chief Franchise Officer, and it’s his role to keep Church’s Chicken a top-drawer experience for both franchisees and their customers. What’s Pendergast’s strategy? It’s driven by technology, but in surprising ways.

One of the challenges facing Church’s Chicken is accelerating an already rapid pace of store openings in the United States. From an average of 17 new stores per year, Church’s Chicken saw 59 new stores open in 2007 and is forecasting between 60 and 70 new stores in 2008 in the U.S. alone. To deliver on this goal, Pendergast and his team have developed a major technology initiative addressing construction processes and methods. About 2½ years ago, Church’s Chicken debuted panelized construction for its free-standing stores. The building elements delivered to the site had all exterior surfaces finished, windows installed, and with the assembly of the walls and roof, could be watertight within 24 hours. This fast-track construction so accelerated opening time that Church’s Chicken looked to leverage it into other types of locations. Pendergast and his team proceeded to translate into the U.S. market the best practices in construction that Church’s Chicken had learned from its international franchisees and improve on the original modular model.

The new technology initiative for store construction adds three different technology approaches. The first is a fully modular building in which both the interior and the exterior elements arrive fully assembled and are dropped onto a pre-prepared site. The advantages include the ability to control the upfront construction costs and to minimize the impact of weather and other events on completion. The fully modular stores are typically opened 90 days earlier than conventional stick-built locations. Plus, since the building is considered a mobile structure, some franchisees elect to depreciate it over an accelerated time frame as equipment rather than a building. All of these technological innovations combined “represent $100,000 of value to the franchisee,” says Pendergast.

Second, Church’s Chicken’s construction technology advances have allowed it to translate its product into more urban and suburban locations in the new strip mall locations. “Within 1,200 square feet – the same footprint as a Subway – we can deliver the Church’s experience in the same quality as a freestanding location,” Pendergast states. The design, sourcing and equipment packages have all been value engineered to translate the product into the current trend of inline stores.

Church’s Chicken is also excited about the technologies enabling the new kiosk locations. These 320-square-foot locations are targeted for enclosed malls, colleges, theme parks and the like. “It opens up more for us,” enthuses Brian Blosser, Director of Restaurant Construction. “It gets us more mainstream.” Some of the challenges in delivering the full Church’s Chicken menu in 320 square feet have been met head-on by improvements in equipment technology. One example is the development and sourcing of hoodless fryers. This equipment “reduces costs and allows more flexibility in where [a restaurant] can be located,” says Pendergast. The hoodless fryer technology removes a major constraint to having a kiosk-type Church’s Chicken location while enabling the franchisee to offer a consistent product and the recognizable Church’s Chicken brand.

Other improvements in equipment technology include rethermalization units. For the company in general, says Pendergast, it’s always a question of, “How can we do what we do even better?” The rethermalization units enable Church’s Chicken to deliver a variety of side items faster and more consistently.

Rolling out the new construction technology is underway for fiscal 2008. Church’s Chicken plans to open both its first fully modular standalone store and its first kiosk location this year. Going forward, Pendergast forecasts that the mix of new locations will be roughly one-third freestanding, one-third conversions and one-third nontraditional venues such as food courts and inline locations. “Our original buildings were walkups,” he observes. “What we’re doing with the new construction technology is enabling a back-to-basics approach. We’re not tied to industry thinking.”

The second set of technology initiatives is a collection of more conventional restaurant applications, all targeted to address the challenges inherent in keeping a 50-year-old brand nimble and profitable. With about 200 domestic franchisees, there are challenges related to legacy technology and a patchwork of point-of-sale (POS) systems. Church’s Chicken looked to answer the question of how to integrate all the data from the locations in order to add value to the franchisees’ businesses and to enhance the brand. The answer, being implemented in 2008, is a Web-based data warehouse. Partnering with MIRUS, Church’s Chicken’s new data warehouse is local-technology agnostic, meaning that, regardless of their POS system or other technologies, franchisees can integrate their operational and management data into the warehouse for decision support analysis. Pendergast explains that the solution “sits on top of the other platforms. It enables us to collect data and push it back out to the franchisees in a usable form. We can use data to identify problems before they get too big, and to share best practices.” Using the MIRUS solution has allowed Church’s Chicken to avoid the Draconian measure of mandating that franchisees rip out existing technology and upgrade to a standard platform. This technology approach “reflects our core belief about franchising and the role of the franchisor,” Pendergast explains. “We’ll do whatever’s necessary to improve the cash flow for our franchisees, so we look at any investment as having to have as high a return as possible.”

The success of this strategy is evident: Church’s Chicken’s franchises’ financial performance is among the top 10% of all fast food franchises, with an EBITDA for the most recent year of about 26%. “And,” says Pendergast, “we’re just starting to use technology to help improve the store-level cash flow for our franchisees.”

Church’s Chicken has also partnered with technology providers to create a tool to help franchisees better manage their physical plant. The company-wide reimaging project “will touch over 1,000 stores in some way,” Pendergast points out. To help manage this effort, the company has developed a database with photographs, as-builts, parking inventories, equipment inventories, size, seating and all types of physical plant details for every location. “It helps us be very consistent in our image standards,” says Pendergast. “We can clarify issues during an online meeting with our franchisees” with everyone literally looking at the same data. “It’s a cost-effective way of getting current.”

Church’s Chicken has also deployed technology solutions to help franchisees address problems plaguing the quick service restaurant segment since the beginning of time: human resources issues. Church’s Chicken is in the process of rolling out a voice- and Internet-enabled job application system. The candidate can input or give his or her information over the telephone. The system takes the information and performs a basic level of prescreening. The store manager gets an initial recommendation on each candidate. In addition, the system tracks the people who’ve applied for a position, so that managers can fill openings quickly from a prescreened pool of candidates. A major benefit to franchisees, says Pendergast, is that this system is providing a significant reduction in employee turnover. To further enhance employee retention, Church’s Chicken is also implementing pay cards for its employees. “Many don’t have bank accounts,” Pendergast explains. This basic technology solution makes the employee’s life easier by eliminating the need to go to a check cashing business, which can be inconvenient and expensive.

“It’s never one thing alone that drives success,” Pendergast observes. “It takes all these pieces working together to deliver that great experience of a fantastic meal at a compelling price.” Church’s Chicken’s creative use of technology is a giant piece of the success picture.

September 20 – 21, 2008 at Sandy Springs Historic Site and Park, http://www.sandyspringsfestival.com or call 404-851-9111.

September 20th at 6pm at Tiger Mountain Vineyards near Clayton, GA.

On October 4th, Ray’s Restaurants will kick off National Seafood Month with Atlanta’s Inaugural Seafood Festival. The celebration will continue throughout October. National Seafood Month highlights the importance of seafood as part of a healthy diet and celebrates the contributions of the seafood and fishing industries. Festivities will include special chef created menu, culinary and wine demonstrations.

Ray’s on the River, Ray’s Killer Creek and Ray’s in the City will donate $1 for every Seafood Platter ordered in the month of October to Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper is the Atlanta-based environmental advocacy organization dedicated solely to protecting and restoring the Chattahoochee River Basin. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will also participate in the event by offering special recipes and educational information.

September 19 – 21 Jekyll Island, GA, for more information visit http://www.jekyllisland.com/shrimpandgrits/ or call 1-877-4-Jekyll.

September 2008

By Jaymi Curley

Girasoles (pronounced here-ah-SO-lays), a small Mexican-Mediterranean fusion restaurant in Watkinsville, GA, about 10 miles outside of Athens, is serving up innovative meals with high-quality ingredients. Owner Chef Jose Zambrano finds ways to ingrain his restaurant firmly in this small community of 2,000 people, drawing in loyal customers with not only his delicious menu, but also an overwhelming sense of hospitality.

Chef Zambrano’s education in food was entirely hands on, at the sides of some of the best chefs in California. Schooled primarily in the French tradition, which was some of the most popular cuisine of the times, Chef Zambrano’s talents led him to work for the Hilton Hotel chain, first in Newport Beach, and later in Beverly Hills. From there, he moved to Georgia to open his first restaurant. Girasoles opened in 2005, following on the heels of two of his past successes in Athens, La Estrella and Zambrano’s.

The current trend toward fusion cooking has helped customers open up to Chef Zambrano’s way of looking at food. “People now are open to trying new tastes, new flavor combinations,” said Chef Zambrano. The cuisine at Girasoles is described as a creative mix of flavors, a combination of Mexican and Mediterranean, the joining of which comes quite naturally, Chef Zambrano says. “It’s like a marriage between two different cultures,” said Chef Zambrano. “These traditions marry well, because they are both strongly flavored, but ultimately are very light. They complement each other.”

Chef Zambrano’s firm belief in using only the freshest possible ingredients also aligns his restaurant with a current trend toward using the best of what is local and in season. “Everything here is fresh. We don’t even have a microwave in this restaurant. We never use processed vegetables or ingredients.”

Today, his food prices can add 30% extra to his allocated food budget. Rather than sacrifice quality, Chef Zambrano and his partner have modified the menu as a measure to keep costs down. “We’ve had to drop a lot of seafood dishes from the menu, due to the cost,” says Marta Whigham, Chef Zambrano’s business partner and co-owner of Girasoles. “Crabmeat and lobster prices are just too high. We have also gone to a smaller menu.” Some of the changes to the menu, though made for cost-cutting purposes, seem to be embraced by Chef Zambrano’s regular customers. A jump in the cost of frying oil, from $26 per gallon to over $50 per gallon, prompted a decision to remove all fried items from the menu. “We’ve gone to all grilled and roasted meats, added a lot of salads, and more vegetable and pasta dishes. Our customers’ responses have been really positive. They love it, because it is still very flavorful, and it is very healthy.”

The word “girasoles” means “sunflowers,” a symbol of welcome and hospitality, and an ideal to which Chef Zambrano is fully committed. One of the advantages to running a restaurant in a small community is that customers become more than diners, they become friends. This sense of welcome attracts a following for Girasoles, as clients from Athens, Loganville and even as far away as Milledgeville travel to the restaurant to partake of Chef Zambrano’s cooking. Girasoles also offers catering services, which comprises about 30% of the restaurant’s revenue. “Summer is very busy with weddings, but we also see a slight increase around Christmas for corporate parties,” says Whigham.

In addition to offering the best dining experience possible, Chef Zambrano and Whigham also leave an impression on the community by inviting them in for more than just a meal. In the past they have offered highly successful cooking classes, salsa-dancing lessons and currently offer live jazz evenings once a week. Whigham insists that this form of indirect advertising is important to building and maintaining their loyal customer base, especially in the face of rising advertising expenses. “It’s a difficult time for restaurants right now, and we rely a lot on word of mouth. We do use newspaper advertisements and some couponing, but not every month.” The costs of providing these incentives are reasonably small, but result in big dividends for the restaurant. “We have many loyal customers who came for a [cooking] class, and just kept returning. We often get catering business from them, too,” said Chef Zambrano.

For Chef Zambrano, extending so much hospitality to his guests is more than a business trend; it is a basic philosophy and a way of keeping his business footing in the community, even as the economy tightens belts for both the restaurateur and the consumer.

September 17, 2008 for more information, visit http://www.garestaurants.org

September 17, 2008 at Cobb Galleria, visit http://www.atlantafoods.com for more information.

The Farmhouse, located in the Inn at Serenbe, is pleased to announce Nick Melvin as the new executive chef. Melvin brings raw culinary talent coupled with an affinity for farm-fresh, authentic food.

Melvin comes to Serenbe from the Concentrics Hospitality Group, where he served for over two years in sous chef positions for Murphy’s, Room and Tap. Melvin was attracted to The Farmhouse’s strong sense of place, and its backyard access to an organic farm.

The Farmhouse serves a weekly changing, prix fixe three-course menu inspired by seasonal organic ingredients grown on the Serenbe Farms. The restaurant was named a “Best New Restaurant” in 2007 by Atlanta Magazine, and has been featured in Bon Appetit and Gourmet.