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shaping
success stories
in the restaurant industry
For over 30 years, we have been the go-to consulting resource for the food service industry. From concept development to profitable solutions, we close the gap between vision and reality.
Schedule Your Consultationshaping
success stories
in the restaurant industry
For over 30 years, we have been the go-to consulting resource for the food service industry. From concept development to profitable solutions, we close the gap between vision and reality.
Schedule Your ConsultationServing Excellence Across The
Food Service Landscape
THE leading TEAM IN
RESTAURANT CONSULTING
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Average Star Rating on Google
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Chains Helped
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Years in Business
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Restaurants Improved
CRAFTING CLIENT SUCCESS
FOR OVER THREE DECADES
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Testimonial
CASE STUDY
Challenge
Atria Senior Living faced the challenge of avoiding repetitive menu offerings in their dining rooms while also wanting to provide their chefs with the flexibility to tailor menus to local demographics and tastes. They needed a solution that would introduce variety and excitement to their menus without compromising on the consistency and quality of their foodservice across multiple locations.
Solution
Synergy Restaurant Consultants embarked on an extensive assessment, touring multiple Atria Senior Living locations across the country. This allowed the Synergy team to thoroughly evaluate their existing practices and identify areas for improvement. Based on the findings, comprehensive document outlining recommendations for a dynamic yet structured menu planning process was developed. This strategy aimed to strike a balance between innovation and consistency, ensuring that each location could offer unique and appealing menus while adhering to standardized procedures.
Outcome & Benefits
The new menu planning process features diverse and appealing menus that can be adapted to regional preferences. This not only enhances the dining experience for residents but also boosts employee satisfaction by empowering chefs to be creative and responsive to local tastes.
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Testimonial
CASE STUDY
Challenge
Prominent entrepreneurs in Oakdale, CA, acquired a former café with the vision of transforming it into an elevated yet approachable American grill. They faced several key challenges: redefining the café's concept and developing a unique, high-quality menu, designing the back-of-house, developing infrastructure to support the new concept, establishing efficient operating and training procedures for the new restaurant management team, creating comprehensive training materials and operating infrastructure, and ensuring a smooth launch with continued success.
Solution
To address these challenges, the entrepreneurs partnered with Synergy to leverage their expertise. Synergy's team meticulously crafted a new concept and developed a menu aimed at delivering a best-in-class dining experience. They designed the BOH layout and conducted a two-day strategic planning session with the new restaurant management team to establish robust operating and training procedures. All necessary training materials and operating systems were created, and Synergy trained the opening team on the menu items and procedures, ensuring they were well-prepared for the launch. Additionally, Synergy provided on-site support throughout the opening process and continued their support for a period of 90 days to guarantee a smooth and successful opening.
Outcome & Benefits
The collaboration between the Oakdale entrepreneurs and Synergy led to the successful transformation of the former café into an elevated American grill. The new grill featured a highly refined and appealing dining concept that attracted customers, a best-in-class menu that set it apart from competitors, and efficient operating procedures established through strategic planning. The well-trained team delivered exceptional service, and the smooth, successful launch was supported by ongoing on-site assistance, ensuring operational stability and growth during the critical initial period. This strategic partnership and comprehensive approach not only met but exceeded the entrepreneurs' vision, establishing the new grill as a standout dining destination in Oakdale, CA.
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Testimonial
CASE STUDY
Challenge
Pollo Campero sought a world-class kitchen design team to create a new kitchen prototype for its rapidly expanding concept. Synergy was tasked with reducing the kitchen’s footprint by 10% to remain competitive and increase real estate opportunities. In this redesign, Pollo Campero also hoped to incorporate both operational and energy efficiencies, further reducing kitchen labor as a product of the redesign.
Solution
Synergy first surveyed two different existing kitchen designs to understand current needs and use of space in a time-motion study, highlighting areas of improvement, kitchen shortcuts and recommended pieces of cutting-edge kitchen equipment. Synergy presented comprehensive strategic plan to provide a best-in-class and fully integrated POS, KDS, online/mobile order, call center, delivery dispatch and driver system, real-time Guest order updates, improved reporting and KPI scoreboard, and labor management systems. Synergy then helped build several new press-worthy kitchens and will be involved in retrofitting the new design into existing locations.
Outcome & Benefits
“We are getting a 90% customer-satisfaction rating on all points: food, quality, speed of service and accuracy of order. The new kitchen design has played a key role.” - Ricardo Castillo, V.P. of Operations
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Testimonial
I worked directly with the Synergy team over multiple operations, menu and concept development projects and as an extension of that collaboration, worked with Jim Campbell for about a year on improving the supply chain programs for Great Wolf Lodge. Jim and I worked well together and I always found his communication with both myself and other Great Wolf team members was excellent. Together we determined the best course for the supply chain project. Jim worked directly with vendors to complete a distribution analysis and ultimately he recommended we change our distributor resulting in approximately $200,000 in annual savings. When we agreed to go through the change in distributors, Jim managed the initial implementation. There were several other key individual product projects within supply chain that he worked on for Great Wolf. Product savings for new suppliers and renegotiated price agreements from existing price agreements amounted to $300,000. Key products in the product savings number were bacon, chicken tenders, fries, and eggs. Combined distribution and product savings came to $500,000 for our company.
What was eye opening was that our new owners brought in two high profile consulting companies specifically for procurement. They estimated we had about a million in F&B savings that could be achieved in partnership by leveraging their other big brands. As they looked closer at ‘our spend’, they realized we are just super tight with our buying since we worked with Jim and Synergy. Bottom line is even these procurement consultants couldn’t find any more savings for us. I felt it is also important to mention as you navigated that agreement with USF and Foodbuy, we have managed to expand it and drive more savings so you should get the credit here for setting that foundation which allowed Great Wolf Lodge save an additional $500K.
Synergy exceeded expectations and we were very satisfied with the results. I would not hesitate to recommend them to other restaurateurs for operational or supply chain projects.
CASE STUDY
Challenge
The woodland-themed hotel chain was losing significant money in foodservice and had low guest satisfaction scores due to food quality and the overall foodservice experience. Guests frequently brought their own food to the resort or left the property to purchase food elsewhere. The leadership team felt there was an opportunity to increase F&B spending on site by evaluating opportunities in the dining operations.
Solution
Synergy was brought in to help identify ways to improve food quality, optimize BOH operations, and to conduct a holistic operations and supply chain assessment of all units. The team identified operational efficiencies and alternative production systems to improve productivity and throughput, reduce complexity in the commissary and helped implement the corrective actions. In addition, Synergy took the leadership team through a discovery tour of their competitors to lay the foundation for concept development for three new F&B outlets that would support the brand’s overall positioning.
Outcome & Benefits
Upon completion of the initial due diligence phase, Synergy successfully rebranded the existing pizza concept to appeal to the target audience, developed a new full-service restaurant concept that leveraged the brand equity, drove increases in POR (per occupied room) revenues and saved the brand over $900,000 via renegotiating distributors and key supply chain products and helped turn negative guest satisfaction scores around.
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Testimonial
CASE STUDY
Challenge
Dunkin’ Donuts was looking to develop a new brand strategy to position the brand for long-term success in the changing competitive marketplace. Synergy collaborated with Dunkin’s team as well as their chosen design firm, market researchers and agencies as the food service designer and efficiency expert.
Solution
Synergy was asked to find opportunities for improved efficiencies and ticket times at the stores, especially at the drive through, through operational and technological improvements to be executed in a new prototype. Synergy completed an assessment of multiple franchise locations and formats in several regions of the U.S. to survey challenges to operations and opportunities for improved throughput and service through efficient back of house design and IT system architecture for the new prototype. The team identified operational efficiencies and alternative production systems to improve productivity and throughput, including an assessment of kitchen commissary operations to reduce complexity that could be executed at existing locations to improve ticket times.
Outcome & Benefits
Ultimately, Synergy delivered a new technology system topography, new kitchen and back of house design with equipment specs for cold brew on tap and a robust beverage system. Our team collaborated with other design and consumer research consultants to create a new brand strategy and develop a cohesive new guest experience and prototype including:
-An exclusive On-the-Go drive-thru lane lets DD Perks® members who order ahead via Dunkin’s Mobile App bypass the ordering lane and merge straight into the line for the pickup window.
-Fully-integrated digital kiosks, guests will choose to order with or without the help of a crew member
-New equipment to support a beverage-forward repositioning of the brand to include cold brew on tap, new sightlines for the beverage equipment and improved guest experience
“Over 14 SKUs were eliminated, ticket times improved by over 4 minutes, and sales increased by 11%”
“Sales grew from 1.3 million to 3.8 million and prime operating expenses went from 78% to 62%”
“We went from a $3.9 million facility to a $4.3 million facility.
-Gilbert Tapia
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