Tech Trends
March 2005

What Do Applebee’s and Capital Grille Have in Common?
Tres Bien, Trabon!

By Peter Langlois

What could the largest casual restaurant chain have in common with a 20-unit niche brand that touts some 300 different wines as one of its claims to fame, along with prime, dry-aged beef? How about being technologically savvy?

Applebee’s uses a proprietary e-system for managing its menus for corporate and franchise stores. Would it surprise you to find that Applebee’s has several templates that it uses for different markets? Furthermore, franchisees have the ability to tweak their menus to personify trends in their trading areas. That’s why you’ll find regional variations as you travel around the country within the Applebee’s system.

With options galore, there’s only one way to manage all this—electronically. Applebee’s hired Kansas City-based Trabon Solutions www.trabonsolutions.com to develop a system that allowed for both maximum flexibility and control. Because Applebee’s has semi-annual menu rollouts, Information Technology must go way beyond management merely communicating with stores. Procurement-Purchasing and identifying resources are tied into the system as well. Before a menu is rolled out, local purveyors are notified which ingredients should be phased out and which new ones are needed to launch the new menu/s. Incidentally, Trabon’s parent company, Print-Net, laminates, and distributes menus for Applebee’s. Obviously this system is customized for Applebee’s.

When I talked with one of Trabon’s founders, David Windhausen, I asked him what he kept on the shelf that other chains might be able to use. “We don’t do off the shelf,” he said. “Every job is custom-made because each client in the restaurant field has his/her idiosyncrasies. Our job is to insure that we meet and exceed their needs.” He told me that Trabon does a program with Houlihan’s as well, but it’s different. “Since Houlihan’s has chefs, we produce their standardized recipe manuals with cost projections for their semi-annual menu roll outs,” he noted. “Each store gets manuals including plate presentation photos. No two projects are alike.”

For Capital Grille, Trabon has developed a system to track wine sales and tweak wine lists by market. For example, while you would find an extensive core list of wines at both a Capital Grille in Atlanta and Houston, both cities’ wine managers would have options to modify the overall wine list to suit the tastes and budgets in that area. A wine manager would submit list changes to Trabon, which would e-mail the new list, including edits for spelling, descriptors, etc. to Capital Grille Corporate. Corporate could approve and Trabon would have new lists printed and staged for change within a few days. Incidentally, this project received a Hospitality Technology Edge Award in 2002.

The wine system also tracks inventory and sales, so store product sales mixes could be compared for shrink. Like the Applebee’s Menu Program, flexibility at the local level is synchronized with the control aspects that corporate needs to manage the business. I’d say this is the wave of the future, but I’d be behind the curve. This is something worthwhile for all restaurants to consider adopting.

Bio:

Peter Langlois is founder of www.RestaurantU.com: Tools of the Trade for Business, for School, for Free!, co-editor of Weekly Restaurant Connections (e-Newsletter): www.wrcnewsletter.com, Instructor, The Art Institute of Houston-Culinary, and Management, Marketing and e-business Facilitator at The University of Phoenix (Houston). Langlois is also a Malcolm Baldrige 2004 Examiner. He has a Political Science degree from Michigan State University (Modern International Chinese Relations) and an M.B.A from the University of Houston (Marketing and Business Strategies). A detailed CV outlining his hospitality career is available on both web sites.

Contact information: 832.860.5595 or peter@wt.net