Starting from humble roots in a London basement in 1997, Bagel Factory has grown to over 30 branches across the UK. Offering fresh bagels, snacks, and coffee, this chain’s stores are all in high-footfall locations, including airports, malls, and central London.
What was the Challenge?
With locations across the UK, Bagel Factory was struggling to consolidate all data in one place. They had a limited POS legacy system, meaning their north stores’ and south stores’ datasets were managed separately and there was no one source of truth.
Due to the nature of their business, Bagel Factory needed to be reactive. Varied footfall across their locations meant they needed a system that could implement site-specific promotions in line with current, relative stock levels.
They also needed a degree of self-sufficiency – their existing system meant they couldn’t update pricing or promotions themselves; instead, they needed to contact their POS provider every time they had a small change to make.
Limitations with their POS solution meant they were spending additional time each week on admin, filling in separate spreadsheets per store. Without a comprehensive reporting system, staff hours were going into manual tasks instead of value-add tasks that would enhance customer experience.
One Source of Truth
With one platform overseeing all their locations, Bagel Factory now has oversight of all sales and transaction data in one place. Better yet, we provided an app that allows them access to real-time reporting, whilst on the move, at the touch of a button.
This has enabled them to be agile, adapting pricing and promotions per store based on up-to-date metrics in order to drive more sales and increase customer loyalty. Running promotions on the items that aren’t selling well in one location has meant they can better manage their wastage levels per store, too.
“For us, the reporting system where we can export the data is the key thing… We weren’t able to do it before. I’m doing an analysis every day about the range and different promotions; we can manage different price levels and clusters with one system only.”
Bespoke Reporting on the go
As well as streamlining the overall process for them, we were able to build custom reports so that their team could spend their time on their customers, not their spreadsheets.
“Before, we had one person doing the sales reporting every day – there was a spreadsheet sending over all the revenue, all the data… Now, we have a report which is sent automatically every morning. It’s much quicker and it’s easy to understand where we are.”
Automated Promotion Prompts
Till templates for each store change throughout the day, meaning buttons for menu items and meal deals automatically adjust when breakfast turns to lunch. We also added till prompts so that staff are able to offer customers current promotions that prioritise consumer experience.
User Permissions
We implemented access control to ensure each member of the team was allocated certain permissions based on their role. Only senior staff are able to update pricing and promotions, meaning increased control and oversight of all transactions. Each store is also able to add new buttons based on stock count and demand.
“We can make more changes by ourselves very quickly – if I produce a new bagel, I can make a new button in 5 minutes instead of, before, we had to ask for support at the previous POS supplier, so it was quite challenging.”
Inventory Insights
Our solution enables Bagel Factory to gain real-time insights about their big sellers, like their meal deals. Rather than their legacy system simply recording how many meal deals were sold, our system allows them to see which single items are most popular within each meal deal. They have better oversight of their stock and can implement promotions that customers genuinely value while looking after their bottom line.
“With the old system, it was a problem because a big part of our sales come from meal deals – we didn’t know what we sold in each meal deal. If, inside the meal deal, every person is going to take the more expensive bagel, of course we have to adapt the price and understand our margin as well from a P&L finance point of view.”
Our inventory management has meant that Bagel Factory has a better understanding of what they need to order for each store. With auto-alerts enabled, supplies can be automatically ordered when stock levels reach a predetermined level. Our POS solutions enable faster processing, enhanced customer service, and a better experience overall…
“It’s helping the team in the stores process transactions quicker than before. There’s a possibility for online and delivery sales. It’s a fundamental tool for our business. It’s simple to use and understand… for sure, I would recommend it.”
Timing
We first made contact with Bagel Factory in October 2019. They were looking to roll out 30+ outlets across the UK with new EPOS and credit card-integrated solutions. The project was delivered in 3 phases and ran alongside their existing POS solution until all older units were removed.
The first phase took place in February 2020 and included their locations in the north of England. The second and third phases of the project were completed by June 2020.
Breaking the project into phases allowed the client to manage the reporting shift to our solution and monitor the installation progress to allow for any snagging. It also allowed time for onboarding and training to ensure their teams were up to speed. Since 2020, we have installed our solutions in additional new Bagel Factory locations as the company has expanded.
Solutions & Hardware
The driver for change at Bagel Factory was an ageing EPOS solution that was no longer fit for purpose, and the need to take advantage of new technologies with the outlets (kiosks, mobile apps etc). Bagel Factory also required a more structured support plan for its outlets, as the existing solution was unreliable.
The integration Systopia has with payment providers was a huge benefit to Bagel Factory. Staff were previously having to manually key in amounts for customers to pay by card. We provided Bagel Factory with a robust Cloud solution that made deployment and expansion simple to achieve.
In 2022, we embarked on a development project to implement Bagel Factory’s own mobile application. The Systopia APIs made this process simple, and our experience of working with other platforms and applications was a great benefit. The hardware chosen for each outlet was specified to meet the needs of the client now and in the future. We also provided label-printing systems connected to our POS system for a comprehensive solution.
