Discovery Coffee is a premier boutique coffee brand, sold in three cafes in Victoria, British Columbia. In addition to their retail stores, Discovery Coffee operates their own local roastery, serving both their own cafes, and the wholesale marketplace. They also operate a mobile van for events and other high-traffic remote locations. (And they bake their own pastries and doughnuts.) 
Mike Boyle is the Vice President of Business Development for Discovery Coffee. His mandate is to grow the business profitably, and to streamline operations. When Mike started, Discovery Coffee was basically a manual operation. Maitre'D was installed, but it was being used almost exclusively as a cash register—each location had a single Maitre'D station. Inventory, labor, scheduling, accounting, reporting: all were handled with pen and paper and with manual data entry. Mike wasn’t a stranger to Maitre'D. He had used Maitre'D for years before coming to Discovery. In that earlier position, Mike had the full Maitre'D system and had developed extensive familiarity with it—from basic operations to the most detailed customizations.
Knowing Maitre'D as well as he did, Mike knew that there was much more value for Discovery Coffee to pull from Maitre'D—both by using the existing core system to its fullest, and by implementing other features. He also knew that a successful technology transition has to be done systematically. You don’t try to uproot an entire business operation in one fell swoop: you don’t just flip the master ON switch. You move a business slowly, a step at a time, focused on achieving success at the end of each step.
Step One: Use What You Own
The first step Mike took was free and effortless. Discovery Coffee was not using all the capabilities they were currently paying for with the core system. This was especially the case when it came to data analysis and reporting. They had scores of reports available, out of the box, to support core functionality: they just weren’t running them. Here too Mike held back from doing too much. He wanted to get ownership acclimated to the detail and granularity of Maitre'D reports without overwhelming them by piling on the reports.
Mike focused exclusively on running Sales Consolidated reports. That was enough to show the team the value of maintaining a constant and accurate view of sales. Now, at a moment’s notice, they were able to see current-to-the-second sales data, broken down by customer, type of payment, time of day, items purchased, and more. The win paid a fast dividend to Mike’s plan. Impressed by the depth and granularity of the reports, the owners gave Mike quick approval to put additional Maitre'D stations in each location, dedicated to reporting.
Find the Biggest Win Opportunity
Where to go next? Mike considered implementing a customer-facing functionality. He determined that functionalities such as Loyalty were important, but the wins were neither swift nor certain enough to be good first moves. He turned his attention instead to streamlining and improving the back office operation. He looked at various aspects of it, including inventory management, marketing, forecasting and more. Labor management was what caught his attention.
Labor management at Discovery Coffee was manual from start to finish. Those manual processes were inaccurate, unmonitored, slow, and impossible to analyze. Because everything was manual there was no integration with Maitre'D sales data. Discovery Coffee had no way to see all of the critical correlations between sales, staff and schedules.
Mike prepared a strong justification for the owners. Here he used his own knowledge of Maitre'D and of Discovery Coffee, along with steady support from the people at Orca Dynamics (Discovery Coffee’s Maitre'D reseller). Once he received the green light to switch on Labor Management, the wins were as quick and impressive as he had hoped. Inaccuracy was eliminated, since now clock in and clock out were handled through Maitre'D (instead of on paper). The amount of time it took staff to input hours, process payroll and schedule coverage for the coming week was reduced to almost zero. Monitoring employee performance became simple. The reports generated by the Labor Management module, integrated with sales data from the core system, provided a full view of sales (Mike focused on gross and by-category sales), time spent per customer, compliance with break time limits, and more.
The Clear Path to the Perfect Fit
Today, Maitre'D is handling sales, labor and gift cards at all of Discovery Coffee’s locations. In May of 2014, Discovery Coffee launched a mobile coffee and pastry van. That opened the door for the next expansion of Maitre'D. Handling sales and managing the remote staff is entirely in the hands of the full-function mobile pos version of Maitre'D.
Mike’s strategy of looking for fast wins that would have significant impact on the business was an unqualified success. He quickly proved that Maitre'D saves time, lowers operational costs, improves accuracy, and delivers core value as a strategic business tool. As he continues the initiative, he’ll add other modules that solve equally important issues. When he’s done, he’ll have assembled a system with the exact mix of modules that delivers everything Discovery Coffee needs to compete and to grow—one successful step at a time.
