Craft Casual Hot Dog Chain Franchisee Ditches Spreadsheets for Advanced Technology to Allow for Streamlined Inventory Tracking

As Wade Lancaster’s team was tracking inventory at his two Dog Haus locations, he was up to his ears in Excel spreadsheets and loose papers. Going through daily and weekly inventory counts for the ingredient-rich menu was proving to be a large time suck across the board, especially considering that Lancaster operates two Dog Haus locations in Decatur, Illinois; Georgetown, Kentucky and Slidell, Louisiana. He decided he needed to make a move to improve efficiencies in his back-of-house operations and decided to partner with MarketMan.

“Before MarketMan, we were struggling with Excel spreadsheets and did not have a viable solution for our inventory cost of goods needs,” said Lancaster. “MarketMan quickly filled that gap, and did it in a way that was far and beyond our wildest expectations.”‍

MarketMan was originally founded in 2013 to replace the outdated phone, mailed or even faxed order forms and invoices that restaurant operators previously relied on to keep track of inventory. The cloud-based solution tracks every single purchase and sale made by the restaurant, giving the operator detailed insight on their inventory and profitability. The solution was the perfect fit for Dog Haus, which has a menu featuring both Haus creations and customizable options where guests can choose from a wide array of unique toppings, leaving inventory hard to predict without the aid of technology.

“MarketMan has quickly allowed us the ability to increase inventory counts because of how simple it is to track,”
said Lancaster.

“Before MarketMan, we had to do everything on the go. Now, we have daily and weekly counts and everything is more structured and streamlined. MarketMan has also saved us six hours every week because we no longer have to manually type in data.”

For multi-unit operators like Lancaster, who also oversees operations for Captain D’s and Church’s Chicken, keeping restaurants organized across the board is a big challenge.

“The need for a system like MarketMan is greater for multi-unit operators,” said Lancaster.

“Keeping brands separate is extremely challenging. With the system, the managers and operators can simply upload invoices and then the accountant can see, minute by minute, purchases made for each brand which is extremely helpful and time-saving. They can immediately see what they need to pay and why.”

Of all of the benefits that MarketMan has provided Lancaster, one of the biggest and most important is ease-of-use. It is essential in the foodservice sector when the time is of the essence and adopting a new service can be so daunting the operators will avoid a new system simply because of fear of the onboarding process, that ease-of-use is put on the forefront. Not only does MarketMan onboard easy, but once the system is in place operators are able to simply use their smartphones to snap a picture of their invoices and receipts. The company’s data scanning technology will extract information from the photos and automatically begin tracking.

“MarketMan is extremely user-friendly and the processes and systems are the same, so no matter what brand, the system is easy to use across the board,” said Lancaster. “Looking forward, as we grow and add or move managers across the brands, they will deal with invoices and inventory tracking the exact same way.”

In the five years since it was founded, MarketMan has already made a large impact in helping clients reduce food costs by two to five percent within the first year of using the platform. As the technology brand remains committed to improving the bottom line of all of the restaurants that it is partnered with, it will continue to innovate its product looking for new ways to improve its offering to each customer.

“We are constantly looking for new ways to help our clients increase productivity and profitability,”
said MarketMan co-founder and CEO Noam Wolf. “We are excited to continue to innovate our platform and build on the strong partnerships we already have with our existing customers, as well as be able to offer something fresh and innovative to new restaurants that are looking to get their back-of-house operations in order.”