Bun fight breaks out after devs, techie jump ship: Bakery biz Panera sues its former IT crowd If you were to list the top five reasons why sandwich shop chain Panera has been so successful, with over 2,000 bakeries across the US and Canada, it's unlikely that its IT team would make the cut. But, according to the company itself, its IT function is not just a key ingredient but its "most important asset." That claim …
In order to cut down on waste and to have food and to have food ready to eat, you have to be able to predict how many meals of X will you sell.
WHat other shops have done is to allow you to order your meal to be picked up and ready. This allows them to take and process the order so you can walk in and just pick it up.
But if you can predict how many of X you will sell ... that's a plus.
What trade "secrets" would still be hidden from view from a determined group 20 college students observing the front of house operations of their local Panera. Especially if they worked in the "Banquets" department in any large Las Vegas casino for a summer?
Perhaps Saich and company should sponsor such a (focus group/mystery shopper) activity and have these college kids write an operations/specifications manual on their observations alone. It would make great defense fodder to determine if these trade secrets were truly "secret."
These ones:
""Panera employs a team of information security personnel whose jobs are dedicated to preventing the unauthorized access and release of Panera’s trade secrets, proprietary data, and intellectual property. Panera also encrypts all of the hard drives in the computers it uses and requires that employees use regularly updated passwords to access these computers.""
You wot mate?
But employees there have to actually USE these systems, so they know what capabilities they have. Those 20 college students could get jobs at Panera, and if you have a few in the front of house, a few in the back of house, and a few as manager they'll find out what the system does.
Because determining HOW to implement something is the easy part. The hard part is determining WHAT to implement.
Don't know about all the states, but noncompete agreements are not enforcable against citizens of the state I live in. Doesn't matter what state the agreement applies in, where I live the law treats noncompetes as "under duress" if you must sign to work and are therefore null and void against anyone residing here.
[snip]
"But the real kicker finally arrives in this paragraph: "Panera understood that there was an opportunity to create value for shareholders and to lower overall service costs for Panera's cafes, by commercializing the technology for other restaurants."
Ah. What that means is: we figured out a system that means we have to hire fewer staff by getting customers to order their own food. And it works without driving everyone completely nuts."
[/snip]
Er, my take-away (ah!) from the 1st sentence would be they worked out they could SELL the technology for other restaurants (to use) - there by adding shareholder value by becoming a software house with a chain of bakeries... (hey, it worked for Amazon, a data center operator with an eCommerce/supermarket business on the side)
IT in food service... I worked in the trenches for Papa John's back in the 90's. Their computer network was impressive to say the least. Everything was entered in the 'computer' from inventory,( twice a day, and three times when our provisions were delivered), to employees clocking in and out. If sales were slow, the computer would say so at the half hour report, and that you needed to send someone home early. If the damned computer had a bit of AI and a voice, it could have run the place without a manager...
I can see why Panera is throwing the sueballs like their playing dodgeball...
I've never had a problem with the McDonalds system, but I tried to use one at a Burger King a couple of weeks ago.
You select the meal you want and it asks if you want to add [RANDOM UPSELL ITEM] to the meal, the only two buttons are Yes, or Cancel. You literally have to press Cancel to progress to the next step of the order. This happens repeatedly with almost every step of the order. It was thoroughly confusing, I accidentally cancelled my order twice because I thought I was meant to be pressing cancel to move forward, instead of the other stupidly named button offered.
I too don’t get the snidey comment about McDonald’s self-order console - they pretty much just work pretty well - if anything they need a slightly better touchscreen, but that is it. Like pay at pump.. ‘self-checkout’ that works as opposed to the horrible NCR ones in Tesco/Asda/Sainbury’s.
McD’s App based ordering is also really good they just need to stop hiding the damn QR code check-in.
"McD’s App based ordering is also really good they just need to stop hiding the damn QR code check-in."
They're all ok if you know what you want. What they are all shite at is making it easy to browse the menu. In other words, they work for the frequent customers but turn off the occasional customer. To my mind that is short termism thinking because they are pandering to the regulars and reducing customer growth. The regulars will keep coming back anyway. New or occasional customer are more likely to walk out in confusion. Especially with the BK self service system.
And it works without driving everyone completely nuts.
I once had the misfortune of trying to use the Panera 2.0 system. It was during the holiday season, and I'd been out shopping in the cold and snow for some hours, and wanted to grab a bite to eat and a coffee. Panera was the only thing nearby. It took several minutes to navigate the poorly-designed menu on the thing, which was sluggish and packed with unhelpful eye candy, advertising, and attempts to sell me things I didn't want. Then, after I supplied payment information, it told me to take a pager and enter its number so I could be alerted when my food was ready.
There were no pagers - the charging station was empty. Clearly the charging station had no way to inform the kiosk of that. There was no option to say "you're out of pagers, you fucking machine". I had to cancel the entire order.
Needless to say, I left and have not been inside a Panera since. I'd like to see everyone involved lose this lawsuit.
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