And, in fact, it's been a resounding success; sales of the burger bomb continued to exceed expectations in December 2004. Sales at Hardee's stores that have been open at least a year were up 5.8 percent for December, and "the Monster Thickburger was directly responsible for a good deal of that increase", says Brad Haley, Hardee's executive vice president of marketing.

Smart Food
Restaurant chains such as Hardee's, Wendy's, Ruby Tuesday, T.G.I. Friday's and others are heavy users of BI software. Many of the big chains have been using BI for the past 10 years, according to Chris Hartmann, managing director of technology strategies at HVS International, a restaurant and hospitality consultancy. They use BI to make strategic decisions, such as what new products to add to their menus, which dishes to remove and which underperforming stores to close. They also use BI for tactical matters like renegotiating contracts with food suppliers and identifying opportunities to improve inefficient processes.

Because restaurant chains are so operations-driven, and because BI is so central to helping them run their businesses, they are among the elite group of companies across all industries that are actually getting real value from these systems. Want proof?

Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, the privately held company that operates T.G.I. Friday's and Pick Up Stix restaurants, saved $US200,000 in 2003 by renegotiating contracts with food suppliers based on discrepancies between contract prices and the prices suppliers were actually charging restaurants. Carlson's BI system, which at the time was from Cognos, had identified these discrepancies.

Ruby Tuesday's profits and revenue have grown by at least 20 percent each year as a result of the improvements the chain has made to its menu and operations based on insights provided by its BI infrastructure, which consists of a data warehouse, analytical tools from Cognos and Hyperion, and reporting tools from Microsoft.

CPR helped CKE, which was on the brink of bankruptcy five years ago, increase sales at restaurants open more than a year, narrow its overall losses and even turn a profit in 2003. A home-grown proprietary system, CPR consists of a Microsoft SQL server database and uses Microsoft development tools to parse and display analytical information.

In June 2003, Wendy's decided to accept credit cards in its restaurants based on information it got from its BI systems. Because of that decision, Wendy's restaurants have boosted sales; customers who use a credit card spend an average of 35 percent more per order than those who use cash, according to Wendy's executive vice president and CIO John Deane.