At Smoothie King, we’re committed to empowering our franchisees with the tools and technology that drive smarter, more efficient operations. Our partnership with Crunchtime represents a meaningful step forward in delivering data-driven insights that improve profitability, strengthen operational excellence, and ultimately help our franchisees focus more on what matters most, our guests.
Smoothie King Selects Crunchtime to Improve Profitability and Efficiency Across Franchise Network
At Smoothie King, we’re committed to empowering our franchisees with the tools and technology that drive smarter, more efficient operations. Our partnership with Crunchtime represents a meaningful step forward in delivering data-driven insights that improve profitability, strengthen operational excellence, and ultimately help our franchisees focus more on what matters most, our guests.
Crunchtime has been a smooth transition for us. The scheduling system is straightforward, and the dashboard snapshots make it easy to stay on top of our operations. The phone app’s inventory integration is a meaningful improvement from a convenience and efficiency standpoint. We also appreciate the auto invoicing, order recommendations, and the ability to upload invoices by picture. Having inventory and auto ordering right from the phone will definitely save us time and streamline our day-to-day processes.
One thing that I really love about Crunchtime Learning is just how easy it is to navigate, and the fact that managers don't need to spend so much time trying to figure out what needs to be assigned to an associate or what an associate needs to complete, because everything is just there for them. So it's less time for them having to track down what exactly needs to be completed in their roles.
We have definitely noticed, from when we first started changing from paper to electronic – and some of the different things we've added since then – it's only gotten easier. That first initial switch from paper to electronic, that's a big change. Once we got everybody on board and there was reporting, and people were being held accountable for completions and things like that, it created a culture around the visibility of things. If it's gonna be done, we need to make sure it gets done. And I feel like all of our initiatives keep getting more and more effective and completed in a more timely manner as time goes on. So it's been really great to see that.
We're at 170 locations currently, with plans to grow much more than that. The goal is a thousand stores. Having a tool like Crunchtime Ops Execution helps us standardize our process for operations. So when we sign on multi-unit franchisees, it's a plus point. It's a bonus point for them to see that we're an organized franchise brand and we have these standards in place. Our franchisees have loved the product because before, there was no visibility into our day-to-day operation for my field team. It was you go to the store when you can, you fill out the form, then you email them the form. It was a very old school process. So we've come into the modern age with Crunchtime Ops Execution. They love using the application on their phones or their tablets, so it's really easy for them to execute the tasks that we need to execute.
Initial reports show new servers in our Pilot locations are outperforming expectations using our new blended approach that pairs Crunchtime Learning with side by side training, contributing to improved sales performance.
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Listen to the audio version of this blog, to drive operational excellence, support staff, and maintain a consistent guest experience, even during turbulent times.
Where technology plays the most important role is resiliency - encouraging resiliency throughout the operation, throughout the guest experience, across the board. The way to do that is to configure things that can do more with less. Making sure our technology is flexible and adaptable, which has the added benefit of adapting as you enter new markets and types of locations.
The GMs have the full responsibility of the P&L of their restaurant, so it is very critical to give them the tools that they need to be able to see their P&L, and make sure that there aren’t hidden costs that they aren’t aware of until the end of the month
Because of how well you support us, you guys are now considered the gold standard for vendors and integrations across HX here. This is good in some ways, but it causes me headaches in others. When other vendors aren't as good as you, people ask, "Why aren't they like Desmond and Jackie and Ali?"
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Crunchtime has empowered us to work smarter, expand more quickly, and provide high-quality customer service across all Gong cha locations.
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Zenput has been a great tool for our stores
What do you like best about the product?
Very helpful in completing tasks faster at restaurants. Enjoy the triggers feature so that locations are aware if a certain task is past due. Very user friendly and not as time consuming as other software's. API integration works very well with Zenput
What do you dislike about the product?
Since I'm in a corporate level I have a hard time accessing the users in Zenput. We mostly have to send the tickets for troubleshooting to Zenput support and wait to hear back on how to resolve the issue.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Making sure our temperature for custard is accurate and that we maintain it at a certain temperature. Also, helping our FBC's with task completions
We have seen tremendous success on all of our measures since we started using Crunchtime Ops Execution. Every manager that I train enjoys using Crunchtime Ops Execution because it’s made their jobs a lot more efficient.
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Zenput gives us that ability to communicate with the stores in real time. If you have that type of communication with the stores, you're able to improve your operations. When you have clean and inviting stores, your sales are gonna improve. Franchise profitability is improving, and when franchisees are profitable, they're opening more stores. This, in turn, helps us accelerate overall growth.
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From day one, the time savings were evident. Between the custom revenue-based templates that could be applied to each store and the new system allowed for more efficient and accurate scheduling company-wide.
Papa Gino’s unlocks smarter scheduling and tighter inventory with Crunchtime
The mobile app was a huge win for our team. It cut down the time and frustration of counting inventory. When vendor ordering became available in the app, that was a game-changer too.
Crunchtime in Action: Scaling with Consistency (Master Franchisee Testimonial)
Stores with high completion rates on Crunchtime's Zenput platform have consistently shown better same-store sales growth. Brand compliance leads to serving drinks in a better format, ultimately driving better sales.
We make sure that the locations have all the right checklists, and that they are time-bound, so if it isn’t done within a certain timeframe, it shows up as incomplete, and if that happens regularly, it sounds the alarm that upper management needs to visit the restaurant to get it back on track.
We have many processes in place to make sure a shift is customer-ready. We have our Crunchtime Ops Execution daily agenda, which is a timed readiness checklist to make sure that we have everything in place to provide the service that our customers expect.
We use Auto-Post [in Crunchtime], which I love—that feature has saved me so many hours of my life. I would highly recommend it to any of your clients. If you ever need somebody to get on a microphone and say 'turn it on,' I would do it.
If you look at the AVT for last week on just beer, it's only off by pennies, so we're super happy about that with Crunchtime.