I have been in the restaurant business for 30 years and always believed in security systems. Previously we worked with a vendor that we were not happy with at all. When I received a call from DTiQ and watched a demo, I was excited about the potential of the service.
There were several other restaurant concepts and operators using the system and I heard some very positive reviews.
DTiQ System Utilization
We were interested in surveillance for several reasons; most importantly:
- Employee productivity
- Improvement of internal controls to reduce theft
- Protection for employees
- Internal and external security
Over the past couple of years I’ve seen DTiQ’s technology continue to improve and I find myself using the system more and more. They make it really easy.
SmartAudit™ Reports
The biggest selling point for me is the SmartAudit.™ As technology has developed, one important thing I learned is that camera systems are only good if someone is watching what is going on. I don’t have enough staff to handle watching video at all my stores everyday but DTiQ’s SmartAudit™ team handles that for me. Now, if an employee or customer does something wrong, I know about it. The staff knows they’re being watched and that makes the system really valuable to me.
I share the reports with the whole team and display them at staff meetings. They are great for pointing out opportunities for improvement but can also be used to reward employees for good Speed of Service and exemplary customer service.
“I encourage operators to sign up for 1 audit per week. It’s a constant reminder that we have a tool available to us to help improve performance.”
The End-of-Month reports on the portal are also great for showing store trends. They tell us where we are doing well and where we could use some work.
Because of the audits, we were able to identify several instances of internal theft. We’ve also had incidents where guests have complained about an employee and, upon review of video, it was revealed that our employees did everything by the book; the guests were actually out of line. In those scenarios, the system saved multiple employees their jobs.
I encourage operators to sign up for 1 audit per week. It’s a constant reminder that we have a tool available to us to help improve performance. It keeps our staff honest and, in combination with POS integration, helps us to ensure that transactions are being properly rung up.
MyDTT™ Portal
I’m a frequent user of MyDTT™, which I access mainly for Live View. I like the Custom View feature because I can see what’s going on at multiple stores from 1 screen. I have 1 setup that shows me the registers from 6 stores at once so I can get an idea of how busy they all are.
I also use it for Recorded Video Search if there’s an incident or question about something. I’m actually in the middle of an investigation because of an incident with our loyalty card program. We recognized that an employee was fraudulently using a loyalty card to take advantage of free food. We are only able to pinpoint which employee did this because of the video and POS data. Without it we would not be able to verify any of the details. What bothers me most about this is not that our employee was getting free food but that our customers were being denied access to the program.
Financial Impact
Compared to other Qdoba groups, we have improved about 1% on food costs since installing the DTiQ system. I think this can be attributed to a combination of things including product theft, issues with portioning, or ringing up transactions inaccurately. One of the most common problems was that employees would add Guacamole to dishes without adding it to the transaction. That can equate to a significant amount of money and product that goes unaccounted for.
Final Thoughts
I’m a big fan of DTiQ overall and especially impressed with the Support team. In fact, I’ve used DTiQ as an example of good customer service in conversations with other vendors. Anytime we have had an issue they have responded immediately.
In my situation, operating 13 restaurants over 3 states, DTiQ is a necessity. I can’t drop into all the locations every day but this system, including SmartAudit™, POS integration, and audio, has really increased my comfort level with remote markets. I almost feel like I’m there to an extent. In the past there was a concern about expanding our enterprise because you couldn’t easily manage it; that’s no longer an issue today.
