A Jasper’s and Avero Success Story
The Challenge
Jasper’s Plano is a fine dining restaurant in Plano, Texas, famous for their gourmet backyard cuisine and simple elegance. It is operated by the Kent Rathbun Restaurants group based in Dallas, Texas with Johnny Carros spearheading the daily operations as the general manager.
After Carros became the general manager in 2011, he took on a project to diversify and elevate the wine list. Knowing that wine was one of the restaurant’s largest profit margin items, he wisely identified the wine list as an opportunity for improvement and more revenue. He wanted to increase wine sales and match the wine offerings to the overall sophistication of the dining experience.
When the wine average check began to decline rather than increase after implementing changes to the wine list, Carros knew he had a problem. He turned to Avero’s restaurant solutions to help him improve his average check and track the impact of his work.
Time to Take Action
With Avero’s insights on hand, he launched a three-part action plan to improve the performance of his team and boost wine sales.
1) Pinpoint the problem
Using Avero’s service category tools, Carros was able to identify which servers were consistently selling less wine than their peers and which wines were being sold less overall.
2) Implement changes
Carros utilized pre-shift meetings to increase the team’s wine knowledge. He instructed them on “go-to” wine parings and descriptors and held short quizzes to gauge their wine knowledge. Using Avero’s service summary report allowed Carros to post the server’s weekly average check results to encourage friendly competition and reward top performers. It was a positive and simple way to show the staff how their work directly correlated to increased tips for themselves and sales for the restaurant. Showing them the tangible progress they were making in the weekly results kept motivation high.
3) Track progress
With Avero’s actionable data at his disposal, Carros was able to monitor the success of his efforts to increase the wine average check. When individual servers continued to lag behind others in wine sales, he could easily identify them and take additional time to meet with them between shifts to strengthen their wine knowledge and confidence. Having data on hand made those conversations easier to have with staff since it kept the focus on numbers rather than any interpersonal concerns.
The Bottom Line
After several months, Carros was thrilled to see that the percentage of wine per cover increased by 4%, resulting in $280,000 YOY in incremental wine sales. Additionally, he saw an average check YOY increase of 5%, resulting in just under $200,000 in incremental sales at dinner alone.
Avero helped push Carros’ success to the next level by putting tangible revenues behind the opportunities he saw for improvement and giving him the level of insight he needed to make impactful business decisions.
Carros said, “You can take what you know from extensive industry experience to run a successful operation, but Avero gives you the resources to move the needle that much further.”
