Got Milk?

Got Milk?!  

 

Your Vision Ten & Ten team has been extremely busy over the last couple of weeks.  The excitement around VenWatch and it’s capabilities is leaving many restaurateurs anxiously awaiting it's launch.  

 

In many ways, the build behind VenWatch has been one requested by YOU; the restaurateurs!  

As we interview Restaurateurs we’re asking them to share scenarios in which our impending technology would have been of immense value to them.

Enter Jim A, owner of an Italian/American contemporary dining establishment in PA.  When we first sat with Jim, we literally asked the following question.  “What is the most painful business practice you currently undertake in your restaurant”.  His answer, “monitoring food costs”.

In order to get to the "bottom" of his frustrations behind these practices, Jim made it known that monitoring food costs is something he takes very seriously as his business would suffer significantly without it.  

The biggest problem is the time Jim has to dedicate towards the lengthy process of tracking each item, delivered and charged by his vendor.    

So we asked Jim; "why are these practices neccesary?"  He referenced that if he wasn’t double checking product costs his vendors could likely get away with an accidental or purposeful errors in charges.  

He proceeded to provide the following example:


“Imagine if you came to find out that for 3 months your vendor was charging you for a CASE of 1 gallon milk jugs for every 1 gallon jug received”.

 

That’s right, if he ordered 3 - 1 gallon jugs he would receive just that. However, he was being charged for 3 cases of 1 gallon jugs.  The cost difference?  Instead of $3.55 per gallon jug, Jim was being charged $21.30 per gallon jug.  Multiply that by 3 orders and you have an owner paying $63.90 for 3 gallon jugs of milk; instead of the true cost of $10.65. This went on for 3 months....ugghh!!!

Sounds silly but with everything else going on during the day; and with kitchen staff often the ones on the receiving end of food deliveries, it can be easy to lose track of costs associated with items such as milk.  

The overall balance of an invoice can be in the several thousand dollar range.  It’s near impossible to spot a discrepancy of $53 in one invoice.  Had Jim not caught this it could have transpired for months, and after a full year of this mistake, it could have cost him an extra $2,756.

That money should be in JIM'S pocket, and thankfully for Jim he eventually caught the error through his own invoice tracking.  

Which takes us to why he had such a huge smile on his face when we introduced him to VenWatch and it’s capabilities.  

“So you mean to tell me, I could have caught this error in it’s 1st week and all that’s required on my part is to snap a photo or scan the vendor invoice?”

That’s right Jim, take a picture or scan and upload the invoices, and that's it!  

Jim’s response “Now that’s something worth having”.  We agree, and we hope you do to!


Your Vision Ten & Ten Guys,

Dom and Dan



Which One Are You?!

Which One Are You?!

 

 

Before we get into this weeks blog submission let’s reflect on a few things:  

 

We all want similar things in life and we usually attain those things through hard work.  But what happens when we’re working incredibly hard but aren’t reaping the appropriate rewards?  

 

- Do we continue to do the same things over and over and expect a different result?  

- Do we work even harder?  

 

The former can be widely known as the definition of insanity. You know, trying the same things over and over and expecting a different result?

 

At Vision Ten & Ten we’d like to present a 3rd option.  How about working smarter?  

 

Our blogs have an aim and a purpose.  As we continue through our journey of developing a software that’s going to revolutionize the way restaurateurs run their establishments, we’ll be sharing stories from successful owners so that we all can learn from their experiences.

We are learning that many owners are able to keep a "light pulse" on their ordering habits. Meaning mostly a loose interpretation of expected costs and pricing from a number of vendors for a variety of items.

 

Let’s be honest, it’s near impossible to keep on top of the fluctuating pricing of so many food items, and even harder to spot discrepancies in charges from your vendor.  It seems like the last thing any owner has the time for is to check each line item in an invoice and make sure it’s 100% accurate.  Your Vision Ten & Ten Guys have spoken to HUNDREDS of restaurant owners and we’ve found 3 categories of personalities when it comes to tracking food costs:

-  Those with "photogenic skillz:"  You know who you are!! When asked “How do you keep track of your yearly spend on each item?" or "How do you make sure vendors are charging you the correct price?”, you very confidently point to your head and say “it’s all up here”.

-  Those who do some, but admit, not enough.  You take the time to track or monitor each line item of an invoice, but only quickly scan it for BIG red flags.  Typically you will catch fluctuations or errors on big ticket items (poultry, seafood, etc) but neglect the smaller “unsold items” (i.e. Splenda)

-  Those who track meticulously but slave themselves in doing so.  You are the owner who takes an invoice and enters the contents from every line item into your accounting software, easily spending 2-4 hours per week with this exhausting and time consuming activity. You appreciate how your bottom line is reacting to these efforts but hate the effort required to complete this task. To make matters more frustrating, it’s taking time away from other operations within your business in addition to cutting into your personal time!!!

It’s with all 3 of these owners in mind that Vision Ten & Ten forged ahead to begin creating VenWatch.  An Optic Recognition Software platform that allows restaurant owners to simply snap a photo of a vendor invoice and upload it to our portal.  Once done, the owner can sit back and wait for the magic to happen.  

 

VenWatch will not only store all invoice data electronically, but it will provide reports suggesting price trends, price alerts, price discrepancies and much, much, more.  

 

Why is this so important?  

 

For starters, knowledge is power.  Having a great understanding of where and why you’re spending your money can go an extremely long way in improving your business decisions.

 

VenWatch puts YOU in control.  

 

1. Make informed decisions on food items for your menu.  

2. Be conscientious of the quantity and cost of those  “unsold items” you are buying.  

3. Get aggressive with vendors on inaccurate charges to keep the money where it belongs, IN YOUR POCKET!!!  

 

Next week, we’ll be providing a real life example of how one of our users has worked “smarter" and saved $$ THOUSANDS $$ of dollars for their restaurant by VenWatching their invoices.  

 

See you next week:

 

Your Vision Ten & Ten Guys, Dom and Dan.

Do you have the Time?!

Have you ever dreamed of opening you're own restaurant?

We have, and the more we research, the more we appreciate just how difficult this industry has become.  We can certainly tell you from the hundreds of conversations that we've had, that it takes a special type of person to own and run a restaurant in today's economy.

Dwindling margins, increased competition and aggressive bargain hunting aren't making the business any easier for restaurateurs who are trying to make an honest living.

Vision Ten & Ten, Co-Founder, Dom Balsamo; has had the pleasure and disservice of growing up in the restaurant business. He knows that while the business can be very lucrative, and the experiences can be extremely gratifying, it's often the type of hard work best left to those who enjoy thankless jobs. 

The type of thankless jobs that require you to be on your feet for 10-12 hours per day, 7 days a week; regardless of Weekends, holidays, birthdays, picture perfect or disastrous weather.  You name the scenario and the owner sees it as only one thing, another day at work!

We've learned that the restaurant business isn't for those who enjoy regular free time, long holiday vacations or the occasional day off from inclement weather.  It's for those who understand that in order to be successful, you have to work your tale off, and only rest once they know the job is completely done (despite knowing the work will never be done!)

Needless to say; the restaurant industry is only suitable for the most incredible types of people. 

Because it can be very rewarding to own a reputable and successful restaurant, many current owners are often looking to unique business practices improve their business. These practices certainly include regularly searching for ways to increase customer volume, but that doesn't have to be the only way to become successful.

 

What if we were to influence you to think more about streamlining you current business and improving your bottom line by not focusing solely on increasing the total number of covers each night?  

 

Please visit our website (www.visiontenandten.com) and follow the link to learn more about the development of the VenWatch, Optic Recognition; Restaurant Invoice Management software platform.

 

We are sure that you'll agree that there are many ways to improve the way you own and run your restaurants.  Some are obvious and easy to implement, while others require an owner with sufficient time on their hands.  Needless to say, we appreciate that time is of the essence in this industry; and that as a result, this renders most "business improving ideas" generally worthless to those who need them the most.  

 

Let Vision Ten & Ten, and the VenWatch Software save you time!!!

 

As a team dedicated to improving business efficiencies, our goal is to deliver weekly blogs that will help many restaurateurs look at their operations differently.  Hopefully an idea or two makes it into your bag of tricks with the help of VenWatch!!

Authored by,

Your Vision Ten & Ten Guys; Dom and Dan

Welcome to the first ever Vision Ten & Ten Blog Post!

                  
We are extremely excited to be initiating this online resource for our readers, business partners and customers. Our goals are the following:

1. Get to know us! (www.visiontenandten.com)
2. Know why we are doing this.
3. Track the development progress of our VenWatch Restaurant software solution.

These are NOT our Goals:

1. To perceive that we ever know more than our readers...about anything
2. To have any rhyme or reason behind our posts. (isn't there excitement in variety?!)
3. To have our posts immediately disregarded as spam or plain dumb :(

Vision Ten&Ten was founded by Daniel Lawson and Dominic Balsamo in April, 2014  with the intention of "turning hypothetical solutions into a reality."

What does that really mean? Well, we were tired of dreaming about entrepreneurial successes without having a solid idea to build a business. Sure, we both have had several "light bulb" moments where we had thought that we had discovered the next best thing...(one of my ideas was a toothbrush that already had toothpaste in the handle so that you wouldn't have to always apply...cool, right? ugghh) but we finally realized that those ideas were self generated and hadn't really served any market's actual needs.

Talk about a "light bulb" moment...it was more like getting smacked upside the head with a shovel (View Funny Shovel Video Here). How were we to start a business without truly knowing a market's needs? That is when we were introduced to the practice of "idea extraction." The process of Idea Extraction is simple; find the pain, identify the problems and create a solution. However the execution of idea extraction can be very challenging.

Which Industry should we choose to idea extract?
What questions do we ask to get the answers that we need?
What if I know absolutely nothing about the businesses that we are speaking too?

All legitimate questions/concerns, right? Trust me, there were and continue to be MANY more. But that hasn't stopped us; and in just 3 short months Vision Ten&Ten was born, long term relationships within our industry of choice have been initiated, and the VenWatch software solution is currently in development!! (more on that later)

In the coming weeks, we want you to get to know us; where we come from, our families and our passions. We also want to share with you pearls of information that you may find useful in your businesses. Much like the practice behind idea extraction, we will be interviewing many different business owners on what types of information will be of the highest interest in reading our Blog.

As mentioned in the beginning of the post, VenWatch is a software solution that is specific to the restaurant industry.  For that reason, many of our blog posts pertaining to business "best practices" will be geared toward restaurant owners, managers and employees. 

Please; always enjoy the content, and keep an open door policy toward sharing your thoughts, concerns and "light bulb" moments as you follow along :)

Authored By,

Your Vision Ten&Ten guys; Dom and Dan.