The annual NRN Power List is the definitive list of industry leaders who are not only setting trends today, but also shaping them for tomorrow.
Meet the technology innovators on Nation’s Restaurant News’ 2020 Power List
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Following serious foodborne illness outbreaks in 2015 and again in 2018 that were linked to its stores, fast-casual brand Chipotle knew it had to rethink its operations, particularly its food safety protocols.
To regain consumer trust and prevent any future incidents, it needed the right approach. That’s why it tapped Zenput, a San Francisco-based software company that allows for remote monitoring of in-store protocols, including food handling, temperature, handwashing and employee wellness.
That’s the kind of trust that a number of restaurant and food retail brands, including P.F. Chang’s, Domino’s, 7-Eleven and Five Guys, have put into the San Francisco-based software company and its CEO Vladik Rikhter.
Since starting Zenput in 2012, Rikhter has made the company’s operations execution platform the global go-to for restaurant companies looking to elevate how they do business. The technology allows multi-unit operators to introduce, monitor and manage individual operating procedures at the store level to ensure compliance, and improve productivity and execution across the board.
“Restaurant operators invest heavily in operating procedures and planning key initiatives but rolling them out and ensuring compliance is non-trivial,” Rikhter said in a statement.
Zenput allows them to get a clearer view of the day-to-day operations and ensure those carefully crafted plans are actually applied in practice, he added.
In November 2019, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based P.F. Chang’s deployed the platform to ensure compliance with critical food safety protocols at all of its 210 U.S. locations.
The news came shortly after Zenput introduced Zenput Connected Store to its suite of solutions, providing new temperature monitoring, thermometer syncing and food-labeling capabilities to operators for more effective management of food safety conditions.
