Speaker: Communicating tech needs to vendors may help in ‘stormy’ timesSpeaker: Communicating tech needs to vendors may help in ‘stormy’ times

Alan Liddle

ATLANTA —Foodservice might better weather the “perfect storm” it faces related to business challenges and technology if operators develop and share with vendors a thorough “hierarchy of needs,” said Arby’s Restaurant Group executive Don Zimmerman.

Zimmerman, ARG’s senior vice president and chief information officer since 2005, spoke during the annual FS/TEC Awards Luncheon here Oct. 12. With his past experience as vice president of information technology, or IT, for Sears, and as the holder of key IT posts with Frito-Lay and PepsiCo, Zimmerman was able to offer some “outsider” observations about restaurant technology. —Foodservice might better weather the “perfect storm” it faces related to business challenges and technology if operators develop and share with vendors a thorough “hierarchy of needs,” said Arby’s Restaurant Group executive Don Zimmerman.

He said staff at Atlanta-based Arby’s, the quick-service sandwich chain with nearly 1,100 company-operated restaurants and 2,400 franchised units domestically, uses “the perfect storm” to describe the state of foodservice for several reasons. Among them: the industry’s fixation on “pennies and seconds”; its ownership and franchising of lots of small businesses critically dependent on technology; the large percentage of inexperienced teenagers in the workforce that requires that IT tools be intuitive; the need to deal with numerous laws, regulations and guidelines, including Sarbanes-Oxley and the Payment Card Industry group’s security standards; and the “less mature technology” Zimmerman sees as too common. —Foodservice might better weather the “perfect storm” it faces related to business challenges and technology if operators develop and share with vendors a thorough “hierarchy of needs,” said Arby’s Restaurant Group executive Don Zimmerman.

“The challenges that we have, especially in the fast-food industry, are creating a situation where technology is a tough thing to work through, yet it creates a great deal of opportunity,” Zimmerman said. —Foodservice might better weather the “perfect storm” it faces related to business challenges and technology if operators develop and share with vendors a thorough “hierarchy of needs,” said Arby’s Restaurant Group executive Don Zimmerman.

To better navigate those challenges, he said operators might want to develop and communicate an informational pyramid that spells out from the bottom up the price of entry related to landing a company’s business, the non-negotiable functions or services, highly desirable features or support, and ways vendors can add value. —Foodservice might better weather the “perfect storm” it faces related to business challenges and technology if operators develop and share with vendors a thorough “hierarchy of needs,” said Arby’s Restaurant Group executive Don Zimmerman.

“So what’s the issue” for foodservice technology today, Zimmerman asked after detailing Arby’s’ hierarchy. “A lot of what we’re seeing out there” from suppliers “is lacking the middle component,” or non-negotiable and highly desirable characteristics, he indicated. —Foodservice might better weather the “perfect storm” it faces related to business challenges and technology if operators develop and share with vendors a thorough “hierarchy of needs,” said Arby’s Restaurant Group executive Don Zimmerman.

Those missing items, Zimmerman said, cover such things as reliability and resiliency; monitoring, management and support; cost effectiveness; and scalability. He maintained that if operators spell out their requirements and vendors meet them, “we can battle the clouds” of the industry’s perfect storm. —Foodservice might better weather the “perfect storm” it faces related to business challenges and technology if operators develop and share with vendors a thorough “hierarchy of needs,” said Arby’s Restaurant Group executive Don Zimmerman.