Case Study

Case Study

Romano’s Macaroni Grill is a nationwide Italian restaurant brand founded in 1988. Named the No. 1 Italian Restaurant Chain in America by a Nation’s Restaurant News consumer survey, Macaroni Grill has company owned stores in 15 different states coast-to-coast including Hawaii.

"Expo has enabled us to build a culture of accountability, competition, collaboration and knowledge sharing."

Nishant Machado
Dividend Restaurant Group

EMAIL. EXCEL FILES.

Romano’s Macaroni Grill was in growth mode after the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

Its team was expanding and its loyal customers are coming back to the restaurants, but with surging demand comes the potential for inefficiencies and lost productivity.

Before Expo, the operations team was juggling a myriad of Excel spreadsheets and dozens of emailed reports to stay on top of store sales and metrics. Restaurant general managers didn’t have an easy way to understand how they could use their data to drive sales performance every day, since legacy reporting only gave them limited insight on a weekly or monthly cadence.

“Everyone was operating on old information,” says the COO of Romano’s Macaroni Grill.“We were emailing files around but our GMs didn’t have real time information they could use to impact their teams’ performance.”

The lack of simple-to-understand, timely information was not limited to the operations team. Romano’s Macaroni Grill CFO says, “we have over a dozen different software systems but none of it was talking to one another. We had trouble getting the company aligned on KPIs because each system was telling a different story and there was no source of truth.”

EVERYONE IS USING IT.

Expo integrated the entire software stack allowing Romano’s Macaroni Grill to have a unified dashboard for the entire organization.
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With Expo, the entire organization is aligned on one source of truth for all of the company’s most important metrics. All teams use Expo to run meetings so that everyone can be on the same page. One general manager who came from restaurants like Olive Garden and Cracker Barrel, says “At those companies, all I had was a weekly report. Expo is more advanced and has more depth.”

TURNING DATA INTO DOLLARS.

Romano’s Macaroni Grill has leveraged Expo to turn their data into actionable insights that drive sales. Restaurant managers use Expo to create performance based schedules, run contests, and train their employees 1:1 to upsell specific menu items.

Area Managers and Restaurant Managers log into Expo every day to find out what the areas of opportunity are for the business and use this data to coach, manage and train their teams. Armed with this data, Romano’s Macaroni Grill has increased their sales averages over $1 per person which has resulted in millions of dollars in incremental revenue for the company.

“It affects our bottom line. Managers are able to see everything in real time. So they are able to make quicker decisions as opposed to waiting for an Excel spreadsheet to come out,” said Romano’s Macaroni Grill CFO.

“It’s been a game-changer for us.”

Case Study · Casual Dining

How Romano's Macaroni Grill drove $1M+ in incremental sales with Expo.

A dozen-plus disconnected systems became one source of truth. With the whole organization aligned, managers turned real-time data into revenue.

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The short answer

How did Romano's Macaroni Grill use Expo?

Romano's Macaroni Grill, a nationwide Italian chain that was part of Dividend Restaurant Group, used Expo to replace a tangle of Excel spreadsheets and emailed reports with one real-time dashboard for the whole organization. With everyone aligned on a single source of truth, restaurant managers used the data to coach teams and drive upsells, lifting per-person averages by over a dollar, which added up to millions of dollars in incremental revenue.

01 · The before

Email. Excel files.

Coming out of the pandemic shutdowns, Romano's Macaroni Grill was in growth mode. The team was expanding and loyal customers were returning, but surging demand brought the potential for inefficiency and lost productivity.

Before Expo, the operations team was juggling a myriad of Excel spreadsheets and dozens of emailed reports to stay on top of store sales and metrics. General managers had no easy way to use their data to drive performance day to day, because legacy reporting only gave them limited insight on a weekly or monthly cadence.

"Everyone was operating on old information. We were emailing files around, but our GMs didn't have real-time information they could use to impact their teams' performance."COO, Romano's Macaroni Grill

The problem wasn't just speed. It was that nothing agreed.

"We had over a dozen different software systems, but none of it was talking to one another. We had trouble getting the company aligned on KPIs because each system was telling a different story, and there was no source of truth."CFO, Romano's Macaroni Grill
02 · The shift

One source of truth.

Expo integrated the entire software stack into a single dashboard for the whole organization. Every team, from the corporate office to individual restaurants, worked from the same numbers, and used Expo to run their meetings so everyone stayed on the same page.

"At other companies, all I had was a weekly report. Expo was more advanced and had more depth."General Manager, previously at Olive Garden and Cracker Barrel
03 · The payoff

Turning data into dollars.

With the data unified and current, managers could act on it. Restaurant managers used Expo to build performance-based schedules, run contests, and train employees one-on-one to upsell specific menu items. Area managers and restaurant managers logged in every day to find the biggest areas of opportunity and used that data to coach and train their teams.

$1+ added to the per-person average, which translated into millions of dollars in incremental revenue.
"It affects our bottom line. Managers can see everything in real time, so they can make quicker decisions instead of waiting for an Excel spreadsheet to come out. It's been a game-changer for us."CFO, Romano's Macaroni Grill
Expo enabled us to build a culture of accountability, competition, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.
Nishant Machado
Nishant Machado Dividend Restaurant Group

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