Pizza Chain Leverages Video for Operational Excellence

Hideaway Pizza, a 12-restaurant chain based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, relies on video surveillance for a lot more than just loss prevention.

Deterring and minimizing losses due to theft positively impacts the bottom line, but the true success of a restaurant has a lot more to do with the performance of the kitchen and wait staff, their interaction with customers and the quality of the food.

With that in mind, Hideaway Pizza equips a typical restaurant with up to 25 cameras covering the front of the house, the kitchen, cash drawers, bar area, entrances, exits and parking lot - “pretty well every nook and cranny,” notes Tyson Smith the chain’s IT director.

Using video surveillance as an enabler of operational excellence has contributed to Hideaway Pizza’s success.

March Networks’ 8000 Series hybrid recorders are a perfect fit for the pizza chain given its mix of analog and March Networks MegaPX WDR MiniDome IP cameras.

The March Networks 8532 Hybrid NVRs accommodate a mix of up to 32 IP or analog cameras, feature onboard video storage of up to 12 TB and offer end users the option of hard disk mirroring for redundant storage.

Hideaway Pizza uses March Networks’ Visual Intelligence software suite and the powerful Enterprise Service Manager for remote management and resource optimization.

The system gets a lot of use.

“It’s like instant replay in sports,” said Smith. “If we can help our team members improve how they serve guests, it’s better for everyone.

“We can see the food being prepared and going up to the window and we can see how long it sits there before it gets delivered to the table. If a customer complains that their food was cold, we can tell if the customer is correct.

“We have cameras throughout the front of the house covering all the tables so we can see the servers deliver their orders. We can also investigate customer incidents such as slip and falls.”

Cameras cover back doors and parking lots, the manager’s office and the bar area where they can be used to investigate any incidents involving alcohol.

As for archiving, “we try to shoot for 30 days storage, but most of our sites are getting 60 days, while some go up to 100 days. Newer sites are being equipped with four 3 TB drives for total onboard storage of 12 TB.”

The extra storage is required to accommodate the very large files, but it’s worth it considering the exceptional quality of the IP video, said Smith. “The difference is like day and night.”

“We’ve had great support as we transitioned to March Networks video surveillance technology and have had no real issues. The systems are performing exceptionally well.”

Learn more about March Networks here.