Cutting Prep Waste by 52%

Jimmy John’s Case Study – Key Takeaways

POS: PDQ

The Problem

At the individual locations, baking bread throughout the day can often become a guessing game. The staff constantly needs to anticipate fluctuations in customer demand. An over-anticipation can lead to a surplus of bread, meaning many loaves can get wasted at the end of the four hour window. An under-anticipation might mean customers experience long wait times or don’t get served at all. 
 
This pain point can be put under even more pressure at the end of the night, when the window of time before the bread would be unusable was smaller. It is essential that the bread is baked in advance, but that decision is made without knowing what the tail end of the shift will bring. Jimmy John’s general managers are given the difficult task of maximizing customer satisfaction while also minimizing waste. The bulk of that trade off can often come down to this single decision at the end of the night.

The Results

By systematically resolving this pain point each day, ClearCOGS was able to cut the bread waste in half for these six Jimmy John’s locations. On average, before working with ClearCOGS, each location was throwing out an average of 300 units of bread a week. ClearCOGS was able to get that down to 150 units. The average savings just in bread waste for each location was about $300 monthly.

Not only was ClearCOGS providing monetary value, but also providing a relief for the managers who these decisions had previously fallen on. The time and energy that it takes to be constantly evaluating and making the bread baking decision has been a major source of stress and inefficiency in these locations. 

Kyle Roadl, one of the general managers, commented on how helpful the reports were to the staff he supervised. He said, “ClearCOGS has been a lifesaver. I can confidently say it has taken major stress out of our day-to-day lives! – It breaks down hour-by-hour how much bread we should have. It’s almost dummy-proofed to where, if we follow this game plan, we shouldn’t run out of bread, but we’re not going to waste multiple trays at the end of the night either. It’s pretty crazy how its projections are right on the money.”