You'll find Zoës at the end of restaurants in the Yellow Pages. The ”last place you'd look” hardly seems a strategic play for a chain of restaurants anxious to expand. Then you notice the ë. It's your hint Zoës Kitchen is different.

The Mediterranean-influenced casual food restaurants, which started in Birmingham, AL and spread to neighboring states, proclaim “fresh” when you walk in the door. Warm reds, pale yellows and avocado greens flow from walls to menu boards, tables and chairs. The food is made fresh daily: a mix of soups, salads, sandwiches, dinners and sides following Zoës' original recipes.

Zoës was already growing in 2007 when it was purchased by Brentwood Associates, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. The first order of business: Automate the manual processes that had become a way of life at this home grown restaurant company.

“We needed to eliminate all the mistakes that come with the manual work and operate more efficiently,” recalled Jason Morgan, who Brentwood brought in as Chief Financial Officer for the new Zoës Kitchen, LLC. “Each of the chain's 16 locations kept up with business in separate data bases. The consolidated reporting was all Excel driven. We needed better visibility to information - like detail on miscellaneous expenses - and better financial analysis by location.”

Barely half a year after the acquisition, Zoës threw in the towel on their QuickBooks and jungle of spreadsheets. In its place they implemented Microsoft Dynamics GP with the Chef's Kitchen® solution for restaurants from Birmingham-based L. Kianoff & Associates, Inc. The Microsoft GoldCertified Partner promised to implement Best Practices that would facilitate managing multiple

location restaurants - from food to labor costs and cash management - and integrate it all in Microsoft's proven business management and accounting system for managing the back office.

The Dynamics GP system introduced Zoës to automation's speed and accuracy. Adding in the Chef's Kitchen® piece, with its restaurant specific chart of accounts and suite of tools, gave them the ability to do weekly reconciliation of cash and credit cards electronically.

Sales information is pulled automatically weekly from each store's point of sale register. The information is automatically imported into the Chef's Kitchen® routine in Dynamics GP. Then, Zoës' accounting can produce sales reports whenever they want to know how the business is doing. “The biggest thing for us is the weekly bank reconciliation. That alone has been worth the cost of the entire system,” said Morgan.

“Unless a restaurant owner knows the true bank balance, they don't know how much to release from cash funds,” said Dennis Day, Chief Consultant at L. Kianoff & Associates. Day led the team that spearheaded development of the Cash Management functionality of Chef's Kitchen®. “It gives Zoës the ability to stay on top of cash and credit transactions on a daily basis; that's one of the most vulnerable parts of managing any restaurant. We combine that with a restaurant centric chart of accounts, restaurant centric financials and the ability to also track non-financial information - such as employee counts - and you can imagine the view they now have into all the information needed to manage a growing list of restaurants.”

Chef's Kitchen® also brings a strong focus on daily cash reconciliation, critical in an industry where fraud is made easier by the reliance on cash and credit cards.

“The cash management component of Chef's Kitchen® provides both tools and processes to reconcile bank balances daily including complex credit card deposits and transfers between accounts. The GL accounts are automatically updated daily with bank transactions fees, wire transfers, etc. Having information feed from the restaurants to the corporate offices means they always have a current, accurate picture of how each location, territory and manager are performing.”

“The cash management component of Chef's Kitchen® provides both tools and processes to reconcile bank balances daily including complex credit card deposits and transfers between accounts. The GL accounts are automatically updated daily with bank transactions fees, wire transfers, etc. Having information feed from the restaurants to the corporate offices means they always have a current, accurate picture of how each location, territory and manager are performing.”

Zoës Goes Chef's Kitchen® To Streamline OperationsA Case Study For The Restaurant Industry

Customer Success Story

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Eliminate Manual Work

Type of Business:Fast Casual Restaurants Headquarters: Birmingham, AL

Zoe's Stats:32 Locations10 StatesUsers: 6Employees: 500Annual Sales: $20MWeb: www.zoeskitchen.com

System Profile:Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Essentials • General Ledger • Payables Management • Receivables Management • Fixed Assets • PrintBoss Secure Check PrintingBest Practices Suite for Chef's Kitchen® with Cash Management & Advanced Reconciliation • FRx for Financials • Integrations:    – ADP for Payroll    – Decision Logics Capturing Store AP    – Daily Sales Report (DSR) from RMNX Point of Sales System

Type of Business:Fast Casual Restaurants Headquarters: Birmingham, AL

Zoe's Stats:32 Locations10 StatesUsers: 6Employees: 500Annual Sales: $20MWeb: www.zoeskitchen.com

System Profile:Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Essentials • General Ledger • Payables Management • Receivables Management • Fixed Assets • PrintBoss Secure Check PrintingBest Practices Suite for Chef's Kitchen® with Cash Management & Advanced Reconciliation • FRx for Financials • Integrations:    – ADP for Payroll    – Decision Logics Capturing Store AP    – Daily Sales Report (DSR) from RMNX Point of Sales System

“The ability to reconcile the bank account is critical,” said Angela Morris, a Chef's Kitchen® consultant. “When I started working with them, Zoës took 3 days to reconcile bank accounts at month end. Now it's about 2 hours.”

The Chef's Kitchen's® restaurant-focused Chart of Accounts was also flexible enough to tweak for a more detailed analysis and comparison of individual store performance.

“Let's say meat costs are consistent across all stores and suddenly one goes up 2 percent. That could mean meat is going out the back door,” said Morris, a 20+ year veteran of the restaurant industry. The system also tracks “comps” so managers see how much goes to employee and manager meals, quality of service or coupons. Other reports compare income statements side by side, over periods, and across multiple units. “Chef's Kitchen® gives them a jump start on industry-specific reports: reports they may not think of, reports they may not know how to write, or reports they may not have time to write.”

“GP is a great system,” said Morgan. He also credits the partnership with L. Kianoff, which guided him and his team through their implementation, with helping achieve his personal goal to complete the project ahead of schedule and under budget. He said the consulting services team's “outstanding thoroughness and knowledge” help him decide early to go with their methodology after he was assured it would replace the need for parallel testing and reduce time to go live.

“The equity investors were beside themselves that we did not run parallel,” said Morgan. “Then they were surprised at how fast we were up and running.” Morgan said they were also pleased to have spent less than they had thought would be needed “to get a total solution at this level” and he credits a lot of it to L. Kianoff's expertise in the restaurant industry.

“They offered suggestions appropriate to the company and the industry. Based on the efficiencies we gained, we were able to reduce headcount and save $40,000 a year. There was a lot of good planning in the set up of a chart of accounts for restaurants.” Morgan said. “I've worked with other software consultants in the past who, once you are up and going, you couldn't get them back on the phone. L. Kianoff & Associates was available 24/7. They are much more thorough and knowledgeable. Their training was better and more inclusive.”

In a 2010 interview in The Birmingham News, Zoës' CEO Greg Dollarhyde was excited about how the restaurant chain is now positioned for future growth. “We plan to take this company to the next level,” he said.

Despite the economic downtown, the company had its financing in place and was on track to open another 12-14 locations. That would bring their total to 46 Zoës in operation by the end of 2010.

Favorite Chef's Kitchen® Financial Reports: 1. Flash Report: Weekly snapshot of sales, food costs, labor costs, comps etc.2. Unit side-by-side comparison Income Statement: Detail & Summary3. Rolling quarter income statement: Detail & Summary Income plus Unit detail4. Detailed income statement: by Unit, State, Total - current period and YTD5. Summary income statement: by Unit, State, Total - current period and YTD6. Controllable Income by Unit7. Detailed income statement: by Unit, State, Total - Actual vs. budget, current & YTD8. Summary income statement: by Unit, State, Total - Actual vs. budget, current & YTD9. Balance sheet with comparisons

Information is consolidated in a weekly report. Zoës accounting can produce sales reports whenever they want to know:

n Did the bank deposit match sales from POS system at each location? And match GL?

n What are the sales by location, grouped by state?

n How much cash did we take in by location? By all locations?

n What was the cash over/short amount?

n Are we collecting money from all credit card charges?

n Are expenses in line - from labor to supplies - at each location?

1128 22nd Street South, Birmingham, AL 35205 • (205) 592-9990 • www.kianoff.com • www.chefskitchengroup.com

Analysis By Store