Souper Salad

The Challenge

"Once our eyes were opened to the possibilities enabled by the D-Link cameras, we realized we had received so much more from the D-Link solution than we first envisioned. D-Link really came through for us,"
-Zvonimir Gluhak, Information Technology Director

As Americans have become increasingly concerned about health, diet, and fitness, a San Antonio, Texas-based restaurant chain has successfully filled the need for fresh, healthy, high quality meals at affordable prices in a comfortable, casual dining environment. Souper Salad, one of the nation's largest all-you-care-to-eat soup and salad bar restaurant chain, operates over 89 restaurants in 12 states. Yet the company's growth has not gone without its share of operational challenges.

With Souper Salad's serve-yourself model, the customer experience is heavily influenced by the restaurants ability to keep the lines efficiently moving and conducting fast and accurate transactions at the cash register. Souper Salad set out to find a better formula for improved customer service and operations. Secondly Souper Salad was concerned about the increasing occurrence of shorted cash register receipts and security risks of theft and vandalism. As a result, management decided that installing surveillance cameras would be the most convenient and cost-effective method of dealing with these issues without disrupting customers or employees.

The Solution

One of the main requirements for Souper Salad was the ability to monitor stores from any remote location, thus they ruled out closed circuit television systems and considered deploying Internet cameras. After carefully researching a number of Internet camera options, Souper Salad decided on the D-Link DCS-2000 Internet Camera. The D-Link cameras had unbeatable price points and a reputation in the technology industry for robustness, ease of use, and reliability. In addition, the Souper Salad team found that D-Link was the only vendor to offer surveillance and recording software at no additional costs and the only vendor offering the ability to easily integrate the camera picture into a custom designed monitoring interface. "Our management team wanted a way to monitor all of their respective restaurants from a single interface screen," commented Zvonimir Gluhak, information technology director with Souper Salad. "The D-Link IP camera solution was the only one we saw with the flexibility to easily integrate video from multiple restaurants into our own custom developed, web-based 'Soupercam' monitoring application," added Gluhak.

The recorded video as well as the live video feeds are available to Souper Salad management from any remote location with Internet access.

Gluhak and team retrieved the required java script free of charge from the comprehensive D-Link support site and integrated it into their own web interface. The custom built "Soupercam" application enabled a regional manager to monitor all of their restaurants at the same time from any location with Internet access.

The installation of D-Link DCS-2000 Internet cameras into all of the restaurants went smoothly and was managed internally by the IT department. A single camera was mounted in each restaurant with a clear picture of the cash register area. The camera was then connected with category 5 cable to a back office network within the restaurant. Each store hosted its own video recording station equipped with an 80 Gigabyte storage capacity. Video is recorded on a 24x7 basis by the recording station. About 15 Gigabytes of storage is required to provide two weeks of restaurant surveillance. The recorded video as well as the live video feeds are available to Souper Salad management from any remote location with Internet access.

Benefits

Immediately after the initial installation of the D-Link DCS-2000 Internet Cameras, Souper Salad was able to identify key operational improvement opportunities. Managers were able to easily monitor the cash register and payment area for accuracy in conducting customer transactions. The shortage in cash register receipts subsided shortly after the camera installation. Managers also found that they were able improve the effectiveness of their restaurant's customer service. Customer greetings, line monitoring, restaurant signage, employee procedures, and other operational aspects of running the restaurant could be monitored and recorded for training and evaluation purposes.

The management team was also pleased to offer some additional security and protection for their employees. Three weeks after the installation of a D-Link DCS-2000 Internet Camera into one of the restaurants, the camera system was put to the test. An ex-employee from one restaurant took his stolen cash register key, walked into another restaurant, and stole all of the cash from the register. The whole event was recorded and the video was provided to the police who arrested the suspect two weeks later. "By integrating D-Link Internet Cameras, we recognized and solved a number of operational issues, increased restaurant security, and improved both profits and productivity. After observing what the D-Link cameras were capable of, we identified other potential uses to benefit our business," commented Gluhak. "Once our eyes were opened to the possibilities enabled by the D-Link cameras, we realized we had received so much more from the D-Link solution than we first envisioned. D-Link really came through for us," added Gluhak.

BACK