This spring, three hotels in the Midwest switched over their restaurants to a full-service Uno franchise, and early results are promising. One hotel has seen 30% of its sales come from its franchise, said Erik Frederick, CEO of Uno Restaurants. More hotel locations are in the pipeline.
Regina Jerome: The Mastermind Behind Uno's Tech Transformation
“A good percentage of hotels are not making money or are losing money on food and beverage,” said Frederick. “Everyone loves pizza. And they (hoteliers) know good and well how many pizzas come into their hotels. They’re losing out.”
Converting over to a known pizza brand also helps hoteliers capture lucrative alcohol sales plus off-premises orders and third-party delivery sales from local customers, Frederick added.
A franchisor with 75+ locations, Uno’s has an established supply chain, including a frozen pizza and calzone division, and infrastructure to support current and future franchises. Known for its Chicago deep dish pizzas, Uno’s menu also includes thin-crust pizzas, gluten-free cauliflower crust pizzas, calzones and a variety of entrees. UNO gives franchises wiggle room to add local flair to their menus. In Baltimore, the hoteliers could add Crab Cakes, or in Philly, cheese steaks, for example.
Tech-Enabled Concept
Recently Uno overhauled its tech stack, spearheaded by Regina Jerome, Senior Vice President of Information Technology, and HT’s Top Women in Restaurant Technology Lifetime Achievement Award winner.
Jerome joined UNO in 2019 with the mission to replace legacy systems with more modern, data-driven solutions including a restaurant management solution, finance, back-of-house operations, contactless payment for curbside and pay-at-the-table transactions, loyalty, order & delivery, data insights and a new mobile app, to name a few.
All the work done on the tech stack was done with scalability in mind, explained Jerome. For hoteliers, they can easily integrate these solutions into their property management system. While hoteliers may not need the entire UNO tech stack, there are certain must-haves including CrunchTime!’s restaurant management system that is known for its labor and food cost analysis, as well as Paytronix’s mobile app and loyalty, Jerome explained.
Day one, the Uno franchise opens with an app and can start taking orders, Jerome explained.
CrunchTime has become an essential tool for Uno to help with labor costs and food waste, Frederick added. “We can look at the reports and say, ‘Hey, your cost structure is off.’ This is all part of giving them the menu and the recipes. We want their restaurant to be successful.”
Tags: Uno Pizzeria and Grill, UNO tech
