When I tell the story about Brad and Randy Carter, father and son team who own Little Caesars pizza locations, I cannot help but think of my trademark saying “I was a teenage franchisee”. My father Alexander Mashour was moving and shaking with the franchise Ziebart Auto Rustproofing in the 60s and my sisters and I were sitting at the dining room table practicing our handwriting as we filled out his marketing postcards (Age 7-9) The next stop was going into his stores on a Saturday in high school as office help. He’d occasionally put me on the spot to answer the phone and book appointments (“Would you like an appointment for this coming Monday or Wednesday”) I caught THE LOOK, if I didn’t nail the deal (Age 15-17) In college and after college, I went on to manage the accounting at Ziebart, then worked at his President Tuxedo and Coffee Beaneries with the same exactness in following the script, knowing the drill and living the brand. Same story, different name, different age. He groomed me for what was to come next.
Another Father’s tale: Randy Carter was a retired engineer and his son Brad had worked for Little Caesars since high school and had 14 years of experience with the corporation, from crew member to Area Supervisor. It was a perfect combination of experience, skill and desire. On January 14, 2008, Randy and Brad opened the first of their 3 stores in Wilmington, NC.
From the beginning, Randy has done the accounting for the stores, with the exception of taxes and annual audits. Randy uses the Technology In A Box QuickBooks for the Little Caesars Franchisee. This includes the QuickBooks data file template and training that was developed to account for the daily transactions specific to the Little Caesars franchise. While this proved to be an efficient system, Randy’s technical experience nudged him toward looking for a more efficient way of handling the weekly Blue Line bills. Furthermore, he understood that as more stores were opened, the time requirements and chances for errors increased. An opportunity was there for the taking.
In May of 2010, after the Little Caesars Conference, Randy set up a conference call with Blue Line to discuss the idea of using the electronic file to import his Blue Line purchases into QuickBooks. At the time, the food reports were sent electronically, but the information had to be manually entered, store by store and item by item.
Enter Technology In A Box Learning Services, LLC. By September 2010, dialogues between Randy, Blue Line and Christine lead to a Roundtable discussion during which the Franchisees were polled to gauge their interest in an application that would import their Blue Line purchases directly into QuickBooks. The question Randy still asks today “Who WOULDN’T want to save time and give up manual entry”
In November of 2010, Christine call upon Ron Dropik at Vertical systems, a programming company that could build the application to bridge the information between the Blue Line export file and the franchisee’s QuickBooks file. The Little Caesars Transaction Importer Tool was created and a new legacy was born.
According to Randy, since using the Transaction Importer, the 30-45 minute weekly process of manually entering Blue Line invoices for 3 stores can now literally be done in seconds… as quickly as he can file the invoices. Since he began using the Importer Tool in May 2011, Randy has been giving feedback to Christine on a regular basis . . . to date everything is a “Go”!
Let us know if you are interested in an efficient tool for your franchise processes! Tell us your story if you have been using the Little Caesars Transaction Importer!
And a final word….. Thanks, Pops and Happy Belated Fathers Day to him and to all of you.
