Jeane & Reinier Venekamp
Founder & CDO
People Serving People
Jeane Venekamp started her accounting career when she moved to the United States two decades ago. With a passion for helping small businesses she decided to open her own firm. In 2016, fascinated by the restaurant industry and its challenges, she chose to specialize in restaurants.
Reinier Venekamp started his career as a data analyst for a Dutch market research firm after which he took on a global analyst role for a 4 Billion dollar public traded manufacturing company, responsible for data and insights on revenue, cost and margins across all regions and global key accounts. He has extensive hands-on experience with Restaurant365 since 2017, has led several Restaurant365 implementations on behalf of PSP as well as Restaurant365.
Pinar Alptunaer
Partner Marketing Manager
Restaurant365
Pinar Alptunaer is Partner Marketing Manager at Restaurant365, managing relationships with accounting channel and strategic partners. Pinar also manages sponsorships for R365 events like the Restaurant Transformation Tour. With over 20 years of experience working in the hospitality industry, she continues to keep her finger on the pulse by working The Masters Golf Tournament for the past 11 years. A New Orleans native, Pinar grew up between the United States and Istanbul, engraining her love of all things food and hospitality.
One of the key advantages of outsourcing to PSP is the ability to free up time and resources for business owners to focus on hospitality, food, and service. Can you explain how PSP enables this and what impact it has on your clients' businesses?
Operators have to focus on day-to-day needs of their business. PSP handles everything no one has time to do during the day, but that’s imperative to making the machine run smoothly (pay bills, manage invoices, cost control, analysis, and POV on what the next move might be). By taking the entire backoffice of their plate, provide real-time quality business information that allows business owners to run their business.
Becoming more cost-effective and efficient is a significant aspect of partnering with PSP. Could you explain how you are helping smaller restaurant groups see the cost-effectiveness typically associated with larger chains?
The smaller business owner is the one that cannot afford to not know their numbers.
PSP brings opportunities to reduce costs to the surface on an item level, which for smaller restaurant groups is even more important as larger chains tend to have more purchasing power.
Billy Beane, one of the best-known data analytics case studies, that set about mining decades of data on hundreds of individual baseball players in order to figure out the best strategy for recruiting good players (when they had no money). Beane bet big time on analytics and his efforts paid off. The Oakland A’s started to win, even against baseball teams that had much larger budgets. The team became the first team in over 100 years of American League baseball to win 20 consecutive games.
PSP can help smaller groups focus on where the majority of their money goes by identifying key items, eliminating ambient noise and focusing on what makes the biggest difference to their bottom-line.
We're impressed by PSP's comprehensive approach, including top-notch consulting services. Can you share an example of the consulting services you provide and how they've helped your clients thrive by improving their operations and profitability?
Through recipe development/cost analysis one of our clients was surprised to see how high their plate cost really was; they then asked us to help mold their generous spirit into choices that were also good for the business.
With PSP’s analytic capabilities clients get deep insights into the dreaded third party fees charged by delivery services allowing them to optimize pricing strategies to cover these fees across channels.
Hidden profits and losses are a concern for many restaurant owners. How is PSP using real-time data to help its clients uncover hidden profits and losses and make more informed business decisions?
PSP makes everything visible. If you can’t see it, you can’t celebrate or correct it!!
Implementing new systems or software can be challenging for any business. How is PSP making the implementation a smooth and painless process for your restaurant clients?
PSP takes the burdens of technology implementation and integration off our client’s hands. We allow them to focus on how they want to run their business while PSP makes the system design decisions to support their needs. PSP has a best-practice, step-by-step approach which allows the client to get onto the platform quickly and expand into other areas at a pace that the client’s team can support.
PSP only asks clients to provide information; the heavy lifting of implementation is all done by us in-house. This erases that initial “Where- and HOW - do we start’ that happens when beginning to learn a new technology.
Data accuracy is essential for making informed business decisions. How does PSP ensure timely and accurate data for clients, and how does this contribute to their success?
PSP’s outsourced accounting team reviews the client’s business activity on a daily basis. This ensures quick visibility of the business and allows the client to make changes and corrections in a timely manner. This process guarantees data accuracy, since the review happens the next day while details are most clearly remembered.
Building strong client relationships is crucial in any business. How does PSP foster and maintain relationships with its clients, and how does this contribute to long-term partnerships?
PSP strives to comprehend both the client’s business as well as their internal teams, enabling us to collaborate closely and maintain a focus on priorities. We achieve this through regular Zoom meetings or phone calls, during which we connect with clients regarding their priorities and provide updates on projects or initiatives we've undertaken based on their guidance. This approach is designed to foster open communication and mutual trust – the backbone of any successful relationship.
PSP really becomes an integral part of the client’s team, facilitating a deep understanding of their business.
Can you highlight some specific features or functionality of R365 that has been particularly beneficial for your clients and has set them up for success?
Reporting! Not just as a tool to see sales results (also useful!), but also to spot positive/negative changes or fluctuations in COGS, inventory, or other sectors of the business. Reporting takes a complicated mass of information and allows processing it in smaller bites/bytes.
Example: Usage of key items to focus on the 80% of items that truly move the needle. Lots of these are known to the operators, some of them turn to be a surprise
What are some of the anticipated future challenges and trends that you believe may impact the restaurant community? What steps are you taking to help your clients stay ahead of these challenges?
The restaurant landscape is becoming increasingly more complex in terms of both demand and supply dynamics, accompanied by the integration of advanced technologies.
As technology seeps into every facet of our lives, so it does with dining – delivery, apps, ghost restaurants, QR codes for menus, etc. (nevermind the pandemic!) have all changed the way restaurants play the game. But PSP remains focused on data – which is and will always remain en vogue. Real-time data means owners/operators can pivot in any direction with confidence that they know what is happening inside their own four walls.
By dedicating our efforts exclusively to the realm of restaurants, our team has cultivated and sustains expertise within this ever-shifting industry. PSP is dedicated to guiding clients through the intricate web of this complexity.
Every restaurant is unique, like a snowflake, with its own set of processes and requirements. How does PSP approach the onboarding process to tailor your services to the specific needs of each individual restaurant client?
PSP starts by ensuring that the client’s end goals are clearly defined and well understood. We then combine both best practices and client needs to tailor the R365 solution to the client’s business.
Listening and executing based on client priorities. I like to tell clients that R365 seems like a giant, impersonal database – but it’s just the opposite: With client input, PSP creates a digital version of your physical reality! After just a few months in R365, your system will exist in the same language that you use to communicate about your actual restaurant.
If you could have a celebrity chef as a spokesperson for PSP Now, who would you choose and why?
Jacques Pepin. As one of the French masters, he is not only a celebrated chef, he’s skilled as a businessman and understands those are two different capacities. In the same vein, PSP does not pretend to advise our clients on how to run their business, but we are experts at revealing the true status of the company so that the experts can make the right choices at opportune times.
When it comes to onboarding new restaurant clients, what unique approaches or strategies does PSP employ to ensure a smooth transition and help them hit the ground running with your services?
PSP follows a systematic, best-practice, phased approach to onboarding new clients. This allows clients to get onto the platform quickly and then expand their platform usage into the areas most impactful for their business first.
We draw on past/present client experience to outline a best-practice approach, and use general timelines to help clients understand how long implementation usually takes – part of our client communication strategy. This is incredibly valuable for our clients as the restaurant business lives in a world of immediate need and execution.
