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Since its founding in 2008, Black Rock Coffee Bar has grown from a single drive-thru in Beaverton, Oregon, to more than 160 corporate-owned locations across seven states. With plans to continue scaling aggressively, leadership knew the systems supporting store teams had to evolve just as quickly.
For Vice President of Learning & Operations Services Heather Kluzak, that meant building operational consistency without losing the people-first culture that defines the brand. To support growth, Black Rock needed real-time visibility into inventory, cost of goods, and store performance to help teams act in the moment instead of reacting weeks later.
Before implementing Restaurant365, Black Rock Coffee Bar struggled to get clear visibility into inventory spend and product usage. Stores counted inventory once per month using Excel spreadsheets, overloading in-store and accounting teams with manual work.
“Prior to R365, we had limited visibility into our spend at the store level,” Kluzak said. “We knew there were opportunities to improve our cost of goods, but the data wasn’t always easy to access or analyze quickly.”
With inventory measured monthly, leadership often reviewed results after the fact rather than having the visibility needed to make adjustments during the month. Store teams primarily worked from budgets and historical ordering patterns, which made it harder to quickly identify shifts in usage, waste, or product movement.
“We wanted our teams to have better insight into what was happening week to week,” she said. “That visibility helps leaders make smarter decisions in real time instead of looking backward.”
As the menu has expanded and drink customization increased, having clearer insight into product usage became even more important. Leadership recognized the opportunity to strengthen reporting and provide store teams with tools that would help them better understand inventory performance and operational drivers.
We knew there were opportunities to improve our cost of goods, but the data wasn’t always easy to access or analyze quickly
Heather Kluzak, Vice President of Learning & Operations Services
Black Rock Coffee Bar
Shortly after joining Black Rock, Kluzak led the implementation of Restaurant365, starting with a small pilot before rolling out the platform across all locations. Inventory management became the priority, with the goal of replacing spreadsheets and creating a scalable, repeatable process for stores.
The team shifted from monthly to weekly counts, giving stores immediate visibility into actual versus theoretical usage. Managers could now review their numbers before approving counts, identify missing invoices or missed items, and make corrections right away instead of weeks later.
“We decided to go with a weekly cadence to really give us the true information that we needed so that we could be proactive, week over week, instead of again waiting till the end of the month to figure out what was missing or where we overspent,” she said.
Restaurant365 also enabled above-store reporting, allowing leaders to compare performance across regions while accounting for differences in pricing and market conditions. By focusing on variance instead of raw cost, Black Rock could evaluate stores more fairly and identify where coaching or process changes were needed.
To support the brand’s highly customizable menu, Black Rock built detailed recipes and modifiers directly into the system. This ensured theoretical usage reflected real-world ordering behavior—down to half-sweet drinks and size variations—so store teams could trust the data they were reviewing.
New locations were brought onto Restaurant365 from day one. Stores completed a full opening inventory before ringing their first sale and immediately joined the weekly count cadence, ensuring clean data and consistent processes from the start.
“I really feel like we’re set up to scale and scale quickly,” Kluzak said. “We have certainly implemented systems that are scalable, and everything that we look at in terms of something new or even something revised is through a lens of scalability. We want to make sure that new stores are fully supported from the get-go.”
With Restaurant365 fully deployed, Black Rock Coffee Bar gained real-time insight into inventory performance across its growing footprint. Weekly counts replaced monthly snapshots, allowing teams to spot issues earlier and adjust before costs escalated.
The company established clear expectations around inventory variance, with the goal of reducing the gap between actual and theoretical usage and giving teams better control over cost of goods. As store leaders became more comfortable working with the data, they began driving stronger consistency in their inventory performance.
Operational efficiency improved at the store level as well. More frequent counts reduced the time spent searching for product, streamlined ordering, and led to cleaner, more organized storage areas. Managers spent less time reacting to surprises and more time running the business.
Most importantly, store leaders developed stronger business acumen. With access to clear, timely data, they could understand the story behind their numbers, adjust purchasing decisions week over week, and connect inventory control directly to profitability and bonus outcomes.
I really feel like we’re set up to scale and scale quickly.
Heather Kluzak, Vice President of Learning & Operations Services
Black Rock Coffee Bar
Black Rock Coffee Bar brought on Restaurant365 to support rapid growth while strengthening operational discipline and store-level decision making. Moving from monthly spreadsheet counts to weekly, data-driven inventory management, the brand gained visibility it never had before, without sacrificing its people-first culture.
Today, Restaurant365 helps Black Rock standardize processes across markets, bring new stores online faster, and give leaders at every level the insight they need to act with confidence. The result is a scalable operating model built to support continued expansion and consistent execution across all locations.
Weekly inventory counts
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