Villa Restaurant Group (VRG) began as a single New York City pizzeria more than 60 years ago and has since evolved into a multi-brand restaurant enterprise with 85 corporate locations and 55 franchises across the U.S. and abroad. Its portfolio includes proprietary brands such as Villa Pizza, Tony & Benny’s, Green Leaf’s, South Philly Steaks, and Mo’ Burger, alongside major franchise partnerships with Starbucks, Shake Shack, Jersey Mike’s, Dos Toros, and more.
Since joining in 2019, Controller Michael Leemann has helped lead VRG’s financial and operational transformation, partnering with Food Cost Specialist Tommy Gering and Restaurant365 to drive scalable growth, streamlined operations, and better profitability.
Despite its successful track record and growth, VRG faced significant operational challenges that threatened consistency and profitability across locations. Corporate leaders lacked visibility into store-level performance, often receiving end-of-period numbers with little actionable detail. Each store operated differently, with no standardized processes in place, leading to inconsistent financial and guest experience outcomes. Manual inefficiencies like paper-based inventory and reporting consumed valuable manager time, while a disconnected tech stack created silos and drove up costs.
VRG turned to Restaurant365 to unify accounting, inventory, scheduling, and purchasing on one platform. The company consolidated legacy systems and automated key functions like AP invoice capture, saving hours of manual work while reducing errors.
A major success factor was VRG’s change management strategy. The company appointed divisional champions across its various brands to pilot and advocate for the platform, ensuring smoother adoption. Meanwhile, Gering standardized recipes, items, and vendor data, giving leaders reliable, comparable insights across locations.
By implementing automated KPI dashboards, actual-versus-theoretical reporting, and monthly calls between corporate and field teams, VRG and Restaurant365 created a data-driven culture focused on continuous improvement.
With Restaurant365, VRG’s Efficiency improved at every level of the business, with inventory processes halved and new stores implementing the platform without adding corporate staff. Financial performance improved significantly: at VRG’s LaGuardia Airport location food and labor costs fell by 1% to 2% year over year while stronger purchasing compliance drove better vendor pricing and rebates.
The improvements weren’t just financial. Simplified processes reduced stress and repetitive, manual work for in-store teams, driving monthly staff turnover below the 75% industry average. On the guest side, the benefits were equally clear. Managers now spend more time on the floor, leading to consistently higher customer satisfaction scores thanks to fresh food, friendly staff, and faster service.
Restaurant365 has truly transformed how we operate. From automation and visibility to profitability and guest focus, it’s taken us into the future of growth for Villa Restaurant Group.
Michael Leemann, Controller
Villa Restaurant Group
By aligning technology, people, and processes with unified systems and automated workflows, Villa Restaurant Group set the table for sustained growth with measurable profitability, efficiency, and employee satisfaction and retention improvements.
The commitment to innovation and continuous improvement earned VRG Restaurant365’s first-ever Customer Excellence Award at the Restaurant Transformation Festival in San Diego—a recognition of how embracing technology drive real, measurable results that help restaurant operators build profitable, long-term enterprises.
1–2% cost reduction
year-over-year
50% less time
 spent on inventory
Lowered staff turnover
below the 75% industry average
Discover how you can start achieving savings like these for your business
Restaurant365 brings together accounting, operations, scheduling, and more in a flexible platform—empowering restaurants to choose the solutions they need and scale with confidence.
