Sugary Sweet Surveillance Success
How NGP Management Reduces Food Waste by More Than Half and Optimizes Store Operations
When your business revolves around sweet success, every dollar and donut counts. At NGP Management—a Dunkin’ Franchise operator in the New England region of the USA—a top priority for Carl Wolcott, Asset Protection Manager, is managing donut inventory and reducing waste—but it was slipping through the cracks.
March Networks’ video surveillance coupled with the Searchlight data analytics platform has enabled NGP Management to transform their operations, cutting donut waste by more than half, and ensuring every sugary treat meets customer demand.
Hole Lotta Trouble: Managing Donut Inventory and Reducing Waste
Founded in the early 1990s, NGP Management has grown steadily to 114 retail stores across Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, all equipped with March Networks systems.
After starting as a store manager with the company in 2012, Carl later transitioned into asset protection. He noticed that several franchisees faced significant operational challenges, particularly with managing inventory across multiple stores. For many years, the company’s surveillance technology was underutilized, primarily serving as a reactive tool for viewing recorded footage rather than a proactive solution for loss prevention and operational efficiency.
The company had been struggling with high product waste and theft, like discounting, under-ringing, and food theft, making it difficult to track store performance and employee compliance efficiently. Carl noted that excessive donut waste at the end of the night was having an impact on profits. Across 114 stores, this issue can significantly impact franchise revenue.
Carl and his colleagues have made it a priority to leverage the full potential of their surveillance system to enhance the company’s security and operational performance.
Glazing the Way: Transforming Operations with March Networks
After configuring and using March Networks loss prevention solutions, Carl started receiving proactive email reports on potentially fraudulent transactions. The team started analyzing the data on issues like theft at sandwich stations, drive-thru discounts, voided transactions and backdoor product losses, which resulted in immediate identification of employee theft. It became clear that by simply utilizing the technology and services available through March Networks, NGP Management could quickly and easily improve customer satisfaction, reduce waste, and crack down on food theft —all helping to boost security, efficiencies and profits.
In fact, one Dunkin’ location, previously among the top underperforming stores, became one of the top performers in year-over-year sales after operators used the technology to prevent and address issues like discount abuse, late openings, early closings, and fraudulent voids.
Key to their success was also the decision to utilize March Networks’ VMS—Command Enterprise Software (CES) on-premise and March Networks’ Searchlight software with POS integration for enhanced operational monitoring and theft reduction. The solution enables remote Operations Audits and other tools for real-time alerts to add to the extensive deployment of NVRs and cameras across all stores.
Centralized management helps Carl’s team to effectively and efficiently monitor all 114 stores from one place, providing valuable business intelligence at the enterprise level and site-specific. March Networks also developed custom integrations for NGP Management to target specific concerns like tracking donut case activity and identifying locations where theft is more common.
“Monitoring donut display cases and inventory trends for specific donut flavors helped us find that balance between preventing early stockouts and reducing end-of-day waste. Thanks to Searchlight and Operations Audits, we receive this crucial information automatically right to our email, helping us make changes and decisions that keep customers happy and minimize losses,” said Carl.
The company is also working with March Networks to launch Smart Safe integration, which links cash deposits with video footage, making it easier to identify the culprit when any cash is missing.
Dough-lightful Outcomes: Turning Operational Challenges into Sweet Success
By fully leveraging their video surveillance system with POS transaction integration, NGP Management has turned their challenges into sweet successes. They have significantly improved operations and increased profits—cutting product waste by more than half in select stores and reducing the number of stores consistently running out of donuts. The March Networks system enabled Carl and his team to catch a significant amount of fraudulent transactions and instances of product theft.
“We’ve caught theft of all kinds, big and small using March Networks technology—most of which comes to me proactively, without me actually having to watch the surveillance video,” says Carl. “We’ve had employees making themselves sandwiches to take home daily, we’ve had boxes of food product being stolen from the back door… but now I get alerted immediately, and our staff can take action.”
Carl added that after tailoring March Networks solutions to fit their business needs, he and his team hadn’t realized how much they had underestimated the value of the system they had been using for years. Automated loss prevention features, real-time alerts and Smart Search allow his team to quickly gather evidence on theft, pinpoint stores that close early and identify pre-closing activities that hurt customer traffic.
“It has been night and day in terms of loss prevention and fixing operational challenges since we really started to take advantage of all that the March Networks products and services have to offer. We were really underutilizing some features in the past, and I am so impressed with what we’ve been able to do with the technology systems we have.”
Utilizing advanced video surveillance and transaction data, Carl and his team are empowered to take proactive measures, ensuring every donut and dollar stays in the dough. By drastically reducing waste and enhancing security, NGP Management has optimized inventory management, reduced theft and improved customer satisfaction— boosting profits. Their team operates more efficiently across all locations— ensuring that every donut finds its way to a happy customer, not the trash!
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