How Brixens is Increasing Revenue 10% Week Over Week With Toast POS

Brixens has been taking complete care of its guests since it opened in July 2017. "We make everything from scratch," says Tanya Sanchez, General Manager. "All of our recipes are developed in-house, and we use ingredients typically found in fine dining restaurants."

Inspired by a family history of healthy eating and dietary restrictions, Tanya designed Brixens' menu to be incredibly customizable, so that every customer has something to enjoy.

"Growing up, I realized that it was hard for people who have dietary restrictions to just go out and enjoy a meal," Tanya recalls. "I wanted to create a place where everyone would feel comfortable, regardless of their dietary needs."

Almost every item on the menu can be modified for vegans or vegetarians, without any sacrifice to the original flavor profile. This focus on the guest experience has resulted in huge increases in popularity for Brixens since opening.

Fighting an uphill battle with Micros

Brixens was not always the well-oiled machine it is now. In fact, when Tanya chose Micros as Brixens' first point of sale system back in January 2017, she said the team faced a series of challenges.

"We chose Micros because the sales rep really convinced us on their customer service. He told me that his team would be here for us day or night." However, shortly after making the investment, Tanya and her team were not impressed. 

"We made a plan to have Micros up and running by our opening that April. Long story short, the system wasn't ready by then, so we were forced to delay our opening," says Tanya. To make matters worse, once Micros was actually operating in their restaurant, Tanya was shocked when it could not perform the simplest of tasks.

"About 20% of our orders would be randomly marked as fulfilled. They would just disappear from the kitchen screens completely," Tanya recalls. This would result in severe delays, with some ticket times going almost as high as two hours. 

Several months down the line, Tanya found something shocking when looking at past reports. "These lost orders resulted in a large volume of comped meals. In our first six months of business, we had comped over $50,000 worth of food. We were basically paying people to eat at our restaurant."

When Tanya reached out for help, she was left to her own devices. "We called our local Micros distributor begging him to help us. He couldn't figure out how to solve our problem, so he decided instead to not do anything and abandon us."

Fed up with how much harm Micros was doing to their business, Tanya and her team made the switch and invested in Toast.

Increases in efficiency with Toast's Kitchen Display Screens

In Brixens today, you will find five Toast terminals and a rather unique setup of kitchen display screens. 

"We use one kitchen display screen per station. We have one for the fry station, one for the bar, one for the expo station, and another for the sauté station," explains Tanya. This allows Brixens to maximize order turnover, as each chef or bartender only sees orders that are relevant to them, creating a very granular separation of duties. 

Combined with reliable communication between the point of sale terminals and KDS units, Toast has had a dramatic impact on Brixens' revenue.

"Since switching to Toast, we've been increasing sales by at least 10% week over week" says Tanya.

Tanya attributes this impressive revenue growth to two additional factors. The first is the shortened ticket times.

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The second is the near elimination of comped orders. "We went from constant meal comping to it being a very rare occurrence," Tanya adds. 

Newfound confidence for the future

When asked about her goals for 2018, Tanya was confident in her team and in her restaurant. "By July 2018, I want to have doubled our sales from where we were in January. Toast's reliability and impact on our efficiency so far makes me confident that we can achieve this."

Additionally, Albuquerque residents can expect the first Brixens advertisement this year. 

"When we used Micros, I genuinely did not want to advertise because I didn't want more customers coming in and having a bad experience due to a lost order," Tanya admits. "With Toast, we're looking at advertising for the first time because we feel confident that we can deliver the guest experience we've always wanted to."

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