Capton announced that the InterContinental Miami Hotel is seeing significant and immediate cost savings following a December 2008 installation of Capton’s RFID-based Beverage Tracker solution.
The InterContinental Miami Hotel is one of the properties in the portfolio of Strategic Hotels & Resorts, an industry-leading owner and asset manager of high-end hotels and resorts.
In November 2008, a beverage manager familiar with Capton’s Beverage Tracker solution at another property joined the team at the InterContinental Miami. Amidst the challenging economics of Q4 2008, Strategic Hotels was convinced that the Capton solution would produce bottom line results. The Capton solution was subsequently purchased and implemented in two bar and restaurant concepts at the InterContinental Miami in December 2008.
“Even during an economic downturn, we could see the value of moving forward with Capton as a cost savings tool,” according to Spiro Frangos, director of food and beverage for the InterContinental Miami. “We saw a drop in pouring averages of almost 37 percent in the first 60 days, which we know will correlate to a significant savings in annualized liquor inventory costs.”
Jason Deville, beverage manager for the InterContinental Miami added, “The hotel used an inventory solution in the past which highlighted missing bottles of liquor, but did not give any information on how they went missing. The Capton advantage is the immediate ability to have a specific conversation with a specific bartender on a specific issue. It gives me the answers to the key questions. Where are my missing drinks? Where are my over or under pours?”
The Beverage Tracker system utilizes RFID-enabled liquor pour spouts to provide a better-than-secret-shopper picture of exactly how each drink is prepared, how the guest is served and how the transaction is handled in the point-of-sale (POS) system. The system tracks and highlights variance events for management follow-up action. ROI reviews insure management understands current operational patterns monitored by the system, resulting progress areas and remaining improvement opportunities.
“Based on the results achieved, Strategic Hotels is looking at implementing the Capton solution at more locations,” said Capton’s CEO, Scott Martiny. “When every percentage point beverage cost drop is worth thousands of dollars, the benefit of the Beverage Tracker system becomes even more obvious in difficult times. We are seeing more and more owners and asset managers like Strategic Hotels considering Capton as a factor in driving these kind of results.”