Get a Handle on Your QSR Kitchen Repair Costs

Out of the frying pan but avoiding the (budget) fire

For a quick-service restaurant, the kitchen is the heart of your operation. You need it running at 100% efficiency every single day to maximize your profits. However, it can be one of the more costly areas for your business. It’s full of expensive assets that require regular maintenance, and on occasion, can break down entirely.   

But how can you tell if you’re spending too much? Do you know how much your industry peers are spending? If your fryer has been repaired three times this year, is it time to get a new one? If you don’t know, then you’re likely overspending — and losing valuable asset uptime. We have the answers so you can keep your kitchen cooking, your costs low, and your guests happy.

The assets in your kitchen that burn through your budget

The most costly assets to repair include ovens, charbroilers, and walk-in coolers. They also happen to be the ones that you need to keep your business running. That means that if they break down, you’re also missing out on the revenue they would be generating in that downtime! You can do some napkin math to figure out you’d be on the hook for a few hundred dollars in repairs, and thousands of dollars in missed revenue. You can calculate your exact losses here. 

It will be helpful for you to know what the average repair cost is for these business-critical assets. If you’re spending more than the average, you’ll want to find a way to improve the speed of repair as well as first time completion rate. That will not only lower your final invoice cost, but save you even more in revenue.

Let’s make cooler (and smarter) asset decisions 

Let’s talk about walk-in coolers. We’ll use them as an example of how you can analyze an asset’s performance based on actionable data, and make smart decisions about how to run your business. The average walk-in cooler requires about 1 repair every 3 years, which take over 11 days to resolve. But the average warranty is only 6 to 12 months. You don’t need a calculator to know the costs are going to start adding up. 

This is where we can help. Our platform is already tracking asset performance for 3.6 million pieces of equipment. And by analyzing the frequency and cost of repairs, compared to the original value and remaining useful life, we can help you make data-driven replacement decisions. Tracking hundreds or thousands of critical assets is complex, but we can help you do that, and see what’s happening with each one in real-time.

The more you know, the smarter you can grow 

It rhymes, so you know it’s true. But really: When you track asset spend and performance, you have granular visibility into how much each asset type is costing you, so you can prioritize opportunities to optimize sourcing and costs. Our platform also tracks provider performance in repairing those critical assets, so you can find top performers to get fast quality work done. 

“ServiceChannel is a vital tool for managing over 2,000 facilities. For a multi-site restaurant, it’s a must. You’re collecting data the entire time. You can always go back, look at your average spend, evaluate the vendor, and see if you can get better value.”

– Roger Goldstein, Executive Director of Facilities, Panda Restaurant Group

If you find yourself making decisions based on your gut, the way you’ve always done it, or anything but a rich pool of data, then you’re missing out on facility uptime — revenue, in other words: Let ServiceChannel supercharge your business decisions with data to help you turn the most profit possible. 

For a look at the full report on how quick service restaurants can save on costs in the kitchen and select the top performing service providers, check out our Quick-Service Restaurant Facilities Benchmark Report.