When Hardee's Food Systems, America's fastest growing fast food chain, embraced a computing strategy to give it a competitive edge in the fast food industry, it decided not to make it a rush order.

Today, Hardee's eight-year implementation of a VAX computing network - linked to the VAX information system developed by its primary vendor, Fast Food Merchandisers, Inc. - has produced a level of vertical integration unmatched in the industry.

Hardee's recent acquisition of the Roy Rogers fast food chain and the smooth integration of hundreds of new restaurants into Hardee's informational infrastructure demonstrates the "bottom line" value of Hardee's investment in Digital technology.

STREAMLINED INFORMATION FLOW

In 1982, Hardee's Food Systems decided that complete reliance on centralized, mainframe computing had created a serious impediment to the growth and management of it business.

"We decided to decentralize our computing, making the field responsible for operational information - as opposed to corporate. This allowed us to avoid a very complicated mainframe upgrade of our corporate data center, and continued dependence on a single point of failure. Almost overnight, our operational information also became a whole lot better and more credible," explains William Burd, Vice President of Information Systems for Hardee's Foods.

Hardee's initial approach was to implement Digital VAX 11/750 systems in each of its seven area offices, tied by leased lines to a corporate VAXcluster system, today made up of VAX 6000s and VAX 8000s located in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

As the number of Hardee's restaurants has grown to total over 1700 in 1990, Hardee's upgraded from VAX ll/750 systems in its area offices to VAX 8200, 8350, and 8810 systems, taking advantage of the 100 percent code-compatibility of Digital VAX systems. This has allowed Hardees to grow its computing power smoothly and inexpensively, without application software modification or code conversion.

Sales, tax, labor, inventory, and waste information is collected at each Hardee's restaurant by Positran point of sale terminals. For 35 seconds each night, area office VAX systems automatically "poll" each restaurant's Positran devices, edit the collected data, and load it into local area office databases for labor, sales, and menu mix analysis. Simultaneously, the Hardee's VAX information network forwards financial and labor information to Hardee's corporate information center to enable generation of general ledger and payroll reports.

By tapping into the VAXcluster using desktop terminals, Hardee's senior managers can study corporate facts and figures, or monitor the progress of individual restaurants.

The data gathered by the VAX information network is also exchanged with the VAX information system of Fast Food Merchandisers, Inc. - Hardee's $1.4 billion sister company - its primary food, packaging, and utensil supplier.

INTEGRATION: A KEY COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Every time a sale is rung up in a Hardee's restaurant, the restaurant's inventory is decremented, based on the recipe for each menu item. An intelligent controller in the restaurant calculates an inventory order that will be automatically submitted to Hardee's network, subject to approval by the store manager, during electronic polling of the restaurant each night.

This information is forwarded to FFM s headquarters VAXcluster and distributed throughout FFM's VAX computer network to MicroVAX systems located in each of its three manufacturing and 11 distribution plants- Automating the inventory order process ensures that every Hardee's restaurant receives the supplies it needs to operate accurately and on time.

"We're one of the few restaurant chains that is indeed vertically integrated," says Douglas May, Vice President of MIS for FFM, Inc. "This has given us a terrific advantage."

"In an industry typically operating with gross margins between seven and nine percent, in which commodity prices ca fluctuate as much as 25 percent in a single day, order processing efficiency can make all the difference, says May "Our Digital computing capabilities have played a very key role in our success."

"We have decided that VAX system technology is our stated direction," adds Burd. "We just do things so much better today than we ever have."

FLEXIBLE AUTOMATION SUPPORTS ACQUISITION

The fast food industry is characterized by rapid growth and the need to react quickly to sudden changes in the marketplace and shifting business requirements.

Hardee's recent acquisition of the Roy Rogers restaurant chain presented Hardee's and FFM's VAX information systems with a significant test of their system's ability to respond to a major challenge.

"Suddenly we had one distribution plant that had to adjust from an average of 250 deliveries each week to over 1500. The VAX information network we developed - and the use of Digital's DECtalk product - allowed us to handle the increase with no changes in the VAX system at all," says May.