Overview:

Great food. Classic rock. World's largest selection of draft beer. Positioned with these three promises, Yard House Restaurants opened its first upscale eatery along California's Long Beach waterfront in 1996. Already it has grown to include nine restaurants, and was named a Hot Concept by Nation's Restaurant News in 2002.

Sage MAS 200

• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Bank Reconciliation
• Custom Office
• FAS Asset Accounting
• General Ledger
• Inventory Management
• Purchase Order
• Visual Integrator

Yard House Finds Plenty to Savor With Sage MAS 200

Great food. Classic rock. World's largest selection of draft beer. Positioned with these three promises, Yard House Restaurants opened its first upscale eatery along California's Long Beach waterfront in 1996. Already it has grown to include nine restaurants, and was named a Hot Concept by Nation's Restaurant News in 2002.

Accommodating as many as 250 beers on tap is no small feat. At the cost of a cool half-million dollars, the flagship restaurant boasts a draft system and two-story keg room with more than five miles of beer lines. Guests sip ales from uniquely shaped glass containers measuring three feet tall, suggesting the early Colonial tradition of serving 36-inch glasses of beer, or "yards," to weary stagecoach drivers. Menu items include Jamaican jerk chicken wings, Caesar salad with seared ahi, and warm chocolate soufflé.

Taste of Success
By the time the Yard House expanded to a second restaurant, it had outgrown its original QuickBooks package. The company selected Sage MAS 90 ERP software as its end-to-end business system after a careful selection process based on its flexibility, reliability, and insightful reporting.

"Everybody here loved Sage MAS 90," says Phil Crawford, CIO. "It has managed all of our receivables, payables, profit-and-loss calculations, cut our checks in AP, and even tracked our inventories for years. It was robust, too, and very user-friendly. Nobody wanted to change."

Centralized Control
But as operations became more dispersed, Crawford could see that thin-client computing would be essential. "We upgraded to Sage MAS 200 about a year ago based on Sage MAS 200's enhanced LAN capabilities," he explains. "Being part of the Sage Software family of products, we were confident it would perform well. Sage MAS 200 fits our organizational model from an IT standpoint, as it allows us to run our system across a T1 line. This means we have a point-to-point connection from headquarters to any site in the enterprise."

Crawford notes that Sage MAS 200 is very easy for end-users to learn and use. "All we need is one bookkeeper at each site, plus four accounting clerks at the corporate office. The Aloha and HSI POS Systems in our restaurants export the data to a third party application called Aspect Software which in turn posts sales, labor, and inventory dollars directly into Sage MAS 200 utilizing the Visual Integrator module. This has enabled us to streamline and achieve incredible efficiencies in both accounting and IT," he says.

Another important benefit of Sage MAS 200 is convenience. "Remote management saves me a lot of driving time," says Crawford. "I can install Sage MAS 200 anywhere I need to. More importantly, I can remotely manage users, access levels, and rules based management from a centralized location. It also gives me maximum control from an administrative perspective."

Easy Access, Consolidated Data
Lorrie Coppock, accounting manager, had used Sage MAS 200 at two jobs prior to the Yard House, and was glad to see her old friend being implemented. "Sage MAS 200 is the staple of our accounting division," she says. "Without it, we'd be using pens and paper. Security is excellent. Best of all, we have every form of data consolidated into a single system, for easy access and complete reporting functionality."

Both Coppock and Crawford appreciated the assistance provided by their Sage Software business partner. "They were really helpful, explaining how the upgrade would improve operations, and explaining any OS constraints," says Crawford. "Their support ensured that implementation was speedy and smooth."

Crawford believes that selecting Sage MAS 90 at the outset, and then upgrading to Sage MAS 200, were wise moves. "Sage MAS 200 gives us the integrated functionality we need," he notes. "We now have excellent reporting utilities, and the system is compliant with our corporate LAN–allowing us to leverage all of the efficiencies inherent in thin-client architecture."