Kernels Popcorn Case Study: Faster Field Assessments with MeazureUp
MeazureUp was able to catch up with Paula Hurley, Director of Retail Operations at Kernels Popcorn to hear about her experiences since using the digital solution.
Why was tracking store assessments so slow at Kernels Popcorn?
Kernels Extraordinary Popcorn opened its first location in 1983 and has grown to more than 75 locations across North America. The brand built its following on product quality and on flavors that stood apart when snack food was assumed to be unhealthy, from Creamy Caramel to BLT on Rye. Sunflower oil became the base for all Kernels popcorn, which is where the company mantra “Practice Safe Snacks” comes from.
Paula Hurley, Director of Retail Operations, oversees the operations side of the business, with hiring and training, sales, health and safety, and internal inspections all under her accountability. Corporate stores received one field assessment per month and franchised stores twice per year, which meant District Managers were constantly conducting store visits.
The assessment itself ran on paper and Excel. The checklist was eight pages long, and there were three different versions of it. A Field Manager going out to conduct an assessment had to print the right one and handwrite notes directly onto the paper. Each Field Manager then sent Hurley PDFs of those notes, and it fell to her to review and translate them into data that store managers and the corporate team could use.
As Hurley put it, it could take hours just to organize and complete reports, wasting her time and lowering the value of the data she was creating. Only once that was finished could summary reports go out to stakeholders. In many cases a store waited up to two weeks to receive anything. With a fourteen-day turnaround, follow-up planning and coaching lost their effect, and by the time a store read the report the information could already be out of date. Photos taken during an assessment had to be stored on the individual District Manager’s phone until the final report was assembled.
What did Kernels need from a digital field assessment tool?
Kernels wanted reports produced quickly enough that management could help stores identify areas for improvement without the two-week delay. Faster assessment data would let Hurley and her team address issues in a way that benefited locations immediately, and store visits and their reports would no longer leave gaps that needed interpretation. The priority was a seamless process, easy for anyone to understand, that could scale as the chain grew.
How did MeazureUp reduce equipment downtime at Kernels?
Popcorn production depends on specialized equipment, so any downtime directly affects the bottom line. Since introducing MeazureUp into store visits, that downtime has decreased, a direct result of faster response times to operational issues.
When machinery is down, management can track the status of Action Plans relating to equipment fixes inside the MeazureUp application, so franchisees and general managers can see that the impact on revenue is contained. Potential issues can be identified and serviced before they become failures, and when problems do occur the team can act on them quickly. Identifying issues sooner means getting machinery back online earlier, which limits disruption to sales.
Why does assessment turnaround time matter for multi-unit snack and food retail?
A store assessment is only as useful as it is current. When a report takes two weeks to reach the location it describes, the coaching conversation happens about conditions that have already changed, and the manager receiving it has little reason to act. Closing that gap turns the assessment from a record of what happened into a tool for fixing what is happening, which matters most where equipment uptime and product quality are the business.
