Tim Hortons Franchisee Cuts Maintenance Expenses by 50% Using Coast

The McCluskey Group is one of Coast’s oldest customers. When they first heard about the software in 2019, the company owned and operated about 10 Tim Hortons restaurants. All of the restaurant equipment they owned was managed through a spreadsheet, and it wasn’t working. 

The company needed software to track their maintenance activities, but all the solutions they found were designed more for manufacturing companies and didn’t address their specific needs. That’s when Tara Lee-Hendrycks, director of operations with The McCluskey Group, was introduced to Rohit Prakash, Coast’s CEO. She hopped on a phone call with him to vent, as she puts it, about the problems she needed to solve. 

His response? “Let me take a stab at that.”

No Clear Picture of Equipment Downtime

The two worked together to come up with a solution that addressed her core problems. The main one being that she didn’t have a system to track all the day-to-day issues found with their equipment as well as the buildings they had. “We had a lot of downtime,” Lee-Hendrycks admits. “We had a repair and maintenance worker who we brought into the company, but he didn’t know what was broken or the parts he needed, so he’d spend a lot of time going to get them.” 

In short, communication regarding equipment downtime was horrendous, Lee-Hendrycks says — and in the fast-food industry, that can quickly stifle your business. They needed a solution that allowed for immediate action when equipment broke down — something with pictures and all the process documents required to be effective. They also needed a better scheduling system. 

“That was the dream,” says Lee-Hendrycks. “Being able to communicate live and track it and know how we’re doing. We wanted to be able to answer the question: ‘How good are we at our job now?’”

Coast Helps Reduce Maintenance Expenses

With all of this in mind, Coast adapted its capabilities to meet their needs. Not only did the software’s maintenance management system streamline the team’s work, but it also included reporting when equipment was down or broken, helping the team answer questions about what to repair or completely replace. This data also allowed Lee-Hendrycks to challenge manufacturers on repairs that were more manufacturer-related instead of user error. 

The result? The company was able to close a major gap of inefficiencies, which reduced their maintenance expenses by 50 percent in that first year.  “Now, anyone can report when something is down. So, instead of being down for two days, we’re back up and running within a few hours,” Lee-Hendrycks says. “Less downtime means more opportunity for driving sales.”

The other major benefit of using Coast involved how they worked with third-party vendors. “As we became better at tracking, we could hold third-party vendors more accountable,” she adds.

Growing With Coast

Coast also made it easy for the company to grow, adding 23 more restaurants to their original 10. “Tracking maintenance for 10 restaurants was painful using spreadsheets, so I can’t even imagine doing 33 restaurants with that process,” Lee-Hendrycks points out. 

The McCluskey Group now has 700 employees with at least 50 to 70 percent of them using Coast in one way or another. Lee-Hendrycks says that the software is a good place to store all the information they need regarding asset and maintenance management as well as a place to have high-level communication. Everyone from the company’s president to 15-year-old team members communicate through Coast.

“It truly simplifies our lives,” Lee-Hendrycks adds. “And now that we’ve had it for so long, we take it for granted. We do everything in it.”

Coast Meets the Client’s Needs

Perhaps the most impactful thing throughout her time working with Coast is the responsiveness of the Coast team. It goes beyond simply being available to help. The team was able to adapt and customize its software to her specific needs. “For me, working with Ro meant the ability to design whatever my mind dreamt up,” Lee-Hendrycks says.

And that hasn’t changed. Whenever she has an idea about how to do things better, she just makes a call and asks if it can be done.

“If I have a question or need, it’s flawless, and they’re so helpful,” she adds. “That’s one of the big pieces [about Coast] — the team’s ability to work with their clients. They’re willing to make it exactly what you need.”