In 1936, Johnny Colera began selling hot dogs at his lunch counter in Jamestown, New York. Thanks to his special chili sauce and savvy business management, his restaurant, named Johnny’s Lunch, became a huge success and a local institution. Johnny’s Lunch offers good food, low prices, top-notch service, and a unique store atmosphere, featuring Johnny’s hot dogs, burgers, fries, onion rings, and shakes, as well as less common options like homemade rice pudding. The restaurant now wants to grow into a national QSR (quick-service restaurant, or fast food) leader similar to McDonald’s. The company is currently led by two of Colera’s grandchildren, Anthony and John Calamunci, and a newly assembled team of executives with experience in the QSR industry. Growing the company from its humble origins into a national presence faces significant challenges. One will be to retain the restaurant’s small-town, local flavour as franchises proliferate across the country. Accomplishing this goal will require a coordinated effort. Another challenge for Johnny’s Lunch will be to sustain growth despite the impact of a weak economy. Analysts predict that the slow economy will threaten growth potential for QSRs; it’s estimated that the sector’s annual growth will slow to 2% or 3%, down from much higher rates during more promising times. The company hopes that familiar and cheap food will translate to success even in an economic down turn during 2009 and beyond. Management wanted to expand to 30-50 restaurants by the end of 2008, with a goal of as many as 3,000 locations nationwide in the following 5 years. There are only 3,300 hot dog restaurants in the country, and the most prominent chains like Nathan’s Famous and Wienerschnitzel have only 180 and 250outlets, respectively. Johnny’s Lunch and industry analysts believe that there is room for the explosive growth the company is planning .Johnny’s Lunch hopes to overcome these challenges with the help of state-of-the-art technology ,including sophisticated mapping technology to scout locations, state-of-the-art point-of-sale (POS) systems, and inventory management systems that ensure freshness and reduce costs .Pitney Bowes MapInfo has allowed Johnny’s to take a scientific approach to choosing spots for new restaurants. MapInfo’s Predictive Analytics group interviewed 800 customers at the original James town restaurant to identify the types of customers Johnny’s Lunch attracted. Half were families; most were ages 16–24 or over 60 and had lower-middle to upper-middle class incomes. The interviews also determined the distribution of customers coming into the restaurant from work, home, shopping, or some other location. MapInfo’s Smart Site Solutions analytics technology helped Johnny’s Lunch use this information to pinpoint potential markets and to identify the optimal number of sites within the market to maximize sales. Smart Site Solutions separated the country into many designated market areas (DMAs) showing the level of competition, demographics, and characteristics of prospective franchise locations. Pitney Bowes consultants determined which of 72 “clusters”, or neighbourhood types, best match the restaurant’s optimal target areas from a variety of perspectives. Using this data within the Smart Site Solutions model allowed Johnny’s Lunch to identify approximately 4,500 optimal trade areas across the country. The executive team believes that these areas possess the best opportunities for successful Johnny’s Lunch franchises. Using data such as trade area size, buffer distance between stores, customer profile, and more, Smart Site Solutions created a model that predicted the potential success of various sites. The processes allowed Johnny’s Lunch to identify sites without a wealth of historical sales data. Target spots include strip malls in facilities ranging from 1,400–1,800 feet, as opposed to freestanding locations, which tend to cost more to setup. The company also hopes that its franchises will be placed alongside well-known national brands, which will give Johnny’s Lunch immediate credibility among consumers. Another area in which Johnny’s Lunch is using advanced technology to spur growth is its POS system. A POS system captures sales transaction data at the actual physical location where goods or services are bought or sold through electronic cash registers or handheld scanners. Company executives have selected the MICROS 3700 POS system from MICROS Systems as the system all their franchises will use as Johnny’s Lunch expands. A good POS system helps monitor inventory, control waste, and adhere to government regulations (for example, if food takes too long to prepare, if a cashier voids excessive transactions, or if any violations of labour laws occur, the sys-tem will alert employees). The MICROS system does all this and provides several other advantages. The sys-tem has impressed Johnny’s Lunch with how easy it is to understand and use, and MICROS is a large company with national reach and vendor locations throughout the country. This means that as Johnny’s Lunch grows nationally, MICROS will continue to be able to meet the company’s needs throughout the United States and should be simple for new franchises to master. The system also allows the company to track useful data about consumers’ habits, such as how much food is eaten in the restaurant as opposed to how much is carried out. Until recently, the company exclusively used laptop computers and two POS systems to run the business. Johnny’s Lunch currently uses a single custom-made server from Dell Direct, but plans to add more new servers in the near future—one for marketing data, and one that will network all locations’ POS systems—as part of an IT overhaul. Johnny’s Lunch also plans to upgrade its Web site, incorporating a portal that will allow franchise operators to place order and download pertinent information.