Border Security

Until recently, El Rancho Foods’ loss prevention and security system amounted to cameras and VCRs in many of its restaurants, which offered some protection until it became clear much of the equipment was outdated and needed expensive repairs.

The potential problems from a malfunctioning system became more obvious when expensive repair bills came through CFO Marty McFeely’s office, and taped recordings of events in restaurants were not always available because recording equipment was broken or because basic maintenance had not been performed.

For McFeely, the case for a reliable surveillance system came down to the need to refute fraudulent slip-and-fall claims by customers, recordings of thieves committing robberies and having a management presence throughout the company’s 87 franchised Taco Bell restaurants to deter illegal or improper activities by employees or customers.

The initial search for a new and better system began shortly after McFeely received a $2,200 repair bill for a malfunctioning VCR. One potential vendor offered to replace all of the original cameras and recording equipment with a system that wasn’t compatible with any of the existing equipment, and charge about $6,000 per restaurant location.

Suddenly, the ability to combine some of El Rancho Foods’ existing equipment with new, more modern surveillance cameras and digital video recorders became an important capability, one that was offered by Toms River, N.J.-based Visual Management Systems.

“The main purpose of the new DVR surveillance system at the beginning had to do with insurance,” McFeely says. “We wanted to be able to identify the frauds, someone who would sit down in the dining room and say, ‘I fell.’ It was the same with robberies; we wanted to get the bad guys on film, and there was the issue of providing a plain old deterrent — not hide the cameras, but get the word out to make sure everybody knew management has a presence.

“But we soon realized that if we resolved [or prevented] just one situation of fraud, it would be a payback for the whole system,” he says.

All of the company’s Taco Bell locations now have the same LP equipment, with any variations being dictated by the size of the individual restaurant and the appropriate number of cameras.

With the camera system linked to the store’s PC in a back office, managers can click back and forth between routine PC operations and store-monitoring activities. And since recordings are time- and date-stamped, the company was able to refute a former employee’s claim that he was owed back pay for additional time spent in the restaurant.

While the initial emphasis was on monitoring in-store activities, the company has found that the cameras can bring solutions to issues of property being defaced with graffiti and preventing crime outside restaurants by installing multiple cameras in parking lots.

For its traditionally-sized Taco Bell restaurants, four cameras are adequate, McFeely says, while newer and larger locations require nine cameras — often with one in the drive-through lane that allows employees to monitor when lines may be getting too long.

Studying human nature
Jason Gonzalez, CEO of Visual Management Systems, says that the U.S. employment pool is comprised “of 20-60-20 groups. The first 20 percent of those are angels, model employees; 20 percent are opportunistic or mildly dishonest,” he says. “The remaining 60 percent are the fence sitters: They will take the side of whoever is having the greater success in their quest to be good or bad.”

Visual Management Systems’ equipment and services are designed around a working understanding of human nature — basically, that when management has a presence in the workplace, employees’ performance usually improves and they are less likely to engage in theft.

The cameras and recording devices bring management’s presence into the workplace 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through constant monitoring during hours when employees are in the building and with motion sensors when the building is supposed to be empty.

At the most practical level, Visual Management Systems has won friends and clients with its TrueHybrid Surveillance Platform because it allows those clients to continue using equipment they have already paid for while adding digital technology to the system. The result, Gonzalez says, is “a cost-effective transition to the next generation [of] digital video.”

In addition to review in high definition on monitors or in-store PCs, that data can also be viewed from remote locations via the Internet. Clients can assign varying levels of access to store-level and corporate managers.

Equipment packages consist of cameras, monitors, a storage device that is preloaded with recording software and an operating system designed to manage Internet access and various controls. The system is also protected with back-ups to preserve data, Gonzalez says.

Other Visual Management Systems clients include Harley Davidson, T.G.I. Friday’s, Clearview Cinemas and Best Western hotels. Most want to achieve some version of three different goals: improve worker productivity; improve customer service; and discourage workplace theft, vandalism and customer fraud.

“When it comes to productivity, it’s human nature that people do more when they perceive they are being watched,” Gonzalez says. “That’s why we encourage local managers to announce the installation of the cameras.

“In customer service we bring some accountability. With a nominal amount of review, I can verify that you said hello, that you were helpful and friendly, and that there was some up-selling. For problems of theft and vandalism, we can record what is being stolen … [and] with the quality of our digital images, we can verify the change being given customers at the register,” he explains.

Costs and benefits
El Rancho Foods chose to make capital equipment purchases for each restaurant as it replaced and upgraded the existing system and installed the same system to new locations. McFeely estimates that outfitting restaurants requiring nine cameras and the DVR costs $6,000 to $8,000.

In describing the time frame for generating a return on the company’s investment, McFeely says, “You can get your money back real quick compared to what you would lose in a robbery or two. Our robbery losses have definitely gone down since we put these cameras in. That’s why we splash it on our [restaurant] windows. The idea being: Why try to rob a house that has a barking dog, when there’s another house down the road that doesn’t have a dog. We’ve got a deterrent.”