Why did Duck Donuts partner with Qvinci?

The mission of Duck Donuts has been consistent since our founding, to guarantee every customer a clean, courteous, family—friendly, fun and scrumptious experience. Not wanting to stop at excellent customer service alone, Duck Donuts turned our attention to finding ways in which we could improve the experience for our franchisees and support them in all aspects of their business. With Qvinci we gained visibility into our system—wide financials and can now truly provide our franchisees with valuable and actionable guidance to help them run their businesses even more profitably.

What was Duck Donuts doing before Qvinci?

Prior to Qvinci, we were asking the store owners to send us their P&L statements on a monthly basis. They would fax, email, or find additional ways to provide them, a process that was not organized. We looked at each P&L individually, but as a young, growing company, we wanted to start seeing some more complex comparisons. We also had several franchisees who were asking how they compared to others in the system, which was hard to answer when we were still comparing “apples to oranges.”

What initially brought you to Qvinci?

As the brand expanded, we tried to gain access to more reports that would allow us to compare across franchisees. We wanted to see that everybody was in alignment, but that was difficult due to limitations with our manual system. After being referred to Qvinci by Intuit QuickBooks®, we immediately realized that to run these more sophisticated reports and improve reporting quality, Qvinci was absolutely the next step we needed to take. It’s been great having one place to consolidate these reports and actually seeing the breakdown of each line item. As we said, previously we were requesting P&L reports individually, and it was hard to read through the disparate styles and determine how each chart of accounts was set up. Now, with Qvinci, it has streamlined our process and we can view the breakdown of each line item in a standard chart of accounts. We know exactly where the numbers are, can compare financials on a unit—level and system—wide basis, and most importantly, efficiently provide guidance to our franchisees.

Overall, how has your experience been with Qvinci?

Qvinci has supported us in ways which have completely exceeded our expectations, and the whole team has been fantastic and extremely responsive, answering any questions we had and helping us get Qvinci seamlessly rolled out to our franchisees. The onboarding process was also super easy and only took 3 minutes. The price is reasonable, and we can definitely see the advantage of Qvinci and how well it is working out with Duck Donuts.

How has Qvinci helped your franchisees?

We’ve had a lot of requests from franchisees asking us questions like “I’m three months open, how am I doing?” It’s great to have the resources available where we can run reports with so many parameters and across groups of similar franchisees as we can with Qvinci. We’ve been able to provide these curious franchisees with reports showing their performance in relation to their peers. Compared to our previous “apples and oranges” method, it’s a huge asset for us and our franchisees.

While franchisees were hesitant to share their numbers at first, once we explained the benefits of having their reports in one central database, and how Qvinci is simply a tool to help us help them more efficiently run their business, they soon realized the impact. We also remember that not everybody is an accountant, so giving them easy—to—understand KPI sheets as part of their monthly reporting package is a huge bonus. Of course, our franchisees want to know where their money is, and this is a great starting point for a store owner before they dig deeper into their financials. Our regional franchise coaches are also trained on what to look for in our franchisees KPIs. They can easily go into Qvinci and see if, for example, labor is high, and provide appropriate guidance to the franchisee in response.

How has Qvinci helped Duck Donuts corporate?

We currently have more than 60 stores open today, and another 130 stores planned in 23 states. We wanted these comparison reports to identify trends, and it is a win—win for the company and for our franchisees to get onboard. This year we wanted to take a different approach on really assisting our franchisees, and now we are getting that real—time data we can provide them to help guide their business and ensure success. Currently we have 98% of our existing owners on Qvinci, and we are requiring all new franchisees to implement Qvinci as part of their FDD. We are ready to dive even deeper into its expansive functionality as we discover all that the platform has to offer.