Since 1987, Sculpture Hospitality has been enhancing the performance and profitability of bars, restaurants, and hotels worldwide. By managing inventory levels to reduce waste and loss, the company helps businesses improve profitability in a highly competitive market where only 20 percent of operations remain open after five years.
Part of the reason for this rate of failure is loss, which can add up quickly and will inevitably have a detrimental impact on the operation’s performance. A free pint here, an overpour there, mistakes and oversights can amount to thousands of dollars in losses that can threaten the viability of an operation long-term. Whether it is intentional or a mistake, humans are fallible, which is why partners like Sculpture Hospitality have developed a suite of services and supports that can help to mitigate these actions and their consequences.
“In this economy, every penny counts. With the price of inflation, it’s so much harder to keep the lights on and keep the doors open, but if you’ve got your product sliding out the back door, I would say, it makes it almost an impossible task and that’s where we come in,” explains Dennis Roberts, who has been a Sculpture Franchisee since September 2001, of the personalized touch he and his colleagues offer.
A unique value proposition
Sculpture Hospitality stands out by combining advanced technology with expert hands-on support. As Vanessa De Caria, President and CEO of Sculpture Hospitality, explains, “We are not a tech company that provides service; we are a service company that provides amazing technology.” This unique approach ensures that bar and restaurant owners not only get cutting-edge inventory management tools but also receive the expert guidance needed to implement and maximize these solutions effectively.
Under the leadership of Vanessa De Caria, Sculpture Hospitality has demonstrated the benefits of having a female leader at the helm. Women in leadership roles often bring diverse perspectives, foster inclusive work environments, and drive innovative thinking. Vanessa’s forward-thinking vision has been instrumental in the company’s continued success and global expansion.
As De Caria further elaborates, “We developed a software program over 30 years ago that was ahead of its time, especially when operators only used pen and paper to conduct inventory counts.” This continued forward-thinking foundation has led to widespread belief in the value of Sculpture Hospitality’s offerings, resulting in a global family of 300 franchisees in more than 30 countries.
The company’s easy-to-use software solutions integrate seamlessly with any resource management or point-of-sale system and are backed by unmatched 24/7 support—a fundamental principle of Sculpture Hospitality. With tools like the user-friendly food and beverage inventory management system and comprehensive analytics and reporting, businesses gain complete visibility into their operations. This combination of technology and hands-on support helps businesses save time, enhance ROI, and significantly boost profitability by optimizing inventory management processes.
A model to emulate
Across the globe, Sculpture Hospitality offers bars, restaurants, and hoteliers the support they need to understand their own operations by leveraging modern technology and a knowledgeable team to onboard and support them through the integration and analysis.
From De Caria’s perspective, “The franchisees are really well trained; they learn how to navigate the software and we provide ongoing training for them as we offer new products, new services. Most of our franchisees come from the Hospitality Industry and have a deep understanding of the challenges operators face like overpouring, questionable inventory counts that force them to spend too much time trouble shooting their month-end pour costs, and other financials. The entire inventory process is tedious. Outsourcing it to our teams allows them to use actionable data and improve their ordering. Our franchisees are industry people, and are continuously being trained and upgrading their learning to delivery continual upgrades to the platform.”
To remain competitive on the software side, Sculpture Hospitality continues to hone its offerings by listening to its vast customer base, evolving to better meet the specific needs of its clients through software updates, new apps, and data aggregation tools.
Though its genesis was in the management of alcohol inventories, which is typically a higher yield, Sculpture Hospitality has evolved to include food, which is a major opportunity given that it represents 80 percent of an establishment’s inventory management considerations.
With food comes a host of services and support that includes vendor analysis, price fluctuations, ordering, recipe and menu engineering, and other features that leverage the wealth of data collected to better understand clients’ needs as well as market trends that are taking place.
“It’s definitely a different tech landscape than it was 30 years ago; with new solutions constantly emerging, technology can become outdated quickly. This influx of tech-oriented solutions presents a challenge in our hospitality space, which has traditionally focused on personal service,” explains De Caria of a challenge that Sculpture Hospitality and its clients face.
Owner-operators are tasked with navigating the proliferation of software solutions that are available to them, and while the choices can be overwhelming, none of them offer the same level of support that is provided by Sculpture Hospitality.
Meeting clients where they are
Sculpture Hospitality offers three tiers of service for clients based on their needs—from self-guided offerings for the technologically astute client who can operate the software and facilitate inventories themselves, to comprehensive services that enable clients to take full advantage of the local support that is available to them with setup, training, database management, and analytics, ensuring there’s a custom service option to suit every need.
As leading pioneers in the space, De Caria believes, “We’re the only ones who have this footprint globally and that can tailor any solution to any need of the customer. Unlike other software solutions off the shelf, we take the time to truly listen and understand our customers’ pain points, allowing us to tailor solutions that make the most sense for their unique needs.”
Roberts heralds Sculpture Hospitality’s commitment to offering 24-hour technical support to ensure that regardless of when an issue arises, it will be addressed promptly and seamlessly. “We pride ourselves on being 100 percent accessible 100 percent of the time,” he says. “That’s the advantage of having so many boots on the ground so widespread around the globe; I think that’s what makes us really different from a lot of the competition.”
Despite growing around the world, the goal at Sculpture Hospitality remains the same: to continue to offer a technology solution that supports its clients in operating with optimal performance and profitability, informed by actionable data and compatibility for the digital age, supplemented by an unmatched consultative approach personalized to an operator’s needs.
“It’s just not in our DNA to be hands-off,” says De Caria. “What sets us apart is our ability to navigate the overwhelming array of tech choices while maintaining our cutting-edge capabilities. The challenge lies in ensuring we continue to showcase our innovative solutions without losing the personal touch that has distinguished us for many years.”
Proven results
In the age of data, Sculpture Hospitality is the competitive advantage that bars, restaurants, and hoteliers can rely on to help them make the right decisions based on actionable information. As De Caria notes, “What we provide are actionable data points that allow operators to better understand their business and make decisions on what to order, what products are moving well, what their price points are, and so much more.”
Sculpture Hospitality helped Saint John Ale House in New Brunswick reduce its pour cost by seven percent while increasing its profit margins by addressing its challenges, which included inefficient liquor inventory practices that had plagued the business for years. What further complicated this matter was that it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The management team conducted monthly inventories, which was a time-consuming process that was ineffective, wasting more time and money along the way. When Sculpture Hospitality came onboard in 2008, Saint John Ale House’s pour cost was an alarming 38 percent, which would have major implications for the company’s profit margins.
The same can be said about Malone’s Grill in Santa Cruz, California, an Irish pub founded in 1980 and later sold in 2016, when it was transformed into an award-winning American gastropub. But with success comes challenges and, in this case, managing inventory was the problem.
Once instituted, Sculpture Hospitality’s solutions led to a steady improvement in profit margins at Malone’s Grill through the reduction of waste and increased accountability. Stock shortages became a thing of the past, and the overall operation saw significant benefits from the structured approach and accountability that Sculpture Hospitality provides.
During the pandemic, times were tough, and Malone’s made the hard decision to work without Sculpture Hospitality’s services. During that time, the operation experienced a loss of $6,000 worth of alcohol, losses that Sculpture could have helped them avoid.
After reinstituting Sculpture Hospitality, Malone’s Grill went from a pour cost of 28 percent to 16 percent, which goes to show that its services truly are an investment that pays off. Its owners, Jennee and Taylor Fontana, are now Sculpture Franchisees themselves.
Jennee Fontana has said, “It’s a great program, so it was the obvious choice to purchase after we learned the franchisees in our area were selling their territory. When I am completing audits for clients week to week, I look at how much we charge and then compare that to how much they are still saving overall while working with us. The numbers prove that working with Sculpture is a no-brainer.”
