How Bagel Boss Gets $4,526 in Average Monthly Additional Revenue from the vGrubs Tablet

Bagel Boss was founded 45+ years ago in New York and has been providing masterfully crafted bagels ever since. In those years, they've grown considerably, adding 15 locations across New York and even into New Jersey. Bagel Boss has been with vGrubs since 2022, and has had plenty of success with them since.

We chatted with two Bagel Boss franchise owners —Jeff Grossfeld and Nantha Suppiah —to get a picture of how the team uses vGrubs in their day-to-day operations, as well as how vGrubs became an essential part of their business. Jeff Grossfeld is the owner of two locations and Nantha Suppiah is the owner of one.

Bagel Boss partnered with vGrubs over other aggregation software for its ease of use and additional revenue: “It was just so much easier and anyone could learn it. By the end of the day, all my staff knew exactly how [the vGrubs tablet] worked,” says Grossfeld. One year later, Bagel Boss is using the vGrubs delivery aggregation tablet to help run their business across more than a dozen locations. Here's how:

More Efficient, Time-saving Tablet Aggregation

Bagel Boss uses vGrubs tablets to manage more than 60 delivery platforms across 15 locations. And those platforms not only have Bagel Boss’s menu items on them, they are also selling additional items through virtual kitchens, meaning each store is getting sales from 10+ tablets, all combined into one. Sales have never been this easy to boost, and monthly delivery revenue numbers are now up by a whopping 20%+ in some locations.

The Power of Just One Tablet and One Printer

“It was congested, we had a bunch of tablets,” says Grossfeld.

“The wireless printers were jamming and staff were making mistakes, or the printers were offline. Now, we have everything in one place hooked up to one printer and it works perfectly.”

Grossfeld was especially impressed with how vGrubs paid attention to the details, and notified him if something seemed off.

“If we forgot to turn the tablet on, or open the store for deliveries, I would get a text [from their Concierge] asking me if this was intentional. Very useful to keep us on top of things,” says Grossfeld.

Nantha Suppiah, an owner with one Bagel Boss location, uses the tablet to make adjustments to his menu and change his open schedule on many different tablets. All this from one place, “I didn’t know until recently that I could change menu items about our restaurant on the [vGrubs] tablet and it will show up on Ubereats and others,” says Suppiah.

A dedicated employee for inputting deliveries into the POS system was only necessary for the biggest Bagel Boss locations. The exact savings in labor cost is clear for those specific locations (in the thousands), but it was obvious to all the owners that their stores did not see any congestion due to tablet management, saving them at least a couple hours every day in labor costs.

“It definitely has streamlined the process, the whole process with orders. We also don’t have to get on the phone with the delivery providers anymore, and that’s a big time saver,” says Suppiah.

The Key to Boosting Revenue

Across Bagel Boss’s locations, they've been able to increase delivery revenue by between 10-24%, which is unheard of since average restaurant sales growth per year is 1-2%. It goes to show, even in a post-pandemic economy, there are ways to significantly grow in today’s competitive restaurant industry.

vGrubs also helps with disputing cancellations on behalf of store owners. For Grossfeld, the resolved disputes were saving him 30 to 60 minutes on the phone every day.

“Really love the feature where I get around one text a day telling me that a canceled order was resolved in my favor,” says Grossfeld.

Total revenue recovered on an Average month for his store was at a respectable $561.

“No negative feedback [about vGrubs]. I would recommend [it] to anyone,” says Grossfeld.

“Now, we make all kinds of order fulfillments. Some things aren’t even on our menu, we just have the ingredients and we make it for the customers vGrubs brings in,” says Suppiah.

Additional menu items from vGrubs brands are listed and fulfilled by Bagel Boss restaurants.

“Even if we have smoothies, people are going to search for the word smoothie, not bagel shop. Sales for our lesser known items have really gone up thanks to vGrubs,” says Suppiah.

When the numbers were broken down, one of Grossfeld’s Bagel Boss locations was bringing in a whopping $4,526 extra per month thanks to the one tablet vGrubs had sent over.

“I would say the tablet pays for itself five times over. Wait, it’s probably more than that, I’ll have to check,” says Grossfeld.

vGrubs Concierge: Premiere Customer Support

vGrubs helps owners directly and near instantly with its round-the-clock customer support texting line. “Any time I have a problem, I can just text their team and I’ll get a response right away. Very useful in this industry. vGrubs is very hands on,” says Suppiah.

vGrubs provides a dedicated team that will answer any questions about the tablet, resolve technical issues and much more. The revenue recovery team handles cancellation disputes, but also handles order adjustments and customer communications. Restaurant owners subscribed to vGrubs don’t have to deal with any of the customer facing side of things, and everything is handled for them so they just have to answer clear cut yes or no questions, and do what they do best: manage their restaurant.

“We have [looked into competitors] but we weren’t ready to jump in. We were actually looking for somebody to integrate with our POS system, which is clover, but i think with this additional third party sales which you guys have, that’s one of the [reasons why we went with] vGrubs. And you guys also take over communications with the other providers. It’s not just combining orders coming in, it’s also managing those orders and dealing with problems. In addition to additional sales, that’s why it was compelling,” says Suppiah.

Bagel Boss: a Franchise Aimed for Growth

Bagel Boss has grown substantially since opening its doors in 1975, and their growth shows no sign of slowing down. Bagel Boss continues to grow into 2023, and is in the process of opening a new location.Through 2022, 2023 and moving forward into the future, Bagel Boss will be relying on vGrubs delivery management to help process orders more efficiently, accurately, and even find revenue growth opportunities for their stores