About a year after launching Livelenz Inc., Joel Doherty ran into an extremely grateful early adopter of the company’s data-analysis technology for quick service restaurant, or QSR, franchisees. This client, an Albertan who used Livelenz at his 11 franchises, had just come from meeting with his accountant and was delighted to learn that Livelenz had saved him $144,000 in the first year alone. He now employs Livelenz at 19 franchises.  

It’s this sort of value proposition that has allowed Livelenz to build up 4,500 clients, to develop strong relationships with leading international partners and to attract $1 million in private equity financing, all in its first two-and-a-half years.

President Joel Doherty and his partner Daryl Fraser launched Livelenz in March 2010 in the belief that the owners of fast-food franchises don’t have the data they need to make prudent business decisions. The franchisor takes care of marketing and the grand strategy for the chain, but the owner of the individual outlet needs real-time data to figure out how to squeeze as much profit as possible out of his operation.

Livelenz meets that need. Doherty and Fraser assessed four variables that a QSR has to monitor in order to prosper: sales; labour costs; food costs and employee theft. By monitoring these four factors in real time, Livelenz can help QSR franchisees implement little changes that save money and/or increase sales.

“There are literally hundreds of different ways that we add value to their operations,” said Doherty, sitting in a Kentville Tim Horton’s franchise not far from his office in Centreville, N.S. “We can help them immediately to reduce their labour costs in what we call `overage.’’’

Overage is having too many staff working during non-peak times. Livelenz analyzes peak sales times for the outlet, and compares the sales volume with the number of staff on the counter at any particular time. This allows the owner to rework schedules to match staff levels to sales volume.

Employee theft is a huge factor in the industry as studies have shown that about $16 billion is stolen annually from QSR establishments by employees. The crimes include pilfering money from the till, taking food, giving free food to friends and loyalty card scams.

“We can use the data we collect to identify the theft when the employee least expects it,” said Doherty, adding that the Livelenz platform can marry together the point of sale data with video data from surveillance cameras to pinpoint the crime. And, he added, “You can manage it all while sitting on the beach via your iPhone.”

Livelenz now employs 15 people (up from five when it launched) and seven or eight of them are in product development, working on the next generation of products. The company understands that the vast majority of a QSR’s interactions with its clients take place at the point of sale, but the industry is hampered because there is no standardized PoS platform throughout the industry. The closest thing to a standardized component is the receipt printer; Seiko Epson Corp. of Japan has 75 percent of the North American market for these devices.

Livelenz has struck a partnership with Epson to embed its systems in the next generation of receipt printers. “It’s made that little receipt printer a real-time data-analysis system that just happens to spit a piece of paper up through the top,” said Doherty.

Livelenz in February raised $1 million from Innovacorp in its first VC round, and has used the money on product development and sales efforts. The company is working on the development of about eight products, and to help with that, it is aiming to complete an $8 million to $10 million B round in the next 12 months.