CASE STUDY: HUNGRY LION IMPROVES
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY WITH FILE13’s DATA-DRIVEN METRICS

“We’re using FILE13 to digitalise operational tasks that need to take place in-store, where historically you would have just had a piece of paper. Now being able to see remotely what happened in each store ensures complete transparency and that’s been invaluable to us.” – Jonathan Symonds


The food production industry is one of the most lucrative albeit saturated industries in South Africa. As a result, fast food outlets such as Hungry Lion are constantly seeking methods to improve efficiency and grow revenue as they grapple with challenges such as compliance, food hygiene, food safety, and managing deskless staff. Outlet managers often struggle to adequately train staff and measure staff performance and key performance indicators (KPIs). This, in turn, affects compliance, food hygiene and safety requirements, upkeep of restaurants and accountability.

Hungry Lion has been using Bloodhound’s FILE13 deskless workforce management platform since early 2018. It has been implemented at more than 250 Hungry Lion stores across all the countries that they trade in and offered increased flexibility, transparency, and productivity. Jonathan Symonds, Head of Insights, together with a small team of analysts, used business intelligence (BI) tools to analyse Hungry Lion’s FILE13 data in order to manage the business more efficiently. Jonathan’s role was to furnish data and metrics while enhancing the visibility of information for the entire operations team.


Customised data collection


Collecting reliable data and providing accurate feedback are crucial components of performance management. Jonathan and his team started working on food cost models and successfully launched BI dashboards for the operations team. Part of that journey was obtaining validated data from FILE13 and working with the Bloodhound team to get to a point where the information was available at a granular level and could be integrated with BI tools. The goal was to ensure a uniform flow of data in the same repository. This empowered the operations teams to make decisions based on fact rather than based on gut feel.

Gathering data insights to empower operations teams


Once the team better understood what the backend portal, Observer could do, Hungry Lion used FILE13 to structure questions and apply conditional logic to their digital checklists. This meant that workflows could be set up to cater to in-store deviations in terms of which additional context, such as a clarifying comment or a photo supporting the data, could be requested. All that information combined with a thorough understanding of the value that this tool offered, became paramount in Hungry Lion’s journey with FILE13 and their ultimate operational success.



“We were able to get to a point where we didn’t only have quantitative but also qualitative data. So instead of asking 30 questions in a checklist, we could now reduce the number of questions significantly by adding a conditional format to say if the answer is ‘no’, provide further details in the form of either a photo or a comment. That kind of utility was really powerful for us. Now we can, based on results, give somebody a generic instruction and get them to follow the process logic. All because of the flexibility of FILE13.”Jonathan Symonds, Head of Insights

On route to meeting long-term goals


The fast-food chain’s long-term goal is to improve operational efficiency by empowering deskless workers to work smarter and make better operational decisions. FILE13 in combination with BI tools such as Google Data Studio is playing a key role in achieving this goal. It will enable Hungry Lion to open more stores in less time while also boosting operational efficiency.



“We’re using FILE13 to digitalise operational tasks that need to take place in-store, where historically you would have just had a piece of paper. Typically, the regional manager would need to conduct a store visit and go through the last week’s stack of papers. Whereas now, the regional manager can sit at his laptop, wherever that is, whether he’s at home, on the road, or visiting another store because he’s able to remotely see what happened in the store the prior day. It ensures complete transparency and that’s been invaluable to us”Jonathan Symonds

FILE13 also empowers Hungry Lion to conduct trend analyses. The data collected from these analyses will, from an insights perspective, assist the operations teams and empower them to have in-store visibility, to self-help and to find insights on their own. Analysing the data over time highlights where stores are underperforming or where stores are recording one value where another value is anticipated. This helped Hungry Lion to blend their data successfully across different channels. Management by exception is another key benefit where issues are only escalated to management if it represents a deviation from the benchmark. This led to Hungry Lion establishing a deviation workflow running in the background and plugging into the FILE13 data that will pick up any deviation that is beyond an established/acceptable norm. These trends would have been impossible to find without FILE13’s exception-based management as it would take days to filter through the “good” data to find the anomalies.

30% Cost savings in oil leading to improved recipes and reduced food costs


FILE13 also empowers Hungry Lion to conduct trend analyses. The data collected from these analyses will, from an insights perspective, assist the operations teams and empower them to have in-store visibility, to self-help and to find insights on their own. Analysing the data over time highlights where stores are underperforming or where stores are recording one value where another value is anticipated. This helped Hungry Lion to blend their data successfully across different channels. Management by exception is another key benefit where issues are only escalated to management if it represents a deviation from the benchmark. This led to Hungry Lion establishing a deviation workflow running in the background and plugging into the FILE13 data that will pick up any deviation that is beyond an established/acceptable norm. These trends would have been impossible to find without FILE13’s exception-based management as it would take days to filter through the “good” data to find the anomalies.

Final thoughts


FILE13 is the main digital platform used by Hungry Lion to manage deskless workers, aggregate the required operation data, and ensure quality assurance at ground level. Currently, Hungry Lion is using FILE13 at 240 of their stores across Africa with Zambia seeing the steepest growth. Using FILE13 not only freed up their operations managers’ time but being able to derive accurate trends from data analysis is continuously improving Hungry Lion’s bottom line.

“This utility was really powerful for us. Now we can, based on results, give somebody a generic instruction and get them to follow the process logic. All because of the flexibility of FILE13.”Jonathan Symonds
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