The modest beginning of Kona Ice at Northern Kentucky in 2007 turned out to be among the top 8 franchises in the U.S.A. It has ranked on Entrepreneur's "Fastest-growing franchises” list for multiple years and has won many national awards. Kona Ice offers the most delicious shaved ice while creating a one-of-a-kind self-serve sweet experience with 40 flavors and 20 more in production. Currently, more than 1,400 Kona Ice mobile units serve 49 states across the country.
Given that the company offers a variety of flavors and thousands of franchises to manage, it wanted to gain full visibility over business operations and reduce costs. Working with Mobisoft Infotech, Kona Ice successfully managed all franchise operations and tracked events, staff, locations, menus, and order fulfillment while maintaining tight control over expenses.
About Kona Ice: Nation-wide Presence and Intensity Levels
Kona Ice offers a gourmet shaved ice experience directly to customers through thousands of ice trucks in the U.S.A. They are equipped with different variations of shaved ice trucks like the Kona Entertainment Vehicle (K.E.V.), Kona Kiosk, and the Kona Mini. The Kona Ice Truck can serve over 500+ customers within an hour. Kona Ice is well known for its presence at multiple events and festivals across the country. From music festivals to school events, tournaments, daycare, birthday parties, and corporate events, Kona Ice makes sure to create fun and frolicky events for all age groups.
Through their custom software application development, Kona Ice also helps schools to raise funds for the betterment of the organization and involves students and teachers to make it a fruitful fundraiser campaign. As of today, Kona Ice has donated more than $100 million back to neighborhood schools, nonprofits, and teams.
Effective Franchise Management and Controlling Cost Counts
Kona Ice was using the SaaS application development platform to manage its thousands of franchises and business data and for better collaboration. SaaS is undoubtedly an excellent website application software built for cloud computing. However, one of the major challenges was the cost. Kona Ice was paying a high cost for its subscription-based SaaS application, which charged a commission on each order. As a result, Kona Ice could not maintain control over costs. Plus, other problems like inadequate data security, poor user experience, reliance on network connectivity, low performance, etc., were the challenges Kona Ice faced with the subscription-based application.
Goals
To have a user-friendly online platform
To reduce operational costs
To simplify order fulfillment operations
To manage the data of franchises
To track orders of each event in real-time
To simplify daily franchise workflows
Kona Ice worked with Mobisoft Infotech - an experienced custom app development company based in the USA, to design a tailor-made digital Kona OS solution that simplifies operations and reduces overall costs.
The Strategy & Solution
Understanding and finalizing custom requirements
Choosing the right tech stack
Designing visually stunning user interfaces
Integrating robust third-party tools
Developing a custom software solution
Kona Ice wanted a custom web application to streamline the order fulfillment process, manage the data of franchises, and track orders of multiple events hosted throughout the year at multiple locations across the USA. To do so, Kona Ice teamed up with Mobisoft to develop a custom web application that would help -
Customers
place their orders from a web app well in advance.
Franchises
keep an eye on staff, orders, and events
Kona Ice
to automate operations across levels
The solution would also help Kona Ice to keep an eye on each order with detailed order information like the number of orders fulfilled at each event with earned revenue.
Focus
The custom web application of Kona OS consists of four user panels to simplify the tasks of each user. Let us have a look at the integrated features of each user interface:
Super Admin Kona OS
Using the ‘Super Admin’ user panel, Kona Ice can simplify entire business operations along with managing franchises and menus from a single place. Admin can add, view, and manage the data of Kona Ice franchises across the country. With the new system, the super admin can view reports based on orders, payouts, events, and franchise activities. This helps Kona Ice access the performance of all franchises and make data-driven decisions for the future.
Franchise Admin Panel
The franchise admin’s role is to manage the data for all workflows, including clients, events, menus, equipment, and staff, and generate reports. The franchise admin can add, edit, or view the menu as per requirement. The franchise admin can update or view pending and delivered orders while managing refund-related queries. Plus, adding the details of staff, their shifts, and staff scheduling has become easy with the custom web application. The added feature in franchise admin performs a detailed view-based report dedicated to orders and events and the product reports of the events. The franchise admin can hold school events according to customer requirements; hence the detailed reports act as proof for all event activities.
Customer Web App
A list of all public events is available on the Customer Web App. Using the app, customers can add their orders to the cart or explore the options available in the menu and place an order, followed by an easy payment method and receive orders at their doorstep. This app also allows customers to pick up the order directly from the Kona Ice food truck. This feature can help in gaining customer satisfaction and feedback regarding the services and delivery system.
Staff Web App
This is one of a kind of employee scheduling app that allows efficient scheduling of staff for events. It is available for only mobile browsers - POS iPad app - and used by the staff to view their daily shifts and tasks assigned to them. They can log attendance, request time off, and manage orders at the food truck. The franchise can have a master schedule that provides the staff details, such as which staff members are available for each area or event and what days, shifts, and preferences they have for those days. The franchise can track the time of each staff member and improve collaboration.
Key Implementations
The key focus was on user interfaces and system upgradation to achieve the set goals. Kona Ice made the best use of our UI UX design services to create impactful user interfaces and immersive user experiences. We followed an agile methodology combined with state-of-the-art technology stack. The key implementations for the custom web app development project for Kona Ice include the following:
- Custom user interface design for each panel
- Multiple payment gateway system integration
- Business intelligence reporting
- GPS tracking system integration
- Privacy and security integration
Results
With the new web-based system, the desired objective was achieved. Kona OS can now cater to multiple locations at a time and manage franchise operations seamlessly.
- Centralized and enhanced order management system
- Better manage the operations of all franchises using a single platform
- Track franchises, events, staff, work timings, locations, and sales
- Reduced expenses and better customer services
- Managed all orders efficiently before delivery
- Effective order fulfillment at multiple locations and events
- Simplified process of placing an order for a specific event
- Better report management of inventories, sales, orders, deliveries, and more with the super and franchise roles developed for the project.
- Cost-effective web-based system
