Consolidated reporting, comp/labor tracking, and automated delivery
Overview and Challenges
City BBQ is a fast-casual barbecue restaurant group in the U.S., serving dine-in, takeout, and catering across multiple locations. As the business grew, its reporting ecosystem sprawled across multiple interfaces and manual handoffs. Teams couldn’t reliably tell whether a joint—or even a labor hour—was comp or non-comp, and there was no consolidated place to see performance. Users frequently exported data, stitched files together, and waited on heavy model downloads for even small changes. Inconsistent templates and a lack of UI/UX standards made reports harder to read, while refresh failures sometimes produced incorrect or blank distributions.
Catering lacked a dedicated data model. Legacy processes required daily steps to push Excel outputs to an SFTP folder. Even when refreshes are completed, data could be missing at send time, eroding confidence and slowing day-to-day decisions.
Solution
City BBQ partnered with kipi.ai to standardize on Snowflake as the
governed backbone and use Power BI for a consistent, user-friendly front end. We introduced dynamic comp logic to classify joints and labor hours; rebuilt reports on a parameterized semantic model to make change management lighter; and designed a single reporting hub so users can find everything in one place.
Operationally, we implemented Power BI Paginated Reports to generate Excel extracts and set up scheduled email delivery before the workday begins. A new Catering data model—informed by the Infor design—brought catering into the same governed layer, and Infor catering reports were migrated to Power BI. We added after-hours monitoring and pre-send data checks so distributions only go out when data is present, and we automated daily SFTP loads to remove manual steps.
Tech foundation
- Snowflake as the unified, governed data backbone (security, scalability, reliable sharing).
- Power BI Service + Paginated Reports for a standardized consumption layer and inbox-ready Excel.
- Parameterized semantic model to streamline download/modify/redeploy and reduce memory overhead.
- Consolidated reporting hub to replace scattered interfaces with a single, consistent experience.
- Data quality & monitoring (after-hours checks, issue detection, near real-time fixes).
- Automated distribution & edge flows (email scheduling, daily SFTP loads, pre-send data-presence validation).
- Governance & access aligned across Snowflake and Power BI to protect sensitive views while enabling self-service.
What we delivered
- Dynamic comp classification for both joints and labor hours (comp vs non-comp).
- Report consolidation into a single, navigable hub with a standard template and polished UI/UX.
- Inbox-ready Excel via Paginated Reports and scheduled email before shifts start.
- Lighter change management through a parameterized semantic layer that reduces rework.
- Catering data model built and Infor catering reports migrated into Power BI.
- Automated SFTP flows and pre-send data checks to prevent blank or incorrect distributions.
- After-hours monitoring for same-day/near real-time remediation.
Results
- Comp tracking that works: end-to-end visibility and reconciliation of comp vs non-comp sales.
- Labor clarity: first-time insight into comp vs non-comp labor hours for sharper staffing decisions.
- Time back to the business: a single hub plus email-delivered Excel eliminates tab-hopping and manual exports.
- Faster change turnaround: the parameterized semantic model cuts rework and memory use; tweaks ship quicker.
- Consistent experience: template-driven UI/UX makes reports easier to read and trust.
- Higher integrity: monitoring and validation prevent incorrect or blank reports from being sent.
About kipi.ai
Kipi.ai, a WNS Company, is a global leader in data modernization and democratization focused on the Snowflake platform. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Kipi.ai enables enterprises to unlock the full value of their data through strategy, implementation and managed services across data engineering, AI-powered analytics and data science.
As a Snowflake Elite Partner, Kipi.ai has one of the world’s largest pools of Snowflake-certified talent—over 600 SnowPro certifications—and a portfolio of 250+ proprietary accelerators, applications and AI-driven solutions. These tools enable secure, scalable and actionable data insights across every level of the enterprise.
Serving clients across banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, retail and CPG, and hi-tech and professional services, Kipi.ai combines deep domain excellence with AI innovation and human ingenuity to co-create smarter businesses. As a part of WNS, Kipi.ai brings global scale and execution strength to accelerate Snowflake-powered transformation world-wide.
Learn more at www.kipi.ai
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