Best Practices for Finding Benefit Solutions

This edition of MRM's "Ask the Expert” features advice from Trion Group. Please send questions to Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine Executive Editor Barbara Castiglia at bcastiglia@modernrestaurantmanagement.com.Q: As restaurant groups build benefit solutions, will they find more savings if they focus on brokering or strategy?

A: The proper consultative answer is, it depends! The brokerage approach focuses on a simple analysis of per unit cost. This is the appropriate strategy for a smaller operator with a single restaurant or with a limited number of restaurants that has to be fully insured. The only factors that have to be considered for this option are price and the use of plan designs that are appropriate for the sector. 

For larger operators, especially those with multi-state operations, the analysis becomes far more complicated.  Since self-funding will be the likely solution, more technical factors must be built into the decision-making…