Customer Stories
Biscuitville
This 85-location, North Carolina-based restaurant chain serves up fresh governance thanks to OnBoard’s cloud-based, paper-eliminating, digital platform.
Customer Stories
This 85-location, North Carolina-based restaurant chain serves up fresh governance thanks to OnBoard’s cloud-based, paper-eliminating, digital platform.
Industry: Restaurants
Headquarters: Greensboro, North Carolina
Board Management Goals
Results
OnBoard Capabilities Utilized
Mention the name “Biscuitville” in the Carolinas or Virginia, and those who are familiar with the restaurant chain will likely think of its delectable biscuit sandwiches and other breakfast items.
But in order to keep any operation this size cooking, the folks who run the kitchen — figuratively speaking, in this case — need to govern in a way that keeps their thousands of customers happy and well-fed.
Unlike many restaurant chains, Biscuitville, which was founded in 1966, remains family-owned and does not franchise its restaurant locations. “This is the most transparent company I have ever worked for,” says Anja Benjamin, Biscuitville’s Executive Assistant. “The hope is to keep it in the family as long as possible.”
The company, which employs 2,230 people, boasts an employee benefit program, the Rise Fund, which helps employees cope with financial hardships via donations from other employees, the company itself, and outside donors.
It came in especially handy last fall, when Hurricane Helene inflicted so much damage in the Carolinas. “We instituted a qualified disaster immediate assistance plan as part of that fund, which allowed us to give anyone affected $500 for whatever they needed, and no bureaucracy involved.”
Biscuitville’s board of directors includes nine paid members, four of which are family members. They also operate audit, compensation, governance, and executive committees. The larger board and each committee meet quarterly, usually in-person. They don’t enforce term limits but have an informal maximum age limit of 72.
Anja joined Biscuitville in 2019, and says she was amazed to learn the board still conducted paper-based meetings. “They were still printing out board books and mailing those,” she adds. “The leadership team was coming to me at the very last minute with an updated document. It was a race for me to get the board books distributed and mailed. It was crazy.”
The next move was to find a solution that enabled Anja and board administrators to get more out of their time. “It really was like chasing cats,” she says.
Once the meetings began, Anja says it was common for papers to be strewn across the board table. Now, she projects board documents onto a screen for all members to see, reducing the table clutter. “When you’ve got that many people in a boardroom, there’s just not space to open up a board book, with all these papers … it was just so incredibly crowded,” she says.
— Anja Benjamin, Executive Assistant, Biscuitville
For Anja and most board members, a cloud-based, digital board portal was uncharted territory. “We had not had a platform like this before, so this was going to be a learning experience, and we weren’t sure what the buy-in was going to be from the board members and the shareholders. We do have some seasoned people who were technology-challenged, so we weren’t sure what it was going to look like.”
Biscuitville’s board settled on OnBoard in 2021. From there, it was time to implement the solution. This was a critical juncture, since few on Biscuitville’s board were familiar with a digital board platform.
“I feel like we got the support and direction and help we needed, particularly with our board members, who needed some extra help,” Anja says. “I set up 1-on-1 time with them to help them build their confidence with it. OnBoard is very user-friendly and easy to figure out if you just get in there. It’s pretty fool-proof.”
As new board members join, Biscuitville includes a one-hour OnBoard tutorial and access to OnBoard’s videos and resources as part of their orientation.
Four years into its usage, Anja says her favorite part of OnBoard is the ability to import the meeting agendas. “It’s seamless,” she says.
As for the board members, OnBoard’s mobile capabilities are among their favorite features. “If there’s an action that I need them to take care of, they can access it via the app on their phones, and I think they love having it on their tablets,” Anja says. “We gained some space by using tablets instead of paper.”
Anja and the board also make extensive use of the Notes and Annotations capability, along with the meeting calendar.
“Annotations is the most utilized capability in OnBoard for Biscuitville,” Anja says. “The meeting calendar in OnBoard is our absolute go-to for all meetings. Every document needed for each meeting is uploaded accordingly. Everyone is aware that should they have any questions about date, time, etc. regarding a meeting, OnBoard is where you will go to find the answer.”
Given how little Anja and the Biscuitville board members knew about the digital board management world prior to joining it, she says she’s happy with how the board adapted to the new technology and how well it has served the board and, by extension, the company.
“Anything new is scary, not having had experience with a board platform before,” Anja says. “Looking back on the transition into learning it and utilizing it, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was.”
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