More than 30 years ago, Crabby Bill's founders, Bill and Dolores Loder, promised to serve customers with great food at great prices and with great service. Keeping track of the hundreds of thousands of meals served, the tons of fish and seafood cooked, the millions of dollars in sales, and the myriad happy customers, is FileMaker Pro, helping to ensure that Crabby Bill's delivers on that promise!

The six restaurants may be called Crabby Bill's, but the friendly service and great prices make sure that "crabby" is only a name. Located on the coast of Florida in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area, the restaurants promise to serve the freshest fish and local favorites. And judging from diners' comments it's a promise they keep.

But while food has to be served quickly and piping hot, Luis Campuzano, Crabby Bill's Chief Financial and Technical Officer, found that the data he needed to run the business was regularly served up cold. The problem was simple; the data was in two legacy SQL databases and access to it was through slow custom scripts. "The main challenge was to be able to link to our data in the SQL backend," explains Luis. "All of our data was in two or three databases in the SQL backend and when we had to transfer files over, it was just more trouble than it was worth." At least it was, until he heard about the new features in FileMaker Pro.

Luis wasn't exactly a FileMaker newbie. He'd used the software personally for some time, and Crabby Bill's was using FileMaker for other things, but when Luis learned that with FileMaker Pro he also could access, use and manipulate the vital data that was residing in those two SQL databases he was delighted. Working with Phillip Kurpe, the senior partner of PK Information Systems, LLC in Clearwater, Florida, Luis was quickly able to connect to those SQL backend databases. He was then able to create custom reports such as sales and scheduling, do calculations, and use current data from his existing FileMaker databases seamlessly through the FileMaker Pro interface.

Successful Solution

"We store all the restaurant sales from the chain in the SQL databases, we also have an accounting package that tracks the inventory, and they are both in the backend," says Luis. "So the data that I'm tapping into are in those two databases. Now I'm able to look at both databases in FileMaker Pro and see our combined accounting, inventory and sales data easily and quickly."

We store all the restaurant sales from the chain in the SQL databases, we also have an accounting package that tracks the inventory...Now I'm able to look at both databases in FileMaker Pro and see our combined accounting, inventory and sales data easily and quickly.

— Luis Campuzano, Chief Financial and Technical Officer

Now that over 4 million records in hundreds of tables in the backend databases are easily accessible, Luis has continued implementing other new features in FileMaker Pro. He especially likes the Conditional Formatting, which allows him to quickly visually identify something that needs attention. As a restaurant chain, there are always things specific to his business that Luis needs to attend to. "We actually wrote a seating program for our stores in an earlier version of FileMaker Pro," he says "and now with conditional formatting it's a lot easier to use."