Exec summary

Thrive Restaurant Group believes that everybody matters, wants to make a difference, and that the experience of work can enrich people and contribute to their flourishing in life. But supporting 200 restaurants across 19 states placed unmanageable demands on the company’s lean accounts payable team. They needed a scalable, centralized procure-to-pay workflow to keep pace with continued growth without adding headcount.

Today, Ottimate serves as the hub of Thrive’s financial operations. Invoices are entered into a centralized system, automatically routed through approval workflows, and paid using each supplier’s preferred method. New features, such as Ottimate Copilot, have further increased efficiency and enabled the AP team to focus on higher-value initiatives that support growth.

About Thrive Restaurant Group

Thrive Restaurant Group is known for its warm, inviting dining experiences. Founded more than 60 years ago in Wichita, Kansas, the company has grown from five Pizza Hut restaurants into a leading restaurant group with more than 200 locations across 19 states. Today, Thrive Restaurant Group’s portfolio spans everything from fast casual to sit-down dining, including popular brands such as Applebee’s, HomeGrown Kitchen, and Qdoba.

The challenge

At Thrive Restaurant Group, accounts payable is the starting point of the broader financial lifecycle. Data that flows through AP directly impacts profit and loss statements and informs decisions that are made throughout the organization. That’s why maintaining accuracy is critical.

But as the company doubled over the past decade to more than 200 locations across multiple brands, its accounts payable operations became increasingly complex. This made it more challenging to ensure accuracy and efficiency.

Thrive’s small AP team was under pressure to manage a growing volume of invoices with disconnected tools and processes that weren’t built to scale. Without a centralized system to manage invoice intake, approvals, and payments, the team was bogged down by manual work and clunky tool-to-tool handoffs, leaving little time for strategy and analysis.

To support continued growth, the team at Thrive knew they needed an efficient, scalable solution that would centralize processes, reduce manual work, and ensure timely, accurate financial data across its expanding restaurant portfolio.

The solution

To support ongoing growth, Thrive Restaurant Group selected Ottimate as its end-to-end accounts payable automation solution. Today, the platform serves as a centralized hub for AP, handling the entire procure-to-pay workflow within a unified platform. 

“Ottimate is the hub for a majority of our accounting information, and it’s absolutely crucial to how we manage our finances,” said Aimee Clare, Accounts Payable Manager for Thrive Restaurant Group. “The data from Ottimate is used to generate our profit and loss statements and really influences the decisions that we are able to make to grow our business.”

Today, invoices enter Ottimate via electronic data interchange (EDI) or are uploaded and approved by restaurant managers. They are then routed through approval workflows based on role and responsibility. 

From there, invoices flow seamlessly into Thrive’s accounting system through integrated APIs. This automated process minimizes manual handoffs while ensuring accuracy and consistency across locations. 

“It’s all integrated with an API, so it’s very hands off,” said Kristina Rios, Accounting Business Systems Analyst at Thrive Restaurant Group. “Once an invoice is loaded, very few people actually touch it, and it just flows well through the system.”

More recently, Ottimate has enabled Thrive to tailor its financial processes with additional dimensions. This enables more detailed, accurate coding across departments, locations, and other key variables. 

“That’s been revolutionary,” noted Rios. “We don’t have to capture and code those on the back end. We’re able to do it right in Ottimate.”

The team at Thrive also uses Ottimate Copilot to further streamline work. Copilot assists with tasks such as surfacing insights, building reports, and troubleshooting issues, freeing the team to focus on higher-value work.

The results

Implementing Ottimate has made a tremendous impact on the efficiency and scalability of Thrive’s AP operations. Thanks to process automation and seamless integrations, invoices flow through the process faster, with fewer errors and far less manual intervention. 

“We’re not spending two hours per day exporting and posting invoices and payments,” said Rios. “We have all these integrations built with Ottimate’s help, allowing the process to happen automatically. It saves around 10 hours a week with the built-in APIs. It has really changed my life.” 

These efficiencies have enabled the AP team to support a growing number of restaurants without adding headcount. 

“We’re able to run on a lean team and focus more on results-driven projects,” explained Clare. “Instead of spending time on data entry and number crunching, we’re able to focus on building relationships and handling exceptions with our vendors.” 

Ottimate has also improved Thrive’s ability to use financial data more strategically. With accurate, timely information flowing through Ottimate, the team has reliable, in-depth insights that fuel better decision-making.

Newer platform capabilities, such as Copilot, have further improved efficiency while freeing up bandwidth for strategic work. 

“Copilot has definitely cut down on the amount of time I spend searching for information and troubleshooting,” said Clare. “It’s allowed me to focus on bigger projects that wouldn’t have gotten attention before when I was so wrapped up in the weeds.” 

Beyond efficiency gains, Ottimate has also positively impacted team growth and development. With Ottimate in place, Thrive has been able to onboard new AP staff more quickly. Plus, with less manual work required, the team can focus on bringing in new skill sets when hiring for open roles. 

“One of the amazing things that Ottimate has allowed us to do is diversify our team,” said Clare. “We’ve been able to bring on people with other skills who can focus on relationships and supporting our managers and vendors, rather than spending all of their time on data entry.”