COMPANY
Garb-Ko / 7-Eleven®
INDUSTRY
Food & Beverage
COMPANY SIZE
SMB
COUNTRY
United States
SCALE
~100 franchise locations
Garb-Ko operates around 100 7-Eleven® franchise locations across Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Each store runs a web of networked systems: point-of-sale registers, gas pump controllers, ATMs, credit card interfaces, money order kiosks, and state-operated nutrition program terminals - all from different vendors, all requiring reliable connectivity.
When the team started, every location ran on dial-up with no remote access. When something broke, they found out from the store - and by the time someone responded, an average of 45 minutes had already passed. Just to start troubleshooting. At busier locations, 20 minutes of downtime could mean $200 in lost sales.
Systems and Security Administrator Jason Lee tried building a custom monitoring tool from scratch. It quickly hit a wall. Scalability and reporting were unmanageable for a team of three.
Jason Lee evaluated several tools - including Numara, SpiceWorks, and GFI Network Server Monitor. None met his requirements for scalability, ease of use, and cost. He installed a PRTG trial in a single store. Three days later, Garb-Ko upgraded to a full commercial license with unlimited sensors.
Today, PRTG monitors servers, bandwidth, routers, VPN connections, firewalls, and batch file processes across all ~100 franchise locations, all managed remotely by a team of three. Alerts route automatically: certain events go to Level 1 helpdesk support; after 30 minutes, tickets escalate to engineering. The team no longer waits for a store to call.
When a vendor's system causes an issue, PRTG data helps troubleshoot it - even problems completely outside Garb-Ko's control. And historical traffic data now informs long-term planning: from spotting underutilized servers to timing hardware upgrades before failures occur.
PRTG definitely reduces the stress level and allows us to do a lot with few people. Not only is it reassuring that the network is being watched, but it also cuts our troubleshooting time by a good 50-60 percent and helps us to be more proactive in finding and solving problems.
