Case Study: Restaurant Schedule Management

HR Ledger helps restaurant transform schedule management, limit expenses, and maintain a loyal staff.

Coat and Thai is a tony Thai restaurant whose owners are planning to open a second location with hopes of franchising in the future. It copes with the complications common to the restaurant industry; service peaks, specialized staff, and high employee turnover.

Overwhelming Workforce Management Challenges

Coat and Thai’s sole manager was the only one doing the hiring, scheduling, and time tracking, creating a bottleneck that soon became an unmanageable burden. She was handling employee time, attendance, and scheduling with a 90’s era punch clock, Excel spreadsheets, and a small dry erase board hung in the kitchen. The establishment has team members working from 5:00 a.m. until 2:00 a.m., seven days a week, compounding the logistics of scheduling.

Additional obstacles included maintaining adequate staffing for every shift, adapting schedules to sudden surges in business, managing schedule requests, tracking worker meal breaks, and keeping skilled chefs and experienced servers from jumping ship to newer restaurants opening in the neighborhood; a sour prospect for any organization.

WorkforceHUB Sweetens the Sour

Coat and Thai concluded that the first order of business was automating employee time and attendance. TimeWorksPlus allows employees to clock in/out from their mobile devices, eliminating the need to swamp the kitchen during critical shift changes, and allowing employees to move in and out of shifts with increased efficiency.

Diners are appreciating better service, and Coat and Thai has eliminated costly guesswork and back-dating when congestion forced team members to skip clocking in. Mobile clock also permits their head chef to clock in off site when buying produce at local farmer’s markets, saving time and reducing time card errors, something both management and employees appreciate.

Reduced Labor Costs

Coat and Thai has seen a decrease in labor costs as a result of incorporating integrated clock in/out features for unpaid meal times and breaks. Before WorkforceHUB, staff members often punched out for a meal and forgot to punch back in, creating problematic back-filling and costly guesswork. With WorkforceHUB PunchLogic, busy employees are only given logical options when accessing the clock in system to lessen mistakes, compile better records, and streamline payroll.

Filling holes in the schedule has become much simpler with the TimeSimplicity Virtual Trade Board. Previously, the supervisor would sling change requests to the staff, and then re-circulate when options were proposed. Now, employees simply post requests on the Virtual Trade Board. Managers can rapidly view, monitor and authorize shift request changes online. Once a shift trade is authorized, TimeSimplicity automatically informs the appropriate staff members. Since the system implementation, the restaurant has rarely been caught shorthanded. Job codes and pre-set requirements make scheduling simple so classifications such as the age requirement to serve alcohol don’t get overlooked during shift swaps or replacements.

SOLUTION — WorkforceHUB

• TimeSimplicity for automated restaurant scheduling and mobile coordination.
• TimeWorksPlus for integrated time and attendance tracking.
• Mobile access offers employee access and management control.

The team members love the Virtual Trade Board because it has significantly reduced the time it takes to manage work schedules and submit time cards. Many employees are college students whose schedules change each semester. Adapting schedules to better deliver staff flexibility has significantly improved staff member morale and minimized turnover.

Equipped for Expansion

The owners of Coat and Thai are better prepared for planned expansion into new venues and franchising. With a handle on the complexities of crew scheduling, and seamless integration with payroll, owners and management can now focus on service and growth. Custom templates make schedule replication quick and easy, and centralized reporting permits the business to monitor and adjust to changes while minimizing pricey overtime, scheduling conflicts, and peak service emergencies.

Most importantly; employees are excited to participate in the growth of the company and share their enthusiasm with their increasingly satisfied patrons.

UPGRADE TODAY

HR Ledger offers WorkforceHUB™, the unified Human Resources portal that makes it easy to optimize the performance of your managers, employees, and company.

WorkforceHUB™ includes TimeWorksPlus, TimeSimplicity, and TimeWorks Mobile. We’ve just added onboarding, benefits enrollment, performance reviews, and employee engagement! WorkforceHUB™ is created for busy employers like you who need to streamline scheduling, automate time and attendance tracking, maintain regulatory compliance, and reduce labor costs.

How much can you save? Check our HR Ledger ROI Calculator.

We can get you up and running with WorkforceHUB in minutes. Contact us today to set up a demo.