Payroll Solutions helps restaurant transform schedule management, control expenses, and maintain a dedicated workforce.
Coat and Thai is an upscale Thai restaurant whose owners are planning to open a second location with hopes of franchising in the future. It deals with the complications common to the restaurant industry; service peaks, specialized staff, and high employee turnover.
Overwhelming Workforce Management Challenges
Coat and Thai’s single manager was the only one doing the hiring, scheduling, and time tracking, creating a bottleneck that soon became an all-consuming 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, exacerbating the logistics of scheduling.
Additional challenges included maintaining adequate staffing for every shift, adapting schedules to unanticipated surges in business, managing schedule requests, tracking staff member meal breaks, and keeping skilled chefs and experienced servers from jumping ship to newer restaurants opening in the neighborhood; a sour prospect for any company.
Workforce Management Suite Sweetens the Sour
Coat and Thai determined 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 team members to transition in and out of shifts with improved efficiency.
Customers are appreciating better service, and Coat and Thai has put an end to costly guesswork and back-dating when congestion forced staff members to skip clocking in. Mobile clock also allows their head chef to clock in off site when acquiring 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 decline in labor costs as a result of incorporating integrated clock in/out features for unpaid meal times and breaks. Before Workforce Management Suite, employees often punched out for a meal and forgot to punch back in, creating problematic back-filling and costly guesswork. With Workforce Management Suite PunchLogic, busy employees are only given logical options when accessing the clock in system to lessen mistakes, gather better records, and expedite payroll.
Filling holes in the schedule has become far less complicated with the TimeSimplicity Virtual Trade Board. Previously, the manager would sling change requests to the staff, and then re-circulate when options were proposed. Now, team members simply put requests on the Virtual Trade Board. Managers can rapidly view, monitor and confirm shift request changes online. Once a shift trade is confirmed, TimeSimplicity automatically alerts the appropriate staff members. Since the system conversion, the restaurant has rarely been caught shorthanded. Job codes and pre-set requirements make scheduling easy so classifications such as the age requirement to serve alcohol don’t get missed during shift swaps or replacements.
SOLUTION — Workforce Management Suite
- TimeSimplicity for simplified restaurant scheduling and mobile coordination.
- TimeWorksPlus for integrated time and attendance tracking.
- Mobile access provides employee access and management control.
The staff members love the Virtual Trade Board because it has dramatically reduced the time it takes to manage work schedules and submit time cards. Many team members are college students whose schedules change each semester. Adapting schedules to better provide staff flexibility has greatly improved staff member morale and minimized turnover.
Positioned for Growth
The owners of Coat and Thai are better prepared for planned expansion into new venues and franchising. With a handle on the challenges 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 allows the business to monitor and adjust to changes while decreasing pricey overtime, scheduling conflicts, and peak service emergencies.
Most importantly; associates are eager to participate in the growth of the company and share their enthusiasm with their increasingly satisfied patrons.
UPGRADE TODAY
Payroll Solutions offers Workforce Management Suite, the powerful, fully-integrated Workforce Management Suite that makes it easy to optimize the performance of your managers, employees, and organization.
Workforce Management Suite includes TimeWorksPlus, TimeSimplicity, and TimeWorks Mobile. Workforce Management Suite is developed for busy employers like you who need to streamline scheduling, automate time and attendance tracking, maintain regulatory compliance, and decrease labor costs.
How much can you save? Check our Payroll Solutions ROI Calculator.
We can get you up and running with Workforce Management Suite in minutes. Contact us today to schedule a demo.
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