Case Study: Restaurant Schedule Management

Coat and Thai’s single manager was the only one doing the hiring, scheduling, and time tracking, creating a bottleneck that soon became an unmanageable burden. She was managing 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 restaurant has staff members working from 5:00 a.m. until 2:00 a.m., seven days a week, compounding the logistics of scheduling.

Additional complications 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 associates 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 experiencing 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 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 decline 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 staff members are only given logical options when accessing the clock in system to decrease mistakes, gather better records, and streamline 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, staff members simply place 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 informs the appropriate employees. Since the system implementation, the restaurant has rarely been caught shorthanded. Job codes and pre-set requirements make scheduling effortless so classifications such as the age requirement to serve alcohol don’t get missed during shift swaps or replacements.

SOLUTION — WorkforceHUB

• TimeSimplicity for simplified restaurant scheduling and mobile coordination.
• TimeWorksPlus for integrated time and attendance tracking.
• Mobile access provides 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 team members are college students whose schedules change each semester. Adjusting schedules to better offer staff flexibility has dramatically improved employee morale and minimized turnover.

Ready for Expansion

The owners of Coat and Thai are better prepared for projected 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 concentrate on service and growth. Custom templates make schedule replication quick and easy, and centralized reporting permits the company to monitor and adjust to changes while reducing expensive overtime, scheduling conflicts, and peak service emergencies.

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