HotSchedules

PF Chang's Download Case Study

Background

P.F. Chang's China Bistro (NASDAQ: PFCB) is a full-service upscale casual dining restaurant that provides its guests with consistently outstanding Chinese cuisine, attentive and personal service, an innovative beverage program and an inviting dining environment, all at a great value for their dollar. P.F. Chang's owns and operates 189 full service Bistro restaurants that feature a blend of traditional Chinese cuisine. The Company's restaurants offer flavored, culinary creations, prepared from ingredients, including herbs and spices imported directly from China. The menu features traditional Chinese offerings and dishes. Additionally, P.F. Chang's owns and operates 159 quick casual Pei Wei restaurants.

Challenge

Previously, P.F. Chang's managers were scheduling 150+ employees working more than 650 different shifts each week. Creating weekly schedules was very time consuming and laborious for managers, and understaffing or overstaffing were frequent problems. Additionally, managers usually had to sit down at home with pen and paper to create schedules, since they did not have adequate time in the restaurant to schedule during busy operating hours.

Solution

P.F. Chang's knew it needed a solution to better manage the stressful and time-intensive employee scheduling process—and what they got with HotSchedules was that and more. From intelligent labor forecasting to a highly effective communication portal, HotSchedules offered a full labor management solution for P.F. Chang's.

Results

P.F. Chang's managers have reduced their scheduling time by 75%, and employees love the ability to access scheduling tools online and from their mobile phones - they have also indicated that using HotSchedules has improved their morale because they had more flexibility and control over their schedule. Additionally, P.F. Chang's regularly uses HotSchedules as a valuable communication system to send out time sensitive messages to employees or managers at individual restaurants or chain-wide.

The Roll-Out

Soon after the first location implemented HotSchedules, word-of-mouth kicked in and quickly spread across the chain, and although it wasn't mandatory to implement, each restaurant saw the benefits of the solution and signed on one-by-one, prompting P.F. Chang's corporate to embrace the solution chain-wide.

The HotSchedules support team took a hands-on approach by training the staff and management at each location across the country, with the final location rolled out in 2008. "The program is very easy and highly effective to use once you've participated in the HotSchedules training program," said Peggy Rubenzer, VP of Training, P.F. Chang's. "Through each implementation, the HotSchedules team managed and supported the program so it did not weigh on our IT or training staff. They also have a firm understanding of restaurant operations, from the staff, management and corporate perspectives."

Increased Efficiencies

While managers previously spent 2-4 hours scheduling wait staff alone, they can now produce complete staff schedules in just 20-30 minutes with HotSchedules schedule templates. Managers no longer have to sift through disorganized papers for employee availability and schedule requests. All this information along with employee contact details is easily accessible in the HotSchedules Manager portal, which managers can access anywhere, anytime, easily and securely over the web.

Additionally, P.F. Chang's uses HotSchedules' labor budgeting tools to more accurately schedule the right employees for each shift and avoid costly errors due to over or understaffing. Along with the P.F. Chang's IT team, HotSchedules helped to develop a custom interface for its Aloha POS. This interface enables a single point of entry for HR data, while polling time card punches and sales for reporting. Furthermore, staff schedules export nightly to the Aloha POS to take advantage of the native punctuality control. Beyond integration and labor controls, HotSchedules provides extensive reporting to give P.F. Changs' managers a window into their operations. Instant overtime warnings and Scheduled vs. Actual reports empower managers with more time and greater accuracy to proactively manage their workforce.

Excellence in Communications

P.F. Chang's has found HotSchedules to be extremely useful as a communications portal. The company can share messages from the corporate office to all team members, or managers at individual restaurants can alert their employees of upcoming staff meetings or company initiatives. "It's a great place for us to share positive messages with all of our restaurants and keep reinforcing the things that make us successful," Rubenzer commented. "We receive thousands of positive guest comments each week, and we like to pick the best responses and post them for all of our managers and employees to see."

In addition, HotSchedules has been great for communicating during emergency situations. "When P.F. Chang's locations in Louisiana were hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we used HotSchedules to communicate to our employees, find out where everyone had scattered, and route relief funds to employees affected by the storm," Rubenzer said. "The HotSchedules system is a perfect way for us to communicate all types of communication, including urgent emergency communications, to one or all of our locations."

P.F. Changs' managers also use the HotSchedules Digital Logbook, a central online portal that replaces outdated and cumbersome paper red books, to document critical occurrences as they happen. The Digital Logbook encourages more frequent and comprehensive communication among the management team at each location, and ensures that everyone on the team is accountable. All shift information and highlights – such as employee counseling, petty cash totals, repair and maintenance issues, and any other important notes from a shift are securely documented for the management team's use. Using the Digital Logbook, this information iseasily documented, searched, and archived. Just like the manager's scheduling portal, the Digital Logbook is easily accessible anywhere with secure login, so if a manager forgets to log something, they can add it in from home instead of trying to remember to backlog during their next shift.

From start to finish, HotSchedules has proven to be a highly-effective labor management solution for P.F. Chang's that both the staff and managers love using—and they couldn't imagine going back to the "old way." Currently, P.F. Chang's is transitioning from HotSchedules Team to Enterprise for even greater labor savings. Rubenzer closed, "In our experience, HotSchedules has always been eager and willing to partner with us on any new initiative that comes up. They have never put a limit on the service they provide."

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TS Restaurants Download Case Study

Background

Founded by Sandy Saxten and Rob Thibaut in 1977, TS Restaurants (www.tsrestaurants.com) has grown from a single restaurant in Kimo's Old Lahaina Town to a successful multi-concept operation. TS Restaurants has more than 1,700 employees and 12 restaurants located in Hawaii and California across eight concepts, including Kimo's, Leilani's, Hula Grill, Duke's, Keoki's Paradise, Jake's Del Mar, Sunnyside Restaurant and La Quinta Cliffhouse.

Challenge

As with many restaurant operators, using a paper-based scheduling process presented challenges for TS Restaurants. The company needed a more efficient, powerful labor scheduling solution that would improve the scheduling and communication process, as well as reduce labor costs. Additionally, according to Tammy Fukagawa, vice president and controller for TS Restaurants, "While the traditional red book was an adequate means of communication between managers, we were looking for a more innovative tool to further improve our communications."

Solution

An employee at TS Restaurants' Hula Grill Waikiki had used HotSchedules' online labor management solution at a previous job and recommended the tool to her general manager, Dianne Vicheinrut. After researching HotSchedules, Vicheinrut and Fukagawa knew immediately that HotSchedules Enterprise would be a powerful tool to implement across all of TS Restaurants' concepts.

Results

Since using HotSchedules' restaurant labor management solution, TS Restaurants' employees have reported that they love the accessibility and ease-of-use of the online scheduling tools. Additionally, manager communication has improved dramatically, the time required to create weekly schedules has been cut from hours to minutes, and total labor costs have decreased between one-half and one percent.

Labor Management = Pain + Frustration

For TS Restaurants – a thriving, successful restaurant business – the "old way" of employee scheduling and reporting was not up to par with what the executive team and management staff needed to get their jobs done in the most efficient way. For hourly employees, the inflexible paper-based scheduling process was always a hassle, and swapping shifts was a laborious and time-consuming process.

"Our employees were constantly struggling to keep track of their schedules from week to week – jotting them down on scratch paper, calling in to the restaurant to ask busy managers and staff for their schedules, or making a dozen phone calls just to get one shift covered," says Vicheinrut. "Additionally, the management staff was not able to adequately communicate with each other or make consistent shift notes with the existing manager red book. Entries were not thorough enough, and it was more difficult to follow-up on previous entries and keep appropriate records and feedback on employees."

With the existing paper-based scheduling procedures, TS Restaurants' management staff ran the risk of double-scheduling employees who worked at more than one location, and most troublesome, the issue of overtime costs. Since TS Restaurants did not have a real-time reporting solution that would inform managers of total current hours, they were not always aware of when employees were logging costly overtime hours.

The Rollout

After one of its employees recommended HotSchedules, it didn't take long for TS Restaurants to see the value in implementing the software. TS Restaurants selected HotSchedules Enterprise, the premier web-based restaurant staff scheduling and comprehensive labor management solution designed for multi-unit restaurant chains, and immediately began rolling it out.

"As a rule, our company prefers to do in-house training and roll outs. It helps us to understand the technology much better," says Fukagawa. "With the first location install, we worked closely with the HotSchedules team to set up the program to match our exact business requirements. HotSchedules was very helpful, thorough and patient with us. They ensured that our needs were met 100 percent."

HotSchedules' labor scheduling solution was rolled out at TS Restaurants in four phases:

• Phase One introduced the HotSchedules program to restaurant management and began rollout of the Managers Digital Logbook. In this phase, TS Restaurants assigned one or two staff members to administer the setup and configuration tasks.
• Phase Two involved TS Restaurants selecting project managers who were responsible for customizing the schedule templates (i.e. changing the HotSchedules scheduling terminology to the restaurant's own existing scheduling terminology.) TS Restaurants then trained the project managers on how to build the schedule templates.
• Phase Three included training all scheduling managers on how to enter employee availability and how to generate a schedule.
• Phase Four introduced the HotSchedules labor scheduling solution to all TS Restaurants employees, then allowed employees to begin using additional tools for swapping shifts and requesting time off.

Satisfied Employees, Effective Management and Significant Labor Savings

Since deploying the HotSchedules solution, TS Restaurants' corporate team, management staff and hourly employees have been very pleased with the results. "Not only does everyone love the accessibility of scheduling tools anywhere, anytime, but we have also seen increased efficiencies in our business operations and improved management/employee communications," says Fukagawa. Fukagawa reports that employees enjoy HotSchedules' intuitive, user-friendly interface and easy access to their schedules via web, text message, or a 24/7 toll-free automated support line.

HotSchedules also enables TS employees to easily request shift trades and time-off, subject to manager approval. The flexibility and accessibility of HotSchedules is especially popular with "Gen Y" employees who are accustomed to accessing information instantly online or via their mobile phones. HotSchedules' manager interface includes tools to quickly create schedules, approve and deny shift trades, review requests for time off, print reports and evaluate staff availability.

"For cost control management, the ability to monitor overtime hours has been incredibly valuable. With HotSchedules, we are consistently aware of which employees are approaching overtime, and we know the exact implication it will have on our employees' hours prior to approving any shift swaps or requests for additional shifts," says Fukagawa.

Managers also love the ease of creating weekly schedules – what previously took many hours to accomplish now requires less than 30 minutes. This increased efficiency allows TS Restaurants' managers to spend more time running the shift, taking care of customers and addressing employee needs and concerns. HotSchedules also allows managers to carefully monitor and manage employee punctuality, which can also save on costs by disabling employee clock-in before their scheduled shifts begin.

TS managers have also had an overwhelmingly positive response to the HotSchedules Digital Logbook. The Digital Logbook replaces the traditional, cumbersome "red books" with a streamlined, web-based manager communication portal, which encourages much more descriptive shift highlights and employee tracking, as well as sales deposit log, safe-count sheet, archive search, and much more. The HotSchedules Digital Logbook simplifies how restaurant managers collect, search, and manage critical documentation, and it improves communication among the management team. Managers communicate more effectively with one another, and managers and employees are held more accountable with comprehensive records and shift details readily accessible and searchable.

Fukagawa says that TS Restaurants' management team has done a tremendous job in controlling labor costs. Since implementing the HotSchedules solution, TS has seen a reduction in labor costs at each of its 12 locations, totaling approximately one-half to one percent – a significant savings for a company its size. Fukagawa reports that locations already utilizing HotSchedules' advanced tools and reports (such as overtime warning and daily Pro Forma reports) are seeing the most substantial decrease in labor costs. HotSchedules Pro Forma reports allow management to review and compare labor variances in scheduled versus actual hours and dollars, as well as projected versus actual sales by shift, day and week-to-date. Managers can also drill down on variances to review employee time clock punches versus scheduled hours.

HotSchedules' labor management solution provides more than just staff scheduling for TS Restaurants – the restaurant operators also utilize the web-based platform as a powerful communication tool. "We use the HotSchedules solution to send messages to management and staff to let them know of upcoming meetings, employee events, inclement weather, etc.," says Vicheinrut. "We even take advantage of the portal to boost employee morale, such as highlighting the employee of the month or sending ‘Happy Birthday' messages."

For TS Restaurants, there is no looking back to the "old way" of staff scheduling and labor management. "HotSchedules has completely exceeded our expectations. We would recommend it to anyone, whether a single independently owned restaurant or a large corporate chain. Our employees and management enjoy greater work-life balance with the flexibility and control of HotSchedules, and our company has seen increased operational efficiencies and labor cost savings across the board," says Fukagawa.

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