Employee Scheduling and Labor Management for Fast Casual Restaurants

There is a silver lining to the current economic climate: recessions are a great time to streamline processes – both to save money and to give yourself the time to focus on the strategies that will keep your business successful through trying times. Even in the best of times, fast casual operations with lean expenses will profit more than a cost laden competitor.

The sad fact is that some fast casual businesses will drop out of the race, and smart restaurant operators know that those businesses that stay in the game will be the operations that accurately track and forecast costs – both labor costs, and inventory expenses. Remaining profitable is key.

Depending on the fast casual concept, payroll is one of the largest expenses. And you probably spend a lot of time making sure that this large expense is kept below budget – while ensuring that you have the necessary staff coverage.

Restaurant staff scheduling isn’t easy – most managers spend at least two and a half hours, every week, building and managing the schedule. Managers must juggle employees’ availability and varying skill sets, identify cross-training needs, monitor part-time employees (each with their own set of scheduling requests), and even worry about labor laws concerning staff who are minors, or employees who drive or handle liquor. You communicate the schedule to all the employees, respond to endless questions about next week’s schedule, deal with late time-off or unplanned sick staff members and late shift-swap requests.

And then you must communicate the newly revised schedule to the employees. Again. And again. The cycle never stops!

It’s tedious and time-consuming. And extremely important. Over-staffing costs your business money, and drains profits. Under-staffing costs you customers, and drains profits.

Luckily, there is a time-saving and cost conscious solution: TimeForge. TimeForge will cut your employee scheduling time from hours to minutes – or even seconds. And, TimeForge turns attendance management (monitoring employees who ride the clock, or buddy punch) into a simple managerial task.

And in both profitable and challenging economic times, the ability to manage schedules at one or many locations and monitor and forecast your labor expenses makes TimeForge an instant budget boosting tool. In fact, TimeForge can increase restaurant profits by 3-5%.

Add in the ability to integrate easily with restaurant POS systems and payroll systems, employee reminders of upcoming work schedules, staffing notifications for schedule changes by text message or email, and the ability to focus manager time on the necessary tasks facing a fast casual restaurant manager on any given day, you’ll find that the time saved first week alone pays for the investment.