Recession weary-fast casual restaurant managers are scrambling to shave costs and attract customers in tumultuous times. The sad fact is that some fast-casual restaurants will drop out of the race, and savvy restaurant managers know that those businesses that stay in the game will be the ones who can accurately track and forecast their costs – both labor costs, and inventory expenses. Remaining profitable is key. Even in the best of times, fast casual operations with lean expenses will profit more than a cost laden competitor.
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 restaurant afloat (and successful) through trying times.
Depending on the fast casual concept, payroll is one of the largest two expenses – the other costly item in your budget will be inventory. And you probably spend a lot of time creating careful employee schedules to ensure that you have the coverage needed during busy periods without overspending your payroll.
Restaurant employee 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 skill sets, part-time employees (each with their own set of scheduling requests), multiple shifts, training sessions and/or employee meetings, and (depending on the business) even worry about insurance or labor laws concerning employees who are minors, or staff who drive or handle liquor. You communicate the schedule to all the employees (by printing or emailing it), field endless inquiries about next week's schedule (or worse, scramble to fill a missed shift), deal with late time-off or unplanned sick staff and shift-swap requests.
And then you must communicate the newly revised work schedule to the employees. Again. And again. The cycle never stops!
Communicating the labor schedule, and building a good labor schedule is time-consuming and tedious, and vital to your fast casual business. Over-staffing costs your business money, and reduces profits. Under-staffing costs you customers, and reduces 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% with its cost cutting and time saving controls.
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.
