The biggest expense for most restaurants isn’t food costs, rent or mortgage costs, or overheads like utilities or insurance. For most restaurants in America, regardless of size, the biggest expense is labor.
The better a restaurant can manage labor costs, the more profit the operation stands to generate. And yet restaurant operators frequently bemoan the tech sprawl of separate digital platforms for hiring, scheduling, payroll, inventory, and more.
“Many struggle with running three or maybe four separate systems across what we think of as the employee life cycle,” says David Peirce, senior vice president and GM of emerging markets at Fourth. “You hire an employee, then you have to schedule them, you start paying them, and then eventually you offboard them.”
There can be a real cost to that fragmentation, not just in dollars but also in the accuracy of captured and retained data, the logistics of operational planning, and the quality of organizational decision-making.
Streamlining tech to reduce errors
A single scheduling and team management platform, like HotSchedules, can reduce those losses by helping with hiring, shift scheduling, cost forecasting, attendance tracking, and more. All of it is assisted by AI, driven by humans, with the ultimate goals of satisfied customers, engaged employees, and increased profitability.
One immediate payoff: fewer errors.
Payroll managers need accurate records of who worked, when they worked, and what jobs they performed. Without an integrated system, that often means exporting scheduling data, importing it into payroll software, and then transferring information back again — a repetitive process that wastes time and increases the risk of errors.
The more touchpoints a business has, the more likely you are to make mistakes, Peirce says. “And those mistakes can be costly.”
Onboarding is another process that can be complicated. Managers typically process new hires through a hiring system that includes document checks. Once that’s finished, they’ll likely load the new hire into their scheduling, time clocking, and payroll systems. With different systems, the potential for mistakes multiplies exponentially.
A business can end up paying employees too much or too little, potentially upsetting employees or hurting the bottom line. Or both.
HotSchedules can manage all aspects of payroll, including standard wages, the tip payout system, and overtime. It also handles onboarding, integration, scheduling, and more, ensuring a smooth, reliable process no matter the level of employee turnover.
Fewer errors helps save money and time — and also keeps managers and business owners focused on what’s important.
“Restaurant managers don’t get into the business to sit at their desks exporting and importing CSVs into different programs,” Peirce says. “They get into the business to spend time with and grow their team, and to spend time with their customers.”
360-degree support
Empowering and supporting employees isn’t just good for them; it’s good for the bottom line. HotSchedules helps ease one of workers’ chronic pain points: scheduling.
Employees can enter preferred hours, or dates and times they can’t work. The platform also lets them swap shifts directly, rather than navigating the multi-person game of telephone usually required to juggle schedules. That empowerment makes it easier for managers to create a schedule that works for the business and the team.
“The manager’s only job is to approve,” Peirce says. That saves time and reduces frustration, which in turn saves money and supports employee morale and retention.
Multiple functions, one platform
“When you’re running a restaurant, forecasting is critical; it’s what you base the rest of your decisions on,” Peirce says. “You’ve got to be able to match your labor and your cost to how much revenue is going to come in, how much traffic’s going to come in the door.”
HotSchedules is backed by 25 years of restaurant industry data. With AI crunching the numbers in real time, managers using HotSchedules can plan how to absorb or prevent bad shifts from causing bad days, weeks, or months. Managers can react faster, plan wisely, and keep operations running smoothly — all of which translates to happier customers, satisfied workers, and better results overall.
See how HotSchedules simplifies restaurant workforce management.
This sponsored post was created by BI Studios with Fourth.
