Success Story: Tilted Kilt

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1 Customer Success Story: Tilted Kilt Page 1 Success Story: Tilted Kilt Busting through scheduling and communication challenges across 77 locations and counting

2 Customer Success Story: Tilted Kilt Page 2 What's in a name? For Tilted Kilt a lot actually. The Kilt implies something Irish or Scottish, and that s true, but with an American twist. The goal was to take the European pub premise and merge it with American fare, great sports and gorgeous female servers dressed in sassy mini-kilts and matching tops. Add a little whimsy and a crew that doesn t take themselves too seriously, and you begin to understand why Tilted Kilt was dubbed The Best Looking Sports Pub You ve Ever Seen. Tilted Kilt was named among the fastest-growing franchises in terms of revenue last year, and with 100 locations and almost 10,000 employees across the nation, there s no question that the Tilted Kilt concept has found its audience. The good times continue to be on tap as the Tilted Kilt group continues to grow at a steady pace across the country. By the end of 2014, they had over 100 locations and counting. Fancy Schmancy But all that business growth is not without a set of challenges, however, and no one knows that better than John Stevenson, the former Director of Training. Having been with Tilted Kilt in various roles for over seven years, Stevenson is very familiar with one challenge in particular the time that can be consumed creating employee schedules using spreadsheets. Initially, we were using some pretty fancy schmancy spreadsheets with shaded cells and everything. It was pretty advanced stuff, Stevenson jokes. In a Snapshot Their Story In 2009, the growing Tilted Kilt brand realized they needed a better solution to manage the schedule creation process. After researching what other top franchises use, the Operations team chose HotSchedules as their full labor management solution. Challenges Scheduling was a very stressful and unpleasant part of a manager s job, further complicated by the number of employees per location. Requests by the team were being made informally, often verbally, without an adequate process for documentation. Scheduling taking at least 8 hours a week of the managers time. Products HotSchedules Integrated Results One to one and a half percent reduction in labor costs from the first month. 75% reduction in time to create schedules. Now able to proactively and accurately forecast sales and labor. The pain of spreadsheet scheduling is pretty easy to imagine: In addition to just building a schedule with the right people in the right places, managers have to consider many other factors, such as sales and labor forecasts, staff availability, and requests off. Once the

3 Customer Success Story: Tilted Kilt Page 3 schedule is built, they have to print and post it to a bulletin board. From there, managers deal with the inevitable changes and new requests that come in, along with innumerable calls to the store from staff members who haven t made it in to read the schedule. 75% decrease in the time it takes managers to create schedules % reduction in labor costs within the first month of using HotSchedules. Managers able to accurately forecast sales and labor. Unfortunately, the process of scheduling was a very unpleasant part of the job. It was stressful, and became more personal than it needed to be. Requests off were made informally, often verbally, without adequate processes for documentation. Staff members who thought they had gotten their request in often discovered that it had been inadvertently forgotten or lost. This created tension for managerstaff relationships. At the time, changes to the schedule required three sets of initials in the shift-change log that was housed on site. What do you do if someone needs to make a change for the next day and the other person they want to trade with isn t on site? How do you get their official confirmation? It s a problem. Plus, the time it took made it even more tedious, says Stevenson. Adding to the typical burdens that scheduling creates, Tilted Kilt had two additional challenges. First, the sheer number of employees per location over 100 made the process unmanageable to start with. Secondly, in an effort to be accommodating to their staff, they allowed them to make weekly requests off and set weekly availabilities. The hope was that setting this flexible standard would be more convenient for staff and it is but it also means that managers struggled even more trying to do it all manually. With all that s involved, I would say that it was taking our managers eight hours a week to produce a good, accurate schedule. We took on some extra work to fully customizing the schedules to accommodate the staff, explains Stevenson, but it makes things ever-more complicated for the managers creating the schedules. Sporting a New Schedule All the time spent on the schedule was time lost working on other aspects of the business. It was frustrating for staff and managers alike, so Stevenson began looking into ways he could improve things. Pouring over industry and trade publications, he was struck by a couple of articles on the Cheesecake Factory (Stevenson s former employer) and P.F. Chang s, in which they noted the improvements the two franchises had achieved by using a labor management solution.

4 Customer Success Story: Tilted Kilt Page 4 I'd estimate we're spending at least 75% less time on the schedule since moving to HotSchedules." -John Stevenson, Director of Training , Tilted Kilt Franchise Operations, LLC Another piece of the set-up that Stevenson really appreciated was the Welcome Sheet. Every employee is given a Welcome Sheet with instructions on logging into HotSchedules. The Welcome Sheets are fantastic! When you re rolling out something new to every employee, the communication HAS to be there. Little things like that show how HotSchedules is always anticipating the challenges and providing what s needed before we have to worry about it. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly even brand new hourly trainees took to HotSchedules. They picked it up, ran with it and use it all the time now, he says. Scheduling MVPs Since implementing HotSchedules, creating and managing schedules has improved by a lot. I d estimate we re spending at least 75% less time on the schedule since moving to HotSchedules representing hours and hours of work. If you really think of all the pieces that are affected: the forecasting, the creation of the schedule, the updates and changes, the printing, posting, and then managing the phone-ins to the store HotSchedules is responsible for an amazing amount of time saved. Stevenson decided to investigate further. After kicking the tires on three different solutions, and seeing demonstrations, the Tilted Kilt team decided to move forward with HotSchedules. I did my research and learned a lot in the process. You can tell that the creators of HotSchedules have run restaurants before they have built a solution that comprehends and addresses all the challenges we face in our business." A Strong Kick-Off To get started, the HotSchedules team trained all of Tilted Kilt's management team. The next play: integrate the HotSchedules system with their Aloha POS system. The integration was surprisingly easy. It was kind of a weird time for us too we were in the middle of several job transitions, including mine, and were a little concerned that something might go awry. But honestly, HotSchedules made it a breeze, Stevenson says. Perhaps even more important than time is the sanity his managers have gotten back. Managers aren t stressed about phone calls coming in 10 minutes before a shift with people saying, Am I supposed to be there or not? Now, staff can just check the schedule online or on their phone s app or call HotSchedules to get it. Everyone across the board, in every position has enjoyed and benefitted from the move to HotSchedules, Stevenson says. Busting Through Goals The team at Tilted Kilt realy heavily on HotSchedules' sales and labor forecasting and reporting functions. The Labor Proforma is crucial to helping us manage controllable costs. Our ability to effectively schedule labor is a key performance indicator (KPI) for us. We coach our managers to look at the proforma before they even consider starting to schedule, Stevenson explains. Prior to having HotSchedules, we did our best to wing it and hope our labor numbers would come in line. Then we d watch it on the fly and do our best to react. With the HotSchedules Labor Proforma, we can get out of the reactive loop. The proforma makes us proactive.

5 Customer Success Story: Tilted Kilt Page 5 Conservatively, we save a percent to a percent-and-a-half in labor costs thanks to HotSchedules. It started saving us in the very first month we implemented and has continued to save us that much every month since. Without a doubt, HotSchedules pays for itself with the labor savings we ve achieved. -John Stevenson, Director of Training , Tilted Kilt Franchise Operations, LLC Managers also use the Actual vs. Scheduled reports as well as the overtime alert to find labor savings. Though the overtime scheduling was never a big issue, it was something they monitored closely. We pretty much trained overtime scheduling out of our managers, because when it happened, we had some uncomfortable explaining to do upstream. That said, overtime certainly didn t increase after HotSchedules. It just automated the process of tracking staff member hours, rather than having to do it manually, says Stevenson. Punctuality controls are an additional money-saving feature. Previously, managers spent a lot of time every shift reviewing clock-ins and outs. Now, by pushing the schedule into the Aloha POS system, managers can control when employees are allowed to clock in or out, if they wish - saving precious time and money. Conservatively, we save a percent to a percentand-a-half in labor costs thanks to HotSchedules," says Stevenson. "It started saving us in the very first month we implemented and has continued to save us that much every month since. Without a doubt, HotSchedules pays for itself with the labor savings we ve achieved. Attracting the Next Wave of Talent Tilted Kilt has been using HotSchedules for over six years and Stevenson is confident they made the right move. In addition to easing the scheduling burden and improving the forecasting and communications, staff and managers are really enjoying how easy it is to access all of their scheduling and communication tools in one spot. I don t have any empirical data, but I know we ve lost people because they didn t follow the correct protocols with shift changes and ended up missing shifts or getting angry over the disorganization." If they d had HotSchedules back then, he's confident that those issues would not have come up in the first place. Tilted Kilt is really all about the people. Girls in kilts are our brand. We want to attract the best employees by instituting technologies and solutions that make us the most progressive. HotSchedules is one technology solution that helps us be the employer of choice. Call us at Visit HotSchedules.com 2017 HotSchedules. All rights reserved. HotSchedules cannot be responsible for errors in typography or photography. HotSchedules and the HotSchedules logo are registered trademarks of HotSchedules. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks. This case study is for informational purposes only. HotSchedules makes no warranties, express or implied, in this case study.