The challenge

Dixon Foods is a family-run McDonald’s franchisee that’s been operating for nearly 50 years. As the business expanded from one to 28 locations, communications within and across teams became challenging. It was difficult to ensure that all staff were well-informed about new or seasonal McDonald’s products, which impacted the customer experience.

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While some managers used group texts to share updates, they found that it wasn’t very helpful for tasks like distributing schedules or managing shift covers. When the company’s leadership heard about Crew’s mobile solution for team communications and scheduling, they decided to give it a try.

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The solution

Dixon Foods adopted Crew Enterprise to simplify and encourage positive interactions within its restaurant teams, share important corporate updates, manage weekly schedules and motivate employees. Each location now has an established Crew organization, or group, which its managers use for daily communications.

 

Most Dixon Foods’ general managers (GMs) post schedules on Crew each week, which makes it easy for staff to request shift swaps or inform their supervisor when they’re running late. Their team leaders also use Crew to reward top performers with “Gold Stars” – inspiring and encouraging their best employees. Area supervisors can even monitor multiple restaurants at once from the Crew app on their phone, and get involved as needed without having to visit each location on a regular basis.

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Results

In many parts of the business, Crew has become the primary avenue for communications, making it vital to the success of Dixon Foods. Tyler Sollars, an area supervisor, noted that employees at the locations that are most active on Crew are much better informed and engaged with the company’s sales promotions and service competitions. Additionally, stores that struggled historically have elevated their performance, thanks to better information sharing and motivation with Crew.

 

“Yesterday, I was monitoring a Crew discussion in one of my stores where the manager was out for the day,” Sollars said. “Her drive-thru team wasn’t performing well, so she took a picture of the score and shared it in Crew, saying ‘Hey guys, we're only 16th out of 28 today. Let's get this thing moving!’ A couple hours went by, and her next post in Crew was ‘Team, thank you so much – we went from 16th to 8th!’” This resulted in an 11-second boost in speed of service that day.

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Dixon Foods’ GMs are enjoying dramatic time savings with Crew, especially during weather events. If it snows in the area, managers no longer have to spend hours calling or texting everyone individually to make sure they know about restaurant closures or schedule changes. They just send one message and Crew delivers it to everyone at once.