The challenge

Kentucky Fried Chicken was facing a challenge encountered by nearly every quick service restaurant business today: that of inefficient communications between its staff members, resulting in wasted time scheduling shifts, checking and confirming schedules, and communicating daily updates and details. Difficulties in shift management meant that locations were sometimes understaffed, leading to longer wait times for food and dissatisfied customers.
 

Troubles in scheduling were also a strain on employee morale - restaurants left short-staffed, or managers pulled away from operational and floor duties to deal with shift swaps and covers. Employee turnover also meant that phone books and work directories were quickly out of date. There was no unified system for rewarding top performing employees, nor for peer recognition.

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The solution

Katie Slater, Director of Operations for Slater Enterprises, first encountered Crew
at AKFCF, the annual trade convention in Anaheim. She decided to implement a trial run in three KFC restaurants for four weeks, and was so impressed by the results that she immediately rolled out the app to all 16 restaurants, where Crew is a now a key component of the employee experience today.

Unified communication

By utilizing Crew, KFC was able to streamline communications both within its individual locations and across the entire operation, while eliminating the task of managing and sharing e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Employees and managers are now instantly able to contact their entire teams, and send messages to anyone currently physically present at a location. Additionally, by using Command Center, Katie can now broadcast messages to her entire organization. "With Command Center, it's easy to make company-wide announcements. The user interface is simple and intuitive. I can even deep-dive on statistics such as check-ins, tasks completed, and employee activity."

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Prior to Crew, when an employee needed to check their schedule, they had to either travel to a physical location or call their manager. Given ongoing personnel changes and shift changes, this was a headache for staff members. A fry cook weighs in on communications after Crew: “Now with the app, managing and keeping up to date on my schedule is way easier than it was before.
My schedule’s now always in my pocket, on my phone.”

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Efficient and easy scheduling

One of the biggest pain points for KFC was the management and optimization of schedules at each of its locations. When an employee needed to swap shifts, they were often unable to coordinate with teammates and managers on short notice, leading to confusion and short staffed restaurants. With Crew, there is instant communication. “Now I don’t have to call my manager to ask who might be able to cover my schedule, in case I need to make a change. I can check all that for myself, real time.”

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A location manager notes: “I used to spend significant portions of my day fielding phone calls and requests from employees, coordinating schedules and answering questions. Now, employees can communicate directly on shift swaps, and then propose changes for my approval on the app.”

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With restaurants fully staffed and managers able to devote their time to operations, and not shift management, the locations are able to focus on food orders and delivery. Within just a short period, Slater was able to see significant results in preparation time, leading to increased customer satisfaction.

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Employee recognition and retention

Crew’s Gold Star feature enables employees to not only track their own kudos, but also recognize and celebrate their fellow team members. “Before Crew, there was no unified way to track and recognize our employees. Now, whenever one of our staff receives a gold star, the entire team is notified. And there’s a nice history aspect to it , where we can see the employees with the most stars this week, this month, of all time on the Leaderboard.”

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Impact​

“Since our operation is a franchise business, each of the managers of our fourteen restaurants are given wide autonomy to decide what works best for their individual location. The fact that all fourteen of them chose to implement Crew for their employees speaks volumes.”

 

“Crew fixed so many pain points for us, most crucially that of employee communications, leading to very tangible results in our food delivery and satisfaction. We will be continuing with Crew Pro and are delighted with the results.”