The challenge

David Morrison is the Director of Tacala Leadership University. He oversees the training and development of Tacala’s staff of over 7,000 working across 288 locations. Tacala’s impressive commitment to investing in and developing their employees has made them one of the largest and most respected Taco Bell operations in the U.S.

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As the company grew to nearly 300 stores, David was looking for a way to simplify operations and effectively communicate with the expanding Tacala team.

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The solution

While visiting a store in Birmingham, AL, David learned that the top performing manager there was using Crew to engage his team, simplify scheduling and keep everyone on the same page. “What stood out to me was how quickly he was covering shifts--in as little as six to seven minutes--using the app” said David. “I saw a big opportunity to streamline operations and improve store performance across our entire system with Crew.”

Faster shift covers for optimal staffing

Tacala uses Crew to find last minute shift coverage and put the schedule in everyone’s pocket.

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“Crew makes it faster and easier for managers to cover a shift because they can broadcast it to their entire organization in seconds and team members can volunteer to help out,” says David. “An average store has three to four callouts each week, that’s about a thousand callouts a month. That means Crew is saving managers hundreds of hours each week that they can re-invest in operations. That has a major impact on team performance and our bottom line.”

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“Crew has made it much faster and easier to find and optimize coverage so we can serve our customers.”

David Morrison
Director of Tacala Leadership University

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Engaging and recognizing employees

Tacala uses Crew to recognize team members for doing great work, motivate their staff and create stronger connection and teamwork across the company.

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David notes that “the really good managers are using Crew to engage and recognize their team”. Charlie says, “I post goals for the week, I set expectations on the things we can work on to get better as a team. I say good job, I say thank you, I give people Gold Stars and I tell them to keep up the good work.” Willy, another RGM at Tacala, uses Crew to highlight customer feedback, “when a survey mentions an employee by name I post it directly into Crew and say “great job”. It’s huge, everyone likes to be recognized publicly and Crew makes it very easy.”

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David sees smartphones as a powerful way for Tacala to connect with their staff, “Crew engages my employees where they are at which is on their phones. For years we’ve been trying to get people to engage with the content that we present to them. Crew lets us put that information on their phones and that’s really powerful. I see no reason to fight the current of phone usage. It’s obviously here to stay and so we see this as an opportunity to reach people in new ways.

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Simplifying multi-unit communication

Tacala is using Crew to create a stronger connection between in and above store teams. David is excited that, “it gives me or anyone on the above store management team the ability to broadcast a message to everyone instantly. I can reach 7000 people in 30 seconds using Crew.”

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“So whether I want to send a video of our VP of Ops talking about the new nacho fries or remind everyone about our scholarship program, I can do all of that in Crew. In the past, we struggled to fully communicate these benefits and it was a missed opportunity. Now with Crew that’s no longer an issue.”

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For Deborah, Crew has brought her closer to her eight stores, “before Crew, I would group text or email with my immediate managers but it wouldn’t go all the way down to their teams. Now with Crew I can have direct contact with every team member. The communication has really improved and that translates into everyone feeling like a part of the team, no one feels left out.”

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Impact

​By using Crew Tacala has improved communication across their entire staff, saved valuable manager time and discovered a higher impact way to engage and recognize employees.

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Because of these advancements, David predicts better employee retention for Tacala long term, “Crew is a way to make team members more content in their work whether that’s through recognition, or visibility to their schedule or being able to cover shifts or pick-up shifts to get more hours. We believe that over time Crew will be a valuable way to help us reduce turnover.”