How events enhance QSR scheduling UI
QSR scheduling is a major cost
In addition to rising labor costs, quick serve restaurants (QSRs) have been faced with a number of challenges over the past 2 years, including:
Labor shortages and reported turnover rates as high as 150%
It costs $5,864 on average to replace each hourly employee
Sudden fluctuations in demand that lead to over and under staffing
Staffing is known to be a major cost for QSRs, which has only become more difficult to manage due to a shortage of labor in the space. These companies have to compete to retain their workforce now more than ever–and platforms serving the industry are figuring out ways to help them.
QSR scheduling platforms are branching out into new data sets, such as events
These platforms are looking for ways to improve their accuracy around predicting labor demand, and many are turning towards integrating new data sets, such as intelligent event data, to improve employee scheduling–resulting in maximized sales and mitigated losses.
When it comes to saving on labor costs, the name of the game is right-sizing your staff for each and every shift–in other words, scheduling the lowest number of staff needed to efficiently complete each shift.
Let’s take a look at how QSRs can use intelligent event data to pinpoint this number, and how scheduling platforms are integrating this data to enable QSRs to optimize their workforce every day.
Surface upcoming events so the whole team knows what to expect
Keep QSR teams informed within your labor scheduling UI, where some platforms integrate events as a part of the scheduling process. When there are popular events coming up, the whole team from management, to hosts, servers, and more will see them and know which days to expect a busy shift.
It’s expensive to have a surplus of staff on the schedule, but it’s also hard to identify the right number of staff needed each day. How many managers will you need on a Saturday afternoon? How many jr. staff members will you need?
The visibility of local, high-impact events enables operational teams to adjust the employee schedule – and inventory orders – to accommodate larger or smaller crowds than usual.
What events have historically driven demand for your different store locations? Looking at historical event data compared to your internal sales data, you can easily determine the types of events that impact your location’s demand, which ultimately impacts your staffing decisions.
From this information, you can look ahead to plan accordingly for upcoming events that will attract hungry crowds after a local concert, festival, or a sports game.
QSR-serving platforms integrate events to enhance staffing and demand planning
Leading platforms such as Lineup use intelligent event data to reduce forecasting errors and improve model accuracy. During initial trials, Lineup’s forecasting was 35% more accurate when leveraging verified event data, or demand intelligence.
“Before PredictHQ and Lineup, these restaurants were going next door to ask their neighbors what was going on if there was a sudden influx of people from an event. The millions of events we’re getting from PredictHQ provides peace of mind that we’re delivering accurate, helpful insights to restaurants across the U.S. that drive profitable decisions every day,"
-Brian Bemiller Product Leader, Lineup
Explore how Lineup, an AI-powered restaurant prediction platform, integrates demand intelligence to drive greater forecast accuracy and profitability for their users.
