Business Performance Toolkit for Restaurants

Texas Roadhouse

Famous for its hand-cut steaks, fresh-baked bread, and warm, homey atmosphere, Louisville-based Texas Roadhouse, Inc. operates more than 360 steakhouses across 47 states n the USA. In 2009, readers of Consumer Reports magazine voted the restaurant chain “Best Value” in its category.

The first location opened to the public in 1993, and since then the company’s workforce has grown to 40,000 employees, many of them seasonal. This extensive, diverse group presented a wide variety of unique needs and challenges. While the business first utilized a large payroll service bureau for people management at all of its locations throughout the country, Texas Roadhouse found this approach lacking in its ability to keep up with rapid expansion. The company wanted more robust control, flexibility and functionality—and eventually decided that comprehensive HCM from one single provider was the right choice for their enterprise.

For almost a decade, Texas Roadhouse has been enjoying dramatically enhanced people management from a single comprehensive solution. The business achieved substantial gains in HR and payroll functionality customized to their needs, and added powerful business intelligence capabilities to their repertoire as well. But the real boon to the steakhouse chain’s HCM came when they made the switch from a traditional on-premise model to cloud-based delivery.

“We made the decision to switch to the cloud platform because it makes better sense and delivers more value for our business—especially transparent upgrades as well as reduced IT expenses and responsibilities,” said Mark Simpson, senior director of people for Texas Roadhouse.

With people management in the cloud, the company suddenly discovered heightened agility, simplicity, and flexibility in all areas of HR and payroll, while simultaneously saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs associated with maintaining on-premise software, performing manual upgrades, support, and training. Version upgrades became efficient, automated and hassle-free.

Best of all, with reduced IT and support expenses and streamlined processes, Texas Roadhouse achieved a rapid, measurable return-on-investment with cloud-based, comprehensive HCM.

“With comprehensive, cloud-based HCM, we are achieving our goal of $1 million in savings over a five-year period,” said Patrick Sterling, Texas Roadhouse’s director of risk and people administration. “We’re very pleased that we are now experiencing full HCM advantages through superior cloud technology.”

GPS Hospitality

GPS Hospitality, an operator of more than 400 Burger King and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen restaurants, has more than 10,000 active employees who strive to stand out in a competitive industry by maintaining a commitment to being “Service Obsessed.”

As a culture-conscious company that believes people are its greatest asset, GPS Hospitality sought HR technology that could deliver a great employee experience. The company selected a comprehensive solution in October 2016, and, two months later, made an acquisition that doubled its size from 200 to 400 restaurants.

“With minimal HR and payroll staff, we were able to absorb about 5,000 new employees into our system and had no trouble hitting our go-live date of April 1, 2017,” said Christy Norris, director of payroll and HRIS at GPS Hospitality. “The people and technology behind our solution assisted us in our complex transformation.”

“With more than a decade of HCM administration experience on three other solutions, I found over the past year that an all-in-one’s solution usability sets it apart,” said Norris. “I love how easy it is to configure for our particular needs. For example, a platform-configuration rule for a job change eliminated a substantial manual task when we promoted an assistant manager to general manager. I was also able to build our org levels and set them up by region, district, and division. I can change the names of fields and edit labels to enhance the user experience for both HR and the employee. Most importantly, because we utilize an integrated HCM suite, I only have to make a change in one place and it populates everywhere.”

While Norris has enjoyed the tool’s ability to effectively manage employee-related transactions, she reports that customer service has been the most valuable aspect of her partnership.

“What I love most about our vendor is that I always have a team I can reach out to,” said Norris. “I have a number of employees dedicated to my account—an expert who is continually optimizing my configuration, a relationship manager focused on my strategic goals, and the whole team is in touch with one another. In all my years working with HCM solutions, I have never felt so much support on a product.”

RMH Franchise Corporation

RMH Franchise Corporation is the second-largest Applebee’s operator in the United States, with over 175 restaurant locations. Its workforce consists of approximately 10,000 employees across 15 states.

Considering the vast amount of employees and separate tax codes involved in paying its employees, RMH struggled with multiple separate HCM solutions and even a multitude of fully manual processes, including thousands of wage garnishments. The high turnover rate of the restaurant industry also required the RMH payroll staff to manage the hiring and termination of about 400 employees per week. With a growth mindset, RMH realized its HCM strategy could not keep up with its needs and sought a comprehensive solution.

After making the switch to a robust, cloud-based HCM platform, RMH saw a night-and-day difference in areas from payroll efficiency to compliance, and experienced major benefits in the management of new acquisitions. According to Justine Belt, payroll manager for RMH, “Our business model is based on growth through acquisition. [The solution] makes acquisitions very easy for us—a simple matter of adding more records, including locations, pay groups, and new states. When we added 33 locations and about 2,000 employees, it enabled us to scale up without adding any headcount to our payroll department.”

RMH used cloud-based HCM to eliminate painful, time-consuming processes related to tax reporting and wage attachments. Their new platform was configurable enough to handle compliance needs and tax filings in hundreds of localities, while managing to accurately pay a workforce comprised of hourly employees, tipped employees, salaried employees, and employees who work multiple jobs in the same pay period—some of whom even collect overtime and makeup pay in more than one role. Instead of manually producing a tax package in-house and reviewing it for accuracy at the cost of many hours of internal labor, the complexities were all taken care of by their vendor services. Wage attachments can now be handled all with one click.

The organization was even able to integrate cloud HCM into its point-of-sale solution, creating a seamless process for managing employee data regardless of location with complete accuracy and no manual entry. If an employee switches between locations, the manager updates the employee’s record,” said Belt. “When the employee arrives at the new location, the integration into our point-of-sale system enables the employee to clock in electronically.”