CASE STUDY
Kerala Kitchen
A SUCCESS STORY
Hospitality
INDUSTRY
30+
EMPLOYEES
2
Locations
2021
USER SINCE
“It started with one man, a truck and a love of south Indian food”; Kerala Kitchen has been serving authentic Indian food since 2009. Inspired by the light coastal flavours of Kerala. Founder Lewis had a love for curry. When he wasn’t working he was cooking, learning directly from the beaches and backwaters of Kerala. It was at the Sea Sessions Festival, in his future wife Grainne’s home county of Donegal, that he saw food traders setting up shop and realised what he wanted to do next. He bought his own hand-painted truck and drove it straight to his first festival in Temple House, Sligo. Next up was the Dublin food scene, where he set up a stall on the Grand Canal, with queues forming in wind and rain for his coconut chicken and potato curries. By 2016, they had opened their first premises. The result? A down to earth family business, built with grit and good will, that always offers a warm welcome and good food. This year saw the opening of their second restaurant in Stoneybatter. This is such a beautiful story and the Bizimply team cannot wait to get in and try out their specialty curries!
Kerala Kitchen is thriving, from what was once a food truck to now having two locations, their success is impressive. However, with the opening of a second location, Lewis and Grainne need communications between staff to remain consistent within each location and to improve across the two. Also, with more staff to schedule, they realised the Excel sheets were no longer going to cut it. They wanted to find a software that would empower their Manager; Daniela Rodriguez, who carried out these jobs. Since implementing Bizimply all this has changed, keep reading to find out how.
The Challenge
Scheduling was getting messy
Kerala Kitchen were like many others in the industry who used Excel spreadsheets to create their weekly rotas, they would either pin them up on site or send them out in a text message. It often led to people forgetting to check their hours for the following week when on their shift so they had to ring in or text other staff to see when they were scheduled to work. Often staff would misread their hours and show up for the wrong shift or not show up at all. As this started happening more, they knew it was time to begin looking for a software that would eradicate these problems.
“Staff schedules were printed out, done on Excel, staff would then write on the rota the times they finished their shift. This had to be manually inputted at the end of each week and used to pay wages”, Daniela explains, “It was so unorganised looking back, extremely time-consuming, nor very accurate”.
Time and Attendance was another issue that Daniela found difficult to track. With attendance being done via the manual timesheet, they had no insight to their labour sales percentage data nor was it compliance proof. This system led to all sorts of further challenges when it came to Payroll and Holiday requests. The process was prone to human error and inaccuracies as it was hard to decipher employees handwriting of their hours.
“There was so much time being wasted. Payroll was a disaster, there were always issues to sort out and it took time away from doing what I love best, which is being out front with my team and checking up on customers.”
The Solution
Daniela selected Bizimply to help solve her pain points. Managing schedules was now a breeze, replacing Excel with a simple, colour-coded drag-and-drop system that instantly highlights your labour costs as you build for each department.
The whole Kerala Kitchen team love using the Bizimply software, they find that communications have completely improved. Many of the team have downloaded the MyZimply App where they can access the schedule at any time. They are also able to update their personal contact details within the app which saves time on the managers hands. This has eliminated the need for printed rotas and less confusion amongst staff, especially if there has been swapping of shifts.
“It has saved us so much time and money”, Daniela shared.
Due to having completely accurate timesheets from implementing the attendance software, Kerala Kitchen have immediately saved 5% on their labour costs. As well, Payroll has become so much simpler; “Payroll used to take up to 2 days to complete, now I can get it done in about 45 minutes.”
The automation of employee shift times going from the Timestation to the timecards means all managers have to do is approve and export to payroll. It’s a simple concept that will save your business money and give you more time on your hands to focus on other business areas.
Daniela and her team are delighted with Bizimply;
“I can’t believe it took us this long to implement a software like this, our entire business operations have been completely streamlined; we have seen a change in engagement of our employees as well as overall efficiency”.