News Briefs

Hotel Effectiveness by Actabl, a provider of labor management solutions for the hospitality industry, today announced new data revealing trends in labor data for the first half of 2024, along with the introduction of new scheduling features and the integration of Clean Sync with Alice. Poised to revolutionize labor management and operational efficiency for hotels worldwide, these advancements will equip hotels with the tools to keep pace with innovation and exceed evolving guest expectations.

Labor Market Trends

In the first half of 2024, Hotel Effectiveness analyzed data from over 5,000 hotels, identifying several key trends:

• Turnover as a major pain point: While we see that US year-over-year turnover is dropping, in the 90-day view, it’s clear that turnover is still a major concern for the Room Attendant positions, with an average of ~55% of roles turning over within the first 90 days. When viewing the annual performance, the data is not as impactful: PerfectWage is crucial to monitoring these key changes.
• Overtime is making a comeback: Looking at our analysis, full-time employees are searching for more hours than they have in the past. This suggests that more staffing has relieved the strain on full-time staff, allowing them to choose overtime that works with their schedules.

New Scheduling Features

Hotel Effectiveness continues to innovate with new features designed to streamline scheduling and boost productivity:

• Location-specific View: The Location View feature allows hotels to specify areas within a major property, such as multiple F&B outlets, and link positions directly to those areas. Managers can now view schedules by location, ensuring proper coverage for the right positions when needed. For properties where different managers schedule specific outlets but share employees, shifts will now clearly indicate where each employee is working.
• Department View: This new Department View lets managers see hospitality positions organized by department rather than alphabetically. This enhancement provides quick access to multiple department rosters, making it easier for scheduling managers to focus on headcount for specific departments.
• Day View: Scheduling managers can now drill down to a day-by-day view, highlighting each day broken down by the hour. In Day View, users can sort shifts by position, department, and location. This customization ensures that positions are linked to priority locations, and the schedule is viewed by location, guaranteeing the right coverage for the right position in the appropriate area of the hotel.

Clean Sync Integration with Alice

Our latest integration, Clean Sync, connects Hotel Effectiveness with Alice to enable seamless communication between housekeeping and productivity reporting by room attendant and for the whole housekeeping team. This integration ensures effective operational alignment by automatically syncing cleaning data into Hotel Effectiveness every night. This process enhances accuracy and eliminates the frustration of tracking down missing or incorrect entries.

Key insights available through this integration include:

• Daily, accurate cleans entry by employee in Hotel Effectiveness, providing: Minutes per Room Clean averages, viewable by employee or by day.
• Aggregated insights for a comprehensive view of account-wide operations, such as Minutes per Room Cleaned, Minutes per Room Sold, and Room Cleans %.

These insights can be used for 30, 60, 90, or 365-day performance reviews for team members and leaders on property. They can also be compared to Minutes per Room Clean Labor Plan goals to ensure accountability and target adherence.

Additionally, Room Cleans Forecasting utilizes data from the past eight weeks and year-over-year history to forecast room clean mixes, aiding in the efficient scheduling of room attendants.

"At Hotel Effectiveness, we are proud to enable operational excellence through innovative labor management solutions for hotels," said Taylor Jones, Director of Product Management, Hotel Effectiveness by Actabl. "Our latest research paired with new scheduling features and Clean Sync integration with Alice exemplifies our dedication to driving efficiency, enhancing employee satisfaction, and ultimately improving the guest experience."

Chris Kung has joined Zaxby's as its new Chief Digital Officer. He will lead the transformation and acceleration of the company's Loyalty and e-Commerce initiatives.  

"Zaxbys rapid expansion requires the investment of world-class leaders and resources," said Bernard Acoca, Zaxbys CEO. "Chris's expertise in e-Commerce and loyalty programs will help drive incremental growth and enhance the Zaxbys experience as digital touchpoints continue to proliferate throughout the customer journey. His arrival will help us build stronger relationships with our guests by deepening our understanding of their needs and rewarding their patronage with personalized experiences." 

Growing Loyalty

Kung brings over 20 years of innovation and strategy experience to Zaxbys and most recently served as Chief Digital Officer at Dollar General, where he led initiatives that transformed the company into a digital innovator. Kung played a central role in creating the myDG loyalty program. Under his leadership, the company's e-Commerce sales grew 40x in three years, app usage surged from 1.8 million to 7 million monthly active users, and the DG App earned the distinction of the #1 couponing app in America.

Prior to Dollar General, Kung held key leadership positions at Macy's Inc., where he drove omnichannel technology and innovation.

Zaxbys is establishing a new Loyalty & e-Commerce Team, which will report to Kung. This new team will spearhead efforts to make Loyalty and e-Commerce significant contributors to its growth. The creation of the Chief Digital Officer role will open capacity and drive focus for Mike Nettles, Chief Technology Officer, and Patrick Schwing, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, who both previously oversaw a portion of this role.  

Flybuy unveiled its "Course Correct" solution to prevent pickup mistakes. Flybuy’s Course Correct detects when an order-ahead customer or delivery driver is heading to or arriving at the wrong pickup location and offers a friendly redirection message to guide them to the correct pickup address. The Course Correct notification helps ensure customer satisfaction, minimizes the need for costly remakes or refunds and eliminates staff confusion.

Flybuy’s flagship product, Flybuy Pickup, enhances the pickup experience for some of the world’s largest restaurants, grocers, and retailers using precise AI-powered ETAs to determine the location of incoming customers to deliver a seamless order handoff. However, surprisingly, over 1% of customers arrive at the wrong location to pick up their food orders. For many brands, this can result in millions of dollars wasted annually, in addition to causing frustration for both customers and staff. Given that 89% of consumers are likely to make repeat purchases only after a positive experience, these mishaps not only incur costs for remaking or refunding orders but also risk losing future repeat business.

'Eye-Opening' Number of Mistakes

“It was eye-opening to see how often order-ahead customers were going to the wrong location to pick up their order,” said Five Guys, VP of Digital Strategy, Steve Teller. “When this happens, customers are frustrated, staff is confused, and we usually end up having to remake the order and throw an order away at the correct pickup location. With Course Correct, our customers are getting notified before they are frustrated and before the staff is disrupted, which yields a much better experience for everyone.
 

Course Correct allows restaurants to proactively address the challenge of customers arriving at the wrong pickup location without the need for operational changes, thereby delivering a frictionless and satisfying experience for customers and staff. On average, restaurant brands that have already been using Course Correct have reduced their wrong location errors by over 50%, leading to substantial reductions in refunds and saving hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, depending on the brand.

"We quickly realized how important it is for businesses to be able to proactively address customer needs before they even notice a mistake, thereby providing exceptional service," said SVP of Product at Flybuy, Alonso Vargas. "We understand the significant impact customer loyalty has on profitability, and Course Correct is an invaluable tool to drive repeat business and boost profits for our partner brands.”

HungerRush released a native integration between Uber Eats and the HungerRush Point of Sale. 

This integration provides restaurant owners with an additional layer of support to manage both in-house and third-party delivery orders.

Now, owners can enjoy the benefits of Uber Eats and the ease of a fully integrated system:

• Uber Eats orders go straight to a restaurant’s POS. No more manual order reentry.
• Restaurant owners can easily update menus, prices, images, and store hours.
• Managers can control order volume with the ability to pause orders when needed.
• Centralized reporting – everything all in one place for better insights.
   

As of 2023, there are more than 2.85 billion online food delivery service users, according to Business of Apps. This means it’s more important than ever that restaurant owners have the technology in place to handle these increasing delivery demands. 

• 85% say integrations with other systems is driving POS purchasing decisions, according to HT's 2024 POS Software Trends Survey 

Coupled with HungerRush’s existing DoorDash integrations and more third-party app integrations to come, HungerRush is helping restaurant owners prepare for this growth. HungerRush POS combines multiple third-party ordering and delivery services with in-house delivery and driver tracking tools. This provides restaurants with a leading delivery management solution that helps ensure every order arrives exactly as expected and on time.

“We expect food delivery to continue to increase in popularity over the next few years. Because of this, HungerRush strives to ensure restaurant owners are equipped with the best technology needed to keep up with the growing demand for delivery,” said Eran Hollander, Chief Product Officer at HungerRush. “This helps ensure owners and operators are reaching customers wherever they are and provide unparalleled customer experience.”

HungerRush continues to focus on technology that makes it easy for restaurant partners to grow their businesses and stay competitive. This latest integration aligns with their mission to help fast-casual and quick-service restaurants prosper by delivering great experiences for their customers and employees.

Twice Daily, the Nashville-based convenience store brand owned by Tri Star Energy, has achieved a 225% increase in sales dollars since it added Paytronix Order and Delivery and a custom mobile app to its pre-existing Paytronix-powered loyalty program. The brand expanded the footprint of its digital engagement platform in support of the launch of its made-to-order food offerings.

The Twice Daily & White Bison Rewards app integrates Paytronix Loyalty with Online Ordering for a streamlined guest experience that makes it easier to receive special offers, track rewards, or order everything from coffee, bakery goods, made-to-order sandwiches and burritos.

Between January 23 to December 22, 2023, Twice Daily experienced:

225% Increase in Sales – The powerful combination of loyalty and online ordering has increased both spend and frequency.

55% Monthly Lift in Orders – A growing online ordering program enables Twice Daily to meet customers where they are, creating additional purchase occasions.

95% increase in Unique Customers – Twice Daily’s order-ahead is acquiring new customers.
 

“Twice Daily’s proprietary food service offering is a focused differentiator. We want people to know that they can get quality food from Twice Daily that’s on the same level as QSR options,” said Jackson Tolk, loyalty and mobile app manager, Tri-Star Energy. “Paytronix Loyalty has helped us deliver targeted offers that meet our guests’ needs. Linking online ordering with loyalty makes the whole buying process seamless and has substantially helped increase sales.”

Related:   When asked what they really want from loyalty programs, 62% of customers want complimentary products or services,  according to HTs 12^th annual 2023 Customer Engagement Technology Study.

“Down the road, people will buy everything on their phones, and if convenience stores haven’t prepared, they’ll wish they had,” said Jeff Hoover, Director of C-Store Strategy & Analytics, Paytronix. “Brands like Twice Daily are discovering that the attachment rate with loyalty for online ordering is extremely high. Most people will opt-in, even if it's just to have their order remembered for the next time or if there's a free product available for ordering online through the loyalty program. But it’s not so much about loyalty. It's just about being connected and knowing as many of your customers and as much about them as you can fairly.”
 
Founded in 2000, Nashville, Tennessee-based Tri Star Energy owns and operates over 200 c-stores and supplies fuel to wholesale trade channels in 17 states. Besides Twice Daily, its c-store banners include Sudden Service, Southern Traders, Little General and Maverick Quick Shop. Tri Star also owns 20 White Bison Coffee shops throughout Tennessee and Alabama, and supplies fuel to retail dealers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Alabama.
 

Curbit.ai, the restaurant tech company that specializes in cutting-edge capacity management solutions, announced a collaboration with Microsoft to broaden the market reach of its innovative service.  

As part of their agreement, Microsoft will provide critical digital infrastructure and state of the art AI and real-time capabilities enabling Curbit to offer enterprise-grade speed of service analysis, accurate guest expectations, real-time order progress and robust kitchen performance and sentiment analytics.

Fran Dougherty, CEO of Curbit, spent 22 years at Microsoft, where he played a pivotal role in Microsoft Azure's platform growth. Dougherty's familiarity with the Microsoft ecosystem and Azure AI contributed to bringing Curbit's new solution to fruition.  

• Related: Kitchen Armor, Curbit Join Forces to Transform Kitchen Operations

"Curbit has consistently been at the forefront of capacity management and guest experience solutions since its inception in 2019," Dougherty said. "Integrating deeply with Microsoft's global infrastructure and Microsoft's enterprise footprint was the obvious next step in our evolution. As we continue innovating and further developing our technology, our collaboration represents a critical step in realizing our vision of powering 100,000 restaurant locations by 2027."

"With Curbit's rapidly expanding footprint in the restaurant ecosystem coupled with its unique solution using Microsoft Azure and Azure AI, this collaboration represents a natural opportunity for Microsoft to support digital transformation in the restaurant industry at scale," said Keith Mercier, General Manager, WW Retail and Consumer Goods.

Curbit solves a pressing problem for restaurant operators and delivery service providers by analyzing real-time speed of service to accurately predict order readiness. The result is fresher food, minimal wait times and streamlined operations. Curbit's real-time data provides insights into kitchen performance, highlighting areas for operational enhancement, like optimization of order flow and fulfillment processes.