Panera Bread: Labor Mgmt & Customer Service Key Priorities for 2011?

Panera Bread has signed an agreement to license TimeManagement Corporation's TMx Enterprise 5 solution, a labor scheduling software product, after a comprehensive multi-site, 12-month pilot.

 

"We strive to operate at the highest levels of customer service, and the TMx solution will help enable us to do so even more efficiently," says Michael Kupstas, senior vice president, Panera Bread. "The TMx pilot demonstrated an opportunity to manage labor in a way that improves customer experience, simplifies the scheduling process and provides employee convenience. Proper management of these factors will help free up our managers' time and further improve cafe operations."

 

TMx provides an analytical method for developing and maintaining service labor guides by forecasting product mix by time interval and the calculation of labor effort per item. The key result from this is that each cafe's optimal labor or guide hours are based on the product mix they are selling. This, along with TMx robust forecasting capabilities, provides operators with a strong one-two punch.

 

TMx also provides cafe metrics so multi-unit managers can identify strong and weak performers and obtain insights for what actions are needed to improve performance. Coupled with training and top-down accountability, these metrics provide the levers to move the "average" manager performance to "strong-excellent."

 

"We are well into final systems integration activities, enabling the expansion of pilot locations this fall, in preparation for full rollout to all company-owned bakery-cafes starting in 2011," adds Kupstas.