Start-Up Spotlight: How Pryze Is Revolutionizing Hourly Work

For years, Natalia Micheletti and Tim Hylton were successful QSR franchisees for Great American Cookies and Marble Slab Creamery. However, they often had to deal with their employees engaging with their cell phones at work rather than paying attention to their job responsibilities. 

“We could literally see them burn cookies because they were so engrossed in their phones that they didn’t pay attention when the oven timers went off,” Micheletti says. “They were ignoring customers. They weren’t cleaning. It was very frustrating. We were losing close to $150,000 a year on employees who were just scrolling on their phones.”

Micheletti and Hylton tried everything they could think of to stop this behavior: posters in the break room prohibiting phone use during work hours, serious conversations that would lead to warnings and even firing the worst offenders. 

“But nothing worked, and it just wasn’t lending itself to a good work environment,” she states. “We knew there had to be a better way to motivate our staff to get off their phones and get back to doing their jobs.”

So Micheletti and Hylton spent their evenings working together to design an app that helps hourly employees increase their productivity and workplace happiness by rewarding them for their performance and focus. Ultimately, that app became known as Pryze.

Unlocking Employee Potential with Incentivized Goals

Companies work with Pryze to set specific goals for their employees. For example, coming to work with the proper uniform, increasing ticket averages, beating a sales goal by three percent, etc. 

“Setting these micro goals is really important,” Micheletti says. “Upper management knows what the big goal is but getting hourly employees to understand those large overarching goals or how those goals align with their job expectations can be really difficult. Pryze communicates with them in a language they understand, offers fun reminders, and get’s them to pay attention and care about those goals by tying rewards to them.”

Regardless of the goal, when an employee accomplishes it, they instantly get recognition through the Pryze app with a notification that offers positive commendation as well as Pryze Points. Those points build up over time and the employee can use them to purchase something off the Pryze Marketplace. 

“It could be a gift card to a restaurant, to Amazon, to Airbnb, or pretty much anything they can think of,” Micheletti explains. “And the gift card can vary in value from $5 to $500, depending on how many points they’re going to redeem.”

Pryze works with about 250 different brands and constantly rotates which brands are available within the Pryze Marketplace to ensure that there is something of interest for everyone, and that there’s continued interest in redeeming the points among the employees. 

Pryze also reinforces positive behavior by keeping employees engaged with the use of gamification, such as leaderboard competitions. 

But what about the goal of reducing cell phone use during hourly shifts? How can Pryze help train employees to stay off their phones?

At the beginning of their shift, employees activate their “work timer” in the Pryze app, then lock their phone and put it away. As long as they don't use their phone for other apps, they will accrue Pryze Points. However, if the phone is used to access a different app, to make phone calls, etc., it will classify that time as unfocused work and no points will be awarded. It’s important to note that the app does not track which specific applications are being used during unfocused work time, just that the phone is being used outside of the Pryze app.

From Franchise Owners to Tech Founders: Funding the Dream

When Micheletti and Hylton decided to go all in on Pryze, they made the decision to sell their QSR franchises and use that money to be the initial funding they needed to get the technology company started. 

“We’ve never been founders before, we didn’t know anything about selling technology – our background was literally in selling cookies,” Micheletti says. “But we participated in some accelerator programs in our area to help build our network of resources and mentors, we learned how to do fundraising and how to sell our technology, we got angel investors and grant funding, our first set of Venture funds, some large venture capital funding, and we’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of companies believe in our product that have signed on very early on.”

Advice for Collaborating with Startups

When asked what advice Micheletti has for hospitality brands who are looking to work with startups, she focused on the need for honest conversations.

“Be open to a conversation, you can’t get everything you need to know from just browsing a website,” she says. “Sometimes, I’ll see someone hit our website 10 times in one month but won’t schedule a call, which is frustrating. If you find the initial idea interesting, pull the trigger and schedule a 15 minute call. Chances are, if we can’t help you with your problem, we know someone who can. We’re meeting with other innovators constantly!”