[Case Study] Simple, Labor-Saving Scheduling for 75+ Clean Juice Locations

Clean Juice is the first and only USDA-certified organic Juice Bar franchise in the United States, serving a deliciously fresh menu of cold-pressed juices to protein smoothies, to avocado toast, and more. They’re also one of the fastest-growing franchises, having opened their original home location only four years prior, and having grown to nearly 80 locations so far in 2019 (with over 50 currently in development).

Elijah's unique experience

Clean Juice began using 7shifts in 2017, the year they opened their first franchised store, and it’s the first scheduling app Elijah Selent used when he joined as a Juicerista.

Elijah has a unique experience with 7shifts, moving as an employee being scheduled through the app, to being a manager scheduling his own employees with the app, all the way to Field Business Consultant, where he now coaches Clean Juice GMs on how to schedule efficiently.

Elijah’s whole job revolves around helping franchisees manage their business more efficiently—here’s how 7shifts helped him—and the rest of the Clean Juice franchise—do just that.

Simple scheduling—for 1 to 100+ locations

Elijah’s favorite part of 7shifts is how simple it is—for employees, managers, and corporate alike. The intuitive, drag-and-drop schedule builder makes it easy for new franchisees to schedule their staff, and easy for their employees to understand and stick to their schedule.

What simplifies admin work for individual managers simplifies operations for the whole brand—corporate can focus on growing the business while the franchise operators keep everything running smoothly on the ground level.

“[7shifts] definitely makes what we do more efficient. The fact that our managers are able to schedule based on the availability of the employees, and it's all simple and laid out—it allows us to have our best workers, at the best time, at the most needed time.”

How 75+ Clean Juice locations hit their labor targets with 7shifts

One of the main reasons Clean Juice loves 7shifts is how it empowers their franchise partners to not only schedule their staff simply but also stay within their target labor percentage. Elijah himself visits the 23 Clean Juice locations within his territory and works with the general managers to train them on creating efficient schedules in 7shifts to stay within target.

“Just being able to help our stores know how to manage their labor, and schedule properly is because 7shifts is the easiest tool on the entire planet to use.”

With 7shifts, the Clean Juice locations were easily able to build schedules that met their labor (and weather) needs, allowing them to stay between their 22% - 25% labor percentage target.

The integration of 7shifts and their Toast POS allows Clean Juice operators to schedule with the weekly budget tool so they know just how many staff they’ll need on any given day. With the simple drag-and-drop schedule, paired with the powerful weekly budgeting tool, Clean Juice locations are able to hit their labor targets consistently.

Three Clean Juice locations using 7shifts have reduced their labor costs by an average of 8% with 7shifts.

All 75+ Clean Juice locations are hitting their weekly labor targets 75-80% of the time.

According to Elijah, the Clean Juice operators love how easy it is to use 7shifts and the weekly budget tool to manage their schedule.

“When I can show a store, ‘Hey, if you'd put in everybody's payroll information correctly, then [the weekly budget tool] gives you estimated numbers on where [your labor is] at." And usually, the manager will be like, ‘Oh, this is going to help me out so much. Now I know how to properly schedule my store, so I don't have labor costs at 40% at the end of the month.’ “

Improving labor productivity by $15 / hour

With the improved scheduling efficiency, Clean Juice operators saw an uptick in their labor productivity—sales per labor hour. In an examination of three Clean Juice locations, 7shifts found that within the first six months of using the platform, stored were saving an average of $15 per hour on labor for their hourly sales.

By scheduling the right amount of staff at the right times, they were finding that their business ran much more efficiently—with sales growing as their labor dollars became more efficient.

As a brand, Clean Juice uses 7shifts in conjunction with their Toast POS as their main tool to help manage and reduce their overall labor costs. 7shifts helps ensure they can keep their locations efficient, profitable, and continue growing their business.

“7shifts is definitely a tool that we used in order to decrease our labor percentages. When we're running through our profit and loss statement, and using that combined with what was actually “on the paper” in 7shifts, then it's a great tool to be able to have the discussion of how to decrease our labor cost. It's one of the tools that we use all the time.”

Getting a hold on seasonal availability

The restaurant industry deals with a lot of seasonal change over the year—not only in sales but also with employee availability. As 64% of restaurant staff are 16-25 years old, with many of them in school, their availability and scheduling needs can vary a great deal over a calendar year.

Traditionally, store managers would have to rely on employees submitting availability with a sticky note, text, or phone-call—but that’s a huge pain to keep track of every employee’s requests to build the schedule every week.

Clean Juice staff are able to submit time-off requests and availability directly through the free mobile app, which is factored into the schedule automatically when the requests are approved. If an employee ends up being unable to make their shift, they can easily put their shift up for grabs in the Shift Pool for their co-workers to bid on. This streamlined schedule management made it much easier for managers to build schedules that worked for everyone.

“What we like to use 7shifts for is the trading of shifts, or time-off requests, or changing  [employees’] availabilities because it's no longer the summer, and they're going back to school, and they're taking classes. On that side of things, 7shifts has been an incredible tool for us, because our 95% of [our staff] is high school and college students.

High schoolers do not always have the best grasp of their own schedules. So the fact that it's such a simple platform for them to be able to put up their shifts and ask for somebody to take it, or trade shifts with one of their coworkers...then the manager approves it, and it's done. That's been an incredible tool for us.”

Scaling Clean Juice to 100 locations and beyond

Clean Juice plans to grow to approximately 100 locations within the year, and 7shifts will be right alongside them to help schedule and manage their labor.

“From a corporate level, I'm able to go into my stores and help them, help the managers and the owners of our businesses be able to manage their labor and stuff like. It's just an efficiency tool that is simple to use, makes life easier for managers, and allow from the whole office side of things, to be able to better benefit our stores as well.”

As Clean Juice scales, they will continue to onboard new locations into 7shifts to keep control of their labor cost. Elijah finds 7shifts as one of the most useful tools in their operational stack to help them manage their labor costs—effectively helping them run a more efficient and profitable business.

“7shifts has made the life of running a business incredibly simple, incredibly easy, and efficient. And it makes [scheduling] user-friendly to where anyone from a grown adult, to a 16-year-old kid, is able to operate and use it, and understand what they're doing within the system. It makes it user-friendly, easy, fast, and my favorite tool that we use at Clean Juice.”

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About Clean Juice
Realizing the importance of an organic, plant-based diet, co-founders Landon and Kat Eckles started Clean Juice in 2016 as the first and only USDA-certified organic juice bar franchise. Rooted in “healthy body and a strong spirit” (3 John 1-2) scripture, Clean Juice offers organic açaí bowls, cold-pressed juices, smoothies, new greens and grains Greenoa™ Bowls and other healthy foods to on-the-go families in a warm and welcoming retail experience across the nation.  To find a Clean Juice location near you, visit www.cleanjuice.com. For more information on becoming a franchise partner, visit www.cleanjuicefranchising.com.

Dew Smith

Hey! I'm Dew, the former Brand Strategist. I cultivated 7shifts' social and content garden, and I looked for ways to grow our network of restaurateurs, local talent, and tech companies.