How Pizza Ranch Improved Employee Turnover Across 150+ Locations

Not many teenagers can say they started a business — but Adrie Groeneweg did. When Adrie was 19 and working at a pizza parlor in Iowa, he was struck by the amount of customers making the trip to eat there from his hometown. Adrie and his father Bill noted a need for a pizza place in town, so his dad bought the building. They opened with a Western theme on December 21, 1981 — his mom's birthday.

Now, 40 years later, Pizza Ranch has grown to a franchise with 200+ locations around the Midwest. In addition to pizza, they're known for their broasted chicken — a style of fried chicken popular in Wisconsin. They expanded into eater-tainment with their FunZone Arcades, which offer games and buffet options for the whole family.

Problem

With so many franchised locations, Pizza Ranch set a goal to improve labor costs across the chain. They knew one of the biggest reasons new hires quit was inflexible schedules.

"There's a lot of similarities of why people leave in the first 30 days...a couple of those key ones revolve around [how] scheduling just doesn't work for them, and how accessible is it and how flexible is it?," says Ross Groeneweg, Chief People & Strategy Officer at Pizza Ranch. "I often tell the manager who's writing the schedule: you control the restaurant with how you write [the schedule]."

Managers and franchisees faced complexities since employees were often cross-trained and worked multiple roles. To add to that complexity, they needed a solution that worked with their POS system, Revel.

Solution

As a company, Pizza Ranch takes great pride in their partnership with their franchisees. Many began their careers in the company as dishwashers or managers before investing in their own locations. So the head office took notice when they saw franchise owners using 7shifts successfully for scheduling and team management.

"I've seen a lot of demos of [scheduling software over time, and [7shifts] just felt a little bit different, a little bit special," says Groeneweg.

The restaurant named 7shifts their preferred platform for operators in 2022. Today, more than 150 Pizza Ranch locations take advantage of 7shifts for their operations . On average, Pizza Ranch locations that adopt 7shifts see a 14% improvement in employee turnover and a .5% improvement in labor costs — representing tens of thousands of dollars in collective savings for Pizza Ranch franchisees.

"When you get a large chunk of more than half the stores moving in one direction with over a 0.5% difference over the chain, that really is a large number and something to be excited about, " says Groeneweg.

They credit that difference to three factors.

1. Easy scheduling

7shifts makes it easy for Pizza Ranch managers to create schedules. Store leaders can collect and view employees' availability and time off requests to make accommodations. And because managers can build schedules more quickly and efficiently, staff get them in advance, allowing them to plan their lives.

"7shifts greatly increases that ability for managers to do that easily where it's not as much work to accommodate those things, so then they're more willing to do it. And it's also making scheduling easier, so it's getting scheduling out sooner on average," says Groeneweg.

7shifts is clear for managers to learn, as well. "Even though we've had some of these tools before of comparing your schedule variants and all that, 7shifts does it in a pretty readable and ease of use way...Obviously we help to teach it, but it's pretty good at self-learning on its own," says Groeneweg.

At the heart of Pizza Ranch's partnership with franchisees is the Restaurant Support Center where operators can chat with experts about restaurant operations, marketing, and more. The Restaurant Support Center has created internal resources to help franchisees use 7shifts. But they also appreciate the responsiveness of the 7shifts team, especially as they aim to respond to their own franchisees before the end of the next business day. (It's known as the sundown rule).

"7shifts just has been a good partner and been responsive...Account representatives, I've found, have been receptive to feedback, have been quick to handle things...and [I] definitely enjoy a lot of the resources that are available through 7shifts' site and the support team," says Groeneweg.

A Pizza Ranch owner/operator visiting the 7shifts booth at Pizza Ranch’s National Conference in Wisconsin

2. Accurate sales forecasting

It was crucial for Pizza Ranch to find a system that worked with their POS, Revel. With 7shifts' and Revel's integration, operators can now project their sales based on historical data. The integration pulls real-time sales and labor data from Revel into 7shifts, where the tool uses machine learning to recognize sales patterns and become more accurate over time. Managers can better predict how busy or slow shifts will be and schedule staff accordingly.

"The very accurate sales forecast that 7shifts has, especially over time as that builds, is incredibly helpful for more accurate scheduling, and there's just nice reporting," says Groeneweg.

7shifts' system also enforces punch-ins so that employees can only clock in on the POS when they're scheduled to work. Managers can avoid extra labor and overtime costs that they didn't budget for. The Pizza Ranch team values having one software to use, because they can schedule and communicate with their team and manage tasks and clock-ins in one app.

"7shifts is just a very easy to use platform...It's very easy to follow through on it, it's easy to understand. It's also using, in a sense, one platform. So there's not as many platforms for those to use, so there's value in that," says Groeneweg.

3. Accessibility for employees

Just as the Pizza Ranch managers like how easy it is to use 7shifts, the employees enjoy it too. Through the mobile app, they can see the schedule, request time off, and communicate with their team. They don't need to swap personal contact information with their coworkers.

"Employees themselves, they can communicate better, hear what's going on, [be] more involved. [They] don't feel like they're in the dark as much, and also just generally know what's going on more," says Groeneweg.

Staff can also put their shifts up for grabs and take open shifts, which saves them time from having to message individual teammates to find coverage.

"[7shifts] has been very easy to use for our team and we have seen a reduced number of empty shifts due to the nature that they are able to get coverage more readily," says Scott Parrill, District Manager at Pizza Ranch.

Growing better together

While Pizza Ranch doesn't mandate using 7shifts, they strongly recommend it to stores who want to reduce labor and turnover costs. It doesn't take much convincing when operators see the success that other Pizza Ranch owners have had with the platform.

"[There's] definitely a push from us, but also organic growth because people definitely respond when they hear other franchisees winning with a system," says Groeneweg.

As for what's next? Groeneweg says Pizza Ranch is just getting started. They're doubling down on their chicken with weekly wing nights and a focus on takeout. They want to keep doing what makes them great by prioritizing their buffet, their FunZones, and their people.

"Writing the schedule in an effective way really helps with retention because it's ultimately taking better care of, you know, our guests out there, which are our employees."

Samantha Fung

I've taken orders at a drive-thru and a golf course. I've quit a Thai restaurant after 3 shifts. I've done marketing at a Tex-Mex franchise. Now I create content about the restaurant industry.