How Vitality Bowls Saved Thousands in Just 8 Weeks with 7shifts

Tara Gilad started Vitality Bowls to solve a problem. Her daughter struggled with food allergies, and finding a safe place for her family to dine out felt nearly impossible. Undisclosed ingredients and cross-contamination made it a risk.

“We started Vitality Bowls because our daughter was born with severe food allergies, and we quickly realized that we couldn't just eat at any restaurant and restaurants weren't following any allergy safety. So, my husband and I created a healthy food concept catering to my daughter's allergies.”

They expanded to three stores before starting their franchise program in 2014. Now, Vitality Bowls counts more than 70 locations coast to coast, with 6 corporate locations.

Earlier this year, the team embarked on a top-to-bottom re-evaluation of their technology. Their inventory system, POS, digital menus, online ordering apps—everything was on the table.

Problem: Compliance headaches and high labor costs

Doing business in California is not without adherence to strict labor laws, where mistakes on margins as small as a minute can cost a restaurant thousands of dollars in fines.

“We deal with some pretty strict labor laws that come with meal break violations and/or fines, so we needed something that could help us adhere to all labor laws and control our meal breaks by not allowing an employee to clock in before their 30-minute break was up,” says Gilad.

According to California state law, if an employee clocks in just one minute early from a break, that one minute means an extra hour of pay to the employee every time. That adds up.

Employees were also clocking in early or staying late without approval, which led to scheduling inefficiencies. Minor errors like these had an outsize effect on Vitality Bowls' operations, leading to higher labor costs than budgeted. Using 7shifts also allowed Vitality Bowls to set a maximum number of hours in the schedule, preventing managers from scheduling beyond the specified limit.

Solution

With intensive research by CEO Roy Gilad and a trusted hospitality consultant recommendation, Vitality Bowls trusted that 7shifts was the right choice for their six corporate-owned stores in California.

One massive solution: scheduled breaks.

“We can schedule the breaks now, and it'll alert us if they haven't taken their break and they're going to go into a break violation. I don't even know the [exact] cost savings at this point, but I imagine it's thousands of dollars across our six stores,” says Gilad.

Another huge benefit was preventing early clock-ins and late clock-outs.

“We can plug in their break time, and it doesn't allow an employee to clock in before their 30-minute break is up. We also had employees clock in 15 minutes early or stay late, and there was no control. Nothing flagged us. And now we’re able to put in controls. You can only clock in up to five minutes before your shift and it flags us if they clock out late. It has helped us stick to our budgeted hours.”

Using 7shifts scheduling tools, Vitality Bowls managers have been able to create weekly schedules that accurately reflect customer demand. For example, with weather forecasts built into the app, the team can add or subtract depending on the conditions.

“Every time we do the schedule we look at this week to forecast what the weekend could be like. Is it cold? Is it hot? Are we understaffed? Are we overstaffed? And that helps with scheduling as well—and we can complete schedules much quicker now,” says Gilad.

The results? A notable decrease in labor cost percentage, all by finding efficiencies, in just eight weeks and a reduction in the time it takes us to complete a new schedule.

“Our labor went down over eight percent, just from having 7shifts, in just eight weeks,” says Gilad.

Encouraging franchisees to adopt 7shifts

The positive impact of 7shifts on Vitality Bowls' operations was so significant that they highly recommended all 70+ of their franchisees to make the switch, multiplying those savings across the entire Vitality Bowls brand.

D. J. Costantino

Hi! I'm D.J., 7shifts' resident Content Writer. I come from a family of chefs and have a background in food journalism. I'm always looking for ways to help make the restaurant industry better!