8 Tools to Help You Schedule Employees at a Restaurant or Café

Employees are the vertebrae of any service-oriented organization or small business. Restaurants and cafes fall under this category. It is not an easy task to identify and hire employees that will add value to your business. Extreme care and thought have to go into hiring an employee. It is rather easier to retain an existing employee than to hire a new employee.

Schedule Employees at a Restaurant or Café

As one can imagine, it is not an easy task to schedule employees at a restaurant or café. But the times have changed from when the schedule was done using pen and paper. Technology has ushered in newfound ease for scheduling woes for business owners. 

Technological tools help to automate the scheduling tasks of your business and will allow you to focus on what is essential for expanding your business. Online tools like Google Sheets, Google calendar and other calendar applications can be used to schedule, but there are more focused tools available to schedule.

Let me give a brief overview of some of the tools that can be used to make life easier for you.

Humanity

Humanity is a very focussed application and has no other function than employee scheduling, and the application does that well. It helps you schedule considering the demand forecast it generates and has algorithms to create a conflict-free schedule. It gives the employer a wide range of tools and parameters to stay on top of scheduling. Humanity also has an excellent and transparent swap mechanism built-in. It integrates well with almost every software available on the market. It is available as a mobile application and also as a web-based platform.

Crew

Crew is not just an app to schedule employees at a restaurant or café. The Crew service does the scheduling part of the business well and also has a slew of other features which are useful for any small business including restaurant and cafés. Along with scheduling, it has features to send messages and announcements. It also has tools to manage and organize your entire workforce even in different locations. Mainly available as a mobile application. A web interface is also available.

Ximble

Ximble is an excellent tool for scheduling employees. One of the significant features for scheduling in Ximble is the schedule templates that can be used. You can create a template or use some of the existing templates to schedule. These templates can be interchanged according to changing needs or other seasonal changes. In addition to scheduling, Ximble also provides messaging options, staff management, staff optimization and importantly, time tracking solutions. Ximble is available in mobile and web versions.

Be sure to also check out “Tools For Tracking Employee Performance at Your Cafe” to keep track of the activity going on at work.

Homebase

Homebase is another excellent application that can be used to schedule employees at a restaurant or café. In addition to scheduling, Homebase takes care of time tracking, payroll handling, and team communication. It also has supporting software elements to help with hiring. Homebase has a mobile application and also a web interface. The most exciting thing about this particular application is that for the use in just one location, the application is free!

Sling

Sling is another application that provides the use of its software without any charges. For scheduling and internal communications purposes can be used for free. It’s excellent features for scheduling like features to avoid double booking and other commonplace conflicts that arise while scheduling. Sling is available in a mobile version and web version.

TSheets

The primary focus of this application is time tracking. But as an addition to that, it has excellent scheduling feature which is useful for any business, big or small. TSheets integrate well with almost all accounting and payroll software available in the market. The service TSheets provides has a web-based and mobile application based interface.

Take a look at “How to Structure Employee Vacation Policy” also to see how to organize your employees’ vacation times.

Deputy

Deputy is not just an app to schedule employees at a restaurant or café. It is a complete solution for workforce management. As a part of that, there is an incredibly efficient scheduling software within Deputy. Deputy has an auto-scheduling feature which makes your life easier. It also has sections for shift swapping and leave management. Deputy integrates well with accounting, payroll and other software solutions for businesses.

Planday

Planday is another scheduling focussed application. It has templates for schedules which can be created and swapped easily. Along with scheduling tasks, it also takes care of time management, staff management, and communication. It is available both on mobile and online.

All the software mentioned here is easy to use and easy to get started on. Choosing any of these software will help you automate the schedule employees at a restaurant or café. Additionally, you will be free to invest more time in other priority needs of your business. Thank you for reading! Let us know in the comments below which apps you’re already implementing inside your establishment.

Be sure to not miss “Best Small Business Apps for General Productivity” for more helpful info in finding apps and tools to improve the all-around productivity at your restaurant or shop.

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