| Years ago, controlling labor cost in the food service | | | | and the number of buffets. It gives me my supervisor |
| industry was done by just going with the flow. Having | | | | hours, my kitchen hours and my assistant's hours all in |
| an effective labor control meant by being able to | | | | a breakdown." |
| manage your staff during a rush to keep an ongoing | | | | POS Systems: your extra pair of eyes |
| operation and send them home respectively as the | | | | Other POS reports show labor trends over time, and |
| rush slowly descend. | | | | with this owners or district managers can track labor |
| In order to make projections of future sales, restaurant | | | | cost manager performance shift-to-shift, said |
| manager keeps track of their business' performance | | | | Speedline Solutions marketing manager Jennifer |
| for the past couple of weeks and converted those | | | | Wiebe. The system can also produce reports when |
| numbers into an employee schedule. And at night | | | | someone manually edited time clock reports to help |
| when the restaurant closes, the manager sits down | | | | spot potential abuse. |
| with a sack of time cards, calculating for the day's | | | | You can even use the detailed information provided by |
| labor percentage where success or failure of those | | | | time clock reports for labor board reviews of |
| efforts is determined. | | | | attendance-related employee terminations. |
| But today, manual tasks such as this is eliminated by | | | | And at the end of day, a system such as Phillips' can |
| using a restaurant point of sale system where | | | | generate payroll- and employee-information export |
| managers can easily do multiple tasks with a few | | | | files to integrate with above-store accounting systems |
| mouse clicks and keystrokes. | | | | or third-party payroll services. |
| With the minimum wage set to rise to $7.25 over the | | | | The POS also can assist managers properly assign |
| next few years, operators are looking for every tool | | | | employee-shift by forecasting sales and generating a |
| they can find to keep labor costs under control. | | | | schedule based on those sales. |
| The general manager of a Pizza Inn restaurant, Jim | | | | Restaurant Managers can efficiently schedule to meet |
| Phillips, uses his restaurant's POS system from Pixel | | | | their labor targets using sales forecasting and their |
| Point for tracking labor throughout the day. | | | | labor plans. Pixel Point's scheduling tool is linked with |
| Check out your labor cost every 45 minutes or at any | | | | employee skills and availability to speed up the |
| time of the day you want! You'll always get detailed | | | | scheduling process." |
| and accurate reports anytime you want it. "I can pull it | | | | Restrictions on hours and breaks for minor employees |
| up on the terminal, hit labor cost and it tells me where | | | | can be enforced through schedule- and time-clock |
| my labor stands, or if I want to I can go into my hourly | | | | alerts. The schedule also has a built-in time clock that |
| stats and look at those," says Phillips. | | | | requires a manager override for untimely ins and outs. |
| The restaurant POS system can display forecasted | | | | Most operators set their clock-in and clock-out times |
| sales, actual sales and a variance between the two, | | | | very close, within 5 minutes. |
| as well as scheduled versus actual hours. | | | | A staff can't clock in until 5 minutes before their |
| "The system tells me everything I need to know," | | | | scheduled shift or clock out late without a manager |
| Phillips said. "I can look at the POS and see the number | | | | override using this system. It tells if an employee is |
| of pickups for any given hour; the number of dine-ins | | | | supposed to be on day-off but he is still on the clock. |