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Success story: Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen
Discover how Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen brews efficiency and scheduling accuracy across 31 sites and 130 employees with Rotaready Evo, saving over £1600 a week and achieving a 761% ROI.
Challenges and objectives
- Rapid growth to 31 sites made Excel rotas unmanageable once staff passed 100
- Manual timesheet and holiday entry drained head-office and site time
- Real-time visibility of labour costs became essential to keep cash flow under control
Results
- Saving £333 in wages every week through smarter scheduling
- Revenue boosted by £128 a week, delivering a total £1,610 improvement per week
- Better-deployed 88 hours of staff time every week, worth £1,148 in wage efficiency
- 761% return on investment, proving the power of real-time visibility and data-driven forecasting
“Rotaready Evo has completely changed how we run the business. It’s quick, reliable and gives us the confidence that every site is operating exactly as it should.”
Background
Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen has grown from a single shop in 2007 to 31 rail-station locations, employing about 130 people across the UK. For years the team built weekly rotas in Excel, but once headcount topped 100, the master spreadsheet became “insane” to update, with each site emailing its own version for head-office consolidation.
This manual workflow soaked up hours, introduced formula errors and left Finance waiting until month-end to understand the true labour costs, even though cash-flow planning demanded an early, accurate wage figure.
“It was a very time-consuming job,” recalls Will Laycock, Head of Operations at Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen. “Every month, managers would send me their rotas and timesheets, which I’d merge into one big tracking sheet with all the formulas. Then we’d have to manually input every hour, add holidays, calculate sickness, all by hand, just to make sure payroll was accurate.”
The manual process not only resulted in hours of valuable time spent on admin, it also made it hard to forecast labour costs accurately, a key concern for a growing business where cash flow visibility is essential. It was clear that Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen needed a more efficient, reliable way to schedule, track and manage its teams across every site.
From spreadsheets to smart scheduling
After years of juggling spreadsheets and manual data entry, Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen made the move to Rotaready Evo in spring 2024, after a low-pressure sales process that “just felt natural,” choosing the system over two other platforms it had trialed.
Implementation was phased, with the workforce management solution - including drag-and-drop rota editor, mobile clock-ins and live reporting, rolled out across all 31 sites within three months.
With hands-on support from Rotaready Evo customer success team and fast responses through live chat, any early teething issues were resolved quickly.
“Once we got our heads around everything, the labour tracking, cost projections and reporting were particularly game changing,” says Will Laycock. “The support from the team was great - it wasn’t just handed over and left with us.”
Results
Since introducing Rotaready Evo, Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen has transformed the way it manages people, time and costs across its 31 sites. What once took hours in spreadsheets now happens in minutes, with a clear, accurate picture of labour spend available at any time.
“Building rotas used to be a real chore,” says Will Laycock, Head of Operations at Gourmet Coffee Bar & Kitchen. “Now, with Rotaready , it’s quick, accurate and everyone can see exactly what’s going on.”
The business now saves over £1600 a week through smarter scheduling and improved labour deployment, including £333 in direct wage savings and £1148 in better-used employee time, delivering an impressive 761% return of investment.
Beyond the tangible results, Will says the real difference is what he calls “time-saving accuracy.”
“It’s hard to put a number on, but we’ve definitely saved money through time - my time, my colleagues’ time, our managers’ time. It all adds up. From my point of view, I spend far less time chasing or checking things than I used to.”
Rotaready Evo’s notable events functionality has also made it easier to plan for major events and seasonal peaks.
“Not only do we run sites in some of the busiest stations in the country, but we also have locations at major venues like the NEC in Birmingham,’’ says Will. “With Rotaready Evo, we can add key upcoming events that might impact our business straight into the system, so managers can see what’s happening and plan rotas around it. If a site has a particularly busy day, we can look back and see exactly why, whether it was a big show or a local event, and use that insight to plan better next time.”
The accuracy of Rotaready Evo’s time and attendance data means every shift, break and holiday is captured correctly and exported straight into the payroll system, giving Finance smooth paydays every time. Leadership now access real-time labour costs instantly from the dashboard - no more waiting until month-end to learn the wage bill, while regional managers use the mobile app to check who’s on shift before visiting each store, helping them plan their day, spot coverage gaps and support busy sites more effectively.
“Rotaready Evo has revolutionised how we manage our people. It’s easy to use, accurate, and has become part of the furniture.”
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