Pasta Evangelists
How do you make your restaurant business stand out from the competition? By inspiring your people to deliver an outstanding customer experience. The Planday Blog sat down with Charles Wells, People Coordinator at Pasta Evangelists, to see how Planday makes his day work.
Pasta Evangelists:
About Pasta Evangelists
Founded in 2017 by a couple of pasta enthusiasts based in London with the ambition to become the best fresh pasta brand in the world. Pasta Evangelists is inspired by a simple mission. The founder Alessandro Savelli set out to bring the freshness and quality of Italy’s pastifici (small, family-run pasta factories found across Italy) to the UK, making freshly made, artisan pasta a fixture in British kitchens.
Charles Wells
People Coordinator
Pasta Evangelists
“The communication in Planday is very useful. We don’t need to send out emails to our staff and spend time making sure they read them. It’s nice to just communicate through Planday, because we know that staff will read every message,”
Online scheduling system to support business growth
While Pasta Evangelists’ delivery team makes sure the customers receive fresh pre-portioned pasta, authentic and sauces and Italian garnishes to replicate some of Italy’s finest five-star dishes at their homes, Charles manages the teams 130 staff.
“There wasn’t a people team before so it’s very much a new area of the business. As a result, I’m working on performance management, appraisal, employee engagement, payroll management, monitoring cost centres and time tracking,” Charles says.
Having the right tools to manage the day-to-day work with eCommerce, concessions and delivery, all while keeping employees happy, has enabled Pasta Evangelists to grow.
Doubling staff and becoming a part of Barilla, the world’s largest pasta producer, has brought new opportunities and financial needs to the table.
“We are growing massively and very quickly, so we’re looking for a system that can support us with easy tracking and an overview of labour costs,” Charles says.
“Planday makes it easy for us to trim areas where we’re seeing low volume of sales but high costs.”
Easy communication improves staff performance
Taking the guesswork out of employees’ shifts by sharing important information directly in one communication tool, makes it easy for Charles to support his staff and keep them updated.
“The communication in Planday is very useful. We don’t need to send out emails to our staff and spend time making sure they read them. It’s nice to just communicate through Planday, because we know that staff will read every message,” Charles says.
Tracking worked hours, shift patterns and attendance by using the Punch Clock helps managers keep an overview of business’ performance.
Everyone has the hang of it and knows when they need to be in at work so Planday helps us hold staff accountable. Having the Punch Cock to do that is good. Previously, it was harder to track if someone was on time or not”.
“Our staff enjoy contacting me through Planday, they know that I’m here to help and it’s nice for them to put a face to the name”.
“Planday is now a part of the onboarding of new employees. Everyone knows that it’s the key tool they will be using when they are on shift and to clock in and out. The transition has been fairly smooth, and people picked it up quickly”.
Auto-scheduling saves time to focus on what really matters
Charles says Planday has automated the staff scheduling. Having a single system to manage skill-specific shifts and create templates for schedules and employee groups makes a big difference.
“It has saved us a lot of time in terms of scheduling and payroll. We did it manually before, but Planday has made it a lot easier to centralise all work. We can plan by shift types and position which is super helpful,” Charles says.
Online scheduling makes it easier for managers to ensure they have the right staff in place while keeping track of labour costs.
“My favourite feature is that you can pick filters on your schedule and certain shift types to show. This makes it easy for me to pull out the shift costs and get the number of hours straight away. That’s super helpful,” Charles says.
“We are able to see which areas are costing us which amounts and at what time of the day. Planday also makes it possible to forecast how many hours we are devoting to tasks, so we can improve our cost-effectiveness and become more streamlined.
“I also like Planday because it’s easy to store employee documents and have a bit of a repository there, rather than having to upload it to the cloud or store it on my laptop”.
“When I bring someone into the system, I just pull all the documents in there and nothing gets lost.”
Planday/Xero integration takes the pain out of payroll
Payroll is a big task for many businesses. It’s a constant loop of checking the hours are right, that they match the shifts your staff actually worked and that your people are paid the right amount at the right time.
By connecting Planday with Xero, a cloud-based accounting software platform for small businesses with 2.45 million subscribers globally, Pasta Evangelists saves time – and, most importantly – takes the pain out of payroll.
“The Planday/Xero connection reduces hours and hours of payroll administrative time,” Charles says.
“It gathers all of the worked hours’ data from Planday and syncs across to Xero within a couple of clicks. Payroll can then be run through a software-to-software connection rather than an export/import/Excel process.
“This reduces space for human error and manual work spent inputting data. There is a full employee overview available prior to syncing to confirm records and then it feeds into your selected pay run, ready for processing.”
Want to know how you can help your people focus on what really matters?
Having a streamlined staff scheduling system to manage your business’ performance is what makes the difference.
See how Planday can help you inspire your staff to create extraordinary restaurant experiences for your guests with smarter communication, better staff management and easy payroll by integrating to the systems you already use.
To see what benefits you can unlock with Planday and make your day work, speak to a specialist for a tailored solution that fits your needs.
