For our next customer interview, we’re checking in with the folks over at RPM Pizza, the largest Domino’s franchisee in the United States for over 35 years. They employ over 4,000 people across 200+ locations in 7 states.
As we mentioned last week, we’re excited to be sharing lessons from smart frontline leaders like Freddie Tucker, the area director at RPM. In our discussion below, he talks about how he personally uses Crew to keep his teams up-to-date and manage schedules, and what the impact has been on the overall business in terms of on-time deliveries and sales growth.
Crew: Tell us about some of the challenges RPM Pizza’s frontline teams faced prior to rolling out Crew.
Freddie: As a Domino’s franchisee, we rely on three key metrics to monitor the health of our business. Those are: 1) sales, 2) labor costs and 3) percentage of on-time deliveries. This is no easy task, and before Crew, we struggled with coordinating our workforce and managing schedules. As RPM grew, it became especially challenging to keep our stores staffed optimally, which eventually led to lost revenue.
Just for my three stores alone, I was spending an average of eight hours a week on scheduling and getting shift coverage for team members that were unable to make it to work. Back then, we relied on group text messaging (sometimes with up to 60 employees on a single thread) as the primary communication channel for store employees. These group texts often became chaotic and ineffective. Posted schedules got buried, simple shift coverage requests resulted in dozens of comments, and it was difficult to remove terminated employees from the chain.
Crew: How did improving team communication impact quality of work?
Freddie: Crew is a lifesaver, because it streamlines and organizes our daily communications, puts store schedules in every employee’s pocket, and helps us make sure everyone is properly trained. I use the announcements feature to keep my store teams up-to-date and easily share training materials with them, and I use tasks to assign and track training module completion.
With Crew’s in-app camera feature, I can send training videos and teach quality assurance. For example, in a short video, I show the team how to properly sauce a pizza and everyone can reference that at anytime on Crew. I also have my teams take pictures and document each step of their closing procedure, which ensures that all their stores are being closed down properly and each shift is set up for success.
Crew: Scheduling is another area that creates a lot of headaches for quick-service restaurants – how have you evolved that process?
Freddie: Crew’s shift manager allows me to post a picture of the weekly schedule for my entire team to view in the palm of their hands, so everyone can be on the same page all the time. And with group messaging, I can count on my team to be proactive in getting their shifts covered and showing up to work on time.
Crew: What kind of measurable impact has RPM achieved with these improvements?
Freddie: By utilizing Crew, we’ve been able to facilitate shift coverage and reduce no-shows; improve the overall quality of work, along with employee engagement and motivation; and hold our teams accountable. Now that RPM has a better way to keep everyone informed about schedules and training, we’ve increased on-time deliveries by 23% and driven double-digit growth in annual sales.