The Scheduling & Payroll Change That Saved Black Sheep Coffee 13+ Hours on Operations

 

What do insurance, property management, and coffee have in common?

For Jason Frankot, the answer is simple: they’re all businesses he’s owned. After running an insurance agency and a property management company—fueled by coffee from his favorite local spot, Black Sheep Coffee—Jason took things one step further. He bought the café itself, adding a third business to his plate.

Meet Jason Frankot & Black Sheep Coffee

What began as a mom-and-pop paint store eventually evolved into Black Sheep Coffee—a family-owned café born after big-box giants like Lowe’s and Home Depot pushed out the local paint market. That was 17 years ago.

Since then, the shop has thrived. Weekends drew crowds so large that grabbing your favorite treat often meant a 30-minute wait in line. The family behind the counter knew coffee—and food—inside and out, and it showed.

 

 

And among the regulars was Jason Frankot, who would visit the shop twice a day for his caffeine fixes. Eventually, he even moved his insurance agency across the street just to be closer to the coffee. That routine lasted for about 15 years.

Then, one day, a ‘for sale’ sign went up. Without hesitation, Jason called the owner and offered to buy not just the property, but the entire business—despite having no prior experience in the restaurant industry.

And in early 2024, Jason got the keys to Black Sheep Coffee, officially becoming the owner. While he wanted to keep the heart of the business the same, he quickly realized some things—like the shop’s tech—were outdated and in serious need of an upgrade.

Running three businesses in three very different industries comes with its fair share of challenges. We sat down with Jason to hear how he’s using 7shifts to save time on scheduling, payroll, tips, and more at Black Sheep Coffee.

 

The problem: Weak integrations between POS and payroll

It’s no surprise that Jason doesn’t have a minute to waste—he explains that he works about 80 to 90 hours a week, and is constantly looking for ways to save time. 

Upon acquiring the coffee shop, Jason adopted Lightspeed POS and a payroll system he was already familiar with. But he quickly realized it wasn’t the best fit: “I used that for my Allstate, and it works great for insurance—but it’s not optimized for restaurants, for cafés.” 

Although the payroll provider did integrate with Lightspeed in some ways, “it just didn’t flow right.” Jason often found himself adjusting and manually exporting the time clocking data to run payroll. 

“It was clunky. It wasn’t visible […] I just didn’t like it.”

So, Jason went looking for a better way. 

The solution: Adopting 7shifts for maximum efficiency

 He started researching different tech tools and came across 7shifts while looking for platforms that integrate with Lightspeed. He recounts his thinking: “All right, all these companies seem to be integrated. They seem to work. They all kind of do a different thing. Let’s give them a shot.”

It was two months in when he found the optimal setup: 7shifts—not only for payroll, but also for scheduling, time-clocking, and communication. Jason says, “When we made the switch, it was so much smoother […] Being able to just have everything on the app—like the clock-in, clock-out. Here’s how much I made. Here’s the schedule. Here’s who’s working today. Here’s who’s working tomorrow. I mean, it just really simplified everything.”

 

As for the onboarding process, Jason says, “It was very easy. It was very helpful […] I love that you got to work with someone one-on-one.”

Here’s how he uses 7shifts to improve his day-to-day operations at the coffee shop:

Intuitive, speedy scheduling that saves hours

With 7shifts, Jason’s team moved away from the old-school marker board system. His shift lead, Michael, used to spend more than half a day manually creating a schedule. Jason says, “It almost looked like a full collegiate algebra problem […] I’m like, ‘Why? It just didn’t make sense to me.’”

So, Jason showed Michael how to use 7shifts—and they created a schedule together in just a few clicks: “It took us 7 or 8 minutes, instead of half a day.” Jason recounts Michael’s reaction as “it can’t be that easy,” saying, “He was almost in disbelief.”

And while Michael still likes to double-check his work, his time spent on scheduling has already dropped from 5 to 6 hours to just 40 minutes. Jason explains that the goal is to get it down to only 10 minutes as he becomes more established in the new process.

“What’s really nice is I like to set the whole month for the next month. And it gives me the ability to do that. And then if someone’s gone, then we can substitute that one day […] You hit a button and it fills in the people.” He adds that 7shifts also takes in the maximum number of hours an employee wants to work, making the process easier. “The calendar feature works great.”

And the new process benefits employees too, since schedules remain pretty close each week: “We’re giving them consistency—they can plan their time with their family. They can plan their time with just relaxing or doing what they want to do.”

Employee-managed shift pools

Another standout feature for Jason is the Shift Pool, where employees can put their shift up for grabs if they can’t make it. Jason explains that in the past, “they would put it on the marker board there to let someone see—and then people wouldn’t see it or wouldn’t pay attention.” And now, “you hit share my shift, and people get an alert.”

“Some of these shifts are taken almost instantly, and it’s not like, ‘Hey, did someone cover it?’ We got it written up. We know who claimed it, when they claimed it.”

 

He adds, “How would that be communicated before? One text would get sent out to someone. ‘Nope, I don’t want it. Try this person.’ […] That whole process takes 3 or 4 hours.” And now, “Boom. You hit a button, and within 30 seconds, someone’s probably accepted it.”

 

 

As a nod to the coffee shop’s name, Jason also created ‘Sheep Shifts’ for one-off tasks like inventory or deep cleaning. He offers a higher hourly wage for these shifts and posts them in the pool on 7shifts, knowing someone will grab them quickly.

Robust reporting for smarter business decisions

Plus, Jason is able to use 7shifts’ robust reporting to schedule more effectively—limiting instances of overstaffing and understaffing. “I can see charts and graphs for sales and what we’re trending for the day.”

“The trends are nice. The daily projections are actually pretty close.”

7shifts is able to show “where you should be labor-wise. We’re pretty much right on cue for telling us where it is. If something’s off there, either super high and super below, then I’ll take a quick look at it and try to figure out what’s going on.” This can help catch issues like a missed clock-out. 

And he’s able to monitor the numbers throughout the day, asking questions like, “Do we need as many people working? If someone wants to go home, can we send them home?” And on the contrary, if the reporting tells them they need more staff, that’s when putting an open shift up for grabs comes in handy, once again.

 

 

Built-for-restaurant payroll with automated tips

Jason also dives deeper into the issues with his previous payroll provider, particularly on the weak integration with Lightspeed POS: “It didn’t quite communicate, and it would throw everything off.” The manual process of downloading and fine-tuning the numbers would take about 1.5 to 2 hours. 

He adds, “With tips, there was some stuff where I couldn’t do it in [the previous provider]. So, we just did the cash tips here. Tips added about another hour. So, it was anywhere from 2.5 to 3 hours on a weekly basis doing [payroll].” But with 7shifts, it’s become a whole lot quicker.

“I did it this Monday. It took me maybe 4 minutes.”

And this is largely due to the robust integration between platforms: “I don’t need to take the tips from Lightspeed and put them in. They calculate automatically at the end of the day when they do their upload.” The tip-out process now takes him only 2 to 3 minutes. 

 

 

He adds that while the previous payroll provider has a lot of features, “it’s features I need for my insurance company—not features I need for a coffee shop.” 

 

Transparent tip pooling for employees

With 7shifts, Jason is also able to work with his staff to develop a fair system together for sharing tips. He says, “You’ve got the Tip Pooling—all the different equations where you can set it up exactly.” He shares what he thinks would be a fair breakdown and then consults the team for their opinion.

And all the earnings are visible: “They see that on a daily basis,” as the app can estimate their daily tip-outs. “They also know that like, ‘Hey, I know that tips on Saturday are just huge, and maybe I should work a Saturday if I have the opportunity.’ […] The staff love it.”

 

Jason also highlights that it’s easy to adjust from his end if there are user errors: “If someone maybe forgot to clock out, on the next day, all of a sudden, it’s like they’re getting $1,000 in tips—and you go back and adjust the thing because it’s set to the time, and then it’ll go back […] I’ll have it corrected by the end of the day.”

And the cashless payouts are a plus, since all tips can be paid by direct deposit: “It’s just the safety aspect of it, right? I don’t have to go get three grand in cash and start counting every Monday for the Wednesday tips that I have to pay.” He explains that in the past, the cash would be sitting around for a few days before being paid out—and 7shifts has reduced stress, on top of the time savings.  

 

 

Single hub for team communication

On the employee side, Jason explains that employees can contact him at any time of the day, as long as it’s through 7shifts: “It’s going to stay there, and that’s company-wide. That’s saved in the system. I can see it when I open the [app].”

He adds that he also likes the Announcement feature because he’s not always looking for a message back, since it can get distracting when many team members are involved. Instead, “here’s the announcement. No one can respond because I do it on the announcement. And it’s great. And then I can see who read it.”

Through communication on 7shifts, Jason is also able to evaluate team members: “I love that I can see who’s engaged, who’s responding, who knows what’s going on.” He’s able to ask people questions about previous announcements that have been sent out. Through their answers, he says, “It’s nice to know who’s engaged and who wants to make the café run better, instead of like, ‘I’m just here to collect a paycheck.’ 

“I can get a feel of who cares and who doesn’t.”

Employee onboarding in a few simple steps

As for employee onboarding, Jason says, “When I first started, I did the onboarding in [my previous provider] because that’s where we started some of our payroll. Now with both the payroll and time-clocking [in 7shifts], all that really made the whole onboarding process a lot more smooth.”

“We added a new staff member last week […] Onboarding used to take 3 or 4 hours […] Now that’s all in one place, so that made it a lot easier. It’s like 10 to 15 minutes.” He explains that it only took a few simple steps: fill out some fields, receive an email, scan the ID—and everything is up and ready in the system. 

“I didn’t know it was as easy as it was […] It didn’t take as long as I thought. I thought I was missing stuff.”

 

 

The final sip: One platform, all the time back

To end off, Jason explains that his end goal is to get time back for himself: “My goal is hopefully, after the end of this year, I can really just have everything set up at this coffee shop, and I can be the person when someone needs something, I’m there. But other than that, if we can have everything automated to where I just show up for emergencies, or to pay people, that’s kind of what I want to do.”

“I’m just going to relax, spend time with my family—do all that great stuff.”

And he sums off all his thoughts on 7shifts, the key to this goal, with one final quote:

“7shifts, it’s a great tool—all the integrations and all of the features that it has. The more you use with the payroll, tips, and the scheduling, just all the aspects, the easier everything gets. It communicates with itself, so you’re not going to numerous companies for that. When everything is together, the amount of time that it saves is amazing. Things that would take maybe 2 or 3 hours with working with different companies to get reports or pay or something done now take you 5 to 10 minutes. It’s great for visibility. People can see exactly what’s going on. It’s great for saving time, and it’s just simple to use.”