Scaling 43+ Freddy’s Locations: Why HCI Hospitality Partnered With 7shifts

 

Scaling one restaurant is hard. Scaling 45 at once? That takes the right systems, the right partners, and tools that don’t break under pressure. And as fast growth comes with growing pains, HCI Hospitality needed a solution to keep up. Enter: 7shifts. 

All about HCI Hospitality & Freddy’s Frozen Custard

In July 2010, HCI Hospitality became a two-location franchisee of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers in Kansas. And what started as a local business quickly turned into a multi-state operation… now with 43 locations across North Carolina, Texas, Nebraska, and more. 

The restaurant group also has some non-traditional concepts in its portfolio, including Powercat Sports Grill and JC’s BBQ & Grill in Kansas. 

 

 

Meet Jordyn Ross and Chase McCormick

We sat down with Jordyn Ross (Manager of Operations Support) and Chase McCormick (Senior Manager of Business Intelligence & Analytics) to talk about how HCI Hospitality and 7shifts built a successful partnership… and the results it delivered.

With a hospitality management background and years of hands-on restaurant experience throughout college, Jordyn brings firsthand, on-the-floor insight to her work. She helps guide new store openings and special projects while serving as the subject matter expert on 7shifts. 

And Chase comes from a healthcare IT background but saw the appeal of working on a smaller team; his current role spans all things data-related, using insights and analytics to support smarter business decisions.

 

 

The problem: Endless support loops (and growing pains)

Before 7shifts, Freddy’s stores used HotSchedules for scheduling. But time and time again, operators ran into an issue: lack of support. Jordyn says, “We had a lot of frustrations with the support, and continuously growing costs of the platform, but mainly with support and how that was being handled.”

She adds, “We didn’t have a lot of things that we could do on our own. Then, that would cause us to reach out to support, which created this endless loop of never getting things fixed or adjusted to the way we would like.”

So the team started looking for another solution. 

 

 

She recounts the rollout to all other locations once the team determined, ‘“Yes, we like this product,’… It was nice that we could do it at the pace our operators were comfortable with, so we didn’t have to have all locations go live on one day.” Instead, the rollout spanned over a few months.

 

 

She sums up the collaborative experience: “7shifts––we chose them because of their partnership, their flexibility. All the different aspects of software and functionality they have really fit our needs, and we’re looking forward to a continued partnership.”

How 7shifts helps Freddy’s run smoother operations

Jordyn and Chase dive deeper into how 7shifts supports day-to-day operations at Freddy’s, from scheduling and labor control to communication and consistency across locations.

Smarter scheduling for time savings

With 7shifts, scheduling doesn’t have to start from scratch each time. Jordyn shares, “For the restaurant managers, the ability to have the auto-scheduling of the shifts is a big time-saver and the ability for them to rank their team members and build that into the templates.”

And ultimately, the efficiency benefits Jordyn’s role as well: “Having really good schedules based on that helps the most on my end. It’s just the ability to go in and manage and fix things without having to reach out. That’s where I probably get the most value out of it.”

 

 

Ease of use with self-onboarding

When asked about the 7shifts onboarding process for a new location, Jordyn says, “I love that we can just do it ourselves because it’s something we can check off the list a little quicker.”

“The biggest change in the process is that I don’t have to start it as early because I can get it done on my own. HotSchedules, we’d have to request a new location two to three months in advance, and now, the month before is generally when I can get 7shifts set up.”

She explains that she no longer needs to pay for as many months of ‘dead use’ when the store hasn’t opened yet. And she can copy the settings from another location, making the process even more efficient. 

 

She adds, “We don’t have to do a bunch of back-and-forth communication, making sure I can see all the settings on my end and control them, so it’s super easy to do… Even just setting up the Brink POS integration, I’m able to do that once I get the token from Brink.”

“It makes the whole process faster, and we just have so much more control over it… It’s super easy to get set up, and the team can start using it right away.”

Real-time labor cost control at 95% accuracy

While the adoption of 7shifts across stores is still early, Chase says, “The forecast is pretty accurate. I would say within 95%.” And as the stores continue to use 7shifts for longer, he’s expecting a fuller picture with higher accuracy, especially with a year-over-year comparison.

He emphasizes the importance of this: “Forecasting––that’s where it all starts. It’s where you create your schedules. How much food we are going to be ordering is dependent on that forecast.” 

And this brings some exciting opportunities for the team: “As we’re going into ‘26, labor is the big one that we’ve talked [about] as an opportunity for our group.” And while it’s still a bit early to evaluate results of field operations, “within my department, we’ve already seen efficiency gains from 7shifts reporting compared to our previous tools.”

The team has goals to reduce labor costs by building more efficient schedules with forecasting (and ultimately, see bottom-line impact).

Quick, same-day support

And as the Freddy’s team was looking for better support, 7shifts delivered. Jordyn says, “Support’s super fast. Even when we’ve had more complex issues that you had to go into emails over multiple days… again, that was one of our major pain points with HotSchedules. It’s nothing compared to that.”

“Usually, if I do have an issue, it gets solved on the same day.”

 

 

Robust integration with Brink POS

The 7shifts integration with Brink POS is also key to running day-to-day operations for Freddy’s. Jordyn explains, “We have to have sales information to be able to effectively schedule and make decisions about labor, so that’s really critical.”

“One of my favorite parts about the integration is how fast it is. We used to have a delay with when people were put into Brink and when they would show up in HotSchedules… It used to take a whole day. We would have to wait.”

And with 7shifts? “Now, it’s 15 minutes max. Basically, no wait at all, so that’s really great. All their information comes in, their job codes, all that good stuff. And then, sales information syncing all the time… It’s a pretty good integration, I would say.”

 

 

Consistent, above-store reporting across locations

Chase also calls out how simple reporting has become with 7shifts: “The reporting we can get out of 7shifts for our team, across 40 locations, has been better than where we were in HotSchedules. Within HotSchedules, we were having to pull a separate report for each individual location, where 7shifts gives us the flexibility to do it all in one swoop, broken down by store.”

He adds that discovering new functionalities in 7shifts is very exciting. There’s no need to ask teammates to pull a report… only to then have to pull it another 42 times. “That has been a big time saver for our group internally.” 

Alerts, compliance, and logbook features

7shifts’ reminders have been great for decreasing late showups and accidental missed shifts for Freddy’s. And Jordyn adds, “One thing I have heard from operators that does help save on labor is the notifications for when people have not clocked out when they should have. That definitely has helped make sure people are getting out on time.”

Automated attendance tracking is another key benefit, as managers have clear visibility into no-call-no-shows, late arrivals, and employee profiles. Jordyn says they feel this makes it easier to track performance and make more informed scheduling decisions.

And the built-in Manager Log Book is a plus: “Our managers are big users of performance logs… I think the logbook overall is just a really cool way to do it, where I can have all those different widgets set up for them, and that helps them know what they need to be putting in their logbook every day.”

“We had logbooks before, but we’ve really expanded what we put in there and how they’re used because of the way they’re set up.”

“We also use it just to verify time clock-ins and clock-outs, and I know payroll goes in and uses it too. And it’s nice that employees can dispute, and then we can see that directly. That helps us fix things before it’s an issue that we have to go back in and adjust later. Catching it before payroll runs is key.”

Increased team engagement 

Beyond scheduling and labor cost control, 7shifts has become Freddy’s central hub for team communication. Jordyn shares, “The managers enjoy using the Engage section and being able to see all the feedback from their team members.” They can also check who has (and hasn’t) viewed specific announcements… and follow up if needed. 

“The chats are very active, so I know the team members are communicating a lot at all the stores… I see them having fun with their communication. I know they like all the fun, different groups they can be in and just having the ease of being able to send messages out.”

 

The final word

As for some final words, Chase ends off with “Reporting, reporting, reporting,” emphasizing that “efficient reporting is key––it lets our teams focus on insights and improvement conversations instead of spending unnecessary time pulling data from the tool.”

And Jordyn sums up her experience with both the product and the partnership: “It’s been a great platform. We’ve really enjoyed [it] so far, both on my end, and I think the restaurant operators’… I definitely think it’s a good fit for Freddy’s.”

“It was a long implementation since we had so many different things come our way. But what really led to the success of it was just having that flexibility from [the 7shifts] team and being willing to work with us and not rushing through it.”

“Overall, from my end, it’s been about how can we support teams better? I think the partnership with 7shifts has really been supportive of that. We’re really focused on operators, and I know 7shifts is obviously focused on restaurants, so that’s been a key aspect to the partnership.”