How Chulita saves time and grows their business with 7shifts

Chulita has been serving Venice, California locals their brand of Oaxacan food since 2018. Owner Shireen Imani and her all-female management team have been hard at work, adapting to the pandemic and evolving their restaurant, culminating in a Bib Gourmand nod from Michelin in 2022—one of only 15 California restaurants to receive the award.

With expansion on the horizon, Chulita turned to 7shifts to help them manage their growing business.

Problem

As an owner, Imani wears many hats—as does her team. Chulita doesn't have traditional managers, but lead servers with different managerial responsibilities. Tara Edie, for example, is a Lead Server who also runs PR and Marketing for the brand.

Because of this communication bottleneck, scheduling was a "nightmare," and there was an overall dissatisfaction amongst staff, especially in the front of house, when requesting time off.

Solutions

Schedules that save money and time

With 7shifts, Chulita has been able to make scheduling more efficient and less time-consuming.

“7shifts has been able to keep us within our targets and budgets with such ease and efficiency. The ease of being able to instantly see overviews of labor costs and revenue has made our ability to adequately staff the restaurant in real time effortless and has saved us countless hours of time. I can’t imagine functioning without the visibility into those stats.”
-Tara Edie, Lead Server

Communication

Part of those hours saved came from staff using 7shifts to submit availability and offer up shifts. Doing it in the app gave them the assurance that their vacation time was approved.

“People are actually available to make vacations and make plans now because they can put in their time off and have the assurance once it's approved, that they're good to go. I would say that's one of the biggest benefits we've gotten,” says Edie.

Keeping track of tasks

Before 7shifts, opening, closing, and regular tasks were tracked in notebooks—which made things messy and easy to overlook. With 7tasks as part of their tech stack, the team at Chulita checked off 8,210 tasks—an average of 821 a month between April of 2022 and January 2023.

“We can see who has already completed certain tasks and it allows for a better balance of work. It keeps things fresh in our minds and helps us operate more efficiently. Before, we didn't have this feature and it was hard to keep track of everything,” says Edie.

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Choosing 7shifts

Imani and Edie acknowledge that with any new technology tool, there's a period of hesitation and getting a feel, but with 7shifts, that faded quickly.

"There's always sort of a trial period where we're not sure if it's gonna work, it's gonna be a great fit, but that faded away very quickly. As we saw how helpful it was, and it did give the opportunity for her to work on these expansion projects that would bring even more revenue for our business," says Edie.

D. J. Costantino

Hi! I'm D.J., 7shifts' resident Content Writer. I come from a family of chefs and have a background in food journalism. I'm always looking for ways to help make the restaurant industry better!