The Jamba Juice Playbook for Working Smarter With 7shifts: Scheduling, Payroll, Team Management, and More

 

Everyone knows Jamba Juice as the go-to spot for fresh, delicious drinks. But behind the counter, it’s the right people—and the right tech—that keep everything blending smoothly. 

So, we talked to operators, Leslie Broadland and Michele Bryant, about the secret sauce behind running not one—but two—successful stores in California: 7shifts.

Meet Leslie Broadland & Michele Bryant

Leslie Broadland came from a family in the restaurant business. She says, “I was raised in fast food. So, my husband and I graduated from college, and instead of doing our degrees, we both became entrepreneurs and franchisees.”

After franchising 17 Burger King locations with her husband, they were ready for a change. That’s when the couple came across Jamba Juice, opened their first store, and decided to pivot: “It was so much easier than Burger King and so much more fun.” Today, they own two locations in California. 

Michele Bryant worked at Jamba as her first job at just 16 years old. After dabbling in a few other roles, she found her place as Director of Operations at Leslie’s locations: “It’s a fun place to work […] We were very involved with my kids’ schools—I loved that. I was at their schools, selling smoothies, and we were doing all of their events. I could be with my kids even while I was working.”

We sat down with Leslie and Michele to talk about how 7shifts has supported their business over time—with one platform that takes care of almost everything they need: scheduling, payroll, HR, and more.

 

 

Before 7shifts: Uncontrolled labor & payroll complications 

At first, Leslie used Excel to create schedules at the Jamba Juice locations. She explains that she had been using the software for 25 years, and while it was outdated, she didn’t have too many complaints. 

But eventually, they decided to switch to Restaurant365 for scheduling because it came free with the bookkeeping feature—and the change became problematic: “When we switched to R365, we lost all control. It was horrible. We had no control—our labor went up.”

Aside from Restaurant365 for bookkeeping, the stores also used another large payroll provider in the past. Michele recounts all the different issues, specifically with the lack of integrations—she would need to put all the tips in a special format, edit it, and upload it… only to then edit it again. 

“It was a really complicated process.” 

Aside from scheduling and payroll struggles, Leslie also speaks to the inconvenience of having multiple platforms for all different tasks, as she handles onboarding and hiring, too. She mentions having to sign in and document all the staff information in one place, having to do it again for the scheduling platform, and then doing it all one more time in the corporate training platform. 

Then, in 2018, 7shifts pitched to them through a cold call. Leslie says, “At that point, I was so desperate.” She considered going back to her old-school ways, but decided to take a leap of faith. And after adopting it for scheduling, the stores also added 7shifts payroll (when it was first released for beta testing), onboarding, and more. 

 

 

Adopting 7shifts for scheduling, payroll, and HR

Since taking the leap of faith—about seven years ago—Leslie says, “The journey has been so fun because we felt so respected. They noticed I was an owner-operator, not just an owner. And I could explain my problems and what would work, and they would listen and actually design it. And that’s when we started pitching it to my other franchisees.” 

Eventually, Jamba Juice corporate also took on 7shifts as a preferred vendor. And today, about one in five locations has adopted the platform.

 

 

Leslie also notes that she was raised on a non-electronic typewriter. And she says while Michele is younger and more technical, 7shifts was still super basic to learn for her: “There’s zero training. I would say it’s easier than our Toast POS system—which is pretty darn easy.”

 

 

She adds, “This has been very nice to have—where we manage the schedule, we’re also managing payroll, and also managing our HR.” 

Simplified scheduling, backed by data

When asked about the scheduling process with 7shifts, Michele says, “It’s gotten pretty quick.” One store is on a university campus, and that schedule remains quite standard week-to-week. With one-click scheduling using templates, Michele doesn’t need to build from scratch: “I don’t have to create a new schedule. I just have to tweak it every week. I have to make one template—that one is extremely quick.” 

Michele also highlights the weekly and daily look features, and especially loves the bar graph visual in the Optimal Labor Forecasting: “It really helps me adjust by day point. I think that’s where we’ve saved the most labor.” She’s able to flag when they won’t be making enough or when they’ll be the busiest—and move shifts around accordingly. 

She also notes that the hourly labor percentage on the Labor Budget Tool makes it easy to train others to create strategic schedules, and that “[7shifts] projections are very close.” She also loves that she can include specific messages in the scheduling notes, which both the manager and employee can see. For example, “I need you to learn how to count the safe today. I need you to learn how to calibrate the thermometer today.” 

 

 

The platform has also been especially useful for events. Michele shares, “We have a ton of catering marketing events that we do. Having that event planner has really helped us keep track of all our events.” She’s able to mark off specific days on the schedule for events, keeping all employees in the loop with the details.  

 

 

Effortless shift management for employees

Michele adds that the mobile app is a plus for staff: “A huge thing—that I don’t think we even remember dealing with because it has really been such an ease—is the employees having their schedule constantly with them on their phones.” 

 

Michele used to receive phone calls from staff asking, “Who am I working with? Could you send me the schedule again?” And now, she no longer deals with that: “They can constantly view not only their schedule but the store schedule. They can put their shift up for grabs.” She also notes that she loves that 7shifts tracks how many times an employee puts a shift up. 

And with employees finding their own covers, it saves management a lot of time. Leslie says, “As an owner, I have already paid the GM to make the schedule,” and doesn’t want to repay them to make adjustments. This is exactly what 7shifts helps solve: “That has saved me on labor—not having to pull my GM off the line and away from what’s important. They can just approve or disapprove a shift swap. That has been amazing.”

Efficient payroll & tip distribution with error checks

Michele adds, “One thing that I love about [7shifts] is there’s an ease to payroll […] The payroll process is honestly pretty simple.” She explains that it mostly consists of verifying—because of issues with previous payroll providers, “I am overly protective of making sure things are integrating right.”

So, she double-checks the numbers between 7shifts and Toast POS, making sure tips and time-clocking are both integrated correctly. And then it just comes down to filling in any reimbursements or bonuses that need to be paid out.

 

 

Michele also says, “A huge thing that I love about [7shifts] is I get a red flag warning when there’s an error before I try to publish. With most other payroll companies that we’ve tried, I won’t know until I push go.” This is especially an issue because she often faces tight deadlines for payroll—and now, “I can address those problems before we reach that deadline.”

“Payroll is the simplest version we have found—which has many automatic integrations, instead of manual or uploads—saving at least 1 to 2 hours.”

 

 

Onboarding & HR features in one place

Michele adds, “[7shifts] has really taken over HR. I don’t think that was something we ever expected.” Employees at the Jamba stores use 7shifts for everything onboarding-related. Leslie says, “They start using 7shifts from the minute that I hire them. Everything is on there. Their tasks are assigned.” 

 

 

They also use Employee Engagement Reporting on 7shifts to document performance notes for each team member day-to-day—tracking everything from their uniform and attendance to positive and negative feedback—which are then used for bi-annual reviews. “Tying all that in has been amazing—not having that extra portal.” 

“It has really let us go to basically paperless. We don’t have files anymore […] We can upload everything onto [7shifts].“

Tools to engage & retain employees  

Leslie also finds the Shift Feedback tool extremely useful in making sure employees are heard: “We tell them your managers don’t get in trouble. They get more time with us […] We want to educate our managers more. So, I love that shift feedback.”

 

 

She also highlights the employee birthday and work anniversary notifications as a tool she uses to keep the team engaged: “I love how it says somebody’s birthday or anniversary is coming up—and we honor them.” The team makes them a poster and gifts them a little cake, along with a balloon. “And again, I used to manage that on a spreadsheet.”

She also notes that while they generally have high employee retention, the campus location sees more turnover since it shuts down during the off-semester. But even then, “[7shifts] has helped us retain those employees because we can keep in touch with them while they’re away.” They can still send announcements and share photos of their vacations with one another. 

Log book & task lists for transparent documentation 

Leslie adds that they often take the Manager Log Book feature for granted: “We can get all those stats or anything we ask for. We can find it ourselves.” The stores actually use it as an educational tool too—employees fill out questions in the log for training purposes. 

 

 

She adds, “What I am appreciating right now in that manager’s log is the maintenance—I have it programmed so that it emails me immediately […] So, they can say, ‘We’re out of tape. I need more of this.’ And I get that email, and I can get on it right away.” This is a big step up from their old log book—a physical notebook that employees could only access in-store.

 

 

Visibility across multiple locations

When asked about how 7shifts supports operations of both Jamba locations at once, Leslie says, “In a glance, you see both doors at one time.” And Michele agrees that the reporting acts as a single source of truth: “It’s very accurate with that. All we have to do is toggle between stores, and it lists where we’re at and who’s clocked in.”

Leslie also notes, “We have several employees who work at both locations, and I like how we can see that they’re scheduled, but they’re grayed out—which means they’re at the other store. And that has really helped us share employees and not double-schedule them.”

They also use 7shifts to share announcements: “We have two totally different stores, but we can use the same announcement for both.” And when needed, they can easily tailor messages to each location.

The final word

To end off, Michele says, “7shifts [continues] to expand and grow with the times and needs of their clients. 7shifts is now not only a scheduling program, but our payroll, which has simplified immensely with immediate tip integration, HR, tasks lists […] I could go on and on about the capabilities of this program and the unique customization it allows for your business.”