Rudy’s Tenampa Taqueria in Kansas City is a family business offering traditional Mexican cuisine in a casual dining atmosphere. Owner and CEO, Rudy Garcia opened the doors to his namesake restaurant in 1993 and more than two decades later, the business remains strong with 50% of employees being family members.
The Key to Rudy’s Tenampa’s Success
A key to the success of Rudy’s Tenampa is providing guests with world-class hospitality. Rudy’s Tenampa strives to provide the highest level of service for their guests to ensure their return time and time again. In addition to the restaurant, Rudy’s Tenampa also operates a catering business which accounts for 35% of sales. Catering has been so successful that it is now ran as a separate entity and handled by the Director of Catering.
Dominic Garcia, Rudy’s Tenampa Director of Operations, entered management with the goal of making everything run more efficiently. Prior to 7shifts, the scheduling manager at Rudy’s Tenampa was scheduling staff using nothing more than a pen and paper. “There was just so much paper! It was very inefficient.” recalls Dominic.
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Some of the pain points Rudy’s Tenampa experienced were staff forgetting when they were working, management constantly having to text or call employees with the latest schedule information, and shift trade confusion. It was a failing process which prompted Dominic to start researching employee scheduling software. This led him to 7shifts which he has been used in Rudy’s Tenampa for over a year now. He came across many scheduling apps but thought 7shifts was the best solution for Rudy’s Tenampa as it is designed for restaurants. With possible expansion plans on the horizon, Rudy’s Tenampa will be further supported by 7shifts since the system allows staff to be scheduled across multiple locations.
“The accessibility is what really brought me in.”, says Dominic, “It’s very, very, very cost effective for our small business – that’s what really did it for me. Factoring that and its user friendliness is how I made my decision.” Staff now have the ability to check when they work on their smartphones and this has minimized the scheduling confusion for Rudy’s Tenampa employees. “This is so much easier than trying to track people down,” explains Dominic.
Productivity improvements with overall operations in the last year has helped Rudy’s management team to focus on other aspects of the business. “7shifts has made creating the schedule a non task for our scheduling manager. She barely spends any time on it every Sunday.” says Dominic. “Especially with the Shift Pool feature – before, it was the Manager’s responsibility to make sure everything was in order and everyone knew what times they were coming in at. Now, it’s all documented, it’s all online and we have a great record of it.”
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Dominic’s favourite part of being a 7shifts client is the ability to directly deal with the team when he has questions or feedback. He likes the fact that even the CEO is accessible to clients and solves problems without a lot of red tape.
Asked if there is any scheduling advice Dominic would offer his peers in the industry, it’s “don’t rely on permanent schedules where you have somebody working the same days, same shifts every week. Definitely rotate more, because rotation allows your employees to learn new skills and be flexible which allows you to have more power with scheduling when you need to.”
