How Synergy Franchising (Popeyes & Firehouse Subs) Makes QSR Life Easier for 600+ Employees With 7shifts

 

Managing over 600 employees across 27 quick-service restaurants isn’t easy, especially when you’re scaling as fast as Synergy Franchising, one of Canada’s leading franchise groups. For Kyle Ferbey, Chief Operating Officer, building the right systems to support growth is key.

So here’s how the franchise group uses 7shifts to simplify scheduling, improve labor efficiency, and increase profitability across Popeyes and Firehouse Subs stores in Western Canada.

Meet Kyle Ferbey & Synergy Franchising

Kyle Ferbey didn’t start his career in restaurants. Before becoming COO of Synergy Franchising, his background spanned operations and leadership roles across retail, education, and even running his own business. Restaurants weren’t part of the original plan… until one phone call changed everything.

His high school friend (and now business partner), Eddie Tsang, called with an opportunity he couldn’t ignore. Together, in 2016, they opened the first Popeyes location in Western Canada, launching in Edmonton. Soon after, they signed multi-location development agreements for both Popeyes and Firehouse Subs.

For Kyle, choosing which brands to invest in isn’t complicated. It comes down to what he calls a brand thesis: “There’s the phrase ‘investment thesis’ out there for people [to decide] what they like to invest in. I would look at it the same way for us, like ‘brand thesis’. When we’re looking for a brand, it has to be the best product in that marketplace.” And for him, Popeyes leads the chicken segment, and Firehouse Subs stands out in the sandwich market.

 

 

Today, Synergy Franchising owns 21 Popeyes and 6 Firehouse Subs restaurants, employing more than 600 team members. They’re not slowing down with plans to expand to 27 Popeyes and 10 Firehouse Subs locations, bringing their total footprint to 37 restaurants.

We sat down with Kyle to talk about how his team uses 7shifts to make operations for him and his team easier every day. 

The problem: Too many employees for an Excel sheet to handle

When the first store opened, it wasn’t long before Kyle realized an Excel spreadsheet just wouldn’t cut it. The business was booming with lineups down the block, but that also meant managing a big roster. He recounts:

“We’d have 13, 14 people working at once, and that’s as many people we could put in there… I was using Excel, and I’m pretty good at Excel, but it was pretty complex to have to do it. And then, I just started looking at different options for scheduling.”

Enter 7shifts, which he said looked “pretty easy to use” and was offered at a “reasonable price.” And after adopting the tool about a decade ago, he hasn’t looked back. Today, all 27 stores use the platform to schedule and manage their teams. 

He shares, “7shifts has provided a consistent scheduling system for us for 10 years.” 

 

 

How Synergy Franchising uses 7shifts day-to-day

Kyle also shares how positive the experience has been working with the 7shifts team:  “[7shifts] has always been there to support us… And I’m a pretty firm negotiator… I think we’ve always been able to come to an agreement… Everyone’s always responsive. We always get things done. I would never say that that was ever a concern––having slow turnarounds.” 

Here’s how Kyle and his team use the platform for better operations each day:

Scheduling

Kyle highlights the ease of use 7shifts provides with creating schedules: “The fact that you can just copy a schedule over and then start with a templated system is awesome… The fact that you can drag and drop, it’s just really simple to use.”

 

 

And there’s the multi-location factor: “Employees will shift between locations sometimes, if needed. So it’s really simple for us to do that.”

He compares it to day one: “Using Excel for scheduling anything that’s moderately complex for a restaurant is kind of crazy… If I had to guess, our managers would spend maybe an hour a week on scheduling… But to do that in Excel, trying to deal with people knowing what time off they need and all these things would be next to impossible.” 

Kyle estimates that managers save “at least two hours per week,” and it’s not just because schedules become quicker to build. He points out, without 7shifts, “How do you track time off? How do you track requests? How do you do any of this stuff?”

“You’re going to spend more hours on just dealing with all that as well, as a leader. We want our leaders working with our guests, with our staff. We don’t want them sitting at a computer… and having to do a ton of admin work.”

Operations Overview

Kyle also likes using the Operations Overview for multi-location visibility: “It’s nice to see really easily, the data in one frame between all the stores. What’s sales per labor hour? Why does one store have $5,000 more sales but uses less labor than another store?” He takes this information to then try to understand and close gaps.

“I love data and really understanding how to find efficiencies… where we’re being very efficient or very inefficient in the business. So having one system across the board for our second-biggest cost center is really big for us to understand it.”

Optimal Labor Tool

Kyle also explains how 7shifts came up with a custom solution to help benchmark labor: “Optimal Labor… we had to create a manual way to get our data into it, and 7shifts was awesome in supporting us to do that.”

“Now, it gives us really good data, and helps us schedule… It’s hard to put a number on it, but that saved us a lot of money too, just being able to use the Optimal Labor [Tool], and again, create something more equitable across the stores.” For example, the tool can tell management, “You don’t need eight people right now. You need six people.”

 

With all the data extracted, Kyle predicts an extra 1% profitability unlock per store. He explains, “That doesn’t seem like much, but if you have scale––the 27 restaurants we have now, growing to 37––it’s a really big number over the course of that. That’s why I’m really excited about that.”

Compliance & Overtime

Kyle also recounts one of the biggest pain points for the stores: holiday pay. “It was such a nightmare for us to do tracking on that, and the way the government does it.” But with 7shifts, he was able to find a solution for it. 

“That saves a boatload of administrative time to do that. I would say it’s reduced overtime usage as well, because it’s so easy to see.”

Employee Engagement

Kyle adds that if he were to ditch 7shifts and revert to the free corporate solutions, “People would be frustrated with the other systems… In terms of engagement, I think people just like using it… It makes their lives easier.”

“A lot of our staff are teenagers. The app is easy to use… It’s easy to clock in and out. It’s easy to see your schedule come. It’s easy to trade shifts. It eliminates a lot of roadblocks for people.”

And for managers? “The simplicity of using the system and copying schedules over and being able to look at the data and optimal labor easily and readily is a huge advantage.”

He adds: “We do use the Engage function as well too, just to look at data. We encourage teams to fill those out and do the Shift Feedback… It’s fun to look at and to understand the data.”

 

 

The final word: “Give them a try… It’s been a great experience.”

As for Kyle’s final word? He definitely recommends giving 7shifts a try to others in the industry:

“7shifts provided this consistent way of operating for us on something that’s really important––scheduling––and probably the most impactful thing for our employees… It’s provided us simplicity as well as stronger engagement, because it’s easy to use, and people like using it. Looking at us as a business, we want to provide people in our business with tools to succeed––and this would be a tool that would help them succeed.”

“From our personal experience, if you’re evaluating different scheduling businesses or brands to work with, our experience has been really great with 7shifts––from working as a partner, everything on pricing to integrations, listening to us and being open to making change, coming up with new features––it’s been really good. Especially in the QSR and restaurant industry, give them a try because it’s been a great experience for us. Having 600 employees and being really happy with it is a good set of data.”