12 locations, 1 solution: How 7shifts Helped Tono Pizzeria and Frank & Andrea Scale Up

 

Andrea Gambino came to America in the 1970s with one dream: to share his hand-tossed Sicilian tradition with others. He opened his first restaurant in New Jersey, and decades later, brought the same passion to the Minneapolis skyways with three Andrea Pizza locations.

But the family business didn’t stop there. His son, Antonio Gambino, was determined to grow the Sicilian legacy, but this time with a twist—adding a touch of their mother’s Philly roots to the mix with cheesesteaks. In partnership with his long-time friend, Shaz Khan, Frank & Andrea was born in 2016, serving up the perfect pairing of cheesesteaks and pizza on the University of Minnesota campus.

Building on that success, Antonio and Shaz then opened the first Tono Pizzeria + Cheesesteaks location in 2019—a more elevated, dine-in-focused concept. Tono has grown to 12 locations today, and the second Frank & Andrea location is set to open this fall.

 

 

Meet Trevor Guy, IT Manager of Tono and Frank & Andrea

We sat down with Trevor Guy, the IT Manager across all Tono Pizzeria locations, as well as Frank & Andrea. And Trevor has a pretty cool story too—he started as a day-one employee at Frank & Andrea as a ‘slice guy’ and became the assistant manager.

Once he took on more responsibility, he worked more closely with Shaz and found that a lot of their interests aligned—Trevor studied computer science in school, while Shaz studied electrical engineering. 

Trevor explains, “As I wrapped up school, the opportunity arose, rather than to look externally to stay within and help grow the company and become the IT guy there. So it was a really nice natural growth, and it’s super helpful because coming from the ground up.”

 

The problem: Poor integration and inaccurate reporting

Before 7shifts, Trevor used Homebase at Tono Pizzeria and Crew at Frank & Andrea. He explains that Homebase cost nearly 30% more, and he had difficulties with the POS integration. Not only was the manual process inefficient—it was inaccurate, too.

As Tono expanded, Trevor knew they needed to make a change: “We’re a pretty lean team operationally. It’s just me on the tech side. At four locations, it was getting to be impossible to manage Homebase, and that was just one platform in the tech stack.”

The solution: 7shifts for scheduling and communication

Trevor found 7shifts after browsing through Toast’s integrations, and today, everyone at the restaurants uses the platform, aside from the owners. He logs in once a week to check on integrations, and managers log in multiple times a day. 

As for the onboarding experience, he says it was super smooth and took him less than a week. “Since switching to 7shifts, I have [12] locations, and I’m not struggling right now.” Here’s why:

POS integration

Trevor explains, “The integration between Toast and 7shifts is 10 times better than between Toast and Homebase. It automatically syncs wages and positions—one button. I had to do it all manually in Homebase.”

“I [add employees] in Toast, give them their job and wage, come over to 7shifts, hit send invite, and it just works.” He adds, “It saves me hours of time a day because I don’t have to do it manually.”

And while he hasn’t adopted 7shifts for time-clocking, he’s found the platform surprisingly helpful for spotting variances and tracking issues like late or missed clock-ins. Thanks to the notifications, he’s ended up relying on those tools more than he expected.

Templated schedules 

Trevor explains, “Homebase—because of its difficulties—we tend to just copy week from week and then fix it on the fly, which wasn’t great. 7shifts—the templates and the UI—is a lot better for GMs.” Every week, it takes them less than an hour to create a new schedule. “And it’s a more correct and more organic schedule.”

The restaurants use 7shifts templates for efficient scheduling. Their Director of Operations worked with each GM using Daypart’s sales reports to figure out how many staff members were needed per shift—such as four employees on Monday nights and six employees on Tuesdays afternoons—and then built templates around those needs. Now, scheduling is as simple as dragging and dropping names into the preset slots.

 

 

Robust labor reporting

He also says, “Homebase reporting was actually just flat out incorrect,” due to its inability to integrate with Toast properly, as well as its calculations. “That has been a huge difference when we came to 7shifts—7shifts reporting is so robust and so great.”

Trevor’s personal favorite feature is the enterprise dashboard: “I can see both brand sales and labor variance on one screen—it’s awesome.”

He’s also noticed a difference in the labor spend since adopting 7shifts: “It’s definitely dropped. I would say in the ballpark of 6 to 7% per store. And that’s mostly due to live reporting, live sales, and then being able to retroactively make changes.”

 

 

Enhanced employee engagement 

Trevor also says, “I see more employee interaction on 7shifts, which is more important than the manager part for me because I need the team interacting. If the app is fun for the team to use, they’re looking at their schedules, which is nice.” Since adopting 7shifts, Trevor estimates that employee turnover has decreased by 25%. 

 

 

He says employees love the ease of use, especially with our Spanish support: “We have a pretty high demographic of Hispanic, Spanish-first speakers, so the fact that it also works in Spanish and can be translated is a huge win for us […] Being able to use it in their native language is super super helpful.”

Multi-location management 

Plus, the platform isn’t just great for managing multiple locations—it’s also built to handle multiple brands with ease. Trevor says, “Multiple restaurant brands—it’s really nice because I have one login. I can just go to the top and switch between the two. It’s super simple.” 

“And then even in terms of managing employees, it’s really great because they can get one login, and then if I have to move them to a location, it’s one check box on their profile. Super easy.”

Until very recently, the restaurant also had employees working across different locations. Trevor explains, “We had different GMs for each location who weren’t always communicating, so it was nice to use 7shifts to see when this employee was scheduled. If they were available to come over, they could pick up shifts from whatever location was most convenient for them.”

The final slice

As a final remark, Trevor says, “If you’re on Toast, you should be on 7shifts. If you’re going to use an app for scheduling, it’s just the most tightly integrated. The reporting is the best. The scheduling is the easiest.” 

To end, we asked Trevor if 7shifts has lived up to all his expectations. His answer? “More than.”