How 7shifts Helps Wildfire + Fork & Fire Do It All: Scheduling, Payroll, Tips, and More

 

What started as a few backyard barbecues quickly turned into a food truck—and eventually, two full-blown restaurant brands. 

In 2019, brothers Josh and Jason Bishop partnered with their friend Brent Ralston to launch the Fork & Fire food truck in Tucson, Arizona, after building a loyal following from their neighborhood cookouts. When the pandemic hit, the truck thrived while traditional restaurants struggled—and it became clear they needed a full kitchen to keep up with demand.

Rather than open another barbecue joint, the trio switched gears to chicken wings, with Wildfire Wings & Grill set to open in Catalina, Arizona, in early 2022. But just weeks before opening, a local landlord in Oro Valley offered them a brick-and-mortar space to bring their food truck concept to life as Fork & Fire Smokehouse + Taproom. While it was a wild opportunity, it was one they just couldn’t say no to. 

So, both Wildfire and Fork & Fire opened that year—two restaurant brands, five miles apart.

Meet Josh Bishop, Owner of Wildfire and Fork & Fire

We sat down with Josh to talk about how 7shifts has supported his restaurants throughout the years. And while both Wildfire and Fork & Fire are only three years old, Josh’s experience in the restaurant industry spans multiple decades.

He started bussing tables in high school, learned to cook alongside his dad at the family restaurant, and later climbed the ranks at The Keg Steakhouse—eventually becoming the Director of Operations. Along the way, he also went to school for computer programming but admits he had more fun bartending on the side than sitting in front of a screen. What was meant to be a “short break” from school turned into 51 semesters (and counting).

In 2022—the same year both restaurants launched—Josh was still overseeing eight locations of The Keg while running Wildfire, Fork & Fire, and the food truck. He only recently stepped away from his corporate role last year to fully commit to his ventures.

And Josh makes it clear that working in the restaurant space doesn’t mean he’s sacrificing other passions. In fact, he uses his love for computers and technology every day to improve his restaurants.

The challenge: Disjointed scheduling and payroll

Even with all that restaurant experience, finding the perfect restaurant tech stack for Josh wasn’t easy. While he originally used Excel to create schedules, payroll was a whole other challenge. 

When Wildfire first opened, he used Homebase to pay his employees, but quickly realized it wasn’t enough to scale: “When we brought on the second restaurant, we decided we needed something better than Homebase.” 

So, he tried payroll provider after payroll provider. One was short-lived, with issues on the customer service side. Another came with integration issues with time-clocking: “I probably spent as much time making adjustments and entering manually as I would have if I didn’t use the integrations themselves.” 

They were also constantly running back and forth to the bank. And the last provider led to a full-on staff revolt against proprietary pay cards. Enough was enough.

So, Josh returned to the drawing board and started researching. After discovering 7shifts from a quick Google search, he had already implemented the platform for scheduling at both restaurants. And soon after, he added on 7shifts payroll.

The solution: An all-in-one platform for scheduling, payroll, tips, and more

Josh decided to use 7shifts payroll at Fork & Fire first: “The kicker was that there was a tip function, and that tip function would deposit directly into [employee’s] current checking account without additional new cards. So, that was the selling point.”

But it didn’t take long for Josh to use 7shifts payroll at Wildfire, too: “I thought [7shifts] was doing a really good job […] Jason was handling payroll at Wildfire—it was going smooth enough, but to get things a little bit more linear and have less logins, we jumped to 7shifts payroll at Wildfire as well.”

It’s been a little over a year since Josh started using 7shifts for all different solutions: scheduling, payroll, tip management, time clocking, onboarding, and employee communication. He says, “The integration from time punching to time clocks to payroll, all in one place—one login—is a huge win.” 

 

 

He explains that the biggest benefit of having everything in one place is cutting down the mental load: “I can just teach somebody how to use 7shifts, and even if they need to bounce around and bang around for a little bit to find it, everything’s in one spot.” He adds, “It’s just so much more seamless to have one place that they go for all of those things.”

“When people are like ‘tech stack,’ I’m like, ‘I don’t want a tech stack.’ I just want a platform.” 

And here’s what Josh likes about all the different features of the 7shifts platform:

Efficient scheduling

Each week, managers at Josh’s restaurants create their own department schedules using 7shifts in under one hour. Then, Josh sits down every Thursday morning to review the different schedules before they’re sent out.

But beyond creating schedules quickly, the platform is a source of sales projections that Josh leverages to schedule more accurately. He looks at last year’s sales and current trends while pairing those with 7shifts’ data to make decisions. “And then I can put my predictions in, and then my team can write schedules based on those sales.” 

“And that’s definitely helped on labor because now, we write schedules that are designed to be close to our labor budget, rather than just writing a schedule based on what we think we need—and then having to fix that problem throughout the day.”

 

He adds, “To be honest, we didn’t know what we were doing when we started. We weren’t using the tools that 7shifts could provide. […] We were losing money the first year, and it was all labor—now, we are running a very efficient restaurant, and labor is the biggest area that we’ve improved. I would give 80% of that credit to 7shifts, just providing comprehensive tools so that we can manage it.”

Josh attributes to remaining 20% to his managers’ efforts in leveraging the platform to write effective schedules, based on the numbers. He also adds that Toast POS deserves a few points too, since he’s able to monitor it through 7shifts with the integration.

 

 

He also highlights how 7shifts simplifies shift swapping as employees can post their shifts for others to pick up if needed: “I’m always used to calling people, texting people, asking them if they can work—and this just puts it out there in the world, and almost always, somebody picks a shift up.”

Integrated payroll

Josh explains, “When I was dealing with [previous payroll providers], I would probably be spending 2.5 hours just handling my payroll—making sure it was right, moving information from one system to the next.” The process was clunky, he adds, especially since reports only showed employee numbers, not names. 

With 7shifts, the payroll process has gotten a lot simpler: “I really love the card view. I’m able to easily roll through the payroll and look at every shift. And the way that it’s grouped and everything—the visual of it—it makes it very simple to make changes and to add shifts.” And he especially loves how easy it is to move all the time records for payroll in 7shifts: “It’s almost like it’s the same thing—I just sync it.”

Josh adds that his attention to detail makes the payroll process a little longer than it needs to be: “The payroll process in and of itself is really quick, cut and dry, but I go through each time record and compare it to schedules.” But even then, “It’s probably 45 minutes. It’s a pretty easy part of my Monday.” 

 

 

When asked about his experience with 7shifts payroll during tax season, Josh says it was, “Pretty seamless. I personally feel like you handle everything that needs to be handled.” And when it comes to employees and their W2s, “Since using 7shifts, former staff reach out to me way less than using other platforms.”

He points out that in this industry, many people move—and people change their email addresses a lot less than their physical addresses. “Having two years now with 7shifts, W2s this year were—in my career—probably one of the most seamless experiences with staff getting the information they needed.”

Automated tip pooling

Josh also explains, “When you’re dealing with tip pools and tip outs, that can be a bit contentious in a restaurant.” But 7shifts makes it easier, which is why tip management is his favorite feature of the platform. He adds, “In my old job, I’ve spent a lot of time working on Excel spreadsheets to make sure that tips get distributed correctly. And I just love the ability to customize those tip pools and get people their money.”

“About five minutes after everybody clocks out on Toast, everything is in 7shifts.” His team then does a quick review, but “All the tip pools are pretty comprehensive. So, there’s never really any questions about that—they just hit the button and send out the tips.”

His employees especially love that they’re able to receive tips directly in their bank account—the same night of their shift. “They just set up their debit card—they have their money. It’s the same way they use their money all other times. So, it’s not an additional card.”

And the lack of bank runs is also a bonus: “I no longer have to run to the bank to get more money to tip everybody. It’s time for my managers that can be spent making their employee’s lives better, our guests’ lives better.”

Enhanced employee engagement 

Josh also highlights that 7shifts helps to keep his team engaged: “They interact with each other on it. People DM each other and have conversations on it. And once again, it’s not clunky. They like that it’s just easy—it works like the other apps on their phone.”

One standout feature for him is the shoutout function, where staff can recognize each other with open visibility. And beyond leadership updates, all internal communication between staff and managers happens through 7shifts—eliminating the need to swap countless phone numbers.

 

He adds that his employee turnover rates are already quite low compared to the industry standard, and while it’s difficult to attribute one platform as the reason for retaining employees, “7shifts is just a key piece of that puzzle.”

“Because so much of the employee experience is the onboarding and the schedules […] Their interaction with the company is through 7shifts.” He adds, “I probably should give more credit than I do because it really is the interface between me and my staff. And my turnover is low—it’s the lowest it’s ever been. It has increasingly gotten better since inception, and a lot of that is me utilizing my restaurant systems better.”

Josh attributes about 30% of the credit to 7shifts for the improvement he’s seen in the restaurants’ employee turnover throughout the years:

Multi-location management 

Josh also mentions that he has three employees who work across both Wildfire and Fork & Fire. And with 7shifts, “If I do move people between restaurants, they’re using the same system. Their information’s the same. They can toggle between the two like I do, and they can see both. So, that’s a benefit for them.”

He adds, “It just makes things easier, especially when you have one person operating and overseeing both restaurants. I can teach people the things I learn at both restaurants. I don’t have to learn two different things so that I can teach two different things.”

The final word

To end off, Josh says, “In the day and age we live in, if there’s something that’s frustrating, there’s almost always a better solution […] It seems like every time I looked for a solution, I ended up landing on 7shifts.”

“When you start doing POS, let me know.”