By 2020, California restaurants will pay $10,000s in compliance fees. Are you prepared?
California Labor Law Compliance
Labor laws in California are complex, with strict rest and meal break policies state-wide, and Fair Workweek ordinances being implemented in several Californian cities. Labor law compliance in California is critical for restaurants, as each labor exception must be paid out to employees—often titled as “premium pay events.” Here are the California labor laws your restaurant must adhere to.
Employers must:
- Provide employees a 30-minute meal period for shifts 5+ hours
- Provide employees two meal breaks for shifts 10+ hours
- Pay the employee one hour of pay at their regular rate for every day they fail to provide a meal break(s) for the employee
- Provide employees a 10-minute rest period every four hours
- Pay employees for all rest breaks and count them as hours worked
- Pay employees a “split shift premium” for split shifts equal to one hour of pay if they make minimum wage (the premium is reduced the higher their wage)
Emeryville Fair Workweek Ordinance
June 2017 · 56+ global employees or 20+ Emeryville employees
Emeryville’s Fair Workweek ordinance, enacted in June of 2017, is another set of California labor laws that apply to retail and fast food establishments. Any restaurants in Emeryville must pay attention to both state and city laws when scheduling their staff.
Employers must:
- Provide a “good faith” estimate of weekly hours before employment
- Give two weeks’ notice of schedules
- Pay out employees for any last-minute schedule changes
- Allow employees to deny last-minute schedule changes
- Offer additional hours to existing employees before hiring
- Give staff an 11-hour rest period between shifts
- Give staff the opportunity to request scheduling accommodations and changes
San Francisco Predictable Scheduling
March 2016 · 20+ locations · 20+ employees in San Francisco
Labor compliance laws in San Francisco, include the Predictable Scheduling and Fair Treatment for Formula Retail Employees Ordinance (or FREROs) and covers employees in a subset of companies that have 20+ locations worldwide and employ over 20 people in the city of San Francisco.
Here are the labor compliance requirements of these ordinances. Employers must:
- Provide employees with a “good faith” estimate of weekly hours
- Provide two weeks’ notice of schedules
- Pay out employees for last-minute schedule changes with fewer than 7 days’ notice
- Give employees the opportunity to take required meal breaks
- Give employees the opportunity to take mandated rest breaks
How 7shifts helps restaurants comply with California law
7shifts provides the tools restaurants need to ensure labor law compliance in California—from San Francisco to Emeryville—with flexible scheduling tools, transparent communication, and robust reporting tools.
Flexible scheduling
7shifts’ drag-and-drop schedule builder makes it simple to schedule shifts in accordance with the law. Get ultimate visibility into each employee’s shifts and use sales and weather forecasts to build the most efficient schedules.
Flexible scheduling
7shifts' provides restaurants with an intuitive, drag-and-drop schedule builder that makes it simple to schedule shifts that work for your restaurant—and stay compliant with local labor laws.
Get ultimate visibility into each employees' time-off and availability preferences to build shifts and full schedules that work for everyone. Leverage sales and labor data from your POS integration, as well as regional weather forecasts to build more efficient schedules. Over-staffing, under-staffing, and missed labor targets are a thing of the past.
Overtime alerts
While scheduling, managers will receive alerts of any overtime they’ve built into the schedule. Additionally, managers receive a notification when an on-duty employee is about to go into overtime.
Overtime alerts
Managers get automatic schedule alerts when building shifts to notify them of potential overtime. Additionally, managers will receive a notification when an on-duty employee is about to go into overtime—so they can approve the overtime or cut the employee. Overtime notifications are specific to each region—so you'll always be compliant with your local legislation.
With better visibility, your restaurant will never pay out overtime you didn't budget for or ecxpect—and you'll be more in control of your labor costs.
Electronic schedule publishing
Easily publish new schedules to employees via SMS text, push notification, or email with 2 weeks’ notice. Employees can view their shifts directly on their mobile device.
Electronic schedule publishing
When your managers are done building the schedule, they can easily publish privately or publicly—allowing managers to easily provide schedules with two weeks' notice. When new schedules are published publicly, a notification will be sent to employees via SMS text, push notification, or email. Employees can view their shifts directly on their mobile device and chat with managers directly in the app if they have any questions or concerns.
Shift swapping
Employees can voluntarily offer up shifts or accept extra shifts from coworkers with managerial approval.
Shift swapping
Shift swapping empowers your staff with more ownership of their schedules. With this feature, employees can offer up their shifts to coworkers in the "Shit Pool," or bid on other shifts to get more hours.
Shift bids are sent to managers to select the best employee to work the shift. When approved, the schedule is automatically updated to reflect the new changes.
Time-off and availability requests
Schedules are infinitely flexible for your staff with time-off and availability requests submitted directly through the app. Managers can approve, deny, and manage requests on-the-go.
Time-off and availability requests
Schedules are infinitely more flexible for your staff with time-off and availability requests submitted directly through the app. Managers receive notifications of all schedule requests through the app and can approve, deny, and manage requests on-the-go.
Scheduled break management
Schedule custom and mandatory breaks in any shift and get notifications to remind employees to take them.
Scheduled break management
When planning for the weeks ahead, managers can build meal breaks, rest breaks, and even custom breaks into the schedule to stay labor compliant. Managers will receive notifications on the job when an employee is due to take their required breaks.
Split shift detection
Split shift punches are detected automatically when an employee punches in with 7shifts, and the associated “split shift premium” is fed directly into the labor exception report.
Split shift detection
In Oregon and New York, there are strict labor laws around split shifts and clopens. To help restaurants stay compliant, managers will receive an alert when building split shifts into the schedule. Split shift punches are also automatically detected when an employee punches in with 7shifts, and the associated “split shift premium” is fed directly into the labor exception report.
Built-in attestation
When an employee clocks out using 7punches, they’ll be asked if they took their required meal and rest breaks or waived them, so you can accurately track your labor law compliance.
Built-in attestation
Strict regulations regarding meal and rest breaks can cause major headaches for managers—especially when employees simply forget to take their required breaks, or a waived break isn't recorded. When an employee clocks out using 7punches, they’ll be asked if they took their required meal and rest breaks or waived them, so managers can accurately track labor law compliance.
The attestations questions and responses are completely customizable to your restaurant—so you can stay compliant your way.
Maintain compliance records
Keep records of all scheduled shifts, punch data, and account activity for three years and beyond.
Maintain compliance records
Labor laws require employers to keep records of schedules, punch data, and more for at least three years. 7shifts makes this easy by logging all of your restaurant's scheduled shifts, punch data, and account activity for as long as you need.
Generate labor exception reports
Easily access automated labor exception reports with type and fee amount of each exception. With the added visibility, you’ll stay more compliant with local laws.
Generate labor exception reports
Every labor law violation is counted as an "exception" and automatically fed into a report for managers and owners. The labor exception report tracks the date, type, and fee associated with each exception, and provides the visibility needed to help your restaurant stay more compliant with local labor laws.
California restaurants use 7shifts to save time, reduce labor costs, and stay compliant.
Trusted by California’s top restaurants
7shifts is your full compliance and labor management solution
Build perfect restaurant schedules in a few clicks
Employee scheduling for restaurants is simple with our drag-and-drop tool that factors in overtime, availability, and regional labor laws. Once the employee schedule is built, it can be published directly to your staff’s email or mobile device so they always know when they’re working.
You'll spend 80% less time building perfect employee schedules that work for your restaurant.
Explore scheduling toolsStay connected with
your team
Group chats · Direct messaging · Announcements · Shift feedback · Manager log book
Keep your team informed with built-in chat, announcements, and shift feedback. Share photos, GIFs, emojis, and text through one-on-one or group messages, or update the whole team with company Announcements.
Be proactive with employee engagement with store-specific stats like lates and no shows, a real-time leaderboard of most and least-engaged employees, and automated feedback surveys to keep a pulse on employee satisfaction.
Take your communication 'to go' with our free mobile app for employees and managers.
Explore communication toolsOptimize your labor operations
POS integrations · Weekly labor budget tool · Reports · Engage dashboard
Connect your systems—from dozens of supported POS and Payroll systems—to optimize your labor management. Integrate your POS to track real-time variances in sales and labor and make smarter business decisions that lower labor costs. Guide your scheduling with sales forecasts to ensure targets are hit, eliminate un-budgeted labor hours with schedule enforcement, and access detailed reports to identify trends and optimize your restaurant.
Use staff engagement insights and automated feedback from staff to improve workplace satisfaction and productivity.
Explore labor complianceExceed your restaurant goals
Multi-location support · On-demand support · Knowledge base articles & videos
With your labor costs in check, staff engaged, and restaurant schedule managed, you can focus on the things that matter—serving your guests and making your restaurant thrive.
Devote more time to supporting your team, expanding your menu, or growing your sales. With unlimited employee and location support, 7shifts is here to help you succeed—whatever that looks like for you.
If you ever need a hand, our support team is only a chat, email, or phone call away.
Explore support resourcesDozens of powerful, supported integrations
Select your POS and Payroll system from 7shifts' 20+ integrations to create labor-perfect schedules and simplify your management by making better use of the systems you already know and trust.
The best labor management platform for California restaurants
LA has nearly 30,000 restaurants—which means competition is tough. Stay profitable (and competitive) by optimizing your labor with a platform like 7shifts.
Employee scheduling is easy with 7shifts’ intuitive drag-and-drop builder that factors in staff availability, time-off, and California labor compliance. Build simple schedules and share them instantly with your team through our free mobile app.
Integrate your restaurant POS to receive detailed reports on your labor cost so you can schedule employees more effectively and run a smoother operation. Ensure every employee schedule hits or exceeds your labor targets by building yours based on staff availability, weekly shift requirements, and sales (and weather) forecasts. Track variances between projected and actual labor and sales to identify trends and make smarter business decisions on-the-go.
Thousands of LA restaurant pros use 7shifts to save money, stay labor compliant, and engage their employees to reduce turnover. Los Angeles restaurants that create employee schedules with 7shifts find they cut their scheduling time by 80%, reduce employee calls and texts by 70%, and trim their labor costs by up to 3%. With your restaurant scheduling accounted for, you can spend more time engaging your staff and serving your guests.
Explore the rest of the 7shifts platform
Get everything you need to streamline your restaurant operations, all in one platform