Master of Workforce: Thai Leisure on how Fourth helped them achieve 15% sales boost

By Lucy Young|Dec 12, 2023|11:18 am GMT

In our Masters of Workforce series we welcomed Thai Leisure’s Systems Manager, Louis Kinsey and Director of Operations, Richard Simpson, to discuss the restaurant chain’s experience implementing Fourth’s Workforce Management Solution. They were joined by Fourth’s Head of Productivity Consulting, Dave Ellmer, who led on the implementation from our side.

Thai Leisure began its journey with Fourth midway through 2021. The national group, which includes brands Chaophraya and Thaikhun, was keen to upgrade its existing systems post-Covid. “We were setting targets based on standard percentages – hoping more than knowing that those were the true story – and some sites were hitting targets constantly,” explains Louis. “We wanted to give our managers a tool that would allow them to maximise opportunities at each site.”

“We wanted to give our managers a tool that would allow them to maximise opportunities at each site.”

The result was some impressive topline figures; a 15.7% increase in like-for-like sales since implementation and a 1% reduction in labour spend across the group. “This wasn’t one big fix,” says Richard, “But lots of little gains from across the team.”

15% increase in like-for-like sales since implementation and a 1% reduction in labour spend across the group

Lots of small changes equal big gains

Togetherness is a theme that crops up a lot throughout the conversation. It’s a core value for Thai Leisure and one the team clearly takes strides to embody. “Implementing this solution took a lot of teamwork,” Louis points out. “Our whole team was involved, including our exec chef, who worked closely with Dave on prep times in the kitchen, which can be quite complex.”

Richard agrees, “It’s been a real journey of embracing change. We’ve had to make a lot of little changes in our teams around the way we build processes. It was so important that we were all together and all singing from that same hymn sheet, that we knew what the goals were. It’s been an enlightening 12 months.”

It’s been an enlightening 12 months

That 1% labour cost reduction resulted from a desire to give managers more granular data to better understand how their teams work. “We wanted a solution that was tailored to each location,” says Louis. “We wanted to work with a partner to implement and roll it out, who would then be checking in and making tweaks to optimise it. That’s really contributed to the 1% because the system always learns, and the more information we get, the more we can learn about our business.”

A tailored approach

Richard notes that they expected there to be quite a bit of scope in labour percentages. “It opened the door to giving the Business Managers (BMs) the tool to actually understand where that scope was. They can see a clear graph in front of them showing the types of days they’re overstaffed. Some sites were able to bring labour down by 5%. Even in locations where we’ve had dramatic hikes and sales, we’ve still been able to bring the labour down by 1%. It’s a great operational tool for BMs to really get inside the details of the business.”

Dave provided a bit more information on how Fourth’s solution considers Point of Sale (POS) data. “We look at splitting it out into what we call sales types,” he explains. “So that we can attribute differing labour volumes to it, ensuring that we’re grouping all the items that are on sale so we can map an accurate amount of labour to them.”

“It gives you a great opportunity,” Louis jumps in. “We’ve got some very different items in our business, so we had to change our POS categories from just a standard food and beverage metric. We’ve got two different day brands here, we also have a brand where we have a bottomless drink, which customers self serve. That means very minimal levels of engagement from the team, but it’s getting the same amount of sales as complex cocktails, which require much more labour. Understanding that gives the power to the team to tailor the amount of labour for cocktails and schedule far less for bottomless drink sales.”

Employee experience boosts the bottom line

But the big change for employees came in the rota flexibility. Once rolled out, Thai Leisure was able to produce schedules two weeks in advance. With advanced knowledge of when they’re working, staff can plan their lives around work better. ‘We hire a lot of students and part-timers,” Richard explains, “And if we’re honest their priority isn’t work, it’s studying. Now we give them plenty of notice so they can plan their study around work, and they’re coming in fresh faced and ready to do a job. It’s made the car go faster, that’s for sure.”

“Ultimately it helps plan around things like holidays as well,” says Louis. “And increases staff retention. If staff know when they’re working two or three weeks in advance, then they have flexibility and the time to change shifts if they need to. It’s a perk, and it helps us to retain experienced staff.”

 “There was a 7% accuracy increase in deployment, equating to saving 56,000 hours across 16 locations”

Of course, adequately staffing shifts has a knock on effect on staff morale as well. Fourth’s solution measures the accuracy of the schedule, accounting for the number of correctly scheduled hours compared to those that are over or under scheduled. “There was a 7% accuracy increase in deployment,” highlights David, “And that was driven primarily by an investment in your peak trading periods, which was funded by a 22% decrease in over scheduled hours.” That means that staff previously scheduled to cover quieter shifts unnecessarily could be redeployed to work during busier times. David ran the numbers and calculated that that equates to a saving of 56,000 hours across 16 locations in a calendar year.

Richard picks up on the implication of that for staff, “We all know there’s a lot of staff that probably have a bit of fear of going into a Saturday – your busiest time – and what we’ve done is we’ve highlighted areas where we can take two bodies out of an overstaffed Tuesday afternoon and put them on a Saturday night. Out of nowhere, Saturday is now an easy shift because we’ve got the numbers right so that really helps staff morale.”

But the advantages aren’t just in front-of-house. Richard continues, “There’s cases as well, certainly with our kitchen teams, where we have become so accurate that we’ve almost managed to put some chefs on four day weeks. It’s a tough job over a hot wok for 10 hours a day, three days off means no one gets burned out.”

Thai Leisure has seen the spend per head at peak times dramatically increase thanks to improved scheduling accuracy.

And if you’re a little overstaffed at peak times, there’s also an opportunity for upselling. Thai Leisure has seen the spend per head at peak times dramatically increase thanks to improved scheduling accuracy.

What’s next?

With the roaring success of the last 12 months behind them, what does the next year have in store for Thai Leisure Group?

“More of the same!” Says Richard, “We’re not taking that success and thinking right, that’s it. We’ve nailed that we’re done. This will be a continued way of working for the foreseeable future. I think the big focus is obviously staff welfare and maintaining good people.”

“With the recent announcement of the minimum wage increase, we also need to get clever when we look at our menu cycle and reengineering,” says Louis. “We’ve talked about looking at a specific item and the complexity of an item. We can look at certain dishes and remove those with low margins and boost those that are really selling, with minimum impact on spend price for our customers. I’ll be focusing a lot on menu engineering over the next year.”

Dave highlighted how Fourth will be helping with that. “The prep analysis that we complete on each site visits allows you to make some some really informed decisions or look at what’s taking up a lot of labour in the business at the moment, where you’re losing time preparing and producing items that perhaps don’t deliver the guests’ experience or margins that you need it to.”

And what would our three speakers recommend for those contemplating implementing a new workforce management system next year? Go into it with an open mind, be on the same page and have clear objectives. We certainly can’t argue with that!