Lancaster Brewery reduce labour costs using Intelligent Scheduling

Lancaster Brewery use Fourth’s AI-driven Intelligent Scheduling to accurately forecast demand and optimise their workforce scheduling and productivity.

Customer Profile

Lancaster Brewery is an established brewery in the northwest of England, producing a range of quality beers served in the on-site taphouse, across the UK and beyond. The brewery also owns a group of award-winning pubs and hotels in Lancashire and Cumbria. Delivering quality food & drink and top-notch customer service are core values of the Lancaster Brewery business.

Challenges Faced

Early in 2022, Lancaster Brewery’s management team identified the need to evolve and improve their workforce management practices.

• Their current scheduling process was outdated and inflexible, relying on fixed shift patterns that seldom changed irrespective of fluctuating customer demand.
• The team suspected they were regularly overstaffing, but identifying this was challenging and usually only happened after the fact.
• Conscious of the mounting headwinds facing the business, they identified the need to take action to control wage costs, maximise revenue and safeguard the future prosperity of the business.

Solution

Lancaster Brewery chose to partner with Fourth, knowing their combined technology and consulting offering was uniquely placed to help them identify sales and labour opportunities and implement new ways of working to realise them.

The core solution implemented was Fourth’s Intelligent Scheduling, enabling them to optimise labour deployment based on revenue forecasts. Leveraging Fourth’s Productivity Consulting team, custom labour models were created to provide accurate right-place, right-time demand graphs.

• AI Forecasting gives the team clear visibility of customer demand.
• The scheduling interface enables the team to efficiently build flexible shift patterns and deploy staff within budgets and availability.
• The Operations team can now easily benchmark performance across the business.
• The new capabilities have enabled Lancaster Brewery to incorporate productivity KPIs into their management incentive scheme.

Results Achieved

Since implementing Fourth’s workforce management platform, Lancaster Brewery has achieved:

• YoY sales growth across all locations where the solution has been implemented.
• A net reduction in labour costs, allowing the business to absorb two consecutive National Living Wage increases.
• A double digit uplift in sales per labour hour.