ShiftForce Blog

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Matt Thompson

Matt has let his lifelong passion of food and people lead him to 15 amazing years as a restaurant manager and another 9 years working as a Director with a major food service distributor. He has channeled this passion to help create and run ShiftNote. When he's not dominating the food service industry, he's spending time with his 4 children and cheering on the Tigers as a Mizzou Alumni.

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How to Use Halloween to See Spookily-Good Restaurant Sales

Halloween is one of the most fun holidays throughout the year. People are looking for the best place to go where they can dress up, spend time with friends, and enjoy great drinks and eats. When you celebrate Halloween as a restaurant, you can take advantage of an

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Scheduling Secrets Revealed - 5 Secrets to Success

Losing focus on different parts of your establishment is easy when you are busy with managerial duties. It may seem easier to quickly fill out a schedule last minute and send it out to employees without doing much research on staffing needs or employee availability, but this is a surefire way to frustrate employees to the point of poor performance. People are your most important asset! They drive your business and are the difference makers in a competitive market. One of the most important managerial duties is scheduling employees. As a scheduling manager, it is you who dictates where your most valuable assets are working and directly impacting your sales. Yet we know it can be difficult to dedicate the time you need for scheduling with everything else going on! To help you make the best scheduling decisions possible, here are five basic tips for scheduling employees.

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4 Restaurant Marketing Tips for Back to School Season

It is back to school season and families are busier than ever! Transitioning into the back to school routine takes some time. When you add in all the fall activities that kids are apart of or want to attend, parents spend most of their time shuttling their family with little time to

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Birds of a Feather - 4 Restaurant Recruitment Strategies

The perception of indifference from employees is the number one reason why a person will never do business with a company again. In a restaurant where a customer spends all of their time interacting with employees, this impression can make or break your business.

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Prepping for Labor Day

The last holiday before Thanksgiving, Labor Day, is approaching. This holiday presents an excellent opportunity to gain more customers, and therefore more sales and exposure, for your restaurant. Yet this holiday holds a bit of a double-edged sword. Depending on the weather, you

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Celebrate July with Menu Options

Thanks to social media, we are seeing a huge rise in the quirkiest of holidays! From Pretzel Day to May the Fourth Be With You, everyone is ready to celebrate any holiday that pops up. You can pretty much call July the Food Month Holiday with all the tasty eats and treats that we

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Building a Sales Driven Culture

One of the most difficult industries to work in is the restaurant world. From the precise timing of ingredient quantity purchases to keeping the customer experience strong with superior service, managing a restaurant requires a well-oiled machine approach. A fundamental way

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Using Mobile Payments to Improve Staff Performance

Measuring the performance of your staff is one of the hardest parts of running a restaurant, but hard data can make it a lot easier. With the technology available today, you are missing out if you’re not gathering information from each transaction being made. Adopting technology, such as mobile payments, is a huge first step to easy data gathering.

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School's Out for Summer! Staff Scheduling Changes

Summer feeling is in the air! Everyone is breaking out their flip-flops and exchanging plans for summer vacations. With all this excitement in the air, you may already be getting time off requests from your waitstaff. Likewise, you are seeing a flood of former employees and new

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