Mark Sargeant

From Head Chef of Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, to owner and operator of his own restaurant group; Michelin-starred chef Mark Sargeant has certainly made a name for himself in the hospitality industry.

With a mix of fine dining restaurants, pubs and takeaway restaurants it's safe to say each of his sites has its own unique charm and target audience; yet they were all facing similar challenges.

Staff scheduling... with spreadsheets

All four sites were building staff rotas using spreadsheets and managing their costs in a reactive way. At the end of each month, the accounts team analysed the costs to approximate how busy each day had been; they used this to decide how many staff to schedule on future rotas. Building rotas based on past demand as opposed to future demand meant that the balance between staffing levels and footfall was often slightly ‘off'. This left a lot of scope to improve the accuracy of staff scheduling and achieve the optimal labour cost percentage as a result.

Besides building more accurate staff rotas, the the group wanted a solution that would give staff greater clarity and visibility over their scheduled hours, and managers greater visibility and control over staff costs.

None of this could be achieved using spreadsheets, so the group looked to make the jump from its existing approach to staff scheduling.

A game changing recommendation

Mark Sargeant Group looked into a number of software providers and Rotaready came recommended from one of their industry peers. After a demo, it quickly became clear Rotaready was far superior to the other providers the group had considered. So, after one month of trialling the product the group made the decision to roll out Rotaready across all four sites and were fully set up within two weeks.

Rotaready has become an irreplaceable tool for the entire business. The mobile app means all staff now have their schedule at their fingertips. Managers are finding the day to day running of their pubs & restaurants significantly easier, as they can spend less time on admin heavy tasks. And for HQ it has made payroll, monitoring holiday allowances and weekly sign-off a pleasure rather than a chore.

Working with Rotaready has made life easier for the entire business. Scheduling staff time is easy, payroll is more accurate than ever and we have saved a huge amount of time on admin heavy tasks. We're excited to continue working with the team in the future.

EPOS and expansion

Having opened 3 new sites at the end of 2019 Mark Sargeant are looking to further streamline the systems they use across the group. Part of this process is implementing a new till solution that integrates with Rotaready.

This integration will allow Mark Sargeant Group to view key business metrics, such as number of covers and daily sales, from one dashboard. It will also help strengthen the sales forecasts generated by Rotaready, and as a result help the group make even more informed scheduling decisions across their current and future sites.