How a Sushi Restaurant Chain Manages Over 100 Employees with Employee Scheduling Software
Vilnius, Lithuania
Restaurant 110+
Sushi is a popular Japanese delight that you can eat every day and not get bored. So, when our client, Sushi City, opened their first restaurant in Lithuania, it was no surprise that it grew into a popular sushi restaurant chain in only a few years.
Sushi City is one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in Lithuania. They make sure people in four major Lithuanian cities get their favorite meals quickly, whether they eat at the restaurant or order takeout.
But behind such a large operation lies the challenge and responsibility of running a business that not only provides top-quality dishes but also operates smoothly and ensures great working conditions for its employees. That's why Sushi City decided to lead its growth with automated employee scheduling and give the OPTAS solution a try.
In short:
Sushi City is a major restaurant chain in Lithuania. They have several restaurants in Vilnius, Kaunas, Alytus, and Elektrėnai.
They needed a system that would bring more structure to their operations and help manage employee schedules across multiple restaurants.
After implementing OPTAS, they’ve minimized human-made errors to almost 0.
They’ve also improved communication across different departments.
Challenges of a fast-growing restaurant chain
For over a decade, Sushi City has been one of the leading Asian food restaurants in Lithuania. They started as a small restaurant in the heart of Lithuania, and since then, they've expanded to three other major cities and opened many more establishments. As their operation developed, they needed more staff. But more staff meant new scheduling and organizational challenges.
The challenges we worked on
Managing 110 restaurant workers, from sushi chefs to waiters and helpers.
Employee schedules were manually done in Excel and shared across multiple locations. Usually, employees would work at the same restaurant, but sometimes they'd help out at other restaurants. Different locations had to be noted in two separate schedules and sometimes would get overlooked. As a result, managers weren't sure if they had enough staff on certain days, employees were confused about where they needed to work, and it was like playing Sudoku to find the errors in the Excel sheet.
There was a need for a system to register employee requests and preferences. As most of their staff members were young people, working part-time, they had many additional responsibilities and working preferences, such as the days they couldn't come to work due to studies, doctor's appointments, or other requests. Usually, such information was just passed by word of mouth, causing missed shifts, no-shows, and other scheduling problems.
With manual scheduling, they also risked making labor law errors and other mistakes that could affect the business and employee productivity.
Communication with the staff was poor. When schedules were ready, managers would send them through email to everyone. But each time someone had to change their shifts, managers would have to resend an updated schedule. So, each time they made changes, they had to send over dozens of emails.
Quickly growing business and the need for more control to avoid mistakes motivated the Sushi City administration to look for a way to organize and automate their employee scheduling. That's when they came to us.
A modern solution to employee scheduling
We started working with Sushi City right at the start of 2024. Our main task was to give their routine tasks more structure. We started working on one feature at a time. From structuring their scheduling workflows to timesheet management and specialized reports — slowly but surely, we started building clear workflows and processes.
The main solutions we provided:
Integrated scheduling system
One digital system where managers can create schedules and get automatic notifications about scheduling errors before publishing the schedule. We’ve implemented connected schedules where managers across multiple restaurants can share schedules and employee information with a click of a button.
Work time analytics
Restaurant managers were given access to employee work time summaries to see how many hours employees were scheduled to work in each shift and how much they worked in total during the accounting period.
Schedule sharing
OPTAS allowed restaurant workers and administration to share their availability, schedules, and updates through the app or email, where everyone could access their own schedules.
Easy access to employee information
Their accountant was onboarded to use OPTAS, where she could access employee schedule-related information, from shift types to planned and worked hours, and banked hours for each accounting period.
Enhanced administrative integration
We’ve developed a specialized report for Sushi City to speed up timesheet management and performance evaluations. An integration feature has been implemented to export sick leave information from the SODRA system in seconds. We also established integration with the Rivile Payroll system.
TimeClock
Now, we're working on integrating the TimeClock functionality to let people independently register when they get to and leave work. This information is then stored within the system for easy access for administrators.
Although we've only been working together for a few months, Sushi City can already see the results.
Inside one of sushi city's restaurants
During this time, using OPTAS, they’ve managed to:
0 compliance with labor law mistakes.
Reduced missed shifts when employees have to work in two different locations.
Improved communication, as all restaurants have one centralized system to track employee schedules and related information.
Schedules for over 100 employees across different restaurants and cities are now created and shared in minutes.
85% faster timesheet approval process and import into payroll systems.
70% less time spent creating schedules.
Automating restaurant employee scheduling has never been easier
We are excited to see our clients win. If you're interested in automating your restaurant employee scheduling, let's talk. OPTAS offers a modern solution to old problems. From automatically generating shifts for hundreds of employees to managing timesheets in minutes, our software takes care of everything for you. We invite you to book a discovery call with us. During the call, we'll figure out the main problems hindering your business and find personalized solutions.
