How this international coffee brand cut its labor spend by 20% with smart employee schedules 

The inspiration for Gumption Coffee began when Co-Founder Hazel de los Reyes was a young girl growing up in Batangas, Phillippines. Her grandmother would hand prepare the coffee from the plant to final roast herself. This instilled in Hazel a deep appreciation of sun-dried, hand-roasted coffee, which had a superior flavor she knew the world needed to experience.

Twenty years ago, Hazel and fellow co-founder Clare Lim opened Gumption Coffee in Sydney, Australia, where it’s had steady success and won multiple prestigious awards. They began using Deputy in 2016 to streamline their day-to-day operations there. 

Through managing their Sydney operations, Hazel learned that hospitality shift workers need a lot of schedule flexibility. Additionally, she knew the US market, where they wanted to expand, may have different needs altogether – making it even more important to implement a solution that would grow with them.

“When we decided to expand to New York, it was a no-brainer that Deputy was part of that expansion plan because it's been a tool we've used in Australia…if you have Deputy in your arsenal of organizational tools when you grow that operational bit of the organization, you don't have to worry about it.”

As they moved forward with growing their business, Hazel knew that staff management and operational efficiency would be a critical element of their scalability.

Prior to Deputy, Hazel recalls using Post-it notes to gather staff availability and cobble together a schedule, which would be shared on a whiteboard. After a schedule was posted, there would still be much “to-ing and fro-ing” because information was missed in the process. 

“Nobody mentions the stress of scheduling. When I used to schedule without Deputy, it made me dread the task.”

Hazel notes that the aspects of scheduling she struggled with the most were “when people get sick and finding coverage for that time,” “keeping track of individual total hours,” and “having a sense of the mix of talents in a shift.”

From a usability standpoint, Hazel wanted to find a tool that employees could learn quickly and independently and use from the convenience of their phones. They wanted to make the process super simple, so there was more time to train staff on coffee roasting and customer service, which makes their company culture shine.

Hazel enthusiastically notes that there are many factors that made Deputy the perfect fit for Gumption Coffee. 

With their business expanding, she loved that it could handle multiple schedules seamlessly across locations and streamline their communications with Newsfeed. As Gumption Coffee runs all seven of its cafes between America and Australia as a unified operation, these features were a must-have.

She also loved how easy it was to get the software up and running - it was just a matter of employees “downloading the app and suddenly seeing [their] schedule there.” 

Despite the many hats Hazel wears, she still makes the schedule herself, noting the drastic difference Deputy has made for her well-being. 

“It's invaluable how much stress [Deputy] has taken off the shoulders of anyone in charge of scheduling, recruiting, and staff development. Now, instead of dreading that, I look forward to it.”

Gumption Coffee uses Deputy to the point that it has essentially replaced the need for an admin role present four days a week - not only for scheduling but also supporting their hiring and induction process.

“The more I use Deputy, the more it becomes an oracle for my staffing issues…If there are gaps in your talent mix or shifting hours, Deputy will show that very clearly.”

With New York City being a critical location where businesses are scrambling to meet the new Fair Workweek requirements, Hazel notes how helpful it’s been that Deputy has compliance built-in.

“Fair [Workweek] is about the principle of people not being overworked. I like the fact that Deputy enables me to monitor workload and stress.”

In recent years, Hazel began learning about labor efficiency and set some targets for herself. She found managing her labor costs in Deputy to be as easy as “the push of a button.” 

Hazel proudly shares that by using the Reports and Analytics in Deputy, she was able to reduce their labor costs by an impressive 20%.

“Because Deputy enlightened [us about] labor costs, I've become very conversant on efficiency….everything in a shift has a purpose, and Deputy has enabled me to do that.” 

Even as a Deputy power user, Hazel feels that there are many more business skills the software will teach her. She no longer sees every staffing issue as a “catastrophe” and can better utilize her available resources to support the business’s changing needs.

“I'm amazed at how I have evolved as a leader using Deputy.”