About Us

Founded by restaurant owners that understand the value of service

Ellis Winstanley, founder of Axial Shift

Our Story

Axial Shift was founded by restaurant owners that understand the value of service, feedback, and data to achieve sales goals and empower team members. Our goal is to innovate the industry by rapidly growing front line teams, keeping leaders in the action with experience-focused, frictionless apps that support and align all roles in the business.

Why we do what we do

Axial Shift understands firsthand the critical purpose of the unit level workforce and more importantly the challenges those teams face every day.

Managers struggle to connect their activity on the floor with the reports they run in the back office. Too much time is spent doing repetitive admin work rather than spending critical time coaching and developing staff and service.

Axial Shift set out to develop a platform that was not the traditional restaurant software that could take months to deploy and hours a day to administer, costing valuable time to restaurant owners, managers, operators, and training teams.

What makes us different?

We’ve been in your shoes – Axial Shift was built by restaurant owners to keep leaders on the floor, streamline operations, and empower teams with real-time data.

Support that lives up to hospitality standards

When we need support, we want competent quick attention, so that’s what we provide.

We only have humans, and they respond quick. We resolve issues completely and quickly. Our support team.

We listen, and prioritize our customers feedback. We don’t have many issues come up, but when they do we follow through and follow up.

We treat your data like its your data

Your data belongs to you, it’s our role to help you make the most of it.

We will never keep your data from you. We make it all available to you through apps, exports and API’s. Connect our apps, your private apps, or third-party apps to your account, or export data out for analysis. With unrestricted access, you can evolve your business processes as it grows, however you need to.

Quantitative Tools for Qualitative Impact

Axial provides the quality data your leadership team needs to uncover trends and patterns that drive smarter decision-making.

By combining quantitative metrics with insights into behavioral patterns, our platform gives managers a deeper understanding of performance across every level. These actionable insights allow leaders to focus on what matters most—coaching their teams, improving the guest experience, and staying ahead of challenges.

Our Team

Ellis Winstanley

CEO & Co-Founder

Andrew Markley

CTO & Co-Founder

Melissa Doolin-Koehne

Strategic Advisor

Raechel Barnes

Head of Operations & Sales

Careers

We are always interested in talking to passionate people!

If you’d like to join our mission-driven organization, please send your resume for future consideration.

What Customers Say About Axial

Latest Blogs

Schedule a Demo with one of our Product Specialists

Learn how Axial helps access service-focused data to help you win every shift without wasting time in the back office.

See how we help you drive the bottomline with frontline accountability using transparent data on role-based dashboards.

Explore the opportunity of using your data to create consistency across all units – on autopilot.

Ellis Winstanley Founder of Axial Shift

Ellis Winstanley

CEO & Co-Founder

Ellis Winstanley is a seasoned restauranteur and business executive with a successful track record of starting up, turning around and growing businesses in the hospitality, software and several other industries. Ellis began turning around historic restaurant brands while in college and has played key roles in dozens of restaurant related operations over the years. It was during this time that Ellis realized there was there was a huge opportunity to improve the experiences of unit level restaurant team members. His passion for solving this problem led him to assemble a team to build Axial Shift, with the core focus of driving great employee experiences through transparency and purpose-driven growth.

LINKEDIN PROFILE

Andrew Markley, Co-Founder and Architect

Andrew Markley

CTO & Co-Founder

Andrew Markley is an innovative tech leader who began developing technology several years before attending the University of Texas to formally study computer science. Andrew has played key roles in the development of several business systems across dozens of technology platforms. After years of working with Ellis on a variety of projects Andrew became a Co-Founder of Axial where he oversees strategic initiatives and is passionate about the architecture and usability of the Axial platform.

LINKEDIN PROFILE

Matt Woodings, Chief Technical Officer of Axial Shift

Melissa Doolin-Koehne

Strategic Advisor

Melissa Doolin-Koehne was born and raised in the restaurant industry and has dedicated her career to improving the companies and the employees that make up the largest industry outside the US Government. She uses her  passion for the restaurant industry to elevate leaders and organizations through purpose and profits.

Prior to joining Axial Shift, Melissa spent 20 years leading business development at Black Box Intelligence, the restaurant’s leading resource for financial, workforce and consumer benchmarks and insights. Melissa has also worked for the National Restaurant Association and Conscious Capitalism in development. She now is an executive board member of the Texas Restaurant Association and Treasurer for the Education Foundation and an advisory council for Dallas College.

LINKEDIN PROFILE

Justin Buckley, Chief Operations Officer of Axial Shift

Raechel Barnes

HEAD OF OPERATIONS & SALES

Raechel is a seasoned business leader with over 25 years of experience in fostering scalability and growth. Her journey in the hospitality industry began at the age of 19, where she discovered her passion while serving guests at a full-service restaurant. Since then, Raechel has remained committed to the belief that hospitality should be at the core of every business.

For the past 13 years, Raechel has dedicated her expertise to several startup ventures in hospitality technology. Focused on enhancing both guest and team member experiences, she has witnessed firsthand how this approach drives crucial business outcomes.

Raechel specializes in identifying untapped opportunities, developing processes, and building and nurturing teams. Her dedication to service and innovative technology continues to fuel her enthusiasm and drive for success in the industry.

LINKEDIN PROFILE