How Mendocino Farms Increased Their Operational Efficiency and Kept More Revenue with Axial Shift

The California-based company was looking for a way to bridge internal systems and empower managers, without adding extra overhead

Since 2005, Mendocino Farms has made customer happiness a priority. Specializing in gourmet sandwiches, the California-based restaurant chain today has 75 locations, with 15 more in the works, and some 3,000 employees. For a growing business, there’s a lot that goes into ensuring a great customer experience — something technology increasingly shapes.

According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2024 Restaurant Technology Landscape Report, 60% of restaurants planned to invest in technology to enhance customer experience, an increase from 48% in 2023.

Great customer experiences are easier to deliver when an organization is running smoothly. In the same report, 52% of restaurant operators prioritized investing in technology for operational efficiency. Operators are focusing on labor and scheduling, payroll, inventory management, and point of sale solutions.

Bringing the right technology into the organization

For Mendocino Farms, as the company expanded, they found that too many technology platforms were weighing them down. While they’d found tech solutions for different pieces of the business, they were using seven different systems for human capital management — everything from figuring out time and attendance, scheduling, and payroll, plus doing sales tracking manually in Excel.

“We had a tremendous amount of technical debt,” says Brian Pearson, Chief Technology Officer of Mendocino Farms. “We were typically taking about four days to process our payroll, and it was really painful for our payroll folks.”

Because of how data was coming in, there was also a higher chance of inaccuracies. Mendocino Farms knew that they needed to enact a consolidation strategy to bring all of the different pieces of data together and rein in the number of tools being used. The first part of their strategy was bringing down the number of platforms, from seven to two.

“We had our labor data over in one platform, and all of our sales data in our point of sale platform. For a restaurant business, it’s really important for you to know both of those things together, so that you can manage your labor,” says Pearson.

Left with two silos of data, “We needed something to bridge those two systems together, and not bring in a lot of extra overhead,” says Pearson.

Discovering Axial Shift’s integration features

For Mendocino Farms to take the next step in their strategy, they needed to connect their existing systems. Axial Shift's built-in integrations let them connect their data sources and see their full business more clearly. “That was a linchpin,” says Pearson.

In addition to bringing systems together, Mendocino Farms found that Axial Shift could also be useful for other parts of their business as well.

Real time data to empower managers

Because Axial Shift provides real time data, Mendocino Farms can get a better handle on staffing and timing, bringing people in when sales are happening and ending shifts when sales aren’t happening.

Additionally, Mendocino Farms uses Axial Shift to keep all of their managers in the know, enabling managers to log their notes so that other managers and upper management can stay informed.

“Our managers are making better decisions. They’re making more active decisions based on what’s happening real time. That’s definitely been a benefit.”

-Brian Pearson, Chief Technology Officer of Mendocino Farms

Managers report that labor planning dropped from 2.5 hours to less than 30 minutes after switching to Axial Shift.

Other ways Axial Shift is providing value

• Managers build custom forms in Axial Shift and handle admin from their phones, so they leave the floor less.
• Real time insights show when someone has clocked in, and when a coaching moment might be needed.
• Scheduling is easy yet powerful – including the ability for team members to swap shifts.
• The message board in Axial Shift groups team members automatically, and managers use it for important announcements, such as policy updates.
• Axial Shift’s integration framework provides solutions for a variety of business needs and is always growing and evolving.

Overall, Mendocino Farms has been able to move to a new level of operational efficiency, with some added benefits. “[Axial Shift] has helped us reduce platforms, so we don’t have nearly as many platforms in our lives, and that certainly helped us keep more of our revenue,” says Pearson. As business runs more effectively, Mendocino Farms can focus on ensuring that every customer has a great experience.