How California Pizza Kitchen Improved Forecasting with Its Innovative Partnership with Axial Shift
CPK modernizes labor forecasting and streamlines operations with AI-powered scheduling and employee-driven sales challenges.
Since 1985, California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) has served hand-tossed pizzas, salads, and pastas with fresh ingredients and inventive flavors. Guests look to CPK for high quality food and a superior experience in a casual atmosphere. Today CPK has 144 locations globally.
From the introduction of CPK’s signature Barbecue Chicken Pizza to today, CPK has always been an innovator. But while CPK’s business had been evolving, its labor forecasting software solutions were not.
“We wanted more than our labor software provider was able to deliver,” explains JT Szczuka, CPK’s Chief Procurement Officer. “We needed a more dynamic way to manage our labor and labor targets, so we knew it was time to upgrade our toolkit.”
To innovate its processes, CPK searched for a new solution. The team sought ways to improve operational efficiency, make managers’ jobs easier, optimize labor, and utilize AI capabilities. Forecasting, cost, and service were top priorities, as was establishing a vibrant partnership.
“Axial Shift was just night and day above everybody else,” says Szczuka.
Improving Forecasting
For any restaurant, forecasting is critical. “If you don’t have an accurate forecast, it’s difficult to have an accurate schedule or know where you’re over- or, more importantly, under-scheduling.” explains Jeremy Phillips, CPK’s Senior Manager of Training and Development.
Forecasting had been a stubborn challenge and CPK’s platforms were not getting them closer to their targets. “The tools we were using were unable to produce an accurate forecast,” says Phillips. “In order to meet our internal goals for actual versus forecast, our managers had to make several adjustments every week.”
After introducing Axial Shift, CPK’s variance between actual and forecasted labor reduced by more than half. Axial Shift not only helped the restaurants hit their targets, the platform also provided AI tools to help optimize scheduling. “The AI-based forecasting is a win,” says Szczuka.
A Consolidated Platform that Delivers for the Bottom Line
While Axial Shift helped CPK improve its scheduling and better hit labor targets, it also provided an additional benefit — reducing the number of apps needed to track data. More information, including employee hours, sales and percentages, could be consolidated in one place. “That gives the managers a greater ability to manage the labor day-to-day,” says Phillips. “Being able to consolidate and go to one app for scheduling as well as forms is saving us time and money.”
Plus, unlike other apps that require every user, including hourly employees, to pay to download the app, the Axial Shift app costs nothing to download. Neither the restaurant nor the team member has to incur an added cost.
Real Time Features that Drive Employee Action
For CPK, Axial Shift’s real time data, challenges, and in-app messaging became key to motivating employee engagement.
Being able to use one app to get an accurate real time picture has improved CPK’s operational efficiency and streamlined communication for team members. “In the past, managers had to send a text to their regional partners halfway through the day to report their sales and labor, then send another at the end of the night in order to keep their multi-unit manager current,” says Phillips, “There is no more texting, because the information is right there in everyone’s hands in real time, all the time.”
The Axial Shift platform also includes “challenges,” such as encouraging employees to offer more happy hour drinks or appetizer specials in exchange for rewards. The real time data enables team members and managers to monitor and track performance. “Our employees really love the ability to see their sales and contest results in real time.,” says Kristi Leon, CPK’s Senior Director of IT Restaurant Systems. “Our contests emphasize suggestive selling. Access to real-time results through the Axial Shift app encourages participation.”
The challenges are not only energizing and motivating because of their gamified quality, they also positively affect revenue. “The gamification capability was such an added bonus,” says Szczuka, “While our primary focus was solving for labor, the platform pleasantly surprised us with additional tools to attack another opportunity in our restaurants – raising average check. Axial Shift’s solution allowed us to target that, and we’ve seen tremendous response to it.”
