Bill Bellissimo, CEO of Crunchtime, joins Cheddar to break down how he's guiding the food, service, and hospitality industries through the labor crisis with software and technological solutions.

On the Job

The Software Guiding the Hospitality Industry Through a Labor Crisis

Welcome back to on the job presented by ADP the hospitality industry is in crisis and for many in the space technology is the solution. So enter crunch time, it's the leading back house restaurant software that forecast everything from food and beverage operations, labor management analytics and reporting. And joining me now is Bill Bellissimo president and Ceo of Crunch Time Bill. It's good to see you and thanks for coming on. So let's start with your software. How can restaurants use this to their advantage? Well, I mean with Covid that there's been an existential threat to the whole industry, right? The whole delivery model has changed, you know, uh drive through and pick up and delivery supply chains broken. The great resignation is impacted um the whole workforce and it just created an incredibly stressful environment. And our mission has been to streamline the operation and try to distress it and buy a big part of that is just using data to really um figure out how to optimize and simplify operations. Well I know that you know a thing or two about stress because before working in the service industry you're on Wall Street. Talk about a high stress environment. And so how did you marry these two largely diverse backgrounds to create your company. Now Crunch time. Well, when you're in finance, it's just it's a very disciplined, very analytical, very data driven environment. The restaurant industry at least when I started the company was none of that right? It was just a very kind of gut feel very paper driven very in the moment environment. And when I got there, I just said, you know, we just, this just needs to get fixed. Right? So we've really, so from day one, I've been on a mission to try to streamline and optimize based on data and trying to just simplify operations. Well, I'm sure your clientele is probably a very thankful for the time and work that you've put in here. Why do you think it's important to innovate in the service and hospitality space? Now, post pandemic as we try to get to that post pandemic stage, more than ever? Well, you know, the challenges in this environment with with everything changing so much you really can't. It's pretty unpredictable in terms of how many who's gonna come to your restaurants and so you can't plan your business around that, Right? But what you can do is make your business more efficient right, that's within your sphere of control. And so what we've done is really work to give the operators tools so that they could just run their business better. They have an obligation or responsibility to do that. So by focusing on the supply, the broken supply chain, focusing on trying to train pete your employees to just be more effective in their roles by introducing automation to to streamline and use artificial intelligence to drive a lot of those core processes, we think we're gonna we've really moved the needle in terms of just helping all operators solve a really trying environment now, what's interesting about your team bill is that it's not the typical client services team, it's actually made up of industry veterans. What advantage does that give your business and the product that you're selling to these restaurants? Well the reason why I got into banking is I grew up in the industry and when I grew up in the industry, I knew how hard it was. And so when I went off to college, didn't want to do restaurants, wanted something a little more sane and normal and a little more control. Um Well, as life turns out here, I am and I think that what what really becomes important is that you're you're able to um bring it all together and and and and by bringing it all together, you just have to have what we've started the company with empathy as a core value and we know what the back of the restaurant looks like, We know what the back of the kitchen looks like. I grew up around how hard it was. So we've really worked hard to build a company that had that empathy and that's one of the core values of our business by understanding the challenges that people face every day. I think we're able to do not design an engineer software that really really reflects the end user, One of the many challenges out there now. Again as we make our way through this pandemic is the labor shortage. And we saw it in the recent jobs report out last week bills. Certainly the restaurant industry continuing to feel that paying the hardest. How is your company navigating the current labor shortage? So I think there's three really important pieces. First of all where using the data to really look at ways to optimize the the labor schedule and the workforce. I mean it's it's incredibly complex with um you know, just the great resignation. So you have people who are trained who are less trained than they were in the past. You've got a lot of new people working in restaurants. Excuse me. Um So so using the data to make sure you have the right person at the right place at the right time is super important. Excuse me. Um Second pieces using the data, we've also built a lot of automation, right? So someone in a restaurant, it's really important that you order on time, you receive product on time, you do proper sales forecasting, you prep on time. What we've done is build automation so that you're no longer dependent on the person in the restaurant to do that. That we built automation. So the systems can take over those tasks so the people in the restaurants can do what they do really well which is work with guests work create great food and create a really positive guest experience. Third pieces that we've really focused on learning and development, you know helping the employees have a path, helping the team members, I know that the company cares about them and is investing a great deal in helping them develop skills that will transcend the restaurant industry. I think the combination of those, those three things distress the restaurant makes the employees feel valued and really help create great, great guest experience. It certainly makes sense. Build my final question to you is what future opportunities do you see that can help alleviate the labor shortages in the food and hospitality industry? Well the future is now right. We don't have the option of waiting for something else to happen. And we wear our commitment to the learning and development. Our commitment to data and artificial intelligence is really moving the needle today and everything I've spoken about is part of crunch time today and you know, we'll continue to invest in mobility, will continue to invest in, in uh you know, integration will continue to continue to invest, invest and um, you know, data science to just really continue to simplify automate and distress the restaurant environment. All right, Bill bellissimo ceo of crunch time bill. Thanks so much for coming on the show