Jolt

In sum:

We use Jolt to manage the operations for our food trucks and catering services. Since we are totally mobile and often have many events occurring simultaneously, the Lists feature allows for greater oversight and accountability when it's impossible to be everywhere at one time. Jolt has greatly improved the communication between everyone in our team by utilizing the Announcements features. I love that information can be instantly sent out to our staff, we can verify that they read the information, and, most importantly, that they understand the information by requiring quick quizzes based on the topics covered. Moving away from traditional pen and paper checklists and cumbersome communications binders has been overwhelmingly embraced by everyone. We have also seen a reduction in our food waste by utilizing the Date Code Labels. Marking our food items with a clearly readable expiration date has greatly improved our "first in, first out" practices. Additionally, stamping each prepped item with the name of the staff member who prepared it has forced greater accountability that all food items are prepared correctly (and allows management to address individually anyone who needs re-training on preparing a specific item). Lastly, I can't say enough good things about Jolt support. They are extremely responsive and helpful when questions arise, and the application is constantly improving with new features added based on customer requests and feedback. We have used Jolt for a little over a year now, and I wish we had started using it years ago!

Benefits:

Centralized master library of data which can be customized to our specifications and rolled out through technology that all levels in the restaurant can easily use to do their role.

Drawbacks:

As an emerging national chain and being a front runner in the use of technology to assist our growth, Jolt offers a suite of great tools and we are pushing for enhancements that will make our use even better.

In sum:

As a fast growing national franchise, being able to replicate quality and customer satisfaction is paramount to success. Jolt provides a platform which allows our restaurant to quickly replicate consistency for our franchisees which turns into providing our customers with the experience they seek.

Benefits:

The cost and the function that allows team members to edit their own punches. Huge time saver for me.

Drawbacks:

I would like to see integration of Paid Time Off / Vacation hours. We have a set schedule in our clinic, so the scheduling function is a little cumbersome. I understand this approach for restaurants or other types of businesses, but the ability to track / enter Paid time off would be very helpful. I also would like the report option to be different. I would like a report that gave daily, weekly and pay period totals per employee. I have to manually adjust the excel sheet to figure overtime hours.

In sum:

Overall, I am happy with the experience. There are some options that I would like to have added, but it is saving me some time.

Benefits:

The support you get from the Jolt Team is great. They are quick to respond to any questions or concerns. Scheduling now takes us half the time it did before. We manage multiple stores in two states and this system has made us much more efficient and able to hold our team accountable for task that need to be completed on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. We also save time and money on training and daily operations by using the Jolt dating system and printer.

Drawbacks:

Our goal with Jolt was to eliminate paper (Time off request, School Schedules, Checklist, etc.) and it has been able to do that for us. The last thing we are converting to paperless is our cup count form. Travis was able to help us build one in Jolt but it would be even better if the list would calculate the totals. To setup up everything does take time but the bulk importing and ability to assign list to multiple locations makes it much easier.

Benefits:

I like that this helps eliminate the paper in the store and requiring the manager's to "proof" every little part when they are busy managing the shift. Time-stamps are wonderful. The modular ability of being able to build what you need is great. Setting up pushes for the lists and forms at specific times is a great tool to help keep the team on track daily. I appreciate the notifications that I can create for any form. We haven't yet utilized the point system, but our team is excited to use it in contests. I anticipate it will be a great motivational tool.

Drawbacks:

The build-out for getting it functional was time consuming. I did not have any templates to work from. If I had those, it would have been much more streamlined, but would still require an investment of time.

In sum:

We have been using Jolt in our restaurant for about a month. The setup took a little bit of time, but once that was complete, the use of it is great! I love how modular it is. Even within the same company there can be little differences between locations. This software realizes that. The options available make it functional for any paper list, form, etc. Not to mention that every action is time/date stamped! It is great to know when things are actually getting done. I also really appreciate the "real-time" view that I have into my operations even when I am not physically there given the push notifications and range alerts that I have set up. We have been able to mitigate a few situations that weren't being highlighted given our previous methods of data collection and were being overlooked. The price is right where I would expect it to be. The value is great for the product, service, and online information.

Benefits:

Ease of use to create and send out the staff schedule and the fact that it's mobile friendly for all the staff to use anywhere. Nobody can miss a shift because everyone carries a phone these days :)

Drawbacks:

When creating a template for the whole staff schedule and using it for a following week, you're able to easily create the template but implementing it in the following week doesn't allow the shift blocks to be assigned to the same people as the previous week. The shift blocks copy over but don't get inserted under each employee as was copied from the template creation feature.

In sum:

ease of use and organization

Benefits:

Love that this can be an app where Employees can easily access their schedule, release, switch, and pick up shifts and even request time off and change their availability. It makes very important information so simple and easy to communicate. I just love this, we use it a lot for work.

Drawbacks:

I just wish the times are in 15 min increments instead of only hourly. Makes it easier to check how many people is scheduled per 15 minutes at a glance.

Benefits:

The scheduling side is excellent. Easy to use from both our employees point of view and payroll. Great record keeping. The list creation is sometimes a little confusing but support is always quick to respond and very helpful. The lists are a great tool for staff and we have found that being able to adjust them as needed to get the best result from the staff members actually responsible for completing the lists is pretty easy. We supply and sell food onsite to our guests which brings with it all sorts of food hygiene expectations from local government and a large amount of record keeping for this. The lists we have developed allow us to complete all requirements on Jolt with easy access when needing to audit the results. All staff find completing them easy. Auditing the correct completion of the lists by staff is also simple. This leads to higher compliance and can also be used as a performance tool with staff management.

Benefits:

Ease of use. Pictures and date stamps that keep employees honest. training new employees is a breeze.

Drawbacks:

Lack of ability to personalize to individual locations needs or preferances

In sum:

I have been using our new printer for Jolt and I LOVE IT! I really love the fact that every item prepped now is labeled with who prepped it, when they did so, and the EXACT time of expiration. The fact that it uses the internal clock to time stamp items is amazing. This keeps everyone honest. There is no fudging times or dates to extend foods shelf life. The ease of use is incredible. I mean there is not much more to say on that. It took us a couple of tries to figure out the best way to label our items received from Sysco but then a simple answer occurred to me. Before even starting to put up the truck, simply read the invoice and print ALL labels needed and it is a breeze! After that more specific labels can be made using the custom label. We use it to mark the weights of our meats so now daily inventory is a snap. No more trying to decipher messy handwriting. I have even gone so far as to use it to label items for caterings to give things a more professional look. I do wish that custom labels could be saved for repeat use. That is maybe my only complaint about this printer. I keep it in my office to save it from the wear and tear of daily kitchen activities. It is an extremely helpful device that has streamlined our labeling and made it much more effective as well. Having this now and using it all day every day, I hate to think of life without it. Thank you,

Benefits:

My most favorite feature of Jolt would be its assistance in helping the team meet food safety. This feature eliminates any handwritten and/or guessing shelf life for products, as the corporate guidelines for holding procedures are already downloaded on the application.

Drawbacks:

Depending on how tech and app savvy your managerial team is, customization is based on what works for your particular team. Therefore customization is up to us and could be pretty sloppy, which ends up being productivity lost searching for a particular label.

In sum:

The experience has been great through and through! It's been a huge time saver. It's saved us time, and time equals money, in various areas of our business. You can download the names of your staff who in which are on your schedule, and it helps in keeping you and your team accountable.