Harri, the end-to-end workforce operating system designed for the unique needs of the restaurant and hotel industry, has announced its partnership with Toast, the all-in-one restaurant management solution and one of the fastest growing SaaS technology companies in the US to provide a powerful, truly integrated solution for multi-unit restaurant groups that combines day-to-day operations management, end-to-end workforce management and CRM tools for enhanced visibility into business insights that drive bottom-line growth.
The Harri and Toast integration delivers critical data to restaurateurs to drive more informed decisions and increase efficiency by removing the data silos between staff and operational systems. Mutual customers, like Tacombi and Gregory’s Coffee, both multi-unit operators, will be able to dive deep into employee performance. The Harri/Toast platform will facilitate the use of key performance metrics to measure employee success and areas for improvement.
Operators will now have the ability to build a 360-degree view of employee lifecycle from hire to on-the-job performance. The new dashboard offers access to a real-time dashboard with sales & labor data. In addition, Harri’s LiveWire dashboard provides an enterprise view of key sales and labor metrics for real-time monitoring. The dashboard also provides wage analysis, real-time labor cost tracking and time compliance alerts.
“As a restaurant owner for more than 18 years, I’ve long dreamt of the day I could combine two key, best-in-class systems, to manage all core aspects of my business. Our industry has been held back by fragmented systems, bad data and clunky technology for too long. Today, our partnership with the incredible team at Toast heralds a new era of capability that will help our mutual clients navigate the challenging times ahead,” said Luke Fryer, founder and CEO of Harri. Fryer brings a unique background to the leadership post at Harri. He was responsible for the growth of Burger King and Wagamama in his native Australia. “We understand how challenging it is to inspire a work force in such a competitive marketplace.”
Harri is a Workforce Operating System built specifically for the challenges of the hospitality industry. Helping restaurants and hotels source, hire, and manage their employees more effectively and efficiently is more critical than ever before. Harri’s all-in-one digital platform, employers can find and onboard top talent for their business using media-rich profiles and streamlined tools, all while reducing costs, saving time, and enabling long-term success of teams with best-in-class cloud-based management systems.
“It’s our belief that the foodservice industry is at a crossroads,” Fryer continued. “The need for KPI (key performance indexes) is greater than ever. The legacy POS systems that are out there simply hold their own customers hostage so that they can’t get easy access to the data that is so vital to win. Our goal in partnering with Toast is to make that happen and to force these Data Landlords to allow that access.”
“With Toast the operator has the opportunity to build on an easy platform that is open by design. That’s where we come in with the Harri scheduling system that makes it simple for the operator to grow by understanding what makes their business tick.” The newly formed partnership recently welcomed Gregory’s Coffee to their customer portfolio. “A perfect example of how Fast Casual needs smart data and we can deliver it,” Fryer added.
To date, more than 3,000,000 applications from chefs, bartenders, servers, hostesses, and managers have been submitted to 53,000 jobs posted on Harri. Harri has more than 370,000 members and 8,000 employers spanning the US and UK markets. It is the number one marketplace for hospitality talent in NYC.
Rising minimum wage rates are a huge financial challenge facing the industries served by Harri and Toast. Among 3.5-star restaurants, every $1 increase in the minimum wage increases the restaurant’s chances of closing by 14 percent.1
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics April 2017 report, two-thirds of workers earning the minimum wage or less in 2016 were employed in service jobs, predominantly in the food industry. By 2018, minimum wage in many states will rise from as low as $7.25 an hour to reach between $11.00 and $15.00 an hour for hospitality workers. These wage increases will positively impact employees, but will also require restaurants to get creative and really focus on efficiency,” said Aman Narang, president and co-founder of Toast. “We look forward to partnering with Harri to enable restaurants to be as streamlined as possible. They are a key member of Toast’s best-in-class partner ecosystem,the Toast API Partner Program, which empowers Toast users to improve overall operations and grow revenue.”
Toast is a restaurant technology platform that enables customers to simplify and streamline all elements of their operation and deliver a better guest experience. Toast offers a mobile, cloud-based point of sale system (POS) that easily integrates with front-of-house, back-of-house, online ordering, gift card and loyalty programs, as well as labor and sales reporting.
Founded by Narang, Steve Fredette, and Jonathan Grimm, Toast Restaurant POS offers advanced functionality to manage the day-to-day operations of the restaurant, including quick menu modifications, real-time enterprise reporting and labor management on an easy-to-use interface. The platform also features revenue-driving tools including physical and digital gift cards, loyalty programs and online ordering.
From a simple launch in a Cambridge, MA restaurant, in 2013, Toast has grown to over 500 employees. In 2017, Toast was named one of the world’s hottest cloud computing companies in the Forbes Cloud 100 and it announced raising over $100 million as part of its Series C financing. The launch and explosive growth of Toast represents a rather ironic twist for the seasoned veteran Narang. The M.I.T. graduate actually sold his first entrepreneurial venture to Oracle. That very same firm Oracle has subsequently acquired one of the food service industry’s legacy POS firms: Micros. Now Narang and his Toast team find themselves in competition with Oracle’s Micros operation.
“We recognized early on that it was all about creating an eco-system that could tap into multiple touch points in which a restaurant collects data,” said Narang. “This new partnership with Harri is yet another step in our goal of helping the restaurant operator easy access to data that maximizes the customer experience.”
¹ Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit
To learn more about Harri, visit their website.
To learn more about Toast, visit their website.
