SASKATOON, Saskatchewan & TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--7shifts, a leading labor management platform for the restaurant industry, today announced the closing of a $10 million USD Series A funding round to accelerate growth and bring more automation and labor compliance to restaurant chains. The financing was led by Napier Park Financial Partners (“Napier Park”) with participation from Teamworthy Ventures, existing investor, Relay Ventures and former CEO of Snag (Snagajob), Peter Harrison.
7shifts has scheduled nearly 100 million shifts for the 16 million restaurant workers in the US, and collectively saved restaurateurs over $200 million in labor costs. The rapidly growing platform is used by more than 250,000 restaurant professionals and 10,000 restaurants, including large, growing franchises such as Bareburger, Panera, Honeygrow, &pizza, and Smoke's Poutinerie.
“As someone who grew up in a family of restaurant operators, I know first-hand the pain points restaurant managers face in managing staff,” said Jordan Boesch, CEO at 7shifts. “From the beginning, 7shifts has been intently focused on delivering innovative products to make life easier for restaurants, managers and employees alike.”
7shifts gives restaurant operators and employees powerful, easy-to-use software that makes tasks like scheduling, team communication, and shift feedback simple and transparent. The company plans to use the funds to strengthen 7shifts’ leadership position in scheduling automation and machine-learning technology for restaurants, while adding enterprise functionality and statewide labor compliance features.
Mr. Boesch continued, “It’s one thing to predict labor needs, but it’s another to fill the shift with an available and qualified worker– both need to be met for restaurant operators to be successful. Our predictive scheduling algorithm leverages machine learning to enable managers and operators to automatically create data-driven and labor-optimized schedules that exceed the accuracy and trustworthiness of manually generated schedules, while also adhering to state-wide labor regulations. By leveraging POS integrations for real-time data, 7shifts can accurately project future sales with up to 95% accuracy given historical sales, seasonality, weather trends and other external factors. From there, we use machine learning to accurately predict future labor needs and create optimized schedules.”
The 7shifts platform is comprised of a number inter-operable labor management tools that work together to help restaurants create and maintain schedules from either a desktop or smartphone. The platform offers powerful tools for independent and multi-unit operators that help restaurant leaders gain better visibility into their businesses and ensure compliance with labor regulations.
Paul Zarmati, Director of IT for New York City-based Bareburger, added, “The 7shifts team are true partners – they listen to feedback and promptly implement changes that positively affect all levels of our organization, from labor to communications. As we’ve grown past 40 locations, features like the enterprise dashboard have allowed us to get a holistic view of store performance across the board.”
As part of the transaction, Dan Kittredge, a Managing Director at Napier Park, will join the 7shifts Board of Directors.
“Napier Park has a track record of backing dynamic companies that are well positioned to capitalize on long-term growth opportunities in large markets, and that is exactly what we see with 7shifts,” said Dan Kittredge of Napier Park. “7shifts will continue to have a tremendous impact not only on restaurant owners and operators, but also on the millions of staff they employ. We are excited to partner with Jordan and team on their next phase of growth.”
“Filling the schedule is not only the single biggest cost but also the single biggest pain point for almost every restaurant yet optimizing quality of service, expense and compliance has never been harder. This is a problem ripe for machine-learning and for tighter integration with the on-demand economy,” says former Snag (Snagajob) CEO, Peter Harrison. “I believe 7shifts is better positioned than anyone to capitalize on these trends and to solve a growing problem for operators large and small.”
About 7shifts
Founded in Saskatoon, Canada, in 2014, with offices in Toronto, 7shifts is the restaurant employee scheduling solution used by over 250,000 restaurant pros across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. 7shifts is used by growing multi-unit restaurant groups including Bareburger, Honeygrow, Smoke's Poutinerie, YogurtLand, Juice It Up!, and many others. More than a scheduling platform, 7shifts empowers restaurant managers to optimize their workforce to better manage employees, resulting in reduced labor costs. To learn more, or to sign up for free, visit www.7shifts.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram the App Store or Google Play.
About Napier Park Financial Partners
Napier Park Financial Partners is the private equity group of Napier Park Global Capital, an alternative asset management platform with approximately $11 billion in assets under management. Napier Park focuses on investing in innovative, high growth companies at the intersection of financial services and technology-enabled products and services. Napier Park targets investments of $5 million to $30 million, with current and prior portfolio companies spanning the following industry subsectors – Payments, Banking and Lending, Insurance and Benefits, Asset Management & Capital Markets, and Data, Info & Business Services. For more information, visit www.napierparkglobal.com/private-equity.