Customer story: GG’s BBQ and Catering

GG’s BBQ specializes in authentic southern barbecue in an unlikely location: Colorado. Lonnie started GG’s BBQ in the corner of a gas station in 2007. Since then, he’s built a catering operation and expanded the restaurant twice.

GG’s BBQ faced a problem every business is lucky to have: they were growing very quickly. That means Lonnie was also outgrowing his original employee scheduling solution. “We started with a time clock. That entailed buying time cards. Then sitting down every 14 days with a stack of time cards, running military time and converting it into minutes. Every payroll, which we ran bi-weekly, would take approximately 4 hours to complete.” Lonnie’s complex scheduling needs were complicated further by the needs of GG’s young staff: “I have a lot of high school and college kids on the schedule. They’ve got school and clubs, so we work around those schedules too.”

Eventually, Lonnie tried to simplify scheduling by using a spreadsheet template he found online, but that didn’t save much time. “If I input the numbers off of the time cards, it would do the calculating for me, but I still had to go and take each person’s two week time period and enter each day — in, out, in, out. Then I’d have to go do the math and double-check that it was adding hours and minutes correctly to make sure I was paying the employees the right amount.”

After choosing a new point of sale system, Lonnie decided to try Homebase, because it integrated perfectly with the new system. “I decided to take a shot in the dark and give it a chance. I did a little reading about it, and I signed up for the free plan to start.” “Immediately it saved me about 3 hours and 20 minutes every payroll period. It also gave us a huge advantage in writing schedules, posting schedules and being able to communicate with employees.” And now? According to Lonnie, “I can’t live without Homebase.”