Boba Tea Company is a specialty restaurant chain employing 175 people at 14 locations across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The organization is building an intentional and purposeful workplace culture to fuel future growth and expansion into additional U.S. states.
Leveraging the AI-powered UKG Ready suite, Boba Tea has achieved significant business growth, including:
Challenges
Boba Tea needed more consistent communication with its frontline workforce, struggled to properly staff stores with best-fit scheduling projections, and wanted accurate clock punches for compliance and precise payroll.
Solutions
Committed to fostering a culture of empowerment and creating a great place to work, Boba Tea leveraged the AI-powered UKG Ready suite to drive significant business growth and create a culture where employees are inspired to deliver an exceptional customer experience.
“We take great pride in our brand and believe that if you’re looking to grow, you need to have technology and a partner that can evolve with you. UKG is that partner for us and has helped us keep our people informed and engaged which has fueled our business growth.”
Chief Operating Officer at Boba Tea Company
Results
“One of our biggest improvements since going live on UKG is the ability to communicate with staff through the Ready mobile app,” said Luong. “Everything we need to convey to our people is done through our internal ‘BobaScoops’ announcement, which is the first thing employees see when they log into Ready. So, we can roll out a new policy, a new drink, or a new process, and know that all employees across all locations are getting the same information. The app also lifts the burden on HR and managers since employees can do things like swap shifts, view schedules or paystubs, and update their address right from their mobile device.”
The ability for managers to create best-fit schedules and for staff to swap shifts has led to a greater employee experience — as well as higher sales and shorter counter lines — as Boba Tea previously struggled to properly staff stores without an accurate way to forecast how many employees it would need to meet customer demand. That ultimately cost the restaurant chain time and money.
“We were leaving money on the table as we were either understaffed and unable to serve our customers quickly, or overscheduled, which is a drain on our bottom line,” said Luong. “UKG allowed us to see how many people we needed to schedule at each location based on projected sales. As a result, store and district managers as well as payroll staff have saved a combined 70-hours per pay period in reviewing employee time ahead of payroll processing. With our stores more efficiently staffed, we’ve increased sales by 23% — and were able to serve more than 1.3 million drinks through 974,000 transactions last year — which is a big win for our organization and has led to a better experience for our customers.”
Ready has additionally led to more consistency and accuracy in hourly employees clocking in and out of shifts, helping Boba Tea remain compliant with federal employment laws.
“For many of our workers, this may be their first or second job, so it’s important for us to teach them responsible habits when it comes to punches, overtime, and absence tracking because that helps protect them and ensure they are accurately paid for their work,” said Luong. “With Ready, we have integrated facial recognition in every store and don’t have missed punches anymore, and we can now document everything accurately in an easily generated report.”
