Seven restaurants,
two McDonald's franchisees,
one platform
McDonald's franchisees in Portugal run shifts, teams, forecasts and finances on a platform already in use in seven restaurants, and the network keeps growing.
We work with McDonald's franchisees in Portugal, business owners who run several restaurants.
In a network, staff costs and manager time decide the margin. Each restaurant has its own shifts, team, safe and targets. When records, reports and alerts live in Excel, on WhatsApp and on paper, the people running the network spend the day gathering information instead of deciding.
We spent weeks inside the operation before settling the design of the platform, developed in partnership with Flowzi. The result is one place to run the daily work of each restaurant and of the whole network.
How it works
Sales forecasting estimates sales per hour 14 days ahead, so shifts can be planned. Each shift's labour cost is compared with its target and can be adjusted on the day.
The shift sheet is the core: safe, expenses, expiry dates and staffing are recorded in the shift where they happen.
The platform connects to the restaurants' sales and time-clock systems, so the data arrives without anyone typing it in.
Around the shift sit the areas that keep a restaurant running: hiring, onboarding, training, leave, maintenance, cleaning and finance.
Whoever is responsible sees every restaurant on one screen.
One shift,
step by step
Two weeks ahead, the forecast estimates sales for each hour, and the manager builds the shift's team from that number.
On the day, the platform compares the shift's labour cost with its target. If there is a gap, the manager adjusts the team before service starts.
During service, safe, expenses and expiry dates go on the shift sheet, while sales and clock-ins arrive by themselves.
The next morning, the supervisor opens the platform and sees that shift next to the franchisee's other restaurants, without asking anyone for a report.
Business value
Each manager saves one day a week on admin, and the network drops more than 400 hours of manual work a month.
Shift planning backed by the sales forecast saves around €4,000 a month in staff costs, per restaurant. In total, estimated savings reach €300,000 a year.
The network grows without its management structure growing with it. A new restaurant joins the same platform, with the same processes and the same view of the whole operation, and the central team supports it with no extra supervisors. Opening another restaurant no longer means adding another layer of management.
"I saved one day of work a week." Head of Human Resources at a large franchisee.
