We recently Sat down to speak with Kenton, the co-owner of 10 Tim Hortons Locations in Western Canada
It’s a homecoming for the Kenton and his Brother, grew up rooted in the QSR industry, with a family background that expands over 25 years in the space - and their experience shows.
12 years into their own QSR journey, and they have acquired 10 Tim Hortons franchise locations in Alberta, Canada, and they aren’t stopping anytime soon.
We joined Kenton to learn more about his experience running, a growing chain, and to better understand how using Push has transformed how he does business, and life.
After drowning in paperwork, training and onboarding new employees, and spending thousands of dollars paying someone to run their payroll system, the Paul Brothers felt it was time for a change.
After finally making the switch to Push several years ago, Kenton now describes his old system as dated, hard to use, difficult to understand, and time consuming.
Kenton describes his old payroll system as dated, hard to use, difficult to understand, and time consuming.
Fast forward to today and Push has been rolled out across the organizations’ 10 Tim Hortons locations, and Kenton is thrilled with the change.
Thanks to Push, Kenton is now able to run payroll for hundreds of employees in just 15 minutes.
A payroll process that once took a bookkeeper up to 24 hours now saves Kenton 288 hours of labor or $9,600 per year. And that’s just on payroll for one location.
My favorite part about Push is the time-savings. It's very fast, and it removes the need for a full-time payroll person. It also means that now our bookkeepers don't have to do payroll, which adds further cost-savings
- Kenton, Tim Hortons Franchisee Owner
Along with usability and payroll improvements, Push enabled Kenton to train his staff on forecasting features that were complicated and difficult to manage on their previous system.
Kenton shares that although he’s a numbers guy, forecasting, targets and percentages would have previously been difficult and time consuming to explain to the many managers they now employ.
Luckily, once they moved over to Push, Kenton found that the managers were able to easily train on the new system and start owning and understanding labor and forecasting tools right away. This contributed to them hitting labor targets across their budding empire, and saving 3% on labor.
We just purchased some more stores and we've already improved around 3% in terms of labor and benefits, that's really just from speed and the ability with Push to forecast and to see day-to-day, not just month-to-month.
- Kenton Paul, Tim Hortons Franchisee Owner
When Kenton first started using the system, Push helped with an initial onboard of 80 employees.
Kenton found this to be a seamless experience, and with factors like support at your fingertips, Kenton seems relaxed when he talks about his software experience.
I don't know what could have been better. It was seamless really.
- Kenton, Tim Hortons Franchisee Owner
The system was up and running within 48 hours. With a couple of calls from the Push support team, Kenton was able to teach himself how to run Payroll for the organization.
When asked if Kenton would recommend Push to others in his industry, he shared that he would recommend it to others in, and outside of his industry.
Kenton explains Push is a perfect fit for the QSR industry, but that any business that employs 20 people or more would benefit from the simplicity of the system. When asked to describe the net effect of implementing Push, Kenton summarized it in one word - Relaxed.
Push makes me feel…relaxed. Payroll is a fairly stressful thing for a lot of employers, so to take away that frustration is a big thing.
- Kenton, Tim Hortons Franchisee Owner
After running some quick numbers on Tim Hortons as a whole, and referencing the 2021 stats on Tim Hortons profit margins, we discovered that the entire chain makes around 6.52 billion per year.
After some quick math, we were shocked to discover that 3% of that large sum is 195 million. In other words, every percent ads up!
The following is an executive summary of the challenges, solutions and wins Kenton experienced with Push.
- Using an outdated system that was clunky, hard to use, difficult to train on, and full of hard copy paperwork.
- Employing a part-time payroll person, at 24 hours per month.
- Confusing and hard to use forecasting data made it difficult to train managers on sales vs labor calculations.
- A modern and easy to use system.
- Great and consistent support.
- A centralized system that integrates with Clearview.
- Ability to run payroll in 15 minutes, with no training, across multiple locations.
- Intuitive forecasting tools that help users consistently hit labor targets.
- Enabling busy business owners to feel relaxed and at ease.
- Giving franchisees more time to invest in their business.
- Seamless onboarding onto the Push platform.
- Savings of 3% on labor costs by using the Push labor forecasting features.
- Saving 24 hours per month, or 288 hours per year on running payroll.
- Switched over and onboarded onto the Push system in 48 hours.
“In the labor numbers, we were reporting about a $300 to $400 difference than what we were getting through Push!”
-Tara Hardie, ZZA Hospitality Group, 16 locations