The Tech That Helped This Restaurant Fix Its Scheduling WoesThis natural-foods restaurateur found a system that helps her plan.

Foodies and critics alike quickly embraced Ellary's Greens, a 3-year-old natural-foods café in New York's Greenwich Village. But in the back of the house, owner Leith Hill and her managers were using a very stale (though organic!) approach to scheduling employee shifts. "We were making schedules by hand, on paper," recalls Hill, who in April launched an uptown, quick-serve version of her eatery. "We'd spend hours working on the schedule. Then someone would say, "I can't work Tuesdays anymore,' and we'd go back to the drawing board."

The fix

To solve her woes, Hill turned to Planday, a workforce-management platform for shift-based businesses. It was developed in Denmark and introduced to the U.S. market in 2015. For employers, the cloud-based Planday offers schedule making and hours tracking, plus messaging tools to connect with workers. Using the web or Planday's app, employees can request and trade shifts and bid on open slots posted by a colleague or their boss. "A manager can say, "Hey, a shift is open in two hours. Who wants to take it?'" says Planday CEO Christian Broendum.