Snooze Eatery

Snooze Eatery

Snooze Eatery is a popular chain of restaurants in the US with 43 locations. Snooze Kansas City opened just a month before COVID-19 shuttered restaurants and cafes throughout the world. The team at Snooze used the SafetyCulture platform to build up a culture of safety, consistency and quality during one of the most uncertain periods for hospitality businesses. We spoke to Snoozers at the Kansas City location about how SafetyCulture was able to help them raise their safety game and get safely back to business.

COVID-19 has changed everything we do

Before COVID-19 shook the world, Snooze Eatery had patrons lining up for breakfast and brunch food. That all changed when they had to shut down their dine-in option for 10 weeks at the beginning of the pandemic. For TJ McReynolds, General Manager of the Kansas City location, the uncertainty of the situation propelled him and his team to take action, “COVID hit and shut us down. When will we get back to normal? How long will this last? What impacts will it have on our brand new restaurant?”

“We needed to earn the trust of our guests and employees.”

The team did takeout for months before reopening for dine-in customers. To encourage diners to visit and keep staff morale high, safety became the #1 priority for Snooze Eatery. As Katie Birner, Assistant General Manager puts it, “we take care of everyone that comes in the restaurant, and we make sure that we don’t ever put anyone in harm’s way.”

Safety: Regular touchpoints, every single hour

During reopening, the Snooze Eatery team created a brand new role, the ‘Safety Dancer’. “Safety Dancers clock in and they don’t stop moving the entire day. They clean all day. They work off of two checklists. One is a 15 minute cycle and the other is an hourly cycle”, explains McReynolds. Safety Dancers are in charge of cleaning, sanitizing, and managing the capacity of the eatery.

For Snooze Eatery, this meant that guests could trust the safety and cleanliness standards of the restaurant, and enjoy a cup of coffee in bliss.

Consistency: Taking the checklist and putting it on steroids

SafetyCulture has allowed Snooze Eatery to reassure their employees and guests during a time where trust in public spaces is low because of the potential health and safety risks.

“Snooze takes the checklist and puts it on steroids. It’s a unique tool. The inspections and templates make you go through a checklist, but it also makes you give proof in the form of photos and notes, and to take care of things on the spot. It holds you to the utmost perfect standard in every way,” says Birner.

Quality: Delivering the perfect plate, every time

With consistent, quality service comes reliability, and with reliability comes customer loyalty. And in a day and age when customers have higher expectations for dining experiences than ever before, restaurants have their work cut out for them. At Snooze Eatery, they don’t just implement COVID-19 protocols with SafetyCulture — it’s a safeguard for food and service quality across all their locations.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. By using SafetyCulture, Snooze team members can upload pictures and add notes, share recipes and menu ideas, standardize recipes, and even address quality issues across all locations.

Head Chef, Peter Beffa oversees 41 Snooze Eatery restaurants across the country. He explains, “I use SafetyCulture to really look at consistency every day, multiple times per day to see the perfect standardized plates and recipes in a visual representation as well as a written description. So, if we have a customer in Denver who comes to Kansas City and they get the same perfect plate, every single time.”

Focus your energy on what matters most

With an increased focus on quality and consistency today, businesses can’t afford to drop the ball where it matters most. SafetyCulture is a complete solution that helps teams successfully maintain a top level of quality and consistency for all customers.

Encourage your team to take the initiative whenever there’s ambiguity. The more accurate information is readily available and easily accessible, the more you know where to focus your energy.

Discover how SafetyCulture can help your business’ operations. Check out our COVID-19 Response Hub and access thousands of COVID-19 checklists, resources, and ebooks for free.