They told you that Gen X-ers wanted experiences over stuff.

They said Gen X-ers believed in working to live.

They said Gen X had a short attention span and they wanted everything, now, on their phones.

Well, forget all that, because it’s nearly Gen Z’s turn, and they’re an entirely different bunch.

There has to be a better way.

You’ve said it before.

Your managers say it all the time as they emerge like zombies bearing this week’s schedule after four hours in the stuffy back office littered with time-off requests written on napkins.

The practice of tipping has been around for hundreds of years, and it has always rewarded front of house staff much more than their counterparts in the kitchen.

As restaurant operators work toward decreasing the disparity in pay for the first time, however, some eateries are experimenting with alternatives to tipping.

When you look out onto the floor and see a half dozen of your servers carrying trays of drinks, laughing with their tables, lifting plates off the line for each other, you wonder, after these minimum wage hikes, will things be the same?

A trio of after-work ladies is saying cheers to Friday with happy hour sangrias, a heat wave drove your patio to hit an all-time sales record Saturday, and now that it’s halfway through summer, front and back of house are rocking.

Someone might even catch you smiling.

In the midst of all this bliss, it might be easy to shove to the back of your mind the ‘f’ word.

Fall.

It’s a phrase uttered in countless households every night.

“What are we having for dinner?”

For years, most families would have had three choices:  Heat up leftovers, cook a meal from scratch, or dial Dominos.

Today, however, in a world where families have computers at their fingertips and expect to be able to buy anything with them in seconds, a fourth choice—hundreds of choices, in fact—have emerged: Order from anywhere.

We believe every restaurant deserves the perfect schedule.

To have the perfect schedule, you need to know precisely how many bodies you need on the floor.

To know how many bodies are needed on the floor, you need to know your sales—to the week, to the day, to the third of the day, to the hour, to the quarter of the hour.

To do that, your restaurant scheduling software needs POS integration, and not just any POS.

We’ve all been there: Dozens of guests trampling over chairs to get inside during a flash rain.

All hands on deck racing to carry plates and drinks from the patio to who-knows-which-table inside the restaurant.

Flushed servers scrambling to find their guests, switch tables, swap bills.

It’s humid.

It’s crazy.

In a few minutes, it’s sunny.

And everyone wants to go back outside with a mojito.

This is how it starts: Your eyes dart back and forth from the blank schedule on your screen to the notebook filled with handwritten time-off requests from everyone, it seems.

Cheryl has an exam. Jeff’s grandma died. Erica’s sister is getting married in Mexico.

Back in the day, when our team of founding partners worked in restaurants, online restaurant scheduling software wasn’t even a thing.  And there sure weren’t articles you could just download about how to improve restaurant culture or ensure stellar patio service. When we began Ameego, we set out to change both.

Overtime. Breaks. Minimum wage.

For restaurant operators, finding the clauses and calculations to determine these ever-changing location-specific factors can be dizzying.  To help answer some of those questions, we've created this two-part blog series to point you in the right direction!

Does Erica qualify for the Good Friday stat?

What’s her pay for that day if she works it—or if she doesn’t?

How am I supposed to handle vacation pay for the new dishwasher?

It’s hot out, you’re hungry, and you’ve just stumbled upon a patio where people are tipping back cold margaritas and soaking up the sun.

We’ve all been there: Despite knowing full well that the service on patios is often sub-par, we ask for a table outside.

If we asked a handful of restaurant managers and owners what’s important to them when choosing scheduling software, they’d probably mention cost, they may ask about integration with their point-of-sale system, and they might even inquire about features—labor forecasting or time tracking.

And somewhere down the list would be, It has to be easy to use.

And yet, in the long run, ease of use might be the most important factor of all.

Time-off requests come in all forms.

Misspelled text messages, on cocktail napkins passed across the bar at happy hour, or to your face while running food out to a table during the dinner rush.