Keeping a restaurant team together can be like crafting the perfect pizza dough – it takes the right mix of ingredients, expertise, and tools. For Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings, finding that “recipe” to increase hourly employee retention became crucial. Using goHappy’s engagement tools, the team found a new way to build meaningful connections with frontline restaurant workers, starting with simple one-way text messaging.

Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings is a casual dining restaurant chain known for its unique, high-quality, coal-fired dishes. Their signature offering includes pizzas cooked in a 900-degree coal oven, which gives the crust a distinctive char and crisp texture. Drawing from authentic family recipes, Anthony Bruno opened the first restaurant in 2002​. Today, 59 locations span the East Coast, and the brand prides itself on using only the freshest ingredients, like hand-picked Italian tomatoes and in-house grated Pecorino Romano. Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings implemented goHappy in 2021 to improve communication and engagement with restaurant staff, and it remains a critical tool for building a more connected, stronger company today.

Michelle Zavolta, Chief People Officer at Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings, sought a solution for their small HR team to effectively engage with the company’s 1,500+ employees in hopes of addressing high turnover rates.

“We were wanting to see our turnover decrease, especially at the hourly team member level,” says Zavolta. As a small team, they needed a powerful and efficient solution.

“We were exploring avenues and ways to reach out to frontline team members, and we have a very small HR team, so we needed help. We needed help with communication and engagement, and we really wanted to tackle some of the turnover challenges, so we needed something to help us do all those things,” Zavolta says.

The deskless nature of restaurant work means email and messaging systems aren’t as effective and often aren’t an option. “We needed to get to those frontline employees. The letters, the emails, none of that stuff was getting to them,” says Zavolta.

Connor Graves, a General Manager, saw this struggle firsthand. “Some of my biggest challenges as a frontline leader are making sure the communication from upper management and leadership makes its way all the way down to the hourly team members, including the dishwashers and hosts,” Graves says.

Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings adopted goHappy’s intuitive one-way text messaging platform to engage frontline employees directly, and they eventually leveraged the entire goHappy platform after seeing success early on.

After seeing success reaching employees directly on their phones, Anthony’s began using goHappy to automate messages, collect feedback, and provide a self-serve way for employees to access helpful HR information. 

The new partnership with goHappy enabled Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings to improve employee engagement almost immediately. “It was straightforward and easy to use. We were able to get it set up and launched very quickly, and we’ve been blown away by the level of support that we get from the goHappy team. They really feel like an extension of our HR team,” Zavolta says.

The upshot of all that engagement? Employees began sticking around longer. 

“We saw tremendous improvement with retention. Hourly turnover decreased, engagement improved, people felt connected, and they knew what was happening. We now have more engaged teams, and we’re seeing improved results across the brand, so that’s been a big win for us,” Zavolta says.

Not only was the company getting more engagement from workers, but goHappy helped them collect valuable insights to improve the day-to-day experience at work.

As a General Manager with many direct reports, Graves saw a 90% participation rate in his engagement survey. This armed him and his team with actionable insights for improving the day-to-day experience for workers and also helped employees feel heard and understood.

goHappy’s engagement module made it easy for managers like Graves to see who had completed the survey and who hadn’t. 

“I got to 90% participation at my store by logging into the goHappy portal, and the first thing I noticed was that it said ‘failed to send’. I had three people that did not receive the survey. So the first thing I did was make sure they signed up to receive text messages from the company using the QR code.” 

When asked to share tips on running a successful engagement survey, Zavolta shared the following:

Leadership at Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza knew they had an opportunity to improve employee retention, and they used results from the goHappy engagement survey to make incremental changes. 

The first thing they did was improve onboarding messaging to make stronger connections with new hires. 

“Sometimes they weren’t feeling welcomed on that first day,” says Zavolta. Using goHappy’s SMS messaging platform, they could configure welcome messages and train managers to create a warmer environment for new hires from day one.

They also learned that new hires felt overwhelmed with the firehose of information. “They were given so much information on the first day or first week that they forgot what to do about benefits or when they get paid.” With goHappy’s messaging tool, they set up automatic reminders for enrolling in benefits and information about setting up direct deposit.

“Those changes were simple, but it’s the combination that really had the most impact.”

goHappy has had a significant impact on employee retention, happiness, and engagement at Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings. From simple one-way text messaging, automated messages for important milestones, and easy and accessible surveys, goHappy has enabled Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings to build a more connected workforce while making employees feel more valued.

goHappy helps bridge the gap between the corporate office and deskless workers. Industries like hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing use goHappy’s intuitive platform to provide important updates, collect feedback, and improve the overall employee experience. The app-free platform allows communication with anyone who has a mobile device, making it ideal for engaging frontline workers. Interested in learning how you can increase employee retention and engagement like Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza? Book a free 30-minute demo today!