About Tao
Tao Group Hospitality (Tao) is a hospitality company that develops, owns, and operates some of the world’s most successful restaurant and nightlife venues. Through their merger with Hakkasan Group in 2021, Tao has solidified its leading position in the entertainment space and now has over 60 entertainment venues across the globe.
Tao’s portfolio features best-in-class cuisine, Michelin-starred restaurants, award-winning nightlife and world-renowned daylife. With over 25 years of industry experience, Tao is committed to delivering unforgettable experiences and cuisine. Innovation and creativity are the core of the company, and their focus is always on their guests.
Challenges
Tao Group Hospitality was looking to move away from their paper-based manual processes for task completion and food labeling.
Tao’s team was using paper checklists to keep track of tasks and processes. Matt Hughes, Vice President Culinary Practices & Operations at Tao Group Hospitality stated,
“Using paper checklists was messy. You walk around writing things down all day, and the papers get dirty or ripped. Not to mention, it can be difficult to read other people’s handwriting.”
The Tao team needed the ability to manage processes and ensure that things were being done properly when they were not on-site. “We were looking for a way to create accountability and ensure that our processes were being followed, without having to have leaders on-site 24/7. A system that sends real-time alerts, provides visibility anytime, anywhere, and could manage businesses with multiple locations,” stated Hughes.
Tao was also looking for a food labeling solution. The group was using handwritten tape labels to label their food but found many inconsistencies in that process. “We have restaurants around the world, and therefore employ people from around the world. This means that we have employees that speak different languages. We started using numbers to identify different sauces instead of writing the sauce name on the food label, because numbers were easier for our diverse team to read,” said Hughes. Much like their checklists, the handwritten labels would wear out or become dirty, making them difficult to read. Hughes stated, “it just wasn’t sustainable.”
Solution
The Tao team began searching for solutions to their checklist and food labeling problems, and was ecstatic to find an all-in-one solution in Jolt. Tao purchased Jolt’s Lists and Labeling products.
Jolt Lists is a team accountability solution designed to improve task completion. With this digital solution, managers can check if tasks have been completed anytime, anywhere from their mobile device. Users can create standard lists for use across all their locations, and can even require employees to upload media content, or scan a QR code in order to prove that an assigned task has been completed according to Tao’s standards.
Additionally, Tao uses Jolt Lists to help with purchasing. “We have replaced our traditional yield sheets with Jolt. We are able to quickly track the cost of each portion of food in Jolt, then enter that date in our purchasing software later. It makes for a quicker process- saving us time and money, especially in these times of high food cost and supply chain issues,” said Hughes.
Jolt’s Labeling System helps restaurants to stream- line the label making process by reducing the time it takes to produce food labels and by eliminating human errors. With Jolt, employees simply touch the name of the product they are preparing and enter the quantity if necessary. Jolt does all the calculating and printing for them, automatically.
”We really like the gamification feature within Jolt Lists. It keeps our employees engaged and helps us to reward them for good work.” – Matt Hughes, Vice President Culinary Practices & Operations
“It’s great because there are certain time and temp requirements outlined by the health department. Jolt records these automatically for us, so the team is able to work faster, increasing their efficiency as well as ensuring we are providing the highest quality food and best experience possible to our customers” stated Hughes.
Results
With Jolt Lists, Tao Group Hospitality has created an easy to deploy and executable standard of account- ability. Their organization can see what is getting done, and what’s not getting done, in real time. Hughes indicated that an unexpected benefit from using Jolt is the increase in their location’s cleanliness. “We don’t have papers laying around or taped all over the place anymore!”
Regarding Jolt Labeling, Tao now has consistency in their food labeling. Every label has the same format so each employee can read and understand them. Plus, Hughes says that Tao’s walk-ins look much nicer and organized due to the consistent food labels.
According to Hughes, “the bottom line is that if you make things easy for people, they will do it. If you don’t, they won’t. Technology and automation are incredibly helpful in making things easy. Jolt builds accountability and consistency across our brand which provides us with a competitive advantage in this fast-paced industry.”
“If I were talking to someone about Jolt, I would tell them that Jolt is a system that creates a universal language for your team.” stated Hughes.
