Background

Alsea is a multi-brand restaurant operator based in Mexico City, Mexico, that was founded in 1997. It is one of the largest food service companies in the country. Alsea’s operating portfolio includes Domino's Pizza, Burger King, Chili's, The Cheesecake Factory, Starbucks, VIPS, Italianni's, and PF Chang's, and it employs tens of thousands of frontline restaurant employees.

Challenges

While many fast casual and fast food retail locations usually struggle with high turnover and a race to fill open recs, the need was worsened by the labor shortage beginning in 2020. Alsea has consistently looked to the future of recruiting as an essential part of growing its business. But, to reach its 2022 goals, it’d need to bring on more than 200 additional employees to keep up with the recruiting needs.

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"We needed to bring 200+ more people to handle the hiring volume we were anticipating. So we needed to find a way to combine our current team and technology to meet this demand." Jose Albo, Talent Acquisition & Culture and Internal Communications Deputy Director

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Additionally, if Alsea didn’t make significant changes, its restaurant locations would not be fully functional or truly representative of the strong brand they represented. The company had to decide what next step to take in order to secure its future as a frontline employer in an increasingly competitive job market.

Prior to adopting Emi, Alsea faced the following challenges:

• Struggled with not having enough critical staff across many restaurant locations, leading to a significant loss of revenue
• Lost top candidates to competitors and saw a decrease in productivity due to a time to fill of 42 days
• Had a high cost-per-hire because of consistently increasing advertising budget that didn’t produce greater candidate pipeline
• Wanted to offer 24/7 recruiting to better fit with the schedule of the typical frontline worker, but had no reliable tools support this effort

Solution

Alsea turned to Emi, the frontline recruiting automation platform, to streamline their hiring of over 26,000 restaurant employees. This allowed Alsea to launch its forward-thinking, 24/7 text recruiting while also addressing its biggest challenges borne from inefficient, manual hiring practices. 

With Emi, Alsea was able to differentiate itself from other employers in the market, offering candidates access to new opportunities quickly and painlessly via SMS or Facebook Messenger. The restauranter was able to have its recruiters and talent acquisition managers shift their time from tedious, low-value tasks to employer brand building and live interviews. Alsea utilized Emi to manage the once-manual elements associated with attracting candidates, screening applicants, scheduling interviews, onboarding new hires, and analyzing the process. 

This reallocation of HR’s time contributed to the dramatic 20% reduction in turnover, as recruiters were able to choose from a pre-vetted candidate pool and spend more time interviewing applicants, evaluating the best-fit candidate, and fully onboarding new hires.

Results

Alsea experienced several notable changes after partnering with Emi, including:

• Optimizing the hiring process from end-to-end
• Delivering consistently staffed restaurant locations
• Creating a candidate experience that fits into applicants’ lives

And here is what each of these results looks like in Alsea’s day-to-day now:

Optimizing the hiring process from end-to-end

With Emi, Alsea was able to shorten every stage of the hiring process, from application submission to interview scheduling. Between helping Alsea attract more candidates, screen applications, automatically schedule interviews, collect new hire documentation, and onboard new hires, Emi was able to reduce their time to hire from 42 days to just 7, a whopping 83% reduction.

Creating a candidate experience that fits into applicants’ lives

Alsea’s vision of offering candidates the ability to apply, respond, and schedule at their convenience was achieved through its partnership with Emi. Emi’s text recruiting and social media communication capabilities allowed Alsea to reach frontline workers where they are.

So, regardless of the individual’s unique work schedule, they can apply to roles within Alsea at any time and schedule their interviews without having to play phone tag with the hiring manager. This approach has been incredibly practical. This approach has been incredibly effective, as Albo stated,

"60% of our applicants come in outside of business hours or on the weekend. These are candidates we wouldn't be able to connect with if it weren't for Emi."

Delivering consistently staffed restaurant locations

Before Emi, Alsea struggled to meet their projections because key locations were not fully staffed with certain specialized team members. With Emi’s recruiting automation platform, Alsea was able to recruit a larger candidate pool and evaluate the applicants faster and with greater accuracy, which led to Alsea reaching its goal staffing rate of 98% on average.