Sockeye Brewing is a long-time client partner of QTS Custom Payroll. Janice oversees all business operations for the company. We caught up with her for a conversation about her QTS experience.
Tell me a little about Sockeye.
Sockeye Brewing just celebrated its 27th year in business. We have two locations: one is our flagship grill and brewery and the other is the Sockeye Alehouse, a new full-service restaurant with a pub and a 9-hole putting green that opened in March. We’re very proud of it. There are about 185 employees between both locations.
QTS has been our partner since 2015 and we use the payroll, scheduling and employee onboarding services.
What are the most time-consuming aspects of your payroll?
One of the biggest challenges in this type of business is the turnover. We do a bi-weekly payroll and every pay period, we onboard 5 to 10 new employees and terminate others. It would be a real hassle to onboard manually with that many changes. It was huge for us when we discovered QTS’ online onboarding as it cuts our time to less than half for this task. With the digital onboarding portal, employees enter and update their own data, and look up information when they choose without asking us.
When working with a service provider, what are your most important considerations?
Balancing service and value is a priority for me. I don’t need flashiness, I need customer service and cost savings. Of those, customer service is the priority. QTS provides by far the best support I receive from any of the platforms I use, including my accounting and restaurant software. If I have an issue, I get in touch with QTS client service and get quality support almost instantly. I always have a response in less than an hour. Based on the situation, there may not be a solution at that time, but they continue to work on it and keep me updated until there is one. Other vendors sometimes take 2 to 3 days just for a call back.
Why do you stay with QTS?
I’ve been impressed with QTS across the board. Usually, I call QTS to ask about something and they say, “Yes, we have it. Let’s set it up for you.” If they don’t have it, they work with me to get it done.
By far, QTS is the best value for the money. They have everything I need and the cost is quite a bit less than the competitors.
Would you recommend that other breweries and restaurants use QTS?
I make recommendations for things I believe in and absolutely recommend QTS to others. I’m part of a Facebook group for restaurant owners and managers and have had direct conversations with other members about QTS and the reasons why I use it, and pass along Breck’s name and number.
In this group, we also have candid conversations about the restaurant POS app that many of us use. It recently added a payroll and scheduling component it acquired from another company. I demo’ed it twice, thinking it may streamline my process, but there is a lot of room for improvement. It is not as seamless as portrayed so maybe the payroll process is too much to handle. Each time I looked, I determined that it would be much more work for me than continuing with QTS. Instead, I worked with the staff at QTS and they helped me set up reports and export files to coordinate with the POS system. In fact, I found QTS easier to integrate with the POS system than the payroll and scheduling software the POS company provides.
I feel very confident suggesting QTS and would also recommend it to someone doing payroll in another industry.
Why do you stay with QTS?
My top 3 reasons for staying with a vendor are amazing customer service, value and quality of the product. It’s what I receive from QTS.
I love QTS. I get phenomenal service and refer them to others every chance I get.