Harri On the Rise...Why We're Celebrating

This quarter has been tough on our competitors in talent technology platforms. There’s news of consolidation, leadership changes, and potential layoffs -- all cause for concern. Meanwhile, here at Harri HQ, we’ve spent these past couples of months celebrating some exciting milestones and we couldn’t wait to share them with you:

Top Start-Up

Cue the fanfare! Harri has been recognized as a Top-50 Startup in the United States by LinkedIn. The professional networking site weighed factors such as interest in the company, engagement with employees, job interest, and retention to rank the most sought-after startups where professionals want to work and more impressively, stay. LinkedIn cited Harri’s ability to make life easier in the hospitality industry – a tough sector with one of the worst employee turnover rates – by owning all stages of the hiring process, from sourcing hotel and restaurant workers to managing employee schedules. What an honor. "Five years ago,” says CEO Luke Fryer, “we began the Harri journey with a vision of creating the next generation of broadly capable, industry optimized, employee management technology. This was and continues to be an audacious but increasingly achievable goal that's validated by moments like this."

Growing Our Team

While the job market suffers elsewhere, we’re happy to announce that we’ve just hired our 100th engineer and are on track to double that number in the next 12 months. Finding and retaining a skilled engineering team means we can continue to develop a powerful suite of tools to help you with your talent needs, create seamless and user-friendly platforms, and deliver unparalleled customer service.

Expanding Our Global Footprint

Not only are we growing our own staff, we’ve hit a fantastic landmark in growing our customers. Since launching in the United Kingdom in May 2016, we’ve acquired so many great brands as clients. In fact, we just recently signed our 50th customer – Dishoom!

Dishoom is an Indian restaurant chain that pays homage to the old Irani cafes of Bombay. Inspired by true flavors of home cooked Indian food, Dishoom’s founders are re-creating the community hubs they have seen to exist in the restaurants of Bombay. Among their dozens of awards, The Sunday Times recently ranked Dishoom 36th in their ‘100 Best Companies to Work For.” We count ourselves lucky to have such an innovating brand on board - not only is the food sensational; they are pioneers of great candidate experience and we are excited to help them grow through their people!

Powered by Harri, Customers Expand

When we help you build and manage your workforce, you’ll find that you have much more bandwidth to focus on other aspects of your business. That’s why we’re so excited when our partners expand into new locations and concepts. We’re on the same team.

Take ThinkFood Group. We’re currently helping them with talent acquisition and management for their brand-new location in Disney Springs, Florida. The concept, Jaleo By José Andrés, will feature Spanish tapas, paella and sangria.

We’re also stoked to be a part of Snooze, an A.M. Bakery’s incredible growth. After a record six new openings in 2017, the chain is on pace for eight new restaurants this year and 12 in 2019. We recently spoke with their Senior Vice President of People Resources, Brianna Borin, to find out her best practices for ensuring quality talent management as the enterprise continues to grow.

“People are your biggest asset. The second you lose sight of that, things can go really wrong, really quickly -- especially if you’re growing as fast as we are as a company,” she recently told us. “You have to power those assets to be the best asset they can be. Use as many tools and resources that can aid you in doing that well. It’s really critical.” (Watch the inspiring conversation here.)

This is just a snapshot to share that we’re celebrating big wins in how we’re building, growing, and investing in the next-generation talent technology platform for hospitality. In spite of what you’re reading about the fate of some of our competitors, rest assured, the future is bright.

NRA Show 2017 Recap

For the second year in a row, Team Harri was thrilled to be an exhibitor at the National Restaurant Association (NRA) Show, the largest annual gathering of the restaurant, food service, and hospitality industry!

The NRA Show offers more than 65,000 restaurant and hospitality professionals from around the world a taste of the next big trends in the industry.

Here are Harri’s highlights from this year’s event, which took place at the McCormick Center in Chicago May 20-23:

Helping the Hospitality Industry

 Over the course of 4 days, we heard a lot of questions—everything from, “How can I control my labor costs in real time?” to, “When is someone going to create a platform that does it all?!”

The goods news? We're actively working on all of the above!

Our tech-savvy booth allowed us to dive deep into an individual’s issues and show them exactly how our groundbreaking products could help their business.

(Click here if you're interested in scheduling a demo!)

Folks who stopped by our booth loved test-driving TeamHub, Harri’s brand new cutting-edge tool that helps hospitality managers track employee time precisely, streamline the payroll process, plus monitor and optimize workplace culture.

In particular, our biometric facial recognition tool was a big hit! This amazing tool has the ability to recognize staff and functions as a digital punch clock, thereby eliminating wage miscalculations. 

We’re so proud of the innovations we’ve made in the past year—from perfecting our Source + Hire platform to launching the hospitality industry’s premiere scheduling resource, TeamLive—and we’re already excited to unveil even bigger things and meet even more people at NRA 2018!   

Powerful Partnerships

It’s becoming increasingly common for brands in the hospitality space to partner together in order to provide more tailored solutions for the industry. If you were at the show, you may have noticed many amazing brands who teamed up – including Harri and Upserve!  

We recently announced our own partnership with Upserve, the industry's leading full-service Restaurant Management Platform. Upserve manages $11 billion in annual transaction volume, making it the largest provider of cloud-based point of sale and analytics for the independent restaurant industry.

Did you know that restaurant staff composes 10% of the American workforce? We’re thrilled to join Upserve's workforce management program, which is instrumental to recruiting, training, and scheduling the talent that is the driving force behind the amazing hospitality industry.

Plus, we had the pleasure of co-hosting a fun happy hour with our friends at Upserve at the RM Champagne Salon. We’re all about ‘Happiness in Hospitality,’ after all!

Millennial-Minded Tools

Technology is becoming increasingly important for the hospitality industry to drive business, help retain employees, and boost job satisfaction. Many of these tools target Millennials, who are expected to comprise half of the workforce by 2020.

Harri spotted some cool companies, such as Sprinklr, who are working to help the hospitality industry manage and reap the benefits of social media outreach.

(P.S. – we’re on social media, too!)

Tech Talk  

Tech companies were responsible for generating the biggest buzz at this year's show - booths of companies like Mopro, Toast, and OpenTable attracted the most visitors. (Of course, we have to brag on ourselves for being another hospitality tech company attracting a lot of attention!)

Food & Fun

 Chicago has a reputation as a fantastic city for foodies, and Team Harri was not disappointed! From sampling food and beverage trends at the show to checking out local hotspots like Girl and the Goat and RM Champagne Salon, the team enjoying taking in all Chicago had to offer before heading back to the Big Apple.

Though the NRA Show ended on May 23, we’re already excited for next year’s NRA Show—bring on 2018!

HARRI TO SHOWCASE THE FUTURE OF MULTI-UNIT LABOR MANAGEMENT AND UNVEIL TEAMLIVE AT NRA CHICAGO

Chicago, IL: Harri, the end-to-end human capital management solution designed for the unique needs of the hospitality industry, will showcase its revolutionary platform and unveil its latest product at the largest annual gathering of the restaurant, foodservice, and hospitality industry, the NRA Show, in Chicago May 20-23, at booth #7077.

As it becomes increasingly expensive to find, retain, and manage staff, Harri reduces overall labor management costs by ensuring clients get the right people in the right roles and maximizing their employees’ performance and efficiency.

With Harri’s mobile-first, cloud-based platform, they’ve enabled major hospitality brands to attract the best talent for their business needs while eliminating paperwork using their digital onboarding process and reducing time-to-hire and hiring costs by 68% and 48%, respectively.

Harri’s revolutionary new labor management tool, TeamLive, was designed to provide value for the entire spectrum of hospitality business stakeholders by consolidating up to 10 operational systems into a single, mission-critical platform; including instant team communications, team scheduling overlaid with labor costs, and live sales performance data - providing operators with greatly enhanced profit visibility.

TeamLive also features a revolutionary time clock feature with facial recognition, capable of gathering data from individual team members and reducing wage discrepancies.

Currently operating in New York, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Miami and Orlando, Harri partners with more than 8,000 top hospitality brands ranging from fast casual to upscale, full-service dining. Some of Harri’s partners include CAVA Grill, Nandos Peri Peri, TAO Group, Chef Jose Andrea’s ThinkFoodGroup, Chef Michael White’s Altamarea Group, Chef Andrew Carmelini’s NoHo Hospitality Group and The Savoy Hotel London.

ABOUT HARRI

Harri is a platform built to help the hospitality industry source, hire, and manage their employees more effectively and efficiently.  With Harri’s all-in-one digital platform, employers can find and onboard top talent for their business using media-rich profiles and streamlined tools, all while reducing costs, saving time, and enabling long-term success of teams with best-in-class cloud-based management systems.

To date, more than 3,000,000 applications from chefs, bartenders, servers, hostesses, and managers have been submitted to 53,000 jobs posted on Harri.

Harri has more than 370,000 members and 8,000 employers spanning the USA and UK markets. It is the number one marketplace for hospitality talent in NYC.

For more information, visit harri.com.

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Be a wagamama!

wagamama, casual Japanese restaurant chain that started across the pond in London, is set to make its debut in New York City. With already 140 locations around the world, the Big Apple is next up on its US expansion plan.

In preparation for the opening of their new location, wagamama is hosting a series of hiring events. Various FOH, BOH and Management opportunities are available.

Don’t miss your chance to be a part of history! Learn more about the wagamama brand, plus their fun and exciting career opportunities by clicking on the link below. Good luck!

Harri Wins NYC Hospitality Alliance's Technology Award

It's hard to deny the fact that New York City is the hospitality capital of the world. With over 24,000+ restaurants, bars, nightclubs and such, the industry would be nothing without its passionate professionals, working tirelessly day in and day out. So to celebrate, the NYC Hospitality Alliance hosted an awards ceremony to recognize the industry's achievements. 

Andrew Rigie, the Executive Director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, said, "It was an amazing night. We are a passionate industry and it’s important to recognize the hard work and dedication these individuals and businesses put into their craft. Hospitality is an art, and we are so proud to honor and celebrate their contributions.”

Team Harri was in attendance at the event, which was held at the iconic nightclub, Marquee New York. Awards that were presented included Big Apple Legacy Award, Four Stars Award, I ❤ Hospitality Award and others.

Harri was nominated for the Technology Award along with notable names, like ADP, delivery.com, Paycom and more. The award acknowledges the contributions of a technology platform and how it enhances the way the hospitality industry operates. (See here for the entire list of award winners and nominations.)

We were amongst other innovative platforms in our category, but we are proud to announce that Harri took home the Technology Award. The award is a reminder of how much work we have done so far. It also gives us motivation to develop even greater features and products to service the needs of the industry, both employers and employees. 

Big thanks again to the NYC Hospitality Alliance on the successful night and the award!