Café Yumm! has always been more than a fast-casual restaurant—it’s a Northwest institution rooted in clean ingredients, loyal fans, and a signature Yumm Sauce that’s earned cult status. But behind the friendly counter smiles and warm bowls of rice and beans was a mounting operational challenge.
As the company prepared to scale beyond 20 locations, Justin Hall, Systems & Development Manager, knew the old way of doing things wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
What followed was a digital transformation grounded not in flashy tech, but in solving real, operational pain points with Jolt Software.
The Growing Pains
Back in 2017, Café Yumm! was running its kitchens the way many restaurants do—pen, paper, and Post-it notes. Labels were hand-written. Temperature logs were filled out with ballpoint pens. Training materials were physical binders. Each store was doing their best, but the cracks were showing.
“We used to use these washable labels that cost five cents each, and they took about 20 seconds to fill out manually. Multiply that by hundreds of items per store per day—across 20+ locations—and you’re looking at a ton of wasted time and money.”
— Justin Hall, Culinary Systems & Development Manager
The problem wasn’t laziness or a lack of care. It was scale. The systems that worked for five locations just couldn’t support twenty. Reporting needed to be cleaner, training needed to be faster, and safety compliance had to be bulletproof.
The Turning Point
Justin didn’t find Jolt by accident. He was actively looking for a better way to handle food safety tasks and labeling. What started as a pilot for temperature logging and digital labels quickly revealed something more powerful:
“I thought we were just getting a labeling tool. But Jolt started creeping into everything we did—in a good way. The lists, the training library, the logs… it was like we had discovered our digital operations nerve center.”
There was some internal pushback. Senior leadership was worried about intellectual property, especially putting recipes or procedures in the cloud. Others were skeptical about whether franchisees would adopt a new tool. But the early results were undeniable.
Digital Labels
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- From 5¢ per label to fractions of a cent
- Cut hours of daily labor across stores
- Standardized expiration tracking across the system
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Transitioned from clipboards to digital temp checks
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Added cooling logs to monitor HACCP processes in real time
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Identified and addressed non-compliant behaviors immediately
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Task Lists with Accountability
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Created custom task flows for opening/closing,sanitation, and prep
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Used list timestamps to coach employees and hold managers accountable
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“I can see when someone clocks in, waits 40 minutes, and then knocks out 12 tasks in 4 minutes. That’s a coaching moment—and before Jolt, we just didn’t have that visibility.”
Information Library
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Uploaded 200+ pages of SOPs, recipes, and prep guides
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Enabled centralized updates and version control
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Helped franchisees train staff more efficiently and consistently
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Built transparency and ownership into store performance
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Empowered GMs with real-time data to drive behavior change
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Created space for coaching over compliance
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“Jolt has become our source of truth. It’s not just checking a box—it’s creating clarity on what excellence looks like in a store.”
Results That Matter