Apple American Group is the largest Applebee‘s Neighborhood Grill & Bar franchisee in the United States, operating 460 restaurants across 26 states. Apple American Group began in 1999 with just 8 Applebee‘s locations in Washington State. They focus on serving mainstream American dishes in a casual dining atmosphere.
It is part of Flynn Restaurant Group which also operates 282 Taco Bells, 134 Paneras, and 369 Arby‘s, totalling 1,245 restaurants as the largest restaurant franchisee in the US.
Applebee American Group in Northern California began working closely with LANDED mid-2020. When restaurants began opening across the US, the need to hire talent quickly grew across the board - from entry-level roles to upper management. Applebee‘s discovered managers were pouring hours into existing recruiting platforms which lacked engaged and high-quality candidates that suited their criteria.
The re-opening of outdoor and indoor dining meant Applebee‘s needed to staff up, and most furloughed workers were not coming back. Applebee‘s was struggling to hire "A players" in certain locations. Whether this was hourly shift workers for Front- and Back-of-House all the way to Assistant Managers, existing General Managers (GM) were pouring over a dozen hours a week trying to hire the right people.
Even if a good-on-paper applicant was found on a popular job board, candidates often did not show up to interviews or had poor response rates when messaged.
Hiring became highly tedious, creating a need for a digital solution that streamlined the entire recruiting process. This is when LANDED got in touch with Applebee‘s to help them fill the talent pipeline.
Each location hiring 2-3 candidates a week on average, saving 10+ hours weekly
Hard-to-fill Assistant Manager position that was open for 2+ months filled in < 2 weeks
LANDED‘s intelligent matching™ ensures hiring managers connect with A-players that suit the needs of the business.
Within the first two weeks of using LANDED, we screened thousands of applicants to provide Applebee‘s with 182 vetted matches. Of these, each location quickly hired on average 2-3 candidates per week.
To match applicants, we don‘t rely on just manually sorting through resumes. Applebee‘s looks for hires who have fantastic communication skills, are hard-working, and are coachable. Resumes alone are insufficient in picking the best candidates on these axes.
That‘s why LANDED is video-first, with candidates creating profiles with four 20-second videos to answer commonly asked interview questions, like "what‘s a challenge you‘ve overcome". LANDED intelligent matching™ assesses candidates on 50+ data points to match them to roles, ensuring hiring managers only spend time with qualified candidates.
By providing a constant pipeline of A-players, a single Applebee‘s chain saves approximately $240,000 a year by reducing bad hires. These are costs on top of the time spent on hiring, interviewing, training, and underperforming on the job.
“We have seen quality candidates from LANDED in locations that we normally struggle with. A few of our restaurants have used other recruiting sources that have brought unqualified candidates forward for review. With LANDED those locations have seen candidates that are better qualified for the position."
Ghosting reduced by 40%
1 in 4 Interviewed Hourly Candidates are HiredLANDED cuts out the manual work required for scheduling and rescheduling interviews. The best candidates slip away, waiting for hiring managers to respond.
Our interview tools and automations help Applebee‘s General Managers better organize their time and keep the best candidates from slipping away. LANDED takes GM‘s weekly availability and automatically schedule interviews with and send calendar invites to candidates on their behalf. Candidates receive automated confirmations, once the interview has been scheduled, and 1-day prior and day-of interview reminders via push notifications, email, and SMS text message.
This helped Applebee‘s GMs save dozens of hours each month with scheduling, with LANDED dramatically reducing no-shows for interviews.
“Before LANDED we were using other recruiting sources such as Craigslist and Indeed. We decided to use LANDED because it is a different approach to recruiting. Using an app to contact and communicate with candidates makes it a lot easier and faster for the restaurant managers to view candidate profiles and set up interviews."
Reduced average time to respond to candidates from ~3 days down to immediately
Automated engagement messages sent to candidates via push notifications, SMS text message, and email
Save 10+ hours per week with LANDED‘s Messaging & Reminder Automations
It is rare that GMs are able to immediately respond to candidates. This meant applications piled up and quickly became stale. Even with GMs manually spending hours on candidate review and messaging, the best candidates were already snapped up while waiting for GMs‘ first outreach.
LANDED keeps candidates warm and cuts out manual work, so Applebee‘s GMs get to spend hiring time with A-players and get extra time to work on restaurant sales. We automatically engage candidates the second they respond with customizable messages. These messages and reminders are sent to candidates via push notifications, SMS, and email.
As Apple American Group‘s Northern California Human Resources Field Manager, Tina oversees all restaurant hiring for upwards of two dozen locations, so she needs full visibility on candidate pipeline and staffing for each without having to bug busy GMs. LANDED‘s real-time insights dashboard (see sample here) gave her full visibility into each location‘s candidate pipeline and key hiring metrics like time-to-hire and average response time. This helped Tina prioritize her time and keep managers accountable.
These features have made the entire process of managing the talent pipeline easy and efficient for Applebee‘s.
“We plan to continue using LANDED to help with our recruiting for both our front- and back-of-house needs. With COVID, we have had to furlough several hourly team members. We know that not all will return and we use LANDED to fill the open positions."
