Key takeaways
- A popular candy company has staffing challenges due to increased demand during busy seasonal periods.
- The Instawork platform proved far easier to use than their legacy staffing solution and Instawork Professionals outperformed past workers.
- Goo Goo Cluster's partnership with Instawork gives them confidence for expanding their future operations.
Since their start in 1912, Goo Goo Cluster has been known as Nashville’s official candy. And the iconic, round-shaped bar’s legend has only grown since then with chocolate fanatics everywhere obsessing over their nougaty goodness.
While the company loves the national popularity, it can sometimes lead to production challenges within their operations team - especially when it comes to the ups and downs of fulfilling seasonal gift orders throughout the year.
In the winter of 2022, Chris Miller, their Nashville-based Warehouse Operations Manager, was looking at a holiday rush of wholesale orders that could only be fulfilled by bringing on additional hourly staff. At the time, he was finding it very difficult to leverage the staffing provider he had in place to bring on the temporary workers it would require to get orders out the door.
He knew to fill his customer requests on time, he was going to need a better way to find workers - and fast.
The Challenge
“I had to do everything. I had to keep timesheets through an Excel spreadsheet,” Chris said of working with his previous on-demand labor service. “It was a manual process. It wasn’t efficient. But the orders kept pouring in.”
Very quickly, the toll taken on Chris doing tedious administrative tasks to keep his manufacturing quotas on course became unsustainable.
He realized he needed 10-12 workers per day to meet production demand, which was no small request. He also knew his old staffing solution not only made adding team members difficult, it was adding administrative overhead to his busy days.
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Outcome
Using the Instawork platform, Chris could easily hire the workers he needed for his team. He’s also been able to streamline shift scheduling, simplify time tracking, and ramp up and down based on his shipment volume in the process.
“The only thing I have to do is go in there, post a description of the job, how many professionals I need, and hit send.”
The results speak for themselves.
The Tennessee candy maker was able to realize a 300% increase in wholesale shipping after using Instawork. Fulfillment time sped up, quality of work increased, and packing and unloading ran smoother than ever.
Chris was able to build a roster of 25 workers ready to pick up open warehouse shifts from Goo Goo Cluster, and so far has filled 96% of his open shifts using Instawork Professionals.
As for support, Chris said, “If I have a question, the Instawork team are literally there to answer anything day or night, on the weekends.”
The Future
Goo Goo Cluster have bold plans for growth in coming years and want Instawork with them every step of the way.
“We are looking to expand in the near future and having the Instawork Pros here will help that expansion go a hundred times smoother.”
While seasonal rush work will always be a challenge for Chris’ team, he’s confident they will be able to handle it because Instawork’s platform will be the key driver to success in all they do moving forward.
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