Moto Yogo serves up frozen dessert heaven at iconic landmarks while Deputy works behind the scenes

In another life, Stan, the centerpiece of the Moto Yogo mobile food operation, was simply one of a flotilla of electric milk floats whistling around English streets in the early hours. Back in the day, everyone used to wake up to their ubiquitous whirr accompanied by the gentle clinking of milk bottles.

As recently as the 1980s, 89% of all milk consumed by British households arrived in a glass bottle and was delivered to the doorstep every morning. But with the rise of the supermarket, all that changed and today, doorstep deliveries account for just 8% of household milk consumption.

With the number of milk rounds on the wane, many milk floats were consigned to the scrap heap. But not Stan.

Stan was lovingly refurbished and cleverly loaded with enough battery power to run a frozen yogurt machine. As such, Stan was given a new milky mission with Moto Yogo: to deliver ‘the yummiest organic frozen yogurt in the Spooniverse’.

Established in 2013, Moto Yogo sells organic frozen yogurt at foodie markets in and around London, from the back of Stan and one other food truck called Winnie.

But it’s not just their electric vehicles. Moto Yogo is environmentally friendly to its core. All the pots and spoons used are compostable and made from renewable resources, and most of the delicious toppings like rhubarb crumble are locally sourced, from other small businesses in London.

Running a tiny but dynamic and vibrant operation of 15 people with goodness at its heart, efficiency is everything, says April Doty, co-founder and chief swirler of Moto Yogo.

“Our business is tiny but summers are extremely busy and 18-hour days are commonplace. After a long day in the van, the last thing you need is a mountain of paperwork and time-consuming admin on work schedules and timesheets.”

“We were using an online calendar for recording staff availability, and another calendar for actually publishing shifts. Plus, I used a spreadsheet for counting hours and used regular emails and texts for communicating with staff individually and as a group.”

“All this admin was consuming far too much time. And on those long, exhausting days in the van, it was time that I just didn’t have. ”

“We needed to find a system that was as efficient and flexible as possible. I Googled solutions that would integrate with QuickBooks, our payroll system. It had to be affordable, scalable, and easy for both staff and management to use on the go, across everyone’s various mobile devices.”

“While I was confident that I would find something that would meet our needs, Deputy’s beautiful interface and excellent customer service has exceeded all my expectations.”

Doty explains, “We work in an extremely dynamic environment where everyone has to be nimble when it comes to change. We all have to be ready to jump on trains and appear at events across the city at relatively short notice. The role of Deputy in all this is central. It’s become our dashboard for all our activities, and now we couldn’t operate without it.”

“I still get a geeky thrill when I open the Deputy dashboard and access all the handy reports.

“Deputy has replaced the multiple calendars, spreadsheets, and ad-hoc communication in one fell swoop.”

“We grant our staff maximum flexibility to work the hours they want while still balancing hours fairly across the team. Deputy facilitates this effortlessly. Our staff members simply enter the hours they are not available and we schedule shifts around their availability. And we can easily check the hours assigned and worked for every member of the team during the month so that we ensure a fair distribution of shifts.”

Favourite thing

“While we have more than a dozen staff working for Moto Yogo, they are never in the same room together at one time. So good communication is absolutely essential. It’s critical to building a cohesive team.

“So we just love Deputy’s News Feed,” adds Doty. “It’s a fantastic tool for keeping everyone connected to each other in real time. In fact, staff working on ‘Stan’ the milk float strike up friendly competitions with staff working on ‘Winnie’ the milk float to see who sells the most, takes the best pictures or spots the cutest dogs, babies or celebrities.”

“Deputy enables us to communicate together as one family with a shared experience, which is just how we want our people to feel.”

“And when it comes to payday, Deputy has made payday a cinch. I spend minutes rather than hours calculating and processing pay. We use QuickBooks at Moto Yogo headquarters, which integrates beautifully with Deputy.”

“It makes sense to use software that works with other time-saving programs, which is one of the reasons we chose Deputy. We’re now eager to experiment with other integrations like Vend which will help us further streamline our retail analytics and inventory information so that we can focus less on administration and more on growing our business.”