Red Door Escape Room has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by managing labor law compliance with Deputy

There’s a reason why Red Door Escape Room is one of the fastest-growing brands in their industry. Anyone who visits one of their locations will tell you that they experienced a world of fascinating, unique, and challenging puzzles that required them to think outside the box and open their minds to new creative solutions.

The concept of these experiences all started as a single escape room in South Lake, Texas, in 2015. With much success at that initial location and a core mission of “deepening relationships between people through creative entertainment,” the business only grew from there.

Today, they have locations in Texas, Utah, Virginia, Oklahoma, Maryland, and California. Since their first location opened in 2015, their escape rooms have grown significantly in creativity, immersion and technology. They have evolved from mostly puzzles that involve locks and keys to a well-rounded experience with a wide variety of high-tech puzzles and special effects.

With rapid business growth and sixteen current locations, it’s been a challenge for management, including their Director of Operations, Cameron McKibben, to monitor team member schedules, comply with strict meal and rest break laws, and ensure they are staying hyper-efficient as they expand.

When it came to team member scheduling at Red Door Escape Room, their old software was really letting the team down. While it offered all the basics, it was missing key functionalities like labor law compliance management.

There was no way for managers to track breaks efficiently, apply premium pay to timesheets, automate breaks based on shift lengths, and track if team members waived their breaks.

Instead, managers had to juggle all of that manually, spending countless hours trying to ensure the right breaks were scheduled for all their team members. But without the right software to help, it became nearly impossible to track if breaks actually occurred. And when team members willingly skipped their breaks, tracking became even more cumbersome.

Eventually, managing meal breaks manually led to mistracking, and their team missed key requirements from California’s meal break compliance laws.

“We paid for it big time. Essentially, meal break compliance could not be managed through human beings alone as much as we hoped that was possible,” Cameron shares.

After looking for new solutions, Red Door Escape Room landed on Deputy — and there has been a great response from both managers and team members since making the switch.

On the compliance management front, Deputy has made it so much easier for Red Door Escape Room to meet complex break laws and reduce their chances of financial penalties – which Cameron estimates have saved his team hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“With Deputy, our meal break misses are almost zero. The app’s meal and rest break features have made it almost impossible for team members to miss their breaks. And if they do, the meal break and rest break premiums are automatically entered, so we’re already paying the penalty, versus being exposed to greater penalties later down the road,” Cameron shares.

He adds that managers now have peace of mind, knowing that the business has better guardrails and protections around meal breaks, rest breaks, and compliance, thanks to the technology that Deputy provides.

With Deputy’s scheduling solution, Cameron’s team can also manage and access schedules at their fingertips, instead of being confined to a computer. Team members receive instant updates with the latest schedule, so there’s no confusion about when to come in for their shifts. And managers can see if people are running late or forgot to clock in, so they can keep the business running smoothly.

General managers are also spending less time on building schedules – saving half an hour a week, which equates to $12,000 in annual savings. They can refocus their time on growing the business, engaging with their team, and ensuring every guest has a thrilling experience.

The reporting feature has also been instrumental for his team. “It’s given us a lot of useful data,” Cameron says. “I personally build reports and can quickly see a centralized view of all locations and quickly toggle through different data.”

When asked how he would describe Deputy’s scheduling software, Cameron says, “Deputy has made everything around scheduling easier for team members and managers. It’s user-friendly and streamlined – whether you’re on the front-end or back-end as a team member or manager.”