Deputy provides the highest level of service for Veteran and military-spouse owners of Alpha Coffee

When Carl Churchill and wife Lori Churchill founded Alpha Coffee, they started out as an online retailer. Carl is a combat veteran and during his time serving, he would drink coffee, and lots of it. Unfortunately, the coffee he experienced when deployed was never good. After Carl’s retirement, following 21 years of service, he and his wife sat down for a cup of coffee to figure out the next step. That’s where their love for coffee and the military community came together. They wanted to be able to give back to the troops by selling coffee. With that, Alpha Coffee was born. For every order of coffee they ship, they would send a cup equivalent to troops deployed overseas.

“We want to be more than just coffee, we want to be coffee with a cause,” says owner Carl Churchill, “We honor all those who have served in the military and provide discounts to veterans as well as donating to charities.”

And their coffee was a hit! Many of the Salt Lake City coffee lovers quickly discovered Alpha Coffee and encouraged Carl and Lori to open up a coffee shop in the area. So, on June 30th of 2017, the first Alpha Coffee shop opened its doors in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

“We’ve been open for only a year, and we’re growing like crazy!” exclaims Carl, “So far, we’ve donated about 13,000 bags of coffee to the military. We hope to expand in the near future.”

Carl and Lori poured their heart and soul into their business, but also made sure to run it strategically. Since Alpha Coffee started out as an online retail store, Carl was very familiar with leveraging technology in order to be successful. He knew that being tech-savvy gave him an edge over the competition.

After opening up the first official location of Alpha Coffee, Carl and Lori wanted to make sure they were incorporating best practices into their business. Carl and Lori began researching and asking around for apps and softwares that would help improve the business workflow. “Deputy kept popping up as one of the best apps for managing schedules, timesheets, tasking, and communication. Deputy is, by far, the best solution for us,” says Carl, “We spoke to other coffee shops, and they told us to use Google Calendar; Deputy is light years ahead of that!”

Carl and Lori were able to completely integrate Deputy into their business. “Deputy covers all of our daily business operations. From messaging, clocking in via kiosk or the mobile app__, shift trading, and timesheets,” says Carl, “We use Quickbooks for payroll and it’s so streamlined it makes exporting timesheets a breeze.”

Not only did Deputy provide an easy way for Carl to keep track of his employees, he also saw how efficient his business was running because of Deputy. “Using Deputy to communicate versus using texting and email saves us hours. We use it every other day throughout the month,” says Carl, “That tool by itself is great.”

The shift trading feature has also been an extremely useful tool for Carl and his team. Carl and his employees love that people can trade and pick up shifts directly from the app. “We don’t have to jump through hoops to make sure shifts are filled. It’s all arranged for us,” says Carl.

Carl and his team also found a way to make clocking in on Deputy’s Kiosk a little more interesting. “Here at Alpha Coffee, we have a simple mission statement: Awesome coffee, be a warrior, give back, and have fun,” explains Carl, “One way we incorporate fun is by how we clock in. We hold monthly meetings where we cook for our employees and go over the previous months, including sharing the funniest pictures we find of our employees clocking in on the iPad. Now, my team is getting more creative with their daily clock-in photos and are even bringing in props! It’s a simple task that turned into something fun for my employees. We all get a kick out of it.”

In total, Carl stated that he saves about 15 to 20 hours a week just on scheduling, payroll, and communication. “We are always thinking towards the future. We were able to grow quickly and scale our business, and Deputy is a partner that can grow with us. Because of our fast growth, we are now looking to open up 2 more locations. It’s amazing that Deputy can handle that growth with such ease.”