The Spanish Table saves up to 312 hours a year on employee scheduling, so they can focus on opening more locations and delighting customers.

Specializing in delectable food, wines, and cookware from the Iberian peninsula, The Spanish Table helps their customers create delightful gourmet moments and capture the magic of a Spanish holiday with every mouthful.

Bastian Schoell, Company President and General Manager, says it all began with one married couple twenty-one years ago.

“We have a great origin story. A couple in the 90s went to Spain, enjoyed their culinary experiences, then came back to the U.S. and basically realized that they couldn’t find any of the stuff they loved eating in Spain here. So they decided to start importing and founded a very small operation.”

“Today, we have one of the best Iberian Peninsula wine collections you can find anywhere, including online.”

“When I first bought the business, I was puzzling over what makes its magic work, because it seemed so specialized. Some people even asked me, ‘What are you getting into? This is so narrow and so focused.’ But what I’ve realized is that when people go to Spain, they come back impressed…It’s not only the food, it’s the food and the culture. When people come back, they miss that easygoing, Tapas at 5 pm, eat dinner at 10:30 pm, and stay out all night way of life…and they want to reconnect with it. I think that’s the magic of what we do.”

Before Bastian came on as owner, and before he picked up Deputy, The Spanish Table was using clunky spreadsheets to schedule staff and a wall-mounted time clock to record everyone’s hours — a time clock people often forgot to use. 

The whole process needed a renovation. Bastian recalls, “You had to clock in, and then it would print out a spreadsheet, and you would manually enter that into your payroll. I was like, I can’t deal with that.”

With a background in tech, Bastian knew that for The Spanish Table to grow, they needed modern, cloud-based tools that would cut down on wasted time and help them run efficiently.

“We wanted to put together a best-of-breed tech stack,” Bastian says. What made Deputy stand out was that it focused on meeting the needs, and solving the specific problems, of retail.

“Retail is just different — you don’t work like you work in an office. Store managers have trouble getting the message out to employees…Getting people to clock in and clock out is always a challenge in any retail business. Making that easy is important, and providing a level of visibility into what is happening in real-time is important.”

Bastian says that Deputy has given him exactly the seamless time tracking experience he wanted, with the real-time visibility that is so key in retail. He can easily see who is on shift, who forgot to clock in or out, and plug timesheet data straight into their payroll system. 

“That's what attracted us to Deputy as well: the integrations…that flow from time card to payment,” Bastian says.

Another key benefit of Deputy for The Spanish Table is the simplicity of the mobile app, which is a particular hit with their younger employees.

“People being able to clock in and out on their personal device is important,” Bastian says. “And in some of our locations, we skew towards a younger employee set that has a predisposition to “Is there an app for that?”.

Looking ahead, Bastian is confident that Deputy will empower them to meet their ambitious expansion goals.

“With Deputy, I know I can easily roll out to a new location. All I have to do is log in to the system. I don’t need to mount a new time clock on the wall…you’re just off and running…We can start scheduling employees as soon as we open.”

When asked what advice he would give to other managers considering Deputy, Bastian said, “Do it. The benefit will be immediate. Employees will adopt quickly and you will reduce multi-hour workflows to minutes.”