Blue Plate Restaurant Co boosted staff knowledge and engagement with Typsy’s online compliance courses.

Blue Plate Restaurant Company is a restaurant group focusing on community-inspired, guest-intimate concepts. The company was formed in 1993 by David Burley and Stephanie Shimp with the opening of Highland Grill in Minneapolis, United States. Over the years Blue Plate has grown to include The Freehouse, The Lowry, 3 Squares Restaurant, Longfellow Grill, Edina Grill, Groveland Tap, Mercury Dining Room and Rail, Shindig Event Space, The Blue Barn and Blue Farm.

Challenge

Blue Plate Restaurant Company has eight brands across Minnesota, United States, and has struggled to coordinate training across and within its venues. 

The Company was looking for a video platform to make it as easy as possible for their teams to access information, upskill, and provide consistency across their brands.

Typsy's breadth of content designed specifically for hospitality, as well as the availability of content in both English and Spanish, made the platform ideal for Blue Plate Restaurant Company and its teams.

Solution

Blue Plate Restaurant Company has partnered with Typsy to support their teams since 2019. The company has seen immense success with engagement from staff on the platform as well as in venue. 

As the company is based in the state of Minnesota, there is mandatory training on topics such as anti-harassment and anti-bullying that must be covered by staff in order for a business to be compliant. Blue Plate found Typsy's online courses covering these topics helped train staff much more quickly than through face-to-face methods. Typsy's ability to assign these pieces of training to current and new hires, also meant Blue Plate was able to train staff on these topics before they began their next shift.

In 2020 and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Blue Plate Restaurant Co found Typsy enabled the team to keep engaged by utilizing the custom content feature. This was especially of use when the Blue Plate venues were looking to reopen - videos uploaded to Typsy contained key information to help team members get ready to get back on the floor.

Blue Plate has continued using Typsy's custom content feature to educate staff across their eight venues on their home-brewed beer which is available at all locations. Home-brewers at the craft house upload videos discussing the beers on offer and detailing how best to serve them, which has allowed team members across the state to learn how to pour and serve Blue Plate's home-brew before stepping onto the floor for service.

Results

Blue Plate Restaurant Company team members have received more than 8000 skill credits, over 600 certificates, and completed more than 800 hours of training.

The top courses watched by Blue Plate Restaurant team members include Workplace bullying and harassment, Draft beer operations, Health and wellbeing in hospitality, Front of house essentials, and Beer basics.