How Coast Simplified Communication and Efficiency at Colorado Sno-Balls

More about Colorado Sno-Balls

Industry

Restaurant

Size

6 Employees

Location

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Background

Colorado Sno-Balls is a Southern-style snow cone business in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Starting as a fun family project in 2012, Colorado Sno-Balls has transformed from a food truck business to a beloved shop establishment in the local community. With a continually-growing following, the snow cone shop has brought a totally new style of dessert to Colorado Springs. Inspired by the childhood memories of co-owners Jennifer Sweet and her husband, Jeremy Sweet, and reminiscent of their Southern upbringing, their iconic Sno-Balls dessert is an “ice treat on steroids,” with ice crushed so finely that it feels like real, powdery snow.

Jennifer Sweet co-owns and manages Colorado Sno-Balls. With her husband as the other co-owner and their two sons working at the store, the shop conveys a family like atmosphere — and yet, it’s not your average mom-and-pop shop!

“It’s like a family, but not just a regular mom-and-pop shop!”

As Colorado Sno-Balls continues to expand, Jennifer is always looking for new ways to improve and expand their business. Over the past few years, Colorado Sno-Balls has been a major contributor to local school fundraisers and events. Having helped fundraise enough money to support a whole school year’s worth of school lunches, Jennifer and her business are now an integral part of their community.

Jessica and Jeremy Sweet Owners of Colorado Sno Balls

Frozen Communication

With a growing business, Jennifer has no time to spare when it comes to effective and easy communication with her staff. Before Coast, Jennifer dealt with text messaging between various staff members, which took time away from her already-busy workday.

Text messaging would often lead to further disorganization between staff and managers, as texts would frequently get lost or need to be re-sent through several different messaging apps, depending on the medium each employee used to communicate. Photos of the work calendar or schedule would get lost in the chat stream, and would often have to be sent several times, or separately to each staff member. Shift swaps and covers were always complicated.

Jennifer needed a simple and centralized way to keep track of communication between staff. Luckily, she discovered Coast!

Inside of Colorado Sno Ball

Cool, Calm, and Collected — How Coast Simplified Communication and Efficiency at Colorado Sno-Balls

After browsing the app store for a solution to increase efficiency at her small business, Jennifer stumbled upon Coast. Immediately, Colorado Sno-Balls found many of Coast’s features to be very useful in the everyday workflow of the business.

The main feature that drastically changed Jennifer’s business was the easy and convenient group messaging capability. Unlike text messaging, Coast allowed for her and her staff to have one form of centralized communication, and provided an easy way to communicate with individual staff. Announcements and changes were easily made and received via the All Teams Chat feature, while individual conversations between Jennifer and her staff became more frequent, but easier than ever. After adopting Coast, Jennifer noticed that her employees were more likely to reach out to her through the app when there were questions or problems, as Coast reduced the awkwardness of sending personal text messages. Basically, Coast became a safe, professional platform for communication among Jennifer’s staff.

“Employees are more likely to ask questions or keep me updated regularly, because Coast is right there.”

Coast’s Team Schedule was another feature that Jennifer and her husband loved. Before Coast, staff members would often lose the schedule, but with Coast, Jennifer could easily create and upload the schedule to a centralized location where everyone could access it. No more wasted time searching for and sending schedules to staff!

“This way, they can go on the app and pull up the schedule any time — easy!”

Coast’s Shift Swaps has been a big time saver for Jennifer and her staff. Now, instead of having to deal with the confusing, often tangled stream of communication between staff and managers, Coast keeps shift swap updates in one place, where everyone can reference the changes. Not only is the Shift Swaps feature easy to use for Jennifer’s staff, but they can now use it independently. Colorado Sno-Balls’ staff is able to find and swap/cover a shift worker in minutes, and Jennifer no longer needs to play the middleman during her hectic workday.

Snow Cone Colorado Sno Ball

Crushing it! — How Coast has Positively Changed Colorado Sno-Balls

Coast has made many of Colorado Sno-Balls’ daily nuisances nearly disappear!

Now, communication within the business takes little time and effort, and is much more effective than it used to be. Coast keeps all staff communication, schedules, and swaps in one place, allowing for more streamlined and efficient communication. Ultimately, with Coast, Jennifer’s staff is more communicative and organized than ever before.

“My favorite thing about Coast is that it keeps everyone on the team together!”

Coast has also reduced the amount of time that Jennifer and her staff spend on proper communication and scheduling, which saves more time and money for the business. With Coast, Jennifer can spend more time managing the “fun” aspects of her business, and is no longer caught up in miscommunication issues or scheduling concerns.

“We’re saving so much time and money now that we’re no longer searching our phones for shift information or important business communications that get lost in a sea of other messages. Coast keeps us highly efficient!”

With Coast, Colorado Sno-Balls has seen a significant change in how Jennifer and her staff approach each workday, with an overall sense of relief and composure.

Why worry when you can Coast?

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