A Milwaukee-based startup is seeking $50,000 from investors to ramp up development for its restaurant and hospitality staffing platform, WorkShift.
The early stage company is aiming to connect workers to the service industry with open shifts in Milwaukee. The app is geared toward workers in the gig economy, which has seen a 25% rise in demand since the pandemic was declared a national emergency in March, according to data from staffing company GigSmart.
“The gig economy is being fully embraced from the worker and the business side,” said Bekki Yang, WorkShift co-founder and CEO. “In the service industry, they are going to have to have a paradigm shift. They need technology resources.”
Restaurants remain one of the hardest hit industries since the coronavirus took hold. The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reports one in four U.S. jobs lost during the country’s various shutdowns have been in restaurants and bars.
Despite the challenges, WorkShift sees an opportunity to transform the sector’s outdated hiring practices by providing gig workers and hospitality businesses the opportunity to staff in-demand open shifts with the ease and speed of an app.
It’s an idea that has been in play in the health care industry for years, said Manny Lara, a co-founder of WorkShift and the startup’s chief development officer.
“I’ve seen it in health care around nurse shifts,” said Lara, whose professional background is in health care human resources. “I thought we could create something like this for restaurants and hospitality. From the HR side, it was ‘how do you get more nimble with staffing?’ This was a great connection of that.”
Lara and Yang first began discussing the app concept in the fall of 2019, months before the pandemic struck, with the original goal to launch the app ahead of the Democratic National Convention. The event was once projected to draw more than 50,000 people to the city.
“We chatted with the DNC committee, we talked with (restaurant) owners, (and) the restaurant businesses were really worried about staffing the event,” Lara said. “We were getting ready to work with people around March.”
Like so many businesses, the pandemic caused the startup to pause — and pivot.
“It was really just timing,” Yang said. “It allowed us to think this through.”
With the pandemic shifting the hospitality landscape, WorkShift saw a greater opportunity to build out its technology platform to help local businesses struggling to rebound amid the uncertainty. And for workers, the app could provide the key to flexible gig jobs needed to shore up squeezed income, something the startup hadn’t necessarily considered before.
“We paint this picture that you could receive a notification in a restaurant that someone needs to fill a shift," Lara said. "You’re potentially working there the next night. That’s how nimble we want this to be."
After recently pitching its concept to investors, WorkShift launched a funding round to raise $50,000 to enhance the infrastructure needed to move the app toward a pilot launch.
The startup intends to earn revenue by providing users both a transactional and a membership offering, and collecting a small fee. Businesses further benefit by reducing hiring overhead costs and avoiding the thorns of high turnover, the founders say.
In the future, WorkShift envisions “building a community” within the app, similar to a “LinkedIn for service workers,” connecting its users to hospitality training, and launching its service in similarly mid-sized markets such as Cleveland or Raleigh, North Carolina.
Along with the startup’s third co-founder, Julio Fernandez, the founders also say they want to showcase entrepreneurial success among a group of diverse startup owners, especially in an industry widely represented by minorities. Yang is Hmong, Lara is Mexican, and Fernandez is Dominican.
“We really want to make an impact with our app,” Yang said. “We want to launch by the same time next year, with something that can serve workers and the customers with their very baseline needs. We’re hoping that once [investors] see the opportunity that allows us to enhance the platform, we’ll get to the vision we have.”
