How a Spare Rib Express franchisee got 100 hires a year off paper with Shiftbase HR Pro

Yorick Obbens started as a delivery driver at Spare Rib Express and now owns three of its restaurants across Brabant, in Tilburg, Breda, and Etten-Leur. He runs around a hundred hires a year, and with HR Pro on top of Shiftbase he has taken the paperwork off paper, with every contract read and signed before day one.

Any operator running more than one site knows the feeling. You can't be in three places at once, so hiring happens without you, on paper, in someone else's handwriting. A salary gets keyed in wrong. An address comes back unreadable. A contract gets signed on the first shift, if it gets signed at all. As Yorick Obbens grew from one Spare Rib Express store to three across Brabant, that became the part of the business he could no longer keep an eye on.

By switching hiring into HR Pro on top of Shiftbase, Yorick got every new joiner onto the same digital flow, in all three stores at once. The result: paperwork no longer on paper, every contract read and signed before day one, and 30 to 60 minutes back on every hire, across the roughly 100 people he takes on each year.

The challenge: hiring happened on paper, in three places at once

Yorick joined Spare Rib Express as a delivery driver in 2015, while he was still a student. He took on more responsibility over the next few years, became the owner, and grew the business through a period when home delivery went from busy to relentless. Today he runs three Spare Rib Express restaurants in Brabant, around eighty people in total, two larger stores in Tilburg and Breda and a smaller one in Etten-Leur.

Delivery work brings a team that is always moving. Some drivers stay for months, others for a few weeks, and across the three stores Yorick brings on roughly a hundred people a year. Before Shiftbase, each store's manager handled that intake on paper. New starters filled in their own contracts and tax forms by hand, and the managers passed the details up to Yorick. The handwriting was hard to read, so salaries, dates of birth, phone numbers, and street numbers came through wrong. Contracts got lost.

An unsigned contract on a driver carried a real risk too, the kind an owner running three stores can do without. But the deeper problem was how unprofessional the whole thing felt, and the room it left for disagreements later. A contract signed on the first shift, or not at all, is a contract nobody has really read. When the rules are not agreed up front, the discussions come afterwards, about damage, fines, or what was and was not agreed.

The solution: the whole hiring flow via HR Pro in every store

Yorick moved the entire new-joiner process into Shiftbase and switched on HR Pro for the contract and onboarding side. Now the contract is built into the system. New starters enter their own details and sign their contract and the company regulations digitally before their first shift, and Yorick checks the information rather than chasing it.

What sold him was predictability across sites he can't physically cover. The same flow runs in Tilburg, Breda, and Etten-Leur, so a hire is handled the same way whether or not he's in the building. Staff read and agree the terms ahead of day one in their own time, instead of scribbling a contract on the floor when they arrive. And because people fill in their own information, the handwriting errors that used to ripple through to payroll are gone.

Results at a glance

1. 30 to 60 minutes saved on every hire, across roughly 100 hires a year, which adds up to as much as two working weeks Yorick gets back across the year.
2. Issuing a new-hire contract drops from about 15 minutes to a couple, because the contract template is pre-built in HR Pro and new starters fill in their own details.
3. Every contract and the company rules read and signed before day one, so the terms are clear from the start, there are fewer disputes later about rules, damage, or fines, and managers no longer chase signatures mid-shift.
4. New joiners arrive shift-ready on day one, completing their own details and onboarding up front, so wrong salaries, dates of birth, and addresses from hard-to-read handwriting no longer reach payroll.
5. One hiring flow across all three stores, so Yorick gets oversight without having to be on-site.

Before and after at Spare Rib Express

The impact: a predictable hiring flow that takes minutes, in every store

We asked Yorick what changed and he points to how much more professional hiring feels now. Across three stores and a hundred hires a year, the mistakes that used to reach him have largely stopped, and every new joiner reads and signs their contract and the company rules before they start, in their own time. He still casts an eye over each new joiner's details, though now he's checking them rather than rebuilding them.

“Employees can read and sign their contract and company regulations in advance, in their own time, so the agreements are clearly documented from the start.” Yorick Obbens, Franchise Owner

The clarity pays off well after the hire, too.

“There are fewer discussions later about company rules, damages, fines or other employment conditions, and managers no longer need to get documents signed at the last minute during a shift.”

Yorick Obbens, Franchise Owner

We asked what he'd tell another franchise operator weighing up HR Pro, he didn't hesitate:

“Start now. It saves a lot of time and a lot of stress, especially if you run more than one store, because then you're depending on your managers.” Yorick Obbens, Franchise Owner

What's next, for Spare Rib Express and for Shiftbase

Yorick is focused on running the three stores well and keeping the floor staffed as drivers come and go, with the hiring admin no longer landing on his desk. If he opens a fourth store, he can run hiring the same way from day one, with nothing new to set up.

We build HR Pro in step with operators like Yorick. He's already given us sharp feedback on the onboarding flow, and that's exactly the kind of input that shapes where we take the product next. We're here to help multi-site operators solve the chaos today and grow into what the next stage needs.

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