Chatwick Coffee & Bakery saves 2 hours per hire with Shiftbase HR Pro

Thomas Hoare Chatwick and his father Alex run Chatwick Coffee & Bakery, three specialty coffee cafés in Breda, Den Bosch, and Bergen op Zoom. They added HR Pro on top of Shiftbase, and Thomas now saves about two hours on every hire.  

Every small hospitality founder running multiple sites knows the feeling. Hiring lives in your head. Contracts live in your inbox. Somewhere in there is a passport copy you've chased three times. As Chatwick Coffee & Bakery grew from one café in Breda to three across the south of the Netherlands, Thomas, the founder, hit that wall.

By adding HR Pro on top of Shiftbase, Thomas got the whole new-joiner cycle into one system. The result: about two hours back on every hire, time he's spending on planning the next cafés instead of chasing passport copies.

 The challenge: hiring lived in the founder's head 

Thomas Hoare Chatwick and his father Alex started Chatwick Coffee & Bakery five years ago, a single café in Breda with two things they wanted to do well: bake every pastry themselves, and roast every bean themselves. They grew the brand from there. Today they have around 30 people working across three cafés in Breda, Den Bosch, and Bergen op Zoom, mostly part-time.

For years, Thomas ran hiring out of his own head. He brought new joiners on by email and text message. Each new hire added another plate spinning in his head: who'd sent a passport copy, who hadn't, whose contract was still in draft, who needed a chase, who'd messaged at midnight asking about holiday hours.

He'd send a contract as a PDF, chase passport copies, chase the loonheffing form, and chase them again when the first version came back wrong. His accountant made manual changes to contracts every time something needed adjusting, which added up in fees and time. He kept holiday balances in spreadsheets, so staff couldn't see what they had left, and Thomas would calculate it for them on the side.

He was making it work, but only because he was holding it together personally. Looking back at the whole stitched-together way of hiring, he summed it up himself:

“It was all a bit less professional than I wanted to be.”
Thomas Hoare Chatwick, Co-Founder, Chatwick Coffee & Bakery

The solution: Shiftbase first, then HR Pro 

Thomas joined Shiftbase because he'd outgrown his free planning tool and could no longer see the things that mattered as the business grew. In his first month on the platform, he saw the email inviting customers to try HR Pro. He said yes immediately. Contract and onboarding admin was the next thing creaking, and HR Pro was built to absorb exactly that.

Why he said yes: everything in one place, a clear next task in front of him every time he logged in, and a flow where staff can't submit incomplete information.

 Results at a glance 

1. Around 2 hours saved per hire, time Thomas is putting into planning the next cafés.

2. Onboarding paperwork collected in full on first submission. No more three-time passport chases.

3. Contract changes in a few clicks, where they used to take a chain of emails between Thomas and his accountant.

4. Staff self-serve their own holiday balance through the app, so Thomas isn't fielding the same question on Mondays.

5. Accountant on the same view, which cut the manual contract-change billing that used to add up in fees and time.

Vorher und nachher bei Chatwick

 The impact: hiring lives in one system now 

 Thomas now does the whole new-joiner cycle in Shiftbase. His accountant logs into the same view, so they no longer email back and forth on every change. He updates contracts in a few clicks where it used to take a chain of emails. Staff can see their own holiday balance, which means Thomas isn't fielding the same question on Mondays. And he's stopped chasing documents. 

"It's all baked into the onboarding process now. Staff just can't forget what they need to send: passport copies, the loonheffing form, the lot." -Thomas Hoare Chatwick, Co-Founder, Chatwick Coffee & Bakery

He brings the accountant point up unprompted: he has everything in one place now, where it used to cost him real money. 

"My accountant can see what's happening in one place. It used to cost me a lot of money before." 

All in, the move has saved Thomas about two hours on every hire, time he's spending on planning the next cafés. The platform is doing what the founder used to do, which means the founder can do something else. 

What's next, for Chatwick and for Shiftbase

Thomas is hiring Chatwick's first dedicated HR person as the business scales, and putting his focus on planning the next cafés. He's stepping out of the HR function because he no longer has to be in the middle of every hire.Shiftbase is in this with him. We build the product in step with operators like Thomas: solo founders today, bigger teams tomorrow. As he grows Chatwick Coffee & Bakery from a founder doing HR to a team running it, we'll keep building HR Pro to match what that next stage actually needs. Solve the chaos today, grow into the next stage tomorrow.

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