How a multi-location owner ended the reprint-and-laminate cycle and aced his EcoSure audit
SmartSense acquired Jolt in 2025. The two teams now operate together, combining SmartSense's monitoring solution with Jolt's task-management and operations software. The result is a single service, equipment, and software offering built on both companies' technology. The story below originally described this customer's experience with Jolt, which is now part of SmartSense. Learn more about the SmartSense platform.
The results
- Nearly $150 saved per month on labeling
- Roughly 10 minutes saved per shift on temperature checks
- 100% score on the most recent corporate EcoSure audit
Where things started
Garrett, a multi-location Buffalo Wild Wings owner, was stuck in a loop familiar to anyone who's run operations on paper. Every time a policy or procedure changed, the printer and laminator came back out.
"We were always having to reprint things and laminate like crazy just because policies or operations changed. Think opening duties, closing duties, the way servers did closeouts. It was really hard to make sure that both of my locations had the correct operations and were on the same page."
The knock-on effect was wasted labor, with Garrett often redoing work himself.
"Too often we were having to redo work, or show someone how to do something right because paper lists weren't updated."
Seeing the possibilities
When Garrett saw the team-accountability tools, the potential clicked immediately.
"I just knew the possibility was there. If we could accomplish all our line checks on an iPad, we could move everything to digital and have names and timestamps of when everything was done."
Digital lists gave him a way to manage and update every checklist on the fly, tailored to each store.
"I love the ability to create custom checklists for each of my stores, at the store-level. I can't tell you how much documentation you've saved me. If you even saw how many checklists and how many things we create—it's amazing."
The savings hiding in the label drawer
What started as a checklist fix turned up savings Garrett hadn't gone looking for. His stores had been labeling with Day Dots, at real volume.
"We only knew the norm before we were introduced to Jolt. Previously, we were using Day Dots for labeling. In one month we used about 15,000 labels. You really opened our eyes to the savings there."
Switching cut his labeling costs by nearly $150 a month, and that's product alone, before counting the time his team no longer spends filling out labels by hand.
"Everyone loves Jolt labeling—our kitchen, our management team, the front of house. You won't see as many sharpies around the store now. Jolt makes it easy: they just press a button, and they know the shelf life is already on there."
Faster, more trustworthy temperature checks
Temperature probes tightened up both the clock and the numbers. The old routine—temp, walk, write, walk back, repeat—was quietly eating shifts.
"The time that it takes to temp something, go and write it down, come back, temp something again, go and write it down and come back—I think that was huge. I would say that they are able to shave off 10 minutes every shift, which obviously adds up over the course of a week."
For his managers, the bigger win was accuracy they could trust.
"My managers love it for the accuracy. Employees can't fudge numbers when they use the temperature probes which is great. Just being able to go around and temp something, press the button, and it goes to the next item. They like that a lot."
Measuring the success
The cumulative effect, by Garrett's own measure, is that managing checklists and holding his team to standard got "ten times easier," corporate QSC and audit compliance included. His proof point: a perfect score on his most recent corporate EcoSure audit.
"If the tools are there—which they are with Jolt—it's much easier to achieve those higher scores."
The solutions behind the story
Garrett's Buffalo Wild Wings locations rely on:
- SmartSense Operate, so the whole team does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.
- SmartSense Information Library, which keeps employee training and content in one central hub.
- SmartSense Label, which speeds up label-making and cuts errors.
- SmartSense Temperature Probes, for recording food temperatures in seconds.
