Culver's Increased Task Completion Rates Across the Back of House

How one store cut temperature checks from 15 minutes to under 5, and got its back of house under control

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

• Temperature checks completed in under 5 minutes, down from 15+
• List completion up from around 20% to over 90%

Where Things Started

Greg had a back-of-house problem, and it kept coming back to temperature checks. Getting daily tasks done was becoming inefficient, and there was no real accountability for who completed what.

"Temperature logs were taking 15 minutes or more. Stopping what you were doing, tracking down the clipboard, and shuffling through the kitchen three times a day was inefficient."

When the Back of House Slows the Front

The bottleneck didn't stay in the kitchen. Greg noticed it start to affect customer service, with employees not showing the Midwest hospitality Culver's is known for. He needed a way to get more done and lift his team's morale at the same time, because the accountability gap was stark.

"We were probably completing 1 in 5 temperature checks. We had no process for accountability, to know who did what."

From 20% to 90%

Greg joined more than 350 Culver's locations already using the platform for restaurant executions. He didn't stop at temperature checks, either, putting it to work on corporate checklists, food safety lists, product rotation, and more. The value showed up fast.

"Now taking temperatures is less than 5 minutes—start to finish. List completion went from around 20% to over 90%. With Jolt's task notifications, our percentage rates have increased drastically."

Greg credits much of that jump to automatic list alerts, which nudged employees in real time and led to faster service across the store.

Efficiency in Action

The gains added up to real time saved. Greg's store now completes food safety checks three times faster than before, and his managers have saved an average of 10 hours a week, more than a full workday.

"Jolt helps me complete back of house tasks so my employees are able to focus on the front of house with greater efficiency and cheerfulness."

Greg's store is one location within a much larger footprint: more than 13,000 Culver's employees use the platform for team accountability, digital food safety, and employee performance.

The solutions behind the story

Culver's relies on:

• SmartSense Operate, so the whole team does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.
• SmartSense remote monitoring that sends alerts when temperatures fall outside a defined range.
• SmartSense Temperature Probes, for recording food temperatures in seconds.
• SmartSense Information Library, which keeps employee training and content in one central hub.
• SmartSense Schedule, which makes scheduling the whole crew simple with a drag-and-drop interface.
• SmartSense Label, which speeds up label-making and cuts errors.