When building a restaurant group, the #1 driver for sustainable success is your people. It's the most strategic differentiator today—what separates industry leaders from those who merely survive. Unfortunately, HR teams and managers can't find the time for strategic people work. That's because they're struggling with multiple tools that are hard to use and are prone to error.

Soigné is a single, easy-to-use tool to recruit, manage, schedule, pay, and develop restaurant teams. A seamlessly integrated product that gives you back the time to foster flourishing cultures and build dream teams.

Traditional HR tools suffer from three core problems:

👉 They're not built for restaurants
Most HR tools are created as all-market solutions ("Scheduling for SMEs"). They offer endless configurations and customization options but are unable to deliver best-in-class, industry-specific workflows.

👉 They're disconnected
Juggling multiple tools means different logins, workflows, and support contacts. But more importantly, you know how disconnected these tools are. You're entering the same data in multiple tools, integrations aren't working, or need to be checked constantly. You have just enough automation to operate, but not enough to scale.

👉 They're hard to use
Simplicity is often overlooked in other tools. As a result, teams slow down and lose morale.

A new and better way

To regain momentum and operate with speed and focus again, companies are switching to Soigné. We're seeing immediate impact across five key areas.

1. Productivity – Soigné is purpose-built for restaurants and integrates all HR tools into one product. As a result, Soigné leaves zero margin for error and boosts productivity 2x to 3x. This frees up time to invest in what matters most: people and culture.

2. Scalability – Soigné's scalability is unlimited. Traditional HR setups don't scale efficiently: adding locations means adding headcount just to maintain the same level of service. With Soigné, your team's capacity grows with automation, allowing them to support more locations while focusing on high-impact work.

3. Decentralisation – As restaurant groups grow, centralized HR becomes both a growth bottleneck and a risk. All knowledge sits with one or two people at HQ. Every contract needs their approval, every question goes to them, and when they're on vacation or leave, the entire HR function freezes. Soigné enables true decentralization. Location managers handle contracts, promotions, benefits, and leave, while the platform ensures compliance and gives HQ visibility and control.

4. Talent attraction – Traditional system are not attracting a new generation of talent, even though it's essential. We hear from customers that 3x to 5x more candidates are coming in with Soigné’s recruitment widget. That constant flow of talent brings peace and stability to the group.

5. Performance – With a set of 20 KPIs, customers build their own dashboard to steer their teams and demonstrate HR's impact on the group. Think of metrics like trial shift and probation conversion, time to first promotion, and retention of new hires.

"Soigné is the only way to scale operations. I highly recommend it to all HR teams"

Bartel — Switched to Soigné in October 2024

The problem with outsourcing payroll:

👉 It assumes incompetence and creates fear.
👉 It undermines team culture.
👉 It's expensive.

While outsourcing might avoid short-term headaches, you're still managing third parties while paying premium rates. More importantly, you're not building the internal capabilities that drive long-term competitive advantage.

1. Soigné is self-serve

Soigné brings all your HR tools onto one integrated platform. It's purpose-built for restaurants for simplicity and to prevent mistakes. With Soigné, the software guides anyone through core HR tasks: creating contracts, processing promotions, adding benefits, managing leave and sickness. No specialized expertise required. Yes, that includes running payroll.

2. Soigné builds team culture

From quick candidate responses, to smooth onboarding, to thoughtful promotions—every touchpoint shows your people you care. Restore the fundamental relationship, and in return, employees go above and beyond for your guests and for you.

3. Soigné charges a fixed fee

With a transparent, fixed fee per employee, you'll finally see your actual profit margins. No hidden costs, no surprises. Read the RGB Silent Disco Bars case to see how much they saved by switching.

"I had to double-check with my accountant: is this really this month's profit? I couldn't believe how much we gained by switching to Soigné Pay."

RGB — Switched to Soigné in August 2025

The salary admin industry is structured around friction, as complexity pays better than simplicity ("Hourly-billing mentality"). Whether you're switching from various tools or from a payrolling service, the outcome is the same: you now handle your HR and pay run independently from third parties. You've gained more control, deeper insights, and stronger internal capabilities—all while cutting costs and bringing back the fun in HR work.

And the service? Soigné includes free, unlimited chat and phone support with our salary specialists. We guarantee a flawless pay run every month.

Soigné is the tool of choice for more than 200 restaurants, from ambitious newcomers like Flora, to major groups, like 3WO. They choose Soigné to accelerate their people & culture.

See Soigné in action. We'll walk you through the system and show you exactly what it can do for your restaurants.

Once you've got a good feeling about Soigné, it's time to see it in action. A Soigné pilot involves (at least) one location for four to six weeks, covering a complete pay cycle. This gives your team enough time to experience the full system and see how Soigné streamlines operations.

Choosing the right pilot location
Pick a location that's eager to try something new and has influence within your group. Look for locations that spend significant time on recruitment, contracts, and pay runs—they're most likely to feel the friction in their current processes and will be your biggest fans when the pilot succeeds.

Pilot timeline
A pilot is the full Soigné experience and follows the regular onboarding timeline, just one location first. We close with a survey, learn what's working, and where to focus before we roll out further.

What does pilot success look like?
Most teams define success as users genuinely enjoying Soigné—finding it faster, easier, and more reliable than their previous setup. When managers say "I wish we'd switched sooner" or "I actually look forward to handling HR now," you know the pilot has worked. Success means your team feels more in control, makes fewer mistakes, and has more time for what actually matters: building great teams.

After pilot success, it's time to get the key stakeholders onboard. This means business owners, finance, and often restaurant managers. Schedule an internal presentation with support from our product specialists. Before the meeting, distribute these stakeholder-specific pitches to build alignment and address concerns proactively.

Pitch to owners

Use the Why switch section of this guide to build your story about Soigné's impact on your restaurant group. Put simply: with Soigné, you'll gain time to work on culture and build dream teams instead of wasting it on admin.

Pitch to finance

Soigné reduces payroll errors and corrections, the hidden cost drain that compounds every month. Pre-payroll gives you instant visibility into labor costs. Journal entries integrate directly with your accounting software (Exact, Twinfield), eliminating manual data entry. Clean data, accurate numbers, faster month-end close.

Pitch to restaurant managers

Soigné puts recruitment, contracts, and scheduling in one simple tool. No more waiting on HR for basic tasks. You'll handle more of your own people management, learning modern HR practices that make you more valuable and give you more control over your location. Less dependence on others, more ownership of your location.

You've made the decision to use Soigné as your tool of choice. Start by picking a month. What works best differs per group, but by nature, certain periods have their own dynamics. Some are easier to switch than others:

• January - The best month to switch. Apart from accrued hours, there are no major data imports. January gives you a clean connection with the previous book year and a fresh start for your new system.
• February to May - Great period to plan your switch. Minimal historical data to import, and you're still ahead of the busy spring hiring season. This gives your team time to get comfortable with Soigné before peak operations.
• June to August - Depends on how your group is organized. For most, summer at HQ is quieter and provides the breathing room needed to switch systems without disrupting daily operations.
• September, October - Good period if you want to catch your late-season hiring wave. More data to import from the year so far, but manageable if planned properly.
• November, December - Depending on the size of your locations, this could get challenging with year-end processes and holiday rush. Might be better to wait until January for a smoother transition.

Now it's time to get all your locations running on Soigné. Below is a typical timeline for rolling out the full Soigné system: from your first hire to your first fully automated pay run. The three phases build on each other: get contracts right, run pay, then bring scheduling live so hours flow into salary admin automatically.

The red flags 🚩 indicate important onboarding milestones.

Recruitment & contracts

1.1 Recruitment live. Start hiring - Replace your current recruitment form with Soigné's widget. Here's a link to the SDK for your web developer, but we're happy to help out as well. When live, the first applicants come in and job offers can be created and sent to new joiners 🚩

1.2 Employment data imported - We migrate your employee & salary data to Soigné. It becomes your central place for all employee information: docs, notes, messages, contracts, scheduling, leave and sickness. Since most restaurant groups use a combination of their scheduler, payroll system and Excel for employee data, this part of the migration will feel like a breeze. You'll instantly get overview and control.

1.3 Reference functions & skilled worker mapped - A mapping of reference functions and skilled worker classification is required for a compliant setup.

1.4 Task management implemented - With Soigné as your single source of truth, you'll get an overview of every recurring HR task that needs to be done. Fully compliant and no more switching between (disconnected) systems. To give you an idea, here are some of the tasks we generate:

👉 Renew or end contract
👉 Confirm or end probation period
👉 Sign contract
👉 Raise salary (birthdays under 21)
👉 Raise salary (CAO)
👉 Offer fixed hours (WAB)
👉 & many more...

With task management in place, Soigné becomes the leading system for all employment data 🚩

1.5 Additional documents uploaded - Upload any documents you have for your team: IDs, contracts, work permits, and so on.

Pay

2.1 Pay cycle closed in previous payroll system - You close last month in your current system before the handover.

2.2 Pay history migrated - We migrate your salary history from the current year. At year-end, employees receive one annual statement from Soigné.

2.3 Analysis & setup confirmed - We run an analysis of your payslips and ask you to confirm your setup. We look for unusual wage components, non-standard configurations, and compliance issues. Many teams use the migration to Soigné as an opportunity to audit their salary administration and start fresh with a clean setup.

2.4 Fixed hours paid - With contract data leading in Soigné, your fixed hours run is ready to go 🚩

2.5 On-call hours paid - For the first on-call run, you manually add approved hours, leave, and sickness to Soigné. From next month, once Scheduling is live, this is fully automated 🚩

2.6 Wage journal entries synced - Soigné generates your wage journal entries for bookkeeping. You can download them after each pay cycle, or use our Exact or Twinfield integration to sync them automatically to your accounting ledger.

Scheduling & hours

3.1 Permissions & task owners set - Set who's responsible for each task in Soigné and invite your managers to get access.

3.2 Managers onboarded - Managers receive step-by-step articles from our Help Center. We also host public video sessions, and for larger groups we open a temporary WhatsApp group during onboarding.

3.3 Scheduling scenarios & teams ready - Create your scenarios (scheduling templates) and set up your teams in Soigné.

3.4 Schedule published, employees invited - Employees are invited to the app once the first schedule is published 🚩

3.5 Start clocking in Soigné - On the first workday of the new month, clocking starts in Soigné 🚩

3.6 Overtime & leave balances migrated - Once you've finalised overtime and leave balances in your previous system, send them over and we'll migrate them to Soigné. From this point on, Soigné leads on worked hours, sickness, and leave. Well done! You've made it to the finish 🏁

Onboarding isn't complete the moment Scheduling goes live. It's complete once we know it's working well for your team. After your first scheduling period, we ask managers for feedback on the onboarding experience. We look at what went well and what we can improve.

Three months in, we check in to evaluate your results and ask for a referral. We grow through our customers, and we can only do that by delivering exceptional value.