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 100 restaurants, from ambitious newcomers like Flora, to major groups, like 3WO. They choose Soigné to accelerate their people & culture.

Request a demo to connect with our product specialists. You'll leave with a clear picture of what switching looks like, and full access to explore on your own terms to see if Soigné is the right fit for your team.

Once you've got a good feeling about Soigné, it's time to see it in action. A Soigné pilot involves one to three locations over four to six weeks, covering a complete pay cycle. This gives your team enough time to experience the full product 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.

Export and import data
The first step for piloting is getting access to your current salary admin system.

• Analyzing payslips - We run an analysis of your payslips to fully understand 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.
• Import employees - After we've analyzed your payslips and everything is aligned, we'll import your employees into Soigné. This includes all employment data, salary information, contract details, and historical records you need. Most imports are completed within a few days, allowing your team to start working in Soigné immediately.

Shadow run last month
Most customers find Soigné's payslip analysis and validation sufficient to pilot directly. However, we do a shadow run of last months cycle. It can provide peace of mind for management and help move the migration forward with confidence. Once you see both systems producing identical results, you can confidently switch over completely.

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 and salary 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.

When planning your switch, 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.

You've made the decision to use Soigné as your tool of choice. Now it's time to get all your locations running on Soigné. In this section, we outline the migration steps for each part of the product, how to best prepare your teams, and how our product specialists step in to make it a smooth transition.

Salary admin

Export and import data
The first step when switching is getting access to your current salary admin system.

• Analyzing payslips - We run a analysis of your payslips to fully understand 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.
• Import employees - After we've analyzed your payslips and everything is aligned, we'll import your employees into Soigné. This includes all employment data, salary information, contract details, and historical records you need. Most imports are completed within a few days, allowing your team to start working in Soigné immediately.

Replacing support
As Soigné becomes your single point of contact, it also means replacing your current salary administration office. There are two scenarios:

• If your bookkeeper handles salaries - Only the salary admin part of your relationship changes. Your bookkeeper continues handling your books while Soigné handles salary admin.
• If you have a dedicated salary admin office - We replace that service entirely.

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

HR core & contracts

Migrating to Soigné employee profiles
After we've imported your employee data into Soigné, it becomes your central hub and single source of truth for all employee information: from tasks to files, notes, messages, hours, leave, and contracts. 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.

Migrating to Soigné contracts & addenda
Soigné comes with integrated contracts and addenda, including digital signing. No need for other disconnected digital signing tools anymore.

Migrating to Soigné tasks
With Soigné as your single source of truth, you'll get an overview of every recurring HR task that needs to be done. We'll set you up with email and WhatsApp reminders so nothing falls through the cracks. Fully compliant and no more switching between systems. To give you an idea, here are some of the tasks we generate:

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

Recruitment

Soigné comes with a next-gen recruitment suite. Here's how to activate it.

Update website

• Edit Jobs page - Your jobs page needs a few tweaks to align with Soigné's approach to recruiting. Most importantly, we have an "always be hiring" philosophy and don't work with traditional job postings. You can remove vacancy-specific listings from your jobs page. Keeping it simpel is the best advice here.
• Install recruitment widget - 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. Just send us your website's CMS login and we'll do the installation for you.
• Run recruitment banner - To finish your recruitment setup, activate Soigné's recruitment banner at the top of your website. Think of a catchy phrase, something unique to your restaurant, and see 3x to 5x more applications roll in. Here's a guide to maximize your recruitment widget.

Migrate to Soigné ATS

Our product specialists will help you transfer pending candidates to Soigné's ATS.

When switching from a payroll service, you're not replacing existing tools. You're starting fresh with Soigné as your complete HR platform. There are three essential steps to make this transition smoothly.

1. Register as an employer

The first step is to check whether you're already registered as an employer and paying employee insurance contributions. If that's not yet the case, you can easily register with the Tax Authority.

Are you already registered as an employer but not currently paying employee insurance premiums? When you hire staff for whom you will pay these premiums, you must report this using this form.

2. Import employee data

Your employee data currently lives with your payroll service provider. We'll need to retrieve this information to set up your Soigné account properly.

What we need

• Employee personal details
• Current contracts and employment terms
• Salary information and wage components
• Accrued leave balances and benefits

How it works: Use the email template below to request the necessary data from your current provider. Most payroll services can export this information within a few days. Our team will review the data for completeness before importing it into Soigné.

Email template

Subject: Ending contract - [restaurant/group name]

Dear [Provider Name],

We are writing to inform you that we will be transitioning our salary administration to a new platform and will no longer require your services after [end date - typically end of current contract or notice period].

Our last pay cycle with your service will be for the period ending [start month]. Could you please provide us with the following information:

Personal details
• Full name
• Email
• Phone
• Date of birth
• Address
• BSN
• IBAN
• Nationality

Employment details
• Employee type (Regular, DGA, BBL or BOL)
• Seniority date
• Current contract start date
• Current contract end date
• Probation period
• Position
• Employment location
• Hours per week
• Salary (FTE equivalent)
• Benefits
• Allowances

Please confirm you received this and let us know the next steps. Thank you for your assistance during this transition.

Best regards,
[Your name]

3. Change of employer addenda

Once all data is received, and our product specialists have imported it into Soigné, its time to create and send out addenda for the switch of employer.

The process

• We'll create a change of employer addenda for all employees.
• These addenda are sent by email and WhatsApp through Soigné for digital signing.
• Employees receive clear communication about what's changing (just the legal employer entity) and what stays the same (their role, salary, benefits).
• Most teams complete this step within a few days.

This legal step transfers the employment relationship from your payroll service to your own company, giving you full control over your team while maintaining continuity for employees.

Timeline: Most payroll service migrations are completed within 1-2 weeks from data request to going live with Soigné.

After migration, it's time to onboard the rest of your team. This means your HR teammates, business owners, location managers, and finance (everyone who'll use Soigné day-to-day).

Roles & permissions

When inviting users, Soigné offers flexible roles and permissions to match how your team works:

• Recruitment - Manage candidates and applications: send messages, schedule interviews and trial shifts, move to talent pool, or disqualify.
• Employee management - Access and edit employee info (personal details), send messages, schedule check-ins, and edit worked hours.
• Employment - Create and sign contracts, access and edit salaries and benefits.
• Account admin - Manage the entire account including all locations, settings, and user invitations.

Training

Now that you've assigned roles and invited all teammates to Soigné, it's time to schedule training. Our product specialists are here to help! Invite everyone to a video call and share helpful resources beforehand so they can come prepared with questions.

Email template

Subject: Soigné training - [Date & Time]

Hi team,

We're switching to Soigné as our new HR platform, and I've scheduled a training session to get everyone up to speed.

Training details
📅 Date: [Insert date]
⏰ Time: [Insert time]
🔗 Meeting link: [Insert video call link]

What we'll cover
Platform overview and navigation
Managing recruitment and candidates
Creating contracts and handling employment changes
Your specific role and permissions
Q&A

Before the training

Please take 15 minutes to review these guides so you can come with questions:
- Recruitment guide
- Contracts guide

You should have already received your Soigné login invite. If you haven't, let me know and I'll resend it.

Looking forward to getting everyone comfortable with Soigné!

Best,
[Your name]

Soigné offers an employee app with interactive payslips—a simple, clickable version that explains every aspect. Once migrated, send a message letting employees know you're now running on Soigné and how to access their new app.

Email template

Subject: New app for payslips & more

Hi everyone,

Quick update: we've switched to Soigné for HR management. What this means for you:

1. Your payslips are now in an easy-to-use app (no more confusing PDFs!)
2. Access your contracts and personal info anytime

You'll get an invitation email to download the app soon. Takes 2 minutes to set up. Everything else stays the same - just better tools behind the scenes.

Questions? Let us know!
[Your name]