Case Study: Cotton Patch Cafe achieves 50%+ turnover reduction and doubles early food‑handler certifications with CrunchTime (DiscoverLink)

How Cotton Patch Cafe Simplified Recipe Management and Employee Training

Cotton Patch Cafe is a Texas-based homestyle restaurant chain with 48 full-service kitchens across Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic the company struggled with rapidly changing regulations—deciding between dine-in and takeout, adding alcohol-to-go, implementing contact tracing, and keeping recipes and policies current—while trying to support operators without creating extra operational burden.

Cotton Patch moved to DiscoverLink’s LMS and digital recipe system to centralize policies, compliance training, onboarding materials, and certification tracking, removing paper recipes and manual tracking. The change simplified operations, doubled the number of new hires completing food-handler certification within two weeks, and drove major retention gains: 90-day and 6-month turnover each dropped by more than 50%, with overall training completion rising and greater operator trust in the support center.

Cotton Patch Cafe

Ashley Helkenn

Cotton Patch’s Senior Manager of Learning and Development