Case Study: Noodles & Company achieves 1.5‑hour/day labor savings and faster closings with Fourth’s HotSchedules

Labor Optimization with Noodles and Company

Noodles & Company, a national fast-casual chain, faced the common restaurant challenge of optimizing labor across scheduling, forecasting, prep and closing operations. Rather than simply cutting hours, leadership shifted to a sales-driven approach supported by accurate forecasting and data so managers could deploy the right labor where and when it’s needed.

By adopting HotSchedules’ labor optimization, Noodles moved some prep to midday and built a data-driven labor model that saved about 1.5 hours per day in pilot stores. They also found closing teams were more efficient at four people (45 minutes) than five or six (60 minutes), and after validating the approach they rolled it out nationally, driving consistent labor savings while preserving service and team experience.

Noodles & Company

Dave Lehn

Director of Project Management