Australia’s prioritisation of living standards and ‘a fair go’ have led to us having amongst the highest labour costs for business in the world, largely due to Australia having the highest minimum wage in the world, at roughly US$18.10 per hour (H1 2025). By comparison, the Federal minimum hourly wage in the USA is $7.25, which has not changed since 2009.
Businesses across Australia have faced increasing labour costs, but few have seen as much increase as a percentage of revenue as hospitality, particularly as consumer spending has tightened and purchases, or ‘basket size’, has been squeezed.
Calligeros Hotels (CHG), led by industry veteran Peter Calligeros, owns and operates four pubs around Sydney, including its flagship North Sydney icon the Rag & Famish, built in 1860.
Like many, the group had seen labour costs climbing faster than revenues. It was identified that static, ‘copy-and-paste’ rosters sometimes meant unnecessary staffing, adding further pressure, particularly during quieter shifts.
The business did not have a way to link revenue levels with the required amount of labour, which meant management was only able to reflect on problems after they had occurred, rather than addressing inefficiencies at the scheduling stage.
Seeking Solutions
CHG spoke with Quantaco about improving its systems and decided to adopt ‘Salesline’, which integrates into venue workflows to allow precise sales forecasting, to facilitate optimising labour management, ultimately improving profitability.
The group entered a 13-week trial and initialisation period, to “swap guesswork for real-time insights”. This began (weeks 1–3) by establishing a baseline and onboarding the necessary participants, notably all managers. The Saleline software undertook historical data analysis of CHG’s sales and timesheet information, to establish benchmarks.
An essential part of the trial and integrating Salesline into the CHG systems was proper training of management, where they learned to navigate the dashboard and forecasting tools to interpret demand forecasts and adjust rosters on the fly.
Early in the program (week 1) The Rag hosted a surprise mid-week trivia night event, where Salesline was used to tweak staffing, subsequently avoiding overtime and resulting in a 12 per cent boost to per-shift revenue.
The next stage (weeks 4–7) was geared to ‘Optimisation’ through the setting of targets, providing management with achievable goals to pursue.
“Our team worked with the Rag & Famish to set a specific goal of cutting midweek labour costs by 15 per cent, relative to the baseline,” says Quantaco CEO Anthony Sullivan.
“By aligning rosters to Salesline’s demand forecasts and reviewing performance fortnightly, the venue not only met that target but consistently outperformed it.”
Once parameters and goals were in place, the final phase of the pilot (weeks 8–13) was about refinement and ‘Forecast Model Tuning’. At this stage Salesline’s algorithm could adapt to the unique trading patterns of each Calligeros venue, including day-of-week specifics and significant events such as ANZAC Day, by considering historical data and analysing real-time sales trends.
This period also fostered what the company calls a ‘culture of accountability’. This arises from every manager being empowered through transparent metrics to see how scheduling choices impacted the bottom line.
Gains in Efficiency and Flexibility
The Calligeros group report benefitting from the introduction of Saleline through both better analysis of one of the industry’s biggest costs – live sales insights enabling real-time adjustments and proactive staffing allocations – but also by the fact it empowered the managers and boosted their accountability.
As managers became able to track labour versus sales performance it fostered a culture of ownership and continuous improvement, allowing everyone from shift managers to the GM to be more actively involved in the business’ health.
“Salesline doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been, it guides exactly where to staff next,” says CHG group GM Chris Glenn.
“The benefit of real time data allows the hands-on management team to make decisions about revenue and labour costs without waiting until the following month for a report to be presented. Real time data keeps cost management front of mind.
“It allows the senior management team to see at a glance the performance of all hotels, at any given point in time, without having to dial into remote computers or have regular scheduled reports clogging up emails.”
As a new system, being integrated into multiple sites, it was critical that the management embraced and adopted the capabilities of the software, and their doing so actually proved the single strongest predictor of success.
Mobile reporting is available, with updates every 15 minutes, and ‘beating’ the target on a shift is said to lead to a “feel good moment” that also translates into actual dollar savings.
“Like with any program, you quite often only get out what you put in,” adds Glenn, “so we spent a great deal of time onboarding our key personal, to properly adopt it and fully get on board.”
Results & Key Metrics: What CHG learned
20% Reduction in labour costs
CHG found a 20 per cent reduction in labour spend versus baseline – even during busier shifts.
70% Target hit rate
Meeting – or exceeding – staffing and sales efficiency goals increased from 40 to 70 per cent of trading days, across all venues. It was found the greatest ROI came when staffing levels aligned to real-time sales data, rather than with historical averages.
12% Increase in revenue per labour hour
Aligning staffing levels more precisely with demand peaks and troughs let to an average 12 per cent more revenue generated per labour hour.
4.3% Uplift in profitability
Smarter rostering and real‑time adjustments translated into a 4.3 per cent increase in venue‑level profit margins over the program period.
What was learned
Quantaco summarises that Salesline empowered Calligeros Hotels to turn smarter forecasting into real savings, by matching staff to demand and both cutting labour costs and increasing hourly efficiency, by boosting operational agility, and by promoting an insights-driven culture better prepared to face the ebbs and flows of public trading.
This was shown to be viable in a focused, 13‑week pilot project, proving enough time to tune models, embed new workflows and demonstrate clear, repeatable value.
“We’ve managed to reduce our labour percentage with smarter rostering and management on shift,” reports Glenn.
“The bottom line is, you just get better at managing rosters and peak times versus quiet times, because people getting paid in supervisory roles are now accountable daily.”
