The client

Urban Foodies in Melbourne includes a catering company, Bay Leaf, a private and corporate events space, The Woolstore + Co., and corporate cooking classes, Urban Kitchen.

The challenge

Due to their diverse offerings, Urban Foodies needs access to a great team that have a diverse range of skills including bartending, chefs, event assistants and promo staff.

During the events peak season Urban Foodies often face the following challenges:

• • As the frequency of events increases, the number of staff available and required means Urban Foodies are often left short staffed
    
  • The costs of hiring new staff are not feasible (recruitment, admin, onboarding) for staff they only need for a short period of time
  • Finding staff through agencies, uni boards or referrals from family and friends the quality of talent was below their standards and/or outside of their control

“Prior to finding Sidekicker, the way we would boost our seasonal staffing pool would be using staffing agencies, university students, and referrals from family and friends.” – Victoria Black, Events Manager. 

Sidekicker’s solution

Urban Foodies starting using Sidekicker to fill last minute gaps in their roster.

“My favourite thing about Sidekicker is being able to hand-select staff for each event. Every event we have is so different, so to have the ability to select the staff to the brief is fantastic. Once a Sidekick applies to our job, I get to go in and hand-pick the chosen staff for our event.

 

Talent Pools also mean if we’re out on a job and we find staff who we absolutely love, we have the ability to easily add them to a Talent Pool and repost the shift to them which is fantastic,” says Victoria.

The Results

Using Sidekicker, Urban Foodies is able to:

• • Avoid unnecessary costs of recruitment such as resume screening, interviewing, admin and payroll for short-term roles
  • Fill gaps in their event rosters at the click of a button
  • Hand-select the staff with the best experience to suit their multiple businesses
  • Create talent pools so they can rehire the staff they love over and over