Unlocking Flexible Staffing: The Zephyr Express Story
Zephyr Express — Excellence in Fine Wine Delivery Zephyr Express delivers 7,000-10,000 cases of wine a day to stores and restaurants in California. They provide the only branded, California statewide service for fine wine delivery and storage.
"Bluecrew has changed the way we fill temporary positions, particularly during our peak times of business," - Dan Lucht, General Manager
The SuperBowl Challenge
Long turn around times of traditional staffing agencies do not lend themselves to the nature of next day deliveries, online ordering, and rushed retail deliveries. When unexpected peaks in business arise, Zephyr's only options involve turning to overtime or working short staffed.
During SuperBowl 50, Zephyr's online orders spiked and unfortunately traffic was clogged and rerouted all over San Francisco and the Peninsula. Drivers often had to park a few blocks away from their destinations.
Bluecrew Solution
Zephyr first used Bluecrew to successfully deliver wine all over the Bay Area during the busy Super Bowl weekend. With all the closures Zephyr had to reroute many of their deliveries. Dan Lucht, the Zephyr General manager, was thinking ahead and posted a delivery position on Bluecrew and within an hour had a roster of highly rated workers booked to manage the demand spike. Bluecrew workers rode along with drivers to help with the loading, unloading and watching of the trucks.
"During the Super Bowl week, Bluecrew workers played a critical role in helping us meet the high demand for wine deliveries. We now use them to address last minute staffing requirements and they always answer the call with experienced and skilled people.
Bluecrew was also able to offer Zephyr a new solution to last minute order peaks that no other staffing agency could ever fulfill. Bluecrew's On-demand staffing platform allows Zephyr to post jobs 24/7 with daily demand granularity to optimize labor costs based on their varying demand. Bluecrew unlocks a new flexible labor force that changes the way companies look at temporary labor. “It really helped us to have that on-demand staff model, so we could say, we need three people tomorrow and four the next day. We can flexibly mix and match to meet our needs on the spot,” he said.
