The Four Winds Coffee & Tea Creates a Safe Space For College Students with Humanity’s Time Saving Staff Scheduler

Open since 2009, the Four Winds Coffee & Tea is part of a non-profit organization called the Christ Center, which opened in 2004. Located in Grand Junction, Colorado, the Christ Center’s mission is to offer college students a safe and fun place to socialize. The Four Winds Coffee & Tea offers a locally roasted cup of coffee and gives students a place to hang out and help sustain the Christ Center mission. They spice things up with deals and specials, and host free events like swing dancing lessons last month. With coffee, freshly baked food, free wi-fi and an abundance of study spaces, the Four Winds Coffee & Tea is not only an awesome coffee shop, but also provides students with accessible resources and events, and a welcoming environment.

The Four Winds Coffee & Tea grew from one employee when the coffee shop opened, to the present eight, of which the majority are college students. Balancing busy lives, dynamic class schedules and holidays is difficult to keep up with. They also provide an opportunity for local community members to serve the students, fostering a great sense of community. Previously, they physically wrote out staff schedules, which sometimes took hours. Open from 6 am till midnight during the week and 8 am till midnight on Saturdays, they have four or more daily shifts to fill with their small staff group and community volunteers. With one director to manage the coffee shop duties and staff scheduling, they found their pen and paper scheduling method to be time-consuming and difficult to manage.

Since they have switched to Humanity, they have seen vast improvements in their staff scheduling process and communication. In particular, the Four Winds Coffee & Tea have found our availability tools particularly useful, as they are able to see who is available for each shift time, allocate them to the shift and be done. And even with only eight employees, our ‘Message Wall’ is still an extremely useful means of employee communication. Any staff member can sign into their profile and post a public message which is immediately visible to all other employees. The integration of communication lines into the staff scheduler has made the director and her employees’ lives much easier and more organized.

As a nonprofit, money and time are things they cherish and try to use as wisely as they can. Instead of the director working extra hours to cut payroll costs, switching to Humanity allows them to keep staff scheduling time to a minimum. Using an efficient and time-saving staff scheduling software helps the Four Winds Coffee & Tea spend more time focusing on the student customers.

The Four Winds Coffee & Tea provides a safe and comfortable space for college students is important for any college. They are welcoming and focus on creating a sense of community and do so in a fun and exciting way. Humanity is happy to provide our staff scheduler and be a part of a giving organization like the Four Winds Coffee & Tea.