CASE STUDY: STAX BURGERS CO.
HOW STAX BURGERS BUILT A LEANER OPERATION WITH VIABILITY
MEET THE VENUE GROUP
Stax Burgers Co., Adelaide, South Australia
Owner: Zaynn Bird
Zaynn Bird built Stax Burgers Co. into two high-end burger venues running on lean, well-trained teams. But without a system behind the staffing decisions, wages had drifted to 38% of revenue — well above where they should have been for a group of Stax’s size and model. Within a month of going live with Viability, they were operating at around 21%. The gap was never about staff or standards; it was about visibility.
Nearly halved
Under 4 weeks
2
The Challenge They Faced
Running two busy restaurant venues is demanding enough. Doing it without any visibility into labour costs or ordering processes is a different kind of difficulty.
For Zaynn, the challenge wasn’t a single crisis — it was the slow, invisible erosion of margin that comes from operating on feel rather than data. Wages were sitting at 38% of revenue with no mechanism to course-correct mid-week or mid-shift. Ordering across two venues and multiple suppliers was scattered and inconsistent, relying on whoever happened to remember what was ordered last week. And because Zaynn and his business partner both worked across both locations, managing shift coverage without a multi-site tool meant conflicts were inevitable.
Stax Burgers had the product, the standards, and the people. What it lacked was a system to match.
How Viability Helped
Viability didn’t just give Stax Burgers data — it gave Zaynn a platform he could build the entire operation around. From the day it went live, the results were immediate and the workflows changed permanently.
The wage result: visibility, not restructure
Stax’s 38% starting point was unusually high for a group their size — the consequence of running on instinct without a system showing where labour landed against revenue in real time. The opportunity was unusually large as a result. Within a month, wages moved to approximately 21% — no staff cuts, no restructure, no consultant. What repeats across Viability customers is the mechanism: daily visibility, corrective action inside the week.
Ordering went from scattered to streamlined
Zaynn’s built his operation around Viability, to the point where he pushes suppliers to fit his workflow rather than the other way around:
“I tell suppliers they have to allow me to send email orders, because otherwise we can’t use Viability — and no, that’s not happening.”
Email ordering is one of several ways to manage suppliers in Viability — line-item entry, invoice scanning, and per-supplier order totals all work too — but Zaynn’s point lands regardless: the system he uses to run his venues isn’t the one that gets compromised.
Multi-site conflict detection took the friction out of cross-venue rostering
Because Zaynn and his business partner Scott work across both venues, shift conflicts between locations used to be an unavoidable headache. Viability flags those conflicts automatically, pulling both venues into a single back-office view.
The Results
The shift from 38% to 21% on wages happened in under a month — without redundancies, without a restructure, and without a prior system to build from. Stax went from operating on instinct to making every staffing and ordering decision on data. The impact was immediate because the commitment was total: Viability isn’t a tool they use occasionally. Suppliers are required to work within it. The roster runs through it. It is how Stax operates — and the template for how it will operate across every venue they open next.
From One Owner to Another
“Viability is just a one stop shop. We’ve used other rostering tools before and nothing comes close to Viability. That’s just the reality.”
— Zaynn Bird, Stax Burgers Co.
Ready to see what becomes possible when everything connects?
We can walk you through how it works—no pressure, just a quick chat about your venues and what integration could mean for your operation.