The Happy Apple Greengrocer

With locations scattered around Melbourne, The Happy Apple is a boutique grocer that’s been providing top-quality produce and service for nearly two decades. As supermarket shopping becomes more reliant on self-checkouts, Hamish Gadsby and his team focus on building real relationships with their customers and community.

The business opened as a small neighbourhood store with a hands-on team and a simple setup. But as demand for their unique shopping experience grew, so did the size and complexity of the business. What started as a local grocer quickly became a multi-site operation, and the systems that once worked for a small team couldn’t keep up with the pace.

“As we grew, we had to hire more staff, and that added a layer of complexity with unavailabilities, different ages, and different levels. Once you have that level of complexity, rostering and paying people the right pay becomes quite stressful.” 

Hamish Gadsby, Owner, The Happy Apple Greengrocer

As their team quickly grew from 20 employees to 180, the Happy Apple team needed to find ways to improve their efficiency while rostering and paying their staff. 

For Payroll and Accounts manager Philippa, pay day was long and laborious until they made the switch to Tanda.

“The job of doing the payroll for 180 staff is now so seamless. A job that used to take seven to eight hours now comes down to 15 - 20 minutes.”

Philippa Gadsby, Payroll and Accounts Manager

Creating a great business where staff love to work starts with giving employees the tools they need for a great shift.

With their workforce composed of mostly young staff, having a single, accessible way to view and update their details was crucial.

“The key thing is having one platform, so from payroll to onboarding to rostering, making sure that there’s one place for our staff to go and there’s one place for our managers to go.”

Hamish Gadsby, Owner

The industry award landscape in Australia is constantly changing with new legislation, and for local businesses like The Happy Apple, it can be nearly impossible to keep up. 

For Philippa, it was apparent they needed a solution to help meet their obligations under the General Retail Industry Award.

“Beforehand, it was my job to stay across the retail award and ensure that we were compliant with all our staff members, and this is a massive job I would often have to outsource. To have Tanda in the background now running all of our compliance with the retail award is a huge weight off my shoulders."

Philippa Gadsby, Payroll and Accounts Manager