HotSchedules is part of a much larger company
HotSchedules was founded in 1999. TPG Growth, a private equity firm, bought it around 2013 and held it for about six and a half years. In July 2019 it was sold again, to Marlin Equity Partners, and merged into a company called Fourth. Insight Partners holds a minority stake
Today HotSchedules is one product inside Fourth's platform, which serves more than 120,000 locations worldwide with a team of roughly 800 people across the US, UK, Bulgaria, China, Australia and the UAE.
That scale is genuinely useful to some operators. If you run dozens or hundreds of locations, need enterprise forecasting, deep POS integration, integrated payroll and inventory, and a vendor with a global support organization behind it — that's what Fourth is built for, and we're not in that conversation.
Their own description of who they serve is "customers of all sizes, from a single location or franchisee restaurant to a global restaurant or hotel chain." Read that again. You're the first item on a list that ends at global chains.
We serve the front of that list, not the end of it — from a single restaurant up to groups of fiften locations.
They won't tell you what it costs
HotSchedules doesn't publish pricing. To find out what you'd pay, you request a quote, talk to a salesperson, and wait.
Here's Ours
- $30/month for up to 19 staff
- $40/month for 20–39 staff
- $50/month for 40–59 staff
- $60/month for 60–79 staff
- Above that, call our founder Wil on his cell at 704-906-2031 and he'll quote you.
More than one location? Each one is 10% off. Prepay for the year and take another 5% off on top of that.
That's per restaurant, not per person. Every feature is included at every price. There's no upgrade path, because there's nothing to upgrade to. No contract, no setup fee, cancel whenever you want.
We're not saying published pricing makes us better software. We're saying that if you're an independent operator, you probably shouldn't have to sit through a sales call to learn what something costs.
We took a different approach
HotSchedules sits inside Fourth's restaurant technology platform, with workforce management, analytics and operational tools designed for large and multi-unit organizations.
If you need deep enterprise controls and forecasting across a large group, that scale is valuable. We do not pretend a five-person company is the same thing.
We built for the independent operator
We do the schedule, and we do it properly:
- Building and publishing schedules
- Team communication
- Shift trades
- Time off and availability
- Document storage
- Manager's logbook
- Labor forecast as a percentage of sales
We don't do time clock, payroll, tip pooling, hiring or onboarding. For those, we'll introduce you to partners who do them for a living. That's deliberate. Some operators want everything under one roof. Others would rather not put every egg in one basket, and would rather have the best tool for each job than one platform that does ten things adequately.
If that's you, that's us.
We do integrate with some point-of-sale systems
We integrate with some POS systems. Fourth integrates with far more — that's a real difference and we won't pretend otherwise.
But "does it integrate?" is usually the wrong question. The useful one is what you actually want an integration to do for you. Sometimes that's something we already handle. Sometimes it matters enough that HotSchedules is the better call.
Tell us which POS you run and what you'd want it to do. Call or text our founder Wil at 704-906-2031, or email support@schedulefly.com. If we can't help, we'll say so.
Here's who we are
We've been doing this with intention, thoughtfulness, and care since 2007 and we are a small business, probably like you.
We serve a little over 5,000 restaurants, bars, breweries, distilleries, coffee shops, ice cream shops, boutique hotels and small hospitality businesses across the United States and Canada.
Our customers stay for three reasons: it's simple, it's affordable, and when something goes wrong a real person answers. Not a chatbot. Not an AI agent. Not a ticket number. One of us.
We run this business the way our customers run theirs — with care, with attention, and with the same hospitality they show the people who walk through their door. That isn't a marketing line. It's just a small company that answers the phone.
If you want the founder's cell phone number, you've got it: 704-906-2031. That's Wil. He'll pick up.
A customer perspective
"Over the past fifteen years, HotSchedules was a reliable part of our operation. But the platform changed as the company expanded. Their focus shifted, and the level of service stopped reflecting what operators like us actually need.
So I went looking for a company that values direct service, accountability, and real partnership. Schedulefly has provided exactly that. The owner himself reached out, gave me his personal number, and made the transition simple. Every employee has thanked me for switching. The system is clear, easy to read, color-coded, and straightforward. It may not be flashy, but it works — consistently and without excuses."
Jake Schafer, Owner — Gladstones Eat Drink Sports and The Grove Restaurant, Oregon