The organisation
AppleJack Hospitality is one of Sydney's most respected multi-venue hospitality groups, operating eight distinctive venues across the city. From high-energy bars to award-winning restaurants, each venue has its own identity, its own clientele and its own team — but they all share the same challenge: building and retaining a team of people who deliver exceptional experiences, night after night, in one of the most competitive labour markets in Australia.
With approximately 600 team members across front-of-house, kitchen, management and support roles — the majority casual or part-time — AppleJack's workforce is dynamic, diverse and difficult to reach through traditional communication channels. Many team members work across multiple venues. Most do not have a company email address. All of them carry a phone.
The challenge
Hospitality turnover in Australia consistently exceeds 40%. For AppleJack, the impact was felt in every venue, every week. New starters arrived to inconsistent onboarding experiences that varied by venue and by the manager on shift. Some received a thorough induction. Others were handed an apron and told to shadow someone. The result was a first-90-day attrition rate that was costing the business hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Communication was chaotic. Venue managers used personal WhatsApp groups to communicate with their teams — mixing work updates with social chat, exposing personal phone numbers, and creating an environment where critical operational messages were buried under memes and after-work plans. When head office needed to reach all 600 staff with an important update, there was no reliable channel.
Performance management was virtually non-existent below venue manager level. Floor staff, bartenders and kitchen hands rarely received structured feedback, let alone a conversation about their development. Recognition happened verbally and privately — if it happened at all. The team members who went above and beyond had no way of knowing that their effort was noticed by anyone outside their immediate shift.
Matt Jenkins, AppleJack's Chief Operating Officer, knew the numbers. He could see the turnover, feel the inconsistency, and hear the frustration from his venue managers. What he lacked was a system that could work for a hospitality workforce — mobile, fast, no friction, and something people would actually use.
The solution
AppleJack rolled out Prosper across all eight venues in two weeks. The platform was configured as a branded mobile app — "The AppleJack App" — that every team member downloaded on their phone. No email required. No login credentials to remember. Just a simple code, and they were in.
Company hub and communications
The first thing Matt launched was the branded AppleJack hub. He wanted the app to feel useful from day one — not like another management tool being imposed from above. The news feed, document library, shift updates and direct messaging replaced the scattered WhatsApp groups overnight. Within two weeks, the majority of the team was opening the app daily because it was genuinely the easiest way to find what they needed.
Engagement surveys
With the team already using the app daily, AppleJack introduced quarterly engagement surveys and monthly pulse checks. Response rates reached 68% in the first round and climbed above 70% by the third — a significant improvement on previous email-based attempts that had struggled to reach 20%.
The results were revelatory. For the first time, Matt could see engagement scores by venue, by role, by tenure and by employment type. He could identify that one venue had a team that felt strongly supported by their manager while another — just two kilometres away — had team members who felt disconnected and undervalued. The AI comment analysis surfaced themes in hours, not weeks, allowing the operations team to act immediately.
Performance and development
AppleJack introduced structured monthly check-ins for all team members — not just managers. The template was deliberately simple: three questions, five minutes, done. How is your week going? What is one thing we could do better? What do you want to learn next? Notes saved automatically. Goals tracked over time. Calendar sync with Google meant the conversation actually happened.
For the first time, floor staff and kitchen hands had a regular, documented conversation about their experience and their development. The shift from "you are replaceable" to "we are investing in you" was tangible — and the retention data proved it.
Integration with Tanda
AppleJack uses Tanda for rostering, time and attendance and payroll. Prosper integrates with Tanda so employee data syncs automatically. When a new team member is added to Tanda, they appear in Prosper. When someone changes venue, their Prosper profile updates. No double entry, no manual exports, no CSV uploads.
The results
31% reduction in turnover. AppleJack's annual turnover dropped from above 50% to the mid-30s over 18 months — a significant result in an industry where most operators accept high churn as inevitable. For a group of 600, this represents approximately 90 fewer departures per year.
74% engagement score. Organisation-wide engagement sits at 74% favourable — well above the hospitality industry average. The gap between the strongest and weakest venue has narrowed from 28 points to 12, indicating a more consistent experience across the group.
First-90-day attrition down 26%. Structured onboarding and early check-in surveys mean new starters feel supported from day one. First-90-day attrition has steadily declined, with the most significant improvements in venues where managers adopted the monthly check-in framework earliest.
"We tried everything — better pay, free meals, flexible rosters. Nothing moved the needle on retention until we changed the daily experience. Prosper gave us a way to actually connect with our people — not just manage them. Having one app that every team member opens every shift changed the dynamic. Our venue managers now have real data on how their teams feel and a framework for developing people instead of just filling shifts. The engagement scores do not lie — and neither does the turnover number."
— Matt Jenkins, Chief Operating Officer, AppleJack Hospitality
What made the difference
Matt Jenkins is clear about what worked. Starting with the hub and communications — not surveys, not compliance — meant the app launched as something genuinely useful. Team members associated Prosper with getting the information they needed, not being monitored. By the time surveys and performance conversations were introduced, daily usage was already established.
The simplicity mattered too. No email, no laptop, no training session. A phone and a code. In hospitality, if a tool takes more than 30 seconds to access, it will not be used. Prosper understood that from the start.
And the integration with Tanda meant that Matt's operations team did not have to maintain two separate systems. Data flowed. People appeared. Nothing fell through the cracks.