AppleJack Hospitality reduced staff turnover by 31% and lifted engagement to 74% across fifteen Sydney venues by giving all 1,000 team members a branded employee app — no company email address required. Rollout took two weeks, with employee data syncing automatically from Tanda.
The organisation
AppleJack Hospitality is one of Sydney's most respected multi-venue hospitality groups, operating fifteen 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 1,000 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. With fifteen venues each running their own induction, the new-starter experience naturally varied depending on which site someone joined and who was on shift that day. AppleJack wanted every new team member to get the same thorough start — and wanted the visibility to know it was happening consistently across the group.
Like most hospitality groups, AppleJack’s venues had grown up on personal messaging groups. They worked well for quick shift coordination, but they meant personal phone numbers were shared between colleagues, operational updates sat alongside social conversation, and there was no single channel head office could use to reach all 1,000 team members at once.
Structured development conversations were well established at management level, and AppleJack wanted to extend that to every role. In a fast-moving venue environment, recognition tends to happen in the moment and in person — which is exactly as it should be, but it means great work at one venue is rarely visible across the group.
Matt Jenkins, AppleJack’s Chief Operating Officer, had a clear view of the opportunity. What the group needed was a system built for a hospitality workforce — mobile, fast, frictionless, and something people would genuinely want to use.
The solution
AppleJack rolled out Prosper across all fifteen 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. That made it possible to see where support was strongest and share what those venues were doing well across the group. AI comment analysis surfaced themes in hours rather than weeks, so the operations team could act on feedback while it was still current.
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.
Floor staff and kitchen hands now have a regular, documented conversation about their experience and their development. That visible investment in every role — not just management — is reflected directly in the retention data.
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 1,000, this represents approximately 150 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’d invested in pay, meals and flexible rosters — all of it matters. What changed retention was improving the daily experience on top of that. Prosper gave us a way to genuinely 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. 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 Matt’s operations team never had to maintain two separate systems. Employee data flows automatically between rostering and the app.