The Long Way Back to Simple
P.J. Clarke’s left Schedulefly in May 2021.
We understood. COVID was a time of massive change. A lot of restaurants re-evaluated their tech stacks. We lost some during that stretch.
They switched to a scheduling provider that had just sold to private equity for $300 million. Lots of bells and whistles. Lots of integrations. All the flash. But it didn’t work out. It wasn’t simple—and they were used to simple.
So they bailed and moved to another competitor, one that’s raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Same story. Too complicated.
Then they tried a new POS system, owned by a publicly traded company, with its own built-in scheduling software. That didn’t work either. Again—too complex.
One early October evening in 2024, I was out walking my dogs in the pasture when my flip phone rang. 7pm. I answered.
It was one of the executives at P.J. Clarke’s.
He told me the whole story—the journey away from Schedulefly, and the frustrating experience of bouncing through three different systems that promised the world but delivered confusion.
Then he said, “We just had a meeting. We’re all in agreement. We want to come back.”
He had two questions:
“How much will it cost?”
“Will we have to start from scratch?”
I said, “We’ve never raised prices. So it’ll cost exactly what you were paying 3.5 years ago. And if you’d like, I can walk inside right now and turn all of your accounts back on. Everything will be right where you left it.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
A few days later, he told me he shed a tear of joy when he logged back into their multi-unit dashboard. He had missed simplicity that much.
I get chills just typing out this story. The guy literally told me our small team and small business was the preferred choice against literally billions of dollars in investment into competitive options.
One thing is for sure: we’re not for everybody. We don’t chase features. We’ll never have the flashiest appearance or the slickest pitch.
But if you value simplicity, mind-blowing customer service, and a price point that hasn’t budged in 18 years, we’re in a league of our own.
I’ll never forget that phone call.
-Wil