Munson Restaurant Group

How a Multi-Location Restaurant Group Strengthened HR Compliance and Efficiency with AllianceHCM’s Action Forms

Munson is a multi-concept restaurant group operating more than 30 locations and employing over 1,200 people across Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Like many growing restaurant operators, Munson faced increasing pressure to maintain consistent payroll and HR practices across multiple states, while also ensuring managers in each location could stay compliant with rapidly changing labor laws.

For Charlotte, Munson’s Director of Human Resources, the challenge wasn’t just processing payroll. It was trying to keep dozens of managers aligned, compliant, and efficient without overwhelming the HR team at corporate.

The Challenge: HR Complexity Across Multiple Restaurant Units

As Munson expanded, its HR processes became increasingly fragmented. Payroll was split between two systems due to acquisitions, making it difficult to run payroll consistently across entities. Day-to-day HR tasks such as rate changes, corrective actions, and incident reporting varied by location, leaving gaps in compliance and forcing corporate HR to spend valuable time chasing paperwork and double-checking processes.

Charlotte explains:

For a growing restaurant group, these inefficiencies created more than inconvenience. They increased risk. Inconsistent processes meant potential exposure to compliance penalties, higher administrative costs, and less visibility into what was happening at the store level.

The Solution: AllianceHCM Payroll and Action Forms for Restaurants

Munson discovered AllianceHCM at a restaurant industry trade show, and the partnership became a turning point.

Charlotte recalls:

“My COO met one of Alliance’s restaurant experts at a trade show, and the rest is history. They were able to really understand our business and show the Alliance platform, customized to a way that our business operates, solving any question or issue I was facing.”

With AllianceHCM, Munson now runs payroll for all locations on a single platform designed for complex restaurant operations. Just as importantly, the HR team implemented Action Forms, a tool that standardizes how managers handle critical HR workflows across multiple states and concepts.

Today, managers at each location can initiate and submit rate changes, status changes, corrective actions, harassment or incident reports, and even exit interview surveys directly through Action Forms. Corporate HR then receives complete, compliant, and auditable documentation in real time.

AllianceHCM Action Forms for Restaurants

Charlotte explains the impact:

By moving away from email and paper-based processes, Munson gave local managers the tools to stay compliant with corporate and state requirements without creating extra work for HR leadership.

The Results: Standardized HR and Compliance Across All Locations

Since implementing AllianceHCM and Action Forms, Munson has achieved measurable efficiencies:

• Time savings across corporate HR: Instead of chasing down forms or correcting errors, Charlotte’s team can focus on higher-value work. Payroll and HR processes that once took hours per week to reconcile now take minutes, creating meaningful labor cost savings at the corporate level.
  
• Simplified compliance tracking: Sexual harassment training requirements in New York and Connecticut are easily assigned, tracked, and verified through Need Items.
  
• Secure unemployment notices: Delivered electronically, ensuring compliance and peace of mind for both managers and employees.
  
• Consistent HR processes across all locations: From rate changes to incident reporting, every manager follows the same workflow, ensuring accuracy and auditability.
  

Charlotte highlights the partnership aspect:

“The support team is absolutely incredible. I can always get somebody. It feels like they’re part of my company, definitely a partner. We feel like we’re on the same team, looking for solutions.”

Reflecting on the results, she adds:

“Action Forms standardize how we handle rate changes, status changes, corrective actions, and incidents across all our locations. We can assign and verify what’s required, it’s consistent, auditable, and it saves us hours of admin time.”

Conclusion

For multi-concept restaurant groups like Munson, managing payroll and HR compliance across dozens of entities is no easy task. AllianceHCM provided the solution: a single platform that consolidates payroll, standardizes HR processes, empowers managers at the store level, and strengthens compliance oversight at corporate.

Charlotte sums it up: