If frontline execution breaks, growth breaks.
Our founder, Matt Goebel, has said it that simply for years. He spent 15 years in operations and franchising before Woven existed, and a lot of that time went to watching good plans fall apart somewhere between the corporate office and the front desk.
A new policy goes out on Monday. The opening shift sees it. The closing shift hears about it secondhand, if at all.
Nobody did anything wrong. The information just never made it to the people doing the work.
The gap between HQ and the location
The research backs him up. Franchise Business Review’s 2026 Franchising at Work report surveyed more than 9,500 franchise employees, most of them working at the location level.
One result shows up every year FBR runs the survey: senior management communication lands in the bottom five. This year, 76% said their senior leaders communicate clearly and openly. That’s still three in four employees, but it trails the 89% who said their own manager cares about their success.
The trust is already at the location. Messages from further up have more distance to travel. If your systems live at HQ, your frontline gets them secondhand.
Where Woven started
Closing that distance is the reason Woven exists. The first version was built in 2017 for Matt’s own multi-location organization. In his words, it wasn’t “because we wanted to start a software company, but because frontline work was getting harder to execute as we scaled.”
Too many tools. Too many logins. Too much time spent managing instead of leading.
Managers were stuck on admin when what made a location work was having them on the floor with their team. So the first decision was the one that still shapes everything we build: start with the person on shift.
What building for the person on shift looks like
Frontline teams don’t sit at desks. They’re on their phones, between customers, a few minutes at a time. So Woven starts with the phone app, with everything they need for the shift in one place.
Their schedule lives there. They can pick up an open shift or hand one off to a coworker without a group text, request time off and see how many days they’ve used, or call in sick with a few taps so their manager knows right away.
When something breaks, they report it from the same app. (More on how that works across locations in our guide to work order software.) Their checklists and training are there too, so a new hire doesn’t start with a stack of logins.
And since multi-location teams rarely share a break room, team chat and recognition happen in the app as well, instead of in personal texting apps the company can’t see.
None of it is flashy. It’s the everyday stuff, and the everyday stuff decides whether a system gets used.
Why it matters to HQ, too
HQ still needs reporting and roll-ups, and we build those too. But those reports are only as good as what happens at the location. When the frontline uses the system every day, leadership sees what’s really going on: tasks done, issues reported, shifts covered. When they don’t, the reports are built on guesses.
Tony Hartl, a franchisee with 33 locations, put it better than we can:
“We were all over the place, but thankfully with Woven, we have been able to bring all our systems, processes, and resources together inside of one app. Now when a new team member starts, all we have to do is show them Woven.”
That last line is the whole idea. Training every new hire on one system is how you keep 33 locations, or 300, running the same way.
Susie Butler, Sr. VP of Operations at Sun Tan City, sees it from the leadership side: “Woven really is a one-stop shop for our staff and managers.”
It’s also why customers stay with us. Our retention is 99%+, and 92% of our new customers come from referrals. We give the credit to the people at those locations. They decide whether a tool sticks.
Nine years in
The bet hasn’t changed. Build for the people who open the doors and run the shift, and give HQ a clear view of all of it in one system.
Are you seeing the same gap between HQ and your locations? We’d like to hear how you’re closing it.
If you want to see how Woven works for frontline teams, book a demo.
If frontline execution breaks, growth breaks.
Our founder, Matt Goebel, has said it that simply for years. He spent 15 years in operations and franchising before Woven existed, and a lot of that time went to watching good plans fall apart somewhere between the corporate office and the front desk.
A new policy goes out on Monday. The opening shift sees it. The closing shift hears about it secondhand, if at all.
Nobody did anything wrong. The information just never made it to the people doing the work.
The gap between HQ and the location
The research backs him up. Franchise Business Review’s 2026 Franchising at Work report surveyed more than 9,500 franchise employees, most of them working at the location level.
One result shows up every year FBR runs the survey: senior management communication lands in the bottom five. This year, 76% said their senior leaders communicate clearly and openly. That’s still three in four employees, but it trails the 89% who said their own manager cares about their success.
The trust is already at the location. Messages from further up have more distance to travel. If your systems live at HQ, your frontline gets them secondhand.
Where Woven started
Closing that distance is the reason Woven exists. The first version was built in 2017 for Matt’s own multi-location organization. In his words, it wasn’t “because we wanted to start a software company, but because frontline work was getting harder to execute as we scaled.”
Too many tools. Too many logins. Too much time spent managing instead of leading.
Managers were stuck on admin when what made a location work was having them on the floor with their team. So the first decision was the one that still shapes everything we build: start with the person on shift.
What building for the person on shift looks like
Frontline teams don’t sit at desks. They’re on their phones, between customers, a few minutes at a time. So Woven starts with the phone app, with everything they need for the shift in one place.
Their schedule lives there. They can pick up an open shift or hand one off to a coworker without a group text, request time off and see how many days they’ve used, or call in sick with a few taps so their manager knows right away.
When something breaks, they report it from the same app. (More on how that works across locations in our guide to work order software.) Their checklists and training are there too, so a new hire doesn’t start with a stack of logins.
And since multi-location teams rarely share a break room, team chat and recognition happen in the app as well, instead of in personal texting apps the company can’t see.
None of it is flashy. It’s the everyday stuff, and the everyday stuff decides whether a system gets used.
Why it matters to HQ, too
HQ still needs reporting and roll-ups, and we build those too. But those reports are only as good as what happens at the location. When the frontline uses the system every day, leadership sees what’s really going on: tasks done, issues reported, shifts covered. When they don’t, the reports are built on guesses.
Tony Hartl, a franchisee with 33 locations, put it better than we can:
“We were all over the place, but thankfully with Woven, we have been able to bring all our systems, processes, and resources together inside of one app. Now when a new team member starts, all we have to do is show them Woven.”
That last line is the whole idea. Training every new hire on one system is how you keep 33 locations, or 300, running the same way.
Susie Butler, Sr. VP of Operations at Sun Tan City, sees it from the leadership side: “Woven really is a one-stop shop for our staff and managers.”
It’s also why customers stay with us. Our retention is 99%+, and 92% of our new customers come from referrals. We give the credit to the people at those locations. They decide whether a tool sticks.
Nine years in
The bet hasn’t changed. Build for the people who open the doors and run the shift, and give HQ a clear view of all of it in one system.
Are you seeing the same gap between HQ and your locations? We’d like to hear how you’re closing it.
If you want to see how Woven works for frontline teams, book a demo.
