Customer Story
How a UK Fast Food Chain Uses Bridge to Create Hybrid Learning That Scales Performance, Development, and Retention
Discover how Bridge LMS helped one of the UK’s biggest fast food chains deliver and scale its hybrid learning strategy for manager development, improving 80% of key performance and service metrics.
For one of the UK’s most prominent fast food chains, quality frontline training courses and first-class managerial development programs are paramount–especially in times of rapid workforce growth and high turnover.
In an industry with strict compliance requirements and a franchise model that makes connecting with frontline workers a challenge, this training must also be engaging and memorable.
The organization adopted Bridge’s learning platform during the pandemic and subsequent fast food industry boom. Bridge also replaced its insufficient legacy reporting with an engaging and modern interface that resonated with a dispersed workforce.
The Challenge
Finding an LMS to Enhance Development, Retention, and Compliance
Growing and subsequently maintaining the employee base to meet an uptick in business frequently brings new training and development challenges. An increase in worker and manager fluidity across its 1,200 stores created a new degree of urgency in regard to maintaining and migrating historic training enrollment data.
The customer’s L&D team needed a centralized LMS capable of providing consistent coursework, high levels of accountability, and an easy way for employees’ activity within the learning ecosystem to be remembered when they transferred to a different store. This would avoid having them repeat identical eLearning courses at a new location.
At the same time, in locations experiencing high levels of manager turnover, there were gaps in knowledge, poor habits being passed down to workers, and low levels of motivation. To address this, it was critical for the L&D team to instill current and future shift managers with product knowledge and skills and to ensure that its eLearning content contributed to a strong employee experience and fostered development and growth.
To strengthen its manager pipeline and improve turnover, the customer needed an LMS with the tools to support their vision for a high-impact manager development program. It was crucial that this training blended virtual and in-person elements together and used peer learning to strengthen skills development and drive accountability.
However, as a small team of three, they felt their old LMS was missing key tools and resources needed to implement their learning strategy. Crucially, it lacked reporting and analytics to drive behavioral change and had limited scope beyond tick-box compliance training.
We had this opportunity where we could create something new and special that could really benefit the whole operation. As part of our vision, we wanted the ability to deliver a blended learning approach that combined eLearning, project work, face-to-face training, follow-up visits, and check-ins to support progress and accountability. We also needed the ability to pull meaningful data from our LMS. We migrated from our old LMS to Bridge, a platform that had the potential to deliver a hybrid experience.- Learning Technologies Manager
The Solution
High-Impact Hybrid Learning Programs
With Bridge, the customer’s L&D team had the tools to bring their hybrid learning strategy to life and build a management academy pathway. This development journey blended virtual and face-to-face formats, incorporating peer learning while addressing the complexities of engaging geographically dispersed learners.
Bridge provided opportunities for self-guided learning, practice, and feedback over the nine-month pathway, teaching and reinforcing essential leadership skills and franchise-specific knowledge.
By taking advantage of Bridge Journeys within the LMS, the team could more closely connect in-person and digital learning components. This added flexibility and functionality helps them capture face-to-face training data, allows learners to follow their own progress, uses evidence-based checkpoints to track virtual check-ins, and prompts learners to upload work for review.
Further, the customer is leveraging Bridge Analytics to observe and assess managers’ application of skills and behaviors during shifts and track face-to-face training and coaching conversations. Collecting this data spotlights focus areas for the L&D team, giving them insight to further refine training strategies and support learners.
The L&D team uses Bridge to address its wider learning and development strategy. They maintain a centralized learning ecosystem with robust enrollment data, allowing employees to switch stores without losing their learning progress or duplicating their efforts. Employee learner profiles are automatically updated through the time and attendance tool, ensuring alignment with the right curriculum for their job role and location.
Furthermore, while every store has access to the same resources, Bridge supports the L&D team in building personalized, store-specific learning journeys. Bridge’s sibling company, GP Strategies, was additionally called upon to create a custom food safety program using the customer’s own branding and uniforms.
Together, these steps have provided the workforce with tailored learning journeys that emphasize the cultures of individual stores and regions, promoting a stronger sense of community.
Bridge LMS assists with the organization’s mandatory training requirements too. Although operating a franchise model across a large number of dispersed stores adds a layer of complexity to distributing and tracking compliance training, the LMS sidesteps this complexity by centralizing all analytics data in one place, providing the team with a much-improved overview of its learning-related information. By taking full advantage of Bridge’s in-depth reporting, the L&D team has found it easier to keep each store and franchise accountable to its course completion rates, all while reducing time spent aggregating data.
As a result of increased tracking and automation, at least 80% of workers are in compliance. Bridge Journeys (automated learning pathways) has also been met with a positive reception in relation to compliance.
By migrating to Bridge’s LMS, we unlocked the ability to deliver tailored and engaging learning experiences, integrate on-demand learning, and create comprehensive tracking and analytics. This transformation has empowered us to drive deeper engagement and has improved the learner experience.- Learning and Development Manager
The Results
Hybrid Learning That Leads to Measurable Performance Improvements
Since adopting Bridge, the workforce has grown by 12,000 employees and in the first two years of operation, annual eLearning enrollments escalated from 250,000 to 360,000.
Bridge has been an important tool in helping the customer’s L&D team scale training to accommodate a distributed and expanded workforce. For example, using smart groups automates the process of assigning learning journeys to new hires. Since both the allocation process and the learning journeys are entirely automated, large volumes of new hires are prompted to complete mandatory training without additional administrative effort.
The most notable improvements are a result of the manager academy pathway. With more than 100 graduates since 2022 and 130 due to complete training in 2025, the team can measure its impact and see how graduate managers drive store performance.
Firstly, graduate managers and their teams show a marked performance improvement after training. As a result, average service performance in teams managed by manager academy graduates has improved across four fifths of key metrics, meaning people are working more efficiently and to a higher standard.
What’s more, team members working with graduate shift managers provide a more consistent product and service experience for customers, with the gaps between the worst and best performers reducing significantly. The difference between best and worst performers dropped below 10% across all metrics.
Whether it's through training, more focus on the team members, greater motivation, or a combination of all factors, a huge part of this improvement has to be the influence of the manager academy graduates on those team members. We know already that improved service, quality, and consistency are absolutely key to retaining our customers.- Learning and Development Academy Lead
There’s a positive connection between performance based on the amount of time workers spend with academy graduate managers during shifts too. For instance, average worker accuracy and product appearance metrics are both fifteen times higher among employees who spend most of their shift time with graduates. Similarly, team members with more exposure to graduates receive customer satisfaction feedback twice as high as their peers and average 1.5 times higher in terms of productivity output.
These results have made a positive impression on the leadership team within the wider business, with increased investment in L&D.
Due to the success of the manager academy, getting the buy-in from franchisees so far, and the support of our leadership team, we've been able to grow our team. We now have six trainers, an eLearning developer, platform data support, and a videographer–a big investment and a testament to our performance! Those seven extra team members have helped us increase the number of cohorts we can run.- Learning and Development Academy Lead
Looking to the future, the L&D team will continue using data collected in Bridge to improve the manager academy and build new pathways that facilitate coaching and knowledge sharing.
This is the first time at our company in the UK that we’ve been able to attach solid data to measure the impact of training, and I’m thrilled at this starting point.- Learning and Development Manager
1,200
Stores
80%
Improvement in key performance and service metrics
2x
Higher customer satisfaction
1.5x
Increased worker productivity
