Meet Chris Sanderson, Founder at Flexible Hospitality Employment App: Limber

In a nutshell, limber is a marketplace – which matches all the empty shifts in cafés, bars and restaurants with all the great people who want to work them. We’re all about making sure no opportunity to earn cash goes to waste.
 
 

 
How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I used to work for Betfair – where I learnt all about the power of marketplace technology. Before then, I had a lot of experience in the hospitality sector and for me, I thought working in these roles was way too rigid and required way too much commitment given the salary offered by most businesses. I’m someone who likes to do lots of different things and limber is a way for people to work with total flexibility and lots of variety.

I had a bit of a lightbulb moment (limber has some similarities with stuff I’ve done in the past). So I quit my job the next day and here we are.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
We’ve had our most hectic year. We built a new product for the fruit picking industry. That didn’t go anywhere. We’ve diversified into delivery and other sectors. We’ve built the first integration of its kind with a rota management platform (empty shifts automatically go to limber). And we’ve helped 16-24-year-olds get back on their feet after covid by helping the government with their kickstart scheme.

We also introduced a feature allowing workers to increase the hourly rate they’re willing to work for. The feature is especially popular on Friday and Saturday evenings when demand for staff is highest. Our users are reporting Christmas-like levels of demand, with around half the staffing levels. Covid-19 restrictions have made hospitality more labour intensive than ever with requirements such as table service, meeting and greeting, etc a necessity.

What should be a period of welcomed profitability for the industry after a tough year, is becoming really challenging. In response to this, we’ve introduced our own version of ‘surge pricing’. Whenever the app is busy, workers applying to shifts can opt to increase the hourly rate they’re willing to work for. Venues have to pay a bit more but, in the current climate, that might be what it takes to keep the business moving.
 

What can we hope to see from Limber in the future?

 
More cities, more countries, more sectors. But also, more great product. We’re a tech-first company so I’d expect us to announce some more developments in our scheduling integrations in the next few months.