Customer Success Story
How Rudy's Barbershop Saved $200K in Credit Card Fees and Streamlined Operations Across 27 Locations with Boulevard
- Locations
- 27
- Boulevard customer
- since 2021
- Industry
- Barbershop
- Website
- rudysbarbershop.com
Key Takeaways
- Rudy's Barbershop saved $200K in credit card fees with Boulevard Offset, while cutting no-shows 29% and late cancellations 45%.
- Onboarding took just six weeks across all 27 locations, with new staff trained on the system in 30 minutes instead of a full day.
- Centralized reporting gave COO Jeffrey Calkins same-day visibility into performance across every location.
- Boulevard Offset let Rudy's share credit card processing costs with clients with little pushback, freeing up money to reinvest in the team.
Introduction
Rudy's Barbershop opened its first shop in Seattle in 1993, built for people who have hair and the people who cut it — a grunge-soaked counterculture answer to the traditional barbershop. Today the brand has grown to 27 locations, but that growth has not come without turbulence. When COVID-19 shuttered shops across the country, Rudy's had to rethink how it operated, tracked performance, and managed costs across every one of its locations.
Less talk,
more proof
- 200K
- Savings in credit card fees
- 30%
- Increase in gift card sales
- 29%
- Decrease in no-shows
- 45%
- Decrease in late cancellations
The Challenge: Disconnected Reporting and Rising Costs Across 27 Locations
With 27 locations running on disconnected systems, Rudy's leadership team had no consistent way to see how the business was performing. Pulling reports across shops was a manual, day-long process, and rising credit card processing costs were eating into margins at every location. Jeffrey Calkins, Rudy's COO, needed a platform that could give him same-day visibility into every shop and a way to control costs without cutting into the client experience.
The Solution: Boulevard's Barbershop Software and Offset
Calkins found Boulevard's barbershop software gave him the reporting clarity he needed, replacing a process that used to take a full day with same-day visibility across all 27 locations. Boulevard Offset let Rudy's share credit card processing fees with clients at checkout, a change that met little pushback and is saving the business hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
How We Helped
- A simplified solution
- Cut staff training time from five days to 30 minutes, per COO Jeffrey Calkins.
- Smooth onboarding
- Rudy's went live in six weeks and converted all 27 locations to Boulevard on the same day.
- Superior reporting
- Centralized data gives Calkins and the executive team same-day visibility across every location, replacing a process that used to take a full day.
- Increased online bookings
- Boulevard's ease of use and design boosted online bookings and eased pressure on front-desk staff.
- The power of Offset
- Sharing credit card processing fees with clients at checkout via Boulevard Offset met little pushback — Calkins estimates it's saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Rudy's Barbershop
“When I saw how easy it was to generate reports with Boulevard, I knew it was the right solution. Offset completely changed my mind about passing credit card fees onto the customer — they don’t mind, and we’re saving hundreds of thousands a year.”
