Red Lodge Hospitality Group
Red Lodge Hospitality Group has built something rare over 30 years: 4 distinct dining and lodging concepts in the heart of Montana's Beartooth Range, each with its own identity and loyal following. Tom and Liza founded Red Lodge Pizza Co. three decades ago, then expanded through the Carbon County Steakhouse, Bogart's Restaurant, and ultimately The Pollard Hotel, a historic property that anchors the town of Red Lodge. Managing tip distribution across a boutique hotel, a full-service steakhouse, a pizzeria, and a bar, each with different staffing models and tip rules, meant Laurel Sweeney and her team were buried in notebooks, spreadsheets, and manual reconciliation every pay period.
~48 hrs/month
Saved across managers by eliminating manual tip tracking
100% tip transparency
For front-of-house staff via the TipHaus Employee App, with 0 disputes
New Tip Channel
Unlocked for housekeeping at The Pollard Hotel through QR Code Tipping
Montana
4
Multi-concept hospitality group (hotel, steakhouse, pizzeria, bar)
Laurel Sweeney, Controller
Tip distribution across 4 concepts relied on handwritten notebooks and manager-built spreadsheets, creating data gaps, math errors, and hours of manual reconciliation every pay period.
TipHaus automated tip rules per concept and job code, integrated directly with Toast, and gave front-of-house staff real-time visibility into their earnings through the Employee App. QR Code Tipping extended tips to housekeeping staff for the first time.
Reduce tip calculation time by 80% while eliminating manual errors and discrepancies—ensuring accuracy and legal compliance
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Give your team daily access to their earnings. No cash, no bank runs, no stress.
Find out how digital tip payouts are transforming restaurant operations and employee retention.
Laurel Sweeney has been part of the Red Lodge Hospitality Group for 21 years, starting as a server and working her way through management at Bogart's Restaurant and the corporate office before taking on her current role as Controller in 2019. She works closely with owners Tom and Liza across all 4 concepts: Red Lodge Pizza Co., The Carbon County Steakhouse, Bogart's Restaurant, and The Pollard Hotel with its attached Marley's restaurant and banquet operation.
Tom has always been an early technology adopter. Red Lodge was on Toast as far back as 2011, years before most independent operators in the region. That same instinct led the group to TipHaus, and eventually to Cheers by TipHaus (QR Code tipping) for the hotel's housekeeping team.
In the early days, tip distribution ran on trust and cash. Servers settled with the kitchen directly at the end of each shift, handling envelopes. As the group grew and card payments became the norm, that approach stopped working.
The team switched to using Toast shift reviews as the record of each server's tip-out amounts, but there was no automation. Managers recorded the amounts by hand in notebooks, then transcribed them into spreadsheets for Laurel to use for payroll. Across 4 concepts and roughly 120 employees in the off-season, that process added up to 12 hours per week across all 4 locations and left room for error.
Before TipHaus, we'd write everyone's tips down in a notebook, then managers had to manually enter everything into a spreadsheet. It was a slow, tedious process.
Laurel Sweeney
Controller
Then one day, a notebook page went missing. The data was simply gone.
Laurel was spending at least 2 hours per biweekly pay period just on tip spreadsheet reconciliation, and up to 4 or more when the numbers didn't add up. Across four managers at 4 locations, the collective time spent on manual tip handling represented a significant operational drag every single week.
TipHaus replaced notebooks and spreadsheets with automated tip rules tailored to each concept.
Every restaurant has its own setup, from the Carbon County Steakhouse, where bussers are part of the tip pool, to the Pizzeria and banquet events at The Pollard, each with its own distribution rules. When tip percentages need to change, Laurel can preview how the update will affect each role and make the change in just a few minutes. The Toast integration handles the daily sync, pulling shift data directly into TipHaus so managers no longer transcribe anything. In several years of daily use, the integration has required support intervention exactly twice. Front-of-house staff adopted the TipHaus Employee App quickly. Many use it daily to reconcile their expected payout before the close of the next business day. The result has been a near-complete elimination of tip disputes and tip-related conversations, translating into a meaningful lift in staff trust.
TipHaus is a huge time saver for my servers. There is 0 time spent calculating tips or doing payouts manually. The employee app puts everything right there on their phones, black and white, and that brings 100% transparency. No questions asked. They trust the system. I would recommend TipHaus to any operator. It has been set it and forget it, very easy to use, and ready to roll from the very first kick-off call.
Laurel Sweeney
Controller
TipHaus also built a custom payroll export, covering all 4 concepts. What once required hours of manual cross-referencing now takes a fraction of the time.
In October 2025, Red Lodge expanded to QR Code Tipping for The Pollard's housekeeping team. The idea came from Tom, who had seen in-room QR tipping at other hotels during his travels and reached out to see if TipHaus offered something similar. He was excited to learn that Cheers by TipHaus was already included with their TipHaus subscription. Now, branded QR cards featuring The Pollard's logo are placed in every guest room and at the front desk, giving guests an easy, cashless way to tip housekeeping.
With plans to bring QR Code Tipping to the Red Lodge Rodeo and local fundraising events, they're just getting started.
See why TipHaus is trusted by 500,000+ hospitality professionals
For Laurel and the Red Lodge Hospitality Group, TipHaus isn't something that requires daily attention. It runs reliably in the background while the team focuses on what actually matters: running four concepts, taking care of staff, and making sure guests leave happy.
That is exactly how it should work.
