McKeever’s Price Chopper: A Grocery Brand Rooted in People and Purpose
McKeever’s isn’t just a grocery business—it’s a hometown staple built on trust, consistency, and connection.
Family-owned and operated since day one, McKeever Price Chopper locations are woven into the fabric of their Kansas and Missouri communities. Customers recognize the cashiers. Managers know their regulars by name. And behind the scenes, the company runs on strong relationships, many of which have lasted decades.
It’s a business that values loyalty—not just from customers, but from employees too.
“I interned here in college, and I’ve been back now for six years. It works out great. It’s a good fit for me.” — JT Hilderbrand, HR Director, McKeever Enterprises
McKeever’s has always been a place where people can grow.
JT Hilderbrand started with a background in sales and now leads HR. Team members return to the company after time away. And the expectation, across the board, is that you show up, work hard, and treat people well.
That same commitment extends beyond the stores, through community programs like Check Out Hunger and No School = No Lunch—efforts that support Kansas City families year-round.
But when post-pandemic turnover collided with rising labor costs and outdated tools, even a strong culture like McKeever’s started to feel the strain.
That’s why the company decided to modernize the way it managed labor—without losing what made it special.
The Challenge
From the outside, McKeever’s seemed steady—but under the surface, years of disruption were catching up. The business had weathered the pandemic, but it left a wake of turnover, broken routines, and lost knowledge.
Nowhere was that more visible than in scheduling.
“When we got TimeForge turned on, one of the first struggles we ran into was that none of the cashiers had any availability for a schedule,” said JT. “Everyone’s availability was they wanted to work when they want, not when the store needed.”
Managers had gotten into the habit of assigning schedules based on preferences rather than business needs—something JT traced back to a lack of training and a desire to keep things simple during chaotic times.
“Because of turnover, we didn’t have front-end managers anymore who had that knowledge of how to bust out the graph paper and take a sales projection and really write the daily schedule,” he said.
“But [TimeForge] kind of gave us that kick in the pants of what was going on, and we were able to get that fixed too.”
The Impact of Minimum Wage Changes
At the same time, Missouri’s incremental minimum wage hikes had steadily increased labor costs.
“Our labor cost goals were a little outdated based off of the new wage hikes that had happened in the past five years, where they weren’t very manageable anymore,” JT explained. “And really, we just weren’t paying enough attention to labor over time.”
Part of the problem was the scheduling software they’d relied on through their payroll provider, Paylocity.
“It was a very bare basic scheduling system,” JT said. “It gave no cost information or anything like that of what it meant to give that 40 hours… It told the manager nothing.”
With outdated tools and a fragmented process, McKeever’s needed a platform that could centralize labor planning, provide forecasting, and give managers the insight they were missing—all without making things harder for frontline teams.
“The only way you can make any ground [in grocery] is to be super efficient… You can’t raise prices… you have to figure out a way to be more efficient to just make it work.” — Tim Cosens, CTO, McKeever Enterprises
The Solution
McKeever’s needed more than just a better schedule—it needed a system that could bring structure back to the front lines. Store managers had gotten used to building schedules around preferences rather than demand, and legacy tools weren’t offering the insight or guardrails they needed.
In order to reintroduce discipline and data-driven planning, McKeever’s turned to TimeForge.
CTO Tim Cosens had already been in contact with the TimeForge team and saw it as a flexible fit for their size and needs.
“I looked at a couple other [software solutions], but most of the ones that were out there seemed like they were much bigger companies than us or were going to be priced like they were for much bigger companies than us,” Tim said.
After TimeForge was selected, HR Director JT Hilderbrand led the rollout across all store locations. His priority: helping managers transition from reactive scheduling to a more strategic, accountable process.
To replace the guesswork, TimeForge provided tools that tied labor scheduling directly to sales trends.
Managers could use past sales data as a baseline and apply small adjustments based on their local knowledge—bringing structure to a process that had become inconsistent store to store.
“There’s a tool in TimeForge where basically you could say, use the same sales number from last year, and then the manager could do a plus or minus 1%,” JT explained.
McKeever’s also implemented earned wage access through TimeForge to support employees and improve retention.
While JT was initially skeptical, it quickly became a popular benefit among staff and a valuable tool for recruiting.
“It kind of shocked me about how many employees actually jumped on [earned wage access] pretty fast. We got it in our recruiting ads now… and they seem to like it.” — JT Hilderbrand
The team also replaced unreliable hardware with TimeForge’s biometric time clocks, helping eliminate the administrative burden caused by missed punches and device failures.
“Your system has been working great,” JT said. “Those tablets [for the previous scheduling tool] were unreliable. They broke all the time… TimeForge has been good.”
The Result
With TimeForge fully rolled out, McKeever’s saw welcome improvements in labor efficiency, visibility, and confidence at the store level.
The company was able to eliminate unnecessary labor hours and reduce labor costs by roughly 2% overall—a meaningful shift for a low-margin, high-volume business. That number is expected to increase as managers in the most recent rollout locations gain more experience.
“We’ve used TimeForge since the beginning of this year. We got it in all our stores… and we’ve adjusted 1,570 hours down using it as a tool to get our labor correct and where we want it to be. — JT Hilderbrand
Scheduling also became faster and less burdensome. Front-end managers, who once spent hours trying to piece together weekly coverage, gained back valuable time.
“The front end person probably cut their time at least by a third,” said Tim.
Just as important, managers gained a clearer sense of what “good” scheduling actually looks like—something JT saw as a major win for consistency and accountability.
“[TimeForge] made it easy for a person like me, who works for a grocery store but never worked in a grocery store, to understand what is a correct schedule for all the different departments we run,” said JT.
At the same time, earned wage access saw strong adoption. Employees embraced the flexibility, and word of mouth helped spread it store to store.
“When we have a job posting up, we advertise that we do have a same day pay option,” JT said. “Every single day, employees are getting on there and pulling out 30 bucks, 40 bucks—whatever they feel like they need for that day.”
Support from TimeForge’s team played a major role in a smooth rollout and ongoing success.
“Mike (Implementations) and Diego (Support) are very knowledgeable guys, very on top of things,” JT said. “They’ve always had an answer any time I’ve called or emailed.”
For McKeever’s, TimeForge delivered more than a scheduling platform. It helped restore discipline, reduce unnecessary labor, and equip store teams with the tools they needed to run more efficiently—without sacrificing the culture they’d spent decades building.
What’s Next for McKeever’s
With TimeForge fully implemented and payroll integration nearly complete, McKeever’s is moving from problem-solving into optimization mode. The team has streamlined or automated manual tasks and is looking ahead to more flexible scheduling options.
Vacation tracking, once a pain point due to mismatched punches and manual adjustments, is expected to stabilize as the payroll integration finalizes.
“We’re in the final stage of the project,” said Tim. “Assuming that all works out, we should be in real good shape.”
Shift swaps are also beginning to take hold. While it’s new territory for a grocery operation long used to top-down scheduling, JT sees potential in empowering employees to take more ownership over their availability—within reason.
“We’ve just kind of started experimenting with that,” he said. “We had some employees start using it this week.”
With stronger tools, cleaner data, and more engaged teams, McKeever’s is positioned to keep refining its operations while remaining true to its people-first culture.
“TimeForge has been a great tool, a great addition to the toolbox… really got our labor in check and helped give us the good reporting to track that every day and keep everyone informed.” — JT Hilderbrand
