Saskatoon tech company selects Nutrien Tower as new headquarters

A homegrown tech company is renewing its commitment to the province and signaling an economic shift along the way.

7shifts, a scheduling software platform used by more than 15,000 restaurants across the continent is moving its headquarters to the new Nutrien Tower building in Saskatoon’s River Landing.

The company simply outgrew its old building on Broadway Avenue, and with staff working from home for the past 19 months due to COVID-19, chief financial officer Allie McMillan said it was a perfect opportunity to make use of the province’s newest office tower.

“We are essentially doubling our footprint of our current office,” McMillan said.

7shifts is leasing 22,000 square feet of Nutrien Tower, roughly a floor-and-a-half of the 18-story building named after its main tenant, Nutrien.

With about 85, or roughly 50 per cent, of staff working in Saskatoon, McMillan said the new space can accommodate at least 170 people, leaving plenty of room for growth.

“Our team members have been working from home, so we couldn’t have an office space that we currently have to have people come back and be as productive as they had been at home,” McMillan said.

“The new space is collaborative in nature and it also meets the needs of team members to be productive and to have client space if they need when they’re not in their team meetings. It’s really state of the art construction for a remote-friendly work environment, which is our company now and going forward.”

Since growing is the name of the tech game, McMillan and CEO Jordan Boesch have their sights set on plenty of expansion.

7shifts was highlighted during Wednesday’s Throne Speech from Lieutenant Governor Russ Mirasty.

Pointing to the pace at which tech companies are expanding, Mirasty noted venture capital investment in Saskatchewan was a record $171 million for just the first six months of the year — a number largely driven by tech companies like 7shifts, Vendasta, Coconut Software and others.

Boesch sees these first years as tiny steps for the entire community.

“We’ve always had a lot of tech companies here … but it’s been more recently there’s more venture capitalism being poured into these companies to scale them to become global players,” he said. “There’s more support and tech incubation and acceleration now than there’s ever been.”

With offices in Toronto and New Jersey as well, Boesch said tech companies like 7shifts are getting a lot more attention to see possibilities that seemed out of reach only a few years ago.

Boesch originally started 7shifts after working for his father’s Quizno’s restaurant in 2014. It would eventually lead him to move the company to Silicon Valley, a place he figured he needed to be if he wanted to make it big alongside all the other tech giants of our era.

Not so fast.

“I do think there’s a huge opportunity to play a future in the economy of Saskatchewan,” Boesch said.

“We could have stayed down there, but we were all from Saskatchewan and we thought what an opportunity to have to come back with all the things we learned to try and be a part of building something that we think is going to be the future.”

Bucking the trend of Saskatchewan being a resource economy is something Boesch and his team welcome, showing that some of the fastest growing companies in the Canada call Saskatchewan home.

“I’m excited that we’re diversifying quite a bit. I still think we’re in such infancy of the potential here that we have yet to uncover, but it’s very exciting to know we’re amongst other great companies that are paving the way,” Boesch said.