How Kaslu Work got its name (it started with my mum and a bag of cashews)

Every product needs a name, and for a while ours didn't have one. We knew what we wanted to build. What we didn't have was a word to put at the top of the screen.

The word came from my mum.

Kaslu

My mum loves cashew nuts. She asks for them a lot, and English isn't the language she grew up with, so "cashew" has never quite come out as "cashew". It comes out as "kaslu". Pass me the kaslu. Are there any more kaslu? Did you buy kaslu?

I'd heard it a hundred times without thinking about it. Then one day, in the middle of trying to name the thing Renes and I were building, she asked for kaslu again, and it stuck in my head. It was short. It was easy to say. It didn't sound like every other piece of workforce software, all "shift", "roster", "time" and "force" glued together. It sounded like something a person would say, because it was.

It also meant something to me, which I hadn't expected to matter. A lot of what you build as a founder is abstract. This was a small piece of home.

"Ah, like casual"

I didn't know if the name would land with anyone else, so I tested it the only way that counts: I said it out loud to people who run venues.

When I told one of the managers the name, they thought about it for a second and said, "Ah, like a play on words. Casual. Kaslu."

I hadn't meant it that way at all. But they were right, and it fit better than anything we could have planned. Hospitality runs on casuals. They're the people covering the Friday close, picking up the Sunday lunch shift, swapping with a mate when uni exams land. Most of what makes rostering hard in a pub or a café comes down to a team of casuals whose availability changes week to week, and a manager trying to keep every section covered anyway.

So the name has two stories now: my mum's cashews, and a manager hearing "casual" in it. We kept both. Kaslu Work it is.

Who's building it

There are two of us.

I'm Vinny Nery II, the founder. I'm an engineer, and I write a good share of the code, but I'm also the one who ends up doing the business and marketing side: talking to venues, working out what to build next, writing posts like this one, and making sure the people who'd actually use Kaslu Work know it exists.

Renes Reyes is my co-founder, and also an engineer. Where I get pulled towards conversations and the website, Renes stays close to the product and how it's built.

Being two engineers means we can build quickly and fix things the same day. It also means we have to be careful not to build what's interesting instead of what's needed, which is why talking to venue managers is part of the job, not a break from it.

Vinny Nery II

Founder, Kaslu Work

Engineer and founder. Builds the product alongside Renes, and leads the business side: talking to venues, marketing, and deciding what gets built next.

Renes Reyes

Co-founder, Kaslu Work

Engineer and co-founder. Works deep in the product, building the rosters, clock-ins and timesheets that venues rely on every shift.

What we're building, and why

Kaslu Work is rostering and clock-in for hospitality groups. The idea behind it is simple: a pub, a café and a function venue don't run the same way, so the software shouldn't force them to.

Most rostering tools give every venue the same settings. In Kaslu Work each venue is set up the way it actually runs, with its own trading hours, its own sections like bar, floor, kitchen and gaming, its own rounding and approval rules, and its own clock-in boundary drawn on the map. Staff clock in from their phone, and a clock-in only counts once they're on site. Anything outside the boundary is held for a manager instead of being paid by default. Head office sees every venue in one place.

We're also building the parts that meet teams where they already are. Posting rosters and open shifts straight into the staff WhatsApp group is on the way, and so is sending approved timesheets to Xero, MYOB and Employment Hero / KeyPay, so nobody has to retype hours every pay run.

We write a build log most weeks about what we've shipped, including the parts that didn't go to plan. If you want to see how the product is taking shape, that's the place.

Where we are now

Kaslu Work is in early access. We're letting Australian hospitality groups in a few at a time, because we'd rather set each group up properly and learn from them than sign up everyone at once.

If you run a pub, a restaurant, a café or a group of venues and any of this sounds like your week, you can join the waitlist on the home page. Tell us about your venues when you do. We read every one.

And if my mum's reading this: yes, I'll bring kaslu next time.