Challenge: When Cousins Subs moved its HR system to Paylocity in early 2026, the company switched from Rain to rapid! PayCard, drawn in by promises of a fully automated integration and a combined paycard and EWA solution. The integration never worked as promised, leaving HR and payroll to manually manage files every day while employees went without reliable access to wages they had already earned.
How Rain helped: Cousins Subs returned to Rain within months. The manual work disappeared, employees drew noticeably more of their earned wages than they had with rapid!, and the HR team got back the hours a day it had spent troubleshooting the old system.
We've been serving submarine sandwiches in Wisconsin since 1972, when our founder brought the concept from White House Subs in Atlantic City, New Jersey and opened the state's first sub shop. Today we operate 93 locations across Wisconsin, 59 of them corporate-owned, with approximately 1,000 corporate employees eligible for benefits including earned wage access (EWA). We first implemented Rain's EWA solution in 2021 to compete for hourly talent during the post-pandemic labor shortage. In early 2026, a move to a new HR platform led us to switch providers, a decision we reversed within months after the new vendor's promised integration fell apart. Here's what happened, in our own words, from J.J. Grube, CFO, Courtney Hendricks, Director of HR, Maya Jones, HR Generalist, and Adam Levetzow, Talent Manager.
We started looking at earned wage access in 2021, during Covid and in the middle of the labor shortage that hit every quick service and fast casual brand. We needed any competitive advantage we could get to recruit hourly employees, and Taco Bell locations in our market were already offering EWA. We looked at a couple of other vendors, including Branch, before choosing Rain.
Rain's setup was straightforward and worked with our systems from the start. Just as important, Rain covered the cash float, so the benefit did not cost us anything upfront, and the conversation centered around our employees' financial wellness, not just a stopgap for payday. We piloted the program in several stores before rolling it out company-wide.
At the start of 2026, we converted our HRIS from UKG to Paylocity. rapid! PayCard was one of Paylocity's integrated vendors, and its pitch was hard to pass up: a fully automated integration with no files to reconcile, plus a combined paycard and EWA product that would let us retire our separate paycard vendor, U.S. Bank. Consolidating two vendors into one, on what looked like a cleaner technical setup, was the deciding factor.
It was not what rapid! promised. We later found out we were rapid!'s first Paylocity implementation, so we were troubleshooting the integration in real time alongside them. The automatic file feed never worked reliably. Punch and payroll files had to be adjusted manually almost on a daily basis, and even then some employees could not be found in the system at all. Transfers that should have been instant took 24 hours. Employees called every day asking why they could not see their hours or access their pay, and reaching rapid!'s own customer service could take three or four days.
The tipping point came down to cash flow. rapid! could never reliably time its withdrawal to land on the actual payroll date, so we were fronting a week's worth of cash. Then it stopped withdrawing automatically altogether, which meant paying out that money ourselves and reconciling it after the fact, more manual work, not less.
Keeping rapid! running took roughly an hour and a half of combined staff time every day between payroll file uploads and employee questions, on top of an HR team that was already managing a system conversion, a new 401(k) vendor and a new insurance carrier during the same months.
We switched back to Rain within months. Once we announced the move back to Rain, the reaction from employees was immediate: relief.
We were extremely impressed with how quickly Rain was able to get us back up and running once we let them know we were returning. That made a huge difference for us and especially for our employees. The manual file uploads disappeared, the daily employee calls stopped and the team got its time back.
Employees also love all of the promotions and giveaways Rain offers. They've been a nice perk and something we didn't really see with Rapid!.
“No news is good news. If you don't hear from them, that means everything is lovely. All of my employees love Rain. They're so happy to be back with the company.”
— Maya Jones, HR Generalist, Cousins Subs
The clearest sign of how much more comfortable employees are with Rain is usage. On an average payroll with rapid!, employees were drawing around $60,000 combined. With Rain, that runs $85,000 to $90,000. Our Talent Manager has logged into Rain's dashboard exactly twice since we switched back, both times for a one-off question. With rapid!, our team was in that system multiple times every day.
Rain's deduction model also gives us controls we did not have with rapid!. If an employee leaves unexpectedly, we can pause their Rain account the same day, before their final pay runs. For employees with wage garnishments, having that visibility at payroll time instead of finding out after the fact is a real safeguard.
We have also continued to use EWA as a recruiting tool. Since our original rollout, we have acquired roughly 30 franchise locations, and earned wage access is one of the first benefits new franchisees get excited about when they join the corporate family. New hires get the same message from day one: our general managers introduce Rain during interviews and orientation, so employees know they can tap into their pay as soon as their first punches hit the system, well before a first paycheck would otherwise arrive on our biweekly cycle.
Company-wide turnover has fallen from roughly 125 to 130% in 2021 to somewhere around 80% today. While that reflects a lot of factors beyond any single benefit, what we can say is that Rain is part of the reason why people stay, and it is a benefit our teams notice the moment it is gone.
We are watching Rain's newer features closely, including a rent-splitting option, a credit builder card and Guide Me, Rain's financial health agent. We have shared with Rain that we want training materials, webinars or short videos once these roll out more broadly, so we can help our employees get the most out of them.
“It's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube after you've let employees run with a benefit like this. The financial wellness and educational piece is always something we want to use to empower our employees.”
— Courtney Hendricks, Director of HR, Cousins Subs
If another QSR or fast casual brand asked us whether to go with Rain, the answer is simple.
“I will say yes, go for it. It's user friendly, it's easy access, and it was quick and seamless with our Paylocity integration and the file import. You can't go wrong. It's a win for you and for the employees.”
— Maya Jones, HR Generalist, Cousins Subs
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