We recently spoke to Philip Honer and Xander Coptcoat, from atis, about their journey into the hospitality industry, how atis started, and how Tenzo has helped them along their journey. 

atis was started by the founders, Philip Honer and Eleanor Warder, who wanted to create a concept centred around delicious, quick service, real food after seeing similar concepts in America that delivered on quality and seasonality whilst maintaining a broader hospitable experience. They were inspired to build that experience for the UK and have now opened 6 locations in the UK, with more planned this year. 

Developed to meet the demands of evolving relationships with food, atis focuses on satisfaction, personal health, sustainable sourcing, and community building: serving up plant-based food that tastes delicious and reflects the values of global growing communities.

They opened their flagship store in Old Street in 2019, and following the success of their next few restaurants and a growing market for healthy food, have hopes to take the concept nationwide.

How atis saved 12% on labour costs with Tenzo 

Challenges around labour 

Labour shortages are prevalent throughout the hospitality industry, and atis was not an exception. These shortages left staff at atis feeling more strained than prior to COVID with the General Managers constantly asking thre HQ team for more staff to ease the strain. 

The teams at the restaurants were overwhelmed, feeling overstretched during the busy periods and increasing the likelihood of burnout. Varying perceptions of labour strain mean that some stores had more staff; leading to reduced profit margins as a result of increased labour costs. 

There needed to be more clarity on the busiest times when staff were most needed, as well as a way to monitor the varying levels of productivity between locations.  

How Tenzo helped

Tenzo helped to bring this clarity to atis’ labour operations. 

“Numerous daily decisions in the business are assisted by Tenzo, not just as one-offs but on an ongoing basis.” – Philip Honer, Founder atis

Tenzo helped the store-level teams to learn from one another and improve their training programmes to maximise productivity and reduce the risk of staff burnout. 

With Tenzo, GMs see on mobile, and in real-time when they are over or understaffed. 

Results

By driving productivity Tenzo was able to save Atis 12% on labour.

How atis streamlined its menu with Tenzo 

Inefficiencies on the menu

atis felt they needed more reliable data to ensure that their menu was as optimised as it could be, with all menu items performing well and contributing appropriately to revenue. Previously, discussions with employees and customers were the main influence on what menu items they perceived as best-selling. 

How Tenzo solved these problems 

Getting access to the right data allowed atis to visualise trends and make data-led decisions around their menu instead of relying on gut instinct. 

Being able to accurately identify which bowls are selling well, or not so well, allowed a diverse menu full of popular items with high contribution margins. Whereas lower-performing items, leading to a drop in profits, were removed. 

Understanding which menu items are selling the best, allowed them to see their success very quickly, and be able to rework or remove some items altogether. 

Results 

Tenzo has allowed atis to create a menu without outliers.  The menu is aligned with customers’ demands, whilst at the same time generating more gross profit than ever before. 

Conclusion 

Prior to using Tenzo, atis experienced common challenges whilst trying to maximise their labour productivity, and in making sure that all menu items were as productive as they could be. 

After introducing Tenzo, operators at atis were empowered to use their data, using easily accessible visual reporting to understand and manage trends to supercharge their performance. Resulting in them removing outliers from their menu and saving 12% on labour costs.

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We recently had the pleasure of speaking to Benjamin D’Hertefelt, Project Manager at NONA, about their operations and how Tenzo fits in. Download the full case study here.

NONA currently has three restaurants in Brussels with a central focus on sustainability. Not only are they a fully carbon-neutral business, they do all they can to put the focus on their local sustainable suppliers. In fact, NONA stands for ‘no name’ so they can put all the focus on their suppliers.

As a growing business, NONA initially approached Tenzo to help with their reporting, but soon found other ways Tenzo is able to support their growing business.

Access to fast and reliable reporting

Having access to fast and reliable reporting was a must for the NONA team. Their previous reporting process took a lot of time and energy so they wanted something simple and automated.

Thanks to Tenzo’s integrations with Strobbo, Lightspeed and Apicbase, all of NONA’s reporting can now be accessed in one place by anyone in the business.

According to NONA’s Project Manager, Benjamin D’Hertefelt, ‘We have that information straight away, it’s always there.’

Gives the General Managers time to focus on what really matters

NONA’s previous reporting methods took General Managers 2 hours every week. It was admin time that could have been spent in a far more productive way and didn’t align with NONA’s ethos for their team.

‘We want to get rid of administration as much as possible, so they can focus on training, being there with the team, and analysis. And that’s where Tenzo helps.’

Now the GMs use the time previously dedicated to reporting to analyse their numbers and make changes that drive performance in the restaurants.

Saves costly mistakes

Tenzo has given the team at NONA the tools to avoid costly mistakes.

When one of their mushroom invoices looked particularly high, ‘I went straight to Tenzo. I checked per vendor and what the sales were… I could see that the invoice represented almost 40% of our total cost of goods in one of our restaurants.’

This was clearly an error for a product that they only sold in 15% of transactions. Happily, because they spotted it so quickly a significant cost and a large amount of waste was avoided. 

Gives the whole team a voice

Alongside their quantitative information, Tenzo gives team members the ability to leave qualitative feedback as well. At NONA, every shift leader fills in the Tenzo logbook to let head office know of any challenges or successes. 

‘Every morning we wake up, and the first thing we do is check what the sales were yesterday compared to last week, and then you have an explanation of what happened.’

It means if there’s an issue, it can be fixed straight away. It’s also a great way of getting feedback from the entire team. It can be difficult for head office to speak to shift leaders every day (through no fault of their own, it’s just impossible to be in several places at once).

The logbook then gives these shift leaders a voice. ‘The shift leader then communicate to everyone that way – they feel heard.’

Make sure to download the full case study here to get more info.

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In our latest case study, we spoke to Svenja Siltmann, Group Operations Manager at Generator and Freehand to hear about how Tenzo has helped her team solve their reporting issues. This blog is just a small taster, to get the whole story you can download the full case study here.

The business

Combined, Generator and Freehand is a portfolio of 19 hotels in which they operate 40 F&B outlets. Pioneers of affordable lifestyle and masters of the social experience, all Generator properties include a range of room types from shared to private bedrooms, co-working and casual public areas, bars, cafes and a variety of spaces available for private hire – from street facing or basement exhibition spaces to penthouse suites and roof tops.

Freehand is a collection of hotels that combine innovative design, award-winning food and beverage, and community spirit. Each Freehand location – across New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami – takes its cues from its surrounding neighbourhood, with spaces that are a microcosm of the best each city has to offer.

Acquired by London-based Queensgate Investments in 2019, Freehand and its award-winning food and beverage concept, Broken Shaker, join the trailblazing Generator in offering affordable, design-centric accommodations—that include private and shared rooms—alongside thoughtful communal spaces, and a youth-driven social culture.

The problem

With all of the group’s operations handled at their head office in London, the team lacked consolidated reporting across the business to see how each location was performing. They were using Excel to aggregate all their sales numbers, but it was an extremely manual and time-consuming process.

They needed a system that created a foundation that they could operate from on a daily basis. It was also essential that the system would integrate with their chosen POS (in this case Lightspeed L series and Lightspeed K series) so that both the on-the-ground teams and head office could access all of their analytics in one place.

The solution

Tenzo ticks all the right boxes when it comes to Generator’s needs. They wanted a system that was already proven and that provided the necessary reporting for both head office and specific hotel teams despite differing needs. Plus, the mobile app meant that everything was accessible wherever and whenever they needed it.

Tenzo’s easy reporting now allows the team to compare sales to their budgets and forecasts, while also showing what works and what doesn’t within the business, facilitating more decision-making and optimisation. Additionally, everyone having access to the same reports has improved communication between the operations teams, head office and the C suite.

The results

Generator have reduced the time it takes to compile reports by 75%. Now they can use that time to actually act on the insights gained optimising this business stretching 10 countries, 2 continents and 5 currencies and make quicker, data-backed decisions.

Read the full case study and get in touch to see how Tenzo can help you optimise your operations.

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In our latest case study, we spoke to Tom Brand, Finance Director at Incipio, to understand how Tenzo has changed the way they do their reporting and saved them £100,000 a year! 

With six venues and more in the pipeline, Incipio came to Tenzo needing a reporting solution that integrated with their other systems (they use Zonal as their POS and Harri as their labour tool).

The goal was access to data and insights that would enable fast decision-making for their growing business.

To build or not to build?

Initially, the team tried to build their own reports using Power BI but quickly ran into trouble.

Tom explained, ‘The problem with [Power BI] is that whenever you want to change anything, you have to do it yourself and if you’re not an expert it takes a lot of time, and if it breaks there are only a few people that can fix it.’

Ultimately, the team decided to go with a system that was specifically designed for hospitality and had a dedicated support team that would handle the entire integration process.

It was resolved that ‘a system like Tenzo was a much better replacement for Power BI and would give us everything we wanted.’

First challenge? Replace a clunky process

The first challenge to solve was end-of-night reporting. They had built spreadsheet templates for this, but it wasn’t the easiest process. ‘It worked, but sometimes the numbers they pulled weren’t quite right and obviously, it takes 30 minutes at the end of the night which isn’t great if it’s 1 in the morning.’

Plus, this left those in head office with mountains of emails to sift through every day and multiple spreadsheets to download each morning.

Immediately replacing this process with Tenzo was simple as the sales numbers are already there – no manual input required. And thanks to our log feature, managers could submit their narrative reports straight from their phones on their way home.

‘We implemented this pretty quickly and it just worked. That was the first thing that demonstrated that we wanted to roll out further.’

Access to new KPIs

After replacing one of their manual processes, the team at Incipio wanted to go further and track KPIs they previously hadn’t been able to.

The team, and Tom in particular, had wanted to get a better overview of their labour spend, but pre-Tenzo just accessing the data had taken a tremendous amount of time and effort, let alone reporting on it.

Once they implemented Tenzo, ‘I was able to just pull out a few weekly reports showing the number of labour hours used per hour versus sales.’ This quickly showed them where things were working well and where they weren’t.

This in turn led to data-backed decision making rather than relying on gut instinct.

‘Tenzo gave us facts to base our decisions on; before it was quite anecdotal, saying that it “feels like we’re not making money” or “it feels like we’re overstaffed at these times”. But unless there’s a figure there, people don’t really action it because it’s easier to just keep doing what you’re doing.’

Incredible results

And those data-backed decisions turned out to be the right ones. After gaining access to that report Incipio now saves £2,000 per week – that’s over £100,000 per year! Optimising their labour deployment has added thousands of pounds to their bottom line every week.

The team are now focusing on adding their inventory data to Tenzo and are hoping to see the same type of results.

For a more in-depth read, download the full case study here.

If you’d like to find out more about how Tenzo could work for your business, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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For our latest case study we spoke to Scot Turner, VP of Operations at Qoot, about how using Tenzo has improved their business. Introducing Tenzo has significantly improved Qoot’s day-to-day operations, with some very impressive results.

In these strange new Covid-oriented times, operators need to stay on top of their labour costs more than ever, making sure that they aren’t eating up a significant percentage of sales revenue with so many restrictions in place and the chance of lockdowns at every corner. Fortunately, thanks to Tenzo’s simple and easy-to-understand reporting and insights, Qoot was able to save 15% in labour costs by making some key data-backed changes to their shift schedules.

And thanks to Tenzo, General Managers across Qoot’s brands (including The Gentlemen Baristas, By Chloe and the Lebanese Bakery in the UK) have a better understanding of their individual operations. Furthermore, Qoot’s head office can easily see each brand’s activity as well as how the business is doing as a whole, giving them better insight on how to make improvements. They are actively using Tenzo’s comprehensible data analysis to see where more opportunities lie within the business.

If you’d like to find out exactly how Tenzo have helped Qoot, make sure to download our latest case study.

For more information about our partnership, don’t hesitate to reach out to us and request a demo.

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Nando’s Singapore started using Tenzo a little over a year ago to help improve their forecasting accuracy and optimise their staff scheduling. After a three-month pilot and a full roll out, Tenzo was able to improve their forecasting accuracy by 30% and increase their labour productivity by 15%. Find out how we did it in our latest case study.

“Tenzo’s forecasting solution combines machine learning with an easy to use mobile app for the restaurant managers. This has helped us increase our labour productivity by 15% and has continued to perform well since COVID-19 outbreak.” – Moji Neshat, GM Nando’s Singapore

The journey with Nando’s began as the group searched for better ways of scheduling their weekly rotas. The Singapore arm of the business was the first to start making changes. Their Patraos (managers) were not given much beyond a yearly budget and historical sales to predict what sales would be like and as such forecasting wasn’t as accurate as it could be. Consequently, when it came to the weekly rota, many Patraos relied on a static rota pattern not accounting for fluctuations in sales resulting in over- and under-staffing.

What the operations team at Nando’s were looking for was an easy-to-use platform that could address these problems and be incorporated into their current processes without much disruption to the team. To make sure that Tenzo was the right fit, they embarked on a three-month pilot with a select few locations.

By starting with a pilot, head office was able to compare locations who were and who weren’t using Tenzo to see what effect the new platform had. On top of that, the pilot phase called for close communication between both companies that allowed Tenzo to put forward reports and trend analysis to show how Nando’s could improve their operations based on insight garnered from their data.

“The pilot phase enabled the whole team to understand the benefits of Tenzo and compare against locations not using the platform. This showed us clear results and made us excited to roll out into all of the restaurants.” – Vikram Badhwar, Group Head of Operations Technology at Nando’s

It was also important for both the Tenzo and Nando’s teams that the Patraos could trust the information provided. To ensure this was the case, a session was organised to explain how the algorithm works and what factors influence it. The app itself shows last year’s and last week’s comparable sales when presenting a forecast so in itself fosters trust, but getting that extra session really reassured the team that the algorithm worked well.

After the initial pilot, it was clear that Tenzo was improving key metrics and a full roll out to all locations was the obvious next step. The results were just as successful. Since Nando’s Singapore started using Tenzo, they have been able to improve their labour productivity by 15%. In simple terms, this means that for every dollar spent on labour, Nando’s Singapore is now taking in 15% more in revenue, optimising their labour spend while improving sales.

Furthermore, Tenzo’s AI forecasts have improved the accuracy of Nando’s Singapore’s sales predictions by 25%. After the Patrao has input their own adjustments, this improvement rises to 30% proving that the Tenzo-general manager relationship is a symbiotic one. 

If you’d like to hear more about Nando’s Singapore and how it has dealt with the pandemic, give Moji’s episode of our podcast, In the soup, a listen. It’s available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Apple Podcasts.

Cover Image courtesy of Nando’s

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Metropolitan Restaurants is an Italian Restaurant Group located in London. The restaurants include Getti, La Brasseria and Zia Teresa. The group was created by the entrepreneur Stefano Fraquelli, a figure of the restaurant industry of London. It is a family run business which is today managed by his two sons Alberto and Andrea. In all their restaurants, you will find a wide directory of popular Italian cuisine, and friendly service in a convivial, relaxed Italian atmosphere.

“First impressions clean friendly and authentic Italian. The menu is varied from wood fired pizza, a reasonable choice of pasta secondi and homemade desserts that you struggle not to what more than one! All fresh generously portioned and one of the best Spaghetti Vongole I’ve eaten. Great atmosphere too. Can’t wait to return.” 

Arif S. — Tripadvisor

“We have dined at Getti’s on many occasions, mainly for lunch and over the last 5/6 years have found it consistently excellent — The pasta is wonderful complimented by the extremely personal and obliging staff who always make the visit a delightful experience.” 

Peter C. — Tripadvisor

Having met with the owners and discussed their business in detail, we identified the following issues:

1. It was inconvenient and time consuming to precisely follow and action all incoming reviews in real time as well as calculate their review trends over all social review channels.
2. Difficulty accurately forecasting customer demand to ensure the optimal amount of staff and fresh inventory.
3. More generally, it was challenging and time consuming to gather all their useful information into one place.

To address these challenges, they decided to try Tenzo as a restaurant management and sales forecasting software solution to help cut costs, save time and increase the overall efficiency and performance of their business. After a few months of using our back office solution, the Getti team feel Tenzo is a user-friendly application which helps them save money.

In further detail, our business intelligence solution allows them to:

1. Monitor and action their social trends (including TripAdvisor, Google Places, Yelp and Twitter) on mobile for when they are on the go.
2. Forecast demand more accurately (25-50% improvement) using Tenzo’s Artificial Intelligence.
3. Collate all their data into one place to build comprehensive reports, receive alerts and original insights for increased transparency and easier decision making.

“I think that an app like Tenzo could be useful for any other restaurant” 

Andrea Fraquelli — Co owner of Getti

Watch the video testimonial:

Find out more about how Tenzo can help your business

Request a Demo

Like this article or still not convinced? You can also find out why Upham Group and Macellaio trust us.

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About Upham Group

The Upham Group has refurbished and opened numerous superb pubs and inns across the south of England, where you can taste all of the Upham Brewery beers on draft and enjoy fabulous meals every day of the week.

Upham Group are passionate about making great pubs and inns that people love going to. Since 2012 they have been giving a new lease of life to some wonderful pubs in the south of England. They believe the ingredients are finding great pubs with character, in wonderful locations, sympathetically restoring them to give them a fresh start and then adding a mix of great staff, drink, food and atmosphere to create somewhere that people love to meet, eat, drink and sleep.

Upham Brewery on Southampton

“Definitely the best roast beef dinner we’ve ever had.” — Steve L on Tripadvisor

“I can honestly say that Sunday lunch roast in the Thomas Lord was far and away the very best pub lunch we have ever eaten, and I would unreservedly class it as excellent. It has a great atmosphere and efficient friendly staff.” — Purdeysboss on Tripadvisor

Why they use Tenzo

Upham Group faces the same daily struggles than in any business in the hospitality sector. Robb, chief financial officer of Upham Group, mentioned some of their daily struggles as being:

• Assess the performance of the staff
• Ensure the consistency of service
• Respond to clients on their feedback (social reviews) to maintain the customer loyalty
• Give autonomy to the manager of each of the sixteen locations
• Quickly collect accurate and reliable data from their pubs

They decided to use Tenzo to gather and analyse data as well as having better insights as to the performance of each pub. After a few months of using Tenzo, the main benefits which they underline were:

• Analyse sales by product item (ex: fish & chips, burgers…)
• Have access to data that was impossible to see in the POS
• The ease of access allows them to save time and money and to make changes in their menu, opening hours, employees schedule…
• Better forecasting of their sales which causes a better control of stock

“ I would absolutely recommend Tenzo to friends and colleagues in the hospitality sector” — Robb, CFO of Upham Group

Watch the video testimonial:

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About Macellaio

Roberto Costa founded the first Macellaio in Italy before coming to London to share what he had learnt over twenty years in the food industry. His concept is always the same, the best way of doing hospitality is without compromising the quality — ever.

Why “Macellaio”? According to Roberto Costa it is a name that aspires to be a praise to the animal, but above all to the work of the artisan farmers that devote their lives to this passionate world. Macellaio RC is a hymn to Italian excellence.

All the products offered in Macellaio are the result, the “fruit” as they like to say in Italy, of dedicated work by artisans and farmers who share the “Italian passion” and the same meaning of “made in Italy”.

The commitment is to offer their clients the excellence of Italian products with no compromise.

“Is the only place in London where you can find real Italian meat like fiorentina or tagliata. Strongly recommended!” — Emaserafini on TripAdvisor

“One of our favorite places in London. Great meat and a very nice wine list. Staff is very kind and knowledgeable… Always looking forward to go back.” — KB-Dora on TripAdvisor

Why they use Tenzo

Roberto Costa was looking for a way for the managers of his three locations to have everything under control. With Tenzo, directly on their phone, they can check their sales in detail (by location, product category, product item…), all their social reviews (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Twitter…), their staff performance and also the forecast of sales for the next week.

In concrete terms, with Tenzo, Roberto Costa and his managers can see everything in one place, simply presented and on mobile.

“Tenzo it’s simple and that simplicity helps manage the restaurant in the best way… It’s the best app that I saw, ever” — Roberto Costa, owner of Macellaio RC.

Watch the video testimonial:

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