Customer Spotlight - Vapiano UK
Twice Baked started working with the Vapiano UK team back in 2021, where we were tasked with implementing MarketMan across their UK business. And it was here that we had the pleasure of beginning to work with their Special Project Coordinator - Tamara Carretero de Alvaro!
Having spent the last couple of years working very closely with Tamara, we wanted to take the opportunity to spotlight her journey to the role she’s in today, and to get her thoughts on working with us and the MarketMan platform…
Tamara was born into hospitality with her family owning restaurants in Spain, however chose to not work with the family business and instead struck out on her own, first off running tables and working in kitchens at the age of 15, before going to cooking school and working as a chef:
“I realised I really liked the interaction with people and customers more than working in kitchens, so moved to front-of-house and have since worked in fine dining, casual dining, ghost kitchens…small teams and now big teams with Vapiano!”
Tamara previously worked for Korean chicken concept WingWing, overseeing two physical restaurants and two ghost kitchens in the UK, before moving to Malaysia with the business to help them open their first restaurant there.
“What I learned from my time with WingWing and working with ghost kitchens is the absolute importance in the quality of the food that goes out. There’s no opportunity to make up for shortcomings with great guest experience that you might get from a physical restaurant…”
She then joined Vapiano in 2019, as a Deputy GM before moving into her project focused role at the start of 2021:
“I got the opportunity to help the business with projects like new openings, ghost kitchens and implementing new systems like MarketMan, Tenzo and Deliverect which I really enjoyed. And then 12 months ago I was given full responsibility of the MarketMan platform for Vapiano UK and am now their Subject Matter Expert!”
Prior to the MarketMan implementation, the Vapiano team had tried a couple of different inventory management systems which had not delivered for the business:
“Our managers were having to spend far too long on manual processes like receiving and processing invoices, and we weren’t able to get any kind of real insight into our stock, or cost of sales and how they were impacting our business. Also the lack of integration with our POS was causing real problems…”
Working very closely with the Twice Baked team, Tamara got the MarketMan platform up and running and quickly saw the benefits:
“Ordering is much simpler, the accounting integration with Xero has been great and super simple to use, and we’ve massively reduced the amount of time it takes for us to complete a stock take. And with your team’s help we’ve got really accurate reports on our COGS and Actual vs Theoretical which has massively helped us to identify any potential issues as soon as they come up.
The level of support that we received from Yannis and your team was incredible, we sometimes had up to three calls a week! Everything was explained very clearly and put in simple terms that everyone could understand. You could tell that you were coming at the implementation from an operators perspective which made all the difference.”
At the time of writing, Vapiano has six restaurants in the UK. Four in London - Oxford Circus, Tower Bridge, Tottenham Court Rd and Paddington. In Manchester, at the Corn Exchange, and Edinburgh, South St David St.