If we didn’t have Apicbase, we would run into huge difficulties.
Fabio Haebel
Founder Circus & Studio Haebel
Operation Size
6 dark kitchens
2 restaurants
1 bakery
1 concept development studio
Business type
Dine-in, dark kitchens & virtual brands
Modules
Menu Engineering
Procurement
Inventory Management
Sales Analytics
Insights Hub
Growth plan →
How Circus Lowered Food Cost by 18%
“As Circus grew and expanded, we soon saw the need for an advanced inventory management system that seamlessly integrates purchasing and sales data.”
“You can only do operations really well if you are on-site yourself.” When you work on a large scale, that is not an option. “That’s when we turned to Apicbase.”
Fabio Haebel from Hamburg, Germany is a hospitality entrepreneur at heart. He runs two restaurants, a bakery and a rapidly expanding network of dark kitchens and virtual brands called Circus. “At the restaurants, we have 42 employees, with Circus we will soon be at 150,” he says.
We asked him why he chose Apicbase.
What was the challenge?
“If we didn’t have Apicbase, we would run into huge difficulties”, says Fabio.
Firstly, we wouldn’t know our stock levels. Circus, our dark kitchen network, operates super efficiently. For example, when a curry is out of stock, that option is closed instantly on the online menus. If I didn’t have Apicbase, I’d have to hire 30 to 40 people to monitor sales and inventory. Apicbase automates the whole process.”
Secondly, food waste. “With no system in place, there is no control over purchases, expiry dates or quantities left in storage.” Looking at the scale of the operation, “we would have to write off huge amounts of unused products. As a result, “food costs would go through the roof.”
Thirdly, access to reliable data. Control is everything for a growing business. “We need solid data. If the numbers were off, it would be bad for us, bad for investors, and bad for employees. Access to real-time information gives peace of mind. I know exactly what is happening in the company, and when to take action.”
Your stock is unusually low. Take action now.
"Apicbase instantly notified the team. It saved our sales over the weekend."
How do you use Apicbase?
“I work with Apicbase every day”, Fabio Haebel says.
- End-to-end solution – “At Circus, we use the whole system, starting with supplier management and menu management. Then we dig deeper into individual dishes and the associated ingredients, the sales and inventory.”
- Recipe management – “It’s like playing around on a whiteboard where I can drag and drop recipes and ingredients. Apicbase instantly provides food costs, nutritional values, and allergens. The test kitchen has its own library where we develop new dishes. It’s separate from the live environment.”
- POS integration – “In the live environment, everything is linked to our sales dashboard, enabling complete and holistic analytics. Apicbase’s APIs are essential here because they integrate with Deliverect and our POS system.”
- Inventory control – “Apicbase gives us real-time insight into inventory levels, so we know precisely what to order. The barcode scanning makes stock counts a breeze. All procurement happens in Apicbase.”
- Optimisation – “We do a lot of testing, measuring the impact with Apicbase and evaluating the results with the finance department in the system: what if we changed the recipe?; what about pricing?; or what if we purchased differently?”
- Automation – “When the data shows that I need 100 portions of pasta with prawns, then Apicbase instantly calculates: what I need to order, taking current stock levels into account. It creates a bill of materials, which triggers optimised purchase orders for individual suppliers that can be sent directly from the platform. It’s so easy.”
Access to reliable data is simply golden.
What has been the outcome?
- Food cost percentage – “The most significant result we have achieved is related to food cost. Since we started using Apicbase, we have been able to reduce food costs by 3 to 4% weekly. Overall, we were able to reduce food costs by 18%.”
- Peace of mind – “I told my staff: put Apicbase on the homepage of your browser, and check it first thing in the morning. It gives us back time, frees up space in our heads, and provides a level of control over operations we didn’t think possible before.”
- Control – “The best outcome I have gained through Apicbase is actually precisely this control. I know what is going on at every location. And I can act much faster. Before, we were flying blind. Access to reliable data is worth its weight in gold, plain and simple.
“I would advise other restaurant leaders to use Apicbase because it saves a lot of time and gives you back headspace.
Fabio Haebel
Founder Circus
What are 3 important benefits?
Apicbase packs a lot of punch. Three USPs are:
- Communication – “We have a large collection of ingredients and recipes. Every employee knows that there are no spreadsheets, no folders, no Dropbox or other apps. Everything is accessible in one place.”
- Roles and permissions – “We can adapt accessibility to the tasks and responsibilities of individual employees. In other words, we can define who has access to what.”
- Single source of truth – “It’s super efficient to have all essential business data – costs, revenue and profitability – in one system. At any given time, the finance department can dive in and evaluate the numbers.”
What would you say to other restaurant leaders?
“I would advise them to use Apicbase because it saves a lot of time and gives you back headspace. It stores information that would otherwise be all over the place.”
Apicbase organises chaos.
Modules in use
Circus was able to centralise F&B management and get the necessary insights to improve operations using five off-the-shelve modules in Apicbase.
