Silo and Crate Brewery: The Zero-Waste Restaurant Powered by Zero-Fuss Technology
The idea? Running a pop-up without a bin. The result? Silo: the world’s first zero-waste restaurant. After a stint in Australia and Brighton, chef Douglas McMaster settled in Hackney Wick, launching Silo above Crate Brewery. From the food on the plate, to the crockery it’s served on, and the furniture itself, every part of the Silo restaurant comes from a desire to be respectful to the environment.
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Hackney Wick, London, UK
Two businesses, one building
Silo and Crate Brewery sit above one another in a white-washed building on London’s River Lee. While they’re connected with bricks and mortar, they’re two very different operations. One part of the business offers fine dining table service, the other offers fast bar service. They needed a system that worked across both parts of the business to make life easier for the staff, and to make the experience smoother for the customers.
The power of Payments
After extensive meetings, testing, and demonstrations to see the technology in action, Silo and Crate Brewery chose Lightspeed. Many factors made Lightspeed the obvious choice: the wide range of integrations available, the ease of use, and the power of Lightspeed Payments.
“Lightspeed Payments has just sped up service so much, and made it so much easier. Less mistakes, less chance of fraud, less possibilities of things going wrong because it's speaking directly to the ePOS. And, also for Silo, when we were offered the chance to join the beta for the pay at table and split the bill at the table features, we jumped at a chance. Silo ran with it and they loved it.” says Tim Dennis, Silo and Crate Brewery’s General Manager.
A more harmonised and efficient operation
With two separate businesses to run within one building, Silo and Crate Brewery couldn’t afford to be wasting time – they needed every operation to run smoothly and efficiently. That’s what makes Lightspeed Payments indispensable.
“We realised that in our bar downstairs, in the summertime, the bottleneck was speed of service. We could fit slightly more people in, but it was just how quickly we could serve them. Queues were forming at the bar, and so by removing 15 seconds from every transaction, that sped up our speed of service and then maximised how much we could take in a day.” says Jen Thompson, Head of Finance at Silo and Crate Brewery.
By saving time on each transaction, Silo and Crate Brewery saw a 10% increase of revenue on its busiest day.
A calm close of play
When it’s time to close, the last thing you want to be worrying about is making sure the numbers add up. Lightspeed Payments lets Silo and Crate Brewery easily keep track of their day’s takings.
“Thanks to the reporting, it’s taken 3 hours a week off my time doing this. There's no looking for mistakes, there's no looking for refunds and balancing Z reports and X reports. At the end of the night you run one report, take one number, sign off and go home.” says Tim.
“Lightspeed Payments has just sped up service so much, and made it so much easier. Less mistakes, less chance of fraud, less possibilities of things going wrong because it's speaking directly to the ePOS.”
Tim Dennis, General Manager
