Video transcription – Translated from French.

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“We began operating La Crique in 2022, and the first summer we were faced with problems of service quality and speed.

Speed was simply linked to the volume we had and the throughput we had to manage.

And the question of quality was linked to the staff, which is based on extras, because we’re a seasonal establishment.

So we had a lot of people coming in for two shifts, going on vacation, coming back for one shift and not being able to bring out the same Aperol Spritz as the week before. And that’s normal.

At the end of the day, when people are under stress, all of a sudden we put in a little more, or a little less, even though we have measuring devices. We were never really able to get a consistent, high-quality product, and we wanted to find a solution that would enable us to offer better products.

We began by addressing the issue of speed.

Shouldn’t we use barguns to prepare everything?

But we said to ourselves: it’s not just about speed, it’s also about quality, and the bargun didn’t fully address that problem, whereas the Manhattan allows us to have a really good product that’s identical every time.

Another positive point is that there are fewer bottles lying around behind the bar. There can be a lot of abuse behind the bar when there’s a lot of alcohol lying around. Here, everything’s in cold storage. It separates the two things.

Originally, we wanted to take on one employee. In the evenings, we operate with six people, and we wanted to reduce this to five.

In the end, we kept six, but as a result, their evening is much more comfortable than the same six as last year.

So, frankly, I’d say that we could have chosen to eliminate one person, one person at a cost of 25 francs per hour, 30 francs including charges.

Well, we quickly paid for the machine, so we kept [all the staff*] to make it more comfortable for everyone. But we do have less waste, and less need for staff.

In terms of waste, too, it’s a huge gain!

So instead of working with 70-centiliter bottles of Gin, we buy 50-liter cans from the same supplier.

We have 1 x 50-liter can, 1 order at the beginning of the season, and then we’ll be ordering again soon, but we’re ordering 50-liter cans.

It’s also an advantage when it comes to negotiating, because we buy Gin in 50-litre packs, and the prices aren’t the same as when we buy the bottles.

We’re also making savings in this area, paying much less for Gin than last year and the same for Vodka.

For the Aperol Spritz, we used a 1,5-liter bottle. It was too complicated to make cocktails from that bottle. On the other hand, to fill the kegs…”

*Interviewer’s note