Wagamama chooses Welsh company to aid eco-mission and boost profits

Press release: for immediate release May 8th 2008

Since its first restaurant opened in Bloomsbury in 1992, Wagamama has earned a reputation in the catering industry for transforming the way we dine out.

Serving pan-Asian food in a modern noodle bar setting, customers sit in long tables for 20, orders are taken by digital PDAs, and food arrives as soon as it is ready, in whatever order it is ready. Green tea comes free on request and customers keen to recreate the experience in their own kitchens can even buy Wagamama cook books and other merchandise in restaurants.

Yet it’s not just with the eating experience that Wagamama is leading the way – they’re also keen to be at the forefront of corporate responsibility, with the company slogan “positive eating + positive living”.

As well as recycling and source food locally where possible they have more recently taken measures to reduce unnecessary travel among staff.

And they have chosen Welsh business Miura Conference to aid them in this mission.

Wagamama has over 70 restaurants around the world, with more than 40 in the UK. Last month (April) saw the opening of the chain’s first ever Welsh restaurant in Cardiff Bay, with a further eatery planned for central Cardiff under the new library development,

Having staff all over the country has inevitably involves a huge amount of travelling – but since signing up with Cowbridge-based Miura Conference, Wagamama has reduced the amount of travel undertaken by their managers attending weekly briefings by three-quarters, by adopting audio, web and video conferencing.

As Steve Hill, Chief Executive, of Wagamama, explains: “Every Monday the area managers and certain restaurant managers would come to London for a meeting. That was a lot of train rides, car rides etc. What this has done is reduce the need for that.

"They now meet once a month in London. I can’t ever see virtual conferencing totally taking the place of face-to-face meetings – there is a need to have that personal contact. But to do that every week is overwhelming. This enables the managers to have a “meeting” every Monday without getting in the car. It has been fantastic.”

He admits it has meant a huge culture shift in the company. He said: “There have never been issues with the quality of the product or the service – it’s been internally getting off our butts and actually using it. And now we love it. It’s taken a while to start using it, but now that we do everybody wants to use it. It’s re-educating people.”

While Hill is keen to point out that to build an international brand, plane and train travel will always be necessary, global chains must take the issue of corporate responsibility seriously.

"It helps condition people’s thinking by saying on a Monday you don’t need to come to London three times out of four, and it gets people thinking ‘do I need to make that trip?’. People are thinking more in the same direction, it’s the tipping point that gets it flowing the other way.”

As well as helping the environment, it is saving the company thousands of pounds a year in reducing train fares and mileage expenses.

Hill said: "Instead of spending four days a week managing their restaurants and one day travelling to London, they only need to have an hour of their day for a conference call. The rest of the day would have been spent on a train or in a car. It is efficient for businesses.

"And it reduces stress as well. Travelling is stressful for people."

Wagamama has been so impressed with the impact virtual conferencing has had on the company that Hill says those monthly face-to-face meetings could decrease to once every two months or even quarterly. “We will all meet face to face regularly”, he said, “but not so often.”

Tom Stroud, Managing Director, of Miura Conference said he was delighted to see their audio and web conferencing solutions being adopted by such an internationally influential company as Wagamama to tackle the issue of environmental responsibility seriously.

He said: "telephone and web conferencing have come so far since the days of unreliable phone and internet connections and can offer the perfect meeting solution for environmentally conscious businesses. As well as being able to talk to colleagues and clients anywhere in the world, we also offer technology enabling you to share PowerPoint presentations, Word documents in fact anything on your computer, so everyone knows exactly what you are talking about.

"Small and medium sized enterprises alone waste an estimated £47m a year simply because they are not efficient enough in all areas of business. An hour-long phone conference between four people in four different offices, four different countries even, can cost less that £10. Compare that with the cost of transporting those people to the same location, hiring a venue and laying on refreshments.

"Added to that, travel time is dead time,” he says. "Employees may quite like sitting on the motorway in their car listening to Radio 2 in the company’s time, but is that productive? In today’s competitive world we all need to be more efficient, and maximise our value to our employer’s. Using conferencing you are not just decreasing costs, but increasing revenue.”

For more information on Miura Conference, visit www.miuraconference.co.uk, email tom.stroud@miuraconference.co.uk, or telephone 0800 970 2750.

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For press enquiries and interview opportunities, please contact Cathryn Scott on cathryn.scott@miuraconference.co.uk or telephone 07967 818 353.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Miura Conference is a Cowbridge-based business with staff based in Bristol, Ireland, the Netherlands and France.

Miura is a well-respected provider of audio, web and video conferencing solutions and specialises in supplying the very latest, next-generation integrated communication, conferencing and virtual meeting solutions. ? Tele-conferencing services starts at 4p a minute and web-conferencing from £35 a month. Unlike other conference providers, you will not need to download any special programmes, which can be costly and affect your computer’s Firewalls and virus protectors.