Highlights — TLDR

1. Tonkotsu’s Dedication to Authentic Ramen: Since 2012, Tonkotsu has been a staple in London for authentic ramen, meticulously preparing noodles and soup stock and garnishing daily with traditional Japanese techniques.

2. Embracing Modernity in Service and Ambiance: While respecting ramen traditions, Tonkotsu adds a modern flair to its service, interiors, and dining experience, distinguishing it from other ramen joints.

3. Transition to Efficient Delivery Operations: Emma Reynolds, co-founder of Tonkotsu, highlights the restaurant’s shift to delivery in 2016 and the subsequent challenges of manual order entry.

4. Deliverect as a Solution to Operational Challenges: The integration of Deliverect streamlined the order process, eliminating manual entry errors and speeding up service, which is crucial for maintaining the quality of delivered food.

5. Significant Operational Improvements: With Deliverect, Tonkotsu consolidated orders from various third-party delivery services, improving efficiency and reducing labor costs.

6. Enhanced Customer Experience: Deliverect’s platform ensured customers received high-quality hot ramen quickly, maintaining the dish's integrity from kitchen to delivery.

7. Future-Proofing the Business: Emma reflects on the pre-Deliverect era, recognizing the significant improvements in operations and partnership with delivery platforms, making Deliverect a critical component in their business model.

Tonkotsu relies on Deliverect to eliminate errors and speed up order-taking

Opening a string of modern ramen restaurants over the past decade, Tonkotsu has steadily grown into one of London’s best-loved purveyors of hot noodle soup.

The secret to the brand’s success must be the care taken in daily preparing top-quality ingredients from scratch. The brand has a unique blend of respect for Japanese ramen traditions and a sprinkle of modern flair in service, interiors, and the dine-in experience.

“We started in London’s Dean Street in 2012,” explains Emma Reynolds, co-founder of Tonkotsu, “We specialize in ramen noodles. We make all our noodles fresh, along with gyoza, fried chicken, and other side dishes.”

The soup has three crucial elements the team takes great pride in making in-house daily. First is the stock for the soup, which is simmered for hours to release the deep flavors of pork or chicken bones, seasonings, and other signature ingredients of the ramen being made. 

Then there are the all-important noodles made daily using authentic mid-century machinery imported from Japan. 

Finally, the toppings and garnishes sing each bowl, including marinated and braised pork belly, chopped spring onions, soft-boiled egg, chili oil, and bamboo shoots.

“I don’t know how we were managing without Deliverect to be honest. We were manually inputting orders into the tills which led to obvious problems.” - Emma Reynolds, Co-founder of Tonkotsu

Deliverect is the critical link to Tonkotsu’s delivery partners

Emma reveals that the team didn’t realize what they were missing before implementing Deliverect for their delivery orders. The benefits were so impressive that she didn’t know how they coped before using the order management system.

“We have been offering delivery in the restaurant since 2016 and working with Deliverect for the last few months,” Emma explains, “I don’t know how we were managing without them, to be honest. We manually input orders into the tills, which led to obvious problems.”

Given the importance of the product's quality, keeping the customer experience standard high for delivery orders is a real challenge. Orders must go out fast to ensure customers receive a hot soup with the integrity of the garnishes uncompromised.

Deliverect has been a critical partner in eliminating input errors and speeding up delivery orders, helping Tonkotsu to keep orders accurate and of high quality.

Emma was delighted with the results: “Since then, we’ve been able to work with different delivery aggregators and implement those things into the business very quickly.”

“The one key feature of Deliverect is not having to manually input orders into the till which helps us two-fold: it gets rid of manually inputted errors and also saves on labor costs.”

Deliverect helps Tonkotsu eliminate errors and save on labor costs

 Emma says that if one Deliverect feature makes the difference at Tonkotsu, it’s how the orders are automatically pushed to the POS system.

She says: “The one key feature of Deliverect is not having to input orders into the till, which helps us two-fold manually: it gets rid of manually inputted errors and saves on labor costs.”

This has helped Tonkotsu keep up the quality of their offering, even as delivery has exploded during the pandemic.

“Deliverect has become an essential part of our business,” Emma adds, “When I look back at how we were operating before, I wonder why and how we were doing that. It’s meant speeding up the order process, working better with the delivery partners, and having all of our orders from delivery in one place that we can quickly check.”

With the help of Deliverect, Tonkotsu has managed to improve delivery operations while cutting staffing costs, even during such a tough time for the restaurant industry.