Crepes & Waffles increased their digital sales while reducing dependency risk

To transform food into love and joy

Crepes & Waffles is a popular Colombian restaurant chain that specializes in crepes, waffles, and ice cream. The company was founded in 1980 in Bogotá by two university students who had a vision to open a business they were passionate about. It has since grown to over 120 restaurants across six countries.

In addition to its food offerings, Crepes & Waffles is also known for its commitment to sustainability and social responsibility. The company has been certified as a B Corporation, which means they use their business to address social and environmental issues. The company is known for primarily hiring women who are the heads of households, currently employing 7,000 single mothers across its chain. The company supports various community projects, such as assisting vulnerable populations, training employees' children, and sourcing from small national producers.

Non-diversified delivery revenue

For any new business is natural to have a big concentration on their revenue streams. When revenues are growing you start to diversify your business, opening new locations, creating multiple products or services, and using delivery partners like Rappi (Doordash or UberEats).

Starting with a delivery partner like Rappi was a great advantage for Crepes & Waffles, and for a while if a customer wanted to buy from the restaurant they had to buy from Rappi, there was no other option. "That was inconvenient for our customers, they must have a way to buy directly from us" said a C-Level Executive.

Having your own e-commerce website reduces the concentration of revenues from an external source, and lets you have a better position when it comes to negotiating rates and conditions. "If you don't have a digital sales channel owned by the company, you are pretty much putting all your eggs in one basket", said the executive.

Collecting data helps understand customers and boosts innovation

With the upcoming of AI it suddenly becomes strategic to know the data from your business. Tailored e-commerce lets you choose exactly what type of information you want from your operation and it reduces the complexity of implementing new ideas to enhance the customer experience.

Every time you sell through an external partner, you're at risk of losing precious customer data. It is impossible to understand who's buying and it's difficult to create a relationship with that customer. At the end of the day, is not your client, it's theirs. That's not skillful business in the long term.

By working with Axiacore, Crepes & Waffles gets all the relevant data from their sales operation, and over time it will lead to applied machine learning techniques and AI to improve the customer experience, ultimately making it easier to buy from them.

Reduce transaction costs

Any CFO or CEO will be happy improving the bottom line by reducing transaction costs. Software as a service platforms takes a percentage of every transaction, and it's hard to improve the margins when you have a business partner taking a cut of every transaction.

Using a platform like Vtex or Shopify doesn't cause much impact in the beginning, but when you sell millions of dollars your transaction costs have a great impact on your business results. The best way to handle this situation is to have your own platform, it's like when you are renting a place, and then decide to buy it. The numbers are way different in the long term.

"With Axiacore we don't pay percentages for every transaction", said the executive. As a business owner, this will give you more room to invest back in the business and grow. It's all about having a long-term vision where you own your technology and you decide where to go next.