How Camino reduced labour costs and COGS by 5 and 3 percentage points with Tenzo

The customer

Camino is a 5-site hospitality group focused on serving the best tapas to Londoners. With rising labour costs and tight margins, the team needed better visibility into performance across sites — and tools to help General Managers take action quickly.

The challenge: turning data into action across multiple sites

As cost pressures increased, Camino needed to control labour and protect margins without compromising guest experience.

At the same time, the team wanted better reporting and a more usable interface than their POS alone could provide

The business needed a platform that could consolidate performance data and help teams make better decisions day to day.

The solution: one platform for performance across the business

Camino implemented Tenzo as a central platform for tracking sales, labour, stock, and guest feedback.

Tenzo is now used across multiple roles:

• Executive Head Chef – menu and margin optimisation
  
• General Managers – labour control and performance tracking
  
• Head Office – reporting and financial oversight
  
• Owners – real-time visibility via mobile
  

As Finance Director Tyrone Delaney explains: “Tenzo is helping a lot with driving better numbers.”Adoption has been particularly strong at site level: “I thought I used it the most… but no, it’s all the GMs. The GMs use it the most.” 

Improving food margins through better menu decisions

Camino’s Executive Head Chef uses Tenzo daily to monitor dish performance, ingredient costs, and profitability.

“He uses the stock and inventory section daily, tracking profitability and popularity, and general reviews on certain dishes.” 

This insight has enabled better menu engineering and tighter cost control. 

With Tenzo’s help, COGS have gone from 28% of revenue to 25%.

Driving labour performance without sacrificing guest experience

Tenzo plays a central role in Camino’s GM bonus scheme, which tracks both labour percentage and guest satisfaction (NPS).

GMs must meet both targets to qualify, ensuring balanced performance – simultaneously reducing costs and making sure guest experience never suffers. 

This approach delivered significant cost improvements, even during a period of rising labour costs.

“Last quarter, without making changes, we would have expected [labour] to be 36%. But instead it was actually 31%.”

Crucially, guest experience remained strong: “No sites had NPS go down. Some went up quite a lot.”

Delivering significant cost savings

The impact on Camino’s bottom line has been substantial.

“The number that we’ve saved on our labour is in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

Tenzo helped Camino turn performance data into clear accountability and measurable financial results.

Saving time and simplifying reporting

Before Tenzo, reporting required manual exports and spreadsheets. Now, reporting is automated and instantly accessible.

“Previously we would be exporting Excel files, but it just happens automatically now.” 

Even small time savings compound across the business:

“It’s saving probably 5 to 10 minutes a day, so it adds up.” 

Real-time visibility for managers and owners

Tenzo’s mobile app makes performance data easily accessible across the organisation.

General Managers use it daily, and owners can quickly check business performance at any time.

“I can be on Tenzo on the app for 30 seconds and sum up everything I need to know.”

A platform that pays for itself

By improving labour efficiency, strengthening margins, and saving management time, Tenzo has delivered clear ROI for Camino.

As Tyrone puts it:

“It definitely has paid for itself.”