{"id":5418,"date":"2020-04-01T17:04:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T16:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/?p=5418"},"modified":"2020-05-29T17:08:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T16:08:02","slug":"veeno-keeping-staff-key-to-regaining-momentum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/veeno-keeping-staff-key-to-regaining-momentum\/","title":{"rendered":"Veeno \u2013 keeping staff key to regaining momentum"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Rodrigue Trouillet, owner and director of Italian wine bar business\u00a0Veeno, has told Propel staff will be key in the company\u2019s attempts to regain the momentum it had before the coronavirus crisis.<\/p>\n

Trouillet acquired the company out of administration a year ago and said \u201creal progress\u201d was being made before the country was locked down. Like-for-like sales were up 11% in 2019 and Trouillet said it had seen a great start to 2020, with like-for-likes increasing 25% in January and 29% in February.<\/p>\n

Veeno\u00a0was still seeing double-digit like-for-like growth in March until the government told people to avoid pubs, bars and restaurants as the coronavirus crisis accelerated.<\/p>\n

Veeno\u00a0has consolidated its estate in the past year and now has eight sites, including a franchised outlet in Reading. However, Trouillet revealed the company had been talking to potential franchisees before the coronavirus outbreak and those talks would restart when the crisis ended. He said: \u201cWe may have had to shut our wine bars but we have a concept that works and that will really help us when we reopen.<\/p>\n

At the moment we\u2019re pushing online sales and it\u2019s going well. We have furloughed all our staff because we want to make sure we keep them. They have been terrific and one of the main reasons we\u2019ve been so successful in the past 12 months.<\/p>\n

Of course, I understand businesses need to preserve cash but our people will be key to helping us re-establish our momentum when all this passes. We were getting some really good reviews, particularly around customer service. Even now we\u2019re getting a lot of messages from people saying how much they miss us. We look forward to seeing them again \u2013 hopefully soon.\u201d Trouillet said expansion, which he stressed \u201cwouldn\u2019t happen straight away\u201d after restrictions were lifted, would focus on franchising, which was a \u201cwin-win situation all round\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cOur model means the capital investment is quite low. We\u2019ve had about 100 expressions of interest in the past four or five months \u2013 we have to find the right profile.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll use Reading as a blueprint but franchisees have to understand it\u2019s not a money-making machine straight away \u2013 it takes a lot of hard work. We need to be realistic about the type of place we look at and find the right balance between what\u2019s a reasonable-sized site but avoiding high rents and business rates. We need to be smart about it but our message is clear \u2013 we are here to stay, thrive and expand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rodrigue Trouillet, owner and director of Italian wine bar business\u00a0Veeno, has told Propel staff will be key in the company\u2019s attempts to regain the momentum it had before the coronavirus crisis. Trouillet acquired the company out of administration a year ago and said \u201creal progress\u201d was being made before the country was locked down. Like-for-like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[936,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-veeno","category-food-franchises"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Veeno-Drinks-Menu.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franchiselocal.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}