Restaurant chain YO!Sushi has invested heavily in
amultiprotocol label switching (MPLS) wide area network
(WAN)which it said willcut infrastructure costsduring its
expansion programme.
Company bosses predict they will recoup their investment in two
years.
YO!Sushi's first restaurant opened in London's Soho in 1997, but
the chain now comprises 41 restaurants in 5 countries and has
stated plans for 100 outlets by 2010. The high-tech concept of the
restaurant was conceived by founder Simon Woodruffe who introduced
concepts in automated delivery and even preparation of food.
Customers help themselves to colour-coded dishes from a conveyor
belt and order their drinks via airline-style call buttons.
The company's IT manager, Billy Waters, explained the
next-generation networking was intended to have two functions, to
move the restaurant chain forward and to cut operational costs.
"The MPLS solution gives us twice the product for half the price,
it's excellent value for money. There were a few drivers for
choosing it. For one our previous infrastructure - a pseudo leased
line over copper - was close to capacity. And secondly, we wanted
more effective voice links between our 30 [UK] restaurants."
The most effective cost-saver was rationalising all the comms
links around one
comms supplier, NetworkFlow, he said.
"We don't have to deal with a cast list of BT, an ISP, a router
company and all the rest. Just cancelling the BT lines for internal
calls alone has saved us huge amounts of money," he said, "we
expect to get payback in two years."
"For a multi-site company like YO!Sushi, an MPLS IP virtual
private network is the perfect solution. It not only reduces cost
and complexity, but it gives them control," said David Alexander,
commercial director of NetworkFlow.