Rockpool Group opened its first Burger Project restaurant in Sydney’s World Square in November last year. It’s now gearing up to add between 10 and 15 venues by the end of next year.
The restaurant group is run by acclaimed chef Neil Perry along with business partners Trish Richards, who is also his cousin, and David Doyle.
Rockpool consists of eight restaurants in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, including fine dining venue Rockpool Est. 1989, Rockpool Bar & Grill, Spice Temple and Rosetta. The business also does consultancy work with Qantas. It has its own administration office in Sydney and does payroll for 700 staff every week.
Ms Richards, co-founder and director, divides her week between a farm in the Hunter Valley and an apartment in Glebe. “I need to be in contact with everything from both of those properties,’’ she said.
After discussions with IT partner Vision3 IT, Rockpool decided on infrastructure based entirely on Microsoft Azure running Office 365. All users at Burger Project are on Office 365 and can collaborate and communicate from anywhere at any time. “We have been running it for nine months hassle-free basically and now we are going to really start to ramp it up,’’ said Ms Richards, who also uses newer versions of Remote Web Access.
According to Vision3 IT director Nigel Moore, Burger Project’s whole stack is based on Microsoft’s latest server technology 2012R2 and using the cloud.
“What we have built for Burger Project is a scalable system so it is ready to plug in new restaurants as they go,” he said.
Mr Moore said in the past the group’s restaurants grew organically, which resulted in different technologies being used.
“We have put in all of that stuff from day dot so that it’s ready to scale rather than have to try and scale as we go.’’
Rockpool is also on a mission to refresh the back-end of all of its restaurants. One of the key components of the refresh has been a server migration project, with all instances of Windows Server 2003 migrated to newer versions. This has resulted in efficiency, performance and mobility improvements across the board. “In the back-end, we are now building the same infrastructure that we have built for Burger Project for Rockpool as a whole and as their refresh cycles come around they are all going into that new Azure and Office 365 platform,’’ Mr Moore said.
Vision3 IT will undertake the first site in the next couple of weeks. “Then we will slowly bring all of the other sites into that hybrid-cloud mix as well so it is all under the one Rockpool banner,’’ he added.
Ms Richards said she expects to see enhanced collaboration and communication when the entire business is on the same platform.
“As we go down the track and we get everybody on the Azure system we will have a completely different platform, rather than individual it will become more group-orientated,’’ she said.
The group has spent about $35,000 on Burger Project’s back-end Azure and Office 365 environment and on-premise equipment at the first store.
“From there on, it’s not going to cost us that much to do the next store because we have really invested in the platform,’’ Ms Richards said.
Rockpool will also make use of Skype for Business, which will allow staff to communicate better using email, chat and video.
Once on the same platform, it plans to go down the path of a centralised booking system across its eight restaurants. Staff will be able to view each restaurant’s capacity, staffing levels and customer database from one central location.
PROBLEM: Needed a scalable platform to meet rapid growth for a new casual dining venture.
PROCESS: IT partner Vision3 IT advised infrastructure based entirely on Microsoft Azure running Office 365.
RESULT: A scalable system that is ready to plug in new restaurants for expansion. The platform will be adopted across the group for enhanced collaboration and communication.
Source: The Australian, Jennifer Foreshew, July 28th 2015
Originally published as: Azure refreshes Rockpool’s burger menu
