Plaza Dim Sum Streamlines Operations with Sapaad POS

For many restaurants, the pandemic was extremely challenging, with many establishments facing the possibility of closing down their business. Lockdowns and health restrictions prevented most concepts from opening their dining floors to guests, and customers were reluctant to go out and risk getting infected. 

But for the Panamanian restaurant Plaza Dim Sum, these challenges opened the doors to a new opportunity. They successfully grew their Dim Sum brand, launched other virtual brands, and moved from a ghost kitchen to a full dine-in facility by 2021. 

Sapaad’s Restaurant POS was instrumental to their growth, helping them serve customers better and streamline their operations.

The Birth of Plaza Dim Sum

Plaza Dim Sum traced its humble beginnings to the desire of 5 family members to bring together their culinary expertise under one roof. They envisioned a commonplace – a plaza – where family and friends could come together to enjoy the foods they love. 

“Our goal is to bring the best dishes on the table while you enjoy the company of family and friends,” shared Efrain Becerra, co-owner of Plaza Dim Sum. “Plaza is a place where people get along, and dim sum [literally means] touch the heart.”

Plaza Dim Sum’s assorted dim sums

A classic Chinese dish, dim sum is also popular in Panama, with the dumplings being brought over by Chinese immigrants in the early 20th century. However, most of the Chinese restaurants in Panama only serve dim sum during breakfast. 

The Becerra Family had been making this Chinese specialty for over 40 years and was supplying renowned Chinese restaurants. They thought: why not open their own restaurant and serve dim sum the whole day?

With little money to open a walk-in restaurant, they started selling dim sum online. The concept became a hit, and soon, they launched two other virtual brands – Las Alitas del Burro, a concept offering traditional Panamanian dishes, and Bao 4 U, a concept offering Chinese baos. 

When the pandemic struck, they thought they’d be closing shop for good. But their initial investment in online ordering paid off, and soon, orders flocked in. As people were forced to stay indoors, the demand for freshly delivered meals, like dim sum, soared. 

From Online to Dine-In: Facing the Challenges 

As the pandemic lifted, people sought the popular dim sum place that catered to their lockdown cravings. Despite being located in a small alley, with a very small and almost non-existent dine-in facility, customers looked for Plaza Dim Sum. 

Sales soared as they started catering to dine-in, takeaway, and delivery customers. 

Their dim sum was so popular that Efrain recalled an incident when he had a long trail of receipts from combined orders of their food delivery partners. Plaza Dim Sum worked with various third-party delivery services that provided riders for their customer deliveries. 

Customers wanted to receive their orders fast, but the staff struggled to meet the demand, and customers were getting frustrated. It was a chaotic system, and Efrain knew something had to change. 

He finally had enough when the day came that he had over 20 orders waiting to be served and 20 more in preparation. They were using manual systems that were no longer capable of supporting their growing operations.

Efrain started looking for a solution. It wasn’t an easy journey, and he fumbled with cloud-based POS systems that were too complicated – or too expensive – for his needs. He tried to implement a few solutions he found online –with little success –until he found Sapaad’s video library and saw an actionable solution to his challenges.

He knew it was the system he’s been looking for. 

Improving Efficiency with Sapaad’s POS System 

Sapaad’s Kitchen Display System (KDS) was the company’s saving grace. The kitchen quickly saw which orders were intended for dine-in, takeaway, and delivery. They were able to batch similar items together to increase the speed by which they prepared the dim sums. 

The dim sum cart

With Sapaad, no more receipts were falling to the floor or orders getting lost. Servers could conveniently enter the orders in the POS and modify them without the kitchen missing a beat. 

Using Sapaad’s integration with Deliveroo, they were able to manage multiple third-party food delivery aggregators from a unified system. This eliminated order confusion and streamlined their online orders. They were also able to launch their own online presence and cater to customers’ online orders directly, thanks to Sapaad Online. 

With the right POS partner, Plaza Dim Sum eliminated manual processes and freed up time to devote to analyzing their business. With the aid of Sapaad’s business analytics features, they gained visibility to their sales performance, learned which dishes were doing well, and understood how their business was growing. This helped them strategize and make better decisions. 

The Future is Bright with Sapaad

Efrain is optimistic that with Sapaad, the growth they’ve experienced will continue. Sapaad has helped increase sales by 30% compared to the previous year and reduced their average prep time by 25%. They’ve grown their dine-in space from 6 to 20 tables in a year’s time. 

From being heavily dependent on third-party delivery food aggregators, they now enjoy a healthy 50-50 mix of direct and third-party online orders. Their goal is to grow direct deliveries further to account for 70% of all online orders. 

Efrain and the Plaza Dim Sum team

As a small business, they are confident they can tackle the competition. As a matter of fact, they are the only independent dim sum restaurant to open less than a kilometer away from Panama’s largest dim sum restaurant. Having the right system, a high-quality product, and a passion for serving customers well is what keeps them motivated to reach their goals. 

When peers and customers asked how they’ve achieved a smooth workflow, even with a few employees, Efrain’s answer is simple. “It’s Sapaad.”