The group behind The Wayfarer and Willow let its people vote on the platforms and try the shortlist before it chose. End-of-day reports, group chats and staff recognition now run through its own Parogon app.
Parogon Group runs restaurants across Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire. Its history starts in 2007 with The Swan with Two Necks in Blackbrook, and the idea being to turn landmark buildings into places worth driving to for dinner. The Wayfarer in Stone followed in 2011, and in 2015 a head office was set up above it to support the restaurants and the growth of the company.
The group has four co-founders, among them Managing Director Rich Colclough, a former pharmacist. There are eleven restaurants under nine names, among them The Orange Tree, The Block House smokehouse, The Seven Stars and Willow, an all-day dining concept with sites at Trentham Gardens and in Telford.
Many of the senior managers started as bartenders, junior chefs or servers, and the group is built to keep that route open. It has won awards for training and for engagement, Best Companies ranked it the 7th best large company to work for in the UK in 2024, and it became a B Corp in June the same year.
Up to around 100 team members tried the shortlisted apps, and Monotree was the clear favourite.
About 98% of the team was onboarded within a few days of launch.
In Passionate Posts, staff share dishes they are proud of, and winners are picked every month.
Parogon wanted a fresh app of its own, and it wanted its people to have a say in which one. Chris Morgan, who heads up learning and development in the operations team, and Ben Allison, Head of Transformation, held a blind showing of three communication platforms. General managers and chefs were involved, and the teams were sent a survey with videos from the suppliers and got a vote.
When the field was down to three, up to around 100 team members got the apps in their hands: servers, runners and chefs, all the way up to general managers. There was a clear favourite, and it was Monotree. It stood out as a platform made for hospitality, easy to use, where people decide for themselves what to talk about and with whom.
The systems Parogon used before were a little outdated and a little slow, according to James Hawley, general manager at The Wayfarer, who has been with the company for nearly five years. The previous tool was also English only. Part of the team does not have English as a first language, and messages got lost in translation: it was English or nothing. With Monotree, those team members feel more involved.
After we had agreed to partner with Monotree, it became an element of how are we going to move this forward now from contract sign to being something in our team members' hands. And that was a really smooth process, probably the easiest implementation I have done in years because it was all hands-on.
At The Swan with Two Necks, Deputy Manager Libby Caldwell looks after the team and the service. Her team uses the app every day for end-of-day reports and the handover to the next person, to talk to other sites and their managers, to ask for help and to support colleagues in other restaurants.
For James Hawley at The Wayfarer, the point is that he can reach everybody, through the walls, direct messages or calls. From their first day on the app, team members could set up their own group chats and their own groups around whatever they wanted to talk about.
The app is connected to the other systems Parogon uses. Before, a job as simple as getting a picture of something could mean going somewhere else, scanning it and moving on to a different tool. Now it all happens in one place. The app carries the Parogon name and matches its logo: dark, modern and clean.
There is a social side too. The news feed is where Parogon celebrates its staff and what they achieve. In Passionate Posts, people post dishes they are proud of, and winners are picked at the end of each month. It is a community as well as a place for work.
Monotree stood out to us as a hospitality-led platform, which was easy to use, that people could engage with, that they could have full control about what they speak about and who to.
The step from signed contract to app in the team's hands was a smooth one, and for Ben Allison probably the easiest implementation he has done in years. Communication moved into the app straight away, with quick feedback and answers instead of emails that might or might not get a reply.
The teams had been asking for something slicker, closer to the WhatsApp experience they were used to, so early adoption was strong. About 98% were onboarded after a few days. Parogon then used the app to ask staff how the platform could be better. Ideas came back, and Monotree built some of the things the team asked for very quickly.
Chris Morgan's advice to others on the same journey is to keep it simple and listen to your teams. If a platform is easy and relevant, people will engage with it. If it's not, they won't.
With both private and group chats everyone can reach each other in a quick and effective way.
Read moreA place for everyone to share information, images, videos and polls. Every department has its own.
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Read moreI would introduce Monotree as the main body of Roseacre. It's almost the heart and soul where everything can be found in one place.
The cooperation within the hotel is driven a lot through Monotree and we are all part of it. It's made clear from the start that you have to be on that platform. Because that's where we get into contact with each other.
Monotree helped create a community across our restaurants. It's great to collaborate with Monotree; it's dynamic, and we brainstorm about features, possibilities, and the industry as a whole. I really like the mix of operational features with communication - that it becomes a social network.
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