What properly supported onboarding looked like at La Cage

Opening a venue is not the moment to discover that the operational system is still an empty shell. At La Cage Brasserie Sportive in Kensington, the work before opening included 109 menu recipes, their supplier products and allergen detail.

That work is detailed and largely invisible to the guest, but the operation depends on it. Recipes need to be usable by the kitchen. Supplier products need to link to the right inventory items. Costs and allergens need to be present. The setup also has to belong to the team who will maintain it after opening.

Building the working setup

Hops Customer Success Manager Ally Parsons worked with La Cage to input the menu recipes and underlying detail. During that process, she identified information that was missing even though nobody had specifically asked her to look for it. She followed it through over the weekend and attended in person to hand the system over properly to Head Chef Andrew Lubenko.

This is the difference between providing an empty piece of software and implementing an operational system. Hops is configurable, but that configurability only becomes useful when the initial setup reflects how the customer actually works.

Support that carries the project

David Peevers described the effect clearly:

“Ally is one of the best I’ve had beside me, and Hops should know exactly what they’ve got.”

The praise is rightly personal, but the operational point is broader. Good onboarding means somebody takes responsibility for the thread, notices incomplete information and makes sure the receiving team understands what has been built.

You can see more organisations using Hops on our Customers page, or read how Managed Services can keep recipes, products and operational data maintained after onboarding.

View the original LinkedIn post: Hops' La Cage onboarding post, published 19 August 2026