It's crowded, loud and you have to serve yourself. It is a Wednesday evening in a Vapiano restaurant in Hamburg near the central station. Almost every table is occupied. Some guests sit on stools at higher tables. They can not lean back. And if they still want to order something, they have to turn back to the counter. In the background, the sounds of the many cooks mix with English-language music.

Fast Casual is the name of the concept that has made Vapiano so successful in the past: fresh produce, nice ambience, fast but easy service. Fast food for the upper middle class. Those who denied McDonald's could feel at home with Vapiano.

But in the meantime, the successful model has been given a quibble. Several times, the company had to lower its business expectations. Since its IPO in 2017, the share price has fallen by around 75 percent. At the end of 2018, then CEO Jochen Halfman had to vacate his post. His successor Cornelius Everke announced last week, possibly close individual branches.

What's wrong with the former star of the German restaurant scene?

At the heart of the Vapiano concept is a special model of self-service. Customers order their food directly from the chefs. This allows them to look their best while cooking Pasta Carbonara or Risotto Al Funghi and express their individual wishes. So far so good. But above all, they do one thing: wait. They stop while the chefs serve other customers. The queuing experience is part of the concept. When the food is ready, the customers bring it to their own place. And if you still want a dessert or a coffee after dinner, you have to do it again at the bar.

This is annoying for some customers. From the cozy restaurant visit, the Vapiano experience is often quite far away. Despite self-service prices are also hardly smaller than the Italians around the corner. The pizza and pasta dishes range from € 7.25 to € 11.50.

Vapiano was founded in 2002 by Mark Kozilius, Kent Hahne, Gregor Gerlach, Friedemann Findeis and Klaus Rader. The chain quickly became known and expanded worldwide. The company now operates 231 restaurants in 33 countries - from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to Chile or Japan.

However, the core market is Germany. Almost every Vapiano knows this. That's because the restaurants can be found in almost every major German city. In addition, it was once hip to meet friends in the self-service restaurant. "Vapiano has revolutionized the system catering industry," says Markus Zeller, professor of system catering at Heilbronn University. But this image has changed. "There was always criticism from customers that waiting times are too long," says Zeller.

The Italo chain is in crisis

How deep the company is in the midst of the crisis became clear a week ago when the company had to adjust its sales targets for 2018 for the third time. Accordingly, sales should continue to grow at a double-digit rate. However, organically - ie without new store openings - Vapiano expects a loss of one percent for the past fiscal year.

"That we had to correct our expectations downwards, is based in our expansion strategy," says CEO Everke on SPIEGEL inquiry. Since the IPO in 2017, they have "focused on very fast expansion and new openings". In addition, existing markets would have developed worse than expected. Also newly opened restaurants like the one in Glasgow or the Australian Towoomba do not go well according to Everke. "We did not evaluate the individual locations comprehensively according to yield criteria, but prioritized absolute growth," says Everke.

The chief in office since the beginning of December has just announced a program of measures to alleviate the crisis:

  • In unprofitable locations Everke wants to close branches.
  • Overall, the expansion should be much slower. If 32 new restaurants were opened in 2018, the number this year should only be "low double digits". Instead of 70 million euros only 40 million euros are to be invested - and "strengthened in existing restaurants."
  • More Vapiano branches will in future be operated by franchisees in order to minimize the risk to the company.
  • By improving the workflows, the waiting times for customers should decrease.
  • In addition, Everke wants to check whether the imported business with delivery services and take-away moves back.

Many construction sites for the once glorious start-up.

The new strategy also aims to focus more on Europe as a core market. In non-European markets Vapiano wants to "grow in cooperation with experienced franchisees". This is "less capital intensive," explains Everke.

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11 pictures

Photo gallery: What the Vapiano founders are doing today

Whether this will be enough to improve the image of Vapiano among the customers, is open. Because that has suffered badly in recent years.

In 2015, according to media reports, individual restaurants are said to have used rotten foods to prepare the dishes. Apparently, employees had deliberately manipulated the expiration date of some products. Vapiano rejected the allegations and spoke in a statement of "high internal quality and control standards".

In another case, instead of the more expensive scampi on the menus, only cheaper prawns were used in the dishes. Vapiano finally admitted "mistakes" on request and changed the name "Scampi" on the menu to "Gamberetti".

Also in dealing with employees, there were always allegations. Thus, worked hours should have been calculated later. Employees should have been paid less than they would have been allowed. The then CEO Halfmann then announced that he had commissioned the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers with a wholehearted investigation of the incidents.

The scandals got stuck. So trust was lost that Vapiano now has to struggle to win back. CEO Everke has at least set itself the business goals in the future to achieve more reliable: ... "We want to meet our promised forecasts in the future."