How a Multi-Venue Hospitality Business Gave Its Staff Professional, Organized Communication

Introduction

Indigo Pubs and Bars is an LGBT owned and managed hospitality business based in Leicester, operating three venues that work closely together. Founded by James Cockerill over 23 years ago, the business has built a reputation as a welcoming, inclusive space where everyone feels at home, staff and customers alike.

With three venues, a largely part-time workforce, and staff regularly moving between locations, keeping the whole team connected and communicating clearly is one of the biggest operational challenges the business faces every day.

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The Challenge: Personal Messaging Apps Letting a Multi-Venue Operation Down

Before Zenzap, Indigo Pubs and Bars had tried various group messaging apps to keep staff connected across its three venues. None of them worked the way a professional hospitality business needs them to.

• No Clear Separation Between Work and Personal Life: With communication running through personal messaging apps, staff felt like they had to be available and responding around the clock. For a largely part-time workforce, that was a real problem.
• Communication Scattered Across Multiple Groups: With staff moving between three venues, managing communication across multiple personal group chats was messy and inefficient. Nothing was centralized and nothing felt professional.
• Apps That Didn’t Meet the Needs: Every communication tool the team tried did not quite fit the needs of a fast-moving, multi-venue hospitality operation. The business needed something built for professional team communication, not personal messaging.

"Trying to communicate through personal text messages just isn't effective. Then you have multiple teams, you know, they feel like they have to answer 24 hours a day."

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The Solution: Why Zenzap?

Indigo Pubs and Bars needed a professional work chat app that gave staff a clear boundary between work and personal life, worked across multiple locations and teams, and reflected the professional standard the business holds itself to.

What stood out about Zenzap was that it was built with hospitality businesses in mind, understanding the specific challenges of managing a part-time, multi-venue workforce.

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Key Features in Action

Work-Life Separation

With Zenzap, staff can choose when they engage with work communication. 

They can choose when to get notifications, so that when they’re off the clock, they can really disconnect.

They log into the app on their own terms, read messages when they are ready, and keep work entirely separate from their personal lives. For part-time staff working just two or three days a week, that boundary is especially important.

"The great thing about the Zenzap app is that staff members can choose to actually log into the app, choose to read those messages, and it's separate from their personal lives, which just means that gives better downtime to staff."

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One Professional Work Chat Across Multiple Venues

With Zenzap, all communication across Indigo's three venues lives in one place. Staff moving between venues stay connected without having to manage multiple group chats. Everyone knows where to go and what to expect.

"Having the Zenzap app just made it more clear and more straightforward, and people knew where they stood when it came to responding to messages."

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The Impact: A Hospitality Team That Communicates With Clarity and Professionalism

Switching to Zenzap gave Indigo Pubs and Bars one professional work chat that works across all three venues and respects the time of every team member.

• Staff across all three venues communicate in one organized place, with no more scattered group chats or mixed messages.
• Staff have a clear boundary between work and personal life, with the freedom to engage with work communication on their own terms.
• The business communicates in a way that reflects the professional standard it holds itself to every day.

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Conclusion

Running three hospitality venues with a largely part-time workforce takes communication that is clear, professional, and respectful of everyone's time. 

Zenzap gave Indigo Pubs and Bars one work chat that keeps the whole team connected, gives staff the boundaries they need, and highlights that the business takes work communication seriously.

"Zenzap is the ideal partner when it comes to communicating to staff in a professional way."

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