Marugame: Cooking up a winning package
Marugame Udon is a Japanese restaurant with over 1,200 stores across the globe. They launched in the UK in 2021, with a rapid expansion plan that saw them open ten units in a year.
The combination of being a new business and starting during the COVID-19 pandemic meant Marugame had a fairly small employee offering, as Head of People Nicki Sahota explains.
“We basically started everything from scratch. As a business we had lots of challenges. Our staff turnover wasn’t great… people were a bit overwhelmed and stressed at work. Attracting people to work for a business they’d never heard of was a big challenge as well. So those were a few of the reasons we were looking at Perkbox.”
The ability to support people with their physical, mental and financial wellbeing was especially important, as this was now a top priority for employees. Nicki says it’s something appreciated by people at all levels:
“The world was a funny place — we were just coming out of COVID. The challenges that our teams were facing were heightened. As a new business we didn’t have anything to offer.
I can tell you our CEO absolutely loves the wellbeing offering, and I do myself as well! We’ve got really positive feedback from that.”
With 93% usage, the launch of Perkbox across Marugame has been a huge success so far, with Nicki seeing a genuine impact on the business,
“All of our people metrics have improved drastically over the last 6-12 months. For example, we managed to hire 500 people in the last 12 months, in the middle of a recruitment crisis. We recently did a pay and benefits survey and overall our teams were very happy, and our staff turnover has more than halved...”