Broken Eggs
Location: Fitzrovia, London
Restaurant type: Casual dining
Cuisine: Spanish
Years open: 2
The start: As a former investment banker, Gabriel Larraz is no stranger to hard work and gruelling hours. While he enjoyed the comfort and stability of a career in finance, he always knew he wanted to start his own business. In 2022, he made the leap and set up a cloud kitchen with his sister Marta. Their concept, Broken Eggs, aimed to bring authentic, homemade food from their native Spain to London, with a menu based around the humble tortilla.
It was a stark change to the office life Larraz was accustomed to. “I was in a basement kitchen peeling potatoes,” he remembers, “so it was very, very different.” Luckily, he was so passionate about the business they were building, he didn’t see it as work. His passion, however, is not for the food itself. While he’s exacting about sourcing the best ingredients and crafting the perfect tortillas, for Larraz, it’s about creating a feeling. “It’s seeing how people react to the food that we make,” he explains. “When you're able to unlock a memory for someone that's been in Spain, […] that's very powerful.” The approach proved a success, and the siblings opened a restaurant in Fitzrovia in 2023.
The challenge: Larraz is clear about Broken Eggs’ proposition: it’s all about keeping the food and service simple, and doing things “with as much love as possible”. But, when they opened the restaurant, he discovered that it can be hard to hold on to that simplicity. During a busy day, things can get hectic, customers get impatient, and it’s a challenge to stay organised.
Larraz found that he was spending too much time battling with a POS that was “slow” and “overly complicated”. He would have to get data from different sources to try to understand how the business was performing. The admin required to manage complex and disjointed systems was eating into Larraz’s day, leaving him less time to focus on creating amazing experiences for his customers.
The present: Broken Eggs switched to Square in January 2024, and according to Larraz, “it’s just simplified everything”. Every morning when he arrives at the restaurant, he goes straight to the Square Dashboard to see how the business is performing. He can easily segment the sales to compare different times of the day, and see how the Deliveroo side of the business is doing. Larraz says that having access to these insights has been transformative: “We’ve been able to make better rotas, save money and improve business profitability.”
The family business is growing, with Larraz’s younger sister Ada running front of house and supporting with marketing, and his 18-year-old brother Pachi learning the ropes in the kitchen. “It’s amazing to be able to count on them,” he says.
The recommendation: Larraz’s advice is to stay grounded and focus on being the best you can be each day. “My vision for the future of the business is to make sure that the next tortilla that we make is as good as possible. And then let's see where that takes us.”
Square products used: Square Terminal, Square Point of Sale, Square Register, Square for Restaurants
