Flavours School of Cookery | Customer Stories OLD

Bookeo is easy to use on the back end, and it’s flexible.

Amy Burke, Flavours School of Cookery

Running a popular cooking school on a UK high street is a lot of fun. For Amy and Des Burke, co-owners of Flavours School of Cookery in Bournemouth, it’s also fulfilling. They make a living doing what they love, all while enriching the lives of kids and adults throughout the Dorset region.

But when your classes sell out weeks and months ahead of time, continued success is a matter of efficiency as well. It means taking a hard look at what you’re offering and deciding what stays and what doesn’t. With Bookeo handling the bulk of their class signups and payments, Amy and Des have been able to make those hard decisions wisely.

Their school has grown from 8 students to over 6000 – all while Amy and Des have been able to maintain their own quality of life. But what’s most unique about Flavours School is the way its classes entertain and energize its clientele. “By the end of a class,” says Amy, “people feel accomplished and good about themselves.”

Amy and Des’ Story

Amy and Des Burke were both trained as chefs. They worked together at The Savoy Hotel in London before traveling through Australia, Thailand, Bali, and Singapore. There they gained first-hand knowledge about the region’s unique ingredients, spices, and cooking techniques.

Returning back to the UK, the culinary couple cooked in several high-profile kitchens including The Square Restaurant, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel’s Foliage Restaurant, and their own award-winning One High Street restaurant.

After a few years of private teaching, Amy and Des decided it was time to branch out and start their own cooking school. “We started off with eight students,” says Amy, “and we’ve now got just under 6000 on the books.”

Bookeo is definitely worth the cost.

Amy Burke, Flavours School of Cookery

Bookeo’s not staying still; they’re always working to improve it. That gives me confidence.

Amy Burke, Flavours School of Cookery

The Challenges

When they first started out, Amy and Des entered all their class signups and student information into a diary by hand. But growing quickly soon made that method of recordkeeping impossible.

“We couldn’t keep track,” says Amy. “It was just too many people and too much information for our little diary – and my brain – to hold.”

Wanting to offer a variety of classes, courses, clubs, and programs, Amy and Des needed a flexible online booking system that they could customize. They also needed one which could handle their growing number of offerings reliably while streamlining their marketing efforts.

Discovering Bookeo, and seeing how it could solve so many of their challenges, changed everything.

The Solutions

It was an ‘aha moment’ to find Bookeo 7 years ago.

Before they got Bookeo, Amy and Des were writing everything down into a manual diary. Not only was this time consuming, but it was almost impossible to track customer activities. This was a problem because many of their students tended to be repeat customers.

Now Amy and Des can easily look at any client’s history to see what classes they’ve taken previously, and when. This helps them communicate more effectively with their students in general conversations as well as marketing efforts for upcoming classes.

With Bookeo, I can create the kind of events and the number of classes I want.

Amy says that she found it very difficult to find an online booking system that suited Flavours School of Cookery’s needs. Bookeo was the only system that allowed her to customize her class signups no matter what kind – or how many – classes she wanted to offer.

“Bookeo’s easy to use on the backend,” says Amy. “It’s flexible, and lets me tweak it to what I want it to do.”

According to Amy, none of the other online booking systems had that same ability. That’s why, she says, “we’ve always used Bookeo.”

Bookeo is reliable, and it’s always improving.

With about 60% of Flavours School’s business now coming in through Bookeo, it’s important that Amy and Des can count on their booking system no matter what, where, or when.

Amy says that Bookeo is reliable, quick, and accessible. “If I’m at home and I need to view a class or change something,” says Amy, “I can just go in on my laptop and get it sorted.”

Amy also says that Bookeo cares about its clients enough to keep improving. “Every so often, we get notice about an improvement,” she says. “I think it’s really great because it means Bookeo’s not staying still; they’re always working to improve it. That gives me confidence.”

We use MailChimp, which is great because it links with Bookeo.

While word of mouth plays an important part in the marketing of Flavours School, Amy and Des also use several other methods of communication. They use MailChimp for their email marketing, which, Amy says, “is great because it links with Bookeo.”

They’re also able to give prospective students a final nudge right on their website with Bookeo’s simple customer reviews feature. Reading online reviews gives Flavours School’s site visitors a sense of the school’s reputation, plus a real feel for their classes’ uniquely theatrical fun.