Success Stories

Bringing Filipino Cuisine To London

The Filipino-born Montoya began his career in hospitality after moving to London in 2012 and building up an impressive range of cooking positions at several restaurants, including commis chef at Dean Street Townhouse and demi chef de partie at Restaurant Story.

Montoya further built up his reputation in the industry by setting up a supper club and pop-ups (including a year-long residency on Heddon Street in Mayfair), both under the Sarap name, to demonstrate his love of Filipino cuisine. He has also been featured on BBC Two’s Great British Menu, championing Filipino food to a wider audience.

After several years of testing his Filipino recipes and concepts, Montoya launched Apoy, his first permanent restaurant, at Market Halls in Oxford Circus.

The food offering at Apoy is authentic Filipino fare with a modern twist. Barbecue skewers feature prominently, topped with unique sauces, crafted from 7 Up, banana ketchup and soy sauce glaze. 

Other dishes include fried chicken skins and soy braised chicken, the unofficial national dish of the Philippines. Vegan options, such as soy-glazed aubergine and coconut kale, are also available.

Implementing Strong Financial Controls

Prysm Financial’s outsourced finance department implemented leading technology solutions to greatly reduce unnecessary financial admin as well as straightening and streamlining Apoy’s financial processes to deliver clear, robust and accurate reporting.

Restaurant specific reporting means Apoy continues to maintain strong margins by rigorously tracking and improving ingredient, consumables and staff costs. 

Growing with Prysm Financial

Apoy are now primed for expansion, with their model suited to scaling to additional sites, whether through taking on external investment or out of their cash flow and with debt finance. 

Prysm Financial continues to support Apoy by providing robust and regular reports, benchmarking them against other operators, and having frequent meetings delivered with an FD level of support.

Legare is an Italian-led restaurant launched in 2019 that draws inspiration from countries across the Mediterranean.

The Bermondsey-based restaurant was founded by Jay Patel (formerly general manager at Barrafina and Koya) alongside his head chef, Matt Beardmore (ex Trullo senior sous chef).

Since working with Prysm Financial’s specialist restaurant and hospitality team, Legare’s financial processes have been automated and streamlined, so Jay is no longer relied upon to complete finance-related tasks and can now focus his energies on fine-tuning the concept.

A Neighbourhood Restaurant In London

Legare is a London neighbourhood restaurant in Bermondsey, close to Tower Bridge and London Bridge.

The restaurant focuses on antipasti, fresh pasta (made on-site each day) and seasonal produce. Dishes are changed regularly to try out new concepts and keep customers returning.

Wine is also strongly featured on the menu, and significant thought is given to pairing the food with clean and conventional wines.

Suppliers are picked on a bespoke basis, with British produce being sought where possible. This includes wines being sourced from small Italian producers.

Freeing up time and frustration

Prior to engaging with Prysm Financial, Legare worked with an accounting firm that did not have experience with hospitality clients and relied heavily on Jay to do the leg work. 

This took up significant time from the director, and many associated tasks, including chasing invoices and credit notes, that were not adding any value. 

Unsurprisingly, this led to limited financial visibility due to data being processed at a slow pace with no reporting. 

This work also took his focus away from the more creative elements of running the restaurant and was a barrier to assessing business performance.

Streamlined clunky accounting processes

Since Prysm Financial  took over as Legare’s finance and payroll function, all core finance processes automated and streamlined.

Legare has been able to leverage our specialism and experience of running the finance departments of other hospitality clients to maximize efficiency gains.

Prysm Financial’s specialist hospitality bookkeepers chase down missing invoices, process transactions, deal with finance queries, liaise with suppliers and manage your finance mailbox.

This has been enabled by setting up and integrating a fully cloud-based tech stack including Xero, Lightyear and Apron.

Providing Financial Clarity with FD level support

By working with Prysm Financial, reliable and robust management accounts are produced soon after month end.

Alongside key hospitality KPIs, the output includes forecasts and budgets so Legare can navigate past obstacles, identify opportunities and grow with confidence.

They can also see how they are faring by benchmarking their performance against our other hospitality clients. 

We regularly meet with the directors to review the management accounts, discuss areas for improvement, and plan future scenarios.

These improvements have boosted profitability at Legare and helped the directors make plans to grow the restaurant business by seeking expansion with further sites.