Some people eat, pray and love, while others simply prefer to do things their own way. And when you’re serving Sweden's tastiest burgers and expanding your restaurant chain “like a Bastard”, your connectivity needs require taking matters… to the Extreme. See how, together with our partner Xite, we built a future-proofed network for a forward-thinking street food brand called Bastard Burgers!
It’d probably be easier to describe what Bastard Burgers isn’t than what it, in fact, is. This Sweden-based restaurant chain is known as much for their tasty burgers, as for their unique, vibrant company culture which celebrates street food in all of its varied and delicious forms. Doing things “like a Bastard” has become a lifestyle revolving in equal parts around New York inspired street art, inclusiveness, and climate-smart initiatives.
To stay true to their word, Bastard Burgers pride themselves on the use of high quality, locally sourced ingredients and the ability to offer plant-based alternatives for virtually entire menu. Whether you’re a meat lover or a vegan, a rocker or a hip-hop head, a mother or a son – you’re always more than welcome to come over, treat yourself, chill out and just live life. And as it turns out, for many doing things “like a Bastard” is the way to go.
A project to Xite
What kicked off in 2016 in Luleå, Northern Sweden as a small restaurant with 17 seats and a group of friends with heads full of ideas, quickly rose to a large restaurant chain spanning 900 employees working in 70 joints in Sweden, Norway and, starting autumn 2022, also in Finland. Bastard Burgers know no limits, having also brought their music, graffiti, streetwear, and some truly delicious street food as far as to the iconic East Village neighborhood in lower Manhattan, New York.
Despite being number one with the bullet, Bastard Burgers refuse to lose their authentic personality which got them so far. However, with an explosive growth like this comes the inevitable need for a digital environment that will allow you to keep it all together and run things according to some shared standards and procedures.
And that’s where Xite and Extreme Networks come into this story.
Taking the network to the Extreme
Xite has been working with Bastard Burgers since the opening of their sixth restaurant in Sweden and ever since that moment the company’s been delivering IT infrastructure supporting the operation of back-office processes and guest networks for all of the customer’s locations.
“Back when we were starting, we literally shared the recipes among ourselves on hand-written post-it notes. If we wanted to change something, we didn’t have a way to share it with all the other restaurants”, says Rickard Enbom, Co-Founder and Co-Owner at Bastard Burgers. “We needed a new, centralized way of sharing information up and down and across the company, as well as staying in control of our business data and documents”.
But soon enough, that wasn’t enough.
“We also wanted the new networking infrastructure to fully support our mobile communications system, keeping it in line with our mobile first strategy. Most of our employees are around 20-25 years old, so they’re part of the first truly mobile generation, for which the smartphone is often the only access they have to the Internet. And they definitely want to connect, engage more with their work and their colleagues”, Rickard Enbom adds.
“Bastard Burgers required a flexible yet robust, effortless networking solution to support their hyper-scale growth so that the organization could focus on expanding its business, rather than micro-managing communications between distributed locations”, explains Rickard Sellstedt, Senior Network and Security Consultant at Xite. “For us, it quickly became clear that the planned solution needed to be cloud-enabled. And whenever you think of cloud managed networks, you turn to Extreme Networks”.
The recipe for a network well done
The networking infrastructure, provided by Xite on a network-as-a-service (NaaS) basis, has been based on the hand-picked selection of Extreme access points and switches designed for distributed enterprises, edge, branch and small site deployments.
“We recommended ExtremeSwitching X435 Series because they were perfectly suited for the need of a cost-effective Ethernet connectivity in the Bastard Burgers small sites and at the network edge” says Rickard Sellstedt. “Powered by EXOS, the X435 Series offered comprehensive Layer 2 switching, static routing, advanced PoE, role-based policy, comprehensive security services, and – thanks to the industry-leading AVB technology – a reliable, real-time transmission over Ethernet for today's high-definition, time-sensitive multimedia applications used by the employees and restaurant guests”.
Standard-based 30W PoE ports on the X435 allowed to power Bastard Burgers’ Ethernet-connected edge devices, such as IP phones or wireless Wi-Fi 6 APs, without the need for additional electric cabling. Additionally, the switches support fanless operation, especially outside the wiring closet, making them ideal for a noise sensitive environment of Bastard Burgers restaurants.
A smart restaurant
All components of the new networking solution are cloud-based, allowing Xite to monitor them from their Network Operations Center and Security Operations Center. Using ExtremeCloud IQ, the industry-leading cloud platform, has allowed for some powerful, simple and secure hybrid cloud management.
“We were able to get the complete performance, health, and security picture of every user and device in, around, and part of the network, while adding granular template-based policy management for hundreds of devices present at the Bastard Burgers restaurants”, says Rickard Sellstedt.
Bastard Burgers required a flexible yet robust, effortless networking solution to support their hyper-scale growth.
Rickard Sellstedt, Senior Network and Security Consultant, Xite
What’s more, the integrated applications allowed Bastards Burgers to gain better business insights from their network, enhance wireless security and enable seamless onboarding and guest access, among other things.
“For example, Extreme AirDefense simplified the protection, monitoring and security of the wireless LAN networks, while ExtremeGuest provided a robust and comprehensive guest engagement solution, enabling the use of analytical insights to engage visitors with personalized engagements and creating the vision of a smart restaurant”, Rickard Sellstedt adds.
Last but not least, machine learning derived data insights help the IT administrators easily identify and monitor network operational state at a glance, while SD-WAN provides full redundancy by automatically rerouting network traffic around disruptions caused by heavy traffic loads and downtime, making it even easier for Xite to meet the service level agreements.
The plan? To go everywhere!
The story of Bastard Burgers is a classic tale about the right networking solution playing key role in the rapidly expanding business.
“We knew quite early that this business was going to be a success and we wanted to keep expanding. Now we have 70 restaurants in 4 countries and our plan is to go everywhere. The networking solution provided by Xite and Extreme will be a key component behind our future growth”, Rickard Enbom sums up.
Would you like to talk about creating effortless networking experiences for your growing business?
About Xite
Xite, now part of Office Management, is the Extreme Network Diamond Partner and a full IT-Service company specialized in the design, implementation, operation and maintenance of complete IT infrastructure. Xite’s consultants, who boast extensive experience in IT and cutting-edge expertise in one or more areas, have designed and built some of the largest Extreme Networks deployments in the world in the past 15 years. The list of the company’s customers includes mainly large and medium-sized companies located in the Stockholm and Uppsala regions.