About San Carlo
San Carlo is a group of Italian restaurants with 25 locations across the UK and a workforce of over 1,200 employees. The group operates restaurants across the North West (Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool), the Midlands (Birmingham, Leicester), Bristol, and London, supported by a central head office.
With such a large and diverse workforce, San Carlo's training needs are equally varied, ranging from compliance and safety to service standards and career development.
The challenge
Before adopting Expert LMS, San Carlo faced significant barriers in effectively delivering and managing training across its restaurants:
- Weak reporting - Managers had limited visibility of completion rates, making it difficult to monitor progress and prepare for audits.
- Low engagement - Employees found the old system clunky and uninspiring, resulting in lower participation.
- Insufficient support - Customer service was reactive rather than proactive, limiting the ability to resolve issues quickly.
The business needed a platform capable of handling compliance rigorously while also supporting long-term staff development and career pathways.
The solution
What distinguished Expert LMS for San Carlo was not only our functionality, but the partnership approach. Expert LMS demonstrated a clear understanding of the challenges faced in the hospitality industry and where San Carlo was coming from. Paul Jones-Nolan, the Group Head of People at San Carlo, says that we showed a willingness to learn from San Carlo, making the relationship a genuine two-way collaboration.
They wanted to learn from us, as we wanted to learn from them. This wasn't a platform that was just in a box... For us and for them, this was a journey.
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Paul Jones-Nolan
Group Head of People at San Carlo
San Carlo quickly discovered that Expert LMS was not a platform "out of the box" but a flexible solution that could be shaped around their business needs. Together, we worked with San Carlo to co-create a system that would support both compliance and long-term employee growth.
A major part of this collaboration was the development of career pathways for every role across the business. From entry-level positions such as kitchen porters, waiters, and waitresses, employees can now clearly see how they can progress all the way to becoming a general manager in the business.
