Miso Hungry Sushi + Bowls is a fast-growing QSR brand that’s making waves with its fresh, bold and tasty take on Japanese street food. With 4 venues already up and running within 2 years, franchising is a key part of their growth roadmap. 

“We look at franchising as an opportunity to partner with passionate local business owners who can carry our brand ethos into their communities and be the true ambassadors of the brand.” - Head of Operations, Miso Hungry Sushi

But they knew that expansion without quality and consistency would not help them reach their goal of becoming Australia’s most loved and memorable Sushi and Bowl brand. So they partnered with Liven to build a core system that makes scaling easy without losing consistency and quality. 

Discover how Miso Hungry built a fast-scaling franchise model, without compromising quality or brand consistency, powered by Liven One.

Franchising a restaurant: The challenge of scale and chaos of silos

Miso Hungry’s primary goal was bringing high-quality, fast, and fresh Japanese-inspired food to busy Australians. While their mouth-watering, bold creations made with proprietary sauces and premium ingredients really connected with the Australian palate, their systems remained disconnected. As they grew from one location to four, they began to experience the limitations and inefficiencies of using multiple platforms to manage multiple venues.

Some of their biggest challenges were:

• Slow & inconsistent menu updates: Menu updates took days to implement across stores, and weren’t always consistent

• Fragmented reporting: No visibility across venues, especially around stock and sales activity

• Uncoordinated marketing: Promotions lacked coordination and there was no central visibility on customer loyalty and engagement

• Manual effort & errors: Manual reconciliation or updates across platforms took up the team’s time and energy and led to errors

“Once we expanded to more than 3 locations, managing menus, staff permissions, and reporting manually across platforms became unsustainable. We needed a "one system" solution to grow confidently.”  - Head of Operations, Miso Hungry Sushi

Their must haves for this system included:

• A centralised POS and menu management system

• Franchise level hierarchy

• Integrated loyalty and promotional capabilities

• Real-time reporting

• Easy rollout to new stores

• Strong support and flexibility for customisation

The solution: A Fully-Integrated System for Scaling Food Franchises in Australia

Liven One ticked all these boxes, and offered them so much more. The integrated Liven One suite chosen by Miso Hungry included:

• Abacus POS: The core OS, central to all transactions and reporting 

• OrderUp Blue: For digital ordering and delivery

• Zeemart: The fully POS-integrated procurement and inventory management system

• Liven Engage: The hospitality-first CRM to for more informed marketing

• Liven Loyalty: Programmable custom currency (brandollars), automated rewards, tiered memberships and so much more 

• EMS: Liven’s Enterprise Management System that helped create central control and visibility with local flexibility

• Catering: A feature of Liven OrderUp Blue, that allows you to create & managing catering operations from the same back-end

• Self-ordering Kiosks: Liven’s self-ordering tech with upselling, for fast-moving queues and higher order values

• Nomnie Pay: For secure, smooth and easily reconcilable payments 

“The key differentiator was the "bolt-on" architecture. Each product in the Liven One suite offered strong standalone functionality, but also synced seamlessly under one system.”  - Head of Operations, Miso Hungry Sushi

Here are just a few of the ways in which the Liven One tech stack has made growth through the franchise model repeatable at scale, and with consistency, for Miso Hungry:

Menus & pricing updated in a single click: 

Liven’s Abacus POS with EMS has significantly reduced their admin load. Menu changes and pricing updates made centrally roll out almost instantly across all stores, maintaining consistency, transparency and saving hours of manual updates.

Engagement that’s on-brand & drives loyalty: 

With Liven Engage and EMS, they can easily push out personalised offers to customer segments across venues using pre-set email & SMS templates and study the impact centrally.

Central control, with local flexibility: 

Liven’s unique Enterprise Management capabilities helps maintain quality control centrally, while ensuring each franchisee has room for local customisations they can make at their end.

“As a franchisor, you’ll need systems that empower franchisees without making them dependent on you. Liven’s tools give us that balance.” - Head of Operations, Miso Hungry Sushi

Channels easily scaled to drive revenue: 

The modular nature of the tech stack means they are easily able to add additional revenue channels at scale like kiosk and catering, without disrupting existing operations or requiring extra hardware or manpower.

Better inventory tracking and smarter purchasing:

Zeemart’s standout procurement capabilities, deep POS integration and accurate food costing capabilities makes inventory management and purchasing easy and more profitable.

Unified & real-time reporting: 

Liven’s unified reporting capabilities make it easier for Miso Hungry to get the complete picture, benchmark store performance and offer support where needed while replicating success. 

Faster rollouts:

Liven’s tech makes onboarding for new stores structured, tech-driven, and focused on speed-to-market. Miso Hungry are able to provision accounts, push menus via EMS, and support operators through their first weeks with on-the-ground and remote support.

A true partnership: 

The Liven team handles configuration, menu sync, offer training support and proactively help identify potential roadblocks before launches, acting as a trusted advisor and implementation partner.

“Previously we were juggling disconnected tools and manual workflows. Now, with Liven One, we have a unified tech ecosystem that talks to each other and enables smoother, faster decision-making.”  - Head of Operations, Miso Hungry Sushi

The impact: Moving all the right needles for Franchise Growth with Liven One

After adopting Liven One, Miso Hungry’s team has to do less admin work, is able to roll out and train new stores faster and has better visibility across all key metrics.

Here are some other real ways in which Liven One has created a positive impact for them:

• Higher basket values through upselling: The average order value through self-ordering kiosk and online ordering is 13% higher and 2X more, respectively, than dine in orders

• More impactful marketing: With an average open rate of 44% and click through rate of 16%, they’re riding way higher than industry averages for F&B 

• More efficient menu updates via EMS: Time taken to update menu has gone down from days to minutes

• Better food cost control via Zeemart: Food costs are more up-to-date and in their control

• Faster and more accurate payment reconciliation through Nomnie Pay

Food for thought: Key Takeaways for Restaurant Franchisors

Miso Hungry’s approach is all about creating a strong brand and centralised scalable systems that make it easy for franchisees to launch easily and find profitability fast. The Liven One suite serves as the connected tech that helps them maintain brand standards, while being able to move with speed. 

“Technology is the backbone of a franchise model. Invest in tech early. Don’t build on band-aids, build on a foundation that can grow with you.”  -  Head of Operations, Miso Hungry Sushi

Miso Hungry’s story shows what’s possible when restaurant franchisees and franchisors are supported by the right technology. Whether you're starting to franchise a restaurant or running an established food franchise in Australia, having an all-in-one platform like Liven One isn’t just helpful, it’s essential for scale.

If you’re looking to grow through the franchise model or exploring ways to improve the performance and efficiency of your multi-venue restaurant, book a call with our experts!