Patapain, a family-owned company founded in Bourges in 1986, is today a recognized player in fast food in France. Through its four business lines (restaurant, bakery, café, and catering), the brand brings together nearly 1,000 employees spread across more than 60 restaurants. Faithful to the mindset of its founder, the company relies on a strong culture of knowledge transfer and skills development, summarized by a simple conviction: it is the teams that make Patapain. The vast majority of the teams at Patapain work in restaurants, in kitchens, in dining rooms, or in catering activities. A daily operational environment where exchanges are fast, rhythms are intense, and communication between sites naturally remains limited.

In this context, maintaining connections between restaurants, circulating best practices, and giving visibility to what is happening in the field becomes a central issue. Especially in a multi-site organization marked by regular turnover and highly autonomous teams. In 2025, the company chose to rethink its internal communication to make it more accessible, more participative, and closer to the field. The objective was clear: sustainably connect its teams and strengthen cohesion across all sites.

Internal communication confronted with frontline reality

Before the implementation of Sociabble, Patapain relied on Workplace by Meta to structure its internal communication. While the tool had enabled an initial step in the digitalization of exchanges, it quickly showed its limits in such a frontline and multi-site environment.

Patapain has 61 restaurants spread across 20 departments and nearly 1,000 employees, around 95% of whom work on the frontline in restaurants: prep staff, sales associates, managers, catering teams. A reality that requires internal communication adapted to very operational constraints. Teams are in production, in service, in customer contact, and have little time available.

In this context, Workplace by Meta presented several concrete limitations:

• poorly structured information, often lost in feeds
• an editorial calendar without administration, challenges, or highlights
• little visibility for important content
• and above all, limited adoption by frontline teams

Each restaurant operates autonomously. Teams rarely meet, inter-site exchanges remain rare, and the circulation of information depends heavily on local initiatives. In practice, “best practices” often remained confined to one restaurant, without being shared across the network.

We needed to create connections between our different sites, which can be several hundred kilometers apart.

Mélina Thoumazet Employer Brand and Communication Manager at Patapain

Beyond organization, at Patapain, the transmission of know-how and acquired experience is essential: recipes, preparation methods, kitchen organization, or point-of-sale organization. All skills that are built in the field and that must be able to circulate.

Mélina Thoumazet adds: “What can be done in the Angoulême restaurant must be reproducible in the Orléans one.”

Finally, the operational reality of the sector imposed an additional constraint: regular turnover, which required continuously onboarding new employees and maintaining a high level of engagement over time. Internal communication therefore became a critical lever for cohesion, but also for retention. Faced with these challenges, a new solution emerged.

A platform for frontline teams

Faced with these challenges, and with the closure of Workplace by Meta, Patapain chose to deeply rethink its internal communication system. The objective was not only to change tools, but to offer an environment better adapted to the frontline reality of the teams.

Sociabble was selected for its ability to combine ease of use, mobile accessibility, and functional power. The challenge was clear: allow a sales associate on break, a manager between two shifts, or a catering team on the move to easily access information, while also contributing to it.

Several elements were decisive in this choice:

• a mobile-first approach adapted to restaurant teams
• a simple and intuitive interface, close to social media standards
• the possibility to target content by population (head office, restaurants, professions)
• a model encouraging employee participation

But beyond the tool itself, the entire way of launching the platform was rethought.

A launch designed as an event

The deployment of the new platform, named Pépite, was not part of a purely technical logic. At Patapain, the launch was designed as a true collective moment, intended to bring all teams on board from the very beginning. A physical event was organized on June 18, 2025, to gather around 200 employees, alongside the executive committee and part of the management teams. The objective: create a shared experience, memorable and immediately understandable by everyone.

Upstream, a small working group was formed: head office, regional directors, as well as several frontline employees. Their role was to identify best practices and build a format capable of speaking directly to restaurant teams.

Rather than presenting the tool in a traditional way, the organizers chose to start from concrete situations experienced in restaurants. Lack of staff during a shift, need for support between sites, sharing a local success: these everyday issues were staged in a small theater play, then solved live thanks to Pépite.

We dramatized the launch with everyday situations so that everyone could recognize themselves in them.Mélina Thoumazet, Employer Brand and Communication Manager at Patapain.

In the same dynamic, a content creation contest was launched the very same day, involving the teams present at the event. Each restaurant shared a photo of its costumed team in the context of an internal seminar. Participants voted, content circulated immediately, and employees naturally took ownership of the platform. At the same time, the General Management and the Executive Committee actively participated in the event, reinforcing the collective dimension of the launch and giving strong internal visibility to the project.

This approach created immediate momentum. Employees participated, interacted, and published content from the very first hours. The launch became a lively, collective, almost spontaneous moment. In addition to the support provided by Sociabble to project teams, the ramp-up was guided by a proximity-based system with frontline teams. They were trained upstream thanks to on-site support, managerial relays, and regular exchanges with project teams. The ambition was simple: enable quick and natural onboarding, as close as possible to the operational realities of restaurants.

From the very first weeks, a strong result emerged: 98% of employees were active on the platform. In the days that followed, Pépite naturally became part of the teams’ daily routines, eventually becoming a shared reference point within the company. Very quickly, one observation became obvious: it is the frontline teams that bring the platform to life.

Making on-site teams the driving force of internal communication

From the launch, Patapain made a structuring choice: internal communication must not be only top-down. It must be driven by those who live the company every day. Very quickly, restaurant teams became the main contributors to the platform. Today, more than 80% of published content comes directly from employees (UGC, User-Generated Content):

• photos of teams during service or preparation
• highlighting a successful product or display
• sharing an efficient kitchen organization
• feedback from a catering service or local event

This dynamic follows a deliberately simple editorial line: show what is really happening in restaurants. Each site can therefore share its successes, highlights, and daily initiatives, without filters or staging. Concretely, content published by one restaurant can quickly be seen, commented on, and reused by other teams. An idea implemented in the kitchen, an efficient dining room organization, or a local commercial success thus gains visibility and can inspire other restaurants. This spotlight effect creates momentum: teams feel valued, inspire each other, and participate more.

I use Pépite a bit like a typical social network: I look at what is happening in the other Patapain restaurants, I like, I comment, and I also publish content for my restaurant.

Léa Brisset  Sales Associate at the Patapain restaurant on Jules Guesdes in Montluçon

Gradually, the platform becomes a collective expression space where everyone can contribute and highlight their daily life. As Léa Brisset, sales associate at the Patapain restaurant on Jules Guesdes in Montluçon, summarizes: “Pépite really helps create connections between the different Patapain restaurants and allows us to see the successes of others, which is motivating.”

Let us now look at how the platform’s features make it possible to anchor this dynamic in the operational daily life of frontline teams.

Features adapted to the field

Beyond communication, Pépite integrates directly into the operational organization of restaurants. The platform was designed to respond to the very concrete constraints of frontline teams: responsiveness, simplicity, and autonomy.

It is important to emphasize that Pépite is available as a mobile app, thus integrating into the daily lives of frontline teams. Available on iOS and Android, the application allows employees to easily access company news, publish content, react to posts, or exchange with colleagues, wherever they are. Its simple and secure access strongly contributed to the rapid adoption of the platform by employees. Exchanges and content remain centralized in a professional environment managed by the company, with secure authentication systems via SSO or personal credentials. An essential point for Patapain, which wanted to offer a mobile tool that was easy to access while guaranteeing a reliable and secure communication framework for the entire network.

This accessibility then allows teams to more easily use the platform’s other features, starting with integrated instant messaging. It allows direct exchanges, from mobile, without going through head office or external tools. In practice, managers and restaurant teams (prep staff, sales associates, managers, or catering teams) can create discussions by area or by need. A restaurant lacking staff on a Saturday evening can, for example, quickly ask another site for reinforcement. In the same way, a team can share an efficient kitchen organization or ask for advice on product preparation. This logic profoundly changed usage: teams no longer depend on head office to solve daily situations, and therefore gain responsiveness and autonomy. Instant messaging thus becomes a true lever for frontline mutual support, serving the daily operations of restaurants. Mélina Thoumazet summarizes it well: “Before, everything went through the head office. Today, they help each other directly between employees.”

Video also occupies an important place in Patapain’s internal communication strategy. In a network spread across many sites, it makes messages more lively and engaging while creating more proximity between head office and restaurants. With an average of 8 videos per month, it is used to highlight very concrete everyday situations: a photo shoot organized in Amboise with restaurant teams, the winners of an internal challenge, the launch of a new bakery offer, or anecdotes during the brand’s 40th anniversary. Each piece of content becomes a moment of recognition for teams. As Mélina Thoumazet points out, these content pieces are highly anticipated: “Employees know that they can recognize themselves in them, see their team or restaurant highlighted, and share these moments internally.” This feature strongly reinforces engagement: frontline teams (sales associates, bakers, catering prep staff) are no longer only spectators, but visible actors in communication.

Another particularly engaging format: gamification, a key lever in platform engagement. It allows teams to be mobilized around simple and accessible formats directly linked to company life. For example, a quiz was used to engage employees around the sponsorship project of the Route du Rhum. Without knowing the final result, teams participated massively, before a draw designated the winners. Other initiatives punctuate platform life: best galette des rois contest, challenges around iconic products, or games linked to the brand’s 40th anniversary and the 4 CSR pillars. In some cases, employees can even participate several times, such as for photo contests or product challenges, which creates a real flow of frontline content. Rewards remain simple but symbolic: internal badges, highlighting teams, or small personalized gifts. In this way, gamification creates a dynamic of continuous emulation between restaurants and directly highlights frontline professions: sales, production, and catering.

Finally, an internal newsletter is sent every Monday to all employees, in addition to the content published on the platform. Its role is simple: give visibility to important information from head office and highlight the most engaging content published on Pépite by restaurants.

It notably relays:

• restaurant news
• frontline team successes
• new products or offers
• company highlights (anniversaries, CSR, internal events)

The newsletter therefore acts as a weekly reference point for restaurant teams, often not continuously connected, and allows them not to miss out on anything from network life.

Projects that unite the whole company

Pépite is essential in showcasing the company’s structuring projects. In 2026, Patapain celebrates its 40th anniversary, a symbolic milestone for the brand. The platform is already the central point for communication and engagement across the network. This celebration is highlighted as a unifying moment for the entire network: looking back on the brand’s history, highlighting the evolution of the concept, testimonials from long-standing employees, and showcasing internal career paths.

For the occasion, the company has offered itself an exceptional adventure: accompanying skipper William Mathelin-Moreaux in one of the world’s most legendary races, the Route du Rhum Destination Guadeloupe. Teams can discover the behind-the-scenes preparation of the race, follow the stages of the partnership, and participate in exchange sessions around this collective adventure. The CEO even spoke on the event by posting videos revealing the inner workings of the boat itself. In addition, skipper William Mathelin-Moreaux will meet with restaurant teams, further reinforcing the link between the event and the employees’ daily life.

These initiatives shared across the network make it possible to move beyond the strictly operational framework of the restaurant and bring collective projects to life, in which everyone can recognize themselves and see success.

Without Pépite, I could not share this type of project so easily.Mélina Thoumazet, Employer Brand and Communication Manager at Patapain.

Immediate adoption, driven by frontline teams

In just a few months, Pépite established itself as a central internal communication tool at Patapain. Adoption was immediate and sustainable, including among frontline populations usually difficult to engage with digital tools.

The main results illustrate this dynamic:

• 98% of users were active within the first weeks after launch
• 88% monthly active users
• over the last 12 months, 65% of users logged in at least once per week,
• more than 900,000 impressions generated in 2025
• around 800 pieces of content published by employees (UGC, User-Generated Content) in one year
• 25,000 interactions (likes and reactions) over the year
• around 8,000 messages exchanged via chat since launch

Beyond the numbers, it is above all a deeper transformation of internal communication that is taking place.

Rethinking internal communication to connect the field

With Pépite, Patapain transformed its internal communication by giving a central place to frontline teams. In an environment where employees are above all in production and customer contact, the platform made communication simpler, more direct, and more useful in the field.

Restaurants exchange more with each other, local initiatives gain visibility, and employees actively participate in the life of the network. More than a communication tool, Pépite has become a shared space that strengthens the link between teams and brings the company’s identity to life every day.

Patapain thus demonstrates that effective internal communication does not rely only on technology, but on those who truly bring the company to life: its Pépites.

Would you like to bring your frontline teams together and connect a multi-site network around a shared culture? Discover how Sociabble supports companies like Patapain in their internal communication.