Slow for guests, quick at the counter: Bravo on Tebi

Opening into a room Berlin already loved

Bravo sits in one of Berlin's quieter courtyards, inside the glass pavilion Dan Graham designed for KW. The directors of KW and the Berlin Biennale approached its four owners, Vadim, Clemens, Eva and Sören, about taking on the space. Bravo joins Otto, Trio and Pluto in their small Berlin family of venues, a fine dining room, a casual German restaurant and a wine bar.

“It’s a place bound up with the city and its history. For us it felt deeply personal, because Vadim grew up right across the street.”

A café had run in the pavilion for years before them, under different owners, and Berlin had grown attached to it. The four were opening something new into all of that.

"So many people have had this as their favorite café at some point in their Berlin life. There's real gratitude that we've given it some love again."

The setting shapes what comes out of the kitchen, because the courtyard invites people to slow down and the food follows. Simple, nourishing, and built to feed a lot of people well. Open sandwiches, salads, a good chicken soup, boiled potatoes with green beans, tomatoes, egg and smoked fish. Seasonal and vegetable-driven, easy to understand.

"Buy good produce and serve simple dishes made well. It's the food you'd make for yourself at home if you were looking after yourself."

A different kind of hospitality

Bravo is the first of the four venues that runs entirely by day, which gives it a rhythm of its own.

"We come from a restaurant background. This is quicker, higher turnover, more flow, smaller orders. That was new for us."

Since the KW courtyard is a public space as much as the museum's garden, the people visits for different reasons. Somebody might be meeting a friend, or waiting for the exhibition to open, or sitting for ten minutes with a coffee already in hand. Guests get to arrive, settle, and order when they are ready.

"The QR lets people find their own place. To arrive, settle in, and have a moment of quiet in the middle of bustling Mitte."

Two ways to order, one queue

Bravo runs POS, Payments and QR ordering on Tebi, the connected restaurant operating system. Guests either order at the counter or from their table, and both arrive in the same place, so the kitchen works a single queue rather than watching two.

That suits the shape of a daytime service. Small orders arrive constantly rather than a few large ones spread across a night, and the courtyard fills quickly when an exhibition empties out. The counter and the QR carry the load between them.

“Whether an order comes from the counter or from someone’s phone, it lands in the same place. The kitchen doesn’t have to think about where it came from.”

Because payments run through Tebi as well, the takings sit against the orders that produced them, and the day closes without anyone squaring two sets of numbers by hand.

Part of the house

The institution brings more than footfall. House events and cultural happenings run through the space, and Bravo takes part in them rather than working around them.

“It puts us in exchange with something bigger. Being part of that is very rewarding.”

If your room fills faster than your floor can read it, talk to us.