Scaling the vibe: How Street Smash Burger keeps its culture thriving through growth
Street Smash Burger began in Lisbon with a simple idea: bring real burgers to everyone. What started as a passion project has become Portugal’s leading burger brand and one of the country’s fastest-growing food businesses.
The Challenge: when ambitious growth outpaces operations
Street Smash Burger was built on bold ambition, a drive that helped the team achieve remarkable growth. But as the company expanded from a single Lisbon shop to an international brand with locations in Milan and Zurich, that same energy created new operational challenges. Their manual, unstructured approach to HR, recruitment, and daily operations could no longer keep pace. The team knew they needed to professionalize their processes before rapid expansion risked diluting the strong culture that had fueled their success.
Fast growth, slow admin
As new stores opened across Europe, the administrative load of hiring, onboarding, and scheduling shifts became overwhelming for a small team.
Managment conflicts ahead
Leadership recognized the need for digital structure but worried that rigid systems might impact their collaborative, high-energy culture.
Culture and engagement at risk
As the team grew, staying connected became harder. They risked losing the close “family” spirit that defined their early days.
The Solution: A digital core for an ambitious team
Street Smash Burger needed a scalable system that could move as fast as they did. They found that foundation in Factorial. By centralizing recruitment, shift management, and time tracking, they gained the structure required to sustain growth. The platform’s intuitive interface made adoption easy across the organization.
Most importantly, digitalizing operations wasn’t about replacing the human touch. It was about protecting it. By freeing up hours once lost to manual tasks, the team could focus on what truly matters: strengthening their culture through events, shared experiences, and the “family” atmosphere that drives their success.
Centralized recruitment
With Factorial’s hiring tools, the team manages candidates in one place, streamlining recruitment and helping them quickly find the right people to join.
Symplified shift management
Shift planning, absences, and clock-ins are now simple and transparent. Managers have a clear, centralized view, saving time and eliminating the confusion of manual scheduling.
Data centralization
With all employee data in one place, leadership can make informed decisions and plan future openings using real-time insights.
Streamlined onboarding workflows
Factorial also enhances the onboarding experience by centralizing essential documents, contracts, and payslips, giving new employees everything they need from day one.
Our impact
For a fast-growing company like Street Smash Burger, the biggest challenge isn’t just logistics. It’s preserving its team-first identity. By automating and centralizing HR processes, from scheduling to recruitment, Factorial gives leaders back their most valuable resource: time. That time is reinvested in culture. As the leadership team explains, their goal is to use the hours saved through digitalization to “work on the culture of the company.” Thanks to this partnership, the time once spent on admin now fuels the activities that keep Street Smash Burger’s unique spirit alive as the business scales.
“Before Factorial, Street Smash Burger was pure chaos. We needed to hire, formalize processes, and centralize information… so we needed a tool to support us end to end.”
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