How Côte Brasserie cut cost per hire by -71% and transformed its candidate experience
Côte Brasserie is a modern French brasserie group with more than 70 restaurants across the UK. Known for delivering memorable dining experiences, the business turned to inploi, the leading candidate experience platform for high-volume hiring, to modernise its approach to talent attraction.
One year later, Côte Brasserie saw a -70% reduction in cost per application and a -71% drop in cost per hire. The efficacy of inploi’s solution meant that Côte Brasserie maintained hiring volumes, even after cutting their monthly attraction budget by -78%. Côte Brasserie achieved this while launching a new, inclusive candidate experience that reflects the refreshed Côte Brasserie consumer brand.
By combining a brand-aligned, fully-accessible careers site with segmented job distribution and unified performance reporting, Côte Brasserie has achieved measurable results:
decrease in cost per application
reduction in cost per hire
Maintained application and hire volume despite a -78% cut in attraction budget
hours/ month saved through real-time reporting and automation
With inploi’s platform, Côte Brasserie’s Talent team now makes
faster, data-informed decisions across 70+ locations.
About Côte Brasserie
Côte Brasserie is a modern French brasserie group with over 70 restaurants across the UK. As a leading hospitality brand, Côte Brasserie has ambitious hiring goals across front and back-of-house roles, and a commitment to delivering quality experiences, not just to guests, but to future team members.
In 2024, Côte Brasserie was preparing to launch its refreshed consumer website and wanted the careers experience to reflect the same brand evolution: accessible, modern, and designed for meaningful connection.
Challenges
High spend, low visibility
Côte Brasserie’s Talent Acquisition team relied heavily on legacy credit-based job boards, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds annually to attract candidates. But with no performance-based model and limited visibility into ROI, budget was often wasted on underperforming roles or regions. There was no clear way to measure what was working, and what wasn’t.
Manual distribution, manual reporting
Job requisitions were created in Côte Brasserie’s ATS, Talos360, and then manually distributed to job boards - a time-consuming process that added no strategic value. The team also spent over 20 hours per month manually compiling reports from disconnected systems, without access to actionable insight across the hiring funnel.
One-size-fits-all candidate journey
Côte Brasserie’s careers site offered generic landing pages and application flows, making it difficult to engage and convert the right candidates. The experience wasn’t optimised for quality, nor did it reflect Côte Brasserie’s brand or consumer values, something especially critical with a refreshed Côte Brasserie website launching mid-year.
Lacking support for accessibility
The existing candidate journey had no built-in support for differently-abled or neurodiverse applicants, a growing priority for Côte Brasserie’s people team. This not only limited the available talent pool but created unnecessary barriers in an already competitive hiring landscape.
Data silos blocking better decisions
Without a unified view of performance, from click to hire, Côte Brasserie’s hiring data lived in silos. It was difficult to answer core questions like:
“How much does it cost us to fill a Front of House role in London?”
As a result, decisions were based on gut feel rather than insight, slowing the team’s ability to optimise hiring performance.
Solution
Brand-aligned careers site & smarter application flows
Using its Careers Site and Chatbot & Flows modules, inploi rebuilt Côte Brasserie’s candidate journey from the ground up: delivering a fully branded, WCAG-compliant site that aligned with Côte Brasserie’s refreshed consumer website. With built-in accessibility features and tailored application flows, the experience now attracts and converts the right candidates, while filtering out unsuitable applications before they reach the ATS.
Automated distribution & smarter budget allocation
Through inploi’s Talent Attraction module, Côte Brasserie moved from credit-based job boards to automated job distribution by segment (e.g. Front of House, London, Sous Chef), operating on a pay-per-completed-application model. This eliminated budget wastage and made recruitment marketing more efficient, with jobs promoted dynamically to the right audiences, without manual effort.
Real-time reporting across the hiring funnel
With inploi’s Reporting & Analytics module, Côte Brasserie’s Talent team now has visibility across its entire hiring funnel. A unified dashboard combines campaign performance, site analytics, and Talos360 ATS data, enabling the team to track ROI by source, understand conversion patterns, and make faster, data-driven decisions. The manual reporting burden, once 20+ hours per month, has been significantly reduced, freeing up time for more strategic work.
Results after one year
-70% decrease in cost per application
-71% reduction in cost per hire
Maintained hiring volume despite a -78% cut in attraction budget
20+ hours/ month saved through elimination of manual reporting and real-time analytics access
Client Testimonial
Helen Kinrade, Head of Talent, Côte Brasserie Restaurants
Conclusion
For Côte Brasserie, transforming hiring wasn’t just about reducing costs - it was about building a scalable, brand-aligned talent strategy that reflects who they are and what they stand for. With inploi, Côte Brasserie now has a future-ready talent acquisition engine that combines automation, insight, and exceptional candidate experience: purpose-built for high-volume hiring that delivers measurable results.
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