According to President Ronald Reagan, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana tend to agree, at least when it comes to federal government involvement in social media platforms’ content moderation policies…
On March 18, the justices will hear oral arguments in a case, Murthy v. Missouri, in which the two states and several individuals claim that federal officials violated the First Amendment in their efforts to “help” social media companies combat mis- and disinformation about COVID-19 and other matters…
This is one of several landmark social media cases the Court is hearing this term, including Lindke v. Freed and O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, in which they will decide if and when government officials may block private citizens from commenting on their personal social media accounts…
Former national security official and current Harvard Law lecturer, Timothy Edgar ’97, believes that both the states and the federal government have valid arguments, and argues that the justices should channel the spirit of that famous 18th century publisher and postmaster, Benjamin Franklin, who was a proponent of both neutrality and rational discourse…
Timothy Edgar:
Missouri among other states and individuals are arguing that the Biden administration’s involvement in trying to suppress COVID-19 misinformation, especially about vaccines, crossed the line from being public health education to being censorship, by proxy. They argue that the administration was making very aggressive, specific suggestions to those social media companies, either to remove or to downgrade certain kinds of posts, and that by doing that, they transformed the private decisions that those companies made — principally Facebook and Twitter, now X — into public decisions, and that would amount to censorship.
The federal government says this was a voluntary, cooperative effort between social media and the government to combat misinformation and improve public health. They also argue that the government has long engaged in public health education and that even if the government expresses its views bluntly, it has a responsibility to express those views. The First Amendment and concerns about censorship, they say, don’t prevent the government from expressing an opinion about what information is or isn’t truthful when it comes to public health…”
My opinion is that they’re both right and that we need to get some clarity from the courts about where that line is between engagement and public health…
In his early days, Franklin was a printer in Philadelphia and a postmaster. When he was criticized by a number of the citizens of Philadelphia for publishing a controversial essay, Franklin wrote a famous response called “An Apology for Printers,” which is a defense of the idea that printers should be neutral. Here’s the quote:
“Printers are educated in the Belief, that when Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter: Hence they chearfully serve all contending Writers that pay them well, without regarding on which side they are of the Question in Dispute.”
Franklin was defending the idea that there’s a role for service providers — publishers, printers, platforms — to share information and arguing that, if we say that they must agree with everything that’s on their service, then we cut off debate. It is an argument grounded in an enlightenment faith in the idea of rational discourse. Of course, it doesn’t answer the question of whether we should print literally everything — which Franklin did not believe — or when and how platforms should moderate content. But it embodies a certain faith in the marketplace of ideas.
Franklin is making two arguments in his essay. One is the enlightenment idea of rational debate: that the truth will win out. But it also has this very pragmatic point, which is that neutrality is good for business. Printers were natural monopolies in a way that social media platforms can be as well…to serve the public, you need a platform — a printing shop and now a digital platform — that maintains some level of neutrality in order to have a democratic system of government…
When the government communicates with distributors of information, in that case, book publishers, if they do it in a way that makes those businesses feel like they have no choice but to comply, then those actions will be seen as government actions. And they will be seen as a form of censorship that is prohibited by the First Amendment unless there’s some legal basis for censorship…
You can look at this example from Franklin’s life and see some of both sides of what the justices will be deciding in this case. The platform should be neutral. In general, they should aspire to further public debate and that, even when they think something they allow to remain posted to the platform is wrong, they should have some faith in rational discourse. But there is a line, and the platforms or the printers can draw that line where they choose...
The government has a responsibility to inform the public and to engage with digital platforms. They may even criticize digital platforms if they feel that their moderation decisions are being driven by private profits at the expense of the public interest…The government can make rational arguments. What it cannot do is to invoke its power — even implicitly — in a way that makes platforms feel they have no good option but to do what the government says… The government has an important role and responsibility here to be engaging with private platforms, and not just on public health, but on issues of terrorism, and extremism and violence, on issues of taking down illegal content like child sexual abuse material. When there are foreign, state sponsored disinformation campaigns, the government is uniquely positioned to let the platforms know about them. So, they need to be involved with Facebook, X, Google, YouTube, all the big social media companies…
…there’s a difference between X and Facebook and the New York Times. Platforms make content moderation decisions. The New York Times makes editorial decisions. Both are protected by the First Amendment, but they are different decisions, and different considerations apply when deciding when government pressure crosses the line. And this gets back to our discussion of Benjamin Franklin. In the social media space, content moderation may deprive a speaker of the practical ability to have access to digital public square...

The kitchen is on fire. Welcome to the final part of the Vapiano story where the tables are turning. In the first two episodes we followed Mark Korzilius' journey from setbacks to founding Vapiano, a groundbreaking restaurant concept, highlighting its fresh ingredients, dynamic atmosphere, and data-driven operations that drove rapid success. While achieving initial profitability and garnering attention from industry giants like McDonald's, Vapiano's global expansion has led to stellar revenue growth. However, it has also resulted in the emergence of numerous side projects (or distractions), operational challenges, increased costs, significant investments, and a notable accumulation of debt. This underscores the prioritization of top-line growth over profitable growth. We will continue on this thread and see how the story ends, but I would encourage you to read part one and two for better context. Vapiano P1: Italian Food Made in Germany (substack.com). Let's dig in.
Before Going Public
We are now in 2015 and the year is a disaster for Vapiano's PR department. Employee time stamps are being manipulated, endless overtime for employees and high turnover in managerial roles are reported; mice in the kitchen and even rotten food allegedly found.
The company is confronted with allegations of exceeding working hours among trainees in an article published by Welt am Sonntag, while the same outlet accuses Vapiano of manipulating punch times. The auditing firm PwC is commissioned to investigate the allegations and finds that there is no systematic approach but rather misconduct by individual employees, a mistake that’s being corrected. Internal however, investigations into stamp times are carried out regularly now and beyond its obvious reputational impact, this sucks up valuable management time and attention.
In the summer of 2015 CEO, co-founder and investor Gregor Gerlach, who has been running the group since 2011 is stepping down and Jochen Halfmann is taking over. A new Vapiano People Program with an App is being developed with the aim to better interact with customers that will incorporate innovate features such as mobile pay. The German website sees a launch of new magazine to further promote the brand and there is now a full inhouse blogger and Instagram team being installed. In October the company buys seven restaurants from original co-founder, former co-investor and ex-president previously responsible for internation expansion Kent Hahne (2x Bonn, 3x Cologne, 1x Koblenz and one in Cologne that’s under construction). This package of Vapiano restaurants is very successful and generates net sales of more than 20 million euros in 2014. Hahne opened his first Vapiano restaurant in Cologne in August 2006 and in 2015 with his company apeiron AG, Hahne operates six L'Osteria franchise restaurants, a direct Vapiano competitor, and two self-owned restaurants GinYuu.
Then in November of 2015, the next public relations bomb goes off with allegations regarding the company's quality standards. The company immediately investigates the issue through internal and external specialists but finds no evidence of any quality issues. Nevertheless, knowing that the group is now being closely watched, the company’s already in place hygiene standards are being reinforced. Additional audits and inspections are performed nationally. Further, all Vapianos worldwide are being audited twice by the partners SGS Institut Fresenius and SAI Global. Auditing software is purchased to simplify the implementation of the audits and the resulting measures. Apart from the external examinations, there is a food sampling plan in place being performed continuously. Again, all of this sucks up costs, management time and attention. With all these tumultuous developments the company’s growth engine is undeterred. Revenue grows by a whopping 50 million euros to 202 million euros, an increase of 33%. Impressive. While average spent per customer increases in all countries, the number of customers per day in Germany decreases by 3.3% partially due to the negative press towards the end of the year. Five own, four JV and 19 new franchise restaurants are added that year to the group, the total number of own managed restaurants grows to 51, there are 31 JVs and 84 franchises which bringing the total to 166 Vapiano restaurants. Global restaurant sales are now above 400 million euros.
But while revenue grows by an astronomical 50 million euros, operating profits, alarmingly, shrink again. Gross margins are staying perfectly healthy above 75% but operating costs keep growing disproportionately fast. The Company’s outstanding debt jumps by almost 30 million, close to 85 million euros by the end of the year. With operating profits at 9.5 million euros, alarm bells should be going off right now.
In Q4 of 2015, new CEO Jochen Halfmann introduces Strategy 2020. The new strategy includes five essential points. One, profitable growth in the newly defined core markets of Germany and Austria as well as in the UK, Netherlands, France and USA. Two, operational excellence through strict “best practice” management. Three, further development and digitalization of the concept considering guest feedback. Four, greater focus on long-term employee retention and five, building a modern and sustainable IT landscape. Sound’s good on paper but let’s see how things pan out.
Vapiano's investments (capital expenditures) that year are primarily directed towards new restaurant openings, renovations of existing establishments, and share acquisitions in other Vapiano restaurants from franchisees or JV partners. A significant portion of funds is allocated to the digitalization of the guest experience, including the development of a new app scheduled for market release in 2016 and the implementation of a time recording system across all group restaurants. The world's first standalone Vapiano restaurant with a delivery service that year is built in Fürth, Germany. The company keeps expanding its presence in both inner-city locations and international markets, such as Shanghai, China.
To finance all of this, the group has its own operating cash flow which comes in at 18 million while capital expenditures are 26 million euros plus 14 million for acquisitions. The funding gab is filled with 26 million euros of new debt and a seven-million-euro equity raise. At that end of the year and after the equity raise Gregor Gerlach (through his AP Leipzig GmbH & Co. KG entity) holds 30.1%, Hans-Joachim and Gisa Sander through their Exchange Bio GmbH hold 25.5% and the Tchibo heirs, Herz through their Mayfair Beteiligungsfonds II GmbH & Co. KG hold 44,4%.
But for the first time the restaurant’s concept that was so successful to date is being questioned. Some customers are starting to mislike the operational flow of the concept itself. If you want pasta, you must queue for pasta. If you want pizza you stand in a different queue. A small side salad, yet another queue. "You spend more time carrying trays than an actress in Berlin-Mitte. The audience in the pasta limbo can only consist of people who have worked for an insurance company for a long time and, like Stockholm syndrome, they can no longer get away from the industrial canteen feeling," writes TV host Beisenherz provocatively. While overly harsh in his assessment he's not entirely wrong judging by customers venting their frustrations in forums and social media channels. It isn’t uncommon for those who ordered pizza to have already finished eating while there is little movement in the pasta queue. Long term that doesn't go down well, QSRs competitors like L’Osteria are handling this process differently, with much success.
https://preview.redd.it/6cas01oked0d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=2da6e0b4bc0e07dbee558de412feb414cd598d4a

Tipping Point

Where are now in the year 2016 and things start to deteriorate visibility. Perhaps not for the leman’s eye but any business minded observer can see that there are problems under the hood. Yes, revenue grows yet another whopping 50 million to almost 250 million euros but half of that growth, comes from acquisitions of restaurants that the group didn’t already own 100%, which is now being fully consolidated within the group’s accounts. Here is a concrete example. In the past, Vapiano SE, the group’s top holding company held an indirect 50% stake in a French subgroup via the subsidiary VAP Restaurants SA, based in Luxembourg, and included this as an associated company in the Vapiano SE consolidated financial statements using the equity method. Due to the acquisition of additional shares in September of 2016, Vapiano SE's indirect share in the French subgroup increased to 75%. This means that Vapiano SE takes control of the French subgroup, which is therefore included in the group’s financial statements as part of the full consolidation. The revenue from the acquired subsidiary now recorded in the consolidated income statement amounts to 12.8 million euros. While that’s great for the top line, the loss of the fully consolidated entity equates to 0.2 million euros. Yes, you are buying revenue, but there are losses attached to them, not profits. A similar case is the Swedish entity that runs eight restaurants with revenue of 11.5 million euros but has losses of 235 thousand euros. So much for Strategy 2020 and “profitable” growth.
That year the group’s operating profits are absolutely tanking, halving to 3.5 million euros. Operating profits are now a mere 1,4% of revenue. Remember original founder Mark Korzilius who talked about operating margins of 25% to 28% at the restaurant level? Yes, there are overhead costs for the organization that sits above the chain of restaurants, but operating margins that low indicates a course correction is needed. What’s telling is that in the annual report, in the management discussion section, the company starts talking about EBITDA as a proxy measure of profitability, rather than operating profit or net income. This wasn’t the case in the years before. Is this window dressing for an upcoming IPO? EBITDA is short for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. How can you measure profitability of a restaurant chain that absolutely and unequivocally needs capital investment to maintain its restaurant operations, the very source of cash generation, by simply excluding this maintenance charge (depreciation in the income statement)? Vapiano’s own annual report talks about the fact that existing restaurants must be rejuvenated from time to time and that new interior designs have to be implemented every few years. These things wear and tear, they go out of style, kitchen equipment breaks and needs replacement. This business absolutely needs maintenance capital expenditure, why anyone talks of profits before these maintenance costs is beyond me. Fun fact: in the previous annual report EBITDA is mentioned seven times, mostly around restaurant acquisitions and financing, not however as a profit indication for the group. In the new annual report, EBITDA is mentioned 28 times. Maybe it’s just me but belated Charlie Munger liked to call EBITDA: bullsh*t earnings. When in doubt I stick with Charlie. Interestingly, EBITDA for Vapiano keeps growing while operating and net profits keep falling.
Operating cashflow for the group that year is about 21 million euros, but capital expenditure is 30 million and acquisitions for subsidiaries another 20 million. To finance these expenditures another 28 million euros of debt and 16 million of equity is raised. Net debt rises above 130 million euro. The operating cashflow of the group before any capital expenditures is 21 million euros. I am not sure free cash flow would be significantly positive after maintenance capex is paid out; it’s not broken out so we can’t be sure. Granted, I am not on the ground during this time, and I am not in the board room, I am simply reading what’s in front of me, but to me this is starting to look like a distressed situation. Regardless, the following year the company goes public.

IPO

Where are now in the year 2017 and its Vapiano’s first year as public company. The company’s annual report reads the following “Sales revenue, like-for-like growth (LfL) and the earnings figures EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA are used as the most important financial performance indicators for controlling operational business activities.” The very same report however also says: “The majority of the group's investments regularly go towards opening new restaurant locations and modernizing existing restaurants. The latter are differentiated into regular replacement investments that occur during ongoing operations (Maintenance CAPEX) and fundamental investments in the renovation of a restaurant (Remodeling CAPEX). On average, a restaurant remodeling takes place nine years after opening.” It says it right there in their own report; every nine years a remodeling is taking place. Remodeling and updating is not cost free, so why exclude depreciation charges which reflect capital expenditures? I understand that perhaps you would want to strip out one-off opening costs, that’s fine and fair, but don’t go overboard.
The number of restaurants increases by 26 (previous year: 13) to a total of 205. The increase consists of 27 new openings and one closure. Group revenue grows to an astonishing 325 million euros but here comes the shocker, operating profits turn negative to 25 million. Fine, strip out foreign exchange losses of 3 million, IPO costs of 5.8 million and new opening costs of 6.1 million and you still have 10 million euros of operational losses. All the while the debt load of almost 130 million hasn’t materially changed, so those operating losses are before a six-million-euro interest payment. 184 million euros are raised through the IPO of which 85 million go to the company. This money is earmarked for further expansion as the group has ambitions to almost double the footprint to 330 restaurants by the end of 2020. The company is currently not profitable on an operating basis, and still wants to expand aggressively? I don’t get it. The remaining 100 million euros of the IPO money raised is distributed to co-founder Gregor Gerlach and Wella heirs Hans-Joachim and Gisa Sander. The family office of the former Tchibo owners Günter and Daniela Herz with a 44% stake, don’t sell a single share. After the IPO, 32% of all the company’s shares are now in free float.
One year later, in 2018, things get even worse. Revenue grows to 371 million, but operating losses mount to 85 million euros, that’s before interest expenses of 9 million. Even the beloved EBITDA figure turns negative, meaning the operating business before any expansionary or even maintenance capital expenditures is loss making. All regions are experiencing significant deterioration in their earnings profiles. Like for like sales are down 1% across the board. That’s revenue, not profitability. The question naturally arises: is the Group approaching its natural saturation point here or this operational by nature? The operating cash flow is now 9 million while financing cost are close to 7 million. That leaves 2 million for maintenance capital for 74 own restaurants and 76 joint ventures ones. Describing this as financially tight, would be an understatement.
Things are not looking good at this point. Yet the company still grows restaurants by 26 new sites. 64 million euros are spent on acquisitions, new openings, and maintenance costs, financed through a 20 million-euro equity raise and 72 million of new debt. The Company now has net debt outstanding of over 160 million euros. After the equity raise and by the end of the year 2018, Mayfair owns 47.4%, VAP Leipzig, Gregor Gerlach’s entity owns 18.9% and the Sander couple own 15.5% of the company. Yes, the Sanders and Gerlach may have taken 100 million euros off the table, but they still have substantial skin in the game. Plus, Mayfair hasn’t sold a single share and instead injects more money into the company through the equity round. The stock has now fallen from its IPO price of 23 euros per share to under 6 euros by the end of 2018. Something must be done here. And indeed, there is pivot in strategy and a hard push for change. At last, the management team abandons its aggressive growth plan and curtails new openings significantly. Additionally, the team wants to run a thorough analysis of weak locations to then either discontinue or sell sites. In Europe, the operating focus will be put on corporate restaurants and joint ventures in major cities to ensure the ideal size and location to match the respective demographic target group. Outside of Europe, the franchising business is being expanded and at the same time a consolidation of the existing corporate and joint venture markets is being sought. All future investments will be reviewed to achieve higher rates of returns on new openings. Investments are also being made in the renovation of older restaurants. The goal in the future is to also open smaller formats, like Mini-Vapianos (less than 400 square meters) or Freestander at prominent transportation hubs outside city centers (currently in Fürth and Toulouse) to cater to individual location requirements, and to enter new partnerships. I am not sure why management hasn’t stopped all expansion altogether, bringing the ship in order first, getting profitable, clean up, all hands-on deck before considering any further expansions whatsoever. But again, it’s easy to comment from the sidelines; maybe they saw white spaces that would be covered by competing concepts if they weren’t moving fast and aggressively enough. Although pushing internationally means competing with local players such as Jamie's Italian, Prezzo, Pizza Express, Wagamama, Nando's and many more which brings in its own dynamic.
Management also aims to enhance guest satisfaction. This involves refining operational processes, reorganizing the support center, and refocusing on the core offering: providing fresh and high-quality Italian food at affordable prices for a broad audience. The group also aims to reduce waiting times, especially during lunch, while also improving the evening atmosphere. There is even what I would call an evolution, away from Vapiano’s original concept, reorientating the customer journey. The ordering flow is being changed, offering guests synchronized preparations of all dishes while eliminating wait times at the cooking stations. The open show kitchen remains, staying true to original mantra of freshness and transparency but now guests can choose their preferred method of ordering through a mobile app, using a digital order point (kiosk), or by personally placing an order with a waiter. Guests can still freely choose their table and are then informed about the complete preparation of their order through a pager or their smartphone. This is a substantial deviation from the original concept, but a needed one. The group is also exploring and implementing the expansion of take-away and home delivery services but only at suitable locations, not universally across new openings. I am not sure why home delivery is even a priority here; it adds operational complexity. It’s better to clean up shop first and get back to the basics before adding new complexities. To be fair management does try to simplify. There are 49 different permanent dishes on the menu and additional 10 seasonal ones. Customers can choose from eleven different types of pasta. There is simply too much choice, and it makes orders complicated. The company announced to slim the menu down to its most popular and typical Vapiano dishes. There’s no need for an Asian salad at an Italian restaurant. "We have to go back to the roots, i.e. classic, honest Italian cuisine" says COO Everke. Regardless, in November of 2018, the supervisory board pulls the plug on CEO Jochen Halfmann and replaces him with Cornelius Everke. Everke himself has just become COO five months ago. Since 2017 he was responsible for international expansion. From 2011 to 2017 that role was filled by Mario Bauer – put a pin in that name, he’ll play a key role in the groups fate later. Then nine months later, in the middle of 2019, Cornelius Everke quits. He essentially concludes that his skillset and experience in the areas of internation expansion is no longer needed in the foreseeable future. To put it differently: Vapiano has moved from a growth story and has become a restructuring case, and other skills are required for that job. In June of 2019 Everke says the following “(we’ve) made a bit of a mistake when it came to foreign expansion”. No sh#t. Vapiano postpones the presentation of the 2018 annual financial statements three times in the spring of 2019, citing negotiations over an urgently needed loan of 30 million euros. It’s not until the end of May that a binding loan commitment comes through from the financing banks and major shareholders.
We are now in August of 2019 and the corona pandemic is just around the corner. Supervisory board chief Vanessa Hall takes over as interim-CEO and things are unravelling. Visitor numbers are declining; originally, it was planned to sell the US business but halfway through the year the buyer cannot come up with the money. But not all restaurants are performing poorly. The group's poor figures contrast starkly as an example with the experiences of the Swiss-German franchisee, who runs six restaurants. The Sodano family in Switzerland pays Vapiano a royalty of 6% of sales for the use of the brand. Enrico Sodano explains in an interview that they operate largely autonomously from the licensor. If an “accident” were to occur, he could immediately replace the Vapiano sign with Sodano, he says. The family concluded the rents and contracts with employees and suppliers independently. The Sodano family have six locations in Bern, Basel and Zurich, around one million guests every year and 350 employees. Things are going well on the ground. The delivery service they’ve built is offering them a second income stream. Expansion into Winterthur, St. Gallen and Lucerne are being planned; small locations with 150 to 250 square meters and an attached delivery service. Originally, Vapiano restaurants used to be huge but for such a large restaurant to be profitable, 800 to 1,000 guests per day are needed. That’s possible in medium-sized cities, but not in smaller towns which is why the Vapiano group now also supports smaller formats. Back to our corporate drama. The 2019 annual report would be the last report the group files. By the end 2019 the outstanding debt of the company is at an astronomical 450 million euros. Revenue has grown by another 7%, produced by four net new openings through two JVs and two franchise restaurants but operating losses come in at 317 million euros. That sound like an absolute shocker at first but depreciation and amortization charges are 345 million, so that operating cash flow is actually positive but unfortunately capital expenditures and interest payments are so large that they are eating up all of the company’s operating cash flow. Then in the beginning of 2020 Corona hits with full force and the world shuts down. As a result of the measures to prevent further spreading of the virus, the group is forced to cease all global business operations (except in Sweden). While all these shutdowns are happening, the group is the middle of negotiating with its lending banks and main shareholders. There are additional financing needs for restructuring measures, even without a pandemic happening in the background. The situation is so dire that the company starts pleading to the German government to roll out the package of financial help more quickly. Unfortunately, it’s to no end. The rapid closure of restaurants and the resulting lack of operating cash inflows in conjunction with the additional financing requirements, lead to the company’s final knockout punch. In April of 2020, the Vapiano group officially files for insolvency proceedings. The end of an era.

New Beginnings

Because of the pandemic, the majority of the group's subsidiaries in Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United States, Sweden, and China also file for insolvency or seek liquidation. The US business never gets sold in the end and is wound down. In the summer of 2020, significant group divestments occur, including the sale of 75% shares in the group's French subsidiaries, shares in franchisor companies, Australian subsidiaries, German subsidiaries, associated companies, self-managed restaurants in Germany, and insolvency-related sales in the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Sweden. The buyer of the Vapiano brand and one of these bundles of Vapiano restaurants is company named Love & Food Restaurant Holding, a consortium led by Mario C. Bauer – a name I told you to remember. Bauer was a former Vapiano board member and led the national and international expansion, opening 200 sites in 33 countries from 2011 to 2017 until he was succeeded by Cornelius Everke. Bauer didn’t feel comfortable with the IPO at the time but clearly has a lot of managerial and entrepreneurial talent.
The buyer consortium is an absolute A-Team comprised of European QSR top league hitters, including the founder of the Pret A Manger chain Sinclair Beecham; Henry McGovern, the founder and Ex-CEO of the giant international restaurant and foodservice operator AmRest; the Van der Valk Family that runs hotels and Vapiano restaurants in the Netherlands, and co-founder and ex-CEO Gregor Gerlach. The acquisition value is 15 million euros and entails 30 Vapiano restaurants in Germany, albeit that’s just the purchase price which comes on top of any capital investment needed to refresh and return the sites to its former glory. Nevertheless, just as a thought experiment, if you can get each site to 2 million euros of revenue and 400,000 euros in operating profit on average, which wouldn’t be an overly aggressively assumption given the company’s history, you’ve got yourself a package that can deliver restaurant-level operating profits of 12 million euros or more. It’s not disclosed how much capex was needed to refresh the operations, just that fact that the overall investment plus purchase price was a middle double-digit million-euro figure. Stil, it probably was a decent purchase. The same consortium buys Vapiano’s French business for 25 million euros just two weeks prior. After the transaction concludes, the master franchise is given to Delf Neumann and his Gastro & Soul GmbH. Neumann is an experienced operator, and he is ambitious to revitalise the brand with new services and products. For example, instead of pizza, the restaurants will be serving pinsa - a flatbread made from sourdough, wheat and rice flour, topped similarly to a pizza. It targets a more health-oriented customer base looking for a less calory heavy option. The menu overall is expanded by including a variety of vegan and vegetarian dishes.
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Today Neumann’s Gastro & Soul GmbH operates 18 Vapianos on its own account and has 29 franchise sites, amongst other brands. By the year 2021, Vapiano operates 191 restaurants in 34 countries. This is around 50 fewer sites than before the bankruptcy. The number of branches is particularly thinned out in Germany – from 80 to 55. Nevertheless, Vapiano's home country remains by far the largest market, followed by France with 35 restaurants and Austria with 15 locations. “We have shrunk ourselves to health,” says Bauer in the aftermath and there is no further shrinking planned. Quite the opposite, the smell of expansion is in the air again – pun intended. Not as aggressively as before and with a new menu and ordering process.
Overall, the team around Bauer is filled with industry experts with knowledge and networks gained over decades who have a great track record, a long-term view, and the staying power to let Vapiano breath and finds its way back to success. The pressure of being a public company with all the associated quarterly, half-year and yearly disincentives have been removed. The menu is changed and extended with new types of pasta and sauces with significantly more vegetarian and vegan dishes available. Guests can order with restaurant staff, at terminals or on their phones and there are barcodes attached to the tables identify the respective seat. The food is brought to your table, all at the same time if you are in a group, no more annoyances with waiting in line. There is a plan for smaller, 350 square meter locations, with half the number of guests and significantly fewer staff and less set-up costs required to make the economics work. Locations that capitalize on remote work and increased demand for local lunch options, higher population density with shorter delivery routes and therefore cost-effective in house delivery services are targeted. And Bauer is testing the concept of ghost kitchens, which operate without a dining room or service staff, focusing solely on preparing food for delivery services, which for obvious reasons have a very different operational set up and footprint. Original founder Mark Korzilius however is not entirely convinced. He is not a fan of the pinsa for instance and he considers Vapiano's pizza as its cash cow, flagship product and believes that the core Vapiano proposition of Pizza, Pasta, Bar that has given the company its original success is being diluted. He instead admires the competitor L'Osteria, saying they’ve done a better job by focusing on Italian classics, especially the impressively large pizzas that sticks out beyond the plate is leaving every customer in awe. The guys who run L’Osteria are the same guys who have built Vapiano with him in the first place. Bauer on the other hand, like a true business leader, remains undeterred, stating that he is frequently asked whether Vapiano's restart was bold or foolish. He believes in entrepreneurship, franchising, in his experienced fellow partners and importantly the Vapiano concept. By the year 2024 you can find over 140 Vapiano branded restaurant in 27 countries across the globe, including locations far away from its birthplace like Australia, USA, Columbia, Chile, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. And why not? Italian food is, and will remain to be, incredibly popular. Vapiano offers fresh and tasty food at affordable prices in a good atmosphere. This combination of attributes should attract a lot of customers. It certainly has in the past.
For more stories: WIP Thomas Weitzendoerfer Substack

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Weekly Game Questions and Help Thread
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a securimancer working to keep Reddit safe and secure
Written by u/securimancer
Greetings fine humans. I’m here today writing a “Day in a Life” blog post because someone asked me to. I cannot imagine this is interesting, but Redditors tend to surprise me so let’s do this.
Morning Routine
Like many of us, mornings are when I take care of all the dependent lifeforms under my command. Get in an hour or so of video games (Unicorn Overlord currently) for my mental health. Feed the coterie of beasts (including the children), make coffee for the wife and me, prep the kids for school. Catch up on Colbert (my news needs comedy otherwise darkness consumes), check out what’s been happening on Medium and Reddit, and read a few of my favorite cybersecurity / engineering mail lists. Crack open the ol’ calendar and see what my ratio of “get shit done” to “help other people get shit done” is in store for my day. All roughly before 8am. And the beauty of working for a Bay Area company (if we can call it that, we’re so remote friendly) is that I normally have a precious few hours before people in SF wake up to get things done.
Daily Tasks
Each morning has a brief reflection of what I need to get done that day. I’m a big fan of the Eisenhower Method to figure out what I actually need to prioritize in my day. It’s exceedingly rare that I get a majority of my day focused on work that I’ve initiated, so prioritizing activities from code review and pull request feedback to architectural systems design reviews to pair programming requests from the team to random break/fix fires that pop up, all of that gets organized so I feel like I’m (at least trying) to do the most impactful work for the day. Reddit has a few systems to help drive queues of work: Jira for planned work and “big rock” items that we’re trying to accomplish for that quarter, Harold (an in-house developed shame mechanism) for code review and deployment, and Launch Control (Reddit’s flavor of Google’s LaunchCal) for architecture design reviews. Plenty of potential dopamine hits as “things to get done.”
Meetings
It’s exceedingly rare that I have meetings that could have been an email (and if I do, they’re almost always vendor meetings). A lot of what my meetings tend to focus on are around conflict resolutions across teams as we try to achieve different goals or drive consensus to resolve problems that come up on various programs teams are trying to deliver. Working on Security, you can often get perceived as the “Department of No”, but in every meeting I work hard to make sure that isn’t the case. It starts with getting a shared context of what is the problem at hand, understanding the outcomes that we need to drive toward and inputs into the problem (timelines, humans, trade offs), and deciding how we move forward. Meetings are a terrible way to convey decisions as they are only as good as the individuals that remember them, so lots of these meetings are centered around decision docs or technical design reviews. Capturing your rationale for a decision not only helps make sure you understand the problem (if you can’t write about it, it’s hard to think about it), but also helps capture the whys and rationale behind those decisions for future you and other product and engineering staff.
There’s also meetings that I live for, those that are building up humans. We have biweekly SPACE (Security, Privacy, and Compliance Engineering) brown bags where we talk about new things we’ve shipped or some training topic that upskills all of us. We have biweekly threat modeling meetings where we pick a topic/scenario and go through a threat modeling exercise live, which helps build the muscle memory of how to do technical diagramming, and helps build a shared context of how the system works, what our risk appetite is, and how various team members think about the problem providing multiple viewpoints to the discussion (honestly the most valuable component). As a Principal Engineer, I’m keenly aware of my humanity and the fact that I do not scale in my efforts alone: training and building up future PEs is how I scale myself (at least until cloning becomes more readily available).
Ubiquity
One of my super powers is being everything everywhere all at once, or so I’ve been told by my fellow Snoos. I’ve been told that I have an uncanny knack to be in so many Slack channels and part of so many threads of discussion that it’s “inhuman”. Being a damn fine security engineer is hard because not only do you have to have the understanding and context of the thing you’re trying to secure, but also know how to actually secure the thing. This is nigh impossible if you don’t know what’s going on in your business (and we’re still “small enough” size-wise that this is still possible for one human), so I’ve got Slack keyword alerts, channel organization, and a giant 49” ultrawide monitor that has a dedicated Slack tiled window to keep me plugged in and accessible. I also have developed over many years my response to pings from Slack: “Can I solve this problem, if not who can? Is this something I should solve or can I delegate? Can this be answered async with good quality, or is a larger block of dedicated time required to solve? Is this thread too long and needs a different approach?” This workflow is second nature to me and helps me move around the org. I’ve also been here almost 5 years and, as I’m in Security and have to know everything about everything to secure anything (which I don’t, but I am a master of Googling, learning, and listening), I’ve been exposed to pretty much everything in our engineering sphere. With that knowledge comes great power of helping connect teams together that wouldn’t have connected otherwise.
Do Security Stuffs
Occasionally I actually get to do “security” things. These past two quarters it’s been launching Reddit’s “unified access control” solution leveraging Cloudflare Zero Trust, moving us off old crusty Nginx OAuth proxies onto a modern system that has such groundbreaking things like caching and logs , among other things. But really, it’s the planning, designing, and execution of a complex technical migration with only a handful of engineers. I oversee security across the entire business so that requires opining on web app security, k8s / AWS / GCP security, IAM concepts, observability, mobile app dev, CI/CD security, and all the design patterns that are included in this smörgåsbord of technology. Keeping all this in my head is why I can’t remember names and faces and my wife has to tell me multiple times where I’m supposed to be and when. But the thing that keeps me going is always the “building”, seeing things get stood up at Reddit that I know are sound and secure. It’s not denying people’s requests or crapping all over a developer for picking a design they didn’t know had a serious security design flaw. We’re not a bank (either in terms of money we get to throw at security, or tolerance for security friction), we get to make risk tradeoff decisions based on Reddit’s risk tolerance (which is high except where it comes to privacy or financial exchanges) and listen to our business as we try to find ways to improve ads serving and improve our users’ experience. So I view myself like any other software engineer, I just happen to know a lot about security. And I guess not just security, I know a lot about our safety systems, our networking environment, and our Kubernetes architecture. It just comes with the Security space, that inquisitive mind of “how does this thing work?” and wanting to be competent when you talk about it and try to secure it.
Not everything is 0s and 1s, however. A lot of security is process, paperwork, and persistence. Designing workflow approval processes for how an IAM flow should look like. Reviewing IT corporate policies for accuracy and applicability. Crafting responses to potential advertisers’ IT teams on “how secure is Reddit, really”. Writing documentation for how an engineering system works and how other engineers should interact with it. Updating runbooks with steps on how others should respond to an incident or page. Building Grafana dashboards to quantify and visualize how a tooling rollout is working. Providing consulting on product features like authentication / authorization business logic across services. Interviewing, not only for my own team but also within other engineering and cross-functional areas of the business.
End of Day Routine
Eventually, I run out of time in the day as I’m beckoned away from my dark, cave-like, Diet Coke strewn office by the promise of dinner. Wrapping up document review, (hopefully) crossing things off my to-do list, and closing out Slack threads for the day, I try to pack everything up and not carry it with me after work. It’s challenging being an almost completely remote company with a heavy presence in the West Coast, as pings and notifications come in as dinner and kids’ bedtime happens. But I know not everything can be finished in a day, some things will slip, and there will always be more work tomorrow. Which is juxtaposed occasionally with bouts of imposter syndrome, even for someone as senior and tenured as I am. Happens to all of us.
After-hours work is restricted to on-call duty and pet projects. You don’t want to know how many on-call queues I’m secondary escalation on. Or how many Single Point of Securimancers services that I still own (looking at you, Reddit onion service). And pet projects are typically things that I’ve got desires to do: prototyping security solutions we want to look into, messing with my k8s homelab, doing routine upgrades. Nothing clears the mind like watching semver numbers go up (until you find the undocumented change that breaks everything).
Future Outlook
And finally, what's on the horizon for our little SPACE team? We’re still a small team coming out of IPO, and our greatest super power is networking and influencing our engineering peers. We got our ISO 27001 and SOC2 Type 2 last year and continue to ever increase scope and complexity of public accreditation. We’re close partners with our Infrastructure and IT teams to modernize our tech and continue to evolve our capabilities in host and network security, data loss prevention, and security observability. We’ve got two wonderful interns from YearUp that started and are going to be with us this summer, and we continue to focus on improving our team composition (more women and diversity, more junior folks and less singleton seniors). All of this work takes effort by this PE.
So there you have it, a “day in a life” of a u/securimancer. If you made it this far, congratulations on your achievement. Got any questions or want to share your own experiences? Drop 'em in the comments below!

Hey Everyone! Uber here again with the third of our Dragon Development Diary!
Today, we are going to go over everything that makes a dragon a dragon! This should introduce our core concepts that will be used in further dev diaries as we explain the features to come. As always, everything here is still WIP, but we hope this sates your appetites for another week while we continue to put the finishing touches on these fantastic beasts!

A Dragon and its types.

https://preview.redd.it/fbc0uh0vz70d1.png?width=1397&format=png&auto=webp&s=803bc899027d0b71da8e303eb145a37d0657ba9c
In the early stages of our dragon feature development, we acknowledged the importance of striking visuals, as seen in Buckzor’s extraordinary diary last week. Still, we knew we needed to go beyond aesthetics to bring each dragon to life mechanically. We've focused on hopefully making them distinct while implementing intuitive cues to help you quickly tell the dragons apart.
Starting from the top, the three most significant differences in a dragon - Is it a Wild Dragon, freely roaming the wilderness? Is it Tamed, able to be ridden through the skies and into battle? Is it simply owned - laying around a dragonpit, waiting for a rider to claim it?
https://preview.redd.it/a3f6npa8080d1.png?width=830&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b2991b9cf90b8bc460bbf4f263d7bb01f1a09eb
Wild dragons are those that remain untamed and unclaimed by any ruler, living in their natural state. These dragons roam freely across the land, typically staying close to their lairs. Wild dragons cannot be used for combat or travel, and they pose significant risks to any ruler, realm, or location within their hunting range. A ruler who possesses a dragonpit (more on that later) can try to capture a wild dragon to make it an owned dragon. Meanwhile, you might see a local hero or brave knight attempt to tame the dragon directly or courageously endeavor to end its reign by hunting the beast where it lies.
https://preview.redd.it/b11b821g080d1.png?width=621&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fbf1efa447de964eb2dfdfa81ca83ddd43fe79d
Owned Dragons are those claimed by a ruler but not yet tamed by a dragonrider. They reside in their owner’s capital. Like Wild Dragons, Owned Dragons cannot be used in combat or for travel, but they are easier to tame than their wild counterparts. Characters who have not yet tamed a dragon can interact with an owned dragon at their court, either attempting to form a bond with the creature or trying to tame it directly.
https://preview.redd.it/s2ez1fyw080d1.png?width=1581&format=png&auto=webp&s=f97bf9d873704d2846c4311e2ec89ede356d12dd
Finally, we have the tamed dragons,
https://preview.redd.it/r8j33492180d1.png?width=835&format=png&auto=webp&s=b8802062811d5f7e8364306313b706e3b36f9509
Tamed Dragons are dragons that a dragonrider has successfully tamed. If their rider is a ruler, they will reside in their ruler's capital; if not, they will stay in the capital of their employer. However, this is unless they are actively serving in an army or being used for travel by their Riders. Besides Travel and Warfare, riders have numerous ways to interact with their tamed dragons, including taking them for joyrides, increasing their bond with their dragon, or trying to level their rider’s experience at dragon riding.

The Personality of a Dragon.

Each dragon possesses a unique personality, as shown through the Main Series, with Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal. Drogon is fierce and wild, Viserion displays cleverness, tameness, and affection towards Daenerys, and Rhaegal seems to strike a balance between the two. This is further explored in "Fire & Blood" during the Dance of Dragons. Here, dragons like Silverwing are portrayed as relatively docile and friendly towards strangers, while Vermithor grows more tolerant of people and increasingly receptive to new riders. To connect with this, We have introduced a variety of dragon-specific personality traits. These traits intend to complement each other naturally, influencing these dragon characters and who they interact with in many ways.
Originally, we had set out to create every dragon trait as the “dragon” equivalent of vanilla personality traits 1-1. While it worked and took us through most of the development, we occasionally ran into issues where we didn’t like how some personality traits had been grouped when different dragons had been spawned. These issues led to many conversations between Foxwillow and I, where we agreed that to make these better in gameplay and ‘realism’, we needed to create different Personality Scales and then base traits among them.
Our different scales revolve around a Dragon’s general demeanour, conflict tendency, Interactions with Humans, dominance over peers, combat strategy, whether they do better as part of a pack or as a lone wolf, and finally, their feeding habits.
https://preview.redd.it/39z6p6o9180d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=536de12f5375d6f59b9ee4f9ecefdc3ceb2cbc2c
The purpose of these traits should hopefully play a nice dynamic within games, mixed with Flavour Events;
https://preview.redd.it/9a81jobg180d1.png?width=2036&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8cbcf32fc3e8c670a0b4e11d690ab42cdf77580
And Effects on different dragon stats (we’ll dive in later), bonding (another diary), and even AI personality, which we can use when needed across mechanics.
Image of AI Values, where Dragon personality traits have changed the stats.

The Dragon Stats / Attributes.

Developing is a funny activity. Sometimes things that sound simple can be very deceptive, and dragon statistics fell into this bucket. Of course, we knew the standard diplo, martial, stewardship, intrigue, learning array was not going to be useful for a dragon, but deciding what to replace it with has been an evolving process. We needed to think what traits would the player care about for a dragon? What should be presented vs just used in the back end? In the end, we decided on a few key statistics that we think cover the broad base of what’s important when looking at a dragon.
https://preview.redd.it/h9jw2ah4280d1.png?width=290&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f6156d0fca2fd7998657c09a6f64d0c85d89a9e
The first and simplest to explain is dragon size.
https://preview.redd.it/ilks9128280d1.png?width=60&format=png&auto=webp&s=96fd2146943f08dc429467fb0acaba6c9ef3050b
As expected, this is how big the dragon is. Dragons will grow as they age and, just as in the lore, will never stop growing, though the rate does slow down as they get older. Baby dragons will grow by ~30% yearly, while a 100-year-old dragon might grow only 1% larger yearly. We currently target a size of about 20 as an adolescent dragon, ~40 as an adult, and over 100 as a large dragon (think Cannibal, Vhagar, Vermithor, etc), though, of course, all of that is subject to balancing changes.
https://preview.redd.it/yccwo8cb280d1.png?width=60&format=png&auto=webp&s=534be963e87aa46b9f2a99cdc2e9a6e1a16de4f5
The next simplest is Temperament. We wanted a way to reflect the nature of the dragon itself. How approachable is it? Is it more like Silverwing, or like the Cannibal? Will it tear your arm off, watch warily, or approach curiously? Temperament will be largely driven by the traits of the dragon, though some events, both as it grows and afterwards, can permanently change the temperament of a dragon as its experiences change its approach to the world
https://preview.redd.it/mni7c2pe280d1.png?width=60&format=png&auto=webp&s=77496f5d611cd640d11a47f202974a8321531424
The Draconic Dread Icon, taking color inspiration from the Base Game Dread Icon.
This nicely leads us to Draconic Dread. You can think of this as the presence of the dragon. The fear it strikes into the hearts of men. This was created because some things, like a dragon being Skittish, would likely harm its temperament but actually make it less scary. Still, it is largely a factor of its size and temperament, and a more dreadful dragon will be more stressful to interact with. You will need to get over your fear of should you wish to claim its power for your own…
https://preview.redd.it/am1n2u9h280d1.png?width=60&format=png&auto=webp&s=f5c4619165db432f14f81ac55fa0d47c92248ecc
Which takes us to Taming Chance. This is exactly what it sounds like - how innately susceptible to taming a dragon is. Of course, though there is a correlation with temperament and dread, we realized that some traits would not map 1:1 to those prior concepts either. For example, though a Voracious dragon is likely of worse temperament than a Restrained one, it would actually be easier to tame as it’s very food motivated. While only important when a dragon is not yet tamed, we thought that this was such an important factor for the 99% of non-dragon rider characters that might be scouting out a dragon that it deserved its own spot.
Finally, we have Combat Effectiveness (excuse the lack of photo - icon still to be made). This is the most recent addition to the list. Though we always had a more complex structure in the back end, feedback from our QA team has shown that combat effectiveness should be its own displayed statistic rather than using size as a proxy. Of course, this will still be very dependent on a dragon’s size, but will mean that we can have additional congenital traits like Swift to reflect dragons like Meleys or Caraxes that, whilst not being the largest dragons alive, could go talon-to-talon with dragons larger than themselves.

Mysterious Origins

The true nature of dragons is debated, both in the halls of the Citadel in-universe and in the very real forums on Reddit. It’s unclear if dragons truly have a ‘gender’ as all characters in CK3 do, and to what extent a partner is required for them to lay a clutch. There are in-lore examples of ‘female’ dragons who never lay an egg, of male dragons who may have, and of mysterious eggs without clear origins. There are tales of mates, such as Vermithor and Silverwing, while others, like Dreamfyre, have none recorded but laid many. Further, its likely this will never be fully answered in the books. What seems most likely to our team is that dragons can either be fertile or not, and likely have no true gender themselves.
However, both because implementing genderless characters in CK3 would be a nightmare, and because Westeros is hardly the most progressive place, we’ve decided to take a perspective-based approach. Whatever the ‘true’ nature of dragons is, characters certainly regard them as male and female, and so we shall too - dragons' genders will be revealed over time, either at birth due to Maester’s analysis of their movements, due to riders intrinsically knowing the gender of the dragon they ride, or due to the dragon laying a clutch and proving their femininity beyond doubt.
https://preview.redd.it/t1oieucs280d1.png?width=1446&format=png&auto=webp&s=051f449e855fdafddba4a3281bc612e9bff4acd0
It should be stressed that this kind of surprise will be relatively rare. Most genders will be clear by the time the dragon reaches adulthood, and such surprise egg-laying situations shouldn’t happen all that often. While this isn’t the most impactful feature gameplay-wise, we thought that it was an important reflection on the mysteriousness of dragons in ASOIAF lore, and bringing the same feeling to our mod is always something we try to do where possible. Hopefully, the more roleplay-heavy players amongst you will appreciate this extra effort!
FINAL NOTE!!! IMPORTANT
We asked you to hype, and oh boy, hype you have been doing. We do feel we should step in to temper expectations just that little bit. Yes, you're right, there will be a bookmark coming with dragons, but it will be one bookmark. (We will dive in deep soon, we promise!) But it’s not 2 or even 3 like we have seen some people suggest. Despite how simple they may seem to play, bookmarks are actually incredibly difficult to design, particularly complex ones. Dragons has already taken a lot of focus from the team - getting one bookmark done was already a stretch goal for us. While we are proud of the work we've done, and grateful for your faith, even we are not so productive as to make 2+ bookmarks at the same time as a feature of this scope. Never fear though! All good things come in time, and now that dragons are made, many more bookmarks are open to us. In fact, there's already been some discussions on some of the more requested ones on the dev forums 👀, but for another day 😉.
Sorry for the Day Delay! Join our Discord if you haven't already! https://discord.gg/ckagot And stay tuned for more and more dev diaries!
If you missed it, check out Dragon Development Diary #1: Or Dragon Development Diary #2: Or check out the Dragon Reveal Trailer, or relatedly, listen to our Fire and Blood theme to keep you in the dragon mood!!