Meet Big Fang Collective
Big Fang Collective is a fast-growing Liverpool-born leisure group known for their immersive take on competitive socializing. Think golf, cocktails, and street food, served up in venues built for high energy and big crowds.
With private equity backing for a major expansion and six-plus sites already trading, Big Fang faced the classic scaling problem. Information was getting stuck at head office and never reaching the venue floor.
Hannah Swarbrick-Done, Head of People at Big Fang Collective, inherited that comms problem when she joined. The diagnosis came straight from the data.
"Every single survey I'd read for the last two or three years had mentioned communication being an issue. The specifics were cascade of communication, people finding out things last minute, having to ask too many people, or not having clarity around who to go to to get what information. Most things from a communication point of view were broken."
Hannah Swarbrick-Done, Head of People, Big Fang Collective
The problem: email that nobody read
The cause was simple. Every internal channel ran through email, and the majority of Big Fang's frontline team didn't use email. Updates didn't reach the venue floor. Sites operated in silos. The year before Hannah joined, the employee engagement survey hit a 24% response rate.
Big Fang had been using Yapster, a hospitality-focused app Hannah had personally championed. But the product had stopped getting the development investment it needed to keep pace. When Hannah came across Blink, she called it "super mature in comparison."
One feed, one Hub, one collective
Big Fang rolled out Blink as the single home for everything. Shift-friendly updates live in the feed. Structured information sits in the Hub. Posts are targeted by audience, so people only see what's actually relevant to them. For Hannah, that targeting was the unlock.
"The Hub's fantastic. It's really tempting to shove so much in the Hub, and we're trying to not give them too much because I don't want it to just be another library of stuff they don't use. But being able to make quick links out of it, sort information that's only relevant to certain audiences, that ability is super powerful. My feed is tailored to me. I'm not just inundated with everything."
Hannah Swarbrick-Done, Head of People, Big Fang Collective
The founders leaned in too, posting video updates and mixing media formats so leadership messages stayed watched, not skipped. The people team tracks engagement live through Blink's engagement clock, with 82% set as a hard floor they refuse to dip below.
The result: a connected collective, not separate venues
The biggest shift wasn't a single feature. It was the business feeling like one team again. Hannah credits the platform with breaking down the walls between sites.
"Venues don't feel siloed anymore. They know they're part of a bigger structure. They've got visibility now over different venues, different teams. Because they're organized into departments, other bartenders can talk to other bartenders. Bar managers can work together as a peer group. Things like that have really had a massive impact and empowered our managers. Connection and empowering our people."
Hannah Swarbrick-Done, Head of People, Big Fang Collective
The numbers tell the same story. 99% of Big Fang's 195 team members have activated. 94% are active every month. The average user opens Blink six times a day. 46% engage with the feed. And the engagement survey response rate, stuck at 24% before Blink, now sits at 90%.
For a guest-facing business, the equation is simple. The best customer experience starts with the best employee experience. Big Fang now has the platform for both.
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