La Churuata

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The story of La Mechada Express and La Churuata is one of organic, bold growth with deep roots in their community. What started five years ago as an online shop selling frozen Venezuelan products evolved — driven by the pandemic and shifting consumer habits — into delivery, restaurant operations, and a food concept that now blends tradition, emotion, and experience.

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With multiple active sales channels — restaurant, delivery, online shop, and wholesale to other restaurants — operational complexity grew at the same pace as the business. Technology stopped being a nice-to-have and became a strategic necessity.

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Managing so many fronts manually was not sustainable. To keep growing without losing control, Javier Fuentes, CEO and founder of La Mechada Express and La Churuata, needed a solution that brought every channel into a single system. That turning point came with Last.app.

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You've been with Last.app almost from day one. What has it been like growing alongside the platform?

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It's been a mutual growth. We started with an idea, a lot of energy, and Last.app was also just getting started. As our business grew and became more complex, the platform evolved enormously alongside it.

"Last.app is not what it was when it started. Today it covers so much more".

What I value most is that they never stood still. They kept listening to customers, gathering feedback, and turning it into real improvements we could see in the product.

"We've grown together through the process".

For us, that shows that Last.app doesn't just support business growth — it grows with it, adapting to new needs and backing each new stage of the journey.

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What role does technology play in running operations at a restaurant like yours?

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Technology is completely essential for us. When you start out, you can manage a lot of things manually — but as you grow, the workload multiplies, and there comes a point where you collapse if you don't make a decision.

"When you grow, you realise that if you don't automate, the work becomes impossible".

Last.app let us bring order to the whole operation and stop firefighting so we could focus on growing the business.

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What technology tools do you use, and what role do your different sales channels play?

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We have several active channels: we sell in the restaurant, through Glovo and Uber, through our own delivery shop, through an online shop for frozen products, and wholesale to other restaurants via La Mechada Express.

The key is that Last.app let us bring all those channels into one place.

"Thanks to Last.app we could cover everything in a single system and have much greater control".

That has given us a complete view of the business and made day-to-day management far simpler.

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How has running the restaurant changed since you started using Last.app?

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The change has been huge. We went from manual processes to having everything automated and centralised. That let us not only get better organised, but also grow.

"We've been able to double and even triple sales by having everything unified".

Last.app helped us scale without losing control — which is fundamental when you're managing so many channels at once.

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In an industry with high staff turnover, do new team members pick up Last.app quickly?

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Yes, absolutely. The app is very intuitive and easy to learn fast. Even with updates — which are normal in any software — the system stays straightforward to understand.

"It's super intuitive and you pick it up very quickly".

In our case we've had pretty good team stability, but when someone new joins, the learning curve is smooth and frictionless.

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How does the system improve the experience for the team and for customers? What stands out most about Last.app?

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When everything works well on the inside, it shows on the outside. The team works with more ease, the service runs more smoothly, and customers notice.

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But if I had to highlight one thing above everything else, it would be Last.app's customer service.

"They really listen to customers. You make a suggestion and within weeks you see it reflected in an improvement".

We've grown together. Last.app has evolved in step with our business, and that builds a relationship of trust that is fundamental to us.