Tebi: Against the clock
A fast-growing hospitality-tech company moved three floors into one on a four-week build window. Here’s how workplace experience manager Stacy Bergener decided what to lock in early and worked around the one thing outside her control.
At a glance
Company
Tebi: building tools for the hospitality industry with around 130 people
Team
Doubled from around 40 to about 130 people in eight months
The move
Three separate floors consolidated into one, on a ~4-week build window
Locked in early
The Aquablu REFILL+ Series 2, meeting booths, the pantry rebuild
The result
The essentials in place from day one, the calls that mattered made early, and a landlord deal that shared the pantry cost
Tebi’s move ran on a tight build window, but Stacy Bergener had planned for it. She’d run a bigger, slower job before, at her last company and so had some idea of what she was up for.
“We did a full build-out: the planning, design and build in seven or eight months, which was record time, but we had a massive team and an external design team.”
Tebi’s was leaner and faster. “From the time the contract for the new office was signed to when we moved in was maybe four weeks, just under.” A window that short means there’s no time for mulling over decisions once you’re out of the gate.
Setting the priorities
With just weeks to work with, deciding the musthaves , ahead of time, was the first port of call. "I focused on prioritising what we absolutely needed to work in the space, the non-negotiables," she says. "One was meeting booths, and the other was the pantry."
Everything else flexed around those two. The old office had meeting rooms spread across several floors; the new one had four, so booths filled the gap and when the space was fixed, Stacy got resourceful. "We even repurposed an old closet into a meeting room."
When asked how she juggled so many decisions at the one time without dropping the ball, Stacy said she was thorough with her planning. For example, when it came to the meeting booths, she made a spreadsheet of seven companies, including their costs and contract details, made as many calls as she could and carefully assessed each option before locking in her decision.
“We made a deal with our lessor, so they’re paying for half - it’s part of their investment into the space too.”- Stacy Bergener, workplace experience manager, Tebi
The calls she made early
Stacy knew some things needed to be planned early and placed hydration with the essentials.
"In a growing company, in a workplace-experience role, you're stretched; you wear so many hats, you're managing vendors, you're the one doing the invisible work, the heavy lifting," Stacy says.
Looking ahead, she knew speccing a hydration system early would save her time in the long run.
"Right now (pre-move) I've got sparkling water coming in as bottles, and it's me reloading and moving them. Anything that saves me time and takes work off my plate, I'm all about. The last thing I need to worry about is bottles."
To make sure it happened, she budgeted it in from day one.
"It was one of the first contracts we signed once we knew where we were going and what we were doing.
“The last thing I wanted was to be adding another monthly cost at the end."
“Aquablu was a must for me. It was one of the first contracts we signed once we knew where we were going and what we were doing.”- Stacy Bergener, workplace
experience manager, Tebi
Some things you can’t control
The single piece Stacy couldn't control outright was the pantry, which was down to the lease, not her planning. She wanted to customise it to suit her team, but because Tebi subleases the space, the rebuild had to run through the landlord's contractors, on their timeline.
She planned what she could and negotiated with the landlord to share the bill. "We made a deal with our lessor, so they're paying for half, it's part of their investment into the space too." She got the rebuild signed off. And she sequenced the hydration so nothing waited on her end: with the REFILL+ Series 2 contract locked months earlier and designed into the space.
“Ideally I'd have liked everything perfect from the moment people arrived," says Stacy. But on a four-week clock, with a room running on someone else's schedule, she’d done as much as she could: locked the calls that could be made, and planned for the ones that were foreseeable.
Stacy’s advice
Stacy’s advice to fellow managers running a move: trust your read of the room.
"Really use the vendors and services that make your job easier and provide the healthier option.
"You have intuition about what people need, and if you don't, you ask and find out,” she says.
See how Tebi did it
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