Big Subs, Bigger Visibility: How Cibo Italian Subs Grew Online While Staying Focused on the Food
Cibo Italian Subs relaunched in Bedfordshire in early 2025 and did something a lot of restaurants are afraid to do: they made the menu smaller. Gone were the all-day brunches and rotating evening specials of their previous location. In their place, 11 sandwiches, one monthly special, and a simple promise to provide the best sub in town. “Some people say it tastes nostalgic, like the old-school sandwiches people grew up on, but we still try to stay on trend with what’s going on now,” Lel Bosco says.
That focus freed up time, which might be hard to quantify but is extremely valuable to busy operators. We sat down with Lel Bosco, Owner at Cibo Italian Subs, to learn how a small shop used automation to grow its visibility and its regulars across email, SMS, and search; all running in the background while the team stayed focused on the food.
“I’d tell any operator considering Popmenu to just do it. On the days you forget to do something — because that happens, it’s normal — everything still runs in the background.”
Lel Bosco, Owner, Cibo Italian Subs
From Phone Orders to a Real Digital Front Door
Before Popmenu, running the shop’s customer relationships meant relying on whoever picked up the phone. “Before, it was mainly in-store ordering and phone-in collections, which got messy when we were busy,” Lel Bosco recalls. Marketing meant Instagram—and only Instagram—which meant Cibo had no direct line to its own customers, only whoever happened to be shown their posts. “Before, we only really had Instagram to reach customers and even then, the algorithm means a video can go viral without your actual customers ever seeing it.” There was no email list, no text updates, no way to reach a regular directly unless they happened to be scrolling at the right moment.
Popmenu gave Cibo a way to reach people directly, independent of any algorithm. “Now we can send texts and emails, so we reach customers in a different way,” Lel Bosco says. “Even if I forget to do something one week, it happens automatically in the background and customers still get it.”
That shift from posting-and-hoping to actually knowing who your customers are shows up in the numbers: Cibo’s guest database has grown by 44% since starting with Popmenu, giving the shop a steadily expanding pool of people they can market directly to.
Building that digital front door didn’t add work to Lel’s plate, either. “Popmenu was flexible with the design and built it exactly how we wanted,” he says of the website build. “It took about four to five weeks and I didn’t have to lift a finger. An agency would’ve cost a few grand.”
Getting Found and Getting Home
“Looking at our Google profile from before Popmenu, we’d get a few searches and directions,” Lel says. “Now people want to know where we are, the phone number, the order link, the website link; the numbers are really, really good.”
Cibo’s organic search traffic roughly tripled starting in the spring of 2026 and has held at that higher level since, spanning everything from people searching Cibo’s name directly to people simply looking for a sandwich shop nearby. And unlike the days of guessing whether an Instagram post actually reached anyone, that visibility is trackable end to end. “You can see on the dashboard how many website visits and searches actually turn into orders,” Lel says. “It’s fully trackable.”
Behind that growth is a simple mechanic: every dish a guest likes or reviews adds their details to Cibo’s database. “Before we didn’t even know who these people were,” Lel says.
“Now we can see their favorite dish and keep them coming back.”
Turning First-Timers Into Regulars
Getting found online is only half the story. The other half is what happens after someone finds you. Cibo leans on two automated offers to do that work.
The first is a simple pop-up on their website: sign up, get 15% off your first order. It’s a small ask that’s paid off in a big way by earning over £6,800 in revenue driven directly through that incentive so far. “We’ve had quite a few sign-ups this week,” Lel says. “It’s clearly working.”
The second runs quietly in the background: if a guest hasn’t ordered in 30 days, Popmenu automatically sends a “we’ve missed you” email with an offer attached, no manual work required. That win-back flow has driven thousands of pounds in revenue on its own. “I don’t even touch a button to do that,” Lel says. “It all happens in the background.”
The impact goes beyond any single order, too. Online orders placed with an offer attached run 27% higher than orders without one and Cibo has learned to use that lever strategically. “Sending an offer encourages people to buy in periods they normally wouldn’t,” Lel says. “It’s helped grow our midweek sales” during the shop’s normally quieter stretches.
Guest Growth & Repeat Business
Database, search, and offer results since switching to Popmenu
What’s Next for Cibo
With a growing digital presence and a loyal base to build on, Cibo is already looking at what’s next, including a second location. “Potentially open another store and let more people know about us and try our sandwiches,” Lel says, pointing to nearby Cambridge or Oxford as natural next steps, with an eye on something further afield too: “I think we could really work in somewhere like Brighton. That’d be pretty cool.”
Cibo also plans to put their social media following to work in a new way by converting followers into signed-up VIPs and giving themselves another direct line to their most engaged guests.
For a shop built on doing one thing well, that’s the whole point: less time managing the marketing, more time on the sandwich.
“The online visibility has really helped us as a business and a brand.”
