Alpaca Chicken

Founded in 2007 by a mother-son-daughter trio, Alpaca Chicken began as a single restaurant in Durham, North Carolina, serving authentic Peruvian charcoal-roasted chicken. Today, siblings Ranbir and Ruby oversee a fast-growing chain of 18 locations across the Triangle region, with two additional locations slated to open in early 2026.

Known for its signature pollo a la brasa cooked over natural wood charcoal, made-from-scratch sides, and signature sauces, Alpaca Chicken has built a loyal regional following while maintaining an unwavering commitment to food quality, customer service, and community.

As Alpaca Chicken expanded from a handful of locations to nearly 20, the operational complexity of managing consistent standards across multiple sites grew significantly. The team needed a platform that could centralize daily task management, standardize procedures for general managers and staff across all locations, and replace the manual coordination that worked at a smaller scale but wasn't sustainable for a growing brand.

The team also needed a smarter approach to maintenance management—one that could route issues to the appropriate vendors by category and location, while keeping area managers informed and accountable. After a soft launch and successful initial deployment, Alpaca Chicken committed to a full network-wide rollout with Xenia as the operational foundation for their next phase of growth.

‍Digitizing Daily Operations Across Every Location

At the core of Alpaca Chicken's Xenia usage is a set of daily operational projects that bring structure and consistency to every shift. Opening manager checklists, mid-day checks, and closing procedures are all managed through the platform, giving general managers and staff a clear picture of what needs to get done and when.

Temperature logs that were previously tracked manually are now completed digitally, creating a reliable audit trail across every location. Staff also complete hourly production checks through Xenia, tracking chicken at every stage of the process—from the oven to the hot box—to ensure production is running smoothly and each shift is properly supplied throughout the day.

Administrators use Xenia to build and run store audits—adding a formal layer of oversight on top of the day-to-day task flow. Audit data feeds directly into reporting, giving leadership visibility into how individual locations are performing against brand standards and where attention is needed. All checklist and audit completion rates are tracked in real time, so the operations team can spot gaps quickly without waiting for a store visit.

Centralizing Maintenance Requests and Issue Escalation

One of Alpaca Chicken's central goals was replacing ad hoc maintenance coordination with a structured, centralized system. With locations spread across multiple areas of North Carolina—each overseen by its own area manager—the team needed a solution that matched the complexity of their structure.

Using Xenia's custom maintenance request forms, restaurant staff can submit a maintenance issue directly from the mobile app, selecting the category and subcategory of the problem—from hood cleaning to HVAC to plumbing.

When a request is submitted, a workflow automatically escalates the issue to the internal team, creating a task for the area manager to track and follow up on. This gives leadership a centralized view of all open maintenance issues across the network, with photo documentation and location details captured at the point of submission.

Xenia Tools

• Daily operations projects for opening, mid-day, and closing checklists across all locations
• Custom maintenance request forms with conditional logic and subcategory-based routing
• Automated vendor notification workflows routing issues to the right external contact by category and location
• Automated reporting to track checklist completion rates and open work orders across the network