Nick CarterHospitality Technology Consultant
Nick Carter.
Technology leader in multi-site hospitality. Managing partner of a seven-venue group, founder of Control Suite.
Preston, Manchester and London. Equally comfortable with remote working. Available for interim, fractional and advisory work; a written technical review is often step one.
nicholas@ngcarter.comlinkedin.com/in/nicholas-carter-ukngcarter.com
Profile
I run a seven-venue hospitality group in the North West and I build the software it runs on. Most operators buy their systems and live with the gaps. I have always ended up writing the thing myself: EPOS, CMS and e-commerce for a family retail business before its PLC buyout, Table Order during the pandemic which 1,600 UK venues onboarded, and now Control Suite, the EPOS, CRM and loyalty platform handling £6m of trade across our sites.
It means I know both sides of every hospitality technology conversation. I know what a duty manager will actually do at 11pm on a Saturday, and I know what it takes to build a system that survives it.
Selected achievements
- Built Control Suite, an EPOS, CRM and loyalty platform processing £6m of annual trade across 7 sites, now in beta with its first venues outside the group.
- Built and launched Table Order during the pandemic: an order-to-table platform onboarded by 1,600 UK venues and processing millions of orders.
- Grew a hospitality group to 7 venues, £6m turnover and hundreds of staff, owning the P&L across every site.
- Worked with eBay's team on its Argos Click & Collect launch in 2013, then deployed it across my client base. The programme scaled to around 800 UK stores and three million parcels collected.
- Grew a family retail business from £800k to £9m turnover, leading to a buyout by a PLC, and raised the £2m capital required for national expansion.
Experience
Managing Partner · The 85 Group Hospitality, Preston
Jun 2018 – Present
- Managing partner of a 7-venue group in the North West, £6m turnover, hundreds of staff. Led site appraisal, fit-out, launch and trading on every opening.
- Built and now license Control Suite, the EPOS, CRM and loyalty platform the group runs on. Covers till, stock, table management, tiered loyalty, reporting and payroll.
- Own the P&L across all sites: labour percentage, GP, stock variance, supplier terms and capex on every new opening.
- Selected, integrated and replaced the group's full tech stack across EPOS, payments, bookings, CRM, networking and lighting control, building the integrations vendors did not offer.
- Set commercial direction across 7 distinct venue concepts: positioning, F&B offering, event programming and pricing.
- Led the group through Covid, protecting employment while managing supplier terms, funding and phased reopening.
Technical Director · Focus & Co
Jan 2013 – Present · Self-employed
Incorporating Focus & Co Design Boutique, Freedom Hosting and Freedom Cloud Networking
- Built and launched Table Order during the pandemic, an order-to-table platform adopted by 1,600 UK hospitality venues and processing millions of orders. Retired as Covid trading requirements ended, with a number of venues migrating to Control Suite.
- Founded Pro Shops, helping retailers list at scale across multiple websites and platforms.
- Run self-hosted infrastructure serving hundreds of thousands of daily users, managed end to end in-house.
- Worked alongside eBay's own team on its Argos Click & Collect launch in 2013, then deployed it across my client base.
- Lead a team of designers, developers and IT engineers delivering platforms, applications and bespoke integrations for an invite-only client base.
Entertainment Director (part-time) · Baluga Bar & Club, Preston
May 2014 – May 2018
- Booked talent and negotiated fees across a multi-format event schedule.
- Built programming to reach distinct audiences across the city.
- Owned AV architecture, brand direction and brand protection.
- Launched "The Kitchen", a late-night food offering targeting a gap in the local market.
Senior Partner · Ted Carter
Sept 2009 – Jun 2018
- Built the company's in-house systems from scratch, including EPOS, CMS and a multi-channel e-commerce website.
- Grew turnover from £800k to £9m, leading to a buyout by a PLC.
- Raised the £2m capital required for national expansion.
- Introduced performance metrics across departments and a retention strategy that materially improved customer satisfaction.
Chief Engineer (concurrent) · Prime Security Solutions
Jun 2012 – Jan 2015
- Led an engineering team delivering CCTV, access control and control room systems for bars, restaurants, nightclubs and major festivals.
- Mobile data, rapid-deployment CCTV: you couldn't buy one at the time, so I built it.
- Set up and ran emergency response control rooms at several major UK festivals.
Capabilities
LeadershipP&L ownership across 7 sites, leading design, development and engineering teams, board-level advisory and mentoring, vendor selection and contract negotiation, capex planning, multi-site rollout
Technical reviewsCodebase and architecture, version control and deploy practice, server setup, backups and disaster recovery, delivered as a written report
LanguagesPHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Swift
InfrastructureSelf-hosted Linux, Dovecot/IMAP, Docker, Raspberry Pi, UniFi networks, DNS and mail
IntegrationsREST APIs, OAuth2, payment gateways, bulk payment/payroll, DMX lighting control, IMAP migration
DomainEPOS architecture, CRM, tiered loyalty, stock control, table management, order-to-table, reporting
ToolingTwenty years of writing this by hand. AI tooling has compressed the timelines rather than replaced the skill, which is why one operator can ship and run a platform at this scale.