Hospitality technology consulting FAQ.
What it costs, how it works, where I work and what you actually get. If your question isn't here, the free call is the fastest way to ask it.
What does a hospitality technology consultant actually do?
I help venues and hospitality software companies make better technology decisions. For operators that means working out which systems to keep, which to replace and how to make them talk to each other. For software companies it means bringing twenty years of running venues into their product decisions. The point is always the same: fewer wasted seconds, fewer wasted hours, better numbers.
What kinds of engagement do you take on?
Three shapes. A few days a month setting direction and unblocking decisions. Defined fix-it projects with a clear end, like a stack consolidation or an EPOS migration. And interim technology leadership while you find a permanent hire, or work out whether you need one. Quick jobs are welcome.
How does pricing work?
Every engagement is quoted after a free 30 minute call, because the honest price depends on the problem. Diagnostic work is typically a fixed fee agreed up front, project work is priced by the day, and ongoing involvement runs as a monthly retainer that you can cancel monthly. Nothing beyond an agreed first step is ever committed until you have seen the results of it.
Where do you work?
I'm based in Preston and in Manchester and London regularly, working across the UK and equally comfortable remote. International work is fine by arrangement. For anything hospitality, expect me to want a Friday or Saturday on site early on, because that's when the truth comes out.
Which types of venue do you work with?
Bars, restaurants, nightclubs, multi-site groups, event spaces and festivals. I run a seven venue group that includes all of those trading styles, so the advice comes from operating them, not from a case study library.
Do you work with software companies as well as operators?
Yes, that's half the job. Hospitality tech companies bring me in as a sounding board, for roadmap and product decisions, and to translate what operators actually do with their product on a busy night. I've sat on both sides of that table for twenty years.
Are you independent from till and software vendors?
Completely. Nobody pays me to recommend their product and I don't take referral fees. I even wrote my own EPOS platform because nothing on the market did what my venues needed, so I have no reason to flatter anyone's till. The recommendation you get is the one I'd act on myself.
Why not just use a vendor's own consultant?
Because a vendor's consultant is there to make their product succeed, which is fair enough, but it isn't the same as making your venue succeed. I sit on your side of the table, and if the right answer is to keep the system you already have, that's the answer you'll get.
What does a typical project look like?
Usually a short diagnostic first: a few days replacing assumptions with facts about your systems, ownership and risks, delivered as a plain English report with fixes in priority order. Then we agree what, if anything, happens next. You're never signed up to the whole journey on day one.
How long do things take?
Diagnostics run in days, not weeks. Most fix-it projects land in days to a few weeks depending on scope. Integrations and migrations are usually faster than people fear: I once replaced a three site group's ten year old stack in an afternoon. The slow part is normally the deciding, not the doing.
What can you help with specifically?
EPOS selection and migration, getting bookings onto the till, consolidating systems that don't talk, reporting and reconciliation that currently eats days, customer data and loyalty that never gets used, tip and service charge defaults, and the joins between rotas, hours and payroll. If it's a system in a venue, I've probably run it, broken it or built it.
Do you do technical and codebase reviews?
Yes, and it's often step one of a job. I go through the codebase, version control, infrastructure, server setup, backups and disaster recovery, and write up what's solid, what's fragile and what to fix first: plain English up front, technical detail attached. Sometimes the report is the whole engagement; more often it sets the direction for what happens next. How the review works.
How technical are you, really?
Twenty years of writing production code, and the platforms are still running. Before hospitality there was retail at serious scale: through Pro Shops I've listed and synchronised millions of products and sales across marketplaces, platforms and websites, each with its own APIs, data models and rate limits. That work meant designing database architecture that could carry the load, and picking up new platforms and languages as fast as they arrived. In hospitality, Control Suite handles £6m of trade a year and Table Order processed millions of orders, on infrastructure I host and manage in-house: servers, DNS, mail, backups and monitoring. After retail at that scale, a multi-site hospitality estate is a very manageable data problem. My CV page has the detail.
Can you set direction for a development team?
Yes. That's most of what interim and fractional work looks like: agree what we're building and why, put a roadmap the team believes in front of them, review the work honestly, and unblock decisions quickly. I've led design, development and engineering teams for twenty years while owning the P&L they answer to.
What experience sits behind the advice?
Twenty years on both sides of the gap. I'm managing partner of a seven venue group and I wrote Control Suite, the EPOS, CRM and loyalty platform it runs on. I built Table Order during the pandemic, which 1,600 UK venues onboarded, and I was doing this work as early as 2013 with iZettle and on eBay's Argos Click and Collect launch. The full history is on my portfolio page.
What is the Stack Check?
A free ten question diagnostic you can do on your phone in about two minutes. It tells you where your systems aren't talking to each other, what that's probably costing, and what to look at first, with no email required to see the result. Try it here.
Do I need to prepare anything before a call?
No. Bring the most annoying thing your systems do and we'll start there. If you've run the Stack Check first, mention it and I'll have your result in front of me.
How do we start?
Book a free 30 minute call through the contact form. If I can help, I'll say how. If I can't, I'll say that too and point you at someone who can.
Ask the question that isn't here.
A 30 minute call costs nothing, and you'll leave with a straight answer either way.