James O’Sullivan

I’ve been a fan of technology all my life, writing my first bit of software on a BBC micro when I was 8 years old and it’s the only thing I’ve ever done professionally. Working in the hospitality space happened largely through chance, I’d carved out a niche in the SME space converting paper and Excel based processes into web-based one in the early 2000s, when a group of friends that run a handful of cocktail bars asked me to do the same with their operational spreadsheets. Within a year we had a pretty far reaching system, way beyond just operations and by 2013 it was time to expand more seriously. I grew the team to 5 people immediately and we now number around 15, providing services to 200+ venues.

As we’ve been developing our platform, there has been a notable rise in the number of offerings available for clients to interact with their customers and the greatest change by far has come from online ordering for delivery. Indeed I think it’s fair to say food delivery has done to bricks and mortar restaurants what online shopping did and continues to do to high street retail. All that change, however, has lead to systems developers scrabbling to get MVP products to market in a land grab and has led to some significant gaps in their offerings, which offer opportunities to new entrants by giving customers a much better all-round experience.