15 years on the pass.
Then I built the system I always wanted.
I ran restaurants for 15 years as a chef and owner. I built VenueCore because every EPOS, booking tool and back-office system I ever used was made by people who'd never worked a Saturday night.
Fifteen years on the pass. One software company.
The 15 years. I started as a commis chef and ended up owning restaurants. Fifteen years of doubles, late suppliers, walked floats, no-shows on a fully-booked Saturday, and a back office held together by spreadsheets and a thumb drive. I learned how a room actually runs by running one — not by reading a deck about it.
The breaking point. Across those years I paid six different EPOS providers, three booking systems and a stack of back-office subscriptions that never spoke to each other. None of them were built by people who had ever stood on a wet kitchen floor at 11pm. Every comp I didn't authorise, every double-booked four-top, every miscounted float was the same lesson: this software was designed in a meeting, not on a Saturday night.
The decision. I'm a chef and an operator, not an engineer. But I knew exactly what the system should do, because I'd been screamed at by the absence of it for a decade and a half. So I built VenueCore — one operating system for reservations, the floor, the till, allergens, staff, guests and the books — and held every decision to a single test: would this help, or annoy, the person actually running service tonight?
Hospitality software, built by someone who has actually had to use it at the end of a fourteen-hour shift.
Built for the people I used to be.
Three operators, one piece of software. If you recognise yourself in any of these, VenueCore was designed with your Saturday night in mind.
One room, one concept, your name on the door. Replace four logins and a thumb drive with one screen — and keep the soul of the place.
2–10 sites, opening one a year. Standardise the boring stuff — bookings, tills, allergens, payroll — without homogenising what makes each room different.
10–30 venues across cities. Roll up labour, COGS, covers and cash into one view — without hiring a data team to do it.