£47K
saved in year one
TypeCocktail bar and venue group
SitesSix venues across London
EngagementTech + Marketing · 18 months
01 · the challenge
The challenge
Two problems running in parallel. On the tech side, three separate systems for POS, payments and labour, none of them talking to each other, with card processing fees well above market rate on a contract that auto-renewed without anybody flagging it. On the marketing side, three customer data sources across six venues, none of them joined up. SevenRooms held the bookings. Brevo held the newsletter list. The WiFi captive portal collected a sign-up that never made it into either. Automations fired into a list nobody trusted. Nobody at head office could answer how much the tech stack cost or how many real customers the group had.
02 · the approach
How we approached it.
- 01
Full technology audit
Mapped every platform, every contract, every cost line across all sites. Surfaced an auto-renewal due in 90 days that nobody on the team had noticed.
- 02
POS and payments renegotiated
Competitive pitch across the leading hospitality POS providers. Switched where it made sense, renegotiated where it didn't. Card processing fees benchmarked across three providers and moved to the best fit.
- 03
Labour scheduling tied to live sales
Replaced spreadsheets with automated rota planning that pulls real-time covers from the POS. Managers build rotas against forecast, not memory. Sales, labour and card fees land in one daily email at 07:00.
- 04
SevenRooms to DMN + Brevo migration
Lifted every customer record off SevenRooms and rebuilt it in DMN (data master) with Brevo as the marketing layer. Six venues, one master database, one source of truth.
- 05
WiFi + StoreKit syncing rebuilt
Captive portal was collecting data and dropping it on the floor. Till-side customer object was silently failing on a third of bookings. Both rewired so every sign-up and every order lands in the master database with the venue tag attached.
- 06
Newsletter rebuilt with segmentation
Old newsletter ran broadcast-only to a half-trusted list. Rebuilt the audience by venue, opt-in status, birthday, last visit and spend tier. Hawksnest, Peckham Arches, Phoenix, Bird House Brewery, Skylarking and The Bush Tavern, all tagged, all reconciled.
03 · the results
The results.
18%
card processing fees down
30,000+
customers surfaced
132,758
contacts in master DB
109,119
email opt-ins reconciled
£1.16M
guest spend on record
First-year tech savings landed at £47,000 across card fees, labour optimisation and contract renegotiation. On the marketing side, the migration completed across all six venues in April 2026. Thirty thousand customers who'd been booking, sipping or signing up to the WiFi for years had never made it into a list the marketing team could use. They're in the database now. The newsletter sends to a clean list. Birthdays trigger. Every pound spent through marketing now lands against a customer the system actually knows.
whenever you're ready
Let's talk about your tech.
Half an hour on Zoom or in person. We'll show up with questions, not a slide deck.