Tech on Toast, The Hospitality Tech Podcast

This week Chris sits down with Ruth Carpenter, Sales and Marketing Director at Black Rock Restaurants, the Brighton based collection behind Burnt Orange, The Salt Room, Coal Shed, Tutto and new pub concept The Crazy Goose. Ruth rejoins the show (she was number 32 in the harem, now back at 210) fresh from three and a half years at Pizza Pilgrims, where she helped grow the business from 16 to 31 sit...

Your team doesn't think about ops, people and culture as separate problems. They just want to know when they're working and where to find stuff. So why do most hospitality businesses still run their workforce across six or seven different apps? This week Chris sits down with Gregers Knudsen, founder of Monotree, the employee "front door" app that pulls comms, learning and operati...

Chris sits down with Shamik Mojaria, who marks his first year at Crunchtime, to dig into what it really takes to run consistent, efficient operations across a hospitality estate. They get into why years of grabbing the best available tech has left many operators with fragmented, disconnected systems that create more problems than they solve, and why the conversation is shifting firmly toward unifi...

Lorraine Copes, Founder of Be Inclusive Hospitality Chris sits down with Lorraine Copes, founder of Be Inclusive Hospitality, for a proper chat about the people side of the industry. From bringing Shake Shack to the UK to procurement boards at Gordon Ramsay Group and Corbin & King, Lorraine has built a 24-year career, then walked away from the "proper job" to build something with pur...

Loyalty used to mean a stamp card and a prayer. Not anymore. This week Chris sits down with Rubén Recio Nogales, VP of Business Development at Como (now Como Sense), to unpack what modern customer engagement really looks like, and why most operators are sitting on a goldmine of data they're not using. Como describes itself as a data company that specialises in customer engagement. It sits betw...

Visha Kudhail has spent nearly two decades in marketing across Channel 4, Thinkbox, Google, Pinterest and Square, where she and Chris first crossed paths on the hospitality side of the business. Now she has written a book on authentic marketing, and this episode digs into what authenticity actually means once you strip away the buzzword. We get into the difference between being truthful and being...

In this episode, we're joined by Tim from Caffè Nero, Andy from SSP, and John from CrunchTime for a no-nonsense conversation about AI in hospitality. What's actually delivering ROI, what's failed, and what the future looks like for operators on the ground. Less LinkedIn hype, more real talk. What's Actually Working AI forecasting is the clearest ROI win — CrunchTime saw adoption ju...

Rod returns to the podcast after two years to discuss what has genuinely changed in workforce management, and what is simply being repackaged. A familiar pattern is playing out across the industry: leadership sees AI-branded software, decides it looks promising, and tasks an operations manager with finding it. One layer deeper, the desired outcome is rarely defined. The brief drives the purchase,...

Energy is the line on the P&L that nobody owns and everybody pays for. In this episode, Chris sits down with Diego Vega, Founder and CEO of Rye Energy, and is later joined by Rory, Head of Operations and ex-chef, to crack open a category most operators have been forced to ignore. Why this conversation matters Hospitality consumes three to four times more electricity per square foot than the av...

Chris sits down with serial entrepreneur Roger Wade, the man behind one of the UK’s original streetwear brands and the creator of the world’s first pop-up mall. From getting fired three times before the age of 22 to building Box Fresh, launching Box Park, and now reshaping hospitality real estate with Box Kitchen, Roger shares the lessons, mistakes, and mindset that have shaped his journey. This i...

Host: Chris Fletcher Guests: Liz McKinnon – Strategic Accounts, Sky Business (13+ years at Sky) Jatin Chandwani – Chief Product & Growth Officer, Byte by Yum (overseeing KFC, Taco Bell, Habit Burger & Pizza Hut's SaaS platform) Recorded live on stage, this episode dives deep into how reliable connectivity has become the backbone of modern hospitality operations — from QSR chains to sta...

Tech on Toast Podcast – Episode: Yaro Tsyhanenko, Founder of Pickpad In this episode, Chris Fletcher sits down with Yaro Tsyhanenko, Ukrainian-born entrepreneur and founder of Pickpad, a smart hardware startup solving one of hospitality's most overlooked problems: the pickup area. What we cover: Yaro's journey from building a delivery marketplace across 15 Ukrainian cities to relocating af...

Chris sits down with the team behind Bizimply, the Dublin-based workforce management and HR platform serving over 1,300 hospitality businesses and 100,000+ shift workers across the UK and Ireland. Emily and Conor share how they're marrying workforce scheduling with smarter HR tools, and what AI really means for the people powering the hospitality industry. Key Topics Covered 🍺 Bizimply's...

A powerful live panel discussion from the Service event at BrewDog Waterloo exploring the critical balance between treating people as assets versus headcount in hospitality businesses. Industry leaders from Bill's, Little Houses Group, and hospitality veterans share honest insights on retention, leadership development, workforce design, and the future of people management in hospitality. Host:...

In this special live panel from our Service event at BrewDog Waterloo, three leading hospitality operators share honest insights about creating memorable guest experiences in modern hotels. From sensory design to technological innovation, discover what really makes guests come back. 🏨 What Guests Really Remember The panel opens with a fundamental question: "When you think about your own hote...

🎙️ LEADERS SERVICE: Scaling Hospitality with Chaos & Control A live panel from BrewDog Waterloo featuring hospitality leaders sharing raw insights on growth, culture, and operations. 🎤 HOST:Phil Street - Founder, Hospitality Meets Podcast 🎯 PANELISTS: Marcel Khan Caroline Ottoy Matt Bigland Gemma Glasson ⚡ KEY TAKEAWAYS: On Managing Complexity: Vision clarity beats speed every time 10-15 co...

What's the difference between a viral moment and a loyal customer base? In this live panel from Service 2026, hospitality marketing leaders from Dave's Hot Chicken, Rolled, Cote, BlackRock, and Kerb reveal why 70% of guests never return, and exactly how to fix it. Forget follower counts. This is about building habits that drive real revenue. Recorded live at BrewDog Waterloo | Powered by L...

Great hospitality tech should work quietly in the background. When it doesn’t, operators feel it immediately. In this episode of the Tech on Toast podcast, Chris is joined by Colin Jackson, Head of Partner Technology at Dojo, to unpack why integrations are one of the most important and most overlooked parts of hospitality technology. They discuss what good integration really looks like, why the wo...

Payments should never slow service down, but too often they do. In this episode of the Tech on Toast podcast, Chris is joined by Tom Usher, Engineering Manager at Dojo, to explore how modern payments technology is being built specifically for the realities of hospitality. The conversation dives into Dojo Pocket, a handheld ordering and payments device designed to keep teams on the floor, reduce fr...

In this episode, Chris Fletcher is joined by Blair Lundie, Head of Business Development at Tayl, a learning management system built with one obsession: ease of use. They dig into why training in hospitality often becomes a tick-box exercise, what good looks like when you want real engagement, and how operators can use learning content to solve genuine business problems, from improving guest experi...

Reliable connectivity now sits alongside water and electricity for modern hospitality. In this Sky Business–powered episode, Chris sits down with Shona Goodlad (Head of Existing Accounts, Sky Business) to unpack what really happens when you move from “one site” to “thousands of sites”. They talk honestly about why tech projects feel risky, what commonly goes wrong, how strong governance and commun...

Workforce is still the biggest lever (and constraint) in hospitality. Labour costs keep rising, guest expectations keep rising, and “just work harder” isn’t a strategy. In this episode, Ben Dixon — Co-founder and CTO at Sona — breaks down why Sona is approaching workforce management differently: not as another scheduling tool, but as a way to scale great operator decision-making across every site....

This week’s episode opens with something special: Always Open at Christmas , Tech on Toast’s brand new charity single created by the Hospitality Community & Choir in just 72 hours . All proceeds support Hospitality Action . Stream it, share it, and help spread the message. Then we’re joined by Regan Collins , CEO of Coentric and the team behind Connect a platform tackling one of hospitality’s...

This week Chris is joined by Mitz Patel , Global Head of IT Projects at Soho House , and David Broom , CIO at Prezzo Italian , for a festive-but-real chat about the tech challenges and breakthroughs shaping hospitality right now. They dive into inherited systems, shaky connectivity, labour and inventory headaches, AI that’s finally useful, and why hospitality tech still relies on strong human rela...

👋 What’s this episode about? Chris is joined by: Sasha (Product Marketing, Dojo ) Chris (Côte Restaurant Group) Jack (Founder, Pizza Rover ) to talk about what seamless tech really means when you are in the middle of a busy service – not on a slide deck. They cover how to cut friction for guests, keep systems reliable, use data and AI smartly, and still keep hospitality human. Friction and the “V...