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 sites.
They get into what it actually takes to market six premium brands at once, why the Pizza Pilgrims one big campaign model does not translate, and how Ruth has gone properly old school by building a network of the 100 most loyal customers per site and getting under the skin of what they want.
The tech chat is a good one. Ruth talks through inheriting the stack, why Airship does the CRM job, and how bringing in EDGEY took cost per customer from £55 down to £11 in three months, all trackable and wired into SevenRooms so there is no arguing about ROI at board level. Plus why she picked Glu for gifting and loyalty, and the recurring theme of the episode: you are buying into people, not just tech.
Elsewhere they cover the £2 million Salt Room refurb (driven by data showing the audience had aged with the brand), making premium dining accessible without a race to the bottom on price, merging sales and marketing into one team, and a proper honest take on AI. ChatGPT as the hardest working colleague on the team, but everything gets a human lens on top, and stay curious.
Closes on the best sign off this podcast has ever had. Chill out, follow the plan, stay true to who you are.
Topics
Marketing six premium brands with a small team
The 100 loyal customers strategy and guest segmentation
Paid social done right and proving ROI (£55 to £11)
The tech stack: Airship, EDGEY, Glew
Merging sales and marketing
The Salt Room £2m refurb and repositioning for a younger audience
Accessibility versus price
Using AI without losing the human lens
Guest
Ruth Carpenter, Sales and Marketing Director, Black Rock Restaurants. Say hi on LinkedIn (Ruth Carpenter) and check out Black Rock Restaurants.

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 operations into one place for multi-site hospitality. Gregers came up through Planday and built Monotree off the back of watching businesses with 1,000+ employees run their entire company on Facebook groups and WhatsApp.
They get into why that's a problem, how you actually move a workforce off WhatsApp, and what changes when your engagement data finally lives in one place. Plus the open API, customers building reports straight into Claude, and a smart idea on capturing what people know before they walk out the door for good.
Honest, operator-first chat about the bit of the stack everyone has and almost nobody has properly fixed.
A few lines that stuck:
"Good tech is just when you don't really think about it."
"We want to be the heavy use guys."
"If your providers don't have an open API, switch them now. Your data is your precious thing."
Find Gregers and Monotree at monree.com, on LinkedIn, or just at dinner. He eats out a lot.
This episode is supported by Lightspeed. EPOS and payments built to keep service flowing when the patio's packed and the game's on every screen.

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 unified back office solutions.
With the World Cup as a backdrop, they talk through what unpredictable demand actually looks like on the ground, why that 15 minute halftime window can make or break a venue, and how good forecasting changes everything. They also get into what practical AI means in a hospitality context, why ROI is still the hardest question in the room, and how brands like Cafe Nero have used Crunchtime for nearly a decade to digitise and scale their operations.
If you're running multiple sites and still logging into six different systems to get a picture of your business, this one's for you.

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 purpose. Six years on, BIH has trained 2,000+ leaders. We get into the data on who makes it up the chain, why confidence beats everything, and the gap between what boards say about people and what they actually do.
From logistics to leadership. The "safe" degree, falling into hospitality supply chain, and pushing into procurement for the wins and the impact.
The Shake Shack effect. Danny Meyer, "Setting the Table" as her ops bible, and the lesson that stuck: take care of your people and they take care of your guests.
Why she pivoted. Not away from procurement, but towards purpose. She never once said "I want to be an entrepreneur." She wrote the plan in her garden, took redundancy, and went for it.
Be Inclusive Hospitality, six years in. Launched June 2020 into a sector finally ready to listen. Two halves: training leaders on inclusion and belonging, and an upward social mobility arm running mentorship, scholarships and education.
The Better Hospitality Campaign. An industry-wide survey looking at the consequences of what's happening, plus a leadership committee building a set of standards. Report drops end of September.
The numbers. Entry level is the most diverse part of the industry, the boardroom rarely reflects it. Hospitality has the ingredients to be the best, if it builds real career pathways.
Confidence, courage, clarity. The three things that show up when Lorraine coaches leaders, with confidence at the top. Why she refuses to call it "imposter syndrome."
The board-level gap. It always comes back to people. Investing in them costs little and lifts every KPI you sweat over.
Restaurant: Akoko on Berners Street
Tech that earned its place: Fixr (the expense tool Chris put her onto)
Best advice: Find your tribe
bihospitality.co.uk
lorrainecopes.co.uk
LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok: Lorraine Copes and Be Inclusive
This episode is powered by Lightspeed. The EPOS and payments platform built to keep service flowing when summer gets busy. Don't just keep up with the rush, own it with Lightspeed.
What we coverQuickfireFind Lorraine

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 between your operational side and your CRM, pulls in every transaction (identified or not) and surfaces the insights that actually move the needle. Think 3,000 lapsed members targeted in two clicks, or spotting the customers one stamp away from a reward who'll react to almost anything you send them.
Rubén and Chris get into penetration rates (why 15 to 30 percent is normal and how one client hit 80), why loyalty members consistently outspend everyone else, and the frontline staff who quietly make or break the whole thing. They also look ahead at WhatsApp marketing, automated segmentation, AI driven reporting, and the holy grail Live Nation are chasing: card tokenisation that identifies the guest with zero friction at the till.
Honest, practical and refreshingly free of hype. If you're an operator with data you don't know what to do with, this one's for you.
Key talking points:
Why "loyalty" got a bad name, and what's changed
Penetration rate explained, and why 80 percent is wild
The two click campaign and reading customer behaviour
WhatsApp marketing: massive in the Middle East, heading to the UK
Card tokenisation and frictionless loyalty (the Live Nation play)
Where AI fits: segmentation, reporting and machine learning
Why your GM matters more than your software
When to change systems, and when to leave a good thing alone
Guest: Rubén Recio Nogales, VP of Business Development, ComoFind Rubén: LinkedIn (Rubén Recio Nogales). Como are also on the Tech on Toast marketplace.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro and Lightspeed
01:05 Meet Rubén, single parenting and 19 year old cucumber dramas
02:18 Spain to the UK, an ice cream stall in Westfield
03:01 What Como actually does
04:25 Acquired by Global Payments, what the name means
05:09 The state of hospitality tech
08:06 Why the old loyalty schemes failed
09:24 The value exchange and the Starbucks lesson
11:00 Penetration rate and business insights in two clicks
12:29 The Nando's chilli effect
15:31 AI and machine learning in the product
16:11 Como across 50+ countries
17:26 WhatsApp marketing and cultural differences
21:02 Loyalty members spend more, and why
23:07 Penetration rate explained, and the 80 percent client
24:52 The frontline staff who make loyalty work
27:20 Should you switch systems? An honest answer
30:47 Live Nation, tokenisation and the frictionless holy grail
32:47 How to get hold of Rubén
33:41 Chris leaves his daughter at the vets