In this episode of Supy Talks, we’re joined by Jackson Versitano, Senior Director of Hospitality at Lightspeed, to break down why hospitality is harder to run (and scale) than retail — and what operators need to get right as they grow.Jackson brings over a decade of experience across retail and hospitality tech, and shares a practical view on scaling: why perishables and tight trading windows make margins unforgiving, why people + technology are the biggest levers, and how data, POS integrations, and AI should be approached without hype.We cover:✅ Retail vs hospitality: what’s fundamentally different✅ Why scaling breaks without strong foundations✅ People + tech: the two biggest levers for multi-site growth✅ Best-in-class stacks vs all-in-one software✅ POS as the “brain” + why integrations matter✅ AI in restaurants: start slow, fix data firstYou’ll also hear:🔥 “Concept + location” as the real starting point📉 Why bad data makes AI risky (garbage in, garbage out)🔌 How plug-and-play integrations support long-term scale📲 Connect with Jackson:   / jacksonversitano9  

In Episode 18 of Supy Talks, we’re joined by Amy Glover, a hospitality marketing, brand, and guest experience leader with nearly 20 years’ experience across some of the UK’s largest hospitality groups.

Amy has held senior roles at Greene King and Mitchells & Butlers, organisations that collectively operate thousands of pubs, restaurants, and hotels across the UK. Her work sits at the intersection of brand, marketing, and operations - helping large, managed estates scale while keeping the guest experience consistent and meaningful.

In this episode, Amy shares the practical systems behind scaling restaurant brands well. Drawing on her experience with Miller & Carter, she explains how clarity, codification, and strong operator relationships make it possible to grow without drifting away from what guests come back for.

We cover:

✅ Why operations aren’t a delivery layer - they’re part of the product

✅ The difference between brand intent and brand execution

✅ How to protect consistency as restaurant estates grow

✅ What actually needs to be codified to scale successfully

✅ Lessons from Miller & Carter on brand, culture, and leadership

✅ How to stress-test ideas operationally before rolling them out

✅ Why alignment beats speed when scaling hospitality brands

You’ll also hear:

🔥 Why brand ownership can’t sit with marketing alone

🛠️ A real rollout lesson from an over-ambitious dessert launch

📉 How misaligned promotions weaken brand recall

🏗️ Why strong foundations matter more than rapid expansion

🤝 How trust between brand and ops teams drives execution

Amy’s message throughout the episode is clear:

Scaling restaurants successfully isn’t about doing more - it’s about building systems that protect consistency, empower teams, and deliver the same great experience at every location.

Whether you’re a COO, Head of Ops, Brand Director, or founder planning your next phase of growth, this episode offers a clear, practical playbook for scaling restaurant brands without dilution.

📲 Connect with Amy:   / amy-glover-93821954  

In Episode 17 of Supy Talks, we sit down with Rayhan Aleem, Founder of Alpha Pro Partners, to unpack one of the most frustrating paradoxes in hospitality:Why do restaurants with full dining rooms still go broke?Rayhan has advised hundreds of F&B operators across Dubai, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and beyond - and he’s seen firsthand how poor visibility into numbers can quietly destroy even the busiest restaurants. In this episode, he breaks down the financial blind spots, operational leaks, and cultural dynamics that drain profit long before founders realize what’s happening.From food cost ownership to supplier price creep, from wastage to fraud, from ERP myths to the realities of Dubai rents - Rayhan explains why “revenue” is a vanity metric and visibility is the only real protection an operator has.We cover:✅Why restaurants with strong sales still operate at a loss✅The Triple-30 rule - and why many operators never reach 10% net profit✅How to use weekly visibility to prevent monthly disasters✅Wastage, shrinkage & unrecorded loss: the silent killers of COGS✅Who actually owns food cost: the chef, the cost controller, or finance?✅Why cost controllers exist in the GCC (and what their role should be)✅When FIFO makes sense - and when it wastes more money than it saves✅The truth about Dubai leases, fit-out timelines & turnover rent✅Why ERPs fail operators (and what modern systems do better)You’ll also hear:🔥How poor visibility turns accountants into “defensive firefighters.”📉How supplier prices quietly rise without operators noticing🛠️Simple controls to prevent fraud before it hits the P&L📊What investors really expect from early-stage F&B founders🏗️How processes - not passion - determine which restaurants surviveRayhan’s message throughout the episode is clear:Busy restaurants don’t fail because of food. They fail because they fly blind.Visibility into operations, costs, and margins isn’t optional; it’s the difference between a thriving brand and a quiet shutdown.🫱🏻‍🫲🏽Connect with Rayhan:   / rayhanaleem

In Episode 16 of Supy Talks, we’re joined by Tom Stanley, Founder & CEO of William Stanley & Co - a restaurant operator-turned-accountant whose team supports 600+ hospitality businesses across the UK, US, Middle East and beyond. From Soho House to Big Mamma Group, Tom has seen the inside of more P&Ls than most operators will in a lifetime — and he’s refreshingly honest about what really drives profit.Across the episode, Tom breaks down the realities of rising wage costs, why “best-of-breed” tech stacks beat all-in-one, and the operating systems you need in place before you scale from two sites to ten.We cover:✅ The three levers great operators obsess over (and how often to review them)✅ The £200k stockroom audit: controls, accountability and transparent food cost✅ Labour in 2025: structuring sections and rotas without hurting service✅ Why menu engineering is better than hard upsells✅ Best-of-breed tech stacks (“LEGO bricks”) that scale with you✅ Weekly rhythms for making P&Ls usable ✅ When central kitchens pay back — and when they don’t✅ UK expansion hotspots (Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol) and global watch-outsYou’ll also hear:🔥 Why private dining often beats retail as a new revenue stream📊 What “healthy” food cost looks like by concept — and why many now manage to a ~60% combined food+labour envelope🛠 Simple controls that stop waste, errors and theft before they hit the P&L🤝 How tight operator–vendor relationships solve problems faster than any feature list🏗 The single biggest prerequisite to franchising without chaos: a replicable operating systemWhether you’re an FD, COO or multi-site operator planning your next five openings, this conversation is a masterclass in turning numbers into decisions — and decisions into profit.📲 Connect with Tom: williamstanley.co | https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmhstanley/

In Episode 15 of Supy Talks, we’re joined by Ahmad Azmi, Managing Director of Sophia Café and a rising leader in Dubai’s specialty coffee scene.

Ahmad’s career path has been anything but typical: from cabin crew at Etihad, to area manager of 17 Chili’s locations, to building one of the city’s fastest-growing hospitality groups.

Along the way he’s tackled everything from cutting food costs and managing supply chain complexity, to opening 12 franchise locations in three months — all while building a people-first culture.

We cover:

✅ How Chili’s “school of ops” shaped Ahmad’s leadership style

✅ Lessons from scaling to 17 branches without today’s tech tools

✅ Cutting food costs from 52% by fixing wastage, errors, and theft

✅ The challenge of rapid franchising and ensuring consistency

✅ Why attitude matters more than CV in hiring

You’ll also hear:

🔥 The fryer story that taught Ahmad to be friendly, fair, and firm

📊 How a 100k ordering mistake changed his approach to forecasting

🛠 The simple system he still uses today from his Chili’s training

Whether you’re scaling a restaurant group or love hearing real stories of growth, this episode is packed with practical lessons from one of MENA’s most ambitious operators.

📲 Connect with Ahmad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-jamal-azmy-922ba9107/

In Episode 14 of Supy Talks, we’re joined by Chris Daniels, COO of a 43-store Domino’s franchise group and a QSR veteran with over 30 years of experience across Domino’s, Delivery Hero, Freedom Pizza, and more.Chris started as a delivery driver at 17 — and worked his way to the top. Along the way, he’s built ops systems from scratch, led teams through chaos (like the Valentine’s Day Massacre), and helped reduce labour costs while speeding up delivery times.We cover:✅ The $40k chicken disaster that taught him how to handle supplier risk✅ How Domino’s got delivery times down to 23 minutes across 43 stores✅ The key metric his team tracks to improve labour efficiency✅ The hardest part of scaling from 5 to 50 sites — and how to prepare✅ Why menu simplification is the secret weapon in QSR opsYou’ll also hear:🍕 How he became Europe’s fastest pizza maker📉 The perfect delivery aggregator strategy🛠 Lessons from tech roles at Delivery Hero and The Entertainer🔥 His most hard-earned leadership lesson (hint: own your mistakes)Whether you're scaling a restaurant group or just love a good ops war story, this episode is packed with real talk and practical wisdom from one of the industry’s most experienced operators.📲 Connect with Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-daniels-a6220471/

Supy Talks Ep.13 — How Pitfire Pizza Scaled Without Franchising or Discounting (ft. Matthew Cox, COO)

What does it really take to fix the kind of operational problem that keeps operators up at night — and turn it into a competitive advantage?

In this episode, we sit down with Matthew Cox, COO of Pitfire Pizza, a regional leader known for doing things differently in a sea of cookie-cutter pizza chains.

Matt helped transform Pitfire Pizza into a brand with uncompromising quality, thriving teams, and data-driven profitability.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

- The real story behind Pitfire’s $50,000 mushroom variance (and how they fixed it for good)

- How to build a delivery strategy that maximizes both sales and margins

- When to fight your POS — and when to upgrade it- Tips for balancing artisan quality with the realities of scaling up

- How Matthew uses Supy to cut food cost, improve ordering accuracy, and empower every outlet manager

Behind the scenes:

- Why Pitfire “loves complexity” and turns it into a superpower

- What Matt learned from bad audits and inventory chaos

- The one piece of tech every fast-growing brand should prioritize

Whether you’re a multi-unit operator or just want a no-BS look at the real work of driving restaurant profit, this episode is packed with tactical advice, cautionary tales, and practical strategies for modern F&B leaders.

Supy Talks Ep.12 — How To Open Restaurants Fast, Without Losing Their Soul (ft. Yann Chevris & Janos Laszlo)How do you open restaurants quickly, at scale — without losing the magic that made the first one great?In this episode of Supy Talks, we sit down with two operators who’ve done just that.👨‍🍳 Yann Chevris — hospitality veteran and founder of Food For Thoughts Consultancy (https://f4tyconsult.com/), known as the “champion of openings,” having launched over 50 venues globally, including Nobu in London and Urth Cafe in Saudi Arabia.📱 Janos Laszlo — ex-COYA & LPM trainer turned tech founder, now scaling PocketTrainer (pockettrainer.app), a hospitality LMS built to standardise and simplify training for restaurant teams.What you’ll learn in this episode:- How to open restaurants ahead of schedule — and why it almost never happens- The formula for building teams with both soul and scale- Why rushed openings kill culture — and how to avoid it- The hidden cost of inconsistent ingredients across locations- What Janos learned creating training manuals no one read- How PocketTrainer went from side project to scalable startup🔍 Behind the scenes:🍽️ Yann's secret to a three-month concept rollout📉 Janos’s early career mistake that almost got him fired🧠 How to build "Formula 1" waiters without ego battles🛠️ The problem with most digital training tools — and how to fix itWhether you're expanding from 1 to 10 or from 10 to 100, this episode is packed with practical advice and hard-won lessons on how to scale without compromise.

In Episode 11 of Supy Talks, we’re joined by Travis Fish — founder of Ops Club and former Group Ops Director at Comptoir Libanais.Travis has done it all: built brands like BabaBoom, led teams at Nando’s, scaled tech at Rotageek, and now coaches founder-led and PE-backed hospitality groups through the messy middle of growth.We cover:✅ What great ops leadership actually looks like✅ How to roll out tech without wasting six months✅ Why accountability and clear standards matter more than ever✅ How to balance structure and autonomy across 27 locations✅ What he wishes someone had told him in year oneYou’ll also hear:🔍 Why surface-level networking isn’t enough📉 A tech decision he’d take back🔥 The underrated habits of high-performing ops leaders🍽 His favorite restaurants, from guilty pleasures to special-occasion spotsWhether you're running a group today or eyeing the next step in your career, Travis drops hard-earned truths on what it takes to lead operations in the real world.🎧 Listen now to learn how to grow your team, your systems, and yourself — all without losing your mind.Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify.Reach out to Travis!https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisfish/www.ops-club.com

In Episode 10 of Supy Talks, we’re joined by William Connors, a former F&B manager turned tech consultant who’s helped brands like Wahaca, Popeyes, Burger King and Wingstop overhaul their tech stacks and scale without chaos.

Having worked everywhere from Caribbean resorts to high-growth UK QSR chains, William brings a rare mix of on-the-ground restaurant ops experience and deep tech know-how.

We dive into:
✅ How to scale restaurant tech without spiralling into chaos
✅ The difference between managing tech in QSRs vs full-service vs hotels
✅ Why every tech rollout needs a high-performing pilot site
✅ Real-world examples of tech saving (or losing) restaurants hundreds of thousands
✅ What to look for when suppliers say “we’ve got an API”
✅ How to build a best-in-class stack without getting burned by bad integrations

You’ll also hear:
🎃 The story of 1,600 pumpkins being buried on a beach
📉 How payment system failures are quietly killing restaurant revenue
🧠 What operators get wrong when they treat tech like a cost (and how to flip the mindset)

Whether you’re running 3 sites or 300, this episode is packed with no-fluff, battle-tested lessons on choosing the right tools, avoiding expensive tech mistakes, and building a setup that actually helps your team.

🎧 Listen now and learn how to make restaurant tech a profit driver, not a headache.