Not just software: What we did with Dave's Hot Chicken in Manchester

Sunday 14 June, we partnered with Dave's Hot Chicken and Louis Bekk to take over the Printworks site in Manchester for two hours. Louis behind the counter. Chicken on trays through the crowd. A queue down the street.

Louis Bekk has built a cult following through pop-up DJ sets in places no one expects. Ski cabins. Hot air balloons. Bagel shops. Now a chicken shop in Manchester.

Here's why we did it.

How Dave's Hot Chicken launched in the UK with Nory

Dave's Hot Chicken launched in the UK with Nory built into its operation from day one. From the first till ring at their first UK site, every order, every inventory check, every shift has run through Nory.

There's no "before Nory" in the UK story.

That partnership has been working quietly for a year. Manchester was the first time we put it on a public stage. And we deliberately picked an unexpected stage: a daytime rave with Louis Bekk behind the counter, in a city that has shaped UK music culture for four decades.

Different roles. Same mindset.

Dave's Hot Chicken is bold, high-energy, culturally driven. The brand has scaled because it understands a chicken shop is a stage and customers are the audience.

Nory is the agentic AI system for restaurant operations, built for modern hospitality brands. A restaurant operations platform that helps operators run more profitable, consistent restaurants.

Different roles. Same mindset. Both modern. Both move fast. Both challenge what hospitality is expected to look like.

The Manchester activation worked because both brands started from the same place: hospitality is no longer about choosing between brand and operations, marketing and tech, culture and infrastructure. The brands defining the new standard do both. They have to.

Not just software

This is what we want the wider hospitality industry to see.

Nory is software. But software alone doesn't change a category. The brands changing hospitality need more than good operations. They need visibility. Energy. Moments people will remember.

Manchester was Nory showing up differently. Not as the system behind the scenes. As a partner that actively invests in the brands we work with.

For Dave's, that meant content, buzz, and cultural visibility at the moment they're scaling fastest. For Nory, it meant putting our money where our positioning is.

Dave's brings the heat. Nory backs the brands changing hospitality.

B2B brand-building through a B2C moment

This was a public-facing activation designed to make other hospitality brands think: that's different. That's the kind of partner we'd want to work with.

The operators we work with don't pick a tech stack because of a feature list. They pick it because they see how that platform shows up. Whether it moves at their pace. Whether it understands what they're building. Whether it backs them publicly, not just privately.

Manchester answered those questions in two hours.

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What's next

Dave's opens in Dublin on 26 June. We'll be there for that too, doing more of the same in different shapes.

There's a longer thread here too. The era where hospitality tech ran in the background, invisible and undifferentiated, is over. Operators are picking partners that move at their pace, show up where they show up, and build alongside them.

We'll keep showing up.

Want a partner that shows up for your brand? If you're building a hospitality brand and want a partner that moves at your pace, we'd love to talk. Book a chat now.