Jim Hingston is the Digital and Technology Director at Azzurri Group, leading digital strategy for brands like Zizzi, ASK Italian, Coco di Mama, and Boojum. With 20+ years’ experience in tech and e-commerce, Jim brings deep expertise in customer-first digital innovation.
Conor Sheridan is the founder and CEO of Nory, an agentic AI restaurant management system alongside being the co-founder of Mad Egg. Conor blends hands-on restaurant experience with a passion for tech-driven efficiency and profitability in hospitality.
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I think stopping to do things and being quite relentless on that prioritization is is so important for any businesses. Sometimes we'd spend a fair bit of money and we we we got it wrong, but you're much better to pivot at that point or put something on ice to move us forward. I think it's important that the tech is there to be able to serve and support the business. I think it's then important to, you know, empower your team to become a lot more data literate.
I'm Connor Sheridan, founder and CEO of Nory, and welcome to What's Cooking. Today on What's Cooking, we're getting into the guts of something every operator wrestles with: how to turn tech into real impact. Not shiny platforms or abstract dashboards, but digital systems that actually drive operations, reduce chaos, and boost margins. And if you've ever tried to scale tech across multiple brands with different rhythms and realities, you will know this is easier said than done. That's why I'm joined.
By Jim Hingston, Digital and Technology Director at the Azuri Group, the team behind Zizi, Ask Italian, Coco Dumama, Bujum, and Dave's Hot Chicken. Jim's in the trenches, figuring out how to make digital work across teams, kitchens, and customer journeys at scale. We talk about the hard stuff: siloed systems, digital friction, change fatigue, and the practical levers that turn strategy into real impact. Let's get into it.
Jim, welcome to What's Cooking. It's amazing to have you on. Thanks so much for making the time. I know the weather's not the best outside, so I appreciate you making the trip.
No, thank thanks thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Yeah, look really excited. Obviously we've known each other for for a few months now as well. So been exciting to see all the different initiatives and things you're doing in Azuri. But your background stems quite a few different verticals and industries. Would you be able to give us a quick introduction to kind of your career today and how you ended up leading digital and tech at Azuri?
Sure. so yeah, fairly varied career in terms of different sectors. I've joined Azuri almost exactly a year ago, but before that I worked for the gym group in health and fitness. And before that was in retail and then telco. So lots of consumer facing industries and you know, real kind of you know, growing sort of digital capability, digital tech and digital teams.
Nice. Did you see much pattern recognition between, say, fitness to retail to hospitality? Are the challenges similar or are they quite different?
think so, yeah. I mean it's it's been a wild ride that the last twelve months, you know, getting to know hospitality, especially with with everything hospitality's having to deal with sort of at the moment. So it's been a bit of a baptism of fire and trying to learn a new industry. But I I think, you know, especially things like retail are kind of close cousins of hospitality. So there is a lot of very similar things as you start to, you know, especially consumer facing technology, you know, you're getting to
concepts like loyalty, like retention, you know, acquisition, you know, and then you know, getting into the P and L's of the business and you know, my it's my job and my team's job to help tech grow businesses, you know, fundamentally you're trying to do similar things. So and you know, and that's even more important in in hospitality.
Really nice. any like major learnings you take from the first twelve months or things that
Where do we start? I think, you know, that i i in terms of the potential technology can have, is is just really struck me as, you know, you you lift up more rocks or you speak to more people, you you look at sort of more projects, you look at the opportunity technology has to solve different problems, to help businesses either become more efficient or or sort of grow and engage customers in in very different way.
I probably underestimated how much technology is just so prevalent right across our businesses and fundamental to some of our operations. Likewise, I think on the on on the other hand, you know, we're we're probably not where we want to be from a hostech perspective. You know, it's I found it incredibly difficult to do some very simple things where, you know, it's integrating different systems. You know, we we get a lot of closed or siloed systems or relatively anc antiquated systems, which
you know, become really difficult and a bit of a drag on businesses wanting to innovate and change. Yeah, the the appetite's there. But sometimes we we struggle to do it and it's then very difficult to prioritize tech and, you know, we get to the stage where it's an absolute necessity and that that's not really where you want to be with with technology.
No. And it creates like a barrier or resistance to change then because the you can preempt the friction in the process.
Absolutely. And yeah, I I've got systems in the architecture that are, you know, fifteen, twenty years old, you know, as there's things in there that which are older than the iPhone, which, you know, is you know, in tech terms is is is a is a relic. So and and these things become really sort of difficult from a business perspective and you know, where do you start about picking this monolithic stack or system that that's been in that you're absolutely dependent on?
And even with, you know, the best more modern technology that's in play, how do you you know, where do you start on a sort of journey like that? And especially in a you know, a a bigger business as as well, and also appreciating that lots of hospitality brands and restaurant brands don't have the luxury that we do at Zuri where we've you know even got an IT team. Sometimes it's the the most techie person in finance is running the IT. So, you know, it's it's it's really challenging from a you know
post tech perspective and you know, I think we really need to make our technology work a lot harder and a lot yeah, a lot a lot yeah, work a lot better.
Yeah. when you went in then from a prioritization point of view, obviously your business at significant scale. You mentioned tech being prevalent across everything from acquisition to retention to the PL. How did you decide what what was like the order of sequencing or or prior that you wanted to work through?
Yeah, I think there was a couple of ways to look at that. first of all it was just listening. Yeah, it was listening to you know, people across the business. There's a, you know, hugely talented team in all the brands and yeah, they really know the brands and people are passionate about them and you know, just hearing about some of the challenges or or or what was really important. so just taking the time to do that and, you know, not jump to conclusions or, you know, put a roadmap in on day three in the company. Yeah, th there was a lot to
sort of unpick in that place. And then, you know, with that it was then working sort of with the brands and the business to say, look, what's what's super important now? Yeah, we we we've only got a finite set of resources, yeah, we're competing against property, we're competing against, you know, investment into our sort of estate. We need to make things, yeah, we need to make investment decisions that are going to return. And what do we do in what order? And, you know
That took a bit of time to do and we we we also thought about you know, stopping lots of things as well. You know, what was really apparent was we were trying to do too much and you know, we were trying to deliver so many things and almost to the point on some way, you you couldn't really understand why we were doing things or what it was really driving. So, you know, I think stopping to do things and being quite relentless on that prioritization is is so important for any businesses and you know, no matter how much you're spending on tech or
Yeah, what you're able to do. and and and then you you slowly you find yourself in a in a better position where you're you're doing fewer things but getting a bit more focused on doing them well.
Yeah. one of our our head of pro product graph, who I think you've met, has a phrase, fewer, better things. as a mindset of like like if you have extreme focus you'll you'll go far. Whereas if you everyone's really ambitious and energetic and wants to do lots of projects and when you do that you tend to get a couple of projects a little bit of the way versus something the whole way end to end, right?
Yeah. And and to to build on that is it's really easy to focus on the shiny stuff, you know, in terms of yeah, what what's what's the big shiny thing that we think we we should be doing rather than what you should you know, what rather than what what you must be doing and what what's really important. So breaking those things down is is often quite important. Asking a lot of why is this the b yeah, are we doing the right thing in the right order?
is this really gonna help us to drive covers or is this gonna help us become more efficient? Are we doing that in the right way? Which is, you know, a lot of a lot of time to spend, you know, planning and making sure you're doing that. And you don't always get those decisions right. yeah, that that's the thing, you make mistakes along the way. But I think if you can get up momentum and direction, you know, that's that's half the battle.
I gonna ask like in the twelve months, did you optimize for any quick wins like that for momentum to build momentum?
I think so, yeah, absolutely. So I think it was, you know, looking at the projects that were close to completion and getting them across the line and then really then saying, Well, even if you know, this is the goal, what the quick wins you can get within there and digital is a great way you can start to do that, where you can look at the experience, you can look at what's not working and then very quickly optimise that. So, you know, particularly on our sort of yo app and web.
Yeah, there's things that we were able to pull out from from that perspective that, you know, is is has made a bit bit more of an impact and you can start seeing the results.
Nice. So we've spoken with a lot of scale operators on on the show. You don't just have scale at Azuri, you've got five five brands that you're running. So it's like five scaled brands with five sets of needs and technologies. Obviously there's some homogenization, but what's what are the challenges you found there versus maybe in the gym group where it was one business, one brand?
Yeah, lo lots of people asking for lots of stuff. So tr is a lot a lot of juggling with that as well. But look, yeah, generally it's as a techie, I I generally think it's one of the best jobs in the sector. You know, you've got that variety, you've got the you know, the different challenges. Each of the brands, even the ones whether it's casual dining or kind of QSR, which, you know, is a diverse set of brands that, you know, there's really interesting problems to solve and, you know, the Azuri kind of platform looks to, you know
almost have that economy of scale that we'll we'll try and, you know, solve that in a in a fairly consistent way. But but that's not all always possible. So sometimes it is, you know, being a bit more pragmatic with that and not having this big group mentality where, you know, we foist technology upon people. It's it's got to be more of a partnership in in that kind of stretch. But yeah, there's a reality of any business, you know, there's there's there's some of the brands who are bigger and, you know, you make a you know a you know a few few percentage point growth
in those brands and yeah, the whole group wins as well. So yeah, there's a almost a commercial part to how we prioritize and how we, you know, think about our roadmaps.
nice, so you're thinking about like an aggregated P N L or an aggregated commercial and it's like where
Ultimately, yeah, ultimately. but then you know, there there's there there's a few where, you know, you you've got to keep those all all of those operations running and you know, some of them on different tech stacks, some of them you're using different suppliers, so yeah, and sometimes it's helping. But yeah, it i it is net beneficial, I think, having that group.
So five brands and obviously decent level of complexity. you've mentioned you look at like an aggregate obviously aggregated business decisions to make sure the whole group wins. So you have to prioritize across the different groups. You mentioned you use a framework for like guest satisfaction or cover growth and and efficiency across each one. Has there been any, I don't know, mistakes or or
Or misalignment during the twelve months that you you had to go, Okay, look, we need to maybe pump the brakes on this and roll back. It's not working as we expected.
Yeah, I I think there was a a few projects that have been quite long running in the background and when you really sat down and spoke to the the brands and yeah, these these are all projects were kicked off for great reasons and really, really, you know, w well intentioned, but you know, along the way they'd lost there wasn't much advocacy or sponsorship that was coming. So, yeah, you're like, really is this important for you, especially with all these other things to do? Are they solving the problems that are most important for your business right now?
And they're they they were the tougher decisions because, you know, sometimes we'd we'd spent a fair bit of money and we we we got it wrong. But you know, you you're much better to, you know, pivot at that point or put something on ice to to move us forward. So they they were probably some of the most difficult decisions. But you know, prioritization at that sort of level is always you just need that level of pragmatism and you know, the the the you know, the exec team and the brand boards are, you know.
Once you sit down and you talk about options, you know, it's it's it it's much easier to have those conversations. And I think they're important conversations to have with technology. So they're you know, I think it's important that the that the tech is there to be able to serve and support the business. So we need to you know, take on board those requirements and, you know, prioritization needs to be sort of two ways as well.
Yeah, definitely. Understood. speaking of wins, the new Z Z app is coming out soon.
It is yeah. So we are a couple of days away from launch. So that that's probably been one of the questions since I've had since I've joined in the last twelve months is when's the Z app coming? So Zillionaires has has been there for it's about two and a half years old now and you know, way over a million members. huge sort of scheme, great sort of reach, like loved by the customers. But
it's been a yeah, it's a web app, so yeah, there's friction which makes it difficult for the teams and customers to to get at those discounts. So we've yeah, we we we've worked over the last few months to to build that app platform. So we we we scaled first with Ask and built our own app and we've used you know similar sort of technologies, similar platforms to basically rapidly get that out in you know, in in in quick time. So, you know, there's a huge release
and new brand updates. We have a big menu, quite a transformational menu and brand transformation that the team have been working on. So the the app is a a little sidebar or a a part of that kind of like launch. But it's it's gonna be really exciting times for the for the ZZ you know for the ZZ brand and and yeah, really, really good positive step forward.
Really cool. at your scale, you have opportunities that other brands don't have. So that typically comes in the form of build versus buy. obviously the larger the business, you can look introspectively. You have an engineering team, an IT team, you can decide maybe we want to build this ourselves and or we might want to partner with a third party vendor. How do you make that decision and how do you think about that?
Yeah, so it's a great question. we probably do a whole podcast series just on build versus buy and you know, as a you know, technologist and you know, when i i it i it's one that you're constantly grappling with and you you you don't always get it right. Azuri's got a a really
Brilliant history in in investing in technology. Yeah, we founded our own hostech company in in in Opener and you know and that's that's starting to really sort of gather some momentum. likewise we have a whole suite and portfolio of different apps that are really helping us to almost differentiate our business and our our our brand and we're not beholden to
roadmaps and, you know, different suppliers and you know, some of the the complexities that come with with dealing with that. So that that's super positive, but there are, you know, hidden overheads with it. Yeah. You've once you've built it's not just building them, you've got to maintain them, you've got to run them, you've got to, you know, in some cases innovate them and you know, they're they're products on their own right. So it's helpful when you've got you can deploy them into multiple brands 'cause you start to get that kind of scale, but you know
th there's probably not many brands who are in hospitality who are able to, you know, even think about doing that. And then, you know, how do you make that decision? And I I I think as soon as you sit there and, you know, you make a you know, your tech strategy comes to either buy versus build, y you you're doing tech wrong. I I think it it's gotta be, you know, what what's the best solution? Like these decisions are always
so contextual to that problem you're trying to solve, where you're at as a business, your appetite for long-term sort of investment, what you're able to do with it. And yeah, likewise, there's some absolute brilliant suppliers and brilliant vendors. Yeah, we we we've got a load that we work with where we would never dream of building some of these things ourselves because they their expertise is so much deeper than ours. they're going to build better products, they're going to be able to support
things you know, every working hour that we've got that you simply can do in an i i in an internal IT team. yeah, so it's a it's a real pragmatic decision I think you you need to you know decide on and you know when you're making that sort of investment choice. what what I'm always quite keen at a principal level, though you know I break my own rules on this is anything that's really close to the customer or helps you differentiate as a brand, they're the things you want to own.
Yeah, those are the things you want to sort of build yourself and have a lot more flexibility and control because you know, you can generally when you've built your own things, you can get you you're faster to market, it's easier, you haven't got to sort of, you know, brief an agency or another supplier or wait months and months on the roadmap. And those are the things that help your business to stand out. It helps you to engage your propos you know, your your customers in a different way.
But then there's you know there's there's things in the in the in the you know back of house which you know things like payments or you know how you run your ERP or workforce or or you know inventory where you know you want better expertise to come in and help you do that. I you know we'd never dream of you know building our own inventory management or some of these systems. That's where you need the expertise, that's where you need the deep knowledge and people who have much bigger R and D budgets and you know, helping you to move forward. So it's
Kind of getting that cocktail right, I think, is is the way I'd look at it.
It's really interesting. So it's almost like the brands have like your own unique SOPs and value props to guests and experiences you want to deliver. And it's probably hard out of the box to to hit all of those those notes. So if you have customization you can iterate more quickly to go, we know more uniquely what our guests want and
Yeah, and stand out because you know, there there's some brilliant white label solutions out there where, you know, and and some really good, you know, faster market. Let's take apps for instance, where you can white label an app and get that out as well. But the trouble is, yeah, there's very few suppliers in hospitality who are actually running those. And yeah, the apps look good and the propositions are great, but you know, you you your app looks very similar to to to to everyone else experience.
feels very similar as well. And if you're wanting to stand out or you're wanting to use digital to enhance your overall proposition and, you know, the the the food you're serving and the the experience you get in a restaurant, it's very difficult to to do that. And I think by building your own kind of solutions and really bespoking it to the brand and, you know, and what's going to work for your specific customers, is is incredibly powerful if you if you've got the luxury of being able to do that.
new led the gym groups app, customer facing app. what kind of learnings did you get from building that out that you can hopefully apply here?
Yeah, I think there's a lot around personalisation and you know, that that's been around for for yonks and you it's a bit of a buzzword on there. But you know, what what we're really looking for, I think, with personalisation is that, you know, that c contextual and relevant experience, you know, in in terms of providing what people want to find and, you know, information that's relevant. You know, it's not a blanket bombing CRM campaign or, you know, even a you know, slightly amending some of the creative for for a different segment, you know.
To really understand and underpin that data, you can really then start to build something that's a little bit more unique, that's gonna, you know, make sure that when people are deciding to where they want to go and eat out, that you're, you know, top in terms of that consideration. And likewise, you know, I think yeah, there's a lot around where it's you've really got to understand the customer and, you know, the experience and the behaviour of what drives them to build those experiences and use that data in the right way. And and and that was really pre
prevalent in health and fitness and you know, effectively a subscription business where, you know, it's really hard to retain and it's it's hard for people to motivate themselves. So, you know, how do you use digital to when you're feeling a bit lazy and don't really want to go to the gym, how do you you know, how do you try to use, you know, the digital experience to encourage people and get them moving. So yeah, it was a good yeah, didn't quite crack it, but yeah, it's it's a really difficult one to move forward on.
Interesting though, you're trying to tap into psychology of people and how do you influence it? So sticking with the team of data, but maybe shifting gears a little bit. Obviously at scale comes other responsibilities. You have boards, you have investors, you have all those all those good things. So more now than ever, like quality of data, accuracy and insights is so key at like a board level. I'd imagine with five different brands and ways of operating.
can be challenging. How do you prioritize or or manage making sure you can get the right context in front of the right people to to help support those decisions, those investment decisions?
Yeah, it's a it's a great question and yeah, it's almost like a a constant yeah, a constant moving beast to c you know, control and, you know, structure the data that we get across the organization. there's really, really good foundations, yeah. So so that you know the team knew years ago that yeah, having, you know, data in our environment and having access to that data well structured was was super important. So
we have invested in that and you know, a lot of our data is is kind of well structured right across the brand, the enterprises and you know, where we have similar tech stacks across the brand, that may you know means you've got consistent integrations and consistent sort of, you know, patterns in terms of that data that that's coming through. So so that's that's good. And you know, almost as a principle if we're looking at, you know, vendors we want to work with or, you know, introducing a new piece of tech.
that data integration's, you know, pretty much top of the list, right? We won't we won't work with anyone who, you know, doesn't give us access to our data or makes that incredibly difficult or has, you know, technology that's, you know, antiquated and, you know, I can't get an API and, you know, and a feed into my sort of data lakes and data warehouses, etcetera. So so that that that's one thing. And then I I think it's then important to, you know, empower your y your team
become a lot more data literate. So yeah, we have our sort of you know dashboards and there's there's people that we've skilled up and and trained up across the business who you know can build their own dashboards. They're pretty data literate to you know look at you know information from different sources and analyse that I think the the big thing is you know making sure we're asking the right questions and you know using that data in the right way. So how do you how do you get the right insight from that data as well, which is a bit of a skill. We're we're so
data rich and at times really data hungry, but you know, there there's things where it's like what's the action we're gonna drive out of that insight, yeah, let's make sure that, you know, we're not just having a look at some data and, you know, all stroking our chins and saying, that's very interesting. That's you know, what what are we gonna do with that data and and that that's a you know, I think a really important leadership discipline and that's not a you know a tech or data kind of thing. That's a you know whole business and, you know, making sure that we're we're using that to you know
to power the business in the in the right way and try and make the right decisions.
quality of your decisions is so dependent on the quality of the information though, right? You have to get through the we've even gone through this maturity cycle where you go from questioning the numbers going, Where did you get that? And how did you get to that number? And is that accurate to okay, everyone aligns on the data and then it's like what are you gonna do with it? And then how do you manage the number and and and
Slowly yeah.
And that's and that's where you go back to your data integrity and you know making sure your data's well structured, you're you know, engineering it in the right way because
And as soon as there's an ounce of doubt in that, you know, the confidence in in the lot of those numbers can go down. And you know, in sitting in trading meetings where you almost i it it it turns into, well, we don't trust the numbers, there therefore it becomes a bit debilitating. So it's really critical to keep that almost that flow of data and then information ri really yeah, ri really fluid.
So you make the great information at board level, you can make the decisions. Decisions can be made at the executive level with the right level of ROI attributed to it, but they're going to be delivered on the front line ultimately. It to the thousands of employees and frontline workers that work across the business are will be the ones who determine if it's going to land successfully or not. So how do you get buy-in at that level of scale and like multi-brand buy-in to try and or alignment to try and make sure these initiatives land?
Yeah, so and that and that's by partnering really closely, you know, it's it's remembering your role as, you know, you know, a technology sort of partner, sort of in the mix, you know. And you know, ultimately I think buying from the beginning in terms of making sure that, you know, your operators are bought in, you know, there there's there's a chance to have kind of feedback and it's something that's really gonna make a difference.
technology barely works or a system will barely work if it's foiced upon or, you know, there's this group, Ivory Tower, drop you know, you you will use this system. You know, you it's got to be a little bit you know, more of a partnership. And I think, you know, Azuri's got a really good track record of trialing technology at times and really getting the operations on board. Yeah, we've got some, you know, really experienced operators who who really get it. You know, they really get the impact of
no, business change or getting it wrong and, you know, really helping to guide in terms of, you know, this is what's gonna land or or even, you know, when you you do need to sort of, you know, get something across the line, we'll know how to do it and how to, you know, inspire the ops to, you know, pick it up or, you know, help you get to a better solution. I've been always been really impressed in my last year at seeing, you know, some of the trials and then some of the scales. Quite good at Azuri where we'll innovate, we'll go into a couple of stores and then
ramp it up from there and yeah, there's some there's some brilliant, you know, GMs, front of house, back of house team that you know, they won't be backward and coming forward and tell telling you what they think, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly. So and that really helps in terms of you, you don't just land hitting hope on the solution. You you you you generally got that feedback. You can go, right, well that's not worked. We'll we'll go away. We'll make it a bit better. And you know, I think that's that really helps us, you know, where we've got two hundred and fifty odd sites.
across across the Zuri.
And then you get co creators, advocates, people on who can help you then bring the system.
The trouble is they make my to do list a lot bigger. So yeah, there's we're we're not short on ideas but it's it's massively invaluable and you know, it's easy for an IT team to sit in a in an office somewhere but getting them out, you know, speaking to operators, speaking in the in the restaurants, you know, listening to what customers are saying is i is just absolute gold when it comes to you know, building digital products and, you know, technology.
You mentioned some learnings or recovered a few learnings in your your first twelve months. Any any kind of looking back now, any advice you'd give to yourself before you started from what you know today versus you didn't know then?
Don't think so. Yeah. I think i th there's nothing that hugely stands out. but I think, you know, always being curious in in in this position is is important. I I think there's that relentless prioritization just with your own time, you know, in a in a group setup such as what what we have at Azuri, you know, just making sure you manage your own energy and you're you're you're firing up the
Yeah, the the the most important things. It's really easy to get dragged into the day to day. It's really easy to get dragged into the weeds a little bit. And yeah, that's that you know, that's not my role. That's not you know, where Azuri that's well not what Zuri needs from a technology director or technology team. So th th there's things where there where it's, you know, making sure that you're really stripping out the noise and you know, focusing on what what's super important. But yeah, again, we don't always get it right, do we?
Yeah. That's great advice for any leader. I think not to get sucked in. Firefighting can can become the norm. we're gonna move on to the quick turn, which is segment that is rapid fire questions. So it can be one sentence, it can be a little bit longer than one sentence, but we try to keep it tight. So what operational blind spot do you think that hospitality leaders underestimate?
I think it is that relentless prioritization, you know, n never underestimate, you know, the impact that that can have in the team and you know, from from from a day to day p perspective. So so really starting to you know, make sure our teams how they work together and how they're like, you know, focused and have that kind of like, yeah, that mission is is super heav helpful for any projects or you know, certainly in the in the technology arena.
Okay, cool. What tool, system or way of working have you killed off recently and why?
Probably goes back to the some of the projects that that kind of, you know, have have stopped Iced or on on on those pieces as well. You know, constantly asking why are we doing this? Is this the right thing or is this the right time to be doing it? Sometimes it's a timing thing. So so that that's probably, yeah, without you know na naming specifically what projects or or things we weren't sort of doing.
knowing when to quit on them or or knowing when to throw in the towel and say, right, well, we look, we got that wrong. Let's let's move forward. There is a yeah, the the the the other thing to build on sorry, this meant to be quickfire, isn't it? is yeah, there there's a lot of duplication sometimes where you've got multiple tools doing the same thing. So, you know, you usually if you start switching a few things off or really asking, do we need it, you can, you know, save yourself a few pennies on tools and licenses, etcetera.
It's like that Toby Lucke, the CEO of Shopify, he periodically deletes everyone's recurring meetings from the calendar and he's like if they're important enough to find their way back to the surface, right? What's one metric that matters more than most people in the industry realize?
Like that, yeah.
I would say customer lifetime value, but I I think people realise it, but it's just bloody hard to get at. Yeah. It's everyone knows, yeah. It's so much, you know, discussion around loyalty, you know, frequency of visits, all of those sort of things, but it's just really hard to sort of unlock from a data perspective. So yeah, it's important. do people realise it? I I think they do, but it's it's just hard to get
It's really difficult. any kind of retention or attribution, right? One of the biggest challenges. What's the most powerful thing operators could do today, in your opinion, to future proof the business?
Yeah.
think investing in team and people, in in capability, you know, that's where where we see the you know, the best returns in terms of yeah, we we can look at sort of, you know, some of the best digital stuff that I've ever delivered is is been with a really sort of great team and you know, having some of those expertise. so yeah, I I I I I've never regretted, you know, investing in people. and yeah, you don't always get it right but
Yeah, that is yeah, massively underutilised sort of resource and that can that can be the difference in technology between you winning and losing.
Really nice. And then last one, what's one brand that you look at that you admire for how they run their business? It doesn't need to be hospitality, but that you might benchmark against.
Goodness, yeah. I I I I think yeah, there's lots of brands I admire from a you know of a consumer perspective and how they built the tech. But I think what what I'd say around you know my last sort of twelve months and you know what's been quite special about hospitality is just how welcoming everyone's been and and that's from you know some some brilliant you know vendors, you know, some we work with, some we don't, and also some of our competitors and you know, people in in peers in similar positions.
Yeah, lots of people have taken time to r really sort of, you know, be quite open, give me a bit of a step up and yeah, that's been, you know, I think quite s something that's quite special in hospitality. It's really felt that and it's made my landing and navigating around the industry starting to understand, absolutely brilliant. So, yeah, thank you to those people and yeah, that that's been, you know, probably, you know, one of the things that stood out and, you know, really admire a lot of the work that I can see that's going on in Hostech across the
Across the industry.
Yeah, here, here. Cheers to that. well, Jim, look, I appreciate you making time to come on and exciting stuff happening for Azuri. some exciting new openings happening across the brands for the rest of the year. So wish you the best of luck with that. what an awesome episode with Jim. He has a really unique perspective on what you need to do to make digital work and hospitality. He's come from real large scale retail and fitness chains and moved into one of the UK's
Yeah.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Cheers.
Biggest and best brands in the Azuri group. Jim really honed in on what matters most, prioritization, focus, and impact. You're dealing with a business of 250 locations across five brands, multiple projects, multiple streams of ops, multiple PLs, multiple decision makers, and I could go on. But Jim had a really clear and succinct framework. Is this going to drive guest traffic and guest experience? Will this help make the PL more efficient and more effective? And what is the ROI we're going to get?
Make sure we know we can answer those questions. And then it's all about prioritization and sequencing. If you try to do too many things at once, you go nowhere. Focus on what really matters and what's the most important thing to do today and nail that. It's a really awesome episode full of nuggets. And hopefully if you took something from Jim's story, I'd love for you to share it with a fellow operator. And if you're not already following us, now is the time. Until next time.
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