IT has moved from the sidelines to the centre of hospitality operations.
For a long time, technology was viewed as a support function. It was something you upgrade when workflows break or legacy systems become too painful to manage.
In fact, 94% of restaurants only adopt new tech when absolutely necessary. That mindset has created a tangle of tools that:
Don’t scale,
Don’t connect, and
Don’t support business goals.
But that’s starting to change.
Today, hospitality leaders are placing IT at the heart of their operatingmodels. They are rebuilding their business around integrated systems, not bolting new tools onto old processes. IT’s no longer support; it’s a strategic infrastructure. And the restaurant tech stack is evolving to reflect that.
This article breaks down how this shift is happening and what it takes to turn restaurant IT into a true driver of performance.
From Reactive Spending to Strategic Investment
Tech is a lever for reaching your business goals.
Technology in hospitality has long been viewed as a cost centre. But as William Connors, formerly of Wingstop and Noble Restaurant Group, puts it:
Tech should not be treated as an expense. Tech is a tool to make all departments more efficient, growing your business.
William Connors Formerly of Wingstop and Noble Restaurant Group
It’s a view that’s quickly gaining ground. The vast majority of companies that reach out to Apicbase today aren’t asking for a stock-counting app any more. They’re asking: “Can you help us build a reliable, scalable inventory process that actually improves our margins?”
This shift from reactive spending to proactive planning is a marker of digital maturity, as Carl Orsbourn pointed out on The Food Service Growth Show.
And digital maturity changes the question entirely:
Not “What will this cost?”
But “What will this unlock?”
Let’s look at an example.
Some operators hesitate when moving from spreadsheets to a platform like Apicbase. Excel is basically free. The hesitancy is understandable. But do spreadsheets improve performance? Probably not. Apicbase, on the other hand, when used to its full potential, reduces food cost by 5% on average.
For a restaurant group with €30M in annual revenue and a 33% food cost, that’s a €1.5M annual saving. And that’s before factoring in team efficiency and stronger decision-making.
Estimated Annual Revenue
€30,000,000
Current Food Cost (33%)
€9,900,000
Projected Food Cost with Apicbase (28%)
€8,400,000
Annual Savings on Food Cost
€1,500,000
Apicbase customers regularly report a 5–10 times return on investment (ROI) after a full rollout. That’s what strategic IT investment delivers. Technology is not the end goal. It’s a lever for reaching your business objectives.
Today, ease of use and integration consistently outrank both cost and feature sets in conversations with enterprise operators.
And the logic is simple: If a hospitality system doesn’t make work easier, it won’t be used. And if it’s not used, it delivers no value.
In other words, usability is foundational. In busy hospitality environments, staff don’t have time to figure out complex systems. They need tools that are easy to understand at a glance. Apicbase is built with that reality in mind.
Candidates want to know if an employer uses the systems they’ve come to trust.
Apicbase offers separate views for managers and frontline staff. Managers have full control and advanced capabilities, while kitchen teams, using their tablets, only see what they need to place orders, count stock, view recipes, and access allergen information. Clarity and ease of use are what count.
This shift is also shaping how restaurants attract and retain top talent. The technology used influences whether people want to join or stay with a business.
Staff satisfaction is a leading indicator. The tech a company uses has become a factor in hiring conversations.
Jonny Stevens Hospitality industry consultant
Technology has become a factor in hiring conversations, especially for senior roles, notes Chris Fletcher, founder of Tech on Toast. Candidates want to know if an employer uses the systems they’ve come to trust, like advanced inventory software or recipe tools. If not, they ask: “Are we getting it?”
People are less willing to go backwards. If someone has worked with integrated restaurant systems, returning to spreadsheets or disjointed apps becomes a deal-breaker.
And it’s not just talk. It shows up in the numbers. 31% of new Apicbase clients came from referrals by users who switched jobs and recommended the platform to their new employer.
As candidates see it, the systems a company chooses signal how much it values operational excellence and whether it sets their teams up for success.
The ‘Best of Breed’ Advantage
Each system owns a business domain and connects through the data layer.
Many restaurant groups find themselves managing a patchwork of legacy POS systems, spreadsheets and disconnected tools for inventory or procurement. Each solves a problem. But none were built to work together.
The result is friction at every level:
Clunky interfaces for staff,
Limited visibility for management, and
Service slip-ups that undermine the guest experience.
At the heart of the problem is siloed data. Without a unified view of the business, innovation slows and performance suffers. That’s why enterprise operators are moving to a best-of-breed approach.
They select specialised systems for each core domain (front-of-house, back-of-house, HR, finance) and connect them through a shared data layer. Until recently, many believed they needed one ultimate all-in-one solution, whether built in-house or offered by a single vendor. But that mindset is quickly fading.
Systems like SAP are incredibly powerful. You could run an oil refinery on them. But for hospitality, they’re far too complex.
Jornt Depreter Director of Central Business Services at Lunch Garden
Jornt Depreter, Director of Central Business Services at Lunch Garden, explains the shift: Systems like SAP are incredibly powerful. You could run an oil refinery on them. But for hospitality, they’re far too complex. Development is expensive, integrations rarely work as expected, and setup takes forever. With Apicbase, we don’t need to explain how our business works—they get it. It works out of the box at a fraction of the price, with ready-made integrations and clear API docs.
Best-of-breed isn’t without trade-offs. It requires tighter internal ownership, stronger integration capabilities, and a clear strategy. But the upside is flexibility, visibility, and control on your terms, not the vendor’s.
What makes the best-of-breed model so effective is the data foundation. Data from the core systems feeds into a data lake. As Casper van Tricht, Manager Integration Services at It’s Us, puts it:
The addition of a central data warehouse gives you one source of truth. You can trace discrepancies right back to their cause.
Casper van Tricht Director of Central Business Services at Lunch Garden
In older setups, tracing an issue like overportioning can take weeks, pulling exports from disconnected tools, each with its own format and limitations (if it’s possible at all). But with a data warehouse, you can compare metrics more easily and look back in time to find out what went wrong.
Just as importantly, best-of-breed gives you flexibility. If one restaurant system stops working, you can replace it without breaking the entire stack. That means no vendor lock-in. You dictate the roadmap, not the vendor.
Need help setting up Apicbase? That’s where our certified partners come in. They can handle implementation, connect Apicbase to your POS and suppliers, train your team, and even help improve processes. In short, they ensure the system fits your operation and delivers results quickly.
The Rise of the Hospitality IT Leader
The new generation of IT leaders understands systems, operations, and finance.
Technology is too important to be outsourced, sidelined, or buried in the finance department. It sits at the heart of how a modern hospitality business operates. IT needs clear ownership.
That’s why roles like CTO, CIO, and Head of Technology are becoming essential in foodservice organisations. These individuals aren’t traditional IT professionals (i.e., those who maintain networks and hardware), but rather strategic leaders.
As Pieter Wellens, CTO and Co-founder of Apicbase, says:
New IT leaders know how data models affect reporting. How integrations shape workflows. And how every system fits into the business.
Pieter Wellens CTO and Co-founder of Apicbase
In other words, they understand systems AND operations AND finance. They know the business deeply, not just the technology. They can translate strategic goals into technical capability. And they make sure investments actually deliver results.
As Johnny Bröms, Global Chief Digital & Tech at Bastard Burgers, says in an interview with GlobalConnect: “IT used to be seen as a support function. Now, it’s central to business performance. That’s why CIOs need to be involved in strategic planning and not just tech roadmaps.” At Bastard Burgers, Johnny reports directly to the CEO, and works cross-functionally at the top leadership level to guide long-term initiatives.
But choosing the right tools and setting the strategy is only half the job. Success depends on how change is led. System selection is the easy part. Rollout is where transformation lives or dies.
Planning a Major Tech Rollout? Check if Your Restaurants are Ready
This assessment reveals where your org stands, and where misaligned roles, processes, or communication could hinder your tech rollout.
And this is where tech leads play a critical role. They are leading the change, following the key principles of restaurant tech architecture. They engage frontline staff, invest in training, and communicate the “why” of new tech projects.
75% of conversations we have with restaurant operators are about change management.
Chris Fletcher Founder, Tech on Toast
They also secure buy-in across the leadership team. Only when an implementation is supported across the entire company will it gain the momentum needed for success.
The Foundation: Clean Data and Strong Processes
The biggest blocker: “We’ve always done it this way.”
One of the most overlooked aspects of digital transformation is this: technology can’t fix broken processes.
It’s not magic. If data inputs are messy and workflows are unclear, new systems won’t help.
Technology amplifies what’s already there. If the underlying processes aren’t solid, tech just exposes the cracks.
Mateusz Kostrzębski Head of IT, Vapiano, ex-AmRest, ex-Dean & David
This is why the shift from operational to strategic thinking goes far beyond choosing new tools.
It forces you to rethink how the business actually runs:
How processes are defined,
How data flows, and
How decisions are made.
The biggest blocker? A “we’ve always done it this way” mindset. Workflows that made sense in an analogue world don’t automatically translate to a digital one. And the issues that used to stay hidden quickly surface.
If you get the foundations right, configuring the system is easy.
But very few operators are 100% “project-ready” when they start a rollout. And that’s fine. Implementation doesn’t require perfection. It requires a plan. That said, it will reveal imperfections. This is good news. When you know the issues, you can fix them.
And often, those early fixes already drive results before the new tech even shows its full impact.
This reminds me of a recent rollout. The customer’s goal was to improve procurement accuracy.
As they began entering ingredients, suppliers, and recipes into Apicbase, two things happened almost immediately:
Ingredient overlap became obvious: They were buying the same products from multiple suppliers in various formats. Consolidating purchases with key suppliers unlocked big bulk discounts.
Unprofitable recipes surfaced: Apicbase automatically calculates recipe costings and theoretical dish margins. It revealed that several menu items were no longer hitting their target margins.
So this restaurant chain set out to fix procurement, but before optimisation even began, they’d already standardised key processes and improved food cost control.
Apicbase: The Core of Your Restaurant Tech Stack
A powerful restaurant tech stack starts with a solid foundation. Apicbase is that foundation, built to simplify your recipe management, track inventory, and streamline procurement and production.
It connects directly to your data warehouse and POS, feeding accurate cost and stock data where you need it most.
That means fewer errors, tighter margins, and more time for your team to focus on guests.
See how Apicbase fits into your restaurant tech architecture?
Carl Jacobs is the co-founder and CEO of Apicbase, playing a crucial role in the company’s growth and success since it started in 2017.
With a background in cultural management and significant managerial experience, Carl has guided Apicbase to become a prominent player in the food service industry.
Beyond his work at Apicbase, Carl is a mentor at Birdhouse, a respected startup accelerator, where he supports new entrepreneurs.
As a public speaker, he shares his expertise on management, growth strategies, and digital transformation in the food service sector, offering valuable insights. In his podcast The Food Service Growth Show, Carl interviews leaders in the restaurant industry.
Carl holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Management from the University of Antwerp and a Master’s in Art History and Archaeology from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. This combination of cultural and business knowledge allows Carl to address challenges with a creative and strategic approach, making him an effective leader in the industry.
