Software Development for UK Hospitality Businesses

Hospitality runs on too many systems

A typical group of restaurants or pubs runs an EPOS (Lightspeed, Square, Zonal, Tevalis or Epos Now), a table booking platform (ResDiary, OpenTable, SevenRooms), a rota and payroll tool, a stock or purchasing system, a website and an email platform. Hotels add a property management system such as Mews or Oracle OPERA Cloud and a channel manager such as SiteMinder. Each is fine on its own. Together they produce five versions of last night's trading.

dijitul developments builds the integration layer and reporting on top: one place where sales, covers, labour and stock meet, so operators can run sites on numbers rather than gut feel.

What we build for hospitality

• Multi-site reporting. Sales, covers, average spend, labour percentage and GP by site, daypart and menu item, pulled from EPOS and rota APIs into dashboards.
• Menu and allergen management. One recipe database holding ingredients and the 14 regulated allergens, pushing menus to EPOS, website and printed labels.
• Booking and events. Private hire and event enquiry flows with deposits through Stripe, or a bespoke booking system where platform fees or rules do not fit.
• Guest data. Matching guests across booking, EPOS and Wi-Fi sign-ups into a CRM with proper marketing consent.
• Staff tools. Training records, food safety checklists, temperature logs and opening and closing checks on tablets.

Rules that hospitality software has to respect

• Natasha's Law: since 1 October 2021, food prepacked for direct sale in England must show its name and full ingredients list with allergens emphasised. Central recipe data that prints compliant labels removes a real risk. Similar rules apply in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023: in force from 1 October 2024 with a statutory Code of Practice. Employers must pass on all tips and service charges to workers fairly and have a written tipping policy, according to the GOV.UK code. Software that calculates allocations from hours and roles, and keeps records workers can request, supports that duty.
• PCI DSS: card payments go through your EPOS and payment providers; we keep card data out of bespoke systems.
• Licensing Act 2003: age verification records, refusals logs and incident logs are easier to keep digitally.
• UK GDPR: guest data from bookings and Wi-Fi needs a lawful basis and clear retention rules.

How the integrations work

Most modern EPOS and booking systems offer REST APIs and webhooks, though access sometimes needs a partner agreement with the vendor. We pull transactions, menu items and labour data on a schedule or in near real time, normalise them into one data model, and keep the raw data so reports can be rebuilt if a rule changes. Where a vendor offers only CSV exports, we automate the export and import. See API integration and webhook development.

Gross profit, stock and labour in one view

The numbers that decide whether a hospitality site makes money are gross profit on food and drink, labour as a percentage of sales, and wastage. Each sits in a different system: sales in the EPOS, purchases in a stock or invoicing tool, hours in the rota and payroll system.

We join them. Recipe costs come from the central recipe database, updated as supplier prices change. Theoretical GP is calculated from what the EPOS says was sold; actual GP from stock counts and purchases. The gap between the two points to wastage, over-portioning or theft, by site and by category. Labour cost comes from the rota system's API, compared against sales by hour, so managers can see where a shift was overstaffed or short.

Owners get a weekly summary per site; general managers get a daily view on a tablet. Supplier invoices can be read automatically using AI document processing to keep ingredient costs current without manual entry, with a person checking anything unusual. None of this replaces a good stock take, but it makes the result of one useful the next morning rather than the next month.

Getting started

Tell us which systems each site runs and the report you wish you had on Monday morning. After a free chat we confirm the API access available and give a fixed-price quote. Multi-site reporting is the usual first phase. Related: software for retailers.

What we deliver

• EPOS, booking and PMS integrations feeding one data store
• Central menu, recipe and allergen management pushed to EPOS, web and labels
• Tips and service charge allocation with a clear audit trail
• Multi-site dashboards for sales, covers, labour and gross profit
• Event and private hire enquiry and booking workflows
• Guest CRM and marketing consent across channels

How it works and what it costs

Every project gets a fixed-price quote after a free initial chat and a short scoping stage. You own the code and the data.

1. Free chat

   Tell us the problem in plain English: what you do now, what goes wrong and what "better" looks like. No charge, no obligation.

2. Scoping

   We map the processes, systems and data involved, agree what is in and out, and write it down so there are no surprises.

3. Fixed-price quote

   You get a fixed price for the agreed scope, or a phased plan for bigger builds, so you can start small and prove it works.

4. Build and test

   We build in short stages you can see and try, test against real data, then go live carefully with a rollback plan.

5. Hand over and look after

   You own the code and the data. We can host it, support it and keep improving it, or hand it to your own team.

Related