The Future of Hospitality Procurement Is Connected
Behind the Bartender with Dave Bunney, General Manager at JBS Hospitality
Hospitality has embraced technology. Payments are faster, point-of-sale systems are smarter, and venues have more tools than ever to understand their customers and manage service.
Behind every busy bar is a procurement operation that often gets far less attention than it deserves: how you buy your products, and what you pay for them.
Every hospitality business has three major cost areas: People, Property and Product. People are rostered, measured and managed. Property costs are largely fixed and understood. But Product — what you buy, how you buy it and what you pay — is often the least optimised of the three.
Because profitability isn't just about what you buy. It's about how you buy it.
The products need to be ordered. Suppliers need to fulfil those orders. Prices and discounts need to be managed. Invoices need to match what arrived. Stock needs to be available when customers walk through the door.
And much of that process still happens across a patchwork of systems, portals, emails and manual workflows.
The next chapter of hospitality technology isn't just about making service more efficient. It's about connecting the systems that make service possible in the first place.
Hospitality technology has solved part of the problem
The front of house has seen a significant shift in how technology supports daily operations.
Point-of-sale systems capture transactions. Digital payments simplify checkout. Reporting tools help venue teams understand sales performance and customer behaviour.
These systems have changed how venues operate and make decisions.
Yet the information that drives purchasing often sits somewhere else.
Ordering history may live in one platform, invoices in another, stock information in a spreadsheet, and supplier communications in an inbox. Even when individual systems work well, the gaps between them create friction.
A venue can have sophisticated sales reporting and still spend hours managing the process of getting the right products through the door.
The opportunity is to connect what a venue sells with what it buys.
Procurement is a two-sided challenge
For venues, procurement means managing multiple suppliers, product ranges, pricing arrangements, delivery schedules and invoices — often through different systems and processes.
Each supplier may have its own ordering portal, catalogue, terminology and way of handling orders. That complexity compounds as a venue's supplier network grows.
For suppliers, the challenge runs in the other direction.
They need to service customers ordering through different channels, support sales representatives, maintain product information - in multiple systems (some not their own), manage discounts and move order data into their internal systems for processing and fulfilment.
Both sides are trying to do the same thing: get the right products to the right venue, at the right time, with the right information.
But when their systems don't connect, people become the integration layer.
Orders are re-entered. Information is checked more than once. Errors need to be resolved. Valuable time is spent moving information rather than acting on it.
These are not isolated inconveniences. Across a busy hospitality supply chain, they are recurring operational costs.
Behind the Bartender: a real-world perspective
In our Behind the Bartender series, we speak with people working at the heart of hospitality to explore what it takes to run a venue and where technology can make a practical difference.
In this interview, Dave Bunney, General Manager at JBS Hospitality, offers a real-world perspective from the venue side of the industry.
The clip shows the people, processes and technology behind a working hospitality operation — from the bar itself to the ordering tools that support procurement.
It's an important reminder that ordering technology isn't an end in itself. Its value lies in how well it supports the people running the business, the suppliers servicing it and the customer experience at the end of the chain.
The objective isn't to add another system for teams to manage. It's to reduce the friction between the systems and relationships they already depend on.
Connecting venues and suppliers
This is how, we at eBev play a distinctive role.
Rather than operating as a beverage distributor or wholesaler, eBev provides a digital procurement and supplier-connection layer for the licensed beverage industry.
It helps venues bring supplier ordering into a more connected workflow, while giving suppliers a way to engage with customers through a shared digital platform.
That matters because procurement cannot be solved by looking at only one side.
Venues may want a simpler ordering experience, but suppliers also need workable processes for receiving, processing and fulfilling those orders. Improvements are more valuable when they account for both sides of the transaction.
The longer-term opportunity is to connect more of the journey — from product discovery and ordering through to invoices, reporting and the systems that support venue operations.
What Oolio adds to the picture
As part of the Oolio family, eBev sits within a broader hospitality technology ecosystem that includes point-of-sale, payments and ordering capabilities.
That creates an opportunity to bring procurement closer to the operational systems venues already use.
Consider the potential: sales data helping inform purchasing decisions; ordering workflows connecting more directly with venue systems; and supplier relationships becoming part of a more joined-up view of venue performance.
The value isn't simply having more software.
It's reducing the gaps between systems so information can move more effectively through the business.
The specific benefits depend on the systems and integrations available, but the direction is clear: hospitality technology becomes more useful when its different parts work together.
From individual tools to a connected ecosystem
The future of hospitality procurement won't be defined by how many portals, dashboards or applications a business has.
It will be defined by how well those tools work together.
For venues, that means greater visibility and control over purchasing, with less time spent managing disconnected processes.
For suppliers, it means more efficient ways to receive and process orders, support customers and connect ordering with internal systems.
For the wider industry, it means reducing the administrative friction that sits between a product being ordered and that product reaching the bar.
And for hospitality teams, it means more time to focus on what matters: running a profitable business, supporting great service and building strong relationships.
The front of house has already shown what technology can achieve when it removes friction from everyday work. Now there is an opportunity to bring that same thinking to the supply chain behind it.
The future of hospitality procurement isn't another disconnected tool. It's a connected ecosystem — built around the venues, suppliers and people who keep hospitality moving.
Behind the Bartender is eBev's series exploring the people, businesses and technology shaping the future of hospitality.
Watch Dave Bunney, General Manager from JBS Hospitality, talk about how eBev makes an impact across their venue group.