The Old Commodore’s 20 minute promise, backed by Bepoz

Background

The Old Commodore Hotel is one of the oldest pubs in North Sydney, and for decades it has been the local party spot. Ask anyone who has spent time in the area and you will get the same response.

“Although I’m not a native Sydneysider, I’ve yet to meet a person that didn’t have a ‘oh yeah, I remember that night at the Old Commodore Hotel’, because it’s been a bit of a staple as a party spot in North Sydney for a long, long time,” says Brandon Bailey, Group Operations Manager at Epochal Hotels Group.

That heritage now sits inside a business growing fast. Epochal Hotels Group has been through what Brandon calls a meteoric growth period, going from 300 employees to roughly 700 heading into the new financial year. Scaling that quickly across multiple venues puts pressure on every system a group runs.

The Challenge

Growth on that scale exposes weak points fast. More venues, more staff, and more volume mean more invoices to process, more dockets to get right, and more opportunities for small mistakes to compound into real cost.

The group’s two largest venues push high volumes of food through the pass every service. In a suburban pub, consistency is not a nice to have. Locals notice immediately when standards slip, and they vote with their feet.

“If I come in one day and my schnitty is not as good as it was the other day, it could be the end of my coming to the pub, right? So consistency is key,” says Brandon.

The group needed a platform that could remove human error from the back office, keep kitchens accountable during peak service, and hold up as headcount more than doubled.

Why Bepoz

For a group scaling this quickly, the appeal was accuracy and connectedness. Bepoz handles the group’s invoice processing end to end and talks to the other software the business runs on, which closes the gaps where manual handling used to introduce mistakes.

The scalability of the platform was another key factor. With a proven track record built across years of working together, the group knew Bepoz could handle whatever a venue of this ambition demanded. 

How the Old Commodore uses Bepoz day-to-day

The kitchen management screens do the heavy lifting during service. They time every docket, hold the kitchen team accountable to those times, and keep output consistent across high volume periods.

The result is measurable in the pass. Brandon, who has worked in hospitality for over 25 years across multiple countries, rates the venue’s current performance as the best he has seen.

The scalability of the platform was another key factor. With a proven track record built across years of working together, the group knew Bepoz could handle whatever a venue of this ambition demanded. 

Beyond the kitchen, the system functions as an operational backbone. Clear reporting lines, automated invoice handling, and built-in accountability mean the group can manage more venues and more people without adding administrative drag. 

Winning over the kitchen

Not everyone was sold on day one. Chefs who had spent their careers working off paper dockets were sceptical about being asked to run service off a screen. 

“At the beginning there was a bit of pushback. Chefs who have never used a screen before, right? ‘Oh man, when are we going to look at this screen? I know what I’m doing, I’m a chef,’” says Brandon. 

That did not last.

The scalability of the platform was another key factor. With a proven track record built across years of working together, the group knew Bepoz could handle whatever a venue of this ambition demanded. 

Turning speed into a marketing promise 

Once the kitchen was consistently hitting its times, the venue did something most pubs would not risk. It put the speed in its advertising: $20 meals in 20 minutes or less. 

That is a promise you can only make if you can keep it every single service. 

Results

• Zero human error on invoices: Invoices load through Bepoz and flow into the group’s other systems without manual re-keying.

• Tightest order accuracy and cook times in 25 years: The kitchen screens hold the team to consistent times across both high volume venues.

• A 20 minute meal guarantee the venue can advertise: Service speed reliable enough to build a public marketing promise on.

• Clear reporting lines and built-in accountability: Systems and processes that keep teams focused, described by Brandon as almost a management system in itself.

• Kitchen buy-in after initial resistance: Chefs who pushed back on screens now swear by them.

• Scaled from 300 to 700 employees: A platform that held up through two years of rapid group growth.

Looking ahead 

With headcount set to hit around 700 in the new financial year, Epochal Hotels Group is continuing to build out systems that let venues run consistently without constant management intervention. 

For Brandon, the recommendation is straightforward.