What it’s about:
Hospitality is brilliant at creating buzz, but the real challenge is keeping guests coming back long after the campaign ends. This session explores how the best marketing teams turn short-term excitement into long-term loyalty, combining creativity with data to build brands that stick.

What you’ll learn:

• How to turn launch buzz into measurable, repeatable growth
• Proven frameworks to track marketing ROI beyond vanity metrics
• Ways to embed loyalty thinking into every stage of the customer journey
• Where to focus your next marketing pound: hype, habit, or human connection

Why bother attending?
You’ll walk away with practical tools and ideas to boost repeat visits, increase guest spend, and build campaigns that not only convert, but endure.

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Our panel features Ruth Carpenter, JJ Miller, Anais Dixie and Keyana Mohammad, hosted by Naddy Onions.

What it’s about:

The UK Budget is settled and the cost pressures are clear. For London hospitality operators, margins are tight, and simply managing your business won’t be enough in 2026. This masterclass cuts through the noise to expose where operational gaps are eroding profit, and how to close them fast. It’s about moving beyond survival mode and operating with precision, pace, and confidence.

What you’ll learn:

• How to identify and eliminate hidden operational gaps impacting margin
• Practical tools to improve cost control, forecasting, and decision-making
• Ways to operate at “lightspeed” in a high-pressure, data-driven market
• How to shift from defensive cost management to precision profitability

Why bother attending?

You’ll leave with a clear post-Budget playbook to protect margins, optimise operations, and position your business for aggressive, data-led growth, without burning out your team.

Speakers:

• Jack Galley — Senior Sales Engineer, Lightspeed
• Elliot Hill — General Manager, 1 Lombard Street

What it’s about:

Per square foot, your favourite bakery or boozer consumes more electricity than Euston Station. Yet despite energy being one of the easiest costs to control, many operators still rely on expensive hardware and time-consuming consultants. This session breaks that pattern, showing how energy can be simple, strategic, and profitable when done right.

What you’ll learn:

• How to beat the market by securing better energy prices and smarter supply contracts
• Why you can ditch costly hardware—and how free technology enables intelligent energy monitoring
• How to leverage energy data to understand, optimise, and monetise usage
• Exactly what to demand from landlords and building managers to protect margins when expanding

Why bother attending?

You’ll leave with a practical, no-nonsense approach to cutting energy costs, simplifying operations, and protecting margins, making energy easy, not painful.

What it’s about:

Customer complaints are inevitable, but wasted insight doesn’t have to be. This masterclass shows hospitality leaders how to turn rants into revenue by centralising guest feedback from reviews, social channels, surveys, and in-venue comments into one clear, actionable view. The focus is on understanding what truly matters to guests, and acting on it fast.

What you’ll learn:

• How to aggregate guest feedback from multiple sources into a single dashboard
• How topic and sentiment analysis uncover recurring issues like queues, cleanliness, food, and staffing
• How sensitive-topic alerts help teams react faster to critical incidents
• Ways to assign, track, and resolve guest issues efficiently, with insights feeding directly into operations and reporting

Why bother attending?

You’ll see real-world examples of how hospitality teams reduce complaints, optimise staffing, and deliver measurable improvements in guest satisfaction, positive reviews, and operational performance, often within weeks, not months.

What it’s about:
As businesses grow, so does complexity. The challenge for today’s hospitality leaders isn’t just streamlining operations, it’s re-imagining how their entire ecosystem works together. This session brings together visionary founders and managing directors to explore how to build calm, scalable operations in an unpredictable world. From culture to tech to clarity of purpose, we’ll uncover how to lead with control without losing creativity.

What you’ll learn:

• How modern leaders design simplicity into growth
• When to invest in systems versus empowering people
• How to balance efficiency with experience, for both teams and guests
• Lessons from scaling fast while staying true to your brand’s DNA

Why bother attending?
Discover how top operators are creating businesses that run smoothly, adapt fast, and stay profitable, without burning out their teams or themselves. Leave with a new perspective on what operational control really looks like in 2026 and beyond.

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Our panel features Gemma Glasson, Caroline Ottoy, Marcel Khan, Matt Bigland, hosted by Phil Street.

What it’s about:

Gluten is one of the hardest allergens to manage in hospitality. Hidden ingredients and cross-contamination risks mean even small mistakes can have serious consequences. This masterclass brings together industry experts with lived experience to show you where gluten is hiding, what’s going wrong, and how to fix it.

What you’ll learn:

Where gluten hides in kitchens and supply chains
How to prevent cross-contamination
The systems needed for safe gluten-free service
How to build customer trust

Why bother attending?

Leave with a clear, practical playbook to run genuinely safe gluten-free operations, protecting your customers, your reputation, and your business.

Running the masterclass:

Sonny Wells – Founder of Sonny’s
Founder of the UK’s first gluten-free fast food chain, built from his own experience living with coeliac disease.

Tara Taylor – Founder of Good Grain Bakery
Founder of a multi-award-winning organic gluten-free sourdough bakery, built from her passion for real, honest ingredients.

What it’s about:

Are you overstaffed, understaffed, or just guessing? Labour is one of hospitality’s biggest costs, and getting it wrong impacts margins, teams, and guest experience. This interactive masterclass explores how AI can transform labour forecasting while keeping human judgment firmly at the centre.

Hear from Harry Wales, Sales Manager EMEA, as he shows how operators can blend AI-driven insights with manager expertise to make smarter staffing decisions.

What you’ll learn:

• How AI can improve labour forecasting accuracy without replacing human judgment
• How to combine AI insights with manager expertise to reduce labour costs
• Ways to build fair, efficient rotas that work for both teams and the business
• Practical examples, live polls, and takeaways to help you adopt AI confidently

Why bother attending?

You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of how to move beyond guesswork, using AI to improve forecasting, control labour costs, and empower managers to make better staffing decisions.

What it’s about:

Disconnected technology is quietly draining budgets and blocking competitive advantage. This session exposes the hidden costs of data silos and fragmented systems—and the very real opportunities that open up when hospitality tech is unified. It’s about moving from patchwork tools to a connected operation built for scale.

What you’ll learn:

• Why AI initiatives fail without clean, unified data across your operation
• How overlapping systems waste time, create errors, and erode team trust
• What’s stopping you from using guest data to deliver truly personalised experiences
• The operational and commercial impact of fragmented versus connected technology

Why bother attending?

You’ll walk away understanding exactly how disconnected systems are costing you money and damaging the guest experience—plus a clear, practical roadmap for building the unified tech infrastructure you’ll need for 2026.

What it’s about:
In hotels, guest experience is everything, but what truly matters: flawless execution or how the experience feels? This session explores the gap between operational perfection and emotional perception, and why guests remember moments, not checklists.

What you’ll learn:
• How to design experiences that create emotional impact, not just operational efficiency
• Where perception shapes loyalty more than perfection ever could
• How teams can personalise service at scale without overwhelming operations
• The role of tech and AI in elevating (not replacing) human hospitality

Why attend?:
You will leave with practical ways to elevate guest satisfaction, drive repeat stays and create memorable moments that guests talk about long after checkout.

Our panel features Eljesa Saciri and Stephen Nash.

What it’s about:

Join us for a candid conversation with Connor Arnette, founder and partner at atis and one of the earliest employees at sweetgreen. Connor will share his personal journey of helping scale some of the most influential food and wellness brands on both sides of the Atlantic, offering honest reflections on what worked, what didn’t, and what he learned along the way.

What you’ll learn:

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- What it’s really like to scale fast-growing hospitality brands from the inside
- The operational and people challenges that emerge as teams grow across sites and regions
- Common mistakes leaders make when systems, structure and culture don’t evolve together
- How great operators protect time, energy and focus as complexity increases
- Lessons Connor would apply differently if he were scaling again today

Why bother attending?

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You’ll walk away with practical insight from someone who’s been in the room during high-growth moments, helping you anticipate challenges, make better decisions, and avoid some of the growing pains that come with scaling hospitality businesses.

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What it’s about:

Advanced data analytics, AI, and powerful insights were once reserved for the biggest hospitality groups with armies of data engineers and analysts. That’s no longer the case. This session explores how data is being democratised, giving businesses of any size access to the tools and insights needed to optimise performance and margins.

Join Christian Mouysset, CEO and co-founder of Tenzo, and special guests to hear why the secret to hospitality success isn’t just for the big dogs anymore.

What you’ll learn:

• Why advanced data analytics is no longer limited to multinational chains
• What the “special sauce” really is when it comes to hospitality data
• How operators big and small are approaching their data strategies
• How data is being used as a secret weapon to drive smarter decisions and growth

Why bother attending?

You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of how data is now accessible to everyone, and how you can use advanced analytics and AI to unlock better performance, stronger margins, and long-term success, regardless of business size.

What it’s about:

Labour remains the biggest and least forgiving cost on an operator’s P&L – and despite years of focus, it’s still where most margin quietly disappears. Following the Autumn Budget, rising wage pressure and unpredictable demand mean the pressure is only increasing.

This masterclass with Nicol Dwyer, Gary Digby, and Jack Lander breaks down how labour costs really behave on the ground, where inefficiencies creep in, and what operators can do now to protect margins in 2026.

This is not about cutting staff or pushing teams harder. It’s about understanding the mechanics behind labour performance and making better decisions, earlier.

What you’ll learn:

• Why labour still kills margins, even in well-run businesses
• The metrics that actually matter when managing labour
• Where inefficiencies hide as businesses grow and get busier
• How operators improve sales per labour hour without harming service

Why bother attending?

You’ll leave with practical frameworks and operator-tested insight to take back control of labour costs, improve productivity, and protect margins in 2026.

Moderator: Lewis Rhys Davies
Speakers:
Nicol Dwyer, Operations Director, Digbeth Dining Club
Gary Digby, Founder, Digby & Fox
Jack Lander, Co-founder & Managing Director, Pizzarova

What it’s about:

Teams are called our greatest asset, yet too often they’re treated as costs. This session tackles the reality of retention, culture, and leadership.

What you’ll learn:

• Practical ways to cut churn and recruitment spend
• How to balance wellbeing with high performance
• Where AI can support training without losing the human touch

Why Bother Attending?

Walk away with strategies that reduce hiring costs, boost team performance, and create cultures that keep great people.

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Our panel features Lucy Craig, Marco Galer-Reick, Hayley Connor, hosted by Trudi Parr.