Venue: Glory Days, Bondi Pavilion

General Manager: Alfie

The venue

Glory Days sits inside the Bondi Pavilion, one of the most contested pieces of real estate on Australia's most iconic and famous Bondi Beach. When the previous tenant went up for tender in 2022, owner Aaron saw an opening: not just a cafe, but a community space where people could work, recover and connect. Somewhere that felt like a holiday even on a Tuesday.

Between 6 and 9am every morning, Glory Days is full with locals, run clubs, swimmers and families who treat the place like a second lounge. It's the perfect place to social and recover in a beautiful setting, it's become a favourite with The Bondi Beach Run Club who've been coming for years.

It's a venue built on energy. Keeping up with it is the operational challenge.

The problem

For a cafe that thrives in the morning rush, speed of service isn't a metric: it's everything.

"The biggest problem solved instantly was speed of service," says Alfie. "When dockets are coming through thick and fast, as soon as one thing breaks, your flow slows down and your operation slows down."

At peak, Glory Days runs a kitchen managing staggered orders across large groups, a coffee bar competing for the fastest times in Bondi, and a floor team expected to be present with guests rather than chained to a notepad. Before me&u and Lightspeed were fully integrated, manual ordering created friction at every point. One breakdown in the chain could blow out wait times within minutes.

The wage pressure made it worse. With product costs, wages and overheads all rising, there was no room to simply hire more people to absorb the load.

"In hospitality at the moment, there are a lot of areas where you can't cut costs. The only thing you can do to bring costs down is improve your operation and your efficiencies."

The turning point

Alfie joined Glory Days when the venue was Lightspeed-focused and taking a lot of manual orders. The shift happened as me&u was brought in alongside it.

"As we started to integrate me&u with Lightspeed, it made service so much more seamless. Having those two systems talk to each other is super helpful. It speeds things up, makes service easier and gives us more time to touch base with tables."

The integration changed what the floor team could do during a busy service. With ordering handled through me&u, staff could move from processing transactions to actually being present with guests. The wage bill improved. Headcount came down. The quality of interaction went up.

"While we run with fewer staff, we can actually have more conversations with guests."

How it works now

The docket system at Glory Days is one of the features Alfie loves most. For a table of four, orders don't flood the kitchen at once: they come through one after another, giving the team a manageable flow rather than a wall of tickets.

A 90-second grouping window means food still arrives together even when drinks are ordered first.

"If one thing falls over, that blows out within minutes. The docket system staggers orders, which is really beneficial."

‍Stock sync removes a different kind of friction.

As soon as an item sells out, it crosses off the menu across both platforms automatically, cutting the moment where a staff member has to apologise for something no longer available.

Alfie also flagged how Menu positioning has become a deliberate revenue tool.

Specialty drinks and new launches are placed where they'll be seen, not buried. Items that might not prompt a planned order, like the mini tacos locals grab with their morning coffee, get positioned to sell themselves.

"If someone has to go through eight pages to get what they want, they get bored and pick something at the top. If we're launching something new, we make sure it's positioned in the right spot on the screen."

On the customer side, Alfie uses the me&u database to identify top and repeat visitors, and looks after them in ways that keep them coming back. It's become one of the most valuable tools in how Glory Days builds loyalty.

And Reporting, something that once ate into floor time throughout the week, now happens on Monday mornings.

"Without the technology, it would take ten times longer to do the daily reporting and data analysis. I can do that strictly on a Monday and then be in service the rest of the week. If that stopped, I'd lose another whole day of service."

The numbers

Advice you can steal

• Get up to speed before you go live. The integration rewards the venues that invest in learning it. The ones that rush it don't get the same return.
• Use the data to walk into decisions with answers, not questions. Alfie's team reviews numbers on Monday and spends the rest of the week acting on them, not gathering them.
• Position new products where they'll be seen. Menu real estate drives sales as much as the product itself. Don't bury your best additions.
• Look after your top customers before they ask for it. The data shows you who they are. Doing something with that information is what turns a regular into a loyalist.

"me&u and Lightspeed have helped us massively. We can run our systems with fewer staff, which helps maximise GP, profit and revenue. During those spikes, me&u lets us open the funnel and get the maximum amount of revenue in while people are in the venue."