CASE STUDY
UK Hospitality Tech Suppliers Experience Growth Amidst a Period of Economic Uncertainty for the Sector
- UK HOSPITALITY-
Growth in the hospitality technology sector in 2025 suggests that operators are increasingly investing in automation in the kitchen. Hospitality leaders are seeking ways to create efficiencies to counter the impact of higher business rates and increased National Insurance contributions and wages.
Telemetry is one business in the hospitality tech space that has seen substantial growth in the last 12 months. Telemetry now provides real-time monitoring of kitchen equipment to 350 McDonald’ s restaurants across the UK, marking a 20 % increase on 2024.
Despite wider challenges in the hospitality sector, businesses like Telemetry are benefitting as operators seek to reduce reliance on manual processes and limit the operational risk associated with equipment failure.
Piers Skinner, founder of Telemetry, said:“ Across the McDonald’ s restaurants and kitchen machinery that we monitor, our technology typically flags around 1900 alerts each month. While not all of these are major concerns or revenue-threatening, the visibility allows operators to carefully monitor any immediate risk to product quality and the ability to operate. In simple terms, our technology spots issues that wouldn’ t otherwise be identifiable until a total machine breakdown or a customer complaint, which ultimately result in lost revenue.
“ In a time where profit margins are already squeezed to an unsustainable level, even the smallest dip in revenue can be problematic. While we’ re not seeing a return to discretionary spend, operators are still prepared to invest in solutions that can demonstrably protect revenue or remove avoidable costs.”
As well as reducing risk of equipment failure, technology is also being deployed to maximise the return on labour investment. Manual equipment checks currently cost around 20 pence per minute at the minimum wage. In comparison, a monitoring system working 24 / 7 that costs less than the equivalent of 10 minutes of an employee’ s time can offer a major cost and time saving.
Piers continued,“ This is not about removing people from kitchens. Franchisees are continually looking for technology that allows teams to focus on service and jobs where they add the most value, rather than spending time completing manual checks. Keeping things simple significantly improves efficiency, and with the increase in labour costs, we’ ve now reached a point where automation is a necessity, not a luxury.”
Piers concluded:“ The next stage for hospitality technology is deploying data to predict potential issues ahead of time. We’ re currently developing an AI-led analytics programme to surface trends that are difficult to identify manually. Taking that shift from reactive to proactive operations will define how kitchens are run over the coming years.”
www. telemetryltd. com
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