Quantaco

30/06/2026

Watering Hole Hotels Group Executive Chef Thomas Mustafa has been using Cooking the Books from day one. Here is what changed.

Gross profit has measurably improved. Menu prices are now set with live cost data, not instinct. Invoice admin that used to take hours is gone. And Thomas runs his entire kitchen operation, across multiple venues, from wherever he is.

Read the full spotlight here:

Before Cooking the Books, running the kitchen operation at Watering Hole Hotels meant making critical decisions on menu pricing, supplier relationships, and

12/05/2026

EOFY is coming in hot, and with wage increases and Payday Super on the horizon, the margin for error is getting smaller. We’re teaming up with our friends at Tanda on Wednesday, 20th May at 10 AM AEST to help you navigate the chaos with confidence.

Register Here - https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0Rj4s0

Join Quantaco’s own Sharn Burnell and Tanda’s Nick Braban for a quick-fire session on wage predictions, compliance checklists, and FY27 budgeting, everything you need to tighten the ship before 30 June.

Can’t make the live chat? Register anyway and we’ll send the recording straight to your inbox!

Wednesday, 20th of May | 10AM AEST Hospitality businesses are used to managing EOFY reporting, wage increases, and award updates each year. But this year, the margin for error is getting smaller. With Payday Super on the horizon, ongoing cost-of-living pressure, and labour costs already under scruti...

11/05/2026

50%+ of Aussie restaurants cut their menus in 2025. The ones who went hardest, 20% or more, are calling it the best operational decision they've made in years.

Smaller menu. Bigger GP. The full Q3 breakdown: https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0RbJX0

Our Q3 FY26 data backs it up: food GP up 2%, in a quarter beef ran 13.5% over last year and supplier fuel surcharges started landing on invoices mid-March.

Holding 67% would have been a strong result. Lifting to 69% means the kitchen has changed how it operates, tighter menu engineering, cross-utilised proteins, less prep waste.

Chefs across Australia are deliberately pulling menus back: fewer dishes, shorter prep lists, tighter cores. The trade press has named it the 2026 menu reset.

28/04/2026

The Q3 FY26 hospitality numbers are in, but the topline only tells half the story.

Download it here → https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0PbTy0

At a glance, it looks like a decent quarter:
Sales up 4%
Drinks up 5%
Wages holding flat

But when you get into the detail, things look a bit different. Growth has slowed compared to earlier in the year, the gap between revenue and labour is tightening, and the mix across food, beverage and costs is shifting.

That’s the stuff that will impact your rosters, pricing decisions, and supplier chats heading into Q4.

For operators on the floor making calls week to week, that context matters more than the headline numbers.

We’ve broken it all down, by category, key trends, and what it actually means for your venue, in the Quantaco Hospitality Industry Update, Q3 FY26 (Jan–Mar).

14/04/2026

Don’t leave your EOFY planning to the last week of June.

Several of the most valuable tax and super strategies for pubs, clubs and restaurants require action well before 30 June, once the window closes, it’s gone.

If you want to improve cash flow, reduce liabilities, and finish the year clean, the work starts now.

Join our hosts Sharn Burnell & Debra Cram next week for a practical session built for hospitality operators.

Register here: https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0M8_X0

📅 Tuesday, 21 April
⏰ 10:00 – 11:00 AM AEST
💻 Microsoft Teams (free)

13/04/2026

We've broken down what real beverage margin visibility looks like in our latest piece. Read here: https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0LHc20

When revenue is strong, a 3% variance on a top-selling keg looks like noise. But with gaming shutdowns, rising utility costs, and award rate shifts coming, that noise is a signal worth acting on now.

The venues that will be in the best shape 12 months from now aren't just the ones having a big quarter, they're the ones using this strength to tighten their systems and understand their true COGS.

Ask yourself: if your gaming revenue dropped 20% tomorrow, would your F&B operation carry the venue, or expose it?

Australian pubs are having a moment. The harder question is whether you know why — and whether you'll see the problem before it costs you.

07/04/2026

The ATO is watching SMSFs more closely than ever heading into EOFY.

And this year, there's a new tax on top of everything else.

Division 296 is now law, applying from 1 July 2026. It adds an extra 15% tax on super earnings for balances above $3M. For balances above $10M, there's a further 10% on top.

Most people with large super balances still haven't modelled what this actually means for them.

Register Here: https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0KWWq0

We're covering it, along with payday super, EOFY contribution deadlines, and the SMSF cost base reset election, in a free 60-minute session with Sharn Burnell (Quantaco) and Debra Cram (Custom Accounting).

📅 Tuesday, 21 April 2026 | 10:00 – 11:00 AM AEST | Microsoft Teams | Free

If you're a hospitality business owner, high-income earner, or SMSF trustee — this one matters.

02/04/2026

Your team closed the bar an hour ago. The reconciliation is still going. Sound familiar?
How long does end-of-night take at your venue? 👇

See how others are fixing it: https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0KlsT0

01/04/2026

What a two days at the Australasian Hospitality and Gaming Expo 🙌

A big thank you to everyone who visited our stand, listened to our talks, and took the time to have a real conversation with the Quantaco team on the floor. The club and venue community in Queensland continues to impress, the people who showed up this year were serious about their businesses, and it showed in every conversation we had.

Across two days and 4,000+ venue operators, two themes kept surfacing: gaming compliance and the need for better business intelligence. The club sector is under more regulatory pressure than ever, and most operators are still working with operational and financial data that simply don't talk to each other.

Our Cooking the Books team also sparked some great discussions around food cost visibility, and the number of venues that genuinely didn't know what their costs were doing in real time was eye-opening.

We've written up the full wrap-up on the blog, what we heard, what it means for the industry, and what we're taking into next year. Worth a read if you're running a pub, club, or venue right now.

Read it here 👉 https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0KjYy0

Thanks again to the AHG Expo team for another brilliant event. See you in 2027. 👊

Two days on the floor at AHG. Here's what the industry told us about where hospitality is really heading.