A rota on a noticeboard. Someone’s whited out your shift and written their own. Nobody called it broken. It was just how it worked.

In this episode of Captive Conversations, Adam sits down with Jeremiah Siemianow, co-founder of Surreal, for a conversation about spotting a problem hospitality had stopped seeing.

Jeremiah shares his journey from clearing tables in Australia, to real estate sales, to building a platform for booking, paying for and promoting live entertainment.

We talk about:

• Why he and his co-founders asked 140 venues one question before building anything
• Bootstrapping with no technical background, and a A$456,000 quote that came back at A$58,000
• Why the first product, a marketplace, was the wrong model
• What the COVID pause gave the industry the chance to rethink
• Why late payment is often a breakdown in process
• Taking Surreal into the UK

Plus the Captive Conversations questions on the best hospitality experience, the best hospitality tech and more.

This episode is a little different. We spent two days at Hospitality Tech Expo at ExCeL London, and some of the best moments happened on stage. Here are four of them.

🎙️ Tommy Giraux, Head of Restaurant Systems at Honest Burgers
"Buy It. Run It. Bin It." The operator's guide to a tech stack that earns its keep.

🎙️ Peter Hurley, Dan Jackson and Gabrielle Goode, Well Seasoned
Building a pre-opening team without hiring anyone, told through the Grosvenor Arms.

🎙️ Eve Williamson and Alana Bralsford, Served
Your menu is turning away more guests than you think, and what to do about it.

Grab a coffee and listen in.

Captive Conversations is the hospitality podcast hosted by Adam Forman, brought to you by Captive WiFi.

Going back into the Captive Conversations archive, this bonus clip features Chris Fletcher.

Chris explains why operators should map the customer journey before buying POS, CRM, loyalty, WiFi or another shiny platform.

Technology should support the guest experience, the operating model and the available budget. Buying what the venue next door uses is not a strategy, especially when basic experiences such as WiFi remain slow or unbranded.

A practical five-minute discussion for hospitality leaders planning technology investment.

#HospitalityTech #GuestJourney #TechStrategy #CaptiveConversations