From 1 to 7 Sites: Chilled Pubs’ 15 Years of Growth with Fourth

Customer Profile

Founded over 17 years ago, Chilled Pubs is an award-winning East Midlands hospitality group known for its Asian fusion-inspired menus, high-volume cocktail trade and premium pub dining experience. As the business expanded from one site to seven, maintaining consistency, margin control and operational discipline became central to its continued growth. 

Fourth has been their technology partner since the opening of their first site. 

Challenges Faced

With ambitious plans for the business, Travis and the leadership team recognised early that success would depend on maintaining control of labour, purchasing and margins as operations became more complex. 

As a highly tech-savvy business, Chilled Pubs actively sought technology that could provide structured oversight across the estate. Travis, who maintains close visibility of purchasing, labour and margin performance, wanted connected systems that would simplify operations rather than create additional administration. 

As headcount grew, supplier relationships increased and invoice volumes rose, so too did the potential for labour overspend, purchasing inefficiencies and margin erosion. 

To maintain visibility and control, Chilled Pubs needed standardised processes and real-time commercial insight. Fourth provided a single platform to manage both workforce and inventory operations, giving Travis a clear view of performance across the business. 

Solution

Fourth provided a connected workforce and inventory platform that scaled alongside the business – giving Travis clear, real-time oversight of labour and purchasing across every site. 

Workforce Management

Fourth’s workforce management suite enables Travis to monitor and control spend across kitchen, bar and floor teams in real time, with departmental breakdowns and daily tracking against budget. 

Rather than waiting for month-end reports, Travis has a live view of labour performance across all seven sites – allowing early intervention where costs begin to drift. 

This forward visibility enables the team to adjust deployment before overspending impacts margin, giving Travis confidence that labour remains tightly controlled as the business grows. 

Inventory & Purchasing

Chilled Pubs use Fourth’s full inventory suite to operate a successful ‘central hub purchasing model’, managing 100% of food and half of drink supply. Sites raise 70–90 internal requisitions daily through the system, consolidating buying power and ensuring pricing consistency across the estate. 

Weekly stock takes using Fourth’s mobile counting app narrow variance to a seven-day window, enabling rapid issue resolution and protecting margin. 

Results Achieved

With Fourth as its operational backbone, Chilled Pubs has been able to: 

• Scale from one site to seven on a single evolving platform  

• Maintain tight labour control across multiple departments  

• Simplified ordering for sites, with centralised control to secure the best supplier pricing  

• Embed weekly stock discipline across the estate 
   

Rather than reacting to issues at month-end, the business identifies problems early across labour, purchasing and margin. 

More than fifteen years on, the partnership continues to support Chilled Pubs structured, sustainable growth.