How GoTab powers traditional hospitality at 98 Lygon Street Bar & Bistro
98 Lygon Street Bar & Bistro is a neighbourhood venue in Brunswick East built around quality food, considered drinks and generous, face-to-face hospitality.
Across its bar, lounge, bistro, courtyard and private dining spaces, the experience is designed to unfold naturally. Guests might begin with a cocktail at the bar, move through to the bistro for dinner and finish the evening with the same open tab. Behind that traditional style of service is a modern operating system. GoTab has powered the venue from the day it opened in May 2025.
At a glance
- Opsi has helped us keep COGS of 30% or better
- Reduce wage costs by over 40%
- Achieve wage costs of 15% or better
- Thanks to the overall bundle (GoTab, Opsi, Fishbowl) we've reduced management admin time from 8 hours a week to 3, resulting in an extra 13% of customer facing time that helps drive overall sales.
Looking for something better
Before opening 98 Lygon Street, co-founders Simon Aukett and Ben Clark had worked with a range of hospitality platforms, including H&L, Tevalis and me&u.
While each system performed parts of the job, they often felt static, overly complicated or disconnected from the way modern software is expected to work. The team was preparing to move ahead with Square as a contemporary and convenient option when GoTab Australia approached them. From the first demonstration, GoTab felt different.
Its interface was intuitive and familiar, more like the applications people use every day than a traditional hospitality database. More importantly, the team behind it understood both the technology and the realities of running a venue.
“A POS system that does what it’s meant to — and has the willingness to do more.”
Simon Aukett, co-founder, 98 Lygon Street Bar & Bistro
There was one non-negotiable condition: GoTab needed to be fully operational by opening day, approximately six weeks away.
The answer was simple: they would get it done.
Built around the venue
Rather than changing its style of service to accommodate a new system, 98 Lygon Street worked with GoTab to configure the platform around the way the venue wanted to operate.
Four POS terminals connect the venue’s key service areas, while the Manager Dashboard gives managers access to daily sales figures, sales mix and spend-per-head reporting from their phones or laptops. GoTab also connects with the venue’s wider operational stack, including Xero, Deputy, OpenTable, and Adyen. Opsi supports recipe management, inventory and cost-of-goods tracking, while Fishbowl is beginning to help the team consolidate customer information and develop more relevant, targeted marketing.
The result is a platform that connects service, reporting, inventory and customer data rather than creating another disconnected layer of administration.
One guest journey, one continuous tab
A typical evening demonstrates where GoTab earns its place.
A guest arrives and begins with a drink in the bar. A tab is opened and the order is sent to the appropriate printer. When the guest moves into the bistro, the tab can be transferred to the new table and assigned to the relevant staff member.
Food orders are then routed to the kitchen, with the team confident that courses and instructions are being communicated correctly. At the end of the evening, a physical bill can be presented, payment completed at the table and the tab closed. What could become a complicated sequence of opening, moving, merging and recreating orders is handled through a straightforward transfer.
That simplicity matters during busy services. Staff spend less time navigating the POS and more time delivering the experience guests came for.
Speed where it matters
GoTab has also given the team greater control during service.
When the kitchen needs to add a new dish or make an item available for that evening, a manager can open a laptop, create the product and publish it to the POS in seconds.There is no lengthy back-office process and no need to wait for an external support team to update the menu.
The team also reports a reduction in settlement and administrative time, supported by live reporting and integrations that keep financial, stock and operational information connected.
Confidence under pressure
One of the clearest demonstrations came during a short-staffed service in which the team was running three private events across the bistro, courtyard and private dining room. Because the team trusted the system to send the right information to the right place—and to handle coursing correctly—they were able to keep each event moving without the technology becoming another source of pressure.
That reliability is particularly important on busy Friday and Saturday nights.
As the venue has evolved, GoTab has continued to refine workflows alongside the team, including the way courses, item counts, sold-out products and billing information are handled.
Local support that listens
For 98 Lygon Street, GoTab’s Australian support team has been as important as the platform itself.
When an issue arises during service, the venue needs assistance in real time—not when a support desk in another time zone begins its working day.The relationship has remained collaborative from the beginning. Feedback is listened to, immediate problems are addressed and larger requests are either added to the development process or explored with the venue.
That willingness to evolve has helped transform the relationship from a standard supplier arrangement into an ongoing partnership.
Technology that supports hospitality
98 Lygon Street is deliberately traditional in the way it welcomes and serves its guests. Orders are taken face to face, bills are presented at the table and staff remain at the centre of the experience.
GoTab works because it does not try to replace those interactions. It helps the team manage the operational complexity happening behind them.
For Simon, Ben and the team, the best hospitality technology is not necessarily the system guests notice. It is the system that helps the venue deliver a smoother, more confident and more personal service.