Buddy’s Bar: High-volume hospitality without the queues

Buddy’s Bar is a two-level self-serve bar in the heart of Newtown, offering a constantly changing selection of craft beer, premium wine, house-made cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks across more than 40 taps.

Alongside its self-serve tap wall, Buddy’s hosts DJs, live music, comedy and private functions, creating a lively venue that needs to process high volumes of guests quickly—without sacrificing the experience.

GoTab provides the operational layer behind it all, connecting Buddy’s PourMyBeer tap system with open tabs, RFID cards, food ordering and payments.

At a glance

• 25% increase in revenue at King Street Crawl
• Under 1 minute to set up a new customer
• 40+ self-serve taps
• $50 average weekend ticket value
• 20% labour cost on busy nights
• 100-person private function space

A self-serve concept slowed down by queues

Buddy’s was built around the idea of giving guests more freedom. Customers could load an RFID card, explore the tap wall and pour their own beer, wine or cocktails.

But its original Lightspeed POS operated separately from PourMyBeer. Guests had to purchase prepaid credit before they could pour, then return to the service desk every time their balance ran low. On a quiet night, the extra step was inconvenient. On Friday and Saturday nights, it created exactly the experience the self-serve system was designed to prevent: repeated queues, longer waits and frustrated customers.

Someone who needed another two dollars of credit to finish a wine still had to line up and speak to a staff member before continuing their night.

The night that exposed the problem

The limitations became especially clear during King Street Crawl, an annual Newtown music festival.

Buddy’s hosted five bands and eight DJs across the day, drawing one of the largest crowds in the venue’s trading history. With the existing system, guests were waiting as long as ten minutes simply to receive or reload a drinks card. For a venue centred around fast, self-directed service, it was the opposite of the experience Buddy’s wanted to offer.

The team knew the solution was not to add more people behind the check-in desk. It was to remove the need for guests to continually return there.

“GoTab is purpose-built for high-speed, high-volume bars. Guests can run a tab, walk out when they’re ready, and we take care of the rest.”


Duncan McGeoch, co-owner, Buddy’s Bar

From prepaid credit to a seamless tab

Buddy’s discovered GoTab through PourMyBeer’s network in the United States, where GoTab was already a leading POS integration partner.

The key difference was its ability to securely keep a guest’s payment method on file and connect it directly to the venue’s RFID system. When a guest arrives, a staff member activates an RFID drinks card at the check-in desk. The guest taps their credit card to pre-authorise payment, linking the two cards and opening a tab.

From there, the guest is free to explore the tap wall. Every beer, wine or cocktail they pour is added to their tab in real time. Food, merchandise, shots and drinks ordered from behind the bar can be added to the same account, either through a staff member or using a QR code at the table.

The “Uber experience” for a night out

Buddy’s describes the desired journey as an Uber-style experience.

Once a guest has checked in, they should not have to think about payment again. There is no need to monitor a prepaid balance, repeatedly reload a card or join another queue before leaving.

At the end of the night, guests can simply walk out. Open tabs are processed automatically, removing the final payment bottleneck and allowing the experience to end as smoothly as it began.

For the guest, it feels effortless. For the venue, it keeps people circulating through the space rather than congregating around a payment terminal.

A 25% revenue increase

When Buddy’s hosted King Street Crawl again the following year, GoTab had been implemented.

The difference was immediate.

Instead of ten-minute queues, guests could be checked in, receive an RFID card and begin pouring drinks in under a minute. They spent less time waiting and more time enjoying the music, food and drinks. With comparable entertainment costs and a similar peak trading period, Buddy’s recorded a 25% increase in revenue compared with the previous year.

For the team, it was clear evidence that removing friction did more than improve the guest experience. It created more opportunities to purchase throughout the day.

Built for busy nights

Today, Buddy’s operates with two front-of-house GoTab terminals and a spare roaming iPad that can be activated during especially busy services.

GoTab’s integration with PourMyBeer forms the core of the venue’s service model, while QR ordering allows guests to add food without leaving their table. The combination is particularly valuable on Friday and Saturday nights. A guest can be set up in less than a minute, begin pouring immediately and continue adding purchases to the same tab throughout their visit.

Rather than creating separate payment journeys for the tap wall, kitchen and bar, everything is kept together.

Making large functions simple

The same setup supports Buddy’s private events.

Its upstairs function room can accommodate up to 100 people, with many bookings bringing groups of 30 to 60 guests.

Before the event, staff can prepare individual RFID cards for every attendee and connect them to one central tab. When guests arrive, they are handed a card and can move directly to the tap wall. There is no need to process every guest individually, issue paper drink tokens or manually combine transactions at the end of the event.

One organiser provides the payment method. Every guest receives their own card. Every purchase flows back to the same tab.

More time for hospitality

Buddy’s self-serve model is designed to reduce repetitive service tasks, not remove hospitality from the venue.

Because staff are not constantly pouring beers, making basic mixed drinks or processing small card top-ups, they can spend more time in the room. The team describes its floor staff as “hospitality ambassadors”—welcoming guests, explaining the system, answering questions and making sure people are enjoying themselves.

GoTab and the self-serve tap wall handle the transactional work in the background, giving staff more freedom to start conversations and create a better atmosphere.

A clearer view of every tab

The GoTab Manager Portal gives Buddy’s management team access to live sales data from their phones, while also making it easier to resolve customer questions after a visit.

Staff can search for a transaction using the final four digits of a customer’s payment card, review the tab and email a receipt directly. That means concerns about a possible duplicate charge or questions about an order can be investigated quickly, without searching through disconnected systems or manually reconstructing the night’s transactions.

Support conversations are also visible across the team, allowing one staff member to begin a support request and another rostered employee to continue it later in the evening.

A POS that fits the concept

Buddy’s Bar was designed to make drinking, dining and socialising feel more flexible.

Its original POS forced guests into a prepaid process that worked against that vision. By integrating GoTab with the venue’s RFID cards and PourMyBeer system, Buddy’s has created a service flow that finally matches the idea behind the venue.

Guests arrive, open a tab, pour what they like, add food when they want it and leave without lining up to pay.

For Buddy’s, GoTab is not simply processing transactions. It is helping the entire self-serve concept work the way it was always meant to.