In February 2023, the founders of two competing hospitality technology businesses sat down at Totti’s in Sydney. Kim Teo and Adrian Osman had built Mr Yum. Stevan Premutico had built me&u. Until then, Teo had seen little reason to meet the opposition. Dinner lasted more than three hours. The restaurant was doing what restaurants do: making it easier for people to get along.
- QR ordering is the entrance. Payments, loyalty and guest data are the larger business.
- The 2023 Mr Yum merger brought two rival networks under the me&u name.
- The useful lesson for venues: fix the bottleneck, then connect the systems around it.
Dinner with the opposition
Teo later told the Australian Institute of Company Directors that she liked Premutico and then-me&u CEO Katrina Barry more after the meal. Both businesses had picked the UK and North America for expansion. At different times, they had even occupied the same coworking hub in Austin. Their rivalry was following them overseas. The duplication suddenly looked less sensible.
By November, the companies had merged under the me&u name, with Teo as CEO. Premutico, who launched the original me&u platform in 2019 after founding restaurant-booking business Dimmi, became a non-executive director. The announcement put annual dining transactions above A$2 billion. That is money passing through the platform, a measure of meals and drinks sold by venues.
“I liked Stevan and Katrina a lot more after that dinner.”Kim Teo / CEO, me&u
The queue was eating the room
To understand the business, look at Shelly Beach. In me&u’s Boathouse Group case study, a busy Sunday once meant waiting 45 minutes just to order. A whole section of the venue held the queue. Guests were standing where they could have been sitting. The coastline supplied the attraction; the till supplied the obstruction.
The group connected me&u ordering with Lightspeed’s point-of-sale system. It reports immediate order placement, with daily reconciliation falling from 30 minutes to under five. Stock, modifiers and prices flow through the connected setup. Sold-out items disappear from the menu. Guests no longer have to discover, after paying, that lunch exists only on a screen.
Shelly Beach still uses different service styles in different sections. Some guests order themselves; others receive table service. The important choice is where to remove waiting. The software cannot cook the meal or make a crowded kitchen larger. It can stop an ordering queue from occupying the dining room.
One checkout. Several kitchens.
me&u sells to pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes, food halls and hospitality groups. Its menu of products reflects the different ways those places operate. Order & Pay lets guests browse a visual menu and transact on their phones. Pay handles the bill, including splits by item, percentage or amount. A venue can keep its familiar service and change the last few minutes.
Multi-vendor ordering addresses another small absurdity: friends sit together in a food hall, then scatter to buy dinner. Guests can choose from several vendors and make one payment. Hybrid flows combine server and guest ordering; Crew gives staff tools to manage service. These are different answers to the same operational question: where does the handoff become awkward?
The company sits between venue operations and guest relationships. Its distinction is the breadth of that connection, rather than the QR code alone. A venue could assemble separate ordering, payments and marketing tools. me&u offers those functions together, while its APIs and integrations let operators retain other systems. Integration is part of the product’s practical value.
The expensive middle
Putting rivals together did not immediately make the economics tidy. The original me&u raised A$30 million in December 2022, led by Acorn Capital. Its funding arrived in a period when both businesses were cutting jobs and trying to reach profitability. The earlier appetite for expansion had collided with a less forgiving capital market.
Teo’s March 2026 account describes a loss-making first year of integration. Teams, customers and systems needed bringing together. More than 1,000 venues moved onto the continuing platform. She says the business became profitable in the second half of 2025. The sequence matters: the merger created a possibility; migration and consolidation did the work.
Culture had its own migration. Employees entered a fresh shared Slack workspace. Four offices received the new branding. Staff from both businesses helped develop new values. These were mundane changes with a clear purpose: stop yesterday’s competitor remaining today’s other team.
For venues, the cost is contractual. me&u’s payout guide describes an agreed platform fee deducted before proceeds reach the venue, using Stripe Connect. An operator’s calculation also includes setup, training and the fit with existing tools. Time saved at the till is useful only if the rest of the operation can use it.
Remember the guest
The second opportunity begins after the bill. Connect CRM brings guest information together for segmented email and SMS marketing. Loyalty adds rewards and promotions. “For You” uses previous orders across the network to personalise menus. The ambition is recognisable: give software some of the memory of a bartender who knows your usual.
Pancake Parlour offers a concrete example. It relaunched its Lovely Rewards app with me&u ordering integration in June 2025. The company’s case study reports order volume up 33% and total sales up 14% during the first four weeks against the corresponding prior-year period. Guests could still order without the app; members gained rewards. That comparison describes the whole relaunch, so it cannot isolate software’s contribution.
In 2026, me&u widened the brief to reservations, Voice AI and function management, co-designed with operators including Solotel and Artemus Group. Teo says the build took roughly a year and was financed from revenue. The intended benefit is one guest profile across more encounters, including the phone call before dinner.
Start with the bottleneck
The copyable idea is modest. Measure where guests wait and staff repeat work. Connect ordering to stock and the till. Give people a service option they will use. Check fees against margin, and test the busy shift. A phone-led experience needs willing guests and working connectivity; a loyalty campaign needs permission and a reason to return.
At Totti’s, the founders learned something by sharing a table. Their company now sells tools that should leave more of the evening available for exactly that.