Nick Carter
Web developer, product founder and agency owner, focused on hospitality. Managing partner of a seven-venue group, builder of the platform it trades on, and head of a development team.
I run a seven-venue hospitality group in the North West and I build the software it runs on. Most operators buy their systems and live with the gaps. I've always ended up writing the thing myself: EPOS, CMS and ecommerce for a retail business before its PLC exit, Table Order for 1,600 UK venues during Covid, and now Control Suite, carrying £6m of trade a year.
So I know both sides of every hospitality technology conversation: what a duty manager does at eleven on a Saturday, and what it takes to build a system that survives it.
Founder Prooflive.ai2026 - now
- Website platform for UK businesses: sites made in a conversation from the owner's design, checked page by page, then hosted with email, enquiries, DNS and search set up.
- Built it end to end: hosting, DNS, mail, billing and the build API. prooflive.ai
Founder Control Suite2024 - now
- All-in-one hospitality software: EPOS, table bookings, stock, rotas, loyalty and customer messaging for UK bars, restaurants and venues.
- Carries £6m of trade a year across The 85 Group, plus five external clients in beta. controlsuite.co.uk
Managing Partner The 85 Group HospitalityJun 2018 - now
- Seven venues in the North West, over £6m turnover, hundreds of staff. Site appraisal, fit-out, launch and trading on every opening.
- The group trades on Control Suite, which I built and license.
- P&L across all sites: labour, GP, stock variance, supplier terms and capex.
- Selected, integrated and replaced the full stack: EPOS, payments, bookings, CRM, networking and lighting control.
- Use AI tooling where it saves real hours. Build timelines on Control Suite have gone from months to weeks.
- Led the group through Covid, protecting jobs through phased reopening.
Technical Director Focus & CoJan 2013 - now
- Focus & Co Design Boutique, Freedom Hosting and Freedom Cloud Networking: hosting and support for 600+ clients, hundreds of thousands of daily users.
- Fractional IT for hospitality groups: networks, card estates, Microsoft 365 tenants, MSP takeovers, PCI DSS and GDPR.
- Manage outsourced suppliers across hosting, connectivity, hardware and payments; hold them to SLAs and replace them when they miss.
- Built Table Order during Covid: 1,600 UK venues, millions of orders.
- Worked with eBay on the 2013 Argos Click & Collect launch, 800 stores and 3 million parcels.
- Lead designers, developers and IT engineers on platforms and bespoke integrations.
Entertainment Director Baluga Bar & ClubMay 2014 - May 2018
- Talent booking, programming, AV and brand across a multi-format event schedule.
- Launched The Kitchen, a late-night food offer.
Senior Partner Ted CarterSep 2009 - Jun 2018
- Built EPOS, CMS and multichannel ecommerce from scratch.
- Grew turnover from under £1m to £9m and raised £2m for national expansion. Sold to Angling Direct PLC.
- Ted Carter TV was one of the first hundred YouTube Live broadcasters.
Chief Engineer Prime Security SolutionsJun 2012 - Jan 2015
- CCTV, access control and control rooms for bars, nightclubs and major festivals.
- Built rapid-deployment mobile-data CCTV when none was on the market.
- Ran emergency response control rooms at several UK festivals.
Leadership
Multi-site P&L, leading design, development and engineering teams, board advisory, vendor selection and contracts, capex, rollouts.
IT
Infrastructure, suppliers and MSPs, cybersecurity, PCI DSS, GDPR, AI implementation and governance, Microsoft 365, Apple Business Manager and MDM, UniFi networks, backups and disaster recovery.
Technical review
Codebase and architecture, version control, deployment, server setup, written up in plain English.
Languages
PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Swift.
Integrations
REST APIs, OAuth2, payment gateways, payroll exports, DMX lighting control, mail migration.
Domain
EPOS, CRM, tiered loyalty, stock, table management, order-to-table, reporting.