How a global hospitality group replaced messy paper and handwritten labels with one shared system
SmartSense acquired Jolt in 2025. The two teams now operate together, combining SmartSense's monitoring solution with Jolt's task-management and operations software. The result is a single service, equipment, and software offering built on both companies' technology. The story below originally described this customer's experience with Jolt, which is now part of SmartSense. Learn more about the SmartSense platform.
Who TAO Is
Tao Group Hospitality develops, owns, and operates some of the world's most successful restaurant and nightlife venues. Following its 2021 merger with Hakkasan Group, the company operates more than 60 entertainment venues worldwide, spanning best-in-class cuisine, Michelin-starred restaurants, and award-winning nightlife. With more than 25 years in the industry, TAO builds its business around one thing: the guest experience.
Where Things Started
For a company operating at that scale, paper was quietly becoming a liability. TAO's teams tracked tasks and processes on paper checklists, and the cracks showed daily. Matt Hughes, Vice President of Culinary Practices & Operations at Tao Group Hospitality, described the problem plainly.
"Using paper checklists was messy. You walk around writing things down all day, and the papers get dirty or ripped. Not to mention, it can be difficult to read other people's handwriting."
The bigger problem was oversight. With venues around the world, TAO's leaders couldn't be everywhere at once, and they needed a way to know standards were being met when no manager was in the room.
"We were looking for a way to create accountability and ensure that our processes were being followed, without having to have leaders on-site 24/7. A system that sends real-time alerts, provides visibility anytime, anywhere, and could manage businesses with multiple locations."
Food labeling was its own headache. TAO employs people from around the world who speak many languages, so the team had started using numbers instead of sauce names to make labels easier for everyone to read. But the handwritten tape labels wore out and got dirty, just like the checklists. As Hughes put it, "it just wasn't sustainable."
One System for Two Problems
TAO went looking for fixes to both the checklist and the labeling problem, and found them in a single platform, adopting the Lists and Labeling products together.
The Lists product gave managers a way to check task completion from a mobile device, anytime and anywhere. TAO could build standard lists to use across every location and even require employees to upload a photo or scan a QR code to prove a task was done to standard.
The team found an unplanned use for it, too: purchasing. "We have replaced our traditional yield sheets with Jolt. We are able to quickly track the cost of each portion of food in Jolt, then enter that date in our purchasing software later. It makes for a quicker process- saving us time and money, especially in these times of high food cost and supply chain issues," said Hughes.
The Labeling System tackled the handwriting problem directly. Instead of writing tape labels by hand, employees tap the product name, enter a quantity if needed, and the system calculates and prints automatically. It also captures compliance data along the way. "It's great because there are certain time and temp requirements outlined by the health department. Jolt records these automatically for us, so the team is able to work faster, increasing their efficiency as well as ensuring we are providing the highest quality food and best experience possible to our customers," Hughes explained.
Engagement turned out to matter as much as automation. As Matt Hughes, Vice President of Culinary Practices & Operations, noted, "We really like the gamification feature within Jolt Lists. It keeps our employees engaged and helps us to reward them for good work."
What Changed
With digital checklists in place, TAO could see what was getting done, and what wasn't, in real time. One benefit caught them by surprise. "We don't have papers laying around or taped all over the place anymore!"
On the labeling side, consistency arrived. Every label now follows the same format, so any employee can read and understand it, and TAO's walk-ins look cleaner and more organized as a result.
Hughes summed up the philosophy behind it all: "the bottom line is that if you make things easy for people, they will do it. If you don't, they won't. Technology and automation are incredibly helpful in making things easy. Jolt builds accountability and consistency across our brand which provides us with a competitive advantage in this fast-paced industry."
Or, more simply: "If I were talking to someone about Jolt, I would tell them that Jolt is a system that creates a universal language for your team," stated Hughes.
The solutions behind the story
TAO Group Hospitality relies on:
- SmartSense Operate, so the whole team does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.
- SmartSense Label, which speeds up label-making and cuts human error.
