Stratosphere helps hospitality businesses identify where AI creates real efficiency and EBITDA impact, then implements it with the rigour of an operator who has delivered it under genuine commercial pressure.
Why Stratosphere
Three problems sit at the root of almost every failed AI engagement in hospitality. We built Stratosphere to solve each of them — not with better technology, but with better operational thinking.
Most hospitality businesses already have the tools. What they lack is the operational structure to extract value from them — the diagnosis, the prioritisation, and the implementation rigour that turns software spend into P&L improvement.
Generic AI firms arrive with frameworks and leave with fees. They don’t know what a 68% labour percentage feels like at 11pm on a Tuesday. We do. That difference determines whether what gets built actually gets used.
The technology is rarely the problem. The change management is. Every Stratosphere engagement ends with your team fully owning what’s been built — not dependent on us to maintain it.
The Stratosphere difference
Two decades of P&L accountability across 48 sites and £87m in annual turnover. Not case studies. Actual operational experience, with real commercial consequences for getting it wrong.
“Most AI firms learn our industry on the job.We already know it. We ran it.”
Services
A long-term operational engagement, or a scoped project with a defined outcome. Both are anchored in the same discipline: commercial diagnosis first, technology second.
For businesses that need senior operational leadership and AI capability in one engagement. Stratosphere embeds at the leadership level, joining your operational rhythm, understanding your commercial pressures, and building the AI strategy from inside the business rather than consulting from the outside.
This isn’t a report. It’s operational leadership with a commercial mandate, accountability to the P&L, board-level communication, and a team that exits knowing how to sustain what’s been built.
A structured diagnostic of your operations to identify where AI creates genuine commercial value. We map your workflows, quantify the opportunity, prioritise by ROI, and build the implementation roadmap.
For businesses with a strategy that needs executing. We take the plan from paper to operation, managing the implementation, driving team adoption, and ensuring the investment lands where it’s supposed to.
A deep-dive into your operational and commercial performance. Identifies efficiency gaps, cost leakage, and AI-addressable improvement areas, with a prioritised action plan.
The Approach
Every engagement follows the same discipline: understand the commercial problem before recommending a solution. AI is applied where it earns its place — nowhere else.
We start with your P&L, your operations, and your people — mapping where performance is being lost and where cost is leaking.
We model the commercial return of each opportunity, rank by EBITDA impact, and build a roadmap that ownership can back with confidence.
We manage implementation end-to-end — technology selection, deployment, and the change management that determines whether your team actually adopts it.
Every engagement ends with your team fully owning what’s been built — trained, confident, and able to keep improving without us.
Case Studies
Three engagements. Different sectors, identical discipline: understand the commercial problem first, apply AI only where it earns its place on the P&L.
A 12-site casual dining group was carrying an estimated 6–8% labour overspend across its portfolio. Rotas were built manually by site managers without visibility of demand forecasts, historical patterns, or cross-site benchmarking. The result: consistent overstaffing on quiet days, understaffing on high-demand periods, and a guest experience that reflected it.
The group had explored scheduling software previously but adoption had failed — the technology was implemented without operational context, and managers reverted to spreadsheets within weeks.
A growing independent was experiencing three interconnected operational problems: significant stock waste from manual ordering processes, a leaking customer journey with high drop-off between enquiry and confirmed booking, and a CRM strategy that wasn’t converting existing clients into repeat visits.
These aren’t technology problems. They’re operational problems, structurally identical to challenges Stratosphere has addressed across multi-site hospitality at significant scale.
An independent pizzeria was experiencing three compounding problems: food costs running 4–5 points above where they should have been, a delivery and collection channel underperforming despite genuine demand, and no reliable mechanism to bring lapsed customers back into the business.
The opportunity was clear. The time and tools to act on it weren’t. And like most independent operators, the technology already existed in the business, it just wasn’t being used to its potential.
About Stratosphere
Stratosphere was founded on a simple observation: most AI firms approach hospitality from the outside. They learn the sector on the job. We approach it from the inside — with two decades of P&L accountability, brand development, and performance transformation in some of the UK’s most demanding multi-site environments.
Matt Stansbury, founder of Stratosphere, spent over 20 years in senior operational leadership within UK hospitality, rising to Chief Operating Officer of a national portfolio of 48 restaurants with £87m in annual turnover.
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During that tenure: a 4.2% EBITDA uplift. A 40-point NPS improvement. Record sales of £87m and EBITDA of £17m. Delivered through operational rigour, team development, and the disciplined use of data.
“Most AI firms learn our industry on the job.We already know it. We ran it.”
What clients say
“Working with Stratosphere surfaced a £180k labour saving we hadn’t seen in three years of P&L reviews. Within six weeks every site manager was using the system, without being told to.”
Operations Director, Multi-Site Casual Dining Group
“Most consultants tell you what’s possible. Matt showed us what’s practical, and then built it. The stock waste alone paid for the engagement. I didn’t need to understand the technology. I just needed it to work and it did.”
Carrie, Owner & Founder, Blend
“The audit alone was worth it. Matt identified three areas we’d never quantified, the engagement that followed paid for itself inside four months.”
Finance Director, Contract Catering Group
“I make great pizzas, I’m not a tech person. I was skeptical but Matt didn’t try to teach me AI, he fixed the numbers. Food waste down, regulars coming back more often, and I actually understand what’s happening in my business now. Best decision I made this year.”
Marco, Founder, Mamo’s
“I’ve worked with a lot of consulting firms. Stratosphere is the first one that came in understanding the pressure a COO is actually under, and built solutions that worked with that reality, not against it.”
Chief Operating Officer, National Restaurant Portfolio
Request an Audit
An operational audit is a structured 60-minute session in which we examine your current performance, identify where AI can create measurable commercial improvement, and give you a clear sense of what an engagement could deliver.
Stratosphere works with hospitality businesses typically turning over £1m–£100m across 1–50 sites.
No obligation. No generic AI brochure. Just an honest, operator-to-operator conversation about your business.
No preparation required. Bring your questions and a sense of where the friction is.
Honest assessment. If AI isn’t the right answer for a particular problem, we’ll say so.
Commercial framing. Every conversation is anchored in EBITDA, labour cost, and revenue.
Response within 24 hours. You’ll hear back promptly with available times.