Front of house → front end

Fifteen years of
Friday nights taught
me more about systems
than most systems do.

I'm Poni ("PON-nee") — a calm, people-first hospitality leader with 15+ years running bars, restaurants and festival sites across New Zealand and Australia. LCQ-trained, IT-qualified, and just as comfortable rebuilding a roster at midnight as I am rebuilding the stock system behind it.

Let's talk about your venue See the career story ↓
Auckland, NZOpen to on-site, hybrid or live-in roles
15+ yearsHospitality leadership, NZ & AU
20+ venues & festivalsSplore · GOUD · multi-venue groups
Order #0417Table: Career
Hospitality leadership15+ yrs
Venues & festivals led20+
National cocktail titles2
Awards finalist3x
StatusOPEN TO OFFERS
The story, not the résumé

Two trades. One instinct.

Poni Sula smiling, seated outside a bar

I've spent fifteen-plus years on the floor — Wellington, Invercargill, Te Anau, Auckland, and a run of festival sites in between — doing every job a venue actually needs done: opening up, training staff, fixing a roster at midnight, talking a supplier back off the ledge, and closing out a night that somehow still felt calm.

In the middle of all that I picked up a Bachelor of Information Technology, partly out of curiosity and partly because I was tired of watching good teams get let down by bad systems — spreadsheets standing in for stock control, whiteboards standing in for compliance logs. So alongside the venue work, I started building the tools I actually wanted: Hosti for stock and festival operations, CraftIt for recipe and margin costing, and a compliance-and-scheduling platform for a transport franchise network.

"The best operators and the best engineers ask the same question on a bad night: where exactly is this about to break, and who's standing there when it does?"

Case in point: the night a raft race and a wine festival let out at the same time and 350 unexpectedly thirsty people arrived at once. Nobody plans for that. What you can do is make the call fast, protect the room, and turn it into a policy so it doesn't happen the same way twice — which is exactly what I did, and NZ Herald wrote it up (see Press & Media below).

I've led teams through Splore and the Gardens of Unearthly Delights, been a finalist for Contribution to Hospitality and Best Maître D', and — before any of that — spent a year teaching in Busan, Korea, which turned out to be its own crash course in reading a room. What I bring isn't a hospitality résumé or a tech résumé pretending to be the other. It's one person who's done both the 6am prep list and the 6am deploy, and leads accordingly.

Today I'm looking for a leadership role — venue, operations, or hospitality-technology — where that combination is the actual point, not a nice-to-have.

Career timeline

Where the experience actually comes from.

Expand any entry for the detail — responsibilities, wins, and the odd war story.

Led all bar operations for a busy CBD restaurant and bar, driving team performance, streamlining service delivery, and fostering a positive, high-morale workplace culture.

Alongside floor leadership like this, I've spent recent years building the hospitality software I wished existed — see Featured Projects for Hosti, CraftIt and the driving-service platform.

Built and led bar teams for major multi-day festival sites, managing logistics, licensing compliance, and large-scale service delivery under tight, unforgiving timeframes.

  • Recurring engagement across more than a decade of festival seasons.
  • Coordinated multi-bar stock, staffing and compliance across event-scale sites.

Oversaw all operations for a busy suburban bar and bistro. Directed team performance, improved service flow and morale, and lifted revenue through smarter scheduling and stronger guest engagement.

Led day-to-day operations, compliance, cash-ups, supplier coordination, and staff training. Cultivated a warm, reliable local following and increased guest return rates.

Ran floor and bar operations for a busy rural Southland pub, covering rostering, compliance, and supplier relationships.

Directed restaurant and bar service for a busy tourism venue. Balanced staff development, guest satisfaction, and operational efficiency to consistently meet targets.

Took the New Zealand playbook across the Tasman — the venue and cultural-adaptability experience that underpins working across both NZ and Australian hospitality markets.

Full General Manager responsibility across a run of venues, building the floor instincts and systems thinking everything since has been built on:

  • The Mangawhai Tavern, Mangawhai (Apr 2016–Jan 2019)
  • The White Rabbit, Auckland (2015)
  • Orleans, Auckland (2014–15)
  • Scarlett Slimms & Lucky, Auckland (2014) — featured in Metro and Remix magazine
  • The Royal, Wellington (2011)
  • Matterhorn, Wellington (2008–10)
  • Monsoon Poon, Auckland (2012–14)
  • Monsoon Poon, Wellington (2006)
  • Vurtigo, Wellington (2002)
  • Vespa Lounge, Wellington (2001)

Strengthened negotiation, supplier, and relationship-management skills that carried straight through into venue and stakeholder management.

Trained bartenders nationally on spirits and cocktail craft — the groundwork behind the National Champion and Cocktail Bartender of the Year titles that followed (see Awards).

Developed mentoring and communication abilities that translate directly into hospitality leadership — reading a room, holding attention, and adapting on the fly.

Qualifications & certifications

The paperwork behind the practice.

Licence

LCQ / Duty Manager Certified

Licence Controller Qualification — renewal-ready. Full NZ work rights, full driver licence.

Technology

Bachelor of Information Technology

Southern Institute of Technology, Invercargill — 2022. Top Jade Programmer Award, 2021.

Teaching

Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Secondary)

Victoria University of Wellington — 2008.

Arts

Bachelor of Arts, History

Victoria University of Wellington — 2007.

Commerce

Bachelor of Commerce, Accounting

1998.

Systems

POS, EFTPOS & Inventory Systems

Rosters, cash-ups, analytics — hands-on across every venue listed in the career timeline.

Awards & recognition

A few nights that got noticed.

2012

Lewisham Awards Finalist

Personality of the Year

2011

Capital Awards Finalist

Contribution to Hospitality

2010

Capital Awards Finalist

Best Maître D'

2001

National Champion

Absolut National Cocktail Championship

1999

Galliano Cocktail Bartender of the Year

National recognition

In the press

A few times this made the news.

2014 · SunLive & Scoop

Judge, Diageo Reserve World Class National Final

Judged the speed-round bartending category at Ponsonby's Revelry Bar for New Zealand's national leg of the world's top mixology competition.

2013 · Scoop

Lewisham Awards finalist

Named a finalist for Outstanding Hospitality Personality alongside three of Auckland's best-known hospitality faces.

2012 · Otago Daily Times

$10 Queenstown Challenge to Cure Kids — winning team

Raced across the South Island on $10, ending with a haka at Hotel St Moritz — part of an event that raised $313,000 for Cure Kids.

NZ Herald

Managing the unexpected, on the record

When 350 extra guests turned up after two local events collided, went on record about the night and the venue policy that followed.

2018 · Local Matters

Organiser, Mangawhai Speed Shear

Brought a $10,000-prize sheep-shearing competition to the tavern as a charity fundraiser for Pillars, supporting children of prisoners.

How I lead

Leadership philosophy.

Three things I actually believe, not three things that sound good in an interview.

01

Systems, not heroics

A great shift shouldn't depend on one person being a genius under pressure. I build rosters, checklists and tools so the team's second-best night is still a good one.

02

Tell people the truth, early

Most staff and supplier problems are actually communication problems wearing a costume. I'd rather have an uncomfortable conversation on Tuesday than a crisis on Saturday.

03

Fix the process, not just the night

When something breaks on the floor, my first question is never "who" — it's "what let this happen, and how do we make it structurally harder to happen again."

Featured projects

Software built by someone who's worked the floor.

Stock · Events · Multi-venue

Hosti

Founder & Lead Developer

The problem: Festival and multi-bar events needed a shared way to track stock, wastage and per-bar performance — instead of five disconnected spreadsheets that were out of date by the second round.

My role: Designed and built the departments/areas/items data model, wastage rules, and per-bar reporting from the ground up. Hosti started life as a single all-in-one hospitality platform — recipes, costing and stock all in one place — before I split the recipe and costing side out into its own product (CraftIt) so each app could do one job properly instead of two jobs adequately. What's left is a focused, festival-tested stock and event-day tool, currently mid-migration from its original data model onto a cleaner shared departments/areas/items structure across every bar on site.

The impact: A single live source of truth for event-day stock across every bar on site, replacing manual reconciliation at the end of each event.

React NativeFirebase / FirestoreReal-time data
Recipes · Costing · Hospitality

CraftIt

Founder & Product Lead

The problem: Chefs and bartenders routinely price menus and cocktails on gut feel, not real ingredient cost — margins quietly disappear as supplier prices move.

My role: Led product discovery across two user modes (professional and home), designed the search-first recipe catalogue, substitution logic, and drag-to-reorder recipe cards with PDF export.

The impact: Gives operators a live, accurate view of true dish and drink cost — turning pricing from a guess into a decision.

React NativeAI-assisted recognitionFreemium model
Charity · Community · Founder

Shifts for Change

Founder

The problem: Hospitality gives a lot to a community while alcohol, unavoidably, takes some away. There wasn't an easy, industry-native way to put something back.

My role: Founded and ran the concept — bartenders and venues donate a whole shift, suppliers donate stock to sell on the night, and every dollar of proceeds goes straight to charity. No cost to the business, since the donation is tax-deductible; all upside for the cause.

The impact: 32 hospitality staff donated shifts across venues including Racket, Revelry, Mea Culpa and Rich Heart, raising more than $5,000 for 11 different charities — then took the concept to Melbourne.

Founder-ledIndustry partnershipsCharity fundraising
32staff donated shifts
11charities supported
Transport · Compliance · Franchise network

Companion Driving Platform

Founder & Lead Developer

The problem: A driving-service franchise network was juggling scheduling, routing, compliance logging and Total Mobility subsidy processing across separate, disconnected systems.

My role: Researching the operator landscape (mapping, existing operator APIs, ACC billing workflows) and building a single platform to replace the patchwork — priced to make adoption an easy yes for franchisees.

The impact: Currently pre-launch. Built to replace three disconnected systems with one, priced so adoption is an easy yes for franchisees rather than a hard sell.

React NativeGoogle Maps PlatformFirebaseCompliance automation
What I actually bring

Skills, in plain language.

Leadership & team development

Inspiring and guiding teams of varying sizes through clarity, trust, and shared purpose.

Team leadershipMentoring

Guest experience excellence

Known for pace, precision, and genuine hospitality under real pressure.

Service standardsGuest engagement

Operational efficiency

Rostering, cost control, ordering, cash-ups, and full financial accountability.

RosteringCost control

Event & festival operations

Large-scale coordination and compliance for major events — Splore, Gardens of Unearthly Delights.

LogisticsMulti-site

Health & safety compliance

LCQ-trained; upholding safe, professional, and compliant venues as standard practice.

LCQH&S

Systems & technology

POS, EFTPOS, rosters, inventory and analytics — plus an IT degree that lets me build the fix myself.

React NativeFirebase
In their words

What it's like working with me.

"Poni is a hugely positive influence on those around him, consistently leading from the front, whilst empowering people to succeed and creating an environment of trust and confidence for his team. He genuinely thrives in a busy environment, loves looking after people, and values great communication with a goal of creating excellent service experiences every time."

Nicola Richards
Owner-Operator, One Red Dog & Monsoon Poon; Venue Manager, Harbourside Ocean Grill and Bar

"I've worked for and with Poni in the events circuit for many years. His biggest asset is his ability to work with people, to share his vision of a successful outcome and get the best out of those around him."

Chris Simpson
Events industry colleague

"No matter what idea I brought to you, you made it bigger than I ever thought possible. You taught me how to navigate a licensed premises that was struggling to hold its licence, and because of that I can comfortably work in any venue facing that same challenge. You also sat us all down one day and taught us about personality types — you made me feel good about myself and like I could actually achieve things. It was a privilege to work with you, and honestly, the growth you gave me went well beyond just work."

Lailene Greatorex
Assistant Manager, Mangawhai Tavern

"I've worked with so many people, but no one has even come close to matching Poni's energy, determination, spirit, and positivity. He genuinely cares so much about each and every person on the team."

Wai Scott
Head Chef, The Realm, Hataitai

"Poni is the kind of person every festival bar hopes to have on shift. Calm under pressure, endlessly reliable, and always leading by example, he has a knack for keeping both the team and the service running smoothly, even when the queue seems to stretch to the horizon. He genuinely cares about the people he works with, communicates clearly, and somehow manages to make the busiest shifts feel just a little more manageable — and a lot more enjoyable."

Tam Boakes
Bars Manager, The Garden of Unearthly Delights

"Over the past decade, Poni has worked for me, as I have worked for him and also, beside him. His knowledge of hospitality systems and protocols is a solid boost to any event he's involved in, no matter the role. Poni brings an attitude, work ethic and experience that is, in my opinion based on 30+ years in the hospitality industry, an unmatched and immeasurable quantity that lends to the success of any event or venue he's involved with."

Shayle Rogan
Entrepreneur, Festival Operations Manager & Festival Consultant

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