Why we built Paddl.

By year five of running cafés, we had built a stack of spreadsheets, Notion pages, paper checklists, and WhatsApp groups that, in aggregate, was meant to be our compliance system. It mostly worked. It also failed quietly in ways we did not notice until an inspector pointed them out.

The three things that broke us

1. Records that lived on paper

Temperature logs in a folder on top of the chiller. Cleaning sign-offs on a clipboard by the back door. Fine when the EHO turns up. Useless when you need to know whether a particular member of staff actually did the deep clean on Tuesday. We needed the data, but we did not have it.

2. Things that needed to happen on a schedule

PAT testing. Fridge calibration. Pest control visits. Allergen menu reviews when a supplier changed ingredients. All of it on a calendar somewhere, all of it occasionally forgotten because the calendar was not the system, the calendar was a memory aid.

3. New staff coming up to speed

Every new starter needed allergen training, food safety basics, the recipes, the opening and closing routines, the supplier list, the SDS for the cleaning chemicals, and a tour of where everything was. We did this inconsistently and it showed.

What Paddl actually does

The short version: Paddl is the system we wished we had at Harbourside. It does the routines, the records, the knowledge hub, the training, the equipment maintenance, the supplier admin, the EHO paperwork, and the day-to-day operations bits. It is built to be used by people on the floor, on a phone, between covers.

If you are running a hospitality business now and any of this sounds familiar, start a free trial. The site you are reading is full of the lessons we built into it.