How Maroochydore’s Market Bistro Serves Up Success With Zeller

Two hospitality veterans combine forces.

When COVID forced Luke to return back to Australia from Indonesia, where he’d been running Mason, Fishbone Local and The Back Room for The Brett Hospitality Group, a chance conversation with famed Sunshine Coast restauranteur Tony Kelly paved the way for a future collaboration between the two industry stalwarts.

"After long stints in high-profile venues in Melbourne and Brisbane, I moved to Indonesia to run some great fine dining restaurants over there” explains Luke. “But when COVID hit, I came back to Australia, and, being friends with Tony [Kelly] on Facebook, he saw that I was on the Sunshine Coast. He asked me to come on board to manage one of his other restaurants, Spero Greek.”

“Within a short period of time we realised we were compatible and we wanted to do more together and he mentioned he wanted to open a bistro. As luck would have it, I actually had a bistro concept that I'd worked on a couple of years ago. So I showed him the idea I’d been working on and he said ‘Exactly that’. So we got to work to make it a reality.”

Elevating dining in Maroochydore.

Opting for local produce wherever possible, Market Bistro’s menu can best be described as a modern Australian take on a quintessential European-style bistro, specialising in woodfired steaks, fresh seafood, and house-made pasta. The vibe is casual yet stylish, elegant yet unpretentious.

Staying true to classic bistro style, the restaurant doesn’t close between lunch and dinner, so guests can drop in anytime for a steak, caviar, crayfish, or a hearty bowl of pasta. The restaurant seats between 120 and 140 patrons and boasts a loyal clientele who return time and again.

"The community has really embraced us and we’ve seen many of our regulars grow with us. First the wife is pregnant, then they’re in with a baby, then the baby is running around the restaurant.

“I honestly hope in my heart that Market Bistro is the sort of venue that's still there in 20 or 30 years' time, because it feels like it could be. I want to see it become that reliable inner-city style institution where people go there, then their kids go there and so on. It’s very rewarding to grow with the community.”

Ditching the ‘big 4’, switching to Zeller.   

After starting out with a traditional ‘big 4’ bank for EFTPOS payments, Market Bistro switched to Zeller competitor Tyro, but their widely-publicised outage in 2021 caused the business to reconsider its options.

"Initially, we were with National Australia Bank. Back in the day, everyone went with a bank because that’s just what you did,” Luke explains.

“But then new options popped up, like Tyro. This opened the door for people to stop going with banks by default. But when Tyro went down for three-weeks, we lost confidence in them and temporarily went back to using NAB.”

“As a restaurant where 90% of transactions are through EFTPOS terminals, you need to know that if something goes offline, it’ll come back quickly. That’s where Zeller has really excelled for us. Their uptime and the ease of tipping within the Zeller system has been fantastic."

Reaching a tipping point.

The move to tableside payments has been excellent for both restaurants and customers as it speeds up the process considerably, but a poorly-integrated tipping process meant diners were tipping a lot less. Thankfully, Zeller’s tipping function solved this problem seamlessly.

"Tipping became difficult when people stopped signing at the table and started just pressing a keypad – it got lost. It’s just awkward to stand there after someone’s spent $500 and ask for a tip. A lot of tips were missed because of that – not because people didn’t want to tip but because they forgot or they felt like pressing the bank keypad was going to extend the awkwardness.”

“I saw another restaurant using Zeller’s tipping function and thought, ‘Why aren’t we doing that?’ The NAB terminal we were using didn’t have that functionality. You had to awkwardly ask, ‘Would you like to leave a tip?’ which no waiter wants to do, especially not the business owner.”

“Since switching to Zeller and using the tipping function, we’ve noticed a massive uplift in tips, at least 20-25%. It’s been amazing for my team, many of whom are career waiters. I’m in my 50s, and several of my key employees are too. We’ve been doing this for a living for years, and it’s nice to be rewarded for what we do."

"Another phenomenal feature is the ease of splitting bills. We often get tables of 12 who want to split the bill at the end of the night, which can be a nightmare. Zeller makes it simple. You just key in the total amount, divide by the number of people, and take payments. It’s seamless."

Luke also highlights the intuitive nature of the Zeller Dashboard, which makes it simple to track transactions and manage payments. "I’m not super tech-savvy, but it’s simple to log in and find what I need. That level of simplicity is invaluable."