Urban Pubs - Project Management

Ballards was commissioned to provide project management services for Urban Pubs & Bars, supporting the successful implementation of Zonal's Menu Manager and Enterprise Stocks systems.

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Key challenge

Urban Pubs & Bars was undergoing a strategic digital transformation, consolidating multiple systems for food and wet stock management. The core challenge was ensuring a seamless transition from legacy platforms to a unified Zonal suite, all while minimising disruption to operations and managing a multi-phase rollout. A further challenge was bridging communication between Zonal’s technical delivery team and the Urban Pubs operational stakeholders to ensure timelines, expectations, and deliverables remained aligned.

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Work completed

Ballards played a pivotal role in facilitating procurement discussions and cross-party coordination between Urban Pubs and Zonal. The Ballards project manager acted as the central liaison, ensuring clear, continuous communication across all teams, while maintaining a structured, milestone-driven delivery plan.

Ballards: 

• Chaired recurring project meetings and tracked over 100 detailed actions across multiple project phases. 
• Supported technical configuration and data validation by working with both Zonal and Urban's ops/chef teams 
• Mitigated training dependencies by confirming schedules, co-developing plans for head office, site-level, and supplier engagement 
• Oversaw risk management including defining risk mitigations
• Maintained momentum through transparent progress updates, clear documentation, and issue resolution processes
• Ensured all of the project team were held accountable for their project actions and deliverables 

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Results

The phased rollout successfully transitioned Urban Pubs away from the legacy solutions into a streamlined, fully integrated platform. Food ordering and recipe management was centralised through Menu Manager, while stock control was enhanced via Enterprise Stocks, enabling Urban to manage both wet and dry stock in a single environment. The change is expected to yield significant savings on food GP through improved controls and operational insights, while also delivering savings on software licensing.

Ballards' project management provided clarity, consistency, and accountability throughout the implementation, playing a crucial role in delivering a system that now underpins the group’s end-to-end stock and menu processes.