Two days on the floor at AHG. Here’s what the industry told us about where hospitality is really heading.
Brisbane showed up for AHG this year. Over two days at the Convention Centre, more than 4,000 venue operators, suppliers, and industry professionals walked the floor. If you spent any time in the right conversations, a pretty clear picture of where the industry’s head is at started to emerge. We were at Stand 97 alongside our Cooking the Books and Grub Labs colleagues. Here’s what we took away.
The room was clubs — and that’s telling
Walk the floor at AHG and one thing becomes obvious quickly: this is a club industry event. RSLs, bowls clubs, golf clubs, surf clubs, memorials. The pub contingent is there, but the heartbeat of AHG is Queensland’s registered club sector, an industry that employs tens of thousands of people and serves millions of members annually.
That matters for how you read the conversations happening on the floor. These are not operators chasing the next trend. They are venue managers running complex, community-anchored businesses where gaming revenue, food and beverage margins, and wage costs all have to work together, and where the regulatory environment is tightening whether they’re ready or not.
Wednesday was flat-out. Thursday thinned, but the conversations on both days were substantive. The venues that showed up were serious.
“Gaming compliance was a hot topic everywhere on the AHG floor. The venues that aren’t across their obligations are going to find out the hard way, and the window to get ahead of it is closing.”Quantaco Team — AHG Expo, Brisbane 2026
Two topics came up everywhere
The first was gaming compliance. It came up at almost every conversation worth having, and it’s not hard to understand why. AUSTRAC has significantly stepped up its scrutiny of pubs and clubs, with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing obligations now firmly in the crosshairs.2 The venues that aren’t across their reporting requirements, staff training, and audit trails are going to find out the hard way. Cashup and Star Compliance exist precisely for this: giving venues the controls they need without burying their managers in manual process.
The second was data and business intelligence. The desire, sometimes the frustration, to actually see what’s happening across the operation in one place rather than chasing numbers across three systems and a spreadsheet. What didn’t vary was the underlying problem: operational data on one side, financial data on the other, and a gap in the middle where good decisions get lost.
This is the conversation the industry is having right now. It has a real cost, one that’s easy to absorb when trading is strong and harder to recover from when conditions shift.
The food cost conversation opened more doors than expected
Our Cooking the Books team sparked some of the most engaged conversations of the two days, not through a pitch but through a question: do you actually know what your food costs are doing right now, not at end of month, but this week?
For most club operators, particularly the RSLs and bowls clubs that made up the bulk of the AHG floor, the honest answer was no. Not with any real precision. In an environment where input costs keep moving and labour doesn’t get cheaper, that’s a meaningful problem hiding behind a busy kitchen. Several genuine leads came directly from those conversations. Food cost visibility isn’t a nice-to-have for these venues. It’s a margin question dressed up as an operational one.
“Do you actually know what your food costs are doing this week, not at end of month, but right now? For most clubs on the AHG floor, the honest answer was no.”Cooking the Books Team — AHG 2026
What we’re taking into next year
AHG confirmed something we already believed: the club sector wants integration, not more point solutions. Another standalone system is not the answer. What operators are asking for, even if they don’t always frame it this way, is a partner who connects the dots between their POS, gaming, wages, purchasing, and accounts and tells them something useful with it.
That’s the Quantaco proposition. And it landed.
“The club sector doesn’t want another point solution. They want a partner who connects the dots and tells them something useful. That’s the Quantaco proposition, and at AHG, it landed.”Quantaco Team — Post-AHG 2026
It’s not just a floor conversation
It’s worth zooming out from the AHG floor for a moment, because those conversations don’t exist in isolation. They reflect a broader shift happening across the industry right now.
“The shift in 2026 is towards smarter, more informed decision-making, with better business intelligence giving operators deeper insights that translate into forward-looking decisions, not just backward-looking reports.”Winnow Solutions — Key Trends in Hospitality Operations 3
On the workforce side, platforms like Tanda and Deputy were both well represented at AHG, and their presence reflects something real: labour compliance has become a genuine risk category for clubs and pubs, not just an admin task. Award interpretation, wage compliance, and right-to-disconnect obligations are topics venue managers are losing sleep over. The industry is investing in tools to manage this, and rightfully so.
On the data side, the conversation is maturing. Industry analysts and operators alike are recognising that most venues have more data than they know what to do with, and less insight than they actually need. The gap between operational data and financial data, the one we heard about repeatedly on the AHG floor, is an industry-wide problem, not a club-specific one.
“AUSTRAC’s principal focus in the gambling sector has been reviewing compliance with AML/CTF laws by pubs and clubs, a sector identified as particularly susceptible to money laundering risk due to the volume of cash transactions.”Chambers & Partners — Gaming Law Australia 1
On gaming compliance, the regulatory direction is clear and it’s not softening. For venues still treating compliance as a paperwork exercise rather than a systems problem, the window to get ahead of it is closing.
The answer is consistent: rising operational costs, labour availability, and regulatory requirements are the pressure points. The venues navigating them best are the ones with the right data, processes, and technology to make faster, better decisions. That’s not a technology pitch. That’s just what the evidence keeps pointing to.
Tanda — Australia’s leading workforce management, rostering and payroll platform built for hospitality and clubs. | Deputy — Employee scheduling, timesheets and labour compliance software used by hospitality venues across Australia.
- Chambers & Partners, Gaming Law 2025: Australia — Trends & Developments. Available at: practiceguides.chambers.com
- AUSTRAC, Pubs and Clubs with Gaming Machines: Regulatory Guide, October 2025. Available at: austrac.gov.au
- Winnow Solutions, The 4 Key Trends That Will Shape Hospitality Operations, January 2025. Available at: blog.winnowsolutions.com
Let’s continue the conversation
If you were on the floor at AHG and we didn’t connect, or if any of this reflects what’s on your mind in your venue right now, reach out to the Quantaco team. We’re always happy to have the real conversation.