Precision, Processes, and Pinot: Jess Audas’ Fine-Dining Approach to Festivals

Jessica Audas served her first customer at just four years old. By 17, she had won silver for Australia in restaurant service at the international WorldSkills Championships — an accolade that opened doors to Sydney’s top kitchens and a stint alongside a former Noma sous-chef. We sat down with her to discuss her transition from fine dining to event management, and the processes and technology that underpin both.

“I grew up above a restaurant. I was always in and around the kitchen. So from a young age I knew I wanted to work in hospitality,” she says. Cutting her teeth in Sydney’s fine dining scene — including time at Rockpool Bar & Grill, Momofuku Seiobo, and Silvereye — taught her early on the importance of processes and procedures on the commercial success of a venue. “Restaurants at that calibre have systems and procedures in place. It’s a very well-oiled machine. It’s like opening a theatre show each night — you know how you’re going to perform.”

A sea change from Sydney to the rolling hills of Gippsland in Victoria’s south-east saw Jess apply that fine-dining rigour to a local venue, transforming it into a hatted degustation restaurant in just 18 months. “There was already so much potential — it just needed systems put in place. A reservation system, a POS system, a good website,” she explains. “And then it came down to service as well.”

From FOH to festival coordinator

So when the opportunity arose to apply those same systems on a much, much larger scale, Jess didn’t hesitate. Appointed Head of REVEL Global in 2024, she now runs the nationwide cheese and wine event MOULD x PINOT PALOOZA, which merges two festival brands: ‘Mould - a Cheese Festival’ and ‘Pinot Palooza’. Managing more than 100 wine and cheese producers, and upwards of 6,000 attendees across multiple weekends in every state, is a far cry from fine dining, but her commercial and process-driven mindset still delivers success.

“Before the doors open, I brief the producers just like a restaurant pre-service,” she explains. “I tell them how many people are coming through the door, remind them the crowd is excited, and that it’s going to be hard and fast. We do a lot of coaching around expectations rather than just opening the doors and hoping for the best.”

Revelling in data

Very little is left to chance with Jess at the helm. Unlike other festivals where vendors pay for a site, MOULD X PINOT PALOOZA operates on a commission model — which means centralising payments and point-of-sale so the entire event runs like one large venue. “We’re very data-driven,” she says. “I can tell you that last year we sold five tonnes of Australian cheese and moved 13,000 litres of wine — that’s 17,000 bottles. That all comes down to our POS partner, Zeller. Without that data, we simply couldn’t provide this level of insight.”

Being able to make accurate predictions has a twofold benefit. For Jess, it means calculating the ideal ratio of attendees to producers — maximising sales while minimising queues. “I want everyone to have a good time. I want to see growth, but I don’t want to lose the integrity of the event,” she says.

For vendors, the model provides the structure they need to confidently forecast stock levels and revenue. “The reason people love participating is because I can say, ‘I predict you’ll make around $14,000 across three sessions.’ From there, we work out their average unit cost and how much stock they need to bring. It’s very reassuring for producers.”

200 terminals, one dashboard

With thousands of transactions processed in rapid succession, the choice of POS and payments provider becomes critical. Reliability, accuracy, and real-time data aren’t nice-to-haves — they’re essential. “In Melbourne, we received six and a half thousand people in two days. We cannot have our terminals go down,” Jess says.

That need for reliability is why REVEL chose to partner with Zeller. “Firstly, Zeller has far better customer service than our previous provider. The other big win is visibility — “We can remotely see if a vendor is manually entering sales instead of selecting items, ask what they need, and create a new item on the spot so everything is correctly categorised for reporting.”

But the deciding factor was connectivity. “Zeller is the only all-in-one [POS and EFTPOS] provider I’m aware of that has SIM-card connectivity,” she says. “When we were using our previous provider, someone disconnected the venue WiFi at the end of the day while some patrons were still inside. A batch of sales — around 15 minutes’ worth — never went through. The EFTPOS provider didn’t cover them. We literally had to take the terminal back to my hotel room to reconnect it, and even then we couldn’t get help from customer service. We ended up losing money because we had to pay the producer out. With Zeller, there’s a much greater level of confidence that sales won’t be disrupted.”

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