Have you ever felt that pressure when there is a line of impatient customers in front of you and you can’t do anything because your system’s down?
Sunil Tauro has lived that firsthand. As Systems Manager at Emirates Leisure Retail, he oversees technology for Costa Coffee’s outlets, Bars and Restaurants, Pret-a-Manger, Premier Inns, and Zanzibar’s airport concessions, and such things happen.
Maybe that’s why his measure of success is a bit different. “When a customer doesn’t even realize they’ve touched a point of sale, but the order is complete, that’s a success,” he says.
For Tauro, good technology fades into the background. It becomes the business itself.
While he gets it that systems fail, downtime happens, and it always will. What matters is how IT responds. Empathy here is the key. You understand the pressure on the floor, speak plainly when things go wrong, and fix problems without creating new ones.
That mix — technical control with human awareness — is what defines how Tauro leads.
Scale, Stress, and the Architecture of Resilience
Tauro’s career journey has been shaped through his work with Emirates Leisure Retail, which gave him the opportunity to manage F&B operations across Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Today, he continues this journey in the UAE, with each region presenting its own unique challenges.
In markets like Zanzibar, integrating credit card payments with POS systems can be quite challenging due to infrastructure limitations. In contrast, in the UAE, such integration is seamless and essentially a standard expectation.
That’s why scaling systems across geographies requires sensitivity to local compliance, infrastructure, and customer expectations. That’s exactly what makes any system resilient.
That same logic drives his view on self-checkouts and generational change. Gen Z doesn’t queue. They rarely go to counters. If the kiosk fails, they leave. That’s lost business.
Which means kiosks must be monitored centrally, with alarms that trigger support before customers even notice. They must be scalable, hardware-agnostic, multilingual, and designed as extensions of mobile journeys.
“Self-checkouts are managed by Gen Z. If you make it interesting (QR code-based, game-based, upsell-driven) that’s where value comes in,” he says.
Tauro has also catered to rugby sevens events with millions of transactions a day. In those environments, system failure is a liability.
“Peak seasons and events aren’t exceptions,” he insists. “They’re business. Systems must be thin, light, and fast enough to handle volume without breaking.”
The Next Layer of Retail Infrastructure
Post-COVID, mobile ordering and takeaway went mainstream.
Speed and convenience overtook ceremony, and quick-service formats rose to the top.
Tauro sees this as a structural shift. Systems must keep pace with fast-moving trends by seamlessly integrating kiosks and mobile apps. The back office must be stronger than ever to keep up with this pace.
At Emirates Leisure Retail, this is already taking shape through the Costa Coffee app, an ecosystem that, while built on separate platforms, works in complete sync with the POS. From wallet integration and click-and-collect to automatic tier-based discounts and e-receipts, the experience is designed around one principle: minimal friction.
Behind it is a strong focus on customer journey and satisfaction, where every interaction is reduced to the fewest possible clicks, without compromising functionality.
But the real strength lies beyond the transaction. Customer behavior and trends are continuously fed into analytics, enabling sharper decisions around offers, personalization, and operational planning.
It’s a reminder that modern retail isn’t just about enabling transactions, it’s about orchestrating experiences. And when digital, CX, and operations align seamlessly, the system doesn’t just support the business, it actively drives it.
On AI, Tauro is skeptical about the hype. “At the moment, it’s just chatbots,” he says. True functionality will take time. He compares it to electric cars—fast-moving, inevitable, but not yet mainstream.
He sees AI’s real potential in suggested ordering, seasonal trends, and in integrating external data, not in replacing chefs, but in helping kitchens reduce waste and respond to demand efficiently.
Tauro’s final thought ultimately circles back to the idea that the best system is invisible.
Operations should flow so customers don’t realize they’re interacting with technology. That invisibility is the real measure of success.
It’s a philosophy that prioritizes customer journeys, withstands peak pressure, and ensures systems “serve” the business
