THE OPERATOR
Built by someone who has actually run the machine.
Mazi is new. What is behind it is not.
I am Jared Mazzis. I run global operations for Barcelos Flame Grilled Chicken — the flame-grilled chicken franchise my father, Costa, founded in South Africa in 1993, now 140 stores across 13 countries. Restaurants, franchising, food manufacturing, our own delivery fleet, a shopfitting operation. Not advising on them from the outside. Running them: rosters, rushes, suppliers who don’t deliver, inspectors who do, drivers stuck in traffic, a fit-out that has to be ready by opening day regardless of what went wrong that week.
Every system on this site was built for Barcelos first. It is still used there every day, and I am still the person accountable for whether it works. That is the whole proposition. I am not an agency guessing at your operation from a discovery call. I am an operator who had to solve this in my own business, and got tired of being told it needed a two-year enterprise project and a six-figure licence.
Mazi exists because other operators kept asking how we did it.
What that means in practice
I don’t start by selling you something already built. I start by understanding your business — what’s actually eating the week, where the paperwork piles up, what a good day and a bad day look like — and only then decide what to build, what to wire together, and what you should simply buy off the shelf.
Sometimes the answer is that you don’t need me. I’d rather tell you that in week one than bill you for six.
Think of it less as a vendor and more as a guide. I’ve run service businesses, production lines and logistics under one roof, so I usually know what to look for before you’ve finished explaining it.
Where I work from
I’m based in Cyprus and work with operators anywhere. I’ve worked across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia — South Africa, India, Botswana, Cyprus and a few places in between — and I still travel for the Barcelos business regularly.
Being three time zones from your head office has never been the problem. Not understanding your operation is.
The name
Mazi — μαζί — is Greek for together. It’s also close enough to my family name that it isn’t a coincidence.
Both readings are the point: I work alongside you rather than on you, and I put my own name on what I build.
What I believe about software
Buy what’s already good enough. Build what’s genuinely yours. Never let a piece of software tell you how to run your business.
In real operations, offline capability, low hardware requirements and simple deployment matter more than features. A tool that a busy Friday night breaks is not a tool. If it can’t survive contact with your worst shift, it doesn’t ship.
Agencies build what you ask for. Operators build what survives a Friday rush.
FIELD-TESTED, NOT DEMO-WARE