When you ask mendrhub Founder & Executive Director Glen Barkhan what led him to start the business with his business partners, his answer always comes down to one thing: trust. Namely, how trust can sometimes be challenged in service relationships when there isn’t enough visibility or transparency on either side.
For Glen, mendrhub wasn’t about simply filling a gap in the market – it was born from lived experience, operational frustration, and a desire to improve how the Food, Beverage and Hospitality service industry works for everyone involved.
We sat down with Glen recently to talk about his experience starting mendrhub, and what he hopes it can change about the industry in the future.
It started with frustration
With 40+ years of experience in commercial refrigeration, food equipment and HVAC on the service side of the industry, Glen was very familiar with the inefficiencies that accompanied paper-based, manual processes. Information moved slowly. Details got missed. Real-time data didn’t exist.
Like many service businesses at the time, operations were heavily reliant on paper-based processes. Information moved slowly, details were missed, and there was no real-time visibility across jobs, assets, service and logistic history.
“It didn’t start as a software business,” Glen explains. “It started with frustration. With no real-time data to speed up the process, we were throwing more money at the problem, which meant more costs, more admin, and more inefficiencies.”
Put simply, sustainable growth was unattainable. More clients simply meant more overhead. It wasn’t scalable. That frustration led Glen to look for a solution.
“Automation became one of the ways we could improve operational efficiencies and grow without exponential cost increases.”
It was a turning point for Glen, but inefficiency wasn’t the only frustration he wanted to address.
The role of trust in the service industry
Service is essential, but it’s often perceived as a cost rather than an investment. As Glen puts it, “It’s always a grudge spend. No one wakes up wanting to spend money on service. But when something breaks, it becomes mission-critical.”
This dynamic can sometimes create tension between service providers and customers; particularly when there isn’t clear visibility into what’s being done, how costs are calculated, or what value is really being delivered.
“In many cases, it’s not that service providers are doing the wrong thing,” Glen explains. “It’s that customers don’t always have access to the information they need to fully understand the work being carried out.”
Without transparency around labour, parts, asset downtime versus uptime, service and logistic history, even well-intentioned providers can find themselves in situations where trust and value is questioned.
“The real problem was a lack of transparency. When customers can’t see what’s happening, it creates uncertainty, and uncertainty erodes trust.”
From internal software to a SaaS platform
The foundations of mendrhub were built long before it became a software platform. Glen’s decades of experience became the blueprint – transforming practical, real-world knowledge into a system designed to solve the very challenges he had experienced.
“We built it for ourselves first,” Glen says. “Because we lived it.”
What started as an internal tool soon attracted attention from clients as well as competitors who wanted access to the same capabilities.
“Initially, we didn’t want to share it,” Glen admits. “But over time, we realised the demand – and the opportunity to help other businesses benefit from what we had learned over many years.”
While the original mendrhub system was hard-coded for Glen’s service business, the software that exists now is flexible and scalable – purpose-built to reduce admin effort, improve operational efficiency, and support better decision-making.
Accelerating the future with AI
As mendrhub continues to evolve, the integration of AI is unlocking new opportunities to further enhance efficiency, decision-making, and service outcomes.
“We’re now leveraging AI to take what we’ve built to the next level,” Glen explains.
These capabilities include:
- Intelligent job triaging and prioritisation, helping teams respond faster to critical issues
- Predictive maintenance insights, identifying potential failures before they occur
- Automated workflows, reducing manual intervention and administrative burden
- AI-driven business intelligence, providing deeper insights into asset performance, cost trends, and service efficiency
- Smarter scheduling and resource optimisation, improving utilisation of technicians and service networks
By combining real-time data with AI-driven insights, mendrhub enables businesses to move from reactive service models to more proactive, predictive operations.
The holy trinity of business success
Glen doesn’t believe that the success of mendrhub comes down to any one person. Rather, it’s a combination of people, technology and capital.
This includes people like mendrhub MD and shareholder, Richard Barel. Glen says that “Richard’s strengths as a software architect have perfectly complemented my own industry-specific experience, and together, we’ve built a dynamic and effective team that love what they do.”
And like a three-legged stool, Glen credits mendrhub’s Directors, shareholders and investors including Chairman John Studdert, Dave Warneke and Neil Archer for providing a solid business foundation. “They ensured we had stability and balance as we invested heavily to develop a market leading niche platform that drives value for our clients,” Glen says.
A foundation of trust and transparency
Because mendrhub was created from hands-on, operational experience, over time its evolution has been shaped by real customer pain points. Real-time visibility and data foster trust, clever automation reduces costs and admin effort, and the business ultimately becomes more operationally efficient and profitable.
But it’s Glen’s commitment to doing business the right way that continues to set mendrhub apart from others in the market. It’s why companies like Grill’d, David Jones and Betty’s Burgers use mendrhub every day. Mendrhub isn’t just software – it’s a true partner.
As Glen says, “I go into discussions with clients and say we’re a partner to your business; we’re in this together. Think about us as an extension of your business, not just another supplier.”