IT IS no secret that booking Christmas parties at the office, or any other kind of large group meal for that matter, can be a logistical nightmare.

But Oxford entrepreneur Andrew Norton, inventor of online food and drink pre-order system Tell The Chef, is on a mission to hand back control to Britain’s eateries.

A restaurant owner himself, Mr Norton became frustrated by the problems that group bookings created during busy periods.

He said: “The idea for Tell The Chef came about while I was working for a chain restaurant and I saw, for two years in a row, the Christmas co-ordinator – a very common role in a restaurant – fall out with the chef.

“There is a blame culture and if you get your pre-orders wrong it is chaos.”

“Restaurants believe that at times of the year like Christmas, they just have to deal with it.”

“At my own restaurant, The Jam Factory in Oxford, I am a bit of a control freak and I thought ‘there must be another way.’ Mr Norton said the idea first started gaining traction when he met fellow businessman Mark Evans at a TEDx event in the Said Business School.

“I went about building a system and it worked, but not very well,” he explained.

“But Mark listened to my idea and said ‘I might know somebody who can help you.’ He introduced me to other networks that helped build Tell The Chef into what it is now.

“It was a long slog to begin with. Our first customer was the Jam Factory and then Cafe Coco across the road.

“I went to all the restaurateurs I knew in Oxford and told them about the product. People loved it, but selling it to bigger businesses required references and recognition.

“After Malmaison starting using it, we gained a lot of respect from other establishments and it is slowly being adopted by other groups.”

Since starting, Tell The Chef has seen a significant rise in usage.

“Between 2009 when we first started and February 2012, we’d only done about 20,000 pre-orders,” said Mr Norton.

“At the time we were extremely proud of that figure but in the next six months we now expect to process more than a million.”

According to Mr Norton, Tell The Chef’s appeal lies in its accessibility.

“It is 100 per cent built with the restaurateur in mind and a win-win scenario for us and the customer,” he said.

“It brings back the etiquette in the dining room that sometimes gets thrown out of the window when you have more than 12 guests, and restaurant owners like that.”

Restaurants must sign up and submit their menus, then when a customer books a table for a group they receive an email and can invite other guests to the table and choose their courses.

On arrival at the restaurant, each person will find a personal placecard, detailing what they have ordered.

Mr Norton’s invention has also been adopted by Royal Opera House Restaurants.

He added: “Hospitality is a hard business and we want to help restaurants become profitable again.We are empowering restaurants with technology.”