In the culinary world, food is not simply a means of sustenance. It’s passion, flavor, madness,
and love all mixed into one. From a specific technique a cook uses to the way how food is presented on the table, everything counts, pushing the experience of eating a notch higher.
We pay so much heed to the minor details on the plate, but what of those little specks of information that are floating around a restaurant? How can they turn into monetary benefits?
From Facebook check-ins to re-tweets, from menu clicks to table reservation, all together form a goldmine of information that sometimes restaurants simply look past. Most of the restaurants
or food outlets are lost when it comes to utilizing analytics with the humongous amount of data
at their disposal and big data. If one were to look closely, they would realize the sheer amount
of insight that can be produced with analyzing data related to the food world.
Big Data and Money Ball
Today, the culinary world has been flooded with different food trends that are difficult to keep a track of. The trends and restaurants are generally run on gut feeling but when you start asking questions, that when people start squirming. In his book, “The Underground Culinary Tour,” Damian Mogavero asked questions like -why do your food costs go up? Why do your labor costs go up? Who are your top and bottom servers?’ and received a bunch of wrong answers.
Restaurants generate a lot of information; they simply do not know what to do with it.
What Mogavero’s software does is that it sends info straight to the cloud that helps the
managers make sense of it. The data can be used to see how every small thing that occurs
in a restaurant, from the weather to a server’s performance, can impact business. Once all
this information is analyzed, it makes the decision making process like a cake walk.
In another recent example, at Canadian Honker, the managers had absolutely no idea that their customers were looking for the restaurant for gluten-free dishes until they started using Brand Hoot to develop new websites and provide analytics consulting. This new insight not only developed their menu manifold but also they saw an opportunity to expand which they would have missed otherwise.
Restaurant Analytics for Business Growth
Listed below are some ways you can convert the insights you gain from analyzing data into revenue earning tactics.
1. Optimizing the menu
The data collected will allow you to see the dishes that are most popular. You can now manage your inventory better by stocking up the items that are sold often and replace them with those that are less popular. Moreover, it will also give insights about how the prices that should be set for the various products depending on their popularity and ease of availability of ingredients.
2. Enhance customer relations
It’s a common norm for diners to collect a customer’s personal data like their phone numbers, personal preferences, email addresses etc. These details can be used to build a loyalty program with your customers.
Studies show that 44% of the customers are happy participating in loyalty programs and respond positively towards them. Offering spontaneous rewards is another nice gesture that makes the customer love your restaurant and definitely increases the footfall. It also encourages the customers to stay longer during the off hours and the word of mouth marketing buzz that you
get is always a bonus.
3. Determining busy and slow days
Restaurant Analytics can reveal which days of your restaurant are going to be jam packed with people and which days will be slow and lazy. To boost revenue, you can always come up with promotional strategies like ladies night, which will attract the crowd which will attract people on those particular days.
4. Create better marketing strategy
Data gathered can provide fresh insights for devising new marketing strategies. The compressive view of business and industry that you get from the relevant data helps in formulating a strategy
to one-up the competition. This is because restaurant analytics not only focuses on data which is relevant to you but also employs data about your competitors which will help you understand their marketing strategy.
Want to know more about how Restaurant Analytics can fuel your business’s growth? Contact us at Datahut, your big data experts.