In the highly competitive restaurant industry, a series of missed opportunities, inefficiencies and mis-aligned team members can be detrimental to a restaurant's sales performance and profitability.   

By analyzing vast amounts of data, analytics, and insights, you can gain a complete story and understanding of your business's performance. This understanding enables you to strategically plan for your next growth milestone and develop a roadmap to successfully achieve that goal.

Innovation in the restaurant technology space have made it possible for restaurateurs and operators to choose solutions that give them the flexibility to easily adapt software platforms and marketplaces that can operationalize vast amounts of data into actionable insights.

The main key to unlocking your business potential is the daily access and understanding to vast amounts of data quickly. At GoGoGuest, we refer to this process as data operationalization. 

So what does operationalizing restaurant data and analytics into actionable insights mean? 

Overview

In this article, you will discover untapped data sources that can be maximized to enhance sales performance and create unique opportunities that set your restaurant apart from competitors.

• Learn about the three essential data sources that you're probably not maximizing.
• Gain a wealth of customer insights you can leverage to improve sales performance.
• Read examples about new opportunities unearthed from raw data that could potentially differentiate a restaurant business from the competition.
• Sum up what it means to operationalize your data vs. collecting and storing information.

Let's dive in and explore further.

Three restaurant data sources you should be maximizing for sales

Let's take a deep dive and learn about the types of information you could glean from each of your available data sources. 

Point-of-sale (POS) data

Contains valuable insights that go beyond the surface-level information displayed in your preferred POS solution. This data can be harnessed by marketing teams to gain a deeper understanding of a brand's audience and their primary customer segments to craft a personalization strategy.

What you can do with it:

Why does personalization matter? After a consumer's first encounter with your brand, a restaurant's next goal is to gain the consumer's trust.  Making it super easy for guests to willingly stay connected with your restaurant is the first major milestone in your digital customer journey. The next goal is to increase brand recognition by staying current with the preferences and desires of consumers.

Your point-of-sale (POS) data is a valuable resource for gaining insights into purchasing patterns and conducting product affinity analysis to identify menu items that are frequently purchased together. This valuable insight allows restaurants to prioritize high-performing menu items and design menus in a way that naturally encourages customers to make additional purchases during their visit, ultimately increasing the overall profit margins. 

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Guest WiFi data with captive portal technology‍

Offering a guest WiFi amenity in a restaurant location is another gold mine that restaurateurs often overlook. When your restaurant infrastructure naturally needs the Internet and WiFi bandwidth to run and operate, why not offer a guest WiFi amenity with captive portal technology? 

What you can do with it:

1. A branded guest WiFi captive portal technology not only acts as a local digital advertising billboard for your restaurant, it also offers various benefits.
2. By utilizing a guest WiFi captive portal technology, you can gather valuable local insights about your customers, such as their zip code, which can help you better elevate a local marketing strategy.
3. Additionally, this technology provides a secure WiFi amenity for your customers, ensuring their privacy and satisfaction. It also gives your business more control over the WiFi network, allowing you to manage and customize the guest experience according to your guest WiFi policy.

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"Modern consumers rely on technology to make decisions and choices. It is no longer feasible for restaurants to measure the health of their business from a single point of view."

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Data and insights from customer reviews and surveys 

Is an excellent information source to measure brand awareness and social proof.  Here are two forms to effectively gather reviews and feedback from your customers and how you can use it.

What you can do with it:

1. A private customer review and feedback channel. Asking a guest about their experience at your restaurant shows you care. Timing is key and making this experience personalized, super easy, and enjoyable definitely matters. The information collected from a private survey could be used in growing social proof around a product or the brand. For example, asking an audience about their preference between "constructed" or "deconstructed" nachos gains valuable insights into how deeply  passionate their customers have for their nachos and their preferred serving. In survey, both nacho servings emerge as favorites!  
2. Using public reviews on platforms like Google My Business and Maps. This feedback channel effectively enhance local brand visibility and establish social proof. A restaurant that prioritizes delivering exceptional products and experiences naturally garners effortless 5-star reviews from their customers. Moreover, platform algorithms tend to favor brands with outstanding reviews, increasing the likelihood of appearing on the first page of search results when consumers search for relevant keywords such as "good bread near me."
   
   Additionally, the information collected from these reviews can be utilized to gain valuable insights that can enhance your local digital advertising strategy. For instance, Google Ads can provide demographic information about your audience, such as identifying that your brand resonates with fashion enthusiasts. The best part, it is FREE.

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Data from digital marketing channels

‍Are excellent sources for understanding and designing customer journeys that resonate with your audience and specific customer segments.

• Restaurant websites - When a restaurant sparks interest on social media, an ad, a news article, or an event, today's tech-savvy consumers are eager to gather more information. By utilizing Google Analytics with your website's analytics, you have access to a valuable data and insights into your audience, referral sites, and the keywords they use when searching. This information is another gold mine, providing you with a deeper understanding of your audience and top customer base. 
• Data from social media channels such as Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook provide a visually appealing and interactive platform, making them ideal for expanding a restaurant's brand awareness. It is crucial to create content that is both informative and engaging. Leveraging information from previously mentioned data sources, a business would have the ability to shape their content for their audience and core customers. 
• Data from email marketing campaigns and sales performance. Guest engagement through email marketing is a cost-effective channel for restaurant businesses and it unlocks rich customer insights and ROI .  Besides 99% of email users check their inbox daily.
• Information from SMS marketing campaigns and sales performance. According to Statista, the number of mobile devices is expected to reach 18.22 billion by 2025, an increase of 4.2 billion devices compared to 2020 levels. The explosive growth in mobile makes a data-driven SMS marketing strategy a more compelling customer acquisition and engagement channel.

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What you can do with it:

Given the abundance of data sources available, restaurant businesses with a goal to grow and expand to new markets, must consider investing in a restaurant data and analytics program to operationalize large amounts of information every 24 - hours.  By doing so, they can enhance the overall guest experience, safeguard consumer privacy, and provide personalized products, pricing, and offers to their customers. 

Steps to operationalize your restaurant data:

1. Data science. Modern consumers rely on technology to make decisions and choices. It is no longer feasible for restaurants to measure the health of their business from one point of view. 
2. Digital transformation and analytics.  In a dynamic restaurant industry, operators need the capability to efficiently make decisions for their portfolio of restaurants by analyzing and querying vast data sets with machine learning capabilities. This enables them to provide personalized and exceptional guest experiences on a large scale.
3. Unlock the power of AI driven insights. There are multiple data activation scenarios in a restaurant's business environment. For the purpose of simplicity, let's focus on the restaurant marketing data activation use cases. 

For example, when restaurant plans their marketing program for Mother's Day, they can easily access data-driven recommendations that provide actionable insights for a marketer. These AI driven recommendations may include a visually appealing email or SMS template, target customer segments, preferred products, and an optimized send time. The marketer simply needs to review and schedule the campaign accordingly, saving time and effort in the process.

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"After a consumer's first encounter with your brand, a restaurant's next goal is to gain the consumer's trust over a period of time."

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Top customer marketing applications for restaurant data and analytics

When data processing is real-time and actionable recommendations, a restaurant marketing team can focus 100% on fast, efficient and timely execution of customer marketing programs at scale. It becomes possible to deliver and measure high-performance sales with a lean team.

• Personalization Strategy becomes effortless and an essential part of the restaurant guest experience.
• Digital marketing Strategy when powered by data and actionable insights, a digital marketing strategy can be accurately measured based on prioritization, return on investment (ROI), and sales revenue performance.

Conclusion

Restaurant data and analytics is a giant leap forward for your business growth strategy. With the help of GoGoGuest, you can quickly generate entire personalized campaigns that resonate with your intended audience. Book a demo.