Mirus Reporter

Since the inception of your restaurant business you’ve probably tried a variety of methods to engage, grow and retain your customer base because you understand that getting to know your customers and their behavior patterns is crucial for your business. And we know that it is more cost-effective to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. However, from the perspective of data, the check number is the only identifier for a customer’s activity. So unless you are using a guest loyalty program that identifies the customer’s name, email, phone, etc., you have no idea who the person is on any given check.

Menu changes occur all the time in the restaurant business. You might add an item or two, change the price of existing items, run a promotion, or limited time offer. All of these actions generate, hopefully, the consequences you intended. But, most of the time those actions cause other changes you did not expect. These are the unintended consequences. In this post, we give you three important things to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of a promotion.

Employee Spotlight:
Terri Pham Gonzalez, Manager of Account Services, Mirus Restaurant Solutions

If I had to describe Terri in a few words, I'd describe her as a hard worker, someone who is very driven and focused. Terri is the glue that holds the Mirus account coordinators together. The role she plays is extremely important because every client has a unique set of needs and the account coordinators have to keep track of it all.

Like many terms in the restaurant industry, "Restaurant Management Software" is widely used, creating a complex understanding of what it actually means. In this article, I'd like to briefly discuss why that is, explain what I have learned so far by studying its use in our industry and tell you how to get a clearer picture of what defines solutions that are classified as Restaurant Management Software.

What makes your customers happy when visiting your restaurants and what keeps them coming back? Is it the quality and taste of the food? Polite and speedy service? Customer fulfillment, or lack of it, will ultimately affect your restaurant business in a significant way.

Restaurant executives study reports pertinent to their specific departments (Finance, Operations, Marketing, etc.) but no matter their department, there are factors that overlap amongst these departments. One major issue is customer satisfaction. There are many variables that can affect customer satisfaction and by looking at the right information, restaurant companies can utilize a way to measure the key metrics important to executing a memorable dining experience for their guests.

The ordering experience at a fast-casual restaurant can be overwhelming for some guests. Take a second and imagine this scenario with me: You walk into a fast-casual restaurant with a friend. Let's say this is one of those new pizza concepts where you go through the line picking toppings, making your pizza similar to a Subway line.

It's lunchtime, the place is fairly busy. You have a handful of customers behind you as you stare at the menu board above. But it's ok, they are also staring, trying to decide how they should begin their journey. For some, the ordering experience can even cause anxiety. To make the process go smoothly and put guests at ease there are two things fast-casual operators can do. Focusing on these two areas will help fast casual operations increase profits.

What Comes First?

Determining the reason why two restaurant reporting numbers are different can be a real challenge, like the chicken or the egg. In this era of big data, many restaurant companies are racing to improve their use and comprehension of the data they have locked up in their system silos. But, the question for this post is: Does data make people smarter or is it the other way around?

In 2017, same-store sales of all restaurants fell by -1.1% according to TD2NK and their Black Box Intelligence index. This index is computed on data from 30,000 restaurants, so it is a pretty good aggregation of data - about 5% of the restaurant industry. In this population, I think it is fair to say that some of the companies use their data aggressively and some do not.

Overview

Before we jump into the characteristics of an Enterprise Data Warehouse (‘EDW’) it might help to define what an EDW consists of. An EDW is a centralized repository that integrates data from various transactional, legacy, or 3rd party systems and applications that are used to operate and manage your business. In contrast to these systems, the EDW is built for analysis and retrieval of data rather than the upkeep of individual transactional records.

Ralph Kimball, one of the original architects of data warehousing and someone whose teachings we adhere to, provided a more concise definition of a data warehouse: “A data warehouse is a copy of transaction data specifically structured for query and analysis.”.

Finding new ways to maximize the overall profitability of a restaurant business is on the mind of every restaurant owner. Whether you have a few restaurants or a few hundred, you’re constantly trying to think up ways to beef up the profit margin. Your executives analyze the numbers, think up ideas to control costs, cut down on food waste, offer Limited Time Offers, cut back labor hours and eliminate overtime, all with the ultimate goal of increasing profitability. But what steps are taken to ensure that any of these ideas will prove successful? Are they examining performance metrics in order to track and evaluate what steps are effective and which areas need improvement?

2017, what a year it was for the restaurant industry. We saw our share of ups and downs having fought through hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. The stock market hit record highs with increased valuations of some restaurant stocks. There were many major acquisitions throughout the industry.

Mirus also had a busy year. This 2017 Year in Review details some of the highlights from the year.