Mirus Reporter

The Data Is In

The word on restaurant sales has been out in the public for a while now. Same store sales are down for many segments. And for some of the most recent months, the industry overall is down.

Two factors lead to negative same store sales:  declining customer traffic, or customers spending less on each visit. It has been well documented that restaurants have been increasing their prices over the past few years. The National Restaurant Association measured price inflation at 2.7% in July 2016, while the average cost of ingredients fell -3.5%. The increased margin dollars have helped some restaurants cover the increases in labor.

Can We Talk

Restaurants today are about more than just food and hospitality. Technology has become a major factor, both customer facing and behind the scenes. Restaurant chains are being more efficiently run with the help of numerous systems from Point of Sale, Back of House, Labor Scheduling, Business Intelligence, Guest Loyalty and the list goes on. Each system holds valuable information that becomes exponentially more valuable when combined with other data. In order to take advantage of that value, restaurant IT executives are continuously faced with the challenge of making these restaurant systems talk to one another. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Getting data out of some of these systems can be pretty challenging. However, the push is being made more and more for technology companies to "open up" access. Enter the API.

Buckle up because we’re going to turn on the wayback machine and do some time travel back to a day when companies used mainframe computers. Yes, I said mainframe computers. I guess that says something about how long I’ve been around.

OK, let’s fast forward for a minute and make a quick comparison – mainframes, like many of today’s Do it Yourself (‘DIY’) solutions, aren’t for everyone because they’re expensive to acquire, operate and maintain.

As your restaurant business continues to grow, you may decide it's time to implement tools and software to get better control and insight into how things are going across all locations (Exception based reporting isn't possible with Excel spreadsheets!).

Save Time, Save Money

Is time really money? I think so, you only have so much time in a day. If you could save time by making your job more efficient, then you can effectively save money. Improving business efficiency can be achieved through exception based reporting.

As a restaurant marketer your job is to tell a compelling story about your brand that makes people want to come in and spend time and money at your restaurant. You've got two choices when it comes to writing that story: Fiction or Non-Fiction.

You can make-up all the facts and paint a picture of who you think your customers are, why they come to your restaurant and what they purchase OR you can look at the actual facts, really get to know your customers, learn why they come in, see trends in what they purchase and build a highly profitable marketing campaign around your loyal fans who will get excited and hopefully sing your praises on social media. This is where customer data comes in.

Restaurant operators are always searching for new and fresh ideas that will attract more customers. The goal is clear: enhance customer experience, make sure the marketing objectives are met, and that the campaign produces profitable returns.

Labor markets continue to tighten. "Applications have been below 300,000, a historically low level, for 64 weeks, the longest such streak since 1973" (US News & World Report 2016). For the restaurant industry, this is one of four major considerations when managing labor costs. This 'perfect storm' of conditions only happens 2 or 3 three times in a typical career, so if you are feeling the pressure, it is to be expected.

The four horseman challenging everyone today are:

1. Low unemployment
2. Reduced skills in the remaining labor pool
3. Minimum wage increases
4. Overtime rule changes affecting salaried employees

Let's discuss the first two of these challenges. We will touch on the others in later blogs.

The power of consumer knowledge

Understanding your customers is a prerequisite to satisfying their wants and needs to increase customer satisfaction in restaurants. Typically we do not know who our customers are; their name, their email, etc. The lack of knowledge keeps us in the dark when constructing menus and promotions, and hinders our ability to measure whether we are satisfying our restaurant customers.

Consumer profiling based on purchase behavior is a technique you can use to see patterns to determine the various types of customers you have, and how you might better service them.

Brains or Beauty?

What's more important, the way something looks and feels or the functionality and power behind the product? When you have been developing software for as long as we have, you hear it from both sides.

But it's important to find a medium, a middle ground you and your team can work with. Because at the end of the day, the combination of beauty and brains is what everyone is after!