Leveraging Insights: Using Customer Analytics to Enhance Your Restaurant
Introduction
In the competitive restaurant business, customer data provides invaluable direction to improve offerings, boost satisfaction, and increase repeat business. Analytics empower restaurants to make smart, informed choices rather than best guesses. For small, independent restaurant owners, leveraging insights from analytics is essential, but investing in expensive data mining tools is not feasible.
Fortunately, options like Tapless Menu now make robust customer analytics accessible and affordable for small restaurants. In this blog, we’ll explore practical tips for tapping into analytics to understand customers better and tailor your restaurant’s offerings to what patrons want most.
Tapless Menu Provides Actionable Analytics
Tapless Menu is an online ordering system created specifically to meet the needs of independent restaurants. It provides digital menus, ordering, contactless payments, and analytics. Best of all, Tapless Menu does not charge any commissions or fees based on the number of orders. You only pay a minimal monthly subscription fee based on your needs.
Tapless Menu’s analytics and reporting provide valuable guest insights, including:
- Most popular menu items and customizations
- Customer demographics like order location
- Menu category performance
- Special/promotion redemption
This data guides better decision making around menu options, inventory, staffing, marketing, and more. The knowledge helps independent restaurants compete smartly.
Monitor Best Sellers
Have you ever wondered if your best selling dishes are really your most profitable? Analytics provides clarity. You can identify best sellers along with their ingredient costs and profit margins. This allows ensuring your most popular dishes are priced appropriately and represent a sound return on investment.
Additionally, use analytics to:
- Spot dishes that rarely sell and either refresh them or remove them to streamline.
- Determine which ingredients or customizations drive orders to optimize these offerings.
- Compare performance across dayparts to revise menus for different meal periods.
Making data-driven decisions about your offerings maximizes menu performance.
Assess Customer Demographics
Customer data reveals demographics like order locations and device types. Use this info to:
- Geo-target local marketing to the highest density nearby neighborhoods.
- Craft promotions for larger groups if many big orders.
- Enhance menus for dishes likely to travel well if you have many online orders.
- Optimize menus for easy mobile viewing if many mobile orders.
Understanding the customer mix allows optimizing offerings and marketing tailored specifically to who orders most.
Analyze Menu Categories
Menu category analytics illustrate if certain sections like appetizers, salads, entrees, or desserts are more popular. Use this data to:
- Expand the breadth of offerings in well-performing categories.
- Limit overly large low-performing sections to simplify menus.
- Feature faster-selling categories more prominently in menus, marketing, and specials.
Doubling down on proven menu segments makes customers happy. Removing slower types streamlines operations.
Track Promotions
Analytics provide transparency on redemption rates and revenue lift from promotions and specials. Assess:
- Which specific specials or LTOs (limited time offers) resonate most. Bring back winning LTOs.
- Timeframes that lift revenue most. Run promos during peak sales windows.
- Delivery vs. takeout promo popularity if you offer both.
- Daypart promo redemption – lunch, dinner, late night, etc.
Promotion analytics enable learning from both successes and flops. You double down on what works and revise what does not.
Conclusion
These examples just scratch the surface of how analytics can guide your offerings. The key is actually analyzing the insights every week, month, quarter, and year. Look for trends, patterns, and actionable takeaways.
For small restaurants, Tapless Menu provides enterprise-grade analytics without big budgets and specialized personnel. Avoid guesswork and use cold hard data to give customers more of what they love. Analytics-driven improvements keep guests happy, business booming, and simplicity in operations for independent restaurants.
Customer analytics should be an integral part of any independent restaurant’s growth strategy. Data reveals what resonates with your patrons better than hunches or hopes. With analytics from Tapless Menu, acting on customer insights is now accessible without big investments.
Use data to determine optimal menu options, pinpoint operating periods, roll out effective promotions, geo-target marketing, and tailor offerings. Customer analytics allows independent restaurants to compete smartly by giving customers exactly what they crave. Take the guesswork out of running a small restaurant business with data-driven decisions. Let analytics boost your customer satisfaction, growth, and profitability!