How to Use Restaurant Data Analytics To Grow Your Business
If you run a restaurant, you know food. But in today’s day and age, you also need to know data if you run a restaurant. Knowing how to use restaurant data analytics allows you to analyze your business, make better decisions, improve your marketing, and create better overall experiences for customers.
While data analytics might sound complex and technical, it’s actually more simple than you think.
Let’s look at how you can start using data to improve your restaurant or restaurants by answering some of the most commonly asked questions about restaurant data analytics.
Why is data analytics important in restaurants?
Data analytics is important in restaurants because it allows you to gather concrete information and form critical insights about your business. When you have data analytics, you can better see the state of your restaurant and make decisions based on what you learn and know.
Here are a few ways that data analytics can help your restaurant.
- Learn about your customers. Collecting consumer data helps you understand who your customers are as you can collect insights about their demographics, behaviors, and purchasing habits.
- Create customer profiles. When you collect data about customers, you can create customer profiles that include contact information. Tying customer profiles to contact information allows you to stay in touch with customers and reach them through email and text messaging.
- Segment customers to improve marketing effectiveness. When you know more about your customers, you can group them based on their similarities. Segmenting your customers allows you to create more targeted marketing campaigns that speak to specific subsets of your customers.
- Identify your most effective marketing channels and campaigns. By analyzing data analytics from marketing campaigns, you can gain insights into what works for your restaurant. You can see the platforms and types of marketing approaches that produce the best results -- so you can recreate the success in future campaigns.
- Inform menu changes. Collecting sales data unlocks a variety of insights about your menu. You can see what items sell the best and should be highlighted through additional marketing campaigns. You can identify what isn’t selling well so you can remove it from your menu. These are just a few examples of how insights can drive changes to your offerings.
- Identify top locations and customer trends at each location. Restaurant data analytics is especially important if you have multiple locations. You can compare each location's data against each other to identify which locations perform the best and how customers act differently at each location. This information can offer insights that drive marketing and operations changes across your locations.
- Know where to spend marketing dollars. When you have data about which marketing channels and campaigns work best and data about which locations perform the best, you can identify ideal ways to spend marketing dollars. Rather than guessing at marketing ROI, you can know the top options for spending on advertising and promotions.
How do restaurants collect data?
Restaurants collect data through a variety of platforms. Restaurants collect data through:
- Point-of-sale (POS) systems
- Online ordering platforms
- Table reservations systems
- Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
- Website analytics
- Email marketing analytics
- Social media analytics
- Customer loyalty programs
- Customer surveys and reviews
In addition to collecting data through their own platforms, restaurants can also curate data through other third-party data sources.
Related: Why It's Important to Own Your Business Data and How to Start Collecting It
How do you analyze restaurant data?
To gain insights from restaurant data analytics, you need to have a system to collect, curate, and review the data points.
1. Set up data collection. Use data sources -- such as restaurant POS analytics, customer loyalty programs, etc. -- to gather information about your customers and business.
2. Sync systems to create one data platform. Create one dashboard that curates data from each of your systems so you can view information from one place.
3. Review and assess data. Compare the data against your goals and business objectives. Identify opportunities to leverage data, make changes, and create new campaigns, processes, or messaging based on what you see in the data.
Related: Need Help Making Sense of Your Business Data and Analytics? We Can Help
How do you build a restaurant analytics dashboard?
If you want to get the most out of your restaurant data analytics, you need a dashboard that allows you to get a comprehensive look at your business without needing to log in to multiple accounts and platforms.
Through the use of APIs, you can connect a variety of restaurant business and customer data sources to build one dashboard that presents all of the most important data points for your restaurant.
Work with a partner to build a restaurant data analytics solution that pulls the data you need and presents it in the way that best aligns with your goals and objectives. Data experts can help you identify which data points will be most useful for your restaurants based on your planned goals.
At MyArea Network, we help our customers build a custom customer data platform that serves as a restaurant data analytics dashboard. It showcases the most important data about customers so you can identify marketing opportunities, monitor operations issues, and gather insights about sales trends.
Related: How Multi-Location Restaurants Can Use Data to Increase Revenue & Improve Operations
Where can I get restaurant data analytics solutions?
If you are ready to start using data analytics at your restaurant, schedule a time to talk to MyArea Network today. MyArea Network specializes in helping hospitality businesses take control over their data so they can improve their marketing, operations, and customer experience.
See how MyArea Network can help you start collecting data that provides valuable insights about your business. Get restaurant data analytics solutions. Build a custom data dashboard. Get started now. Schedule your call today.
