Restaurant owners can no longer rely on gut feel to make business decisions. To get ahead of the competition, restaurants should power their business with restaurant data and analytics, which is now an essential tool for successful restaurant management.

With the rise of more digitized customer journeys, the ability to gather and analyze information is critical for any restaurant that wants to have a competitive business advantage.

Hospitality operators can tap into this rich data to improve their restaurant operations and drive up more revenue for their business.

READ MORE: Fuel your success with your own guest data

How to use restaurant data

Here are four examples of how hospitality businesses can leverage data to drive their business forward:

1. Sales forecast

Restaurants can use data to calculate the optimal amount of inventory based on previous sales history.

Being able to predict restaurant sales can help with efficient inventory management, so more time can be allocated for other work, such as culinary research and service improvement.

2. Development of new menus

Data analytics can also assist in the creation of popular menu items. Sales data can determine which items are selling well so chefs can adjust their portions accordingly, or prepare those items in advance to ensure that demands are met accurately and smoothly. 

Items that are not selling so well should be removed from the menu to eliminate food waste and also cut down on costs.

In addition, collecting detailed guest data can help restaurants develop menus that are better tailored to the target audience. 

3. Price maintenance

The aim of every restaurant is to keep their prices at a happy medium so that customers can enjoy delicious food at a reasonable price without strain on the business.

Employing a data-based system will allow restaurants to efficiently manage their purchase prices.

When prices of the same ingredient fluctuate widely from time to time and from restaurant to restaurant, being able to confirm purchase prices through data will be useful when selecting suppliers and adjusting the amount of food to be purchased.

4. Marketing optimization to attract customers

A lot of time and effort goes into promoting a restaurant, whether it be through events, campaigns, and regular updates on social media.

Data can be used to determine what marketing methods are the most effective in order to achieve optimal business marketing. 

SEO keywords and event feedback are some of the many examples of information that can be collected through data, which all contribute to the optimization of business marketing.

What types of data should you collect to improve restaurant operations?

1. Guest data

Collecting and controlling guest data is one of the most essential ingredients to restaurant success. Therefore it's important to have a booking platform tool that can stream all these important data from different sources whether it comes from a booking form or guest surveys.

READ MORE: The smart restaurant email marketing guide to winning more customers

2. POS Data

But there are other data streams too from which operators can use to get a 360° degree of their business. Point of sale or otherwise known as POS data can track how much profit a business is generating in direct sales, guest spend history and average spend per customer.

3. Data from booking channels

Sometimes a restaurant uses different booking channels for different purposes. The data from different booking channels should thus be consolidated and ranked with a powerful analytics tool like TableCheck Insight which can see average guest spending, total reservations and etc. by channel.

TableCheck Insight – a reliable, easy-to-use data analysis tool

TableCheck Insight can instantly and automatically visualize and analyze all kinds of information related to restaurants. It has been introduced widely within the industry as an effective means to help restaurants utilize data, which is essential for modern restaurant operations.

Here are some of the ways that TableCheck Insight can help optimize restaurant operations:

1. Make smarter business decisions

With TableCheck Insight restaurants can use data analysis of restaurant visits, guest spending, and other information critical to making effective business strategies.

The management screen displays data in an easy-to-understand, visual report format, reducing the time and effort required to analyze patterns and trends in the restaurant business.

2. Launch effective marketing initiatives

An essential part of data usage for restaurants is its application in marketing strategies. One feature that differentiates TableCheck Insight from other data analysis tools is that it has a customer analysis function.

It can list the customers who have visited the restaurant by categories such as "number of visits," "total amount spent," "frequency of visit," etc., and then predict the time until their next visit on a graph. 

Based on TableCheck Insight’s data analysis, marketing campaigns can be tailored for each customer segment. For example, customers who have visited the restaurant more than 10 times can be recipients of a special discount, or alternatively, limited offers can be given to first-time customers to incentivize them to visit again. In other words, data analysis can help maintain the customer base and create new ones.

3. Search and extract information

TableCheck Insight enables data analysis and extraction by combining various factors such as reservation routes, number of visits, and average spending price. Analyzing data according to business issues and goals will lead to the discovery of new solutions.

In addition, data can be saved in your own dashboard and freely customized to suit the needs of your restaurant.

TableCheck Insight can be used in conjunction with other features like reservation and customer management systems. With TableCheck Insight restaurant data results in more effective marketing strategies, better management of customer information, and safer measures against reservation cancellations and no-shows.