Think 'big data' is just for digital giants like Amazon or Google? Think again. Many industries can leverage the power of big data to better tailor their offerings to their customer's preferences and tastes. In fact, the SMB Group approximates that 18 percent of small and 57 percent of medium businesses are already using Business Intelligence and analytics solutions. The trend is especially gaining momentum in the restaurant industry, with companies like marketing Vitals leading the charge in helping restaurant owners and franchise executives pinpoint what works and what doesn't.
Rom Krupp, the CEO of marketing Vitals, has almost twenty years of experience assisting with POS systems and is now in the business of helping restaurants turn 'data into dollars' through leveraging key analytics through his company's game changing software. When presenting to clients, he likes to reference a quote by classic American innovator John Wanamaker: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." His hunch is that many restaurant owners, consultants, and franchise partners find themselves in exactly the same boat. Whether it's Pizza Hut spending millions to target Millennials only to find out that they eat pizza like their parents, or the local cafe that can't figure out how to live with or without Groupon, restaurants face real challenges when it comes to assessing how and where they should invest their time, energy, and resources.
By envisioning marketing as the intersection of communications and sales, Rom, and his contemporaries, put forward big data as the missing piece and crucial key to a strategic approach to customizing, or "catering," a restaurant to suit its guests, not only through ads, but through everything from menu offerings to server behavior. They imagine a restaurant as a sum of countless different choices, as a kind of chaotic, flavorful chess board that can attract or repulse.
What do you serve, and when? Which server covers which shifts? How do you price the different items on your menu? How do you promote specials? And, to which demographic? Was last week's business bad because of the rain, or because John was manning the register, and he has a difficult time upselling? These are questions most restaurateurs navigate through a mix of trial and error and their own intuition. The question big data and companies like Marketing Vitals pose is whether there's an alternative, or possible upgrade.
