The secret ingredient to any restaurant’s success? It’s called data analytics and it’ll help you crack the lid open on understanding customer behaviour, optimizing operations, and perfecting pricing — all so you can make better decisions that bring in more bucks. That’s why we’re here with another Secret Sauce super blog to share all of our best tips, so you can get the most out of your metrics.
- Start with Skip.
One of the great things about being a Skip Partner is that you have access to your own Skip metrics in the palm of your hand, 24/7. Here’s a quick refresher on what you can check out using the Analytics tool in the Portal and how to correctly analyze restaurant data.
- Look by location: No matter how many locations you run, you can choose how you view them, whether it’s one at a time or every location in the franchise at once.
- Make a date: Want to check out yesterday’s numbers? Or last week’s? You choose the time period and view the metrics accordingly.
- Meet the metrics: Whether you want to check out your gross revenue, the number of orders you received on any given day, or the average spend per order, it’s all there for your viewing pleasure.
- Pick your preference: Want to look up delivery or takeout numbers? Data on new or returning customers? Our filters give you the power to choose.
- Get the lay of the land: Click on the overview tab to get a summary of all the key metrics you need to keep an eye on business performance over time.
- Mind the menu items: Thanks to this addition, you can now check out and compare each menu item by units sold and gross revenue. You can even look by date range and location.
To get the full scoop on understanding your Skip analytics, check out the full article here.
- Study your socials.
Another great place to find data analytics? Social platforms. Not only are they cost-effective, but most platforms make it easy to read the numbers and track social media success so you can make your moves. Here are some analytics to look for to help you understand your customers’ behaviour.
- Reach for the stars: Reach is the number of different people that see your content at any given time. Some social posts, like Instagram Stories, for example, can show you how many people have viewed your post right on the platform.
- Make a lasting impression: Impressions can also help with your social media marketing analysis as it refers to the number of times your content is displayed on a screen (but that doesn’t count how many times it’s actually been seen or interacted with). You can find these numbers where you find your reach numbers.
- Get engaged: Engagement tracks how many people are interacting with your content. This one’s easy to track as you can see it from the amount of comments and likes.
- Survey their sentiment: Opinion mining, or social sentiment, tracks what people have to say about your business. This one is incredibly important to keep an eye on as timely replies are crucial (especially if the customer had an issue — the quicker you can resolve it, the better it’ll look for your business).
- See what clicks: Click-through rate (CTR) tells you how many people saw your ad and clicked on it. Luckily, most social platforms have a built-in analytics tool to let you know how your ads did.
- Get your share: Social Share of Voice (SSoV) tells you how many people are talking about your business versus your competitors. By using social listening tools, you can find out how much of the conversation your business is taking up.
Check out our full article to learn everything you need to know about social media analytics.
- Search other sources.
We talked about the Skip Portal. And the socials. What else can you look at to get the numbers you need? Check out these other ways you can get your hands on more of those precious restaurant analytics.
- Loyalty programs: Everyone’s a winner with this one. Customers earn points that they can use toward future purchases (ensuring they keep coming back for more). And you get to learn all about their ordering and behaviour history, age, dietary preferences, location, birthday, and delivery habits.
- Customer feedback platforms: This is a great way to hear directly from your customers on their overall experience. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, this type of forum lets you jump on it and address it the right way.
- Restaurant operations platforms: When you own a foodservice business, operations are typically split between what you serve and the numbers behind it. Restaurant operations platforms bridge the gap between the two so you can save money by preventing food waste and predicting staffing needs, for example.
- POS integration: If you’re like most businesses, you’ve got your hands in all kinds of cookie jars when it comes to sales channels. POS integration lets you look at your orders from all your channels in one place so you can improve your overall flow.
Want to dig into these platforms even more? Check out the full-length version of our article on using restaurant data analytics to drive growth.
As we put the fork down on another super blog, we hope you learned some helpful tips on how to analyze customer behaviour and get your data to work for you. After all, the better you know your customers, the better you can serve them (and build your business).
