How do you use data to improve F&B operations?

Using data is key to beating the competition and setting new benchmarks for yourself, your team, and the industry. Here's how to use data in your operations: - Customer data. Look at reservation system data and POS data to make great personalised recommendations. - Reviews. Read public customer reviews to identify areas to improve and reflect on what's working. - POS reports. Look at the dishes that are driving the most business and work out how you can continue to encourage orders. It may be a high-margin seasonal dish that you can make a signature. - Social media. Social media is the modern-day customer service channel. Track all customer questions and feedback to learn what is working at what is not.

To cook up success, start by collecting relevant data. This includes customer preferences, sales figures, inventory levels, and employee performance. Invest in point-of-sale systems, reservation platforms, and feedback surveys to gather valuable insights.

Menu specialities in a restaurant, offers in a supermerket or selections of wines in a wine shop or in a wine bar, etc., could be improved by web analytics trend.

Tableau workbooks, Power BI models, Excel dashboards, the list goes on. No matter which form of visualization you decide to create, it is paramount to ensure readability and ease of navigation are key facets of the design architecture. Providing metric glossaries/definitions/captions when appropriate can be a great way to help anyone viewing the data visualization(s) quickly understand the major KPIs showcased. Depending on your stakeholders as well as how robust the data visualization is, consider creating short demo walkthrough videos explaining where the data is being sourced from and valuable insights displayed. The more confident users feel when using the visualization, the better chance of ensuring return on investment thereafter.

With data in hand, analyze and visualize it to extract actionable insights. Tools like Excel, Power BI, or Python's Pandas can help identify trends and patterns, such as peak dining hours or popular menu items. Visualization makes complex data digestible.

To me leveraging actionable insights from data is key to optimizing F&B operations. These insights empower decision-makers to enhance efficiency, improve customer experiences, manage inventory effectively, and drive overall profitability in the F&B industry.

Don't just admire your data; act on it! Use insights to optimize menus, pricing strategies, and staffing levels. For instance, if data reveals a spike in weekend brunch orders, consider expanding your brunch offerings.

Handling customer data demands responsibility. Ensure data privacy compliance and obtain consent for data collection. Protect customer information and use it exclusively for improving services, not for intrusive marketing.

Hire or consult data experts to maximize your data's potential. These professionals can design algorithms for predicting customer behaviour, optimizing inventory, or streamlining supply chains.

Fresh ingredients lead to better dishes, and the same goes for data. Regularly update your data sources to maintain their relevance. New customer trends and preferences emerge over time, so staying current is key.