Leveraging Data for Restaurant Success: Insights from Data Delivers and Primanti Bros

This episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast features a deep dive into how restaurants can use data to drive business decisions, enhance customer experience, and ultimately boost sales. The hosts are joined by Pat Riley, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Data Delivers, and Adam Gollum, CEO of Primanti Brothers, a 91-year-old restaurant brand. They discuss the importance of organizing and monetizing the vast amounts of data generated by restaurants to understand and influence customer behavior. The conversation touches on the utilization of third-party data, loyalty programs, and data analytics to identify customer trends, preferences, and the efficiency of marketing strategies. The guests share real-life examples, including operational changes and menu item adjustments, to illustrate how data informs decisions leading to improved customer retention and acquisition. The discussion emphasizes that despite the availability of data, its effective use is what differentiates successful restaurant operations.

00:00 Welcome to the Data-Driven Restaurant World
00:19 Introducing the Experts: Data Delivers and Primanti Brothers
02:23 The Power of Data in Restaurant Marketing
09:35 Navigating the Pandemic: Strategies and Insights
16:07 Operationalizing Data for Menu Success
20:20 Expanding Reach with Third-Party Data
26:23 The Future of Restaurant Data Utilization
32:31 Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

0:02

This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Helping you run your restaurant better.

Jeremy: 0:10

Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I think everyone out there for joining us, as I say, each and every time. I know you guys have got lots of choices. today we are going to be talking about data and how data is being used to, to help businesses. and, these are some of my favorite type of episodes because we've got not only a tech company, but we've got somebody that uses the data. for their own purposes. And so Pat, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience for those that don't know who you are, and then we can talk about what you get to do. And then we'll get to talk about one of your clients and what they're doing, doing with, what you guys,

Pat Riley: 0:40

Sure. Thanks, Jeremy. Pat Riley, I'm the vice president of sales and marketing for a firm called Data Delivers. we really work with brands, specifically restaurant brands around understanding all of this data that exists, that is just multiplying every day, helping to organize it, get the insights out of it, and ultimately monetize it, and change customer behavior. So that's what we get to do every day. And we

Jeremy: 1:09

favorite topic, let's talk about data, but I know we're going to actually make it super exciting because I know there's lots. That, not only are we producing, but there's lots that we can do with it that I think are way underutilized. and you brought one of your, one of your esteemed, clients with you, why don't you, introduce us and maybe he gave us a smirk for those that are, that are on video, but, why don't you introduce Adam to, to our audience and then let Adam talk a little bit about himself.

Pat Riley: 1:30

get to work with great brands like Primanti Brothers. And, I think Adam and I have known each other for almost four years, maybe even longer than that. it's not a new relationship and, I'll let him say how painful it's been for him.

Adam Golomb: 1:43

super painful. hey, thanks for having me on. Adam Gollum. I'm the CEO of Primanti Brothers. been a marketer most of my career. So every once in a while they let marketers run things. but, we're a 91 year old brand founded in Pittsburgh in 1933. Operate today in, 45 locations in four states, opening number 46 in a week. brand's growing nicely in kind of the Mid Atlantic region. And we use, for being an old brand, one of the oldest restaurant chains out there, we do a lot of data behind the scenes, and execute a lot of programs behind the scenes. But so stay true to who the brand isn't authentic.

Jeremy: 2:19

Awesome. congratulations on store 46. And, some of my favorite brands, ironically, are those that are run by marketers because, they're always doing some innovative, cool stuff that, it's not, I love operators just the same because typically things work really well, but there's not a whole lot of innovation because it's let's keep everything the same. Whereas, the marketers are always trying something new. Pat, why don't we talk a little bit about what data delivers does first and foremost, because then it really will go into how and why Adam, It is finding what it is that you guys do so critical. cause I, I don't think you guys are just in restaurants. I think you guys do other verticals, but primarily in the restaurant space. So why don't you talk a little bit more about what data delivers does from a data acquisition perspective so that we can then talk about how to exploit it and why it's

Pat Riley: 2:57

Sure. so as an organization, we're now in our 22nd year. So we've been around for a while and we started as a pure customer data analytics shop. So we would take in all of these. Messy data sources from all the different systems that a brand would have and help people do strategic analytics with that data. So whether it's customer segmentation, whether it's predictive modeling, whether it's next, next product upsell, cross sell, all of those things. we were doing that for customer organizing, for brands that had large customer organizations. Across telecom, utilities, retail, restaurants, probably 15 years in the restaurant space. And it was probably four years ago, five years ago, maybe now that we said, okay, regardless of industry, anybody with customers has the same data challenges. Everybody wants to know their customers better. They want to understand what's changing with their customer behaviors. And ultimately they want to build stronger relationships with their customers. Have them come in, visit more often, spend more money, those types of things. And so we set out to say, okay, how can we build a platform that 80 percent of the questions can already be answered. We can spend our analytic power, integrating the data sources into this platform, and then answering the other 20 percent of questions that we can't answer out of the gate. We didn't realize at the time that we were building a CDP. But that's, in essence, what we built and, but we came at it from the data and analytics angle, not the technology angle. and so we understood data's messy. It doesn't come together just automatically. You can't just drag tables like the old Microsoft access days and connect fields. It's like there's a lot of art that goes along with the science behind it. And in, in doing that, it really allows us to, not only tell brands a lot about the customers that they may already know, loyalty programs and things like that, but also using our third party data that we have inside of our platform. We identify a lot of customers that are just fragments of data living in POS systems or online ordering systems or something that, that really, aren't much more than a name. Through our processes, we can identify those people and really expand the audience that our clients have the ability to do something with. Understanding is the key to strategy. Communicating is how you monetize that. And that's, we help brands you both.

Jeremy: 5:43

I, I love that idea. You said something pre recording, Pat, that I want to take towards our thread because I really want to, I want you to repeat it. Now that we're recording is this whole idea of understanding who your customers are and where their spend patterns are, because I think that's really going to go into how Adam utilizes your guys's stuff, but if you could repeat that thought that says when sales are up, it's because of something when sales are down, it's because of something else, and without knowing that data, it's really hard, The old adage years ago, and Adam might take offense to this, but, 50 percent of marketing works and 50 percent doesn't work. We just don't know what 50%, was, it was an old adage years ago, but now that we're in a digital world, we can really tell what parts are working, what parts aren't working. And so I'd love for you to expound on that because I think it's important so that we can talk to the customer's perspective of how they're using that day in and day

Pat Riley: 6:28

Yeah. The, we, used to do work with a higher end brand, years ago. And, the sales were up, sales were down. Every operator I've ever talked to understands year over year, month over month, traffic and sales. they don't always instinctually understand every sale. Every visit comes from a person, a customer. And so if sales are up, that means. You had more people coming in visiting spending more money if sales are down Less people coming in spending less money if you don't understand what pockets of customers are You know using you differently. You really don't understand why your sales are up or down And so in putting a face and a name on those transactions on those, we understand, Hey, are my best customers coming in more frequently? And that's what's driving sales. Or are they coming from new customers? Hey, our retention rates dropping. So that's what's impacting our overall sales and traffic. If you don't understand who's driving those chain, those top line business changes, You really don't have a chance of building a strategy to change those trends. and that's really what we try to help people understand is. There are actually people that are representing, that are opening their wallet and spending money. And if you don't understand who they are, it's going to be hard to understand why they're doing what they're doing.

Jeremy: 7:52

Yeah. And I'm going to, I'm going to pass the mic over to you, Adam. Talk to me a little bit about how you consider customers. talk about the data because you know what you can get in and data with data, but it doesn't, if it doesn't drive behavior, none of it matters. If it doesn't drive even strategy, like we were just talking about with Pat, then it doesn't matter. So talk to me a little bit, how you even consider your customers, before you guys put programs in place, because I think it's important to understand and educate our audience about how you think about those things.

Adam Golomb: 8:18

Yeah, I came to Primanti Bros from a large grocery store, convenience store retailer that had, probably, best in class loyalty program, frequency program, really built the grocery loyalty program, out there. So I learned a ton from my time there and understood the power of data and the power of customer data, and what you could do with it to drive sales. Kind of that incremental visit, and coming over to Permanente's, which is casual dining, sports bar, the frequency is dramatically lower than can be in store, grocery. as I dug into the consumer data and understanding, like, how do you drive that extra half visit? how do you find more people that look like your current person today? Cause really when the day's over, the goal is to drive that top line sales. we're a top line sales driven focus company. So that was really the impetus is, we had a small, super small loyalty program when I joined, had some knowledge of, who the consumer was and we call our customers fans. but there was also, what I say is there was a lot of assumptions made about the fan and a lot of, decisions being made. Based on people's opinions. And I'm a data guy. I'm like, Hey, you know, if it, if the data doesn't say we should do it, or the data doesn't say that, let's ground it back in the data guys. so really was, that was really impetus to trying to get a richer data set. And, we went about it a bunch of different ways, data delivers being a piece of it, but growing loyalty, being a piece of it. Reverse token, tokenizing credit card data and using that to get information. So a lot of different ways to get to the answer of who the consumer is, how do you find more of them? How do you get more out of them? They're in the restaurant. How do you get them to visit more often? All those things. And then the pandemic hit, we started this work, I think, Pat, pre pandemic and then the pandemic hit and it was like, okay, how do I drive any sales, and then how do you build the business back?

Jeremy: 9:56

and I'd love to, to get your thoughts, Adam, because there's been multiple strains of thought when I talk to marketers, you've got certain people that are your regulars and driving an extra visit from your regulars might not necessarily be something that you want. Some brands are like, you know what, the guy that's there, every Tuesday and Thursday, cause he's got to go pick up his kids at soccer practice and he comes in, has a beer and a, And, a slice of pizza or whatever, like I don't need that guy to come in anymore. I might want to increase his wallet versus other people that, are there every 30 days. And I want to get them in every 22 days. Talk to me a little bit about how you even consider those, because yes, tons of data sources, but how do you even segment those different types of consumers that interact with the brands in different ways? I know for myself, a family of six, we go out to eat at certain places based on certain behaviors, but when I'm dining Out for business. It's a different behavior set. And so talk to me a little bit about how you even consider that as a marketer and as a CEO.

Adam Golomb: 10:50

Yeah. I think, first off, everyone thinks they have more regulars than they do. so let's, we, our people feel that too, but it's the people you see all the time. It's the guy at the bar, it's the guy who works, the lady who works next door at the office that comes in three times a week. even with those people, you want to understand, What motivates them how you can get another visit back how you can communicate to them in a right way So I use this as an example if you've never bought a kid's meal from us We probably shouldn't send you kids meal promotions, like that's like base level, thing. So like using the data to deliver messaging that makes sense. if you've never bought pizza from us and we think we can sell you pizza because you look like you might want to buy pizza, let's give you an opportunity there. So that's really, I think the level of, of trying to get to that, that Holy Grail of delivering messaging that makes sense to people. So even your most frequent, guests, you want to get, you want to keep them. So that's number one, most important retention strategy and then figure out how you can get a little more out of them or how you can get them to try another day part or another service you offer. And then it's really taking that next level, the mid level medium frequency and trying to get that extra visit out of them. It's a lot easier than getting the light to medium. and then I think the idea of lookalike modeling, taking who you have today and trying to find more of those people. is always important. the old adage, birds of a feather flock together. if four people on a street visit your restaurant, there's a good chance that the other six are probably likely to come to the restaurant if you give them the right incentive. Probably are similar, demographics.

Jeremy: 12:13

Yeah, similar income levels, oftentimes have, same kids in the same age group and all of that. yeah, no. and I love that. and I'm probably going to have to steal that, people think they have more regulars than they were than they do because it's so true.

Pat Riley: 12:26

So Jeremy, I'm data guy. So I, live and breathe this stuff all the time. We. Get POS data from all of our clients and we anonymize it to the standpoint of we can look across behaviors across, we just got done looking at everybody that had a transaction at one of our clients in 22, how many came back in 23, it was about 65 million customers that we tracked across that one in nine came back 20 in 23 that visited in 22.

Jeremy: 13:02

Holy

Pat Riley: 13:03

if they didn't receive some kind of direct marketing, the ones that had direct marketing, it was closer to four and nine. So it was three and a half times higher. If you're able to market to people and keep your brand in front of them to come back. Otherwise you figure eight out of nine people that are in today are never coming back. And that's the stone cold data truth behind what's going on. And, that's the challenge. we talked to a lot of brands and they're always talking about acquisition. Yeah. I understand why, because you got to replace eight out of every nine clients that are coming in, guests that are coming in. The reality is if you focus just a little bit of attention on retention, it's going to deliver top and bottom line results. And that's the biggest opportunity for the industry.

Jeremy: 13:53

and I think Pat, you talk about the posthumous data that you guys look at for that. Talk to me about how the data really informs that decision. And then, then I'll let you pass it to Adam as to what he, they do operationally and marketing wise to keep that. I know for myself, when I have a bad experience, Out of brand, which every brand, I don't care what brand you are. You have to, if you eat there often enough, you're going to have a bad experience. It's just the nature of the world that we live in today. But being able to recover from that versus not recognizing that it was recovered and figuring out a way to get me back in. The data can tell you, the data can tell you, you had a bad experience without a survey. And if you give a survey and then you don't do anything with it, it's even worse. But let's talk about what the data can tell you. Showed you in that and then really pass it to Adam to say, Adam, how do you operationalize that to fix that, not just fix the reason why they didn't come back, but the rest of it.

Pat Riley: 14:43

Yeah. So I, I believe that when you look at, as a consumer, you vote with your wallet. And so if you're spending money. If you continue to spend money that says, Hey, I'm having a good experience. If you spend money today and you don't come back, that probably means you didn't have a good experience. Now that's not always true, but across, again, when you look at millions of customers and their behaviors that can help you infer what's actually happening in restaurants. And so then you start again, data nerd, start diving into it. Are there patterns at certain locations? Are there patterns on certain day parts? Are there certain, days of the week? are there certain menu items that have a higher revisit rate versus others? And when you start benchmarking those across, across your stores and you start looking at, Hey, where am I high performing? where a lot of clients, we get a lot of new customers. We keep a lot of new customers and get that second visit. We keep a lot of the people coming back. What are they doing differently than the locations I have that aren't seeing that? And are there patterns in the behaviors that we can identify? Because that's when you can sit down with the operations folks and say, Hey, it seems like you have a problem on Tuesday afternoons, because anybody that comes in on Tuesday afternoon never comes back. Hey, whoever orders your chicken sandwich at these three locations, They don't come back. Maybe we need to retrain them on how they're making that chicken sandwich, or there's something off because we don't see that anywhere else in the network.

Adam Golomb: 16:16

We've done, take that to drill in on that. we've looked at what first time people buy, and making sure when we're marketing that we're, that's what we're marketing. So what I always, I just, the team, I call it the gateway drug to our menu. but what's the gateway drug to frequency? So if we're going to market, if we're doing a direct mail piece and we're pushing people and don't push people to an item that first time people don't buy. And then the second level is, okay, if they don't buy our first time item, which we have a group of items that are like the best, what are they buying and do they come back and do we have a problem? we've spent a lot of time, we've actually flipped the model on its head this year on our menu development team to focus less on new items and more on a couple of our core categories that. we learned through data delivers and some other in our tattle, which they use for, guest satisfaction surveys. Yeah. We've got a couple items that, they don't test well. they don't get good surveys. They don't get good repeat rate. They don't, they have a lot of people eat them and they never buy them again. so using data to get to that level is it's the Holy Grail, because you would say, wow, I love, I love this item. Let's put it on the direct mail. if that's not something people buy their first time or buy it and turn it into a second time person, why would you promote it?

Jeremy: 17:21

and I'd love to ask real quick, Adam, before, before you, you go, do you evaluate, is it because the items not, being produced well, is it, do you go to the operational side or do you, or Adam, do you just go, and again, I was just. we were talking about a pre show earlier this week. I was playing golf with a half a dozen different brands And we talked I talked about one. I talked to one of the guys at one of the brands I had gone into one of his stores and had a Had an item that i'd had it was fantastic the last three times i'd had it this last visit. It was bad I gave him feedback about it and he's yeah, we changed the way we do our prep on that because it wasn't traveling well for to go at the end of the day. They changed it for to go. And I had a dine in experience and the meal was bad for me. The other five people, it was, the other five people at our table that, cause it was the six of us, they all had a great meal. My meal was not good. I had it five or six other times and it was always fantastic. This time was bad. And I said, what did you guys do differently? It's we changed it for to go. Cause we were getting guest feedback about to go. And I'm like, I'm in the dining room and the item sucked. but I guess talk to me a little bit about operationally. And again, that was just one to one feedback playing off with it with a customer, but talk to me one to one feedback that was mine, but tell me what do you guys do to operationalize those things? Or is it just purely marketing? Let's get them in there with the gateway drugs. Like you were

Adam Golomb: 18:30

no, it's, it's quantitative and qualitative. So it's let's understand quantitatively which items are driving. I, which people are buying it once and never buying it again, Google used to say, when somebody would click on an ad and come to your website and leave immediately, it's like they came, they saw they threw up, type of thing, which isn't great for a restaurant chain to say, but it's a similar mentality. Like they came, they bought that item and they never bought it again. They came back and never bought it again. So it's okay, there's some problem with that item. That they never bought it again. So it's start there to get the universe and then dig into the qualitative. We're fortunate. We get a lot of qualitative feedback from our guest satisfaction surveys that we can tie back to menu items. it's taking that and then starting to understand, okay, what's the issue. I'll be a, Hey, I'm just like that other guy. We have issues. We have items that don't travel well that we're trying to fix, but I would never, I wouldn't fix it to travel well to despite the in restaurant experience, but it's understanding that. And that it's. get in a room, testing the item, playing around with it, trying to understand how you tweak it, putting it out and, the greatest thing about the restaurant industry is you can put something in the restaurant today and get feedback in about 15 minutes on it.

Jeremy: 19:32

I love

Adam Golomb: 19:32

pretty fast to understand, you can take, chicken wings and make them with a new sauce and go walk around the restaurant and have people, no one's going to say no to a chicken wing. when you come to the table, Hey, can you try this for us and get feedback immediately. And then, usually we put them in a couple of groups, but it's really taking that, that, that intersection of quantitative and qualitative, the quantitative points you in the right direction. Then the qualitative tells you the why.

Jeremy: 19:55

Yeah. And obviously that brand didn't expect for my meal to be. not as good in restaurant, but they got that feedback directly from me. I did fill out the survey to them. and, ironically, the guy that I was playing golf with texts me. He's Hey buddy, you're killing me here. I'm like, you gotta fix it. because at the end of the day, you want that feedback from your customers, right? you talk about that. I'm going to. Take a step back because there's a lot of different data points. And I know data delivers collects some portion of it. You talked about tattle. Alex was on the show probably six months ago, Alex, the founder of tattle. And we've had Zach from ovation on and had other people that do guest feedback, surveys on the show. What other pieces of data are you guys aggregating? you talked to Pat in the beginning about third party data. What is third party data? Because when I'm a restaurateur, I hear third party, I think about third party delivery, but there's lots of third party data Sources out there. I know in grocery, you guys use it and see store. You guys use third party data all the time. Talk me through what those sources are that, that can inform some of the data choices and tie on an overlay to the point of sale and the direct customer feedback data.

Pat Riley: 20:55

so when we talk about third party data, what we're talking about is all of the licensable data that exists out there. Most people are familiar with the, experience and axioms of the world that, that have consumer data. For 200 million people in the U. S. we actually audit a lot of those companies. And so we get the behind the scenes look at quality of data, coverage of data and all of that. So when we license data from a variety of those sources, We get information on basically everybody in the United States and probably a thousand different data points on everybody. So not only do we know where they live, age, income, presence of children, likes, dislikes, do they own a home? Do they own a car? All of those types of data that's out there. we're able to take fragmented data that exists in All of the data, all this data that's being collected by a restaurant. a lot of it's not usable because it's just fragments. Like maybe you have a phone number for somebody, maybe you have an email for somebody, maybe you have, um, a credit card, a token or something like that, we're able to take those fragments, put them together, match them with our data. And now we know. Hey, this is Pat Riley. He lives in Chicago and here's an email address that if we want to email him, he's already opted in to receive emails from us. And so we build that out and we put all these fragments together and we build these customer identities. and that's probably one of the things that we do, differently. And I would say better than, Other cdps that are out there. Most cdps are just working with first party data meaning they sign up for permittees loyalty program hey We're going to be able to track their credit card across and we're going to be able to tell you everything that loyalty member did which is super valuable. You absolutely should be doing that, but they're not additive They don't find the pat riley that's not in the loyalty program and say oh This is who pat riley is And we can market to them. And so now we have an additional data database on top of loyalty. And now we can reach a half million people instead of 300, 000 people. and that's ultimately how you move the sales needle is being able to talk to more of your customers and again, keep your brand in front of them so that when they have that decision that 95 percent of us have every night. Gee, what are we doing tonight? You're in the consideration set. And they're like, hey, let's go to Perani's and have a sandwich.

Jeremy: 23:29

and Adam, I'd love for you to expand on that because you alluded to the lookalike, idea. and again, father, three teenage kids and a, and an eight year old. I look a lot, I look very similar to a lot of people in my neighborhood. I've got kids and we're at soccer practice and we're at baseball practice and we're, we have to make choices probably for our kids. More often than I should eat out. I do live in the restaurant space. And so I like to support our clients. And at the same time, we have to make choices and we probably eat out four to five days a week. And so we've got to make that choice, but how do you move that behavior that I'm going to brand X versus brand Y? It's basically. By saying to me, speaking relevantly to me, I don't drink, not that I care that people drink, but I don't personally drink. And my wife only drinks either margaritas or wine. And so giving me the bourbon of the month club email does nothing for me other than turn me off to say, I probably don't want to go there. Adam, you talked about that, that, who those people are and what they've ordered before, talk to me about how you consider that and where you're Where do you guys spend your time and energy? Cause you can do lots of different things with your time and energy on marketing, messaging, branding, advertising, but you've got to make it stick or you're not going to get the results that you're looking for.

Adam Golomb: 24:40

Yeah. I think, let me start off, we have a robust loyalty program, that we're collecting tons of data points. but that's only a percentage of our fans. then we use data delivers to try to, talk to people that aren't in the loyalty program. and I joke with Pat all the time that I hope to never have to use them because we move everybody into loyalty and I don't need to go find other people. that being said, I don't think we'll ever get there. and then really just trying to find people, we are heavy digital advertising brands. And so using digital advertising to, take, here's our current look like people. And let's test lots of different ads and understand which one resonates and drives people back in the door and tracking back through, the whole way through from they got the ad, what was the ad and did they come back in the building, or purchase online, an online order, but it's a constant cycle. I'm a big believer, I don't think we're there yet, but this idea of getting to, I wouldn't call it one to one messaging, because you can put people in groups and cohorts. It's one to group messaging that makes sense to them. you hit right on with the alcohol. It's like, why would we have sent an alcohol promotion to people that have never bought a drink? The odds of them buying a drink are priced pretty slim.

Jeremy: 25:47

and we get, we get, fatigue from these ads that come in, especially people that are doing it, whether it's advertising or it's emails or it's texts or whatever it is. It's you know what? I love it. Cause we're recording this right in the middle of Lent and it's amazing. Everybody never had a fish sandwich on their menu, but they've got a fish sandwich this week because, cause Lent just kicked off and so everybody's got to drive their fish Fridays, which I mean, again, it's fine. It's relevant. It's But if I'm not a fish eater, like why advertise that to me? Cause I'm probably not going to come in and eat fish at your brand. If I've never ever had anything that's seafood, probably not celebrating Lent all that big of a deal, or probably just not going to frequent your brand on Friday if I'm one of those people that doesn't eat, doesn't eat that kind of stuff. I'm going to. Ask one last set of questions and both of you guys, Adam, you coming from outside the industry and Pat, you living in this industry, where do you see brands missing it the most thus far? there's so many people that, that have done little bits and pieces, but across the board, There are brands that are doing it incredibly well, but I think 800, 000 restaurants in the United States or whatever the quantity is, there are so many brands that are not using data to their advantage to do these things. And Pat, I'll start with you since you probably deal with more brands than Adam does. but he was in an industry that really has used data for a lot longer than restaurants have and done it really well, and I'd love for him to talk about what he's learned as he's talked to, his other people that are in the restaurant space doing what he's doing.

Pat Riley: 27:05

Yeah. I would say that when I look across all the industries and then I compare them to restaurant, Restaurant is probably five to 10 years behind retail and retail is probably five to 10 years behind like financial industry and what they're doing with data and how they're able to, keep their brand relevant and change behaviors and drive revenue, from that, where I think restaurants are missing it is. They rely on, primarily loyalty as their one and only vision into customer behavior and loyalty is great. Don't get me wrong. Loyalty should be a key piece of every marketing strategy of every customer strategy that's out there. But the best brands, maybe 15 percent of your customer bases actually opt into your loyalty program. They are self selected your best customers that are out there. And so to think that loyalty customer represents your average customer is a mistake that most brands make. and so you have a small set of your best customers that then you're making decisions and strategies. Which isn't real against the other 80, 90 percent of customers that are out there and how they're behaving. And the opportunity is just to understand more of your customers. and understand that, Oh, just looking at our best customers probably isn't the best way to build a strategy that's going to move the needle. and that's where I think the opportunity is with the data. to just understand a broader set of customer behaviors than just that loyalty subset.

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Jeremy: 29:39

I, I'm going to tell a real quick story before I pass it over to Adam of exactly what you're talking about. It's a brand that chose to keep a menu item on their menu because their loyal customers bought it, but that represented 8 percent of their total customer transaction and nobody else bought it. And ultimately it was a high food cost item. It was hard to prepare and they made a business decision based on that loyalty data. But it was literally. The number of incidents of people that bought that and it ended up being a huge drag on their menu and a huge drag on their food costs and a huge drag on their labor costs because they were trying to serve that loyal customer expecting that if they took that menu item off the menu, those customers would leave. And the truth is those loyal customers are loyal to your brand. Oftentimes, even if you take their most favorite item off the menu, they'll oftentimes transfer to something else versus leaving it on there and hurting your brand. Adam, since you are in one of those industries, and again, I've done a little bit of work in grocery and a little bit of work in C store, the amount of data that, especially third party data that those people have been getting has been insane. Where do you see restaurants missing it today? You've been out on the circuits, you've been out doing the podcast, you're going to trade shows, you're talking to other restaurant executives. Talk to me about where they're missing it most in your mind.

Adam Golomb: 30:48

think the biggest miss, that let's use grocery as an example, the lack of a Nielsen, the power Nielsen had to be able to tell us what our customers were doing outside of ours and what was happening in the category, technomics does that MPD crest does that black box does it on a sales standpoint, but I can't really understand. I'm starting to see more cell phone data, but it doesn't, I don't know that I know our guests went, to Applebee's for dinner, but I don't know why they went to Applebee's for dinner. and what, I think that's the piece that, I don't, you don't get to that in grocery. You knew you could figure out which categories were growing. You could figure out, cause it was all everyone submit the data because everyone got the data and then Nielsen sold the data to, the world of manufacturing, which is CPG world. There's tons of money there. So I think that's probably the biggest miss is that is taking that tied to your loyalty data because your loyalty data is only as good as what's happening in your restaurant. what's happening, outside your restaurant. so I think that's a challenge, especially, in today's world. it's a little tough right now this quarter in the restaurant industry and, trying to understand why is I think the big thing. Are people dining out? I've seen probably read 20 different investor reports, quarterly earning reports, and everyone's got a little bit of a different take on what's going on right now in the restaurant industry of are people economically challenged? Are they trading down? Are they, are they dining at grocery all of a sudden? I think those are the questions everybody's trying to get to an answer on.

Jeremy: 32:08

and I think that's something that, really has been the overarching theme of, of today's show is really, if you're not using data, you, you said it right there in grocery. You had the data. Most of the people aren't subscribing to get the data. And then even if they have it, oftentimes they're not using it to make better decisions. And so I love that both of you guys are. Data geeks from that perspective. because at the end of the day, it drives the behavior. The fact that you're willing to say, I don't care what your opinion is. Show who the data to me, Adam really moves a needle within your brand, because then you know that you're making data driven decisions, not just opinion data, driven decisions. And okay, with that, Pat, how do people get in touch with you? How do they learn more about what data delivers does? And, and then, we'll have Adam, let people know where they can check out some of the

Pat Riley: 32:50

Yeah. So the easiest way to learn about data delivers is data delivers. com. can find a lot of answers to, to our approach and how we think on there. also I'm on LinkedIn. So find Pat Riley, from data delivers on LinkedIn, link in with me, more than happy to, to have conversations that, may not even involve what we can do for you, but if what we see can help. answer questions. Um, we're at all the conference shows and those types of things as well. So be out at Murtach, be at RLC. those are two that are coming up here in the next month or so.

Jeremy: 33:24

Love it. Love it. Adam,

Adam Golomb: 33:26

make sure you don't hit, make sure you don't hit Pat Riley, the basketball coach.

Jeremy: 33:30

Yes, rather the basketball coach, you're just watching on video. Not the same person,

Adam Golomb: 33:35

No, not the same. Okay.

Jeremy: 33:37

and then, why don't you wrap it up with, your, what's your favorite item at your guys's, your guys's store too?

Adam Golomb: 33:41

yeah, the, engaging with me, LinkedIn, best place to find me, and then on the brand permanybros. com, is our website. We are the only permanybros out there, so in that space. And then favorite menu item, I'm, I work the menu and move in and out, but, my true tried and classic, probably the first time I ever had with my grandfather 40 plus years ago was the pastrami sandwich.

Jeremy: 34:05

love it.

Adam Golomb: 34:06

it's still on one of those. It's a phenomenal product. One of our top sellers. It

Jeremy: 34:10

Love it. is it one of the gateway drug items that, that you have on the menu?

Adam Golomb: 34:13

It might be one of the gateway drug items.

Jeremy: 34:15

Perfect. I, a true marketer at heart, even if it's not his favorite menu item, he's going to put it out there as a, as one of those gateway drug items. thank you guys both for educating us, talking through why data is so important. as I say, oftentimes, if you're not doing it, there are other brands that you're competing with that are doing these things. So you better get, if you're listening to the show, likely you're trying to learn and trying to get better. So thank you, Pat, for, for your time. For sharing your wisdom, knowledge and Adam, thank you for talking, real life examples of how you guys use it to our listeners out there, guys. We know that you guys have got lots of choices. So thank you guys for spending time with us. If you haven't already subscribed to the newsletter, do so restaurant technology guys. com and to our listeners, make it a great day.

34:53

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.