How a 10-year-old burger chain harnesses better business analytics to thrive in the notoriously fickle hospitality industry.
What’s the secret to a great burger?
According to Grill’d Founder & Managing Director Simon Crowe, it’s locally sourced, fresh & healthy ingredients. One of those ingredients is tailored business analytics.
Grill’d uses CommBank’s tailored BetterBusiness Insights reports to keep up to date on developments and trends in the food industry. The reports draw together merchant data, restaurant and hospitality industry analysis, key economic indicators and aggregated customer data, including demographics, spending patterns and loyalty.
For example, Grill’d’s most recent Insights report indicates the restaurant chain experienced 38 per cent sales growth between June and August 2014, compared to just 1 per cent growth of its competition.
“The reports are a stimulus for thought,” says Crowe. “They prompt us to assess how we’re performing on different levels versus our competition, and then turn those thoughts into actions.”
Planning for the future
The reports also enable the company to identify business improvement opportunities and plan for future growth.
Since founding Grill’d in 2004, Crowe has remained determined to grow the restaurant chain organically rather than rely only on a franchise model. The company directly operates two-thirds of its 75 restaurants in the business, which currently employs more than 2,000 people.
“We wanted to make sure we grew aggressively but in a controlled fashion,” says Crowe. “In a hospitality, people led business, it’s imperative to have well-established systems and you can’t do that using only a fast-growth franchise model. By operating our first five restaurants ourselves, we were setting up our business for the long term.”
Thanks to these systems and its careful use of business analytics, Grill’d’s future is bright and will soon expand into Asia.
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