A restaurant analytics solution from restauranteurs

Restaurant business is not easy. There are several challenges that owners have to address in order to run a successful eatery. One of them is knowing the needs of the customer. Of course, someone who has been running a restaurant for a while will have some estimates about this, but until recently, there has not been a comprehensive solution to understand customer requirements and behaviors.

Modern analytic solutions are offering restaurateurs extremely valuable insights that can help them optimize their operations by taking better decisions. But while some of them are quite good at the technology, many suffer from the fact that the solution providers lack knowledge of restaurant business.

This was a major thought behind the launch of the London-based startup, Tenzo. Tenzo helps retailers and restaurants see all their business’ data and insights in one place.

Speaking to asmag.com, Christian Mouysset and Adam Taylor, Co-founders of the company, said that what made their solution stand out was their knowledge of the restaurant business. Tenzo connects the point-of-sale, social/ review websites or staff scheduling to provide insights to owners, managers and in-store employees in real-time on mobile and the web.

“Our product has been built and designed by restauranteurs,” they said. “For this reason, it has been designed to be simple to use, following the less is more principle and mobile first. We’ve proved that managers that use Tenzo see their average review ratings go up 19 percent, their forecast error down by 28 percent and a faster growth rate of 6 percent.”

Mouysset, who manages the company’s UK business, had previously founded a chain of restaurants and corporate popups based in central London, enabling him to understand the nuances of the food business. Prior to Tenzo, Adam was an Associate Partner at McKinsey where they led big data and growth tech work in Silicon Valley.

“We’ve proved that managers that use Tenzo see their average review ratings go up 19 percent, their forecast error down by 28 percent and a faster growth rate of 6 percent.”

The solution is purely software-based. The company has machine learning and deep learning algorithms in place to provide forecasts that even take weather and events into consideration. Mouysset and Taylor believes that further technological developments in these fields could have a strong impact on their solution.

There are several factors that could drive demand for this solution. According to the company, mass adoption of mobile technology as well as the increased awareness of restauranteurs that their data holds valuable insights is a primary reason. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, it would be inevitable that businesses to adopt these kinds of solutions to improve their bottom lines. In an economy where labor costs continue to rise, there is an urgent need for businesses to optimize their operations to maximize their output.

However, such technological developments do give rise to security concerns. Increasingly frequent hacking attacks have prompted a rise in cybersecurity fears. Solution providers are forced to make this a priority when offering their products to ensure that their customers have peace of mind.

Speaking of Tenzo, Mouysset and Taylor indicated that security is a major factor they pay attention to. “We take security very seriously - our data is encrypted at in flight and at rest,” they said. “We have regular security sessions to review our procedures.”

Customer response to the solution has been positive so far, even though many restaurateurs are not fully aware of such technological possibilities. Educating the customer on the benefits of the solution would be a challenge in these initial stages but the industry will profit as a whole when more customers fully understand the nature of the technology.

“Most customers didn’t believe such as solution existed to see all their business’ data in one place,” Mouysset and Taylor said. “All our customers have already recommended us to another potential customer.”