I may not know your name, but I remember what you drink as we pass each other on Spring Street. We awkwardly look at one another, and I’m praying we don’t stop to talk because I literally have no idea what your name is. All I recall from my nightlife days are what you drink, where you sit, and your favorite cologne (mostly because I would walk away smelling like you after exchanging a hug). Night after night, you would call out my name to get you your signature drink and say thank you. To this day, I know you only as: Jack & Diet.
For more than a decade I worked at The Butter Group (best known for nightlife hotspots 1 OAK, Up&Down, and Butter Midtown) where I ran their customer development & VIP relations. In this role, I met countless people every day and night. I’d see a familiar face walk through the door, I’d say hello, and I’d walk them to their table and offer them a drink. The only time I truly knew their name was if I took their credit card for their waitress. You can imagine how many people I’ve bumped into outside of work over the years who tell me I look familiar and yet I have absolutely no idea who they are.
Instead of remembering names, I remembered spending habits. I started tracking receipts and other data from client visits in a spreadsheet so I could report to the owners what clients were buying, where they liked to sit, who was spending the most money, and other important notes we could use to improve the guest experience. In addition to tracking as much information as possible on the fly, I created comment cards the waitresses would fill out at the end of their shifts, coloring in any important details we might have missed. But let’s be honest. This was so time consuming! At 6 a.m after a long night, our waitresses just wanted to finish their day and go home, so they rushed through the cards, usually forgetting to add important information, sometimes even forgetting the cards altogether. Like clockwork, everyday at 11 a.m., the office would scan the completed cards and email them to me to review. I wanted to pull my hair out every morning reading these half filled out, scribbled little pieces of paper. I’d read what I could, document important notes, and start my customer outreach.
But why was this necessary? Why didn’t our POS (Point-of-Sale) have a built-in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or a platform where I was able to keep track of this information? Instead of depending on poorly handwritten notecards, why wasn’t all of our client spend data — from one-time visitors to returning guests — instantly captured and catalogued? This would have been such an amazing tool to have had back then.
The industry has come a long way over the past ten years. Point solutions have popped up that use complicated integrations to connect the POS (and its treasure trove of data) with CRM systems and other helpful tools. But in addition to hefty setup and maintenance costs, integrated systems paint an incomplete picture, leaving valuable data siloed away in separate places.
As Director of Hospitality at SALIDO, I’m working with our team to build my dream system that “just works.” We’ve created the first POS to marry CRM, advanced reporting, and more all into a single platform. In addition to automatically tracking customer spend data, our CRM tracks everything from birthdays and allergies, to more specific data, such as a client’s hometown, time of their last visit, and dining and drinking habits. All of these data points are crucial to understanding the customer and how they’re experiencing the restaurant. Because SALIDO stores this information in the cloud, operators always have it at their fingertips. Gone are the days of a single individual holding all this valuable business intelligence hostage in their head. No more marathon “brain dump” sessions when that one person leaves the restaurant. Our platform has you covered.
There’s a better way, and it’s about to get a whole lot easier to know the name of all those “Jack & Diets” out there.
