To Survive in Tough Times, Restaurants Turn to Data-Mining (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The early diners are dawdling, so your 7:30 p.m. reservation looks more like 8. While you wait, the last order of the duck you wanted passes by. Tonight, you'll be eating something else -- without a second bottle of wine, because you can't find your server in the busy dining room. This is not your favorite night out. The right data could have fixed it, according to the tech wizards who are determined to jolt the restaurant industry out of its current slump. Information culled and crunched from a wide array of sources can identify customers who like to linger, based on data about their dining histories, so the manager can anticipate your wait, buy you a drink and make the delay less painful. It can track the restaurant's duck sales by day, week and season, and flag you as a regular who likes duck. It can identify a server whose customers have spent a less-than-average amount on alcohol, to see if he needs to sharpen his second-round skills. So Big Data is staging an intervention. Both start-ups and established companies are scrambling to deliver up-to-the-minute data on sales, customers, staff performance or competitors by merging the information that restaurants already have with all sorts of data from outside sources: social media, tracking apps, reservation systems, review sites, even weather reports.

Comments

Data mining not needed

[JohnFen]

I'd rather eat at restaurants that were competently managed over restaurants that rely on spying on their customers in order to avoid having to be competently managed.

Re:Data mining not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit ... my favorite restaurant is a little local place where the chef/owner is in his presentation kitchen and looking out and waving to his regular customers and always willing to make a one-off dish ... the head waitress has worked in the industry for years (many with this chef), and also knows the regulars by name as well as what they like. And even the people who she doesn't know by name still get the same attentive service.

When we go there, we graze our way through a 4-5 course meal and a generous amount of drinks since we're walking anyway.

Almost without exception (not that they need to) they'll comp us a couple of things, because they like their regulars and by the time we've had a 2+ hour meal, they've more than made money on our visit.

When I dine out, I pay in cash because the wife and I put money into the dining out kitty and spend from that. I've heard of places saying they won't accept cash, and they just summarily lose my business.

I simply won't allow a restaurant to gather digital analytics on me. The place which knows me by name, knows my drink and food preferences, and will happily tweak a menu item for me? That place doesn't need analytics, and wins my business the old fashioned way ... by bloody well earning it and giving me a dining experience which is awesome from start to end.

A restaurant who is going to try to tie me to analytics with some asshole company who wants to track me through the real and digital world? That place will simply never get my business.

Even less fancy restaurants are more than capable of having competent wait staff who don't leave people sitting with empty drinks and can remember people's tastes. Hell, I know pizza places where the wait staff still all know us by sight and remember our drink orders ... because that's part of the job.

If your wait staff is that bad ... this is a management problem, not a data problem.

Re:Data mining not needed

[JohnFen]

They're got nothing to hide and it makes everything that happens to them more relevant and personalized. What's wrong with that? (shrug)

Having something to hide doesn't enter into it (and that's a stupid argument any, since everyone has something to hide).

In terms of restaurants, though, if the restaurant is even halfway decent and you're a regular, you will get relevant and personalized service without the spying. It's called personally knowing your customers.

Re:Data mining not needed

[JohnFen]

There's a distinction to be made between paying attention and spying. Is the waiter just keeping an eye on my table? That's paying attention. Is personal information about my "experience" being entered into a database for further analysis, where it's shared and combined with data from other databases? That's spying.

Re:Data mining not needed

[Falos]

They're not interested in waiters who leave people with empty drinks.

They're interested in grilling waiters who don't upsell enough alcohol.

Even if it's a guy/gal who has a natural talent for attracting clientele and had increased your business - or any other number of useful traits, which don't show up on a spreadsheet and therefore s/he's going to be "reviewed" onto the chopping block.

Metrics are usually genuine; the conclusions attached to them are usually voodoo.

How did you know...?

[geekmux]

"How did you know I wanted a medium rare filet? I haven't even ordered yet."

"It was easy sir. Our sewer system is routed through the kitchen where we perform mass spectometry on your waste matter. Out of your last 73.4 feces samples you've provided, we calculated an 89.27% preference for medium rare filets on Tuesday nights before 8PM, especially after you've had sex in the missionary position."

Re:Are you saying...

[HornWumpus]

All vegans can say that.

Re:Duck??

[erice]

Do people eat that much duck that this is a problem?

It actually works the other way around. Low volume dishes have more potential for volatility and that is problem when trying to balance between having too much (waste) and having too little (can't fill customer orders).