NZ Restaurants Seafarers, Ostro and Ebisu Serves Up Analytics Insights with Qlik

Qlik, a leader in data analytics, announced that New Zealand’s Savor Group of restaurants, which includes Seafarers, Ostro Brasserie & Bar and Ebisu, is leveraging Qlik’s data analytics platform to revolutionize operations from the front-of-house to the boardroom. Qlik is enabling the restaurant group to analyze data collected across all its outlets to better understand drivers of success, promotion performance and supplier value, together with food wastage and costs.

Matthew Sparling, Chief Financial Officer at Savor Group said, “The restaurant industry is highly competitive on all fronts. Even if a customer loves their dining experience, they’ll still want to explore other eateries - making it harder to attract loyal customers. We need to consistently innovate and bring new things to the table, so that visitors to our restaurants are wowed every time they dine with us.”

Savor Group recognized the need to be more effective in leveraging the significant volume of data at its disposal, and to take the guess-work out of its operations to increase competitiveness. Rather than relying on incomplete data, the business wanted a system that would provide consistent figures as well as motivate and engage its staff to use this information. Savor Group turned to Qlik partner, Endeavour, to assist with the implementation of Qlik Sense for self-service analytics in order to connect data from across nine different restaurants to optimize efficiencies across the organization.

Since the implementation, Qlik has provided Savor Group with granular insights on sales and business performance, helping to lead its competitive negotiations with suppliers and partners. It has also helped restaurants like Seafarers to accurately optimize its performance - top-selling and low-performing menu items are no longer identified based on “gut feel.” This helps with the creation of future menus and determining the best promotions to drive capacity and demand.

Wayne Shennen, Venue Manager and Sake Professional at Ebisu said, “Qlik has been instrumental in our efforts to reinvigorate our drink offerings. At Ebisu, we specialize in Sake. Qlik has helped us refine our approach to determine if we’re too cheap or too expensive and to find out what we’re selling the most of and why. This allows us to proactively recommend relevant products to patrons to improve sales. For instance, we noticed one brand of a particularly good Sake was underperforming and encouraged our staff to actively promote it. Before leveraging Qlik, we would sell 1.5 bottles of it a month, now we’re selling one bottle per day. To be able to take that level of insight back to a supplier and show them how we’re selling their product is phenomenal.”

Garnering strong engagement and adoption of the platform was important for Savor Group, so the intuitive nature of the Qlik platform combined with the visual graphs and presentation was exactly what they needed. “The opportunity to access their data, on their terms, meant the process of selling the new system internally to our employees was extremely simple. Staff across all levels could quickly use it with minimal training and they are now very savvy in using the data. Qlik Sense is now a critical tool for the on-going management of our business,” added Sparling.

Sparling concluded, “As a CFO, I’m well-versed in inputting and analyzing data in Excel. However, chefs and front-of-house staff shouldn’t be expected to. They need to see information in real time, and in a format that’s quick and easy to digest. Endeavour and Qlik have been instrumental in delivering these actionable insights to our business group.”

Sharryn Napier, Vice President and Regional Director, ANZ at Qlik said, “The hospitality industry is always moving with the latest consumer trends, meaning restaurants are looking for new ways to innovate and attract customers. For years, restaurants have wanted to understand their customers better but Savor Group is actually doing it – applying levels of analytics that are not just keeping themselves relevant in a competitive industry but also improving the bottom line.”