7 Insights From the National Restaurant Association Show

CHICAGO — The National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago attracted thousands of people and offered thousands of ideas, from optimizing the use of data, to winning at recruiting, to improving diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) efforts.

Meal-serving robots were on display, and plant-based foods were in full force.

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When seeking to build a data strategy, a retailer should start by looking at best customers. “What are their demographics and psychographics?” asked Dan Gertsacov (pictured center), an Atlanta-based angel investor in food and restaurant technology who has worked at Google, Focus Brands and McDonald’s. He was part of a panel on “Data-Fueled Growth” at the National Restaurant Association Show at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Conducting A-B testing can give insight into customer behavior, he added, and studies should stick to using just email, which is the simplest. “People open it and click,” he said. This allows testing to see, for example, if only discounts matter. He told the story of a contest to allow children to walk on a pro spots field, and 75,000 entered. “You can get lots of data on 75,000 people,” he said.

“When you know your best customers and what it takes to influence their behavior, you can ask how to find more like them,” he said. “That’s targeted paid media. That’s where you add more and more data.”

Gertsacov also said that a restaurant of any size should know its most popular menu item—and should get that answer with data. “We did this at McDonald’s. In Latin America, when we put a ‘most popular’ [item] callout, we sold 40% more,” he said. “People look for those signals as social proof. People are looking for that insight, that credibility. Use your data. Focus on the most popular and you’ll sell more of it.”

The marketing budget for McDonald’s in Latin America was $200 million. Gertsacov said they sponsored a lot of events, but what made the biggest impact on the bottom line was restaurant staffing. “There’s a lot of businesses in food courts,” he said, so if potential customers see a line, they move on. “The No. 1 marketing thing we could do was to fix those lines with staffing. Look at the number of orders in an hour and determine your staffing needs.”

When using data to grow business, companies should start with the data they are collecting themselves before third-party data, advised Asha Samal (pictured left, Slide 2), practice lead for data and artificial intelligence (AI) with  NCR, Atlanta. She mentioned customer data, sales data and social media. “If you’re not paying attention to your social media, you’re missing a whole band of consumer you can tap into,” said Samal, who was part of the panel on “Data-Fueled Growth.” “What is data? If a customer comes in, eats and fills out a form, that’s data. It’ll help in finding the insights.”

Samal mentioned the “crawl phase,” where a company can start without millions to spend. “Start with what you have: POS systems have a lot of data,” she said. “If you know Guest X buys fries every Wednesday, that doesn’t help you, but if you know 95% of fry buyers buy a soda, you know to instruct the server to ask Guest X if they want a soda as well.”

A Fig & Olive restaurant in New York was collecting spending-habits data and started an email campaign targeting those who hadn’t been there in 30 days, Samal said. “They were offered a free crostini with a meal,” she said. “That ROI was $36,000 but they spent only one-seventh on the data analytics. It was seven times return.”

At a grill restaurant digging through data, they discovered they had a huge clientele buying rice and salad. “So, they started adding these promotions on salads to broaden their clientele,” Samal said. “Start small, start today. You’re already late if you haven’t started on data. You don’t have to do it yourself. There are many out there who can help you [analyze the data].”

“I’m opening my first restaurant, what software solutions do I need?”

“You need to be able to take money. The core system of anything is your point-of-sale system,” answered Katie Kirschner (pictured right, Slide 2), vice president and global lead for hospitality consulting at NCR, Atlanta, who was part of the panel on “Data-Fueled Growth.”

“The POS system needs to be able to take a payment and track what it’s for, and has to be able to grow with you,” she said. “Replacing it is not fun. What’s your growth strategy and brand strategy? Choose based off of that.”

Software also should be able to host and protect the information of one’s customers and allow them to opt out, Gertsacov added. “If you personalize your messaging, you’ll see double, triple the response rates. Copy is important, but more important than that is images.”

He added that businesses don’t want to depend on third-party marketplaces because the business won’t have the personal information of their customers. “If you’re doing delivery through a third-party marketplace, every bag should have an incentive for why they should come back to you.” Leave a sticker or a note in the bag that reads, “Next time order directly from us,” he advised.

In addition, he advised against too many fields in a form. “Every time you add another field, you’re losing people,” he said. “Ask for the name, email instead of a cellphone, which is too intrusive. Ask for the basics and give them a reason to share more [such as in a special offer].” If a company requests too much information up front, “You’ll see a big abandon rate,” he said. “Amazon knows one-click pay prevents losing sales.”

“All investment will fail unless businesses invest in their employees first and listen to their demands,” said Marc Schroeder (pictured) of Brentwood, Tenn.-based Fintwist in “Win the Recruiting Battle with Employee Payroll Benefits.”

The top issue is attracting and retaining quality employees, he said, citing labor statistics showing 12 million employees in the restaurant business before the pandemic and six million now.

Some people aren’t rushing back to work because, he noted, 40% say wages and benefits are insufficient to attract employees.

“We need to rethink the financial stress many employees face,” he said. “Restaurants must become more careful in how they treat their labor.”

“Offering more competitive pay is top step taken to attract talent,” he said, noting 81% of respondents indicating this in a Comdata survey this year. In second place, 51% said a signing bonus is a solid attraction.

Regarding work schedules, flexibility is the top priority, at 72% of those surveyed.

Schroeder also said applicants are demanding on-demand access to their wages to relieve short-term financial stress, meaning they can access earnings from that day after their shift ends. This can be done when employers work with via a third-party company such as his. The employee incurs a small fee when accessing their money in this system.

How do leaders and organizations get better at diversity, inclusion and equity? In the fireside chat “DEI Blind Spots” at the show, Dr. James Pogue (pictured,   right) said it starts with an assessment.

“Take a snapshot of where your team or organization is at regarding DEI,” he said. “Create baseline definitions; we have to be speaking the same language. Have the same definition for diversity, inclusivity, throughout your organization. As leaders, we have to drive that through the organization.”

A leader once told Pogue, president and CEO of Dallas-based JP Enterprises, which builds inclusive leaders and teams, that it’s “tough” to create those definitions.

Pogue told the leader, “Yes it is. But if you can figure out how to get same amount of cheese or lettuce on a burger across the globe, you can do it for a definition,” he said. “The intention needs to be there. You cannot accidentally get good as this stuff. You can’t accidentally marry someone.

“If you want to be great at anything,” he continued, “you have to do it on purpose, you have to be the leader. Pay attention, smack them on the hand same way you would with other things if they don’t hit the mark. You have to raise the DEI business as everything else: through human resources, marketing, technology.”

There were robots of all kinds at the show, and all proved to be popular attractions; however, the serving robot, such as this restaurant robot waiter from China-based Pudu Robotics, was hands down the most popular, CSP sister site Restaurant Business reported.

Showgoers did not need to go far to find a robot showing off its stuff. In general, full-service restaurants, where a robot can take food to a customer’s table, are the primary target of these machines. While restaurants have been offsetting labor costs by adding robots, it will take time before it can be determined just how popular they will be.

Chickpeas, mushrooms and pea protein were the talk of the show, as the single biggest food trend at the show undoubtedly was plant-based meat, Restaurant Business reported. Any food usually derived from an animal has a competing plant product, and they all were at the show.

Popular items included plant-based beef, plant-based chicken, plant-based fish and plant-based sausage. There was an odd plant-based egg, plant-based ice cream and even a new term, “animal-free” dairy. Heather Lalley of Restaurant Business tasted some and gave her reviews.

Pictured: seaweed, mung beans and other ingredients make up the this plant-based shrimp from New Wave Foods, Nyack, N.Y. Restaurant Business sampled the fried and sauteed offerings and found them to be close approximations of the real deal.