Twin Peaks consistently reports sales and traffic increases, attributed to making improvements on guest experience. Benchmarking is an integral part of their strategy, as learned from this Q&A.
What are the building blocks of your benchmarking strategy?
We align everything with our mission/vision and goals of the company. We make sure that everything we do is impacting them in a positive way. The things we measure can change depending on what we are focused on, but the main areas never change. Sales, traffic, social scores and people metrics.
What are the MOST important metrics you track?
Traffic and intent to return.
What benchmarking metrics bring you the most ROI or value?
Sales, traffic, intent to return, turnover, actual vs theoretical food costs and labor hours per 100 guests.
How does tracking comp sales and traffic data contribute to your overall growth strategy?
We firmly believe that sales and traffic speak to the health of the business. Black Box Intelligence gives us the data point of understanding our own health and trends versus the impact of external market conditions.
What internal benchmarking is most beneficial to your organization?
Volume banding comparisons and key performance indicator reporting.
What external benchmarking is most beneficial?
Sales and Traffic vs Market, all social scoring regarding the guest experience at our restaurants vs competitors, turnover, salary and benefit comparisons (to make sure we are staying competitive).
Who manages benchmarking at your organization?
Since we are a small group, we all work on benchmarking. Finance measures things impacting sales and traffic. Training/HR measures turnover measures and marketing measures the social space.
What are the positive effects on your business you’ve seen from benchmarking your metrics?
It has helped us understand where our strengths and weaknesses are, what makes our guests come back and what keeps them away. From there, we are able to create plans to maintain our strengths, while focusing on our weaknesses.
What internal processes or practices have been impacted as a result of insights gained from benchmarking?
Benchmarking impacts everything we do both within the corporate office to the field. It helps us understand where our focus needs to be in every aspect of the organization.
This Q&A is an excerpt from the Operator’s Guide to Restaurant Benchmarking. Download the free guide today and learn how to develop a structured approach to benchmarking to understand your restaurant brand’s internal success as well as your position in the marketplace.
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