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Tech in a box: How Dickey's uses big data to target marketing strategies

During "Tablets: When, Where, Why and How" at the ICX Summit in Chicago, Dickey's discussed its custom-developed business intelligence service called Smoke Stack that analyzes data to help the restaurant connect with customers and increase sales.

Paula Suarez, director of software analysis and development for Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, discusses the chain's new big data platform.

July 1, 2015 by Cherryh Cansler — Editor, FastCasual.com

Using tablets to enhance the customer experience isn't new, but Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants is putting them in the hands of its c-level executives and staff as opposed to only its customers, said Paula Suarez, director of software analysis and development for Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, a franchise with more than 500 units.

During the Monday session, "Tablets: When, Where, Why and How" at the ICX Summit in Chicago, Suarez shared the company's custom-developed business intelligence service called Smoke Stack that analyzes data to help the restaurant connect with customers, which leads to sales increases. Specifically, the platform collects info from the chain's POS, loyalty programs, customer surveys, marketing promos and inventory systems to provide near real-time feedback on sales and other key performance indicators, Suarez said.

The "technology in a box," as Suarez described it, was born out of the franchise's need for fast information since it's been expanding so quickly over the past couple years.

"We experienced an enormous amount of growth and needed better insight into this evolving target market," she said.

How it works

Business intelligence and data warehouse solutions provider iOLAP combined Syncsort’s DMX data integration software with Yellowfin’s BI platform and Amazon Redshift for data warehousing to create Smoke Stack and implent it across Dickey'smore than 500 locations. It allows chain to learn about its customers but to also assess their needs, which helps them change operational behavior in real time.

All data is collected every 20 minutes and also during a daily morning briefing at corporate HQ. The process included three steps:

1. Collect guest information via TIB and Spendgo, the company's mobile platform and then store that data internally
2. Run guest data reports in Yellow Fin, correlating with sales data,
3. Analyze: Did sales increase or decrease; was it effective?

What Dickey's learned

Suarez said the customer info she's collected is priceless. For example, a few things the platform has already taught her have included:

• The chain's average lunch guest is male, 43, drives an SUV and commutes 30 minutes to work, so the chain now considers Ford finance customers who live 15 to 30 minutes away from a Dickey's as a prime advertising target.
• That women with kids usually visit Dickey's for a later and longer lunch on Wednesdays and that these ladies use Pinterest. To capitalize on this, Dickey's rolled out a Pinterest campaign in which it introduces a craft each Wednesday.
• And that one of the strongest commonalities among guests is that they play fantasy football and have dogs. This means the chain spends more money on advertising on fantasy football sites than on back-to-school campaigns, for example, and may run commercials on Animal Planet to reach their target audience. They also include dogs in catering photos to inspire dog-loving consumers to notice their ads.

About Cherryh Cansler

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Cherryh Cansler is VP of Events for Networld Media Group and publisher of FastCasual.com. She has been covering the restaurant industry since 2012. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, The Kansas City Star and American Fitness magazine, among many others.

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