Guest data: How to use it to plan and improve restaurant events

Knowledge is power. The more insight you have about a guest, the more you can tailor an event or experience to their preferences.

Data isn’t limited to big corporations like Google and Facebook, either. More and more restaurants are using data to learn about their target audiences and deliver personalised guest experiences.

In this article, we’ll look at what restaurant guest data is and highlight some of the ways restaurants, bistros and bars can use it to create better events.

“Having anything less than the comprehensive picture of your customer leaves you scratching and clawing to try and achieve the engagement needed to establish a strong relationship with your audience.” – Karl Schneider

What is restaurant guest data?

Guest data describes the collected information about a guest’s choices, behaviours and preferences. For the restaurant industry, it’s a guest’s food allergies, dietary restrictions, spending habits, favourite table, preferred wine and most-ordered dishes.

Restaurant guest data reveals relevant and actionable insights about your customers – something you can actually use to market to the right people, personalise events, experiences and promotions, and design a better guest experience.

Why is guest data important for event planning?

Guest data can help you achieve your event objectives, increase your ticket sales and provide meaningful and unforgettable event experiences for attendees. Insights about the people coming to your restaurant will help you understand what they like, what they’re willing to spend and how to cater your event to them.

It can also reveal what guests don’t like and enable you to make better decisions about who your event is for and what should happen at future events

The benefits of using restaurant guest data

There are many benefits for designing an event plan based on useful intelligence gained from data rather than just doing what you always do, copying other restaurants or trusting your gut.

Restaurants who make data-informed decisions will:

• Have fewer risks – If you know what your customers value, you won’t have to guess. Risks can be expensive, especially if your budget is small.
• Retain guests – Using guest data to plan unique events equals happy guests. And what do guests do when they’re happy? Come back.
• Save money – Knowing about your guests beforehand lets you eliminate unnecessary or unpopular features of your event (menu items, entertainment, etc.) and streamline costs.
• Sell more tickets – Restaurants that provide what their audience is looking for will have their events attract more people. The more people that attend your event, the more profit you’ll make.
• Attract sponsors and partners – Insights into the demographics of your event guests is compelling to sponsors and partners. From local breweries to authors wanting to discuss their latest novel, partners and sponsors are looking for opportunities for brand exposure. The more guests you have, the more exposure you can promise.

How to collect guest data at your event with Superb

Superb created the first Guest Experience Management (GXM) platform to make collecting guest data easier for restaurants – and to provide the restaurant industry with a way to run and market their business using data.

The best way to collect data at a restaurant or bar event is to sell prepaid tickets. This tells you how many people are coming to your event, and it provides a demographic breakdown, dietary information and, when connected with Superb’s POS, spending habits.

This guest data is also necessary for future events. Knowing your target audience means you can tailor to what guests want – and that increases attendance and ticket sales.

Plus, you’ll be able to collect the email addresses of attendees for email marketing campaigns.

With Superb’s GXM, you can create shareable links to events and tickets.

During and after an event, look back and see where your guests shared the links – was it on Instagram, Facebook or via SMS? This makes it easier for you to budget and plan social media marketing efforts for future events.

When you’re ready to stop using multiple systems that won’t integrate, book a free demo and see how our GXM platform takes advantage of guest data and gives you more time to focus on creating great events.

Understanding guest data at your restaurant event

Once you’ve collected guest data from prepaid ticket sales, you’ll want to pull key learnings about your event and insights about your attendees.

For example, you should have information that shows the following about your audience:

• Age range
• Dietary restrictions and allergies
• Location
• Food and beverage preferences
• Average spend (if they’ve dined with you before)

Following this process allows you to make broad statements about who your event attendees are, what they like and what they want from an event.

Using that information, create statements like these:

• Your winemakers’ dinner event has an audience mostly made up of couples between the ages of 25 and 40.
• They mostly work within 25 kilometres of the restaurant.
• 60% of your event attendees attended your last event and/or dined at the restaurant before.
• The typical spend at your restaurant is €200/guest.
  

How to use past event data to plan your next event

The guest data collected from a previous event will reveal who your attendees were. Use it to make informed decisions about your next event.

• What does their age range tell you about their preferences?
• If most attendees live near the restaurant, are there local partners (breweries or farmers, for example) you can partner with for a future event?
• If a winemakers’ dinner was successful, what other ‘educational’ topics might your guests be interested in? Dinner and a lecture with an author, perhaps?
• If the typical spend during the event was €200, what add-ons can you offer during the ticketing process to increase your revenue?

Recognising patterns in the data may help you discover a type of event that you hadn’t thought of before. For example, design a gin and tonic evening with a mixologist because guest data shows that 20 of your past guests regularly order G&Ts.

Using guest data to market your next bar or restaurant event

You know who your guests were from previous events and you know what they prefer. Use that to tailor an email marketing campaign or inform your social media strategy.

You should also analyse your email platform and social media channels to see how guests found out about your restaurant event.

• Did they find it through a Facebook event page?
• Instagram link-in-bio?
• Or from one of your team members?

Knowing this type of data will help you decide how best to promote your next event.

• How many people followed a link from your newsletter to a ticket purchasing page on your website?
• How many likes and shares did your event posts get on social media?
• Did your website traffic increase around a certain marketing activity during the run-up to your event?

The questions above reveal how successful your marketing activity was before and after the event. Use these to understand where to increase your budget and what channels to focus on for future events.

Remember to make your website a resource for event attendees with valuable information that will educate them about your event and show what they’ll get out of it.

Collecting guest data for your next event is only 1 step in the event planning process, but it’s the most important one.

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