The Restaurant Data Exchange (RDX) Consortium yesterday announced the addition of two nation-wide members – Buca di Beppo and Chevys Fresh Mex® – to the newly formed consortium. This marks an important milestone for the consortium in their efforts to create timely peer-to-peer benchmarking and customer purchasing data analysis in the full service dining segment, while helping chains use the data to increase sales and boost profits.
During the upcoming months, these new members will participate in an RDX initiative that will measure the performance of a chain’s individual units by collecting timely customer purchase data directly from the POS. As a result, Consortium members will gain access to the business intelligence that will help them hone their marketing initiatives and streamline their operations procedures.
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“This is a very competitive industry and insight is the name of the game. The more we know about our own guests and how they use us, the more able we will be to serve their needs,” said Lane Schmiesing, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Buca di Beppo. “Knowing how we stack up against a competitive set also provides us with importance benchmarks. This is just one more piece to the puzzle that helps fill out the picture for us as we plan for our future growth.”
“Implementing a technology capable of delivering a snapshot of our core guests’ preferences is a tremendous opportunity for Chevys,” said Bruce MacDiarmid, Chief Marketing Offer at Chevys Fresh Mex®. “Our guest has the most to gain from this program because we are able to tailor our concept development to meet our guest needs.”
To obtain this customer purchase information, the RDX Consortium has created a data mining technology that captures POS data and standardizes by product category. Once collected, the data will be sent to the consortium through secure Internet connections for analysis and review. Members will then receive a report that not only analyzes the data gathered in their stores, but also compares it against an aggregate data set culled from competing restaurants in the same dining segment.
“Although companies understand the value of analyzing customer purchase data, they often lack the resources and expertise required to implement, manage and maintain such efforts,” said Charlotte Bogardus, Chairman and CEO of Gazelle Systems and co-founder of the RDX Consortium. “The RDX Consortium seeks to help restaurants overcome these barriers, and provide them with the technical tools needed to make customer purchase data a part of their daily operations.”
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By GlobalDataSandra Henkel, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) Vice President and RDX Consortium co-founder states, “This is a tremendous opportunity for the restaurant and foodservice industry to capture the same competitive advantage that the successful grocery industry companies did ten years ago. The market place intelligence delivered by IRI was critical to the profitable growth of the grocery industry leaders, just as it will be for the visionary leaders of the RDX Consortium members.”
About the Restaurant Data Exchange
The Restaurant Data Exchange (RDX) is a newly-formed industry consortium that brings timely, accurate business intelligence to the full-service restaurant sector.
In the RDX Consortium, participating restaurants pool transaction-level detail from their POS systems into a common data warehouse secured and maintained by Gazelle Systems. Data specific to a chain or unit is kept anonymous from other participants. This data is regularly analyzed and members of the consortium can select specific reports that benchmark their performance across a variety of dimensions.
The Consortium can provide its participants with unique and powerful insights to manage and grow their business, including: menu and pricing trends, consumer and market behaviors, frequency and churn benchmarking, site selection criteria, “shopping cart” purchase behavior, and Revenue management. The Consortium founders include Gazelle Systems, Inc. and Information Resources, Inc. with a research collaboration with The Cornell Center for Hospitality Research.
