Unlock valuable insights for your new openings
Opening a new venue is always an exciting venture, but it’s not without its stress. After months of planning and preparation, the big day arrives, and suddenly you're juggling customer feedback, publicity, and the inevitable challenges of a new team finding their rhythm.
Amid all this excitement and chaos, those first few weeks are crucial—not just for making a great first impression, but also for capturing valuable data that operators shouldn't overlook.
From addressing real-time challenges to gaining insights into who your new guests are and where they’ve come from, there's a wealth of information waiting to be tapped into.
I'll share my top tips for working smarter, not harder below and show you how you can make the most of Yumpingo’s features for your new openings!
If you're interested in putting a new venue opening plan into action, contact our customer success team cs@yumpingo.com.
Let’s start with questions
With Yumpingo's research questions feature, you can select from various answer formats, including multiple choice and 'follow up,' and set questions to deactivate on a specific date or after reaching a certain number of responses.
Here are a few suggestions to inspire the questions you may want to include:
- Were you aware of our opening beforehand? (Yes/No)
- How did you hear about us? (Multiple choice)
- How likely are you to visit our restaurant for breakfast/lunch/dinner? (1-5 scale - changes depending on time of day)
- Would you be interested in visiting us for brunch on weekends? (Yes/No - only asked on weekdays)
- How convenient is our location for a lunch break during your workday? (5 star)
- What is your age range? (Multiple choice)
- Which of our other restaurants have you visited before? (Multiple choice, select all answers that apply, included a 'none' option)
- Reasons for choosing us / visiting today (Multiple choice)
- Which of the following have you visited in the last 3 months? (Multiple choice ,select all answers that apply - List local competition)
Tip: Take a look at the research questions you already have enabled for your other locations and consider turning these off during the first few weeks to prioritize the collection of insight for your chosen ‘new’ research questions.
This will ensure you collect a high volume of answers for these questions in the first few weeks. You can always enable these again once you have the data you require.
Enhanced marketing and closing the loop
If enabled, every guest is asked if they would like to opt their email in for marketing.
We recommend integrating with your CRM provider so that opt-ins feed into your database through the Yumpingo API.
If that isn’t an option then you can manually export this data, with sentiment attached.
You can also take advantage of our complaints feature.
Where guests leave a 1, 2 or 3 score on the NPS question, instead of asking the guest to opt-in to marketing we show them a complaints page, allowing you to capture email addresses for the purpose of guest recovery.
Our recommendation is to have our ‘Online Reputation’ module which allows you to read & respond to these complaints from the inbox.
However, you can instead opt to use the Yumpingo API to feed these customers into your CRM or manually download an export of email addresses.
Quick responses to complaints can be a great way of recovering guests in the first few weeks of opening and it can reduce the number of negative online reviews as guests use the Yumpingo device to ‘vent’ their complaint.
In-house routines
Maintaining a sharp focus on guest sentiment during the first few weeks of opening enables teams to quickly identify and address the typical teething problems that come with a new team and venue.
Guests tend to be more observant and critical when visiting newly opened restaurants, as they are assessing whether to return or recommend to others.
The Live page on the dashboard allows you to stay in-tune with guest feedback in real time.
The back-of-house team can immediately address dish execution issues during the shift, ensuring a better experience for future guests.
Similarly, the front-of-house team can monitor reviews throughout service and during shift handovers to track NPS and address service-related concerns.
Suggested actions
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Open the Live page on a tablet and face it towards the back of house team for dish execution monitoring.
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Task the GM/ AGM with providing the team with check-in updates at the end of each shift handover or day part so they can make improvements/ tweaks to service going into the next sitting.
Estate benchmarking
The advantage of having established locations with the same menu as your new opening is that you have valuable data for benchmarking.
By setting thresholds for each dish score, the new site can identify what is considered normal and abnormal.
If a particular dish score deviates significantly from the usual range observed at your other locations, it's a clear sign that something may be off.
Analyzing both the dish characteristics and the overall score provides a more detailed and accurate approach to this evaluation.
Suggested actions
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Create an overall ‘range’ score for each menu item based on data from your other locations (ie. Fish & Chips usually scores between 85-88)
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Go one step further and create the same analysis for each dish characteristic (Look, Taste, Portion & Value scores)
We've seen many of our customers leverage the data collected within just the first two weeks of opening to guide strategic decisions for months to come. These insights are incredibly valuable, especially if you're planning to scale quickly. Paired with sales data, they offer a clear understanding of where your strengths and areas for improvement lie.
If you're interested in putting a similar plan into action, reach out to our customer success team cs@yumpingo.com.
We can also assist with post-launch analysis, providing our interpretation of the data and a playbook to help guide your next openings.
Good luck!
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