Fonda Mexican, the Australian-based restaurant group, reduced kitchen wait times, streamlined operations, and improved overall performance, to grow guest satisfaction by applying Yumpingo’s Continuous Action Process (CAP).

 

The Results

Fonda Mexican started using CAP in the last week of August 2024. By comparing the 18 weeks before CAP, to the first 18 weeks of the rollout there have been significant improvements:

• Unhappy guests (detractors) reduced by 14%
• Happy guests (advocates) increased by 6%
• Net Promotor Score (NPS) increased by 6 points

This improvement — a result of driving progress and improvements through CAP — helped continue a longer-term trend of guest experience improvement at Fonda Mexican, with NPS, a measure of customer satisfaction, increasing consistently across 2023 and 2024.

 

A Culture of Continuous Improvement

The key to success in the Continuous Action Process is having buy-in from senior leadership, right from the beginning. To ensure the project was supported by everyone across the business, Fonda Mexican’s CEO held a meeting with Yumpingo’s Customer Success team. This ensured everyone was aligned on what was achievable.

The next step was to help the wider team identify how Yumpingo was going to support them in achieving their business goals. This included working with the Operations Director, Head of Marketing, and Operations Managers. As part of an introductory training session, Yumpingo went through the steps of the CAP cycle.

The CAP cycle consists of:

• Know - Collecting accurate, granular guest feedback at scale to provide certainty
• Plan - Identify problems and prioritise changes
• Test - Implement small scale changes and monitor effects
• Act - Refine and roll-out the best solutions across the business. 

David Youl, Co-Founder at Fonda Mexican said : “We found having the Yumpingo Customer Success team working with us invaluable for getting buy-in from the teams. It soon became obvious that this was key to getting results early on.”

Find out more on our continuous improvements page.

 

KNOW - Identifying Challenges and Setting Goals

With the senior team fully briefed, Yumpingo helped to identify the main challenges Fonda were facing based on the detailed guest feedback from the surveys. 

Using Yumpingo surveys, Fonda has already captured over 24,500 customer reviews and within that 11,600 Experience Drivers. Experience Drivers uncover the needs of the customer and identify what will have the most positive impact when addressed. 

The challenges that the feedback highlighted included increased spend per head (SPH), but lower footfall, increases in online complaints, and long wait times in the kitchen.

The Experience Drivers data showed guests were disappointed with the speed of food delivery, compared to the speed of other service elements.  In some venues, almost half of the detractors mentioned long food wait times. 

 

PLAN - Action Planning and Next Steps

With the challenges identified, the Fonda and Yumpingo teams held a deep-dive session to develop a series of actions to solve them. These included: 

• streamlining ticket management,
• adjusting team rotas, and
• adjusting printer settings to make tickets clearer and easier to follow.

The value of using data to identify something hiding in plain sight like the printer issue isn’t always obvious, but as David Youl, explained, “The quality and quantity of guest feedback, at the consistent level that we were getting in through Yumpingo’s guest surveys, helped to spot negative factors like the printer issue. This was the kind of thing that we wouldn’t have normally surfaced in discussions with our front-of-house teams, even at regular team meetings.”

 

TEST - Agile Process Development

Over the next two weeks, the Fonda team tested the planned changes in venue, making minor adjustments using Yumpingo surveys and Experience Driver data to track performance improvements based on real-time feedback. The Net Promoter Score began to improve and the percentage of detractors dropped.

 

ACT - From Insights to Active Improvements

Based on initial success, the successful changes were pushed out across the business. Importantly for rapid turnaround of tables, the kitchen ticket times improved, going down to less than 13 minutes.

During August of 2024 47% of detractors said they felt it was ‘Too long to get food’ but come December, that percentage was down to 35%. This quarter reduction improved overall guest satisfaction.

Following this success the teams worked to identify the next opportunities for improvement.

One opportunity was finding a way to add value to popular menu items, like Fonda’s burritos. Analysing the menus online and in-store, a price difference between online orders and in-store purchases was spotted. There then followed a period of testing to find out what adding extras like corn chips or dipping sauces would do to boost perceived value.

This resulted in a lift in online review sentiment, which positively impacted:

• SEO,
• In-store footfall,
• ROI, and
• Google rankings.
  
  

Maintaining the Momentum 

To maintain progress, Yumpingo continued to join weekly calls with the Fonda team to evaluate and revise the CAP plan, continually reviewing the new survey data that was coming in, and seeing where things were improving. This regular check-in helps keep everyone focused and motivated.

David explained: “We were very impressed with how the Continuous Actions Process approach worked for us and made a tangible difference to delivering improvements. Having a structured approach made all the difference between practical changes that we could see, and just being handed some feedback data that we needed to implement ourselves.”

 

Next Steps: Driving Continuous Improvement in 2025 and beyond

Building on the momentum of success, Yumpingo equipped Fonda’s general managers (GMs) with enhanced training, ensuring they can easily and confidently translate guest feedback into practical operational improvements. Data-driven insights are being shared across all levels of the organisation, empowering teams to make decisions that enhance the guest experience.

Given the significant impact of CAP in driving measurable improvements, a new reporting framework is being introduced in 2025. This will enable GMs to track key performance trends on a weekly basis, pinpoint successes, and identify areas for further enhancement—ensuring a continuous cycle of optimization.

Throughout 2025, Fonda is rolling out new menu items. Insights from the feedback on these will inform menu refinements, ensuring that every dish aligns with guest expectations and brand quality. 

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To find out more about how Yumpingo’s Continuous Action Process can improve your business, book a meeting with our team today.