What is a restaurant CRM and why is it important for restaurants?

In the restaurant industry, maintaining good guest relationships is just as important as having a functioning kitchen.

But between running a restaurant and managing its finances, restaurant management tends to forget to allocate the time to better understand their customers.

This is where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and guest data can be of use.

CRMs helps restaurants collect data about their guests through different sources like online and phone reservations. This information can be as basic as name and contact information or go in-depth with details like number of visits, food and seating preferences, allergies, birthdays, and anniversaries.

With it, restaurant operators can gain insight into their guests and create a custom-tailored experience for each of their visitors.

Even if you currently don’t have a CRM system, this process is likely still happening at your restaurant. Your front-of-the-house staff knows who your regulars are from the top of their head and give them a personalized experience. However, this is limited to your staff’s personal, individual knowledge, and with the high number of tables and employee turnover, these important guest details get lost in communication.

A CRM system provides a centralized place to store all this crucial information easily and efficiently, allowing you to analyze the data and make strategic decisions to improve restaurant performance and guest experience.

The guest database generated by a good CRM system is incredibly valuable, and with the right actions, it can help drive sales and increase diner retention.

Read on to learn more.

What is a restaurant CRM?

A CRM system for restaurants is a specialized tool designed to organize and utilize your entire customer database, with a particular emphasis on enhancing the overall experience of restaurant guests.

Restaurant CRMs are customized specifically for the nuances of the dining industry, offering capabilities in managing client information over standard CRM systems. These platforms focus on creating lasting connections with customers by leveraging their data to offer individualized service and tailor marketing strategies.

The demands of the restaurant sector require a dedicated restaurant CRM technology that can properly handle unique guest data and interactions. Such tailored restaurant CRMs empower every team member with detailed information about their guests, which is essential in delivering personalized attention and encouraging repeat visits in such a competitive market.

Restaurant CRM software in particular extends beyond basic functionalities provided by common CRM systems one might use at conventional businesses. It enhances how restaurants engage with guests by personalizing those encounters according to known preferences.

With these powerful tools at hand, venues can:

• Streamline, automate, and synchronize all forms of customer communication

• Increase levels of satisfaction among diners

• Centralize guest information even across multiple venues

• Integrate seamlessly with existing POS software

Why is a restaurant CRM important?

Having a good CRM system in your restaurant is useful for several reasons, we’ve highlighted the most important below.

Understanding your customers

In the long run, a good CRM system will slowly accumulate your clientele’s information to produce an incredibly valuable database with contact details, number of visits, food allergies, birthdays, anniversaries, and even average spend per visit. This information is the basis of understanding your customers and building more effective, targeted marketing campaigns.

Unlock more data

Most CRM systems can be integrated with other tech at your restaurant. For instance, when integrated with a POS system, it can unlock a treasure trove of data that would be difficult to find and analyze manually, like guest average spend, lifetime spend, and total number of visits, which helps you better understand the consumer spending behavior at your restaurant.

Optimizing marketing

Utilizing your CRM software effectively can help segment groups to target with customized marketing campaigns.

Knowing more about your customer base is an essential step in the process of creating more personalized messaging approaches, whether they be through SMS, email, or push notifications.

Understanding your customers means they will only receive messages that are relevant to them. This prevents someone with a shellfish allergy from receiving promotions from a seafood restaurant, and someone under 21 from receiving content from bars.

Loyalty programs and rewards

Loyalty programs and customer rewards are the most useful tools a good CRM system is capable of generating.

By tracking how many visits a guest makes, how much they spend per visit, and what they typically order, you can enroll them in a customized loyalty program.

This is not limited to just customer behavior, but can also be used to send special offers for birthdays, anniversaries, or special holidays.

Loyalty programs and rewards are not just beneficial for the guests, they also keep guests coming back, thus increasing retention.

Every guest is a regular

If you are operating a restaurant chain or have a number of different restaurants under your belt, you can still treat first-time guests as though they were regulars.

By plugging in a single CRM system across all your locations, it doesn’t matter if a guest has been there before as long as they’ve visited just one in the chain.

This gives you the ability to greet them by name at the door, know what allergies they have, when their birthdays are, as well as typical spending habits and customer behavior. Imagine the look on their face when you recommend one of their favorite dishes without them having to tell you.

This also means that new employees also don’t have to spend weeks familiarizing themselves with the regulars.

This curated guest experience is not limited to standalone restaurants, but also includes restaurants in the hotel industry. Through property management system (PMS) integrations, you unlock a host of data points that previously wouldn't have been accessible to your restaurant staff. This allows your customers to have a streamlined stay from the moment they check in to the moment they check out.

By plugging your restaurant management system right into your hotel's PMS, you'll be able to track guest stay metrics right from your host stand. These include room number, length of stay and guest tags. 

Understanding and analyzing restaurant performance 

The information derived through CRM systems can help managers better analyze their restaurant performance by providing operational insights through various data points like busiest day of the week, best-selling dish on the menu, peak and non-peak hours, number of repeat customers, and more.

These insights can determine your operations’ high and low points and help make strategic data-backed decisions to improve restaurant performance, like hiring more staff for busy days and marketing your best-selling products.

What should you look for in a restaurant CRM?

When assessing a CRM system for your restaurant, you should consider several significant factors.

• Integration capabilities: The CRM system you choose should seamlessly connect with your existing POS, reservation, and online ordering systems.

• Ease of use: The system should be user-friendly and easy to navigate for both staff and customers.

• Scalability: The system should be able to grow with your business and accommodate increasing customer data and interactions - as well as the addition of new venues if your business grows.

• Adoption by staff: The system should be easily adopted by your staff, with minimal training required.

By considering these factors, you can choose the best CRM system that meets your restaurant’s unique needs and drives business success.

Which leads us to our next point.

What are the best CRM systems for restaurants?

There are plenty of restaurant CRM software options available on the market, but the conventional systems like Hubspot, Zoho, or Salesforce are designed for more generic uses cases and don't really cater to the specific nuances of restaurants. What could work for a marketing agency or retail brand, will most likely not work for a restaurant.

We've actually put together a roundup of the best restaurant CRM systems available right now, which you can read to get an in depth comparison of each and make an informed decision.

Conclusion

In the restaurant industry, employing a Restaurant CRM system can greatly enhance your establishment’s performance in numerous ways. Such systems elevate customer retention and refine marketing strategies while simplifying operational tasks.

By centralizing guest data within a CRM, you are able to harness in-depth insights about your customers that enable you to craft tailored dining experiences which nurture both loyalty and repeat visits.

Evidence of these benefits is seen across the spectrum from quaint cafes to expansive hospitality chains – all testament to the influence Restaurant CRMs have on business outcomes.

When selecting a CRM for your eatery, it’s crucial to assess features like integration options, user-friendliness, and growth adaptability. Choosing an appropriate restaurant CRM tailored specifically for your needs will be instrumental in tackling market competitiveness and nurturing sustainable growth for your business venture.

Restaurant CRM FAQs

What is a Restaurant CRM?

Restaurant CRM software is a game-changer for eateries, helping them manage customer information efficiently and enhance the dining experience. By using this data smartly, restaurants can build lasting relationships with their guests.

This system transforms restaurant management by organizing important customer data, making it a key tool in creating successful connections with customers.

How does a CRM system improve customer retention?

By using guest data collected through a CRM system, restaurants can provide personalized service and marketing efforts that really resonate with their customers. This helps strengthen customer retention by making interactions more tailored and creating meaningful loyalty programs.

When restaurants leverage this information to offer targeted recommendations and exclusive promotions, it fosters deeper customer loyalty and enhances overall satisfaction.

What is the best restaurant CRM?

There are numerous excellent CRMs available, but the ideal CRM system for restaurants is one specifically designed for the restaurant industry, such as Eat App.