The Big Table Group is using a consolidated CRM platform to capitalise on cross-brand synergies and optimize its portfolio.
Speaking at MCA’s Hostech conference, IT director Sarah Pope explained how the Bella Italia and Frankie & Benny’s operator is looking to leverage its digital infrastructure and scale to capture more visits across its estate.
It comes as Big Table trials several revamped Frankie & Benny’s restaurants, alongside some conversions to other brands, in order to test whether it can drive more value.
“It’s one thing we’ve really pushed over the last four years, to consolidate all our brands onto one core CRM platform,” Pope told delegates.
“With the acquisition of the Leisure sites we did the same, and they happened to be on the same provider as well, which was fortuitous.
“We’ve now started to play around with, what can we do brand to brand. We’re seeing where we can influence, especially Frankie and Benny’s to a Bella Italia, or Chiquito to Las Iguanas. There’re definitely synergy opportunities there.
“We’re looking at what the customer base is, where we might be able to flip some brands if they’re slightly underperforming, what’s going to be the best structure on that.
“The CRM is quite important to us now, pushing through more and more automations to get more personalized data everywhere.”
Meanwhile, Pope explained how acquisitions such as the family-founded Banana Tree, with its entrepreneurship, creativity and agility, had inspired a different way of thinking at the business.
“One of the things we learned with Banana Tree is keeping it simple,” she said. “Perhaps some of our brands that have been going for a number of years got over complicated.
“So we’re going back to what really matters - good quality ingredients, ‘a bit more funky’ is the phrase we used, and trying not to over-engineer everything, in terms of tech stack, supply chain, really keeping value. That’s where we’ve really started to blend that into some of the bigger brands.”
As a group which has grown to 230 sites, Pope said there were always opportunities to refine systems from a tech and IT perspective.
“At the moment we’re trying to make sure we’ve got the value out of all the systems and fine tuning as the margins are quite tight now.
“The brands may have different ideas of what direction they want to go in, but we’re trying to keep the core state of systems consistent.”
