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Sydney restaurants put diners' data on the menu

Esther Han
Esther Han

Monique Atlas at Mejico, which enhances the dining experience via customer profiling.
Monique Atlas at Mejico, which enhances the dining experience via customer profiling.Michele Mossop

In recent days at his beachside eatery the Duck Republic, owner Geoff Bramann has dazzled customers with his hospitality skills to the point where he is being hailed as a magician.

His trick is to pull up their increasingly detailed profiles and check their order history, overall spend, lengths of stay and perhaps even notes on behaviour and preferences.

The Duck Republic in Cronulla has been impressing diners with its personalised service.
The Duck Republic in Cronulla has been impressing diners with its personalised service.Peter Schofield
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"I said to one customer, 'Would you like a glass of your wife's favourite wine? We haven't met your friends before, what would they like? You had the scallops and the beef last time, are you going to go for that again?'" recounted Bramann from his Cronulla kitchen.

"He was like, 'You either have the greatest memory or you're some sort of magician'. It made him feel important, it made him look important in front of his guests."

The Duck Republic is among the first Sydney restaurants to adopt a new software feature launched in the past couple of weeks that is set to push the industry into the era of big data.

Two widely used services – bookings platform Dimmi and point-of-sale provider ImPOS – have integrated their systems so every itemised bill can be automatically stored against customer profiles.

Stevan Premutico, chief executive of Dimmi, said restaurants had for too long relied on memory and manual data entry to build a picture of their customers, trailing behind industries such as airlines and hotels that had mastered guest recognition and offered tailored customer service.

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"Australians don't mind hotels and airlines keeping track of our likes, dislikes and what we do for a living, so long as it improves their experience. It's a necessary initiative for restaurants which operate on super tight 3 to 5 per cent profit margins," he said.

The integration allows all types of eateries, from family to fine dining, to effortlessly capture data.

"Buzzy venues which have hundreds of people coming through the doors each night can streamline processes and deal with large volumes of people," he said.

Social media information can be linked to patron profiles, and staff can also add notes.

He said common notes included whether someone was a wine connoisseur, generous tipper, a frequent no-shower, or even a "PIA", that is, a pain in the arse.

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Upmarket restaurant group Mejico began testing the software feature in the past week. It plans to share the data between its Mexican restaurants in the CBD and Miranda, as well as its soon-to-open Indian one.

Its marketing manager Monique Atlas said they were ready to move on from simply collecting names, email addresses and birthdays, which led to generic messages.

"Now it's ultimately about communicating with people based on what they love. If you only order vegetarian food, we're not going to market you a pig on a spit," she said.

"We've got 250 tequilas behind our bar. If you like tequila, we're going to let you know when a special tequila comes in, and provide the experiences you want, like a tequila class, rather than a generic email."

She said customers who, for example, constantly turned up late to reservations or left small tips, did not have to worry about black marks being placed on their profiles.

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"That's a valid concern, but that kind of thing isn't recorded by us. I don't know about other restaurants, but for us, it's only about providing an exceptional, unbelievable, experience," she said.

Bramann described the data-collecting feature as "big brother-ish", but said there was no need for privacy concerns.

"It's not extreme like facial recognition cameras in shopping centres. All this is going to do is make people feel comfortable and that little bit more special. It captures what's happening inside the restaurant," he said.

Big data expert David Vaile, from the Australian Privacy Foundation, said the lack of transparency to customers was a concern and he would prefer store-front notices and an opt-in model.

"We know there is a massive trade in data and psychographic profiling, so where does this collecting stop? What's to stop them from monetising and further exploiting this valuable information?" he asked.

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"Wouldn't it be better if the restaurant had stable, secure staff, so you met the same person each time, instead of meeting different wait staff who may be keeping a dossier on you?"

Sean O'Meara, managing director at ImPOS, said the disconnect between different operating systems was one of the biggest shortfalls of the restaurant industry.

"The advances in technology are allowing systems to talk to each other in a much greater capacity. This new feature will help improve the way restaurants operate, eliminate manual data entry and provide customers with a better dining experience."

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Esther HanEsther Han is a homepage editor at The Sydney Morning Herald. She was the overnight homepage editor based in New York City, and previously covered state politics, health and consumer affairs.

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