Over the past year, the rapid expansion of Big Data applications has drawn the attention of industries, who generate huge volumes of data. However, big data algorithms and analytics are increasingly the subjects of trade secret litigation as businesses seek to secure the competitive edge, they have gained from investing in big data utilization.

Since a number of industries utilize the power of big data to better tailor their offerings to the customers' preferences and tastes, the restaurant industry is notably showing their interest in big data utilization. Recently, McDonald's, for instance, announced the acquisition of Dynamic Yield to leverage big data in order to revolutionize and personalize its offering.

Panera, in one another example, aggregates information about orders on all digital channels – apps, site, third-party – to assist in planning for in-store labor and product needs. Now the company receives 250,000 digital orders a day and has altered its store operating model to handle the volume.

Big data will continue to have an impact on the food industry, and a restaurant marketer needs to interpret why customer data is critical for boosting the customer experience. The earlier adopters in the sector have already experienced substantial returns on big data investment. However, these returns do not come without risk and haphazard use of the technology could lead to anxiety.

According to the Boston Consulting Group's 2018 digital maturity survey, four out of five brands can access a wealth of data from multiple sources, but only one in five has in place a comprehensive big data strategy.

Therefore, in order to overcome the challenges, restaurants must leverage a strategic approach to gain increased sales, enhanced customer experience, customized insights, automation and actionable data, and so on.

Big Data in Increasing Sales

There is a massive amount of data which is gleaned from payroll, scheduling, inventory and sales every day. Even outside the restaurant troves of data to be collected is equally essential. These outside data include recent reviews, social media hourly brand sentiment, traffic report, latest weather report, among others. Indeed, there will be an explicit connection between near-shore and in-store data. So, utilizing the combination of these two can assist to gain insights that directly impact the bottom line, strengthening sales efficiently.

Enhanced Customer Experience

As the customer demand continues to increase, restaurants try hard on each and every single department area for enriching operations. Today, customers' perceptions to choose food and restaurant have been changed and relied on their personality and class that led a competitive edge to restaurant operators. Thus, adapting and adopting the technology, personalizing the dining experience, marketing and providing good food will give companies the ability to gain loyalty, resulting in enhanced customer experience.

Automation and Actionable Data

With the change in the pace of serving customers, restaurants need to analyze enormous sets of data to envisage what should be the next. This is where big data comes into the scenario. It helps to glean data, assessing and forming a list of actions to be performed by managers and staff. It also assists to provide insights needed to the managers for managing the restaurant. Operators can also be benefited from social listening, emails, and insights from guest manager software to know their customers better.

However, this is only the beginning of the big data revolution in the restaurant industry, whether it's optimizing the ordering process or intensifying their re-targeting efforts. So, restaurants can speed up their performance and effectiveness by deploying insights from advanced big data applications.