The drive to provide convenient off-premise dining options to a wider audience of customers in recent years has driven a proliferation of third-party delivery providers — and along with it, a loss of guest data on the part of restaurants. This data is becoming more important all the time to a restaurant’s ability to compete. If your data management has become too scattered over the years (whether to outside providers or across too many platforms internally), bringing it in-house and managing it from a central source can help you derive a far greater understanding of your guests. From there, you’re in a stronger position to create the kinds of segmented, targeted offers that help you build and retain their loyalty. Bringing your delivery in-house is especially helpful here, but even if that isn’t an option, there are alternate approaches to building upon your store of guest data. Entice walk-in business by offering deals or other perks to those who order and collect from you. When you can get people through your doors, you can use your reservation system, QR codes, loyalty program and guest feedback mechanisms to enhance your insights about the people who enjoy your food. From there, being able to combine and analyze those threads of information from a single dashboard helps you create promotions that feel personal and worthwhile to your guests — enough so that they might think twice about ordering from you via a third-party provider and come to you directly instead.

As data has become a critical asset and contributor to the success of restaurant businesses, so has its security. Unfortunately, having so many more digital assets to protect means there are exponentially more opportunities for threat actors to breach your systems and seize data. The consequences of data breaches are significant: Research from IBM found that in 2020, the estimated cost of a data breach in the global hospitality sector was $1.72 million. Just one year later, it climbed to $3.03 million. But fortunately, a growing assortment of tech tools are making it possible for restaurant operators to ramp up their security and be alerted in the moment if and when problems occur. For example, a recent report from Foodservice Consultants Society International recommends restaurant groups use integrated access control systems to restrict unauthorized access to sensitive information and areas of the operation, as well as monitor any unauthorized access attempts in real time. Further, mobile security management tools including remote monitoring can keep watch over system security around the clock, regardless of the restaurant’s location, and alert designated people to potential threats so they can mitigate them when time is critical. If you’re still at the stage of trying to assess your operation to determine what data you should protect and how – or even if you just want to make sure you’re not overlooking vulnerabilities, the National Restaurant Association offers a digital security guide that helps operators identify risks, protect against them, detect and respond to threats, and then recover from them with minimal disruption