It Should Feel Like Magic, Not Marketing: Personalisation, Loyalty & Data in Hospitality

In this episode of the Tech on Toast Podcast, powered by Zonal, we dig into the misunderstood but powerful world of personalisation in hospitality. With inboxes overflowing and attention spans shrinking, how do brands stand out without becoming pushy — or worse, creepy?

Host Chris Fletcher is joined by:

• Tom James, Managing Director at Bill’s Restaurants, leading the brand through a digital maturity journey with a strong focus on customer insight.

• Dan Brookman, CEO of Airship & Toggle, who helps 400+ UK hospitality brands turn customer data into meaningful engagement and revenue.

• Gillian Nicholson, Sales Director at Zonal, a technology provider supporting operators for over 45 years.

☕ Grab a coffee and listen in as we cover everything from handwritten notes in delivery bags to AI-powered customer insights.

🔥 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why personalisation should feel like magic, not marketing

• The importance of the value exchange — what customers actually get in return for their data

• How brands like Bill’s and Pizza Express use loyalty to drive genuine connection, not just discounts

• The role of automation and segmentation in building brand voice at scale

• Why creepiness vs. annoyance is a real debate when using customer data

• Which channels are working best right now: email, SMS, WhatsApp, and apps

• How to measure success: from cover growth to visit frequency and customer lifetime value

• Where AI is taking us next — from predictive insights to smarter, real-time personalisation

🎧 Perfect for:
Operators, marketers, and tech leaders who want to use data more effectively to build loyalty, grow frequency, and keep guests coming back — without falling into the trap of discount dependency.

👉 Listen now and discover how to make your personalisation strategy feel truly personal.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
What does the consumer get in exchange for their data?
The ease of being able to give acustomer a slightly better
experience or a slightly personalized experience, yeah,
it's kind of the golden goose. And so it's that really human
voice that then feels like it's someone talking to you.
Tell a better story about that consumer that you're trying to
build a picture of. And obviously, we can do that
through our platform. Single customer view, which is

(00:20):
apparently the Holy Grail. As a customer to a brand and all
that stuff, you don't want to feel tracked.
It's really just about how you make use of the data.
Our ecosystem, there is so many actionable insights that you can
take from the data that you have.
I think just looking at the success of menus, what dishes
are working for you? It should feel like magic, not
marketing. Welcome back to the next
episode, the Tech and Toast podcast with our partners Zonal

(00:42):
talking all about loyalty. In this episode, we're looking
at something that's both powerful and often
misunderstood. It's personalization in a where
inboxes are full and attention spans are short.
How can Hostage brands stand outin a way that feels personal and
not pushy? Well, today we've got 3
brilliant guests coming to talk to us.
We've got Tom James, Managing Director at Bill's Restaurants,
who's helping lead the brand through a new age of digital

(01:03):
maturity with a growing focus oncustomer insight and
personalized engagement. We've got Dan Brookman, CEO from
Airship and Toggle, who works for some of the UK's best love
brands to turn customer data into meaningful insight.
And we've got Gillian Nicholson,Sales Director at Zonal, a tech
provider which helps operators Dr. Footfall improve guest
experience and grow customer loyalty.
So grab yourselves a coffee and enjoy the show.

(01:23):
So before we start, we will meetour guests.
So, Dan, who you and what do youdo?
Hello Chris, Morning. My name is Dan Brookman.
I'm the CEO of Toggle and Airship.
I sit on the exec board with Zonal and I do some other bits
and bobs with some other tech. And tell us a little bit about
Airship and Toggle for anybody who lives under a rock and
doesn't know. So Airship is a hospitality CRM.

(01:47):
We take data from around 120 data integrations, we pull that
into our platform and then enable operators to set up
customer journeys, understand who their customers are, e-mail
marketing, SMS marketing, all that good stuff.
And we work for about 400 brandsin the UK across about 6000
locations. Toggle is a gift card platform,

(02:10):
I like to call it hospitality commerce.
It enables hospitality businesses to sell pre sold
revenue, so revenue that's in their coffers before the
customer visits. Customers will buy gift cards
for themselves, maybe with a promotion, although buying gift
to their friends, family and colleagues.
Toggles been going since 2018 and it's currently live in about

(02:36):
7000 locations across about 600 brands.
This year we'll do 120 million in gift card revenue.
Wow, there you go. Follow that.
Tom James, who are you watching?Tom, who are you?
The managing director of Bills. So I started with Bills almost
four years ago now, started as OPS director and then have been

(02:58):
managing director for the last three years and it's been a
really enjoyable journey. I always cover to Bills.
I thought a great team, I love the brand and we had a job to
do, but we've had a really successful and fun four years.
Great brand and lovely to be here.
Lovely to see you again. Thank you.
And Gillian, haven't met you fora few days.

(03:18):
What do you do? Where are you from?
Hi, Gillian Nicholson, I'm SalesDirector at Zonal.
We are a technology provider whohas been serving the hospitality
industry for over 45 years now, and we provide a wide portfolio
of technology products, of whichAirship and Toggle are part of
the Zonal family. And I'm not quite depressed
because I'm older than zonal, just realized.

(03:40):
Anyway, we're here today to talkabout personalization actually
around loyalty and particularly data and the impact of it.
I kind of a question to all we'll start with and I'll start
with you over there, Dan, if youdon't mind.
Like personalisation, it's kind of banded around a lot.
Everyone's been particularly thelast two years, three years, I
think since the pandemic eased that everyone's kind of looking
at it. But what does it actually mean
in hostilities day, I suppose? And, and where have you got

(04:02):
examples of brands that are getting it really right?
You've got a lot of brands you work with are supposed to pick
from. Yeah it's it's an interesting 1
isn't it? I mean personalisation has been
a around a lot longer than post pandemic.
It was really, you know, coming to the fore pre GDPR and
actually a lot of the stuff we were doing back then was more
interesting than the stuff that we're doing now because GDPR

(04:23):
just tore up CRM and tore up data and obviously we're having
to rebuild after that. It was just sort of a three-year
hiatus after GDPRI think that there's so much of it around and
it's not just the simple merge first name into the start of an
e-mail, although not many peopleactually do that.

(04:43):
But unbelievably, after so many people take so long to collect
first name, last name on all different data, well.
Just out of interest, why do youthink that?
Why do you think that that does take time?
Is it, is IT industry specific, do you think?
Well, we're a bit slower than I suppose other industry might be,
Yeah, retail, for instance. I think a lot's been around the
data and the availability of data.
You know, the, the processing ofdata pre GDPR was pretty broad.

(05:07):
You could do what you wanted with it.
You know, we used to have systems that would detect the
Wi-Fi and we had feeds from sky and we would know what football
or sports was on the Y on withina venue at specific time.
And we would automatically segment people based on the
sport. And then we would merge the
sport content relevant to them into the base of the emails on

(05:28):
an ongoing basis. And that was like, you know,
sort of hyper personalisation really.
And and GDPR just we, you know, we tore that platform up
basically that did all of that work.
So I think that now like a good example of decent
personalisation, Zonal has a tables platform and the front of
House of that automatically whensomebody books in, it

(05:51):
automatically pulls from CRM, whether that customer's a
loyalty customer or so when the customer comes to the front of
house and they walk in, the server knows or the host knows
to say, oh, you know, we'll automatically add your points or
don't forget to sign up for loyalty.
And that's a nice easy, you know, connection to make with
the consumer that will heighten their experience.

(06:11):
But I think of the personalisation around, you
know, easy wins around and again, not many people do it,
but just around special occasions, you know, we all ask
for a birthday and we all do birthday marketing and a lot of
people do birthday marketing andit's an easy, you know, it's an
easy conversion, but actually asking people a special occasion
when they sign up with you will allow you to deliver back some

(06:33):
personalization to that customer.
Yeah, I think, I think that thatand that simplicity, Thomas Dam,
as I mentioned there are like the the ease of being able to
give a customer a slightly better experience or a slightly
personalized experience. Yeah, it's kind of the golden
goose, I suppose to get to the first point.
What what do you think about thewhere we're at with?
Personalization, I, I think a lot of it for us is, is as you
say, is not making it more and more complicated or not making

(06:54):
it too tacky. You know, personalization for us
is being able to talk directly to a guest in our brand voice.
So it feels like the manager or a host is talking to them and
that that's our role. We wouldn't say it if one of our
best hosts or best managers wouldn't say it doesn't go into
the comms because I think it's really easy to sort of the line
of it sounds cheesy, I apologize.

(07:15):
It should feel like magic, not marketing.
I think guests are quite good now because you get spammed.
I mean, your inbox as I'm sure is the same as mine.
It's a constant stream of peopletrying to get your attention.
But those where you get that human connection and that touch
point that's relevant to you that actually it knows your
behaviours. And it knows that that I'm most

(07:36):
likely to go to that restaurant on a Saturday morning because I
like going there for breakfast because that's my favorite shop.
When I get that right connectionpoint at the right time to me to
say, hey, why don't you come forbreakfast or the coffee's
brewing, that that's where you start winning.
And so it's that really human voice that then feels like it's
someone talking to you, No? And and same for you, Julian,

(07:56):
obviously you're connected over here to, to Dan in a
professional way and thank. You for clarifying, that's fine.
That's what I'm. Here for just to say silly
things, but where does Zonal stand on this?
Because it's, it's interesting to see personalization as Dan
said, as Dan pointed me correctly there that actually
it's not just recently, is it? It's been going on what we're
talking about 10-15 years, yeah,In the fact that when you were

(08:17):
starting in Sheffield, I. Mean you think about what brands
were doing back in 2005 and 6, where they'd be ringing people
up and ask you, it's your birthday in a couple of weeks,
do you want to come in? I've seen you booked with us
before and we can give you the same booth and it was much, much
more back then than it is now. I think for me, personalisation
and some of the brands that's getting it right.

(08:38):
And to to mention not, not bills, but another is own
customer, sorry. So I guess like Pizza Express
for me. So I think there's it's we've
done quite a lot of research around loyalty in relation to
obviously splitting the demographics.
I think obviously from an age perspective, you obviously have
more loyal older customers, but I guess the split between
parents and non parents. I have two young kids and I

(08:58):
guess as well clarity of that personalisation, those loyalty
programmes have got tailoring tome because I know that the
school holiday are coming up andI can get 25% off when I buy an
adult meal, when I go to a PizzaExpress and I get in the
service. You usually always get really
quick service. And when you're juggling two
young kids and you want to get in and out, then that kind of
matters. So I think yeah, there's it's.

(09:20):
So weird, they pop up all the time.
There's got a piece of express when you talk about this kind of
stuff. Just the obvious nature of what
they do and how they they don't really 'cause confusion around
it specifically. Tom, what are you doing at the
moment in Bills? I supposed to because obviously
you're on this journey as well, or I suppose it's a constant
journey, no? It is and it's, you know, we've
had to come, we've had to get upto speed pretty quickly.

(09:41):
I think what's interesting just to start with the biggest impact
we've had on personalization in the time I've been built in the
last three to four years, this sounds very archaic, is to put
personal handwritten notes in every delivery.
We launched recently on on delivery, on delivery and that
was a commitment that we wanted to do from day one.
That has been nuts in terms of the positive feedback, the

(10:03):
shares, but it just shows actually that that strategy of
make it personal, make it human.And what we then really try to
do is replicate that throughout all of our digital marketing, so
through social media channels. And I think the big win for us
has actually been through utilizing our CRM correctly and
making sure that that whole e-mail journey and therefore

(10:25):
automation. So when you're on specific
journeys, the first time you've been in birthdays is a really
good one that there's a process set up where we're able to talk
to you as a guest that's relevant and that comes in at
the right time periods, you know, even after it's been your
birthday. That's how we want to continue
the party. This is what we can do.
And I think it's setting the tone, making something that

(10:46):
really connects with people and then setting up a process behind
that using the data. And I think that segmentation of
of the database to understand exactly when people come, why
they come, why they want to use us, what's important to them and
when we're useful to them. Knowing that information and
then being able to talk to them in a really human way that makes
it feel like we are, we are connecting in the way we want to

(11:08):
connect in the way actually we want to talk to our guests, I
think. It is the Holy Grail, isn't it?
Being able to transfer your brand voice or or even your
culture actually through a digital means.
It is obviously challenging, but, but actually I think the
world's been educated around it a lot more and I think people
are are responding to it. Someone was saying yesterday,
actually the growth of loyalty programs just generally is up by
like 150% or something. And people just a lady was here

(11:29):
yesterday said she went to a festival, wasn't a huge festival
went in there, but they had their own Lords card.
They could they could buy and purchase and redeem in the in
the venue on it as well, which is great, Ryan.
And people are intuitively looking for it.
So it's interesting. And to Dan and Jillian here,
when people are when customers are coming to you, I suppose on
that journey, what, what are their main, where, what level

(11:49):
are they at when they reach? I'm sure it's different for a
lot of people, but are they are they looking for that first
steps of the name, birthdays? What's the general idea of the
industry when they're when they come to meet you?
Yeah. I think that it's really just
about how you make use of the data.
You know, it's the collection ofdata used to have a strategy
around it. It was a task operators at

(12:13):
location level were tasked with collecting a certain amount of
data from customers on a weekly basis and KPI on it.
It's because we didn't have the digital flow of passive data
that comes in literally on a daily basis without even trying.
So I think that the purpose of why you're collecting data in

(12:33):
the 1st place and what the output of that collection is as
far as the, the, the, the dials that it turns within the
business around revenue. I think that that's what people
are looking for clarity on. And I think that businesses are
still quite wrapped up in all weneed a loyalty scheme because
actually they just don't understand how to do that

(12:53):
without actually having a board level focus on implementing A
loyalty scheme. And they think that that's the
Holy Grail, but it's not It's, it's all of that passive data
that comes in. It's.
Understanding actually what the output of the whole you know,
what's the point? Like anything, what's the point
in doing it unless you actually understand absolutely what the
end result? Will be you used to have such a
budget behind it to acquire data.

(13:14):
You know, people used to buy cold lists of data.
You know, I'm sure you remember when you turned 18 and the local
nightclub had bought the, you know, the registrations and
you'd get a birthday card through your door with a load of
vouchers inside it, a physical card.
And, and you know, for the localnightclub, you don't do that
anymore. But you have got data that's

(13:36):
flowing through your Wi-Fi and your booking and your feedback
and your, you know, all of thesedifferent sources at 16
different sources of data collection.
That's passive data collection in a hospitality business, as
well as then the newsletter signup on your website and it's the
newsletter sign ups, the only active where you're asking the
customer just to sign up with you.
And it's a freaking newsletter. I mean, it couldn't be duller.

(13:59):
So, you know, it couldn't be duller.
So it's actually just, you know,what do we do with this data?
Where's it all coming from? What converts?
What does it give us and how do we leverage it to drive our
revenue occasions? Yeah.
And so Gillian, it's the same, similar really.
And I suppose because you're working at the same place and I.
Think Dan kind of touched on it earlier.
It's about I guess looking at the workflow and the automations

(14:20):
of that and how you can link andtie all that data to make it
richer and I guess tell a betterstory about that consumer that
you're trying to build a pictureof.
And obviously we can do that through our platforms and having
a unique identifier that you then link to various elements of
that customer journey to give you as I say and.
How much does it matter? Totally offbeat if it's a
fragment. So if they come with a bit of a

(14:41):
fragmented text stack and they've got different,
different, I suppose, bits of tech in different places that
don't particularly connect together, how much does that
impact you in terms of building,building that journey?
So for booking systems, CRMS kind of thing, does it help if
they're all in one place as it would be so you can build that
journey? Well, obviously.
I'm going to see you. I totally asked the wrong person
there. I should have asked that.
I know he's going to say the same.

(15:02):
No, I'm not. Actually, I'm going to say that
again. It's all changed because if
you're engaging with a new tech stack, the first question you
should ask that tech stack is doyou have open APM?
Because AP is now as those so standardised.
You know, we can build a new integration with a, a new
platform and you know, with quality assurance and logic

(15:23):
flows and all of that good stuff.
Probably four to six weeks and we probably do two a month, you
know, with the team sizes that we have.
So it, it means that that shouldbe the question.
There shouldn't be any barriers really.
It should be a case of a new tech.
The partner comes in, whether they're coming from abroad or
whether they're coming. They're a start up and they've

(15:44):
got an idea. Really they should be starting
with an API and that enables them to be connected and enables
the operator to get the wealth of data from the platform that
they're providing. You know, in the last year and a
half we've probably integrated and lots of people integrate
with us. It's not all about us
integrating with them. We've probably integrated with

(16:05):
four or five photo booth companies.
And actually the richness of thedata, the pop, the proof of
presence that you get from photobooths is immense.
You know, like absolutely immense.
Wow, that's something. We've saw massively growing zone
all as well into in relation to the integrations, the
partnerships and and usually when you have a conversation,
you won't really get one answer for our text access here.

(16:27):
Yes, everyone does have different elements everywhere
and all operators want to have aunique customer experience and
that doesn't necessarily come from one place.
So yeah, it's about just workingthrough the complexities of that
and and mapping out the journey as you you go through the
process and. For you, Tom, I presume that's a
similar story, right? That, yeah, as you're listening
to these guys talk that actuallyyou're in that place or

(16:48):
constantly in that place where you're trying to work out what
the strategy is, how you go forward, How how, how are you
managing that at Bill's I. Think, I think there's two
things. I mean, we're doing a big
projects at the moment with Dan actually on, on mapping out.
We've, we've had some huge success on sort of the start of
that automation's journey, working out who our guests, what
our main segments of guests are.And now it's about actually for

(17:10):
each of those segments, what's the best way of automating that
journey? What do they want to hear about?
How do we do that? How do we do that map?
And that's huge for us because that level of engagement where
we're talking about the right things at the right time to the
right people and it's relevant and interesting and fun and
comes across as bills, that's where we're seeing the real
wins. I think our strategy has been
slightly different as a brand because as I said, our goal when

(17:31):
we started four years ago was everyone leaves happy.
And that's actually dictated ourstrategy because our goal isn't
10% of the people who sign up for for the app is happy.
We want to have these, you know,in terms of our pool of cash
that we're allocating to discounts and what we're
prepared to do. That has to be no barriers.
And it doesn't mean we can't do loyalty.
It doesn't mean, you know, we know frequency of guests.

(17:53):
We know those guests who visit over 1.3 times and we can drop
flash offers. We can incentivize and reward
those as well. But we wanted to, I suppose,
bills as a brand with that firstsort of point as how do we
become relevant? How do we keep the doors open
and how do we make sure that level of loyalty is driven
towards the brand, not towards discount?
I think that's always been a challenge in casual dining that

(18:15):
I'm genuinely terrified of having, having sort of come up
through the early 2000s and and that discount culture which
trashed brands. Yeah.
Because what you created is a real culture of discount loyalty
where people were, you know, they were addicted to the drug
you were feeding them as as longas there was the deep discount,
which they initially signed up. You turn that off, they are out

(18:35):
the door. They are looking for their next
fix of a 50% off or all. And that that's, that's so
dangerous where you kind of, youknow, our metrics in terms of
what looking forward to success are the same as most businesses.
We want to see sales growth, cover growth, growth in bookings
as well. But we've got to work out how
that is not just driven by a select group of people who are

(18:56):
now coming 6 times because they're hooked on this discount
culture that we're then giving them access to with a Direct
Line into their phone. And it's kind of, it's given
that different approach. We're actually the use of our
CRM system and being able to talk to many more guests, a much
wider pool I think is the way that we certainly want to
approach personalization, loyalty and driving that brand

(19:20):
loyalty. It's definitely, we've seen it,
right? It's been a slippery slope.
Yeah. There's brands that have lived
in that way and Dan actually being data-driven.
It's kind of, is it a buzz word?I don't know.
But a lot of obviously because text just brought a lot of data
with it because of the fact thatyou're plugging people in for
the first time in a long time. How do you what's the best
advice I suppose you can give tosomeone who's building a

(19:40):
practical data strategy rather than just.
I think you mentioned it before about looking at the outcome,
but are there some like specificsteps you would take to get in
there? Yeah, I think, I think the
first, the first thing is the value exchange.
And it's a term that was, I had a general manager in 2007 who
worked for me and he he he talked about the value that I

(20:02):
created for our customers and, and that term sort of stuck with
me over the time. And what, you know, the value
exchanges, what does the consumer get in exchange for
their data? OK.
And it's not a newsletter, you know, that's not, that's not the
the outcome of this. And actually, if you start with
that and you know it's. I do quite a lot around this on

(20:25):
strategy sessions with brands where I just open up their
website and I look at their website and on the website
there's all of these things thatthey're doing.
This might be private dining rooms.
It could be that there's a free night stay on a Sunday if you
book Friday and Saturday. It could be that, you know,
there's a free doggy goody bag in the room when you book a
hotel. It could be that, you know, it

(20:46):
can be anything. There's like, there's generally
5 or 6 things that they're doingthat are advertised on the
websites, but actually they don't wrap that up into
something that just presents that to the customer and said,
if you sign up with us, these are the five things that you'll
get from us over time. And you give it a name, a

(21:07):
friends or a family or the perksor whatever it might be, a club,
whatever it might be. And then they sign up.
And when they sign up with you and you replace your newsletter
sign up form on your website with a nice page that says join
us and this is what you'll get. It means you can ask them a few
more bits of data at that point which hone in on personalisation

(21:29):
and give the operator a chance to really think about what value
occasions can be driven through personalisation from that
customer joining. And then when they've joined,
the automation just delivers on that.
And actually you just take all of the data on the same journey.
So all of a sudden, whether somebody signed up passively
through Wi-Fi and clicked the opt in or made a booking with

(21:51):
you and opted in, it means that they're going to get the same
journey as everybody else and you treat all customers the
same. And I've just been.
So I'm just being educated as I'm listening to you.
But carry on. Yeah.
And. And and that's it.
And then automation delivers thepromise and you don't need to do
offers with it. You know, you don't need to do
promotions with it. You can offer value added stuff

(22:14):
as part of your proposition. And generally you, you, you're
doing things that drive value, really importantly, Dr. value.
And it's all about really just increasing visit frequency.
It's a nudge to a customer to get them to come one more time,
two more times or three more times depending on what your
visit frequency is. So that's my advice is take a
look at your website and generally lots of brands invest

(22:37):
10s of thousands of pounds in these shiny websites.
All of the content goes on there, but they don't present it
back to the consumer through their automations and through
their CRM. Gillian, I'm just saying in
terms of customers coming to you, you have different levels
of customer enterprise, Oregon mid market and the data maturity
I suppose across those differentbrands will be different when
they arrive. Like Tom's saying now he's on a

(22:58):
different journey to what some of his competitors might be.
How, how hard is it to you to give them advice over what Dan's
talking about without overwhelming them?
I suppose without, because Buckham yesterday said they had
a, a data team in their, in their office.
Do you have a data team, Tom? No, no.
And I think it depends on the business, right, And what
they're doing with it. So how do you guys kind of push
them in the right direction I suppose once they come to you?
I think it's about just understanding what their goals

(23:20):
are and what they're trying to achieve.
I think obviously, yeah, varied customers will have, I guess
different understandings of how much they use the data
currently. And I think it's about us just
trying to gauge what they have in relation to resource and how
they're what they're trying to get out of it and the path
forward. Because obviously the, I think
the loyalty and the personalisation element, it's

(23:42):
very important that you do link that to the brand.
You're very clear on what those goals are rather than it be just
being, we're doing loyalty for loyalty sake.
And as you see the margin erosion potentially that can be,
that's where it's a, it's a careful balance.
So there is an element of kind of coaching and consultancy in
the initial stages to understandthe purposes of why and how
they're going to do this. And also understanding the scope

(24:05):
of of that customer as well in relation to the touch points and
not just maybe interacting with the customer on one level.
So there's a restaurant, there'sa bar, there's a hotel, making
sure that if they're looking to build something, they can see
all those touch points and not just getting one element or one
slice of it and trying to maximise it.
So yeah, I think there's just a lot of kind of open conversation

(24:25):
to try and tail it down the pathas to what they're trying to get
out of it. And obviously from our
perspective, we can then link that back to how the technology
can play that really play that part with things like the
workflows and automations we talked to on the other.
And the one phrase I hear a lot of is single customer view,
which is apparently the Holy Grail for when you when you live
in this world. But can one of you, Dan, can you
explain what the single customerview is for people who are

(24:46):
listening and don't know what it, what that might mean?
No. Because it means.
Because it means. I'm not.
Editing that, it means so many different things to so many
different people. I think I don't think we've
nailed it as a business. The single customer view
businesses would have analysts looking at data and trying to

(25:07):
detect trends. They would then take out
segments and obviously you've got segments of different types
of customers that you want to build those segments and
understand those segments. I don't think, I think it's so
fluid as a concept. And actually I think a lot of
operators probably don't know who their segments are.
I think with the advent of AI, if we did this podcast in 12

(25:28):
months time or even maybe six months time, I'd be like, yeah,
absolutely. I understand what the single
customer view is because actually AI could look at masses
of data in pretty much near realtime and and probably tell you
who your customers are and breakthem down into 6 clear segments
of different customers which will then drive the

(25:48):
personalisation. But I think that, yeah, I mean,
it is the Holy Grail potentiallyto drive personalization, to
drive understanding and to driveproduct development.
I think really importantly. Yeah, yeah.
I think it's become a bit of a strange obsession.

(26:09):
I talked to marketers a lot about it and it's become, as you
say, it's the highly grail. But to use that phrase, it don't
let perfection get in the way ofgood.
It's like we've got so much gooddata and this obsession with
getting this perfect picture is actually certainly where we are,
not what's needed. We know our segments, we know

(26:29):
our brand voice, we know who we want to speak to.
And I worry sometimes that we get too obsessed.
We're getting too much information.
As a guest, you want to feel known as a customer to a brand
and all that stuff. You don't want to feel tracked
and that's where I think the single customer view sometimes
gets in the way. We speak about it a lot and
there's an obsession to almost get too much information, too
much data, rather than actually go with what we've got at this

(26:50):
current stage. What amazing things can we do
and the. Reality is it's probably not
very achievable, right Julian? For a lot of brands who are
listening to this, we'll think, I don't know how I'm going to
get that. I don't have a data team, I
don't know, I don't have a head of iti don't have a Dan or
whatever it might be. You know, I don't.
So they're thinking how so it's not achieved.
But you don't need to be there, right, to actually achieve what
we're talking about today in terms of personalisation.
Absolutely, no. And I think obviously with our
ecosystem, there is so many actionable insights that you can

(27:13):
take from the data that you have.
Yeah, I think just looking at the success of menus, what
dishes are working for you, whatpairings go well.
So I think there is an element of I guess maybe tailoring,
maybe not true personalisation, but that's an offer that you can
give to customers, isn't it? There's something there that you
can try and tweak to either upsell, cross sell, make sure

(27:33):
you're selling more margin rich products and you can tailor it
without having to go into a whole world of pain.
Or effort, I suppose. Effort for an ROI that you could
probably achieve otherwise, and.And certainly something for I
guess our more independent customers or smaller footprint
brands then that's, that's they've got the wealth of the

(27:55):
data within their system. Yeah.
To start looking at that and tailoring that and benefiting
from that. And I want to talk about
channels as in the ones that do work.
And so we, we've just been usingSMS actually with something
we're doing at tech on Toast. And it's interesting to see
we've never done it before and we're, and it's very much trial
and error there right now. But SMS versus e-mail versus,

(28:17):
I'd love your opinions on what you see working and where you
think actually your investment should go.
Or is it not one-size-fits-all and depends on what you're
doing. I'll start over there.
Is, is, is there a particular channel you think's quite
interesting or exciting that's working versus others?
Yeah. E-mail still the king, you know,
still the boss, basically. It's obviously because there's
not really a cost associated to it, so much so as SMS and other

(28:41):
channels. E-mail is still #1 SMS took a
real kicking on the PPI claims. That was spam again pre GDPR and
it turned a lot of brands off using it.
It's now back and actually for more immediate revenue driving
opportunities like it's, I mean,it's not today, thankfully.

(29:04):
But if it's checking it down outside and you've got a few
cancellations and, and bookings were down on a weekend or on a
Friday, you might want to do a text message at 3:00 PM in the
afternoon encouraging people to use your delivery channels.
And that would be very effective.
Obviously, you can target those people that might have visited
on a weekend previously and you don't need to be sending, you
don't need to be sending a million of anything or 50,000 of

(29:27):
anything or 10,000 of anything. You know, the point of Book Home
having a data team or business as having ACRM team is really
around focusing CRM activity on driving specific occupancy
levels within a hospitality business and whether that's SMS
or e-mail, but you know, there'sWhatsApp.

(29:47):
Whatsapp's great for communities.
It's great for, you know, business channels.
It's it's, you know, it's just coming in into its own a little
bit as well. There's obviously there's
content creators, there's content influencers.
That's another channel that needs to be leaned on and needs
to be part of the marketing mix.It's so broad, there's so many
channels and everyone needs to have it's actually.

(30:09):
Quite exciting. I mean, I know it's it can be
costly, right, Because if you, you spreading that your budget
around those channels, you have to be smart and I presume that's
where people that you come in, you can kind of help people
direct what they're doing. But I think for Tom, are you
seeing any particular channel that you've that you're almost,
I suppose surprised by that. You thought, wow, we we didn't
think that might happen. No, I suppose e-mail actually in

(30:29):
terms of you kind of felt it's been around for ages and we just
weren't doing it very well is the honest answer.
In terms of, you know, businesses, hospitality
businesses have been sending emails for years and years and
years, but actually now the richness of the content and the,
the, and I've learned so much inthe last four years about
subject lines and actually what.People.

(30:51):
What people? Engage with and how they engage.
And I think looking at all thosechannels, it's one of those we
went through the journey and say, let's maximize me really
good at one first before we moveon and SMS, we're just sort of
dipping our toe. I personally, I've got to, I've
got to be really careful that I often do that with taking
personal anecdote and applying it to the whole industry or do

(31:11):
it anyway, no. One's listening.
It's so. Invasive and actually we're
talking people with SMS and I think I think it's damn saying
it's really good for certain information, but I think if you
use it too much, people have gotused to now the way that people
use their inboxes and, and looking through and scanning
subject lines and then seeing those things that interest them
and hook them. I think that's quite common.

(31:32):
SMS is sort of direct and I think we will look at it.
WhatsApp community is really interesting.
We had a long conversation aboutthat, about how we actually use
WhatsApp. And I think people like to be
part of that. But the big debate for us has
been about apps and to go, do wewant to have an app?
Should we have an app? And I think what we've, we've
taken the view that we want to apply the investment that an app
requires and apply elsewhere. We haven't got to the end of our

(31:56):
e-mail journey and our CRM journey and absolutely
maximizing that. Again, there's a lot of data.
We've seen other businesses beentalking to them that the app to
us was about. It's quite a cost investment.
Someone's going to manage it. It's got to look as good as your
website, but it, but it's a, it's a heck of an investment and
it's, it is a barrier as well where you've got to sign up.

(32:16):
And I don't know how many peoplethat I don't have any data on
how many people have all these redundant apps that sit on their
phones that don't get used. I think you do.
It on your iPhone, right? Genuinely, if you go on your
iPhone, it'll tell you your mostused apps, right?
Just from a personal point of view, right.
And I'm, I think I've got 87 on my phone and I use 6.780% of the
time. Wow, something like that, which
is I was doing the other day to work out exactly this

(32:37):
conversation. Was doing a podcast thinking,
yeah, I think that's really common, the bank sport, you
know, and I mean, yeah, it's interesting.
I do think there's a lot of and the words purges.
And for things that we want as abusiness with the everyone is
happy, if you're actually saying, well, you can have that
offer, you've got to sign up forthe app and we need all this
data for you. And then you can come in.
And if you show your app and then you're on a loyalty
program, which might well be great.

(32:59):
It doesn't fit with our brand interms of having those barriers.
In in fact, everything that everybody's just touched on
totally echoes kind of some of the, the surveys in the reports
that we've done in relation to some of our Go tech reports.
Obviously email's still up there47%, social media and text is is
tied second and third kind of with 17% followed on by WhatsApp

(33:19):
and then apps at 14%. And I think that is the thing,
isn't it? It's such a heavy investment.
It's on the ongoing maintenance of that.
And you need to make sure that it's right and that it's not
just done for one purpose. And then it gathers dust in a
corner because it's. It's so costly.
Yeah. I don't have to say SMS.
I don't know what you guys think, but I actually think it's
becoming a more of a commercial.I, I think, I'm not sure how
much people actually text each other anymore.

(33:41):
I think most people WhatsApp or,or, or the younger guys are,
well, Slack and you know, what'sthe one Snapchat that my kids
use and that kind of stuff. So I think, I do think SMS is, I
don't know, it feels like I I send 8% less than I did probably
two years ago. Yeah, yeah.
I mean it's, it's used for one time passwords.
It's were used for booking confirmations, it's used for,
you know, all of that sort of stuff, you know, and I think

(34:02):
that's one of the reasons actually why it does cut through
a little bit where you're sending out a small number of
text messages to an audience that you know is most likely to
buy that. Urgency.
I suppose you were talking aboutwhere you have an urgent
situation. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, even if you've got some
tables that are free on a Saturday night, you know, and I

(34:22):
keep, I sound so fuddy Duddy. I mean to say Airship started
life as power text. Let's just, you know, we'll
leave that there. We used to send a million text
messages a month. Oh, you right, 2000.
And three and yeah, I can't, well, I won't tell you what else
we're responsible for anyway. So it's, I think, I think that

(34:44):
businesses, hospitality brands used to be mega focused on the
fact that on a Saturday night, they've got 150 table 150 covers
or they've, they've got 1000 capacity and they've only got
600 people booked in. And they would use whatever
means necessary and at their disposal to drive to an 85 or

(35:06):
90% capacity. And that would involve sending
out small numbers of text messages, emails, social posts,
you know, whatever it, whatever it takes to drive that.
Obviously, they don't have the margins in the business now to
have the teams to be able to do that job.
So you need to have the technology that can automate and
that can, you know, can drive those numbers up, but then you

(35:29):
need to use it across the spreadof all of the channels that
you've got available, including all of your social channels.
And it's it's a job. It really is sorry to interact.
You were you were delivering some stats.
I felt like I cut you off. Did you have another one to?
No long. The last one is that 27% don't
want to be contacted at all, butobviously we're interested in
the ones that do. So yeah, that's.
That's very true. I mean, and on and on measuring

(35:50):
success, I suppose, Tom, you've talked a bit about the journey
so far, personalization of Bills.
What metrics are you using, I suppose or you talked a little
bit then about the team saying actually our overall strategy is
what we measure it on, I think. That was one of the big shifts
is is especially for the marketing team.
The brand team is in our goals of cover growth.
We're always relevant with billsas a problem.

(36:11):
We want to be popular and a great measure of popularity is
cover growth. If more people are coming to you
today than there were yesterday and that continues, you're
becoming more and more popular. So that is number 1.
And there's obviously things that make that up like bookings
as well. And then sales, we fall into
attraction than a lot of businesses do, where you sort of
segment your business and marketing digital teams, they

(36:37):
get bonus, get rewarded for whatare called the vanity measures
and engagement. Fine, that that is a step that
you might need to look through with your team.
So how is that post performing as well?
But it's got to play out for thebusiness in terms of a person
coming into your restaurant and enjoying the experience that you
wanted to do. And I think that big shift in in
making it the the harder sales measures to go all of this, all

(37:01):
the campaigns and we can link itnow really well in terms of
seeing all right, today that is bringing more people into the
business. We've then obviously got all our
guest measures and those people are having a good time.
Tell you what, they're likely tocome back if those two things
work. We're being able to talk to them
and then they're coming in. We're making sure from an OPS
point of view they're having a good time.
And it is just it is cover growth like for like growth and

(37:21):
then through the booking system as well to see those channels
and that's it. And we've kind of, we've removed
the reports of reporting on these vanity measures.
Now, and I think is there a particular thing, Dan, that you
would measure? I suppose so if you're Sigma
Tom, which you are, is there anything particular that you're
tracking in terms of engagement or I don't know any stats that
you would measure, I think. Visit frequency.

(37:43):
Yeah. You know how many times
somebody's coming on average perperiod?
I mean it used to. Be 1.2 I mean, this is back in
the day when I was at college, that was all yeah, we're. 1.30
Wow. So yeah, it's not changed, yeah.
I mean, it really depends on, you know, what sort of operation
it is, you know, whether it's a QSR or casual dining, pubs, pubs
with rooms. But tracking visit frequency and

(38:03):
understanding, you know, we havesomething called pop so proof of
presence and it allows our customers to trigger comms based
on like a bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and they can set up
what that bronze, silver, gold and platinum means to them.
So it could be X6 visits a year or four visits or five visits a
year for each one of those or inthe last quarter and when the

(38:25):
most recent one was. And all we're trying to do there
is like a nudge of surprise and delight.
Some brands will tell the customer what they're going to
get when they get to each of those.
Some will just automatically sayon your next visit you will get
something and then they will letthem know once they have booked
in what it's going to be of. Course.
So because the all of that passive data that flows into the

(38:47):
business around the Wi-Fi from the POS, around single use
voucher, used gift card redemption, around photo booths,
around feedback booking, all of those different methods all give
us a digital signature within a location, which means that all
of that pop and the visit frequency just can be automated.
So that's one is visit frequencyand I think the other one is a

(39:10):
Click to conversion. So where a customer's clicked on
an e-mail and they've been seen within a business within X
amount of days is a really good and funnel reporting we have on
airship is is just driving towards that.
And then we indicate as to whether it's going up or down.
So we do the Click to conversionrate based on the click rate of

(39:30):
the e-mail. And then the conversion
obviously is the customer visited.
Wow. I mean, I, I blazed my mind
because the amount of I signed the data.
That's probably why Buck home have a team of data people,
right, working through some of that stuff.
And from the zonal point of view, what insights can you guys
bring to the table and what is there, I suppose there are any
underused tools in your arsenal that the operators don't know

(39:50):
about that they could use to I suppose to help alleviate this
pain? Or has Dan just done all of that
for you? Yeah.
I think Dan's, we've always succinctly covered it.
I think, again, just looking at the data and the insights that
we've got within the reporting as a first measure and trying to
see how they can get more insights out of that.
And yeah, yeah. And I think the final thing on
that just on the basket data, because the basket data is like

(40:15):
it used to be the preserve of very large businesses that
they'd be able to get the basketdata from the pulse and into
their CRM. Retail have been very good at it
obviously for years. E-commerce very good at it
because obviously they know every single transaction.
Hospitality doesn't know every single transaction.
It's getting better at understanding what that might be

(40:36):
using a a linked booking ID, using a loyalty ID or a single
use voucher or a gift card ID. But once you've got that basket
data flowing in, you can start to understand understand your
customer lifetime value as well.And you know, you can base that
on customers who are in an active segment with you and them
when they drop off and when theylapse.

(40:57):
And you understand what a spend per head is or a spend per cover
is on a location by location basis.
And then that enables you to drive and have a metric which is
your customer lifetime value andsee whether you can drive that
up. I mean, the data's just there
nowadays. That's a great metric.
It wasn't that previously and it's, it's there now.

(41:19):
I think I. Understand the value of a single
customer is. It is so crucial to business
because, as I said, it's harder to gain new customers now, easy
to lose them, yeah. Easy to lose them, yeah, but.
Harder harder to win them so andit doesn't bring me on to
creepiness, but I'm going to bring it up anyway.
Someone told me aid as well. You just stay just stay far away
from creepy in terms of when you're you're engaging with
customers. How do you get the bounce right.

(41:39):
I'm going to stop you, Tom not not not in creepiness as well.
I'm creepy, yeah. But like because I think you
mentioned it before about the fact that you you become, I'm
not sure you were talking, I think you were talking about
others programs where you're people are on you all the time
and you get that single customerview actually that you become
one not personal. Targeted, yeah, rather than
known. I think, look, I said earlier

(42:00):
it's the tone of of the voice and it's exactly what we were
saying before is it has to soundlike it would come from one of
our managers and one of our team.
If it's that they're not in any way invasive.
They don't actually have access to all the data that we have as
well. So if it wouldn't sound like
your best host, then don't say it.
And it's too much information. I think it's having those, I

(42:20):
think clear rules in terms of what's important, what is our
strategy, who are our segments and how are we going to talk to
them and and staying away from the temptation of getting just
too invasive. It's one of, you know, we're a
friendly open business and brandand I think that's the tone of
all the emails. It's gonna have some fun with
it, but it's once you start getting into too much detail,

(42:44):
which is useful on something, it's actually useful on say Menu
Insights. It's really good to know exactly
what people eat, how they eat, which dishes.
We did an incredible piece of work on which dishes create an
emotional connection. Looking at 7 years of data and
doing this emotional heat map aswell.
That fish pie, really, unbelievably, fish pie was never
what was. The emotion to the emotion.

(43:05):
It was all positive. It I think that there were sort
of, it was almost 100 emotional keywords that it tracks across
all the reviews. It's fascinating piece of work
to do all that. That's another podcast.
Fish. Yeah, I could.
Go into sort of deep dive on that, but I think that's when
data's, you know, in terms of customer data, it's there to
listen to the customer voice as opposed to analyze and then make

(43:30):
these kind of big, sometimes invasive statements and sort of
knowing too much. I think once a guest realizes
that the process is totally mechanical and you're taking all
this data and you're using it then to weaponize it to drive
sales, then then once if, if theguests can clearly see that
you've got a real problem because that's when the
creepiness comes in. It says information I don't want

(43:52):
to share. Actually, if you're using the
data, which you do have in termsof how they spend, what they
spend, when they like to spend, how many people that they do
that and you use that to create a better menu, a better
experience to go from there. That's fine.
You're doing that on the behind the scenes size, but that
connection piece, the the voice,you've got to be really careful,
no. I totally agree.
Sorry, Gillian, we're going to comment on the creepiness.

(44:14):
Interesting. I'm I'm not really sure that we
we fully get to keeping a stage yet with some stuff.
I think and, and, and, and maybeDan is going to touch on it, I
guess. And he, what he mentions value
exchange as well. But I think obviously we said
that when you sort it out of thedifferent demographics in
relation to who's more loyal andwho wants to be contacted and
things like, again, parents are more likely to be loyal to a

(44:36):
brand than non parents. And I think it's once you tailor
that sensitivity and whether it is opting out elements of
whether you're not a parent and actually you don't want to mark
it to that way or Mother's Day and Father's Day.
And actually I lost my mum more.So you meet you're, you're
you're tailing it and therefore it's acceptable.
But yeah, I get, I guess I'm notsure that we've got to keep any

(44:56):
stages. As you see, some people aren't
even adding names to emails and things like that.
So I think some retailers are approaching it.
That might just be my experiencefor you.
You're getting hit a lot for youleft this in your basket.
This is still there. Do you still want a pair of
shorts? Holidays coming up?
There's a pair of shorts with your name on it.
And I've had that with that nameand the retailers.
So go. That's when you start going.

(45:17):
I'm I'm really not not up. Yeah.
Pumpkin Spice was a story someone told me about in the
States where they have the the big pumpkin spice push over over
the whole depot Halloween periodis it, I think.
And it comes out and it was frightening how accurate they
get. It was a very big, I can't
remember the name of the bloody huge Enterprise brand in the
States, but they could get really close to basically your
absolute behavior across everything.

(45:37):
But then we're going at you. close to creepy, I think they
called it, Yeah. I'd say I think creepy when when
nowhere near I think annoying isis probably more annoying.
Because of the the way we're thequality that we're getting well,
I. Think you know, there was a
really good example recently, I think Jay Rayner said that he'd

(45:58):
booked a restaurant in London and he had 7 emails prior to his
booking to try and reconfirm that his booking was still going
to be a booking. And that's obviously a brand
that's trying to get away from no shows and and fill those
seats. But Seven prior is probably a
little bit of overkill and you're a brand.
That's scared that J Rain is coming in, are you?

(46:20):
Sure, you're coming. And I think in the in the same
way, you know when you ask for feedback after a visit, you
know, you can't ask multiple times.
You know, you've not given it, you've not given it, you've not
given it. Yeah.
So I think that those comms around either a visit, you know,
I think you, you need to be careful there and, and sometimes
those comms come out naturally from those other platforms that

(46:41):
are providing that service as well.
You might not have massive control over them.
Obviously some of the booking providers out there are looking
to drive their own SEO and theirown reach through gathering
feedback that they can then havewithin their platform rather
than it sitting within the operators feedback platform.
And that's kind of can be a little bit dangerous because

(47:02):
they're, you know, almost they're communicating on your as
a, as a because they're also a data controller rather than just
being a processor sat in the background, just doing the job
of of what you've bought that platform for, if that makes
sense. Yeah.
So a little bit deep, no? No, no, no.
But it's a bit like the deliverystyle where you, they have all

(47:22):
the data. Yeah, but they're also providing
a service. Yeah.
And you kind of. Yeah, they're kind of
piggybacking on the back of whatthey should be doing.
Sorry, delivery. I might take that bit out and
we're up towards the end. I just want to look the future
of data. And I think you mentioned
before, Dan, actually we're probably going to talk about AI.
I said yesterday it's impossibleto get through an episode of

(47:43):
that talking about AI. And I think that overlaying AI,
I think you alluded to before where you could put it on top of
bills, for instance, and say, Mr. Bills, whatever you want to
call your AI bot. Tell me about customer acts in
Bristol. And it could and straight away,
and I see some PMSS doing it in hotel world where you can get
really great behavioural data around particular customers.

(48:03):
What, what does the future look like?
I'll ask you since you've been, let's say you've been around the
longest in data. How's that I?
Mean look, it's so exciting. It's so exciting.
It's it's like the conversationswe have internally.
I've got my lead engineer, Julian, who's been with me for
14 years straight out of university.

(48:23):
He built Toggle. He's like just an absolute born
coder, loves it, lives it. And I've just put him on AI for
the last 12 months now as a teamof 1 and just said, look, just
build what you can and just learn it and understand it.
And he's built large language models where you can say you can

(48:44):
click on a customer profile and it will just give you like 480
characters of who that customer is and why they've visited you
without giving the AI any personal identifiable
information. PII.
So that's, you know, one thing. So that gives a front of house
team potentially when I walk into a Bill's restaurant and
they seek me, it might just allow the server to click on a

(49:08):
little icon and it pull up and say that person has visited 4
Bills in the last three months. They have got a dietary
requirement based on what they've purchased and the last
time they visited they gave a negative review.
OK, so it might give them a, a prompt that would just allow

(49:29):
Tom's team to say to that customer, just going to point
out the dishes on the menu that are suitable for you or, you
know, might be suitable for you.And if there's anything that you
need, let us know. And at the end of the meal, make
sure that they've had a good time.
Maybe they'll give them a littlebit of a, oh, this is just on
the House and turn them from a, a detractor into a promoter.

(49:50):
So that's one firm use of AI which will come to the fore.
I think that secondly around thepersonalization and this
automation of segmentation and the single customer view will be
a really big thing. And I think that finally around,
you know, we send 1.2 billion emails in a year.
It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot of e-mail.
You know, I don't think we need,I think we need to send 300

(50:14):
million a year. And actually those emails just
automated. And you know, an e-mail has been
around for so long. It's been around for so long now
and actually it's not really evolved.
You know, there's Gmail have putdynamic e-mail in so that you
can click and you can interact within a Gmail e-mail and you
know, without clicking and goingto a website browser.

(50:37):
So I think that that will come to the fore a little bit more
where emails will become more dynamic and and more driven by
personalization linked to content, which we know is
relevant to the customer and more linked to the needs of a
hospitality venue that wants to drive occupancy or drive up
covers. Where actually it's automating

(50:57):
broadcasts out to people becausewe don't have the teams that can
sit and do these jobs and all just like, oh, we need to send
10 emails there and 10 emails there needs to be sold by
technology. So yeah, I think it's really
exciting. And we've built, we've built
flight assist, which is like a pocket analyst into our ship.

(51:18):
So you can just go on and ask ita question.
You can say how many people visited last month, how many
were new and how many were revisiting and it will just give
you the answer. You can ask it how many, you
know, chicken burgers, how many fish pies we sold last week, and
it will just tell you the answer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's really exciting.
It's I don't think anybody knowswhere it's gonna go.

(51:38):
I think that's. Part of it, right, I think part
of it and the Wild West, I was gonna say the Wild West, it is
the Wild West. I mean it's not even regulated
in the EU is, but I don't think the UK is going to regulate it.
So, and I think from an operatorpoint of view, Tom, excitement,
I had to write an AI policy for Blacklock the other day around
what teams could and couldn't use in their.
I mean, I don't know, I helped Maria do it, but yeah, but

(52:01):
that's coming in, right? Because teams are starting to
use it. So I don't want to get too off
personalization, but how do you see it impacting what you guys
are doing? Cuz yeah, it's exciting, but
also I suppose you've got to pick a root.
Yeah, it is. I think it's, I mean, I'm really
excited because it's eliminatingwhat I think's been a challenge,
certain casual dining sector, which is anecdotes, the loudest

(52:22):
voice in the room or the most senior voice in the room
dictating the brand strategy andthe menus and the service style.
And we've seen that in some wayspositive, that's worked really
well, but in other ways been hugely detrimental to the
brands. And I think what what you've
really seen is the market has evolved so much in the last four
years. The chances of me as MD knowing

(52:44):
what the market actually want, what our guest wants, then you
plan to, you know, we're a national brand.
You turn to regional differencesas well.
There is no way, you know, even with the data we currently have,
we're going to be able to analyse that, make the correct
decisions. And we're really embracing it
certainly in terms of the menu construction, in terms of, you
know, building at heat maps to go, what should our menu look
like? What should the bills menu look

(53:05):
like? What should the price point be?
How does it change as you move throughout the country?
And what what are the different regional trends and where you've
got different demographics and different areas?
If you're if you're more heavilyover indexed with the Gen.
Z crowd, actually that many lookslightly different than than
than the menu in in a older demographic crowd as well.
And that's where I think I'm getting super excited is the

(53:26):
ability to make certainly as a leader and as a senior exec team
to make much better decisions because you have access to all
this data and super quick. I mean, we were playing around
with flight assist yesterday andto go.
I feel this. I think this and you still you
should always have that gut instinct.
One of the joys of being a leader and you play on all your
experience for years, but then being able to back that up with

(53:48):
something that will either preview right and give you the
confidence to go. This is a good decision and we
should do this and here's the reason why or to disprove it.
I think super exciting. The challenge is going to be
learning how you get the information you actually want
and sort of checking through that, but that's what everyone
is working on in the next 12 months.
I think you might level the playing field right as in

(54:11):
because it's so cost effective AI potentially so cost effective
compared to other you know, I'm.Amazed with just sorry for
interrupting just TBT of just when I get bored of an evening
or can't sleep the questions I. Create a picture of myself as a
doll. I did.
I did do want to it. Doesn't matter now.
It doesn't matter. But yeah, I was about to say it.

(54:31):
It was. It was a as a I was watching a
Yellowstone and I look very goodin a ranch in I forget his name
though. Yeah, Jack Duck Jack.
Ohh. John.
John, Sorry. John.
I've lost telly. I was a little insight to Tom
there. No, but some of the insights you
can get from me even just sort of sort of sitting on ChatGPT
and asking these questions of, you know, what should be on the

(54:54):
menu, what would be really effective for here?
What promotion would do this? What would engage guests for
your brand. It's absolutely fascinating now,
I mean. Mark McCulloch quite openly on a
panel with me the other week andhe won't mind me saying this
because it's out there. He said a lot of the Prezzo
strategy was built through ChatGPT was built through asking
and and I just think it'll help brands come to the fore as in
what you do really well, people and food and the the data

(55:16):
madness that goes underneath it.That gives some people an upper
hand. If they've got more budget,
whatever completely might level a little bit.
So that that's right excitement.What about Gillian?
What do you think from a generalpoint of view?
What's the the future? The future?
Of data, well, I think obviouslyeveryone's kind of talked on it
there. It's about the leading of it and
adding in, I guess So the fundamental, the data accuracy
that you are putting into the system and giving it the

(55:36):
context. So all those different layers so
that you can segment so that youcan sort out those demographics
so that you can understand that you're marketing or building
loyalty programmes that will address those different areas.
And I think obviously the the value of the the data that you
get from kind of our systems really, really helps with that.
So I think it's it's about layering on the accuracy, the

(55:56):
context to build that out. I think is is really important.
I think then obviously I do a lot of the heavy listing and the
hard grunting and yeah, excitingtimes ahead, love.
It look thank you very much all three of you for joining us,
particularly the far along that was also interesting.
But if people wanna get in touchand find out, I mean, Dan,
where's the best place to find you?
You know what I mean? On your holiday, A lot on
Instagram, maybe. Yeah, I.

(56:19):
Don't know what you mean. As well.
Find me on LinkedIn or just downat airship.co.uk.
Perfect. And Tom, if people want to reach
out and just say hello, is it LinkedIn the best place to find
you? Yes.
Yes. Yeah, I'm trying to help you.
Yeah. No, yeah, we're OK.
OK, great. And.
Gillian Yeah, you can find me onLinkedIn.
Perfect. All right, guys.

(56:39):
Thanks very much. We'll see you all next week.
Thank you. Thank you.