Groucho’s Deli is a regional sandwich favorite with 30+ locations across the Southeast. A legacy brand with more than 85 years of serving guests, Groucho’s is known for its commitment to high-quality ingredients across its popular meats, cheeses, sandwiches, sides, and more. 

But when sales at one established location began to slip substantially during key dayparts, Groucho’s leadership struggled to understand the source of the change in performance.

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When there’s a clear drop in sales, all vigilant restaurant operators often ask, “Sales are down at one location – why?” But finding a targeted answer isn’t as simple as the question itself. 

For Groucho’s, instinct alone wasn’t enough. Sales at the location had been declining significantly and had been trending downward for multiple quarters. They needed a fast, data-backed way to isolate the root cause before making any changes that could disrupt operations or misallocate marketing dollars.

“We dug into sales by channel and saw a huge drop in digital ordering, both in third-party and native digital. It made us look closer at how our competitors were investing in advertising on these platforms, and made us rethink our approach.” – Deric Rosenbaum

Using Bikky’s guest-level and location-level analytics, Groucho’s started by digging into specific performance metrics: new guest retention, transaction trends, digital versus in-store sales mix, average order value, and daypart performance.

One early question was whether a recently opened location was pulling traffic from the older store. The team analyzed habitual guest behavior and found that less than 10% of regular traffic had shifted, ruling that out as the primary cause of the decline.

With that addressed, they looked deeper into channel and daypart trends. Bikky revealed that while dinner sales were steady, and in some cases improving, lunch transactions had dropped sharply, particularly across digital and third-party ordering. There were no meaningful operational changes, pricing shifts, or menu adjustments that explained the downturn.

After ruling out internal factors within Bikky, Deric broadened the investigation. External research showed that several new restaurants had opened nearby, increasing competition in the surrounding area. 

Now confident that store execution wasn’t the issue, Groucho’s reassured the franchisee and put a focused plan in place, shifting spend toward stronger-performing digital channels like DoorDash and Google PMax, while also increasing local outreach by visiting nearby businesses with samples and catering menus to rebuild lunchtime traffic.

"Once we identified that the drop was not operational, we were better positioned to attack the decline more strategically. We could optimize our performance marketing and even started guerrilla marketing for catering packages, all due to what Bikky helped us uncover.”

With Bikky, the team avoided costly assumptions. They confirmed that operations at the location were strong, giving franchisees reassurance that the issue wasn’t execution-related. That clarity allowed corporate to step in as a true partner — bringing a data-backed plan of action instead of speculation. Rather than questioning store performance, they could immediately reallocate marketing spend and deploy targeted tactics to reverse the trend.

For Groucho’s, the real win was not only recovering sales, but truly understanding what caused the decline in the first place. With that clarity, they could shift strategy more decisively, rather than second-guessing every move.

"This whole situation allowed us to get more creative with our feet-on-the–street advertising and more targeted with our digital marketing. We’ve structured our third-party offerings better, too, and the overall results across conversion and awareness are fantastic.” – Deric Rosenbaum