Founded in Chicago, Protein Bar & Kitchen has been a pioneer in the better-for-you fast-casual space, offering protein-packed meals and shakes catering to health-conscious consumers. With over 15 locations, PBK serves a diverse customer base, offering a high-protein menu featuring flavorful bowls, wraps, and smoothies.
PBK turned to Bikky to understand a sudden shift in sales at one of their locations – a location that had been outperforming was now at the lower end of the system. By leveraging customer data, they quickly uncovered the source of the change in performance. Armed with a clear sense of what was driving this dip in sales, they wasted no time and immediately put their energy towards combating the trend.
Before partnering with Bikky we would spend weeks digging through POS data and spreadsheets trying to understand what was causing a change in sales, now we can immediately isolate and understand what’s happening and focus on solutions.
- Jared Cohen, COO of Protein Bar & Kitchen
Protein Bar and Kitchen got their start in Chicago in 2009 and their healthy and satisfying menu quickly became a favorite for the Windy City’s residents. Their protein-packed bowls and blended shakes are the perfect option for anyone looking for a quick and healthy meal. The PBK team leveraged the organic momentum they built in Chicago to grow the brand to over 15 locations spanning multiple states.
Now as they enter 2025, PBK is a solidified Chicago classic with franchising expansion on the horizon. So when Protein Bar COO Jared Cohen saw a sharp dip in sales at one of their hometown locations, he instantly knew something was up.
Jared and his team sprung into action, working to uncover the cause of the issue: When did the decline start? Was it linked to specific dayparts or menu items? Had operational changes affected performance? Why this location? They needed answers to devise an effective strategy.
With such granular data at our disposal we could analyze customer behavior by channel, customer type, or daypart to form a hypothesis grounded in real insights, instead of chasing our hunches as to why sales trends were off.
The PBK team immediately turned to Bikky, their Customer Data Platform, to diagnose and pinpoint why this location experienced such a sudden change in trajectory. Thanks to Bikky’s detailed insights, they had all the data they needed to isolate the problem, giving them a better insight into how exactly sales were being impacted. Jared used Bikky’s reporting to look at store week-over-week performance, broken down by daypart and sales channel. He identified that the change was isolated to lunch and dinner, while breakfast sales were actually performing very well. Sales channels also told an interesting story, as the changes were concentrated in low-engagement in-store customers and those on third party marketplaces, while first-party PBK app users were less impacted.
Rather than spending weeks digging through transactional data then debating what the root cause of the decline could be, the PBK team was able to easily diagnose the problem and redirected their efforts toward finding a solution.
After uncovering the source of the shift in sales, the PBK team wasted no time. They aligned on six marketing and engagement levers they could deploy around this location to drive these guests back into their location. They kicked off targeted local marketing initiatives, catering activations, partnerships, adjusted third-party advertising, launched new targeted promotions and even started testing the brand’s first ever geotargeted Spotify ads. Protein Bar started rolling out lunch and dinner offers with personalized communications to guests to increase traffic.
They partnered with local gyms to provide more targeted promotions to local patrons. They amped up their advertising on third-party delivery platforms, to capture the attention of high-intent consumers who were new to the brand. Finally, PBK used the opportunity to implement new digital channels and piloted Spotify ads with promotional codes to drive lunch and dinner traffic – an idea they had been toying with, that they now had the perfect opportunity to test.
Bikky helped us quickly identify the problem and provided clarity on how to rectify our decline in sales faster than we could have achieved on our own.
PBK’s ability to monitor customer behavior meant they could immediately detect problems, preventing losses and enabling swifter solutions. This data-driven approach turned a potential setback into an opportunity to strengthen guest connections and experiment with new marketing strategies, all while safeguarding long-term growth.
Outside of solving for specific anomalies and keeping an eye on store performance, Protein Bar & Kitchen is using Bikky to improve the targeting of their everyday marketing efforts. Thanks to Bikky’s segmentation tool, they could easily understand and differentiate between two of their main types of customers: customers who mostly order entrees like a bowl or a salad, and customers who mostly stick to their blended drinks and acai bowls. Just by tailoring offers and promotions to specific guest preferences—like customizing a discount based on whether you prefer entrees or blended drinks—rather than using generic discounts, they increased redemption rates from under 5% to over 15%, driving significantly higher retention.
With this initial success in personalization, they continue to dive deeper into guest preferences, looking for unique behaviors within these groups and testing out tactics as they market to them.
Looking ahead, PBK plans to continue expanding its use of Bikky to optimize marketing efforts and monitor performance across the brand. They’re using this new data strategy to build a playbook to help them stay ahead of any future challenges in their competitive market. Beyond optimizing their existing locations, PBK has begun franchising and has opened new airport locations in New York City and Salt Lake City. The PBK team will spread their data-centric approach to Protein Bar & Kitchen’s operations as they expand into these new territories, one protein-packed meal at a time.
Bikky gives us a level of granularity that we never had before. We can see what’s happening faster, adjust quickly, and align our team around a clear strategy—something we couldn’t do as efficiently without this platform.
