The customer data platform built exclusively for multi-unit restaurants.
The partnership represents a strategic move to refine their brand positioning and elevate their overall guest experience.
NEW YORK, November 11th, 2024 — Bikky, a customer data platform built exclusively for multi-unit restaurants, announced a partnership with WaBa Grill, a leading fast-casual chain known for its freshly charbroiled protein bowls, plates, and tacos served at grab-and-go speed.
Founded in 2006 on the principle that healthy food and quality ingredients should be accessible to all, the brand quickly became popular on the West Coast, seeing double-digit sales increases year after year. They now have nearly 200 locations in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas with plans for further expansion across the U.S.
As WaBa seeks out new markets, their top priority is building a closer relationship with their guests. While the brand’s existing tech stack has served them to date, they needed deep insights into their whole customer base, not just loyalty guests. Working with a restaurant CDP offers them the granular data they need to achieve their goals.
With Bikky, WaBa Grill has unlocked the ability to track and analyze the behavior of more than 10 million guests they’ve served since 2020—a 12x increase over the number of guests strictly viewable through their first-party ordering platforms. The brand came into the partnership focused on marketing, but have since put Bikky’s data to work optimizing everything from their product to operations.
“We initially saw Bikky as a tool to make our outbound marketing more strategic,” says Mark Finnegan, Chief Marketing Officer. “We quickly saw that the data had applications across our entire business, especially for optimizing our menu and operations. We’re now using the data to inform some exciting improvements.”
WaBa is currently undertaking a major redesign of their menu, bolstered by insights from Bikky. The platform revealed some surprising insights and opportunities to streamline the menu for better engagement. For instance, proteins that had long been considered hero items had much lower retention rates than expected. Bikky gave WaBa the confidence to part with the less successful proteins and create space to experiment with new products.
“The data showed us that we could put our menu real estate to better use with products that are stickier for our guests,” says Mark. “Before Bikky, we could only guess what effect removing a menu item would have. Understanding the impact now though has been extremely clarifying, especially as we look for ways to optimize and evolve our menu.”
With a refined understanding of their guests through Bikky, WaBa has also seen significant improvement in ROI on their lower-funnel marketing campaigns. Historically, given the brand’s franchisee-friendly approach and available ad fund dollars, the brand prioritized aspects of guest engagement - messaging and promos through their loyalty program - that they knew would explicitly drive strong ROI. Since adjusting their campaigns based on data from Bikky, WaBa is reallocating marketing dollars to top-of-funnel efforts, allowing them to compete for mindshare and attract brand new guests.
Industry data continues to point towards a challenging environment for restaurants, with traffic for QSR and fast casual brands declining every month since the start of 2024, according to Black Box Intelligence. Operators continue to search for ways to drive higher frequency and greater efficiency without compromising on the guest experience. Bikky ensures WaBa can maximize the success of their marketing, menu, and operational decisions in this tougher operating environment. By empowering them to ask better questions and dive deeper into guest insights than ever before, the WaBa team has the confidence needed to make highly strategic, data-driven decisions that lead to higher traffic, frequency, and sales.
“Today, we’re smarter than we were,” says Mark. “We’re working with fewer anecdotes and more facts, going less on gut and more on data. We’re better prepared to do the work we need to do.”
“WaBa has one of the most unique consumer value propositions on the market. From their wide array of proteins, to the accessibility and affordability of their model - they have so much to offer today’s more value-conscious guest,” says Bikky co-founder and CEO Abhinav Kapur. “We’re proud to empower them with the ability to make more precise - and profitable - decisions across their marketing and menu as they look to bring their concept to even more guests across the country.”
The fastest-growing, most innovative restaurants look to Bikky for unprecedented insight into how their decisions directly impact consumer behavior and top-line sales. WaBa Grill is the latest brand to adopt Bikky’s groundbreaking customer data and analytics platform alongside Dave’s Hot Chicken, Robeks, Eggs Up Grill, Bojangles, and others.
WaBa Grill was founded in 2006 on the principle that healthy food made with quality ingredients should be accessible to all. With a goal of serving the best possible food on the go, WaBa's famous rice bowls, plates and salads are made with fresh vegetables, healthy grains and high-quality proteins including fresh, never frozen chicken, marinated ribeye steak, wild-caught salmon, jumbo shrimp, plant-based steak, and organic tofu, all prepared to order on an open-fire grill and customized with a variety of flavorful sauces, including the fan favorite WaBa Sauce. Learn more at www.WaBaGrill.com.
Bikky is the first Customer Data Platform (CDP) built exclusively for large, multi-unit restaurant brands.
By integrating with point-of-sale systems, online ordering providers, payment processors, and loyalty programs, Bikky is the only CDP able to build comprehensive datasets about everything from the performance of menus to the frequency and lifetime value of guests. With the platform, everyone from the C-Suite to the marketing team is empowered to make better decisions about the business and measure if those decisions are contributing positively to the bottom line.
Bikky was founded on the belief that restaurants deserve the same access to data as the largest, most sophisticated businesses in the world, and is proud to serve thousands of restaurant locations across the U.S., including major brands like Bojangles, Dave’s Hot Chicken, and Long John Silver’s.
Bikky is based in New York City and has raised nearly $15 million in funding to date.
The customer data platform built exclusively for multi-unit restaurants.