The restaurant business is highly competitive and, for a company to stay ahead, speed is of the

essence. “If a region or store is above or below a KPI – whether it is labour or cost of goods – we can
deploy resources to course correct, and we are reacting to those numbers every 12 to 24 hours
instead of at the end of every business week or, in some cases, using months-old data. To stay
profitable, it is just not reasonable to do business that way any more,” says Dickey. Thanks to Big
Data, Dickey’s can better understand what’s occurring on the ground and make quick decisions
based on that information. For them, this translates into increased savings and revenue One
challenge for the chain has been end-user adoption. “We have folks in very different, vertically
integrated positions within the company,” explains Dickey. “Those folks in the corporate office are
based in a traditional office setting working around the reality of the business, all the way down to
the folks in our stores on the frontline who are running a barbecue pit and interacting with
customers. Having a platform that can integrate with all of those different user types is probably our
biggest challenge.” The solution came in the form of a dashboard that made it easy for the whole
spectrum of end users to access and understand data. “The interface makes it much easier. It’s
excellent, particularly for people who you might traditionally think of as more ‘analogue’ than digital.
They came to work for us because they wanted to be barbecue artisans, not analysts.” The fact that
Smoke Stack is so easy to use means it integrates far better into everyday operations, even with less-
technical colleagues. At the end of the day, data that is easy to access and understand is far more
likely to translate into action. Now, more than 560 users are accessing the 200+ reports that Smoke
Stack offers. Another challenge, as is often the case when businesses move into Big Data, has been
finding people with the necessary analytical skills. In Dickey’s experience, finding the necessary skills
is one thing – finding people who are willing to think outside the box in terms of where they may put
those skills to use is quite another. “There is a huge skills gap in the market compared to need. For
us, part of the challenge is not only finding folks with the right skill sets – it is convincing them that
barbecue really is doing Big Data.” In this instance, partnering with an external provider really helped
supplement the company’s in-house talents. “We have been very lucky in choosing the right partner.
We have an account contact in our office at least 20 hours a week and we’re working very closely
with them at all times – it’s closed the gap of what would have been a skills shortage for us if we
didn’t have a partnership like this.