Brand Led Growth Assignment: Eat App

Disclaimer: Since Eat App has recently entered the Indian market through its collaboration with Swiggy Dineout, all analysis provided here focuses on the Indian market.

Eat App is a complete front-of-house optimization platform that helps venues deliver outstanding guest experiences.

The brand describes itself as:

The all-in-one reservation platform

Section 1: Understanding Business

What are you in the business of?

1. Under what circumstances did someone hire your product?

• When Restaurant Partners wanted to enable reservation button on all possible platforms such as google, Social media Apps like Instagram and Facebook, their website, Trip advisor and more.
• When Restaurant Partner wanted to a CRM tool that can help them grow their business.

1. What are they really trying to achieve with your product?

• More reservations
• Increase in revenue
• Ease in Managing operations
• Customer retention
• New customer acquisition

What problem is your product solving?

Indian Dining out market remains sluggish, largely driven by new restaurants opening. And the biggest pain point for both newly opened and well-established restaurants is to successfully earn profits from their business. The challenge exists because of immense competition, not able to acquire new customers and retain the existing customers.

What are the key features your product offers?

1. Overall reservation aggregation
2. Customer Database building & profiling
3. Pre-ordering, All in one QR Code
4. Advanced CRM to drive repeat user and retention
5. Targeted marketing at lower costs
6. Easy POS integrations

How is the user currently solving this problem?

As mentioned above, restaurant owners has two major challenges while running a restaurant.

1. Increase revenue
2. Increase efficiency

Currently in Indian restaurant industry, there’s no single product which address both the concerns. Restaurant owners are relying on multiple tools for marketing, managing reservations, optimizing restaurant space, generating bills, managing database etc which ultimately helps in addressing one or both challenges mentioned above.

ICP Table

Speak to 4-5 different users and create the ICP table. Your ICP table should include behavioral traits, psychographics, pain points & needs & goals.

ICP Goals

List down the goals for your ICP. You don't necessarily have to fill all the goals. Fill the ones that are relevant to your company

Product Goal Prioritization

From all the goals that you have listed, prioritize the ones that you can solve right away. This will give direction to your branding strategy moving forward.

1. Operational Goal -

• To help minimize human errors from table - kitchen - table service.
• Provide high quality service to customers

1. Financial Goal -

• Maximize revenue for the restaurant

List your competitors

Start with listing a few of your competitors. It doesn't necessarily need to be a company, talk about how your ICP is currently solving their problem

Understand the category and type of product

Identify if your product is a category creator or is in an existing category. Next, figure out if it's a pull product or a push product. Do not forget to give reasons for each of these.

Identify the category

New Category:

The Indian food services industry is currently valued at approximately ₹5.69 lakh crore (₹5.69 trillion) and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.1%, reaching ₹7.76 lakh crore (₹7.76 trillion) by 2028. Even though after being such massive industry, In India more than 90% of the restaurants opens and shuts or change of ownership happens (which is very common) within 2 years. Since the churn of restaurants is so high, most of the restaurant owners aren’t aware of CRM tools which is present in market which can help them meet their financial and operational goals. These owners are only using POS (Point of Sale) tools for billings, other than this most of the Partners aren’t using any other tool hence category in India is still new.

Identify the type of product (Push / Pull)

Pull Product:

Since people are not even aware of tools present in market to help them with increasing revenue and better restaurant operations, Eat App becomes a pull product in a new category

Jot down the JTBD of the brand

Basis the Trust - awareness map - Eat App to enter into Indian market effectively has to solve for relevance, Need and Brand Trust.

Trust -awareness Map for Eat App

Why Relevance?

As mentioned earlier, restaurant owners in India does not even have awareness that such tools exists which can help them grow their business, manage their restaurants efficiently so Eat App not just have to make them aware of the tool but also make them realize why the tool is appropriate and why should restaurant partner invest in it.

Why Need?

Once Eat App makes restaurant owners aware of the product, they will have to make them understand why they need it. In India, the owners are still operating their restaurants in traditional manner such as doing social media marketing, influencer marketing, trying to accommodate multiple events, burning lot of cash organizing these events or doing such marketing without being aware whether these strategies are impactful or not. More than 90% of the restaurant owners doesn’t take data driven decisions in restaurant industry. Hence once of the JTBD for Eat App is to solve for Need

Why Brand Trust?

Once the owners are aware and understand the need, it is imperative for Eat App to make them understand why they can trust Eat App. Eat App is present in 80+ countries and helping over 3K+ restaurants to successfully run their businesses. Once the owners understand the used case, they might move to other service providers for cheaper prices in which case Eat App has to communicate precisely the importance of being with them.

Answer the core questions related to your brand

These questions will help you get everything at one place and would make it easy for you to craft your core value prop.

How does the user perceive this category?

The restaurant owners see this category as complicated and not needed. This is because using CRM tools require a bit of tech knowledge, tech acceptance and more than the restaurant Partners, the staff of restaurant does not want to make their life complicated by using such CRM tool.

Are they aware of the category?

90% of the partners are not even aware of the category that a data-driven CRM tool can help them with two things 1) Maximize revenue and 2) Efficient Restaurant Operations

What are the triggers and blockers to purchase?

Triggers:

1. Bookings from various platforms and not relying only on Aggregator platforms such as Swiggy & Zomato.
2. Customer Data and Profiling to serve better in future
3. Real time POS integration to minimize staff efforts to understand the customer’s cuisine preference.
4. Monthly reports and analytics to analyze the business and make data driven decisions.
5. Integrated marketing modes - WhatsApp, SMS & Emails

Blockers:

1. High cost of investment.
2. Fear of no/less adoption

What are the core problems your user is facing?

1. Financial Challenges - Not able to sustain in the industry due to high fixed cost and low customer retention.
2. Operations challenge - One of the used cases is when the restaurants gets super busy and cannot manage walk-ins and reservations effectively.

How do they solve this problem currently?

1. To solve financial challenges - Restaurant Partners try with strategies which were effective few years back such as social media marketing, influencer marketing and hosting an artists or organizing an event, which is again heavy cash burning strategies
2. Most of the restaurant Partners/Staff are managing reservations offline via pen/paper or uses excel. Some Partners also uses reservation aggregation platforms such as Reelo, Sevenrooms, etc

What is the one non-negotiable your user has? Could be money, quality, speed, time, value etc

Operations Continuity - Since the restaurant owners while take time to set-up this with their POS software and the staff will require time to learn it, buying Eat App should not bring any delays or disturb the business operations

What are somethings that your users are willing to compromise on?

Floor Plan feature.

What are the outcomes that users want to solve for after using your product?

1. Increase in revenue.
2. More footfall
3. Customer Retention

Craft your core value prop

For [target customer] who [needs X], our [product / service] is [category of industry] that [benefits / provides pain relievers]

For Restaurant Owners who wants to maximize their revenue and manage their restaurant operations effectively, Eat App is a hospitality technology solution that helps automates table bookings, optimizes operations, and provides actionable insights to boost guest retention and revenue.

4o

Define your brand wedge

If [my industry] perception is [category problem], and my user feels [user pain point], then my brand will always [user non-negotiable]

If hospitality technology industry's perception is tech-driven, expensive and my user feels it will be difficult to use, adoption will be less and expensive then Eat App will be a mentor and guide restaurant owners without disturbing daily restaurant operations.

Identify the core value & personality traits

Figure out the core value and personality traits for your brand. Think about it your brand had to be a person, who would it be?

Identify core values

Eat App's core values are guide restaurant owners so it acts like mentors, they act as a 24/7 available facility and a hardworker, this can be seen via the extensive Eat Academy vidoes they have created on Youtube.

Describe personality traits

If Eat App was a person, it would be confident, minimalist, good communicators, mature and simple to understand.

Define the look

Define your brand look adjectives. Make sure you define more than 2 but less than 5 such statements
I am [brand look adjective] but I am not [qualifying adjective]

I am Confident but I am not aggressive

I am simple but not limited

Get into the specifics

Get into the specifics of the colors, typography, font style, imagery etc for your brand. Try to deconstruct it, take screenshots and talk about all of these specifics

Colors:

Eat App primarily uses Green, Black and White colors out of which Green is the most dominant color. Green color indicates sustainability and growth. Most of the venue management businesses such as Hotels, Banquets and majorly restaurants which involves high fix costs and the owners are always fears of heavy losses and sustainability - Eat App indicates color scheme indicates that they can help the owners to solve their most pestering pain points.

Whereas Black bring a formal nature of Eat App and White brings minimalism and hope.

Typography

Eat App's logo is modern sans - serif font where the letters are all small. Their fonts and writing on various posts, websites and even decks is simple and easy to read.

Imagery

Eat App's creatives on social media platforms especially are very simple, to the point and communicates exactly what they are trying to say with no beating around the bush. They focus on one feature or benefit at the time because of which users/viewers don't get confused and understand clearly what they are trying to communicate

Define the speak

Define your brand speak adjectives. Make sure you define more than 2 but less than 5 such statements
I am [brand speak adjective] but I am not [qualifying adjective]

I am a good communicator but I am not a dictator

I will teach you but I won't control you

Get into the specifics

Define the brand voice, tone and writing style

Brand Voice

Eat App's Brand voice is mature and shows that they are industry leaders. A voice which communicates things very clearly and will have answers to the questions. It is also polite in nature which exhibits that you won't be judged and can ask questions.

Tone

Calmness and patience. If you observe their training videos they have explained each feature in really patient manner, they are aware that not everyone understands technology quickly especially staff working at restaurants hence as a brand they have to be calm and patient while training these folks

Writing style

Simple, Modern, Easy to understand. Their messages and copies are written in plain English and simple sans - serif and similar fonts so that the user don't have to be concerned that they won't understand the message. They address one benefit or pain point or feature at a time so that the users are not confused and can focus on one thing at a time.

Define the behave

Define your brand behave adjectives. Make sure you define more than 2 but less than 5 such statements
I am [brand behave adjective] but I am not [qualifying adjective]

I am a provider but not rigid

I am Structured yet flexible

Get into the specifics

Get into the specifics of the behave. Think of all the use cases, edge cases that your brand has faced, and write what your brand will do in those situations

Brand policies

Customer comes first:

For Eat App Customer comes first, they will help them with resources even if they have to highlight that some other product might work for them in a better manner. For example Eat App has written a blog on their website mentioning best reservation systems present in market.

Train them extensively:

Eat App understands that learning new technology might be challenging hence they have created multiple videos on Youtube in easy to understand manner where restaurant owners or staff can watch the videos repeatedly to learn the usage.

Convenient:

One of the reasons they have created these videos so that the users can watch the videos anytime and anywhere and does not have to wait for support team to reach out to clarify their queries.

Customer experience

• Takes time to learn but super convenient once they understand.
• Helps in growing the business.
• Does not have to use multiple tools to manage reservations.
• Does not have to feed customer's order history in the system to build the database
• Even if Customer directly calls to book reservation, It gets reflected on EatApp.