PETER WILSON
Sun
MARK VAN MANEN/VANCOUVER SUN Nu Restaurant manager Leonard Nakonechny says he can now spot trends early and adapt by comparing sales data marketing and input costs.
More than 500 retailers and restaurateurs across British Columbia will soon be asking themselves a simple question each week:
What’s my Zata?
Their Zata score — of one to 10, with the average being five — will show small- to medium-sized businesses in retail and hospitality just how they’re doing against their direct competitors.
Using an online data network, furniture stores will be able to see where they rate in sales against other furniture stores in the same geographic area. And the same will be true of casual-dining restaurants.
These Zata scores will give smaller businesses a sales intelligence and benchmarking tool previously only available to the likes of big box retailers.
The BC Restaurant and Food Services Association, which already has 55 members up and running with the system, and Retail BC, which will launch Zata this summer, developed the service in partnership, using technology developed by Vancouver’s Vivonet Inc.
“We constantly get phone calls from our members saying, ‘I know how I’m doing, but how is everybody else doing out there?’ ” said Sonja Kennedy, Retail BC’s marketing manager. “Now they’ll have an actual tool to show them how they’re performing against their neighbour.”
Kennedy said they’re hoping that at least 500 of their members will start using Zata within a year.
The data gathered is kept securely, and no business can see the actual details of another business’s sales or growth.
Restaurant association president Ian Tostenson said that the 55 restaurants testing the system are thrilled with the information they’re getting.
“I came from the wine industry, where they have incredible market statistics that drive the business,” said Tostenson. “The restaurant industry really didn’t have that available, and what was available was historic in nature, and not very timely.”
Tostenson said that his organization, which offers the service free to its members, is encouraging restaurateurs to enter their data weekly.
“I believe that Zata is the first step to get restaurants to the next stage in preparing us for 2010,” said Tostenson, who added that he has hundreds of members waiting to try Zata.
Leonard Nakonechny, general manager of both Nu Restaurant and C restaurant in Vancouver, said that he can now spot trends early and adapt his business by comparing sales data, marketing and input costs against his local competition.
The development of Zata happened as what Vivonet’s Brad Brooks, director of Zata, terms “a little bit of groupthink.”
He was meeting with the restaurant and food association about another matter, and the group told him what they needed was more intelligence about what was happening in the marketplace.
“We went forward and developed a project for them,” said Brooks. “At the same time, we had a discussion with Retail BC.”
Brooks said that members simply have to enter their sales and transaction numbers each week, and Zata looks after the rest.
“There’s about 114 calculations that take place in order to give a restaurant or a retailer a look at how they’re doing in terms of the rest of the marketplace.”
How Zata works
Each week, retailers and restaurants enter their sales and transaction information into a secure website.
The Zata — a number from one to 10, with five being average — is calculated, comparing retailers in specific fields and geographic areas with one another.
An overall Zata score of three indicates the business is performing in the bottom 30 per cent. A Zata of eight indicates that the business is in the top 20 per cent.
Zatas are also provided to the retailer or restaurateur for changes in sales growth, sales per square foot and sales per transaction (such as average customer bill in a restaurant).
Other information that can make up a Zata includes cost of goods sold as a percentage of sales, and cost of labour as a percentage of sales.
Tracked, too, are weekly rankings, average Zata, and variance between the current and average Zata.
All this information is kept strictly confidential and away from the eyes of competitors.
