Black Box Intelligence (BBI), a leader in restaurant data and operational performance solutions, has acquired Yumpingo (YPG), a guest experience management and survey platform.
BBI is building an AI Command Center for Restaurants, integrating guest experience management, guest sentiment, operational performance, and workforce and financial intelligence into one platform, according to Mark Dillon, CEO of Black Box Intelligence.
“We’re training our AI model specifically for the restaurant industry,” he said in an interview.
In February, BBI had announced the launch of Performance Intelligence, an AI-driven platform that analyzes guest feedback and workforce and financial benchmarks for operational insights.
Dillon notes that this combination will allow BBI to design enhanced surveys, now including Yumpingo’s ability to provide transaction-level insights, through POS integration capabilities. It will also provide new and comprehensive experience management, combining surveys with social media and online review management, which BBI can connect to financial performance.
“We want to give brands a single source of truth,” he said.
Yumpingo gives BBI new capabilities to deliver prized intel to operators from new perspectives.
“We’ve grounded ourselves in reviews, mostly Google and Open Table and Yelp and everybody else. It’s what the guest wants to tell the restaurants. Now with surveys through Yumpingo, we can find out what the restaurants want to tell the guest. When you put these two things together, you can take a holistic view of the experience.”
Yumpingo was attractive for many reasons, Dillon said.
“Yumpingo has done a really good job with integrations: on the POS side and on the loyalty side. It’s integrated with companies like Toast and Punch,” he said. “Together we can a lot of things around menu intelligence.”
Dillon points to a recent comment from Chili’s CEO Kevin Hochman as a reference point to what motivates BBI.
“A reporter asked him, Where are these ideas coming? He said, I’m listening to our team. He goes around to his stores, visiting five on a trip. Our thinking with our surveys is we want to provide that kind of data on a consistent basis,” he said.
Dillon doesn’t need to take one of his own surveys to articulate why this is important to him.
“We want to help bring the restaurant industry back,” he said. “I feel like we’ve got the data and technology to help.”
