Analytics come up often in many aspects of our lives. According to Techopedia, in our data-driven world, “analytics provide us with meaningful information which may otherwise be hidden from us within large quantities of data.” Consumer patterns in consumption, and analyzing data is not just used on Bay Street. Data can be discovered in virtually everything we see and do from health, entertainment, sports and what we consume…literally.
There are mixed emotions about analytics but the benefits, and yes, there is an upside, can help offer us more relatable information. We’re exposed to so much these days so, yeah, if I’m learning more about stuff that will benefit my puppy instead of crypto currency, then I’m a happy camper.
Recently, Boston Pizza launched a “Fanalytics” campaign that caught our attention. With the Toronto Maple Leafs giving us a moment of hope (oh well) the pizza chain tapped into the fascinating world of analytics in a scientific and fun way to create a limited-time offer menu. Featuring guests’ play-off favourites, their in-house Menu Engineer, Gabrielle Hebert, was able to retrieve menu data and use the information to optimize its (playoff) menu to predict high sellers and trending platters.
Gabrielle started in consumer-packaged goods, but her deep interest in analytics and creativity led her towards seeking a role that would be more “a merger between data and creativity”. Today, she’s part of the Marketing Science Department at Boston Pizza. Her day-to-day is constantly evolving but one thing stays the same, her style in managing the main menu with art and science ensures all the main player platters are data driven. With the optimized and informative data, Fanalytics ensure a positive return and fan experience.
A few fun discoveries…
- Triple Play, Garlic Parmesan Fries & Pizza Flights were the most popular items ordered in Ontario during round 1 of the playoffs.
- Alberta ate more Triple Play than any other province during round 1 of the playoffs.
- Triple Play, Pizza Flights & Deep-Fried Pickles were the most popular items ordered in Alberta during round 1 of the playoffs.
What else did we learn? “As you can imagine it has been a few stressful and exciting weeks during the playoffs, especially for Alberta and Ontario, whose teams made it to round 2 in the playoffs,” said Gabrielle. “So, who stress-ate more pizza in overtime? The answer: Ontario (but only by just a little bit 😊)”.
Toronto? Stress? What? No surprise. Collectively we can be pretty serious about our sports teams. We asked her what the Fanalytics revealed about us.
“Based on our Fanalytics streeter interview series, we learned a couple of things. Some of the insights checked out, while others did not as much. We heard from passionate sports fans that:
- Ranch is better than Blue Cheese Dip with wings.
- The Pepperoni pizza is definitely the GOAT when it comes to pizzas. (Our sales data says this checks out!).
- And that the Leafs will crush the Panthers…”
We know how that ended. There’s always next year?
We also asked Gabrielle what’s the best part of her job? She tells us, “Two words: the people and the pizza! I work with such an awesome group of people, who are smart, dedicated, passionate and just plain fun to be around. Secondly, I get to spend a big portion of my day talking about food and pizza – who doesn’t love pizza?”
Seems like Gabrielle has a pretty cool job. And hey, it’s baseball season! Soooo, Go Jays!
