Pancakes On The Rocks case study: Stacks of benefits

Pancakes On The Rocks has been working with me&u to offer their customers a personal dining experience, so we caught up with General Manager Nelson Tromp to chat about how that’s been going for them. 

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How Pancakes On The Rocks use me&u 

Nelson tells us that bringing technology into the venue came about during the pandemic, but they soon saw the benefit of this new and exciting way of running service. 

“We found that transitioning across to me&u, we could operate the venues with sales getting closer to what they were before the pandemic with a lot less staff. And it's not a cost-saving measure because we still need all the staff we have, plus more. But it just allows us to serve more customers than we could before,” he says.

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How they adapted their service to suit their tech

Being a venue with a strong legacy behind it, changing how they operate may sound like a tough sell, but Pancakes On The Rocks found the transition easy – as did their customers.

“I think we're running anywhere from 65 per cent to sometimes 95 per cent of customers through the me&u platform.”

“A lot of customers are so happy. We've had customers thanking us for putting this in, which was really surprising, and other customers who were totally against technology. But even with that mix, me&u still allows us to serve people better than we could have in the past,” Nelson says.‍

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Happy customers order more through me&u

‍One upside that Nelson and the team have noticed is how customers order through me&u, with higher-value orders coming through more often. 

“Some people say, look, When you go with the QR code, are you dropping the service level?  But if service is giving customers what they want in a timely manner, the QR code allows us to do that.”

“They're also ordering more often, and that can be a result of staff being unable to get back to tables in time. And so people are ordering extra drinks. It's been phenomenal for our business, and that is what our business is about. It's about serving the customers,” he says. 

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Less awkward moments

‍This was probably a point we weren’t expecting from Nelson, but we’ll take it. Fewer awkward moments might even become our new tagline.

“There's the awkward time when you're serving customers in the middle of a conversation, and you don't realise, so you walk up, and they go ‘and then-’ and you interrupt, and they get a bit upset when you ruin the delivery of the story.”

“So many things like this have been eliminated, and that has been phenomenal for us. I think our level of service is probably better than it was before, and it definitely means we can serve a lot more people,” he says.

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How the team are finding it

The strength of any hospitality technology is in how the team use it, and Pancake On The Rocks has seen its staff take to it like syrup to a stack.

“We haven't had any dramas with it all… We like the fact that me&u can suggest items to customers when staff members are rushed. Customers with me&u can order when they’re ready.”

And, of course, there’s the tipping feature that helps keep staff happy.

“There would be 200- 300% more tips through me&u. It’s ridiculously high,” says Nelson. 

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The benefits of integration

One aspect of me&u that Pancakes On The Rocks love is how easy it is to integrate with their tech stack. 
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“It's really helpful that we can connect our marketing to our point of sale system and really dig into what the customers are ordering, how often they're ordering and where they’re coming from.”

“I really think that we're going to see a much greater benefit with this the longer we work with it, and the more we play with it,” he says.

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The results

Of course, the numbers do the real talking when we look at how effective me&u has been for our customers, and Pancakes On The Rocks have some exceptional results to share. 

“Even the top line sales, we're probably upwards of 15, sometimes 20 per cent higher in sales than we were on comparable weeks.”

“The average spend per customer has gone up anywhere from the 15 to 20 per cent mark, which is huge,” he says.

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Would they recommend me&u?

Here are Nelson’s words of advice to anyone still on the fence about the benefits of hospitality technology.

“It's all about providing a better service, and the results we've seen are outstanding. Bottom line, top line, customer, staff tips. All of those things have been so much better for us and to have customers actually thanking us for having QR code ordering is remarkable. I would have thought they'd just be ambivalent about it. The customers are happy. It provides them with more flexibility in terms of payment and ordering.”

“We're not really necessarily tech people, so the me&u team has made it very simple for us to understand and helped us along the way. So I can't speak highly enough of them. I would 100 per cent recommend me&u. I don't think there's much to lose, and there is so much to gain,” he says. 

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