US Restaurant Group Uncovers $1.2M Revenue Potential with Distil Diagnostics

Full of home grown recipes and hospitality, this independent restaurant group with 28 locations across the US came to Distil with a clear challenge – help us capitalise on missed revenue during peak periods.

They knew the answer lay in the data, but with other challenges such as manual forecasting, fragmented systems and continuous market changes compounding the issue – operational blind spots were holding them back.

The outcome? A substantial $1.2M potential revenue increase uncovered just hours after onboarding from blocked inventory during peak weekend services.

Like many growing restaurant groups, they were caught in a data overload – rich in data but short on the time, tools and expertise to draw out the most valuable and potentially impactful insights.

For their entrepreneurial and growth-focussed COO, Distil Diagnostics offered a single source of truth – one place to get clarity on what’s happening now, and crucially, what’s coming next for their restaurants.

How Distil uncovered $1.2M revenue potential in missed availability

Within weeks of connecting the group’s OpenTable Restaurant IDs (RIDs) to Distil, the team surfaced their first big win: an insight pointing to blocked booking availability across several peak weekend periods.

Distil Diagnostics Availability Scan flagged four sites with 2+ hours of non-availability of bookings for parties of between two and five guests.

Looking more closely, these blocks appeared every Saturday and Sunday between 10am and 4pm – despite plenty of inventory still available in all four venues. For example, in one of their locations only 5 reservations were in the books for the upcoming Saturday. So what could be blocking incoming reservations when tables were clearly open?

A deeper look between the OpenTable and Distil teams revealed that the group’s restaurants were on the OpenTable Flexible Discovery Plan, which is designed to let restaurants switch off online discovery during high-occupancy periods to avoid paying cover fees for diners they would likely naturally attract through other channels.

Across the group – these four sites had Discovery turned off from 10am-4pm on weekends, and another 14 sites from 12pm-1pm. Likely a hangover from post-Covid strategies to optimise costs, and subsequent changes in leadership meant this wasn’t on anyone’s radar. As a result, potential bookings were being limited when demand was likely at its peak.

Their Chief Operating Officer said:
“Great insights! I recall doing the pilot (of Flexible Discovery in OpenTable), back during the peak Covid volume. Didn’t realize this setting was left on.”

Gerry McNicol, Founder and CEO, Distil.ai:
“Availability Scan worked exactly as designed to help uncover periods where online reservations through OpenTable were blocked. This has also helped us identify a new product feature, which will highlight these types of blockers with a different style of alert – making it easier for customers to identify why the non-availability might be happening. Stay tuned for that!”

From data to insight to untapped revenue potential

By surfacing what was hidden in plain sight, Distil Diagnostics helped uncover over half of this group’s untapped weekend booking potential and a significant million dollar annual revenue opportunity – simply by connecting visibility to availability.

For Distil, it’s another example of how intelligent data design, built for hospitality, doesn’t just deliver insights – it unlocks revenue opportunities.

Ready to see what Distil could unlock for your restaurant group? Let’s Talk