Introduction

Saturday dinner service, and yesterday’s numbers are not even on the table. Last week’s are even further out of reach. For CMB Restaurants, running 13 locations meant relying on raw POS data that showed totals but offered little real insight. Reporting barely existed for decision-making, so managers leaned on gut feel and hindsight more than facts.

With Zoined’s Restaurant Analytics, that day-to-day reality changed. Every morning, managers now receive clear email reports with sales, staffing, and margin insights before the first shift. Data that was once buried is easy to act on, and what felt like guesswork has become a daily rhythm of fast, informed decisions. That daily reporting is only one of several changes explored in this story.

Full interview with CMB Restaurants Managing Director, Anders Löfman. For those who prefer words, please continue.

About CMB Restaurants

CMB Restaurants is a Finnish family-owned group founded in 1993. Today it operates 13 locations in Helsinki and Lahti, combining restaurants, pubs, and catering services. Together the restaurants generate around €13 million in annual revenue and employ about 100 people. Many of their concepts, from long-standing local favorites to newer venues, are well known in their neighborhoods and have been serving guests for decades.

The Challenge

Running 13 restaurants across Finland gave CMB plenty of moving parts but not much clarity. The tills produced raw numbers, yet those numbers said little on their own. To get even a basic picture, data had to be pulled from different systems and patched together in spreadsheets. A task that happened about once a week, when everything went smoothly.

By then, the moment had already passed. Reports arrived late, sometimes with gaps or conflicting figures. Managers did their best, but many decisions leaned more on memory and gut instinct than on facts. Hours went into gathering data that could have been ready in minutes, leaving the bigger questions unanswered.

What they needed wasn’t complicated: reliable numbers, shared across every location, arriving without delay. And for that to work, the system had to connect directly with Restolution, their POS, and Maraplan, their Workforce Managment System (WFM), so all of the critical data flowed into one place.

The Solution

CMB first adopted Zoined several years ago, with the ready-made integration to Restolution and Maraplan playing an important role in the decision. The integration meant their core systems could flow directly into one place, backed by smooth onboarding and responsive support.

When Anders Löfman stepped in as Managing Director, Zoined was already part of the daily routine. For him, the value was clear from the start. “It was a new tool for me when I started, but I got familiar with it quickly, and I have to admit I’ve become a bit dependent on it,” he says.

Today, customized reports arrive automatically by email every morning at 07:15, with weekly and monthly versions alongside. Around 25 people across the company wait for them. If they do not appear on time, Anders quickly hears about it. The reports have become essential.

The KPIs tracked are practical and tied to the reality of running restaurants in Finland. Labor is a major cost, so sales per work hour is followed daily at each site. Sales per seat and the percentage of sick leave hours are also monitored, along with comparisons to the same period last year. These help managers stay on top of efficiency and budgeting without the lag of manual reports.

The team has also built dashboards and tables that fit their own needs. Each restaurant can be broken down individually, or results can be sliced by time of day or event. At their nightclub, for example, sales are tracked separately during live performances and after. This makes it easy to see exactly how music influences customer spending through the night.

Zoined’s visual tools make these insights simple to grasp. “I’m an Excel man myself,” Anders admits, “but the graphs and diagrams are easier to read, especially for those not so close to operations.”

The cultural shift has been just as important as the technical one. All managers now see the same numbers as headquarters. “I believe in sharing information,” Anders explains. “If it was just up to me, we wouldn’t be doing very well. This way, managers can compare, motivate each other, and learn from what works at different locations.”

Customer Value

For CMB, the biggest shift with Zoined is speed and confidence. “Something that now takes me a minute could take an hour or two back then,” Anders says. “You want to base your decisions on facts if possible, and with Zoined it is quick to pull out the numbers and check.”

The data now goes deeper than before. Efficiency is split across lunch, dinner, and late night. At the nightclub, sales are reviewed during and after live performances, showing how music changes spending patterns. Campaigns are followed in the same way, whether the focus is on starters or specific product groups.

“The graphs and diagrams are easier to read, especially for those not so close to operations,” Anders adds. “For managers, it makes the information quick to grasp.”

Support has also been a key part of the experience. “Adding or removing a restaurant has always been smooth. If I need a new table or report, support usually fixes it in minutes. That makes a big difference.” Anders pinpoints.

Takeaways

CMB Restaurants shows how a multi-location group can move from raw data and gut feel to fact-based decisions. By integrating with systems already in place, Zoined became part of the daily routine without adding complexity. What started as a reporting tool has grown into a culture of transparency and shared learning across all 13 locations.

Recommendation

“If you are managing more than two branches, it is certainly a useful tool worth exploring. The biggest challenge is going from one restaurant to two, because suddenly you need a system to follow up on performance. For us, Zoined has been the answer.”

Anders Löfman, Managing Director at CMB

Conclusion

For CMB, Zoined has become more than a reporting tool. It is proof that when data is clear, timely, and shared across every location, restaurants can make better decisions faster and grow with confidence. That is what Zoined delivers.

See what it looks like in your world: Restaurant Analytics.

Try it yourself: Free Demo.