Save Money and Make Money with Zoined Restaurant Analytics

The full interview with Christian Hallemyr, Head of Concept Development at Sodexo Norway.

About Sodexo / Sodexo Norway

Sodexo operates at a scale few can match. Founded in 1966 and headquartered outside Paris, the company serves 80 million consumers every day through 423,000 employees across 45 countries, generating €23.8 billion in consolidated revenue in fiscal year 2024. Source

In Norway the story is local and long standing. Sodexo has been present for about 40 years with around 1,100 employees delivering workplace dining and integrated facilities services nationwide. Local revenues are about NOK 912 million. Within workplace restaurants the team runs roughly 47 sites, alongside meeting centers and on site service operations.

Together with our partners at Yonoton, Sodexo Norway has switched to a more data-driven omnichannel approach to their restaurants. The portfolio is now built around two clear concepts, with all of them using Yonoton as their POS providers and Zoined Analytics to guide the operations. Eat by Sodexo is the everyday canteen that delivers reliable value without pretense and Omhu is the high end expression for clients who expect to be surprised and delighted.

Our interview took place at Storebrand’s campus in Oslo, which had been remodeled and reopened as an Omhu restaurant about a year earlier. Christian summarises their operations with the following:

“We project restaurants. We build restaurants. We build meeting centers. We fill them with experience, with food, events and recipes”

The Challenge / Before Zoined

Picture a Tuesday lunch service without any visibility into your operations. Prep runs on the head chef’s memory while yesterday’s sales data sits on one computer, the roster on another, purchasing in a third and the menu files somewhere else. Nothing lines up and there's no time to dig into all systems. There is no way to see how many guests to expect, so the chef plays it safe on his gut, cooks for a larger crowd and staffs two extra people, hoping a rush will justify it.

By eleven thirty the first wave is lighter than expected. Hot mains are up but too many have been made. Across town another site spikes and could use the extra hands, yet with no visibility across sites the staff stays put.

By one thirty the restaurant quiets and the restaurant settles down. Thirty mains sit unserved, the two extra staff were not needed. The mains have to be wasted and budgets were overrun, leaving margins thin. That is no way to run a restaurant.

After service the head chef wants to know why this happened, but getting the answer means spending hours digging in five or six systems. Instead, the head chef orders tomorrows ingredients and the cycle repeats.

This was roughly life before Zoined at Sodexo Norway. Scattered data, no live view of traffic and planning that cost time and profit. Christian comments on it as follows:

“The data quality we collected was really hard to get a hold of, in the end you maybe did not know if you could trust it”

The Turning Point / Why Zoined

They noticed that they can't continue running the organisation in this way and accepted that decisions would only speed up and improve if everyone looked at the same truth. Each of the five or six systems that each told a slightly different story, so no one was completely sure which numbers to trust. This needed to change with, so they began looking for a system that could integrate these systems. That is when they found Zoined's Restaurant Analytics, Christian comments it like this:

“One of the major things we changed is collecting the data into one endpoint through Zoined, compared to before when we had five or six different systems”

Implementation & Adoption

Sodexo Norway tested Zoined with the 30 day free trial and decided to implement it immediately after. The implementation process was fast and did not disrupt their work. Sales data was routed into Zoined first, and other systems quickly followed. Numbers that used to live in separate tools now appear side by side in three clearly defined, department based views. Finance looks at the full portfolio, site managers see their own locations and daily performance, and the concept team monitors trends and the menu mix. The structure was built once, then reused across the organisation.

Sales, staffing and operations data finally met in one place. Conversations moved from hunches to shared facts, and the team could act with confidence instead of debating whose report was right.

Onboarding with the head chefs and site managers was easy, and they were trained to use the trend view as their home base, reading hour by hour patterns and rolling averages that make next week’s plan feel less like guesswork. If Mondays average 120 guests and Tuesdays 165, order sheets and prep lists follow that pattern. Production matches demand, waste comes down and margins improve.

Menu decisions shifted from taste alone to taste plus numbers. The team follows what sells at each hour and cuts back dishes that miss margin targets. The concept team then tunes the mix to fit each restaurant’s guest profile so the lineup feels considered rather than crowded.

Christian also implemented the new system with the head chefs, using a hands on dashboard approach with a simple daily habit:

“In my organization, it is much better to use the dashboard. We would rather that they (the chefs) go inside the dashboard and create the report and report it back, because then we get proof that they have been there, done that, read it, understood it.”

Results & Impact

With Zoined in place, the previous reporting was replaced by one endpoint and decisions now run on the same truth. Hour by hour trends guide what to promote and when. Dishes that miss margin targets come off the menu instead of quietly eroding results. Staff move from quiet counters to busy ones during those two to three hour lulls, and ordering follows rolling averages, so a site that sees around 120 guests on Mondays and 165 on Tuesdays preps accordingly. Waste comes down and service runs smoother.

Christian sums it up like this:

“It is very useful to use for upselling. We see whether we sell this or that at a given hour, then choose what to promote at which time of day and on which day of the week, and decide if it is worth the margin and the upsell.”

Chefs can also show clients clear progress on sustainability. Climate scores at dish level turn a general goal into concrete choices, from a burger at the high end of the scale to a risotto close to zero, so financial and environmental targets are discussed with evidence rather than opinion.

The effect is felt both on the floor and in monthly reviews. Promotions are decided faster, conversations between finance, site managers and the concept team are clearer, and production plans fit demand rather than hope. Less time is spent collecting numbers and more time is spent acting on them.

Key Takeaways

These takeaways grow out of the interview with Christian and are most relevant for multi site, high traffic restaurant and catering operations where many people make decisions at different levels. If you recognise a setup with separate tools for sales, labour, purchasing, climate and menu planning, busy chefs and site managers who live in the rush, and leadership trying to balance client promises, guest experience and margins, then his experience applies to you. What follows boils down to how Sodexo have developed with Zoined. One shared view of the truth, tailored by role, to turn that complexity into a daily way of working, repeatable across all sites.

The Takeways:

• Begin with one truth. The moment sales, staffing and menu data meet in a single place, conversations shift from opinion to evidence and actions follow faster.

• Design by role so each level sees what they need. Finance reads the full portfolio, operations and site managers live in their own locations and the concept team tracks trends and menu mix, all of it anchored to the same numbers.

• Make time visible. Read hour by hour patterns to decide what to promote and when, then move staff when one counter goes quiet while another spikes so lulls become preparation and peaks stay under control.

• Let margin police the menu. If a dish misses its target it should not stay on the line, and when the data proves it the decision feels obvious instead of personal.

• Plan production from rolling averages. A Monday that averages 120 guests should not be prepped the same way as a Tuesday at 165, so orders and prep match real demand, waste comes down and service runs smoother.

• Train where work happens. Teach chefs and site managers to pull their own view and make dashboards a daily habit so insights are seen, acted on and shared instead of getting buried.

“It is user friendly on all levels, from the chef up to the CFO, and we can create our own layers in it,”

Conclusion & Forward Look

Sodexo Norway has turned scattered data into a working rhythm. One place for truth now feeds role-based views, the team reads the day by the hour, the menu earns its space and staffing moves with demand. Less time is spent collecting numbers and more time is spent acting on them.

The next step is to bring insight even closer to the pass. Climate data and client goals will sit inside everyday choices, and chefs will have an assistant that answers in plain language, from which dish is most profitable at eleven to why last Monday dipped and what to do about it, so production, promotion and prep can adjust in minutes rather than in meetings.

Christian describes that next step in simple terms:

“As an AI agent could do this easily, it would be more user friendly. They should ask, where do I make the most money, which dish is most profitable for me, why was last Monday bad.”

This is our main project with ZED, read more here.