Faster Decision-making with Zoined Restaurant Analytics

About Picnic

Picnic is one of Finland’s best known lunch and coffee chains, serving freshly made food and coffee in fast casual cafés across the country. Founded as a family business, Picnic has grown steadily while keeping its focus on in-house preparation and high quality ingredients.

The group now operates cafés under the Picnic and La Torrefazione brands. Locations range from high streets and shopping centres to service stations and workplace canteens, reaching customers throughout the day. While tastes and dining habits have evolved, Picnic’s core idea has stayed the same: simple, fresh food, served quickly with a personal touch.

The Challenge

Picnic’s cafés ran smoothly day to day, but reporting behind the scenes was slow and fragmented. In 2017 the company adopted the Restolution Point of Sale system and soon after added the Quinyx Workforce Management system to plan staff shifts more efficiently. Each platform performed well on its own, but the two were not connected.

This separation meant analysis often relied on manual exports and spreadsheets. Combining sales and staffing data took time and introduced delays that limited visibility for finance, operations and café managers. Teams wanted to see key measures such as sales per working hour, personnel cost percentage and Like for Like sales without having to compile them manually.

Picnic also wanted to minimise repetitive data integration work and to make performance information easier to share across the organisation. The leadership team saw data visualisation as a better way to monitor business health than maintaining multiple spreadsheets and static reports.

The Solutions and Adoption

When Picnic began looking for a better way to understand performance across its cafés, the goal was simple. The company wanted sales and staffing information to flow together automatically, with no extra manual work or IT projects.

Zoined Restaurant Analytics was first deployed at the end of 2017 across both the Picnic and La Torrefazione café chains. The solution connects directly with the Restolution Point of Sale system and the Quinyx Workforce Management system, bringing daily results from every location into one clear view.

“Data visualisation helps to grasp things quickly. It is incredibly easy and fast to, for example, monitor our Like for Like sales during lunch hours and understand trends taking place in our different coffee shop segments”

says Henrik Johansson, Group CFO at Picnic Group.

Adoption across the organisation followed quickly. Headquarters teams were the first to use Zoined Restaurant Analytics, followed by product development, marketing and café managers. Managers became active users after only a one hour training session.

Reports that once required separate spreadsheets are now delivered automatically. Scheduled email summaries keep managers and the board informed of performance, while live dashboards allow staff to react to trends as they happen. Each location can see its own progress alongside peers, turning daily data into a shared language across the group.

The Results

With Zoined Restaurant Analytics in place, Picnic gained a clear, real time view of performance across all cafés. Reporting that once relied on separate spreadsheets is now automated, giving each team access to the same trusted numbers at the same time.

The connection between Restolution and Quinyx allows Picnic to follow key restaurant metrics such as sales per working hour, staff cost as a percentage of sales, and customer counts. Hourly sales analysis highlights busy and quiet periods, helping managers adjust shifts and improve planning for each location.

“Hourly analysis makes it an easy task to, for example, pick up challenges in the early morning hours sales and quickly implement corrective actions. At times we deploy specific campaigns for specific coffee shops as a result of our analysis,”

says Henrik Johansson, CFO at Picnic.

Picnic also uses Zoined Restaurant Analytics to track Like for Like sales and to analyse cafés by segment, such as high street, service station, shopping centre and canteen locations. The ability to compare similar cafés helps teams set realistic targets and share successful practices.

Regular email reports keep café managers and board members updated on progress, while live dashboards give everyone a daily view of sales and staffing performance. With faster reporting and shared visibility, Picnic’s teams can act on insights the same day instead of waiting for end of week summaries.

Takeaways for Other Cafés and Restaurants

Picnic’s experience shows how connecting operational systems with Zoined Restaurant Analytics can turn everyday data into practical insight. For restaurant groups running multiple cafés or quick service locations, a few lessons stand out.

• Link key systems early. Integrating Point of Sale and Workforce Management data gives a balanced view of both sales and staffing performance.

• Automate routine reporting. Scheduled email summaries and shared dashboards save time and ensure everyone sees the same numbers.

• Focus on the right metrics. Tracking sales per working hour, Like for Like sales and personnel cost percentage helps teams act on what matters most.

• Keep it usable. Simple visualisation and mobile access mean every café team can work with data directly instead of waiting for reports.

Conclusion

For Picnic, Zoined Restaurant Analytics has become part of the daily rhythm of running its cafés. Data that once sat in separate systems now flows automatically between Restolution and Quinyx, giving every team a single view of performance.

“Zoined Restaurant Analytics helps to grasp things quickly. It is incredibly easy to monitor our Like for Like sales during lunch hours and understand trends taking place in our different coffee shop segments,”

says Henrik Johansson, CFO at Picnic.

The company now uses data visualisation not just to track performance but to guide daily planning and staffing decisions. Teams can identify trends early in the day and act immediately. The next step is to use analytics more fully in managing food waste, supported by the waste tracking features already available in Restolution and Zoined.

“Zoined Restaurant Analytics is constantly evolving in a positive way and the organisation is very agile in responding to customer needs. I am extremely happy with both the product and the support I receive from Zoined,”

adds Henrik Johansson.

With reliable real time reporting and an expanding data foundation, Picnic continues to strengthen its operations and plan with greater confidence across both its Picnic and La Torrefazione café brands.

Explore how Zoined Restaurant Analytics can simplify performance reporting for your restaurant business.