A consumer profile is a factual description of one customer, or a group of similar customers: who they are, what they buy, and how they behave. For a restaurant, the most useful profiles combine contact details and demographics with real behavior, such as visit count, time between visits, spend, and online orders, so you can send the right message to the right guest.
What a restaurant guest profile contains
A complete profile has three layers: who the guest is, what they did, and what they said.
| Layer | Examples | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Contact and demographics | Name, email, phone, zip code, birthday, age, gender | WiFi login, online orders, reservations |
| Visits | Visit count, first and last visit, dwell time, time of day | Guest WiFi and reservations |
| Spend | Checks, menu items, online orders | POS and online ordering |
| Sentiment | Survey answers, comment card ratings | Surveys matched to the guest |
| Risk | Days since last visit, churn likelihood | Calculated from visit history |
Each layer makes the others more useful. A birthday on its own sends a generic offer. A birthday next to a guest’s favorite menu item and their usual time of day sends one they act on.
How restaurants collect consumer profiles
The best profiles are built from what guests already do, not from census data or one-time surveys. Third-party data describes people like your guests. Your own systems describe your actual guests.
- Guest WiFi. A WiFi login captures contact details, and return visits add to the profile.
- POS and online ordering. Checks and orders add spend and favorite items.
- Reservations. Bookings add party size, occasions, and visit history.
- Surveys and comment cards. Each response is matched to the guest who gave it.
Profiles are only as good as the fields guests fill in. Across 2,867,863 guest profiles on the Bloom network, only about 17% have a birth date on file, while about half of guests (49.6%) share a birthday when asked at WiFi login. Asking at the right moment matters. Read more in our birthday marketing research.
Acquisition, engagement, and retention metrics
Every profile answers three questions: how the guest found you, how often they come, and whether they are slipping away.
Acquisition
First visit date and capture source show how long the guest has been coming and which channel brought them in.
Engagement
Visit count, dwell time, time of day, locations visited, and spend show how valuable the guest is today.
Retention
Days since last visit and churn likelihood show who needs a reason to come back before they are gone for good.
2 consumer profile examples, and the campaign each one needs
Example 1: the quick lunch regular
A guest has visited five times, always around lunch, with short stays and a small check. He has only been to one of your locations. The goal is a bigger check, so a thank-you email that introduces the dinner menu, with an offer on an appetizer, gives him a reason to come back at a different time. If guests with similar profiles respond, the same campaign can go to all of them.
Example 2: the occasional dinner guest
A guest started visiting over a year ago. She comes in for dinner, stays about an hour, and spends well, but months pass between visits. The goal is frequency, so an automated message when her visits slow down, thanking her and offering a reward on her next visit, gives her a reason to return sooner.
In both cases the profile does the work: it shows which guest needs which message, and the result shows up on the same profile when they come back.
What to do with consumer profiles
- Group similar guests into segments. Stack filters such as time of day, visit count, dwell time, days since last visit, or churn likelihood.
- Write for each segment. A lapsed regular and a first-time guest need different messages.
- Automate the timing. Welcome, birthday, and win-back campaigns can fire on their own when a guest’s profile changes.
- Find more guests like your best ones. Use your best-guest profiles to target new audiences on Google and Meta.
See every guest’s profile in one place with Bloom
Bloom builds a profile for every guest from your WiFi, POS, online ordering, reservations, and surveys, then uses it to bring guests back.
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