The Partnership
Tattle & Hooters of America
The iconic sports bar and restaurant chain, known for its world-famous wings, lively atmosphere and the Hooters Girls, has been a staple in the casual dining and sports scene since 1983.
Since 2021, Hooters has partnered with Tattle to transform guest feedback into a mission-critical tool for restaurant management and operations, with the goal to improve guest satisfaction and same-store-sales.
- Integrations: Olo, Punchh, Brink
- Locations: 246
- Survey Completion Rate: 90.4%
Opinions to Insights
Building a Guest-Obsessed Culture with Tattle
Hooters launched the "Guest Obsessed" initiative to stand out from competitors, and Tattle quickly became a key part of each store's "scorecard."
"Since I joined Hooters, our leadership team has been making Hooters more data- and information-driven, as opposed to opinion-driven," said Jeff Caplan, CIO of Hooters of America. "Not that opinions aren't important, but if you're telling a story, tell it with data. And Tattle fits very well in that."
Thus, Hooters' leadership emphasized the importance of Tattle scores to district managers (DMs) and general managers (GMs), ensuring the entire organization incorporates these scores into operational discussions—expanding the focus beyond traditional metrics like sales and cost efficiency.
"If we see weaknesses in our hospitality scores, Tattle helps pinpoint the root cause and create a concrete improvement plan."
Jeff CaplanCIO, Hooters of America
Tattle's insights are rich and rewarding.
Becky Moore, Director of Learning, Development, and Training at Hooters, emphasized how Tattle makes it easy to ensure consistent messaging for guest feedback collection and internal training:
"I spend pretty much 70% of my time in Tattle looking at different things, such as each store's top opportunity, user login frequency, industry benchmark and more," said Moore. "I also love that Tattle doesn't just focus on problems. We also celebrate what we're doing well, which helps us reinforce good behaviors while addressing weaknesses."
Proactive Operations
Turning Insights into Actionable Improvements
One of Hooters' key initiatives with Tattle is making scorecards easy and engaging for GMs to use, with a clear call to action for each store on exactly what to improve on each month.
"The information we're getting in Tattle is phenomenal, and it's very, very specific," said Caplan. "Rather than doing a store review and then looking at Tattle data, Tattle data to us is integral to how we view store operations, just like how revenue and profitability would be."
Cole Bastian, Sr. Director of Learning and Culture, highlighted how important Tattle is at driving behavior changes for staff and managers inside the stores.
"The guests are literally telling us what's working and what needs improvement. We always talked about having managers engaged at the tables, but now we have data to show how much of an impact that makes," said Bastian. "We're already seeing a positive shift."
"We've moved from playing defense to playing offense. Instead of just responding to bad experiences, we're using Tattle to identify patterns and change behaviors before issues arise. That's a game-changer."
Tim BaumVP of Operations, Hooters of America
Shared Mission
A Partnership Beyond Tech
Caplan provided three key reasons why Hooters chose Tattle as its CX partner:
"One, it's simple for everyone to use. It has all the data we need while being very understandable and easy to communicate. Secondly—and one main criteria for all our IT partners—Tattle's up and available with no outages. Thirdly, Tattle is an open platform and easily integrates with the other components in our tech stack."
White-glove support, day-in and day-out.
Caplan highlighted the hands-on, strategic support from the Tattle Customer Success team, which facilitated the platform's rollout and deeper internal adoption.
"GMs who fully embrace Tattle love that they're getting unfiltered feedback directly from the guest," Caplan stated. "Whether it's good news or bad news, they can react accordingly.
"Regional managers also benefit significantly, as even if a manager isn't physically present at a store on a given day. They can still monitor guest sentiment, identify trends, and scale successful strategies across multiple restaurants."
"It's easy to put a product out there, but it takes a partner to work with the ops and L&D team of the clients to really leverage it and keep improving. That's how Tattle is – and it's priceless. A lot of other platforms don't do that."
Tim BaumVP of Operations, Hooters of America
The Competitive Edge
An Essential Tool for Restaurant Success
Since implementing Tattle, Caplan has been most surprised by the easy accessibility of actionable insights across all levels of the organization.
"We don't make money in our corporate office; we make money in our stores," Caplan said. "Having a transparent data platform that everyone can use helps promote accountability and ensures that guest experience remains our top priority."
Baun sees Tattle as an invaluable tool for both corporate-owned and franchise locations. "Our guests don't know whether a store is franchise-owned or corporate-owned – they just expect the same great experience. Tattle gives us a way to measure and ensure consistency across the board."
Bastian emphasized that guest experience is the true differentiator in today's competitive landscape.
"At the end of the day, price and product can only do so much. The real reason people choose one restaurant over another is the experience. How can you not invest in understanding and improving that?" Bastian said.
As for final words of advice, Caplan strongly advised other restaurant operators to embrace guest feedback technology, not just as a competitive advantage but as a necessity for the industry's overall health.
"Guests are talking about their experiences, whether you measure it or not," he says. "The question is – are you listening? With Tattle, we're not just collecting data – we're using it to make every guest experience better."
