A Florida-based restaurant group used Axial Shift to improve staff performance, enhance the guest experience, and grow sales across its upscale brands.
Talk of the Town Restaurant Group, which includes Charley’s Steak House, FishBones, Vito’s Chop House, and Texas Cattle Company, used Axial Shift to significantly boost sales, customer satisfaction, and staff retention. The group adopted the app-based software a year ago to further its “culture of winning” and fully recover from the pandemic.
Charley’s Steak House saw a 7 percent increase in wine sales, generating nearly $400,000 in new revenue. At an annual cost of $3,420 for Axial Shift, the group achieved a 115X return on investment solely from higher wine sales. Texas Cattle Company also experienced a 5 percent year-over-year wine sales increase.
Promoting high-margin items
COO Seth Miller, who has been with Talk of the Town for over 20 years, first encountered Axial Shift at the Restaurant Leadership Conference. He saw the app’s potential to motivate staff and drive sales for high-margin items like premium wines. After refocusing on hospitality post-pandemic, Miller noticed that competitive server challenges helped increase profits and staff performance.
Using Axial Shift to track server performance, Talk of the Town improved sales of high-margin items, reduced food costs by 3-4 percent, and saw significant margin growth. Miller emphasized that these changes helped improve both the guest experience and the employee experience, as servers felt confident recommending top-tier items.
%
Increase in wine sales
%
Reduced food costs
%
YoY wine sales increase
Generating nearly $400,000 in new revenue
Real-time performance tracking
Founded by Ellis Winstanley in 2017, Axial Shift aims to use positive motivation to engage servers while offering real-time insights for managers. The software integrates with a restaurant’s point-of-sale system, enabling immediate action on sales metrics. This real-time tracking has contributed to reduced food and labor costs while enhancing the customer experience.
Talk of the Town saw double-digit sales and guest count growth in January, thanks in part to Axial Shift’s training capabilities, which encouraged employees to track their performance daily. Senior operating partner John McCarthy noted that Axial Shift’s technology allows managers to provide targeted, real-time training, which boosts both employee morale and sales.
Boosting staff motivation
Axial Shift’s app enables staff to track sales performance in real-time, motivating high performers and providing immediate, positive coaching for underperformers. This approach has led to higher check averages and tips. For example, the Gary’s Cherry Wood Smoked Old Fashioned at Charley’s, made with a proprietary bourbon, became a significant driver of sales growth.
“We’re developing talent that will carry the business forward.”
-Seth Miller, COO, Talk of the Town
Miller believes that Axial Shift’s technology can work in any sales-based business but stresses the importance of embedding it into the company culture. “We’re developing talent that will carry the business forward,” he said.
