We replaced a £4,500-a-month feedback platform.

The frustration

A central operations team relied on a guest feedback service costing roughly £4,500 a month, and it might have to go. A couple of people asked a simple question. Could we do something really lightweight with AI instead?

The pattern

Paying for features out of habit. The old platform gave executives a monthly industry view, but when asked what they did with it, the answer was to talk about it for a couple of minutes. No decision. No action.

The solution

TableTalk. A first internal version in about a fortnight, then weeks of testing in a small number of restaurants, changing things wherever the stores showed the assumptions were wrong. Rolled out across the business with minimal training over Teams.

The outcome

TableTalk costs a few pounds a month to run across the estate. It has grown to include team recognition, voicemail insight and executive reports that build and send themselves.