How Carrot Beats the Industry on Guest Satisfaction

The Partnership

Carrot & Tattle

Carrot is a Miami-based fast casual brand, known to its guests for years as Carrot Express before shortening the name earlier this year.

The brand has built a devoted following with its innovative approach to healthy fast food, providing wholesome, flavorful meals without compromising on speed or convenience. That following has carried it to 34 locations across Florida and New York.

• Integrations: Olo, Toast, Appfront
• Locations: 34
• Survey completion rate: 96.5%

Guest Feedback

High Velocity. Real-Time. 24/7.

The speed and volume of Tattle feedback became very apparent, very quickly.

When Carrot opened a new restaurant in central Miami, the team was stunned to see such comprehensive submissions rolling in on the first day.

"We had been open for just four hours and were already getting Tattle feedback. How fantastic is that?" said Michael Schatten, Senior Vice President of Operations.

Tattle automatically surveys guests after a transaction or reward redemption through Carrot's existing tech stack, Appfront and Toast. The brand also prints QR codes linking to its Tattle survey on the food safety stickers that seal every to-go bag, and displays them in-store.

The result is 50,707 guest responses to date, which amounts to 2.7 million guest data points. Each survey collects data across operational categories like food quality, speed of service, and hospitality, then down to the root cause factors and specific menu items behind the score.

AI Coach

From Insight to Action Plan

Feedback volume is only useful if somebody does something with it. At Carrot, that happens on the first of every month.

Tattle's AI Coach generates a fresh set of action items for each location, naming the two or three things that specific restaurant should do this month. This is based on that location’s guest feedback and Carrot’s own training materials and SOPs. Regional Managers point General Managers to their action plan the same week: review it, validate it, print it, discuss it.

Then it goes on the wall.

"In every restaurant we have giant communication boards in the back," Michael said. "It could be employee of the month, our goals, food costs. And everybody has their two or three AI action items."

When Michael visits a restaurant and asks the manager what their focus is for the month, they would simply point to the board where the Tattle action items are.

The pattern Michael watches most closely is the gap between regions. The regions and locations that have the most communications about Tattle’s AI Coach also tend to have the best satisfaction and sales growth metrics.

Insights & Analysis

Robust. Granular. Actionable.

Tattle was a "home run" for Carrot after just their first demo.

Having used Google, Yelp, mystery shops, and other CX platforms including SMG and Medallia, Michael saw that Tattle had the best of both worlds. It's extremely intuitive and accessible, while also granular and powerful.

"Medallia surveys have fewer questions and not a lot of data, whereas SMG has the same level of robustness and granularity like Tattle, but not as easy to use at the operator level," Michael stated.

That granularity paid off immediately, and not in the way the team expected.

Three years later the same discipline is pointed at new targets. Right now the team is working what Michael calls neurotically on out of stocks and on ticket time performance, which feeds directly into the speed of service scores Tattle tracks.

Results & Adoption

Three Years of Compounding Gains

As Carrot’s feedback volume skyrockets, so does its overall guest sentiment scores.

Its incident rate, the share of guests who hit a real problem, is 8.8% against an industry average of 16.2%. Its Customer Experience Rating is also 10% higher than the industry average.

Numbers like that don't come from buying software. They come from a rhythm the whole company keeps. Once a month, close to 100 managers from Florida and New York fill a room while Michael walks them through where every location is placed.

"Pretty much every category we're number one, two, or three, month after month," he said. "You look around the room, there's a lot of smiles, a lot of high fives."

Weekly, regionals send their GMs the report, then work it in the store, sitting down with the manager before or after the lunch rush. "Frequently I'll see the Tattle dashboard up on the screen," Michael said.

Three years on, that attention hasn't drifted. "Out of everything we do, every system we have ... Tattle is one of the top two or three categories people speak about."