The Partnership
Willie's Grill & Icehouse & Tattle
Willie's Grill & Icehouse has been serving Texas since 1993, growing from a humble Houston burger shack into a regional institution built around the classic icehouse tradition.
The brand operates a scratch-made kitchen across more than 20 locations, with a menu spanning Texas-sized burgers, Gulf Coast seafood, hand-cut chicken, baby back ribs, and seasonal Cajun crawfish.
- Integrations: Olo, Punchh, Brink
- Locations: 20+
- Survey Completion Rate: 85.5%
The Challenge
Plenty of Feedback, Not Enough Direction
Before Tattle, Willie's Grill & Icehouse collected guest feedback through a mix of methods, including Black Box Intelligence for generic guest intelligence scores and SurveyMonkey for ad hoc testing of new items and limited-time offers.
However, the tech stack did not cover the parts of the experience that actually drove repeat visits. Willie's could see how greets and wait times were performing, but had no way to drill into food quality at the item level, track LTO performance in real time, or follow up with a let-down guest.
Marty Wadsworth's background spans both marketing and operations, so the math on retention was already part of the team's thinking. A returning guest is faster and easier to win than a new one, and Tattle gives the team the ability to retain guests and understand the revenue associated with those efforts.
"Today the more important metric is the 2, 3 and 4-star feedback, because that is actually giving you the insight on what you need to improve."
Marty WadsworthCEO, Willie's Grill & Icehouse
The Solution
Actionable Data and a Built-In Recovery Loop
Two capabilities anchored Willie's decision to switch to Tattle. The first was actionable data: the ability to drill from category, into individual menu items, into LTOs, and surface specific opportunities operators could act on in the moment instead of relying on generic scores.
The second was guest recovery built directly into the workflow. Tattle made it possible to follow up with let-down guests, then track whether they came back, how often, and what they spent.
By rolling item-level surveys, real-time tracking, and operator rack-and-stack reporting into a single workflow, Tattle gave Willie's leadership a unified view of how every store was performing against every operational priority, week over week, instead of waiting on a quarterly review cycle.
"Follow-up and follow-through with the guests we let down was the biggest selling factor for me."
Marty WadsworthCEO, Willie's Grill & Icehouse
How They Use Tattle
A Daily Operating Rhythm Anchored at the Top
Willie's daily rhythm starts at the top. Marty opens Tattle's incident list every morning to review every 1-3 star response from the previous 24 hours. The check is twofold: confirm the team has followed up, and review what that follow-up looked like. If a response is still open, leadership reaches out to the team directly.
Beyond the daily review, Willie's uses Tattle to run market-wide initiatives off real guest feedback. The clearest example is the fries initiative. Item-level data showed that fries were underperforming on temperature and texture across three distinct execution environments: dine-in, to-go and curbside, and delivery.
As a solution, Willie's started handing guests a small order of hot, fresh fries at the car window for the drive home, in addition to the fries in the bag. Willie's used that moment to reframe the drive-home experience around hot fries the guest could associate with the brand. Progress was tracked weekly inside Tattle, with a rack-and-stack of every store delivered in internal communications.
Tattle's AI Coach is also embedded into the manager development program, with newer managers using it through their eight-week training and the six months that follow.
"You might have a company objective. But that company objective should be built off of what the customer is telling you."
Marty WadsworthCEO, Willie's Grill & Icehouse
The Results
From Item-Level Wins to Market-Level Root Causes
Across Willie's system, Tattle has turned guest feedback from a passive reporting exercise into an active management tool.
The clearest example came from Austin. As Tattle data accumulated, Willie's noticed that all four Austin locations were scoring meaningfully lower than Houston and San Antonio. The real root cause showed up when Willie's overlaid back-of-house turnover data against Tattle scores.
Turnover was roughly 25% higher in Austin, which led to slower prep, slower line execution, less consistency, and accuracy issues on to-go orders. Guests had been telling Willie's about every one of those things through Tattle the whole time.
Key Benefits With Tattle
- Replaced fragmented, passive review sources with a unified, high-volume feedback platform
- Established a weekly data review rhythm at the restaurant, division, and brand level
- Identified and addressed hospitality and accuracy gaps across locations
- Leveraged top-box tracking as a leading indicator of revenue and traffic performance
- Built a scalable guest recovery program that keeps GMs focused on the in-restaurant experience
- Consolidated social reviews into Tattle to support smarter, data-driven marketing decisions
"Guests know food quality. Guests know the temperature. Guests know how long it's taking to get their food. Guests know when there's a missing sauce in the to-go bag."
Marty WadsworthCEO, Willie's Grill & Icehouse
