Restaurant Marketing Workshop

Diving deeper: Looking beyond sales for improved restaurant marketing

At the Restaurant Marketing Workshop in Boston from June 2 to 3, panelists will discuss how to do a deep dive into your brand's marketing and menu decisions.

Photo: Connect Media

April 30, 2026 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, Connect Media

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How do you know if a menu item or marketing campaign was a hit with customers? It's one thing to measure a temporary boost in sales, but did those efforts bear fruit in other ways? Did it create loyal customers or bring in new guests? Many restaurants end up focusing on vanity metrics rather than focusing on the incrementality of marketing pushes and how they slowly drive growth.

At the Restaurant Marketing Workshop in Boston from June 2 to 3, panelists Srishti Handa, VP of marketing, Dave's Hot Chicken, Abhinav Kapur, co-founder and CEO of Bikky Inc. and Evan Pardue, director of brand and CX at Condado Tacos, will discuss how to do a deep dive into your brand's marketing and menu decisions.

This panel aims to provide a framework that QSRs and fast casuals can utilize to understand more than just sales, but also how campaigns and menu adjustments impact customer loyalty and other key performance indicators.

Check out a preview of what the panelists will share at the event in the Q&A below.

Q. How would you define vanity metrics and why are they such an issue?

Evan Pardue:The truth is, there are no vanity metrics. Every metric should offer a genuine insight into your brand's performance. What's usually missing is the context supporting the data. There will always be metrics that carry deeper meaning for your brand and strategy at any given moment. What matters most is knowing why you're asking the question and which data sources are informing the metric.

Q. What is one marketing tactic you think really works for restaurants?

Pardue: Consistently assessing your LTO strategy. If you're not interrogating your own LTO strategy, you're missing opportunities to make the menu work harder for your goals. This year, Condado launched our very own Mystery Marg, the first of its kind. It was a smash hit that created impactful moments in the dining room with guests and servers guessing the flavor together. Guests want an experience when they dine in, and a price that makes sense for that experience. That's what we consistently deliver at Condado: fun, exciting, craveable menu items with an experience scaled for every budget.

Q. What is one thing you are most excited to share at the event?

Pardue: I'm thrilled to talk about how we inform our menu engineering, menu innovation and ultimately our media strategy using guest behavioral data. Bikky is our powerhouse restaurant Customer Data Platform that we use to contextualize and inform our decisions, and it's been a game-changer for how we think about connecting data to action.

Clickhere to register for the Restaurant Marketing Workshop. Use the code AMCEDIT20 for 20% off at checkout. Online registration ends May 29.

MarketingDave's Hot Chicken

About Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper is an experienced editor for Connect Media. He has written across a wide range of beats, ranging from food to digital signage to banking, and is the current editor of ATM Marketplace and Food Truck Operator. His background is in information technology, advertising, and writing. When he’s not crafting a story, you can find him going for a run or spending time with his wife and three sons.

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