9.28.2026
Guestologie has completed the deployment of its real-time guest recognition and action platform across all nine Ruth’s Chris Steak House locations operated by Big Steaks Management.
The portfolio-wide rollout follows a pilot conducted between May and July 2026. The deployment gives restaurant teams access to guest history and relationship context as diners arrive, allowing employees and managers to act on that information during the visit rather than reserving it primarily for post-visit analysis or future marketing.
“Everything we do at Big Steaks ties back to our strategic big rocks, including: delivering a flawless guest experience and driving top-line sales,” said Kyle Leslie, President of Big Steaks Management. “Our teams were already executing at a high level. Guestologie gave them a practical playbook for making great hospitality more personal and more consistent across every restaurant. After seeing the platform in action during the pilot, expanding it to all nine locations was a natural next step.”
Many restaurant loyalty, CRM and customer-data platforms are designed to organize guest information for segmentation, reporting and marketing. Guestologie takes a more operational approach by putting that information in front of restaurant teams while the guest is still in the building.
The platform can identify a loyal guest whose visit frequency is declining, a former regular returning after a long absence, a first-time visitor with the potential to become a repeat customer or a preference that employees should remember. It then recommends an action intended to strengthen the relationship, such as a manager visit, a personalized gesture or acknowledgment of something relevant to the guest.
Guestologie said that across its restaurant partners, guests who received a recommended gesture were more than twice as likely to return within six weeks. Guests who had stopped visiting—some for a year or longer—were approximately twice as likely to return within 45 days after receiving a gesture on their first visit back.
Those results point to a broader shift in restaurant guest technology. Collecting customer data remains important, but the potential value increasingly depends on whether teams can use that information at the point of service. For multiunit operators, the challenge is making that type of personal recognition consistent without turning it into a rigid or overly automated interaction.
“Restaurants do not need another database telling them who their guests were after the night is over. They need to know who just walked through the door, why that person matters and what the team can do about it right now,” said Ryan Volberg, Founder and CEO of Guestologie. “Big Steaks already had the culture and operating discipline required to deliver exceptional hospitality. Guestologie gives its teams a shared system for recognizing the moments that matter and acting on them consistently across all nine restaurants.”
Big Steaks’ investment in the platform is part of its broader focus on operational consistency and guest experience. The organization was recently named Franchisee of the Year by Darden. During its adoption of Guestologie, Big Steaks also observed a positive correlation between use of the platform and guest-satisfaction scores.
With Guestologie now live throughout the portfolio, Big Steaks can apply a more consistent approach to guest recognition across its restaurants while still leaving individual teams to determine the most appropriate response. The objective is to help first-time visitors feel known, regulars feel remembered and returning guests feel that their relationship with the restaurant still matters.
