What you need to know:

• CMO for hospitality start-up me&u, Clementine Churchill has kicked off the brand's first marketing strategy.
• Despite a focus on growing customer and merchant adoption, the marketing boss says CX is the key to success not media.
• With a limited budget, Churchill is hoping a sound data strategy will further growth locally and abroad.

Tap-tivated audience

If you've been in a pub, bar or club in the last 18-months – which is still allowed in some states, for now – chances are you've come across me&u.

The hospitality start-up was launched in 2018 by Stevan Premutico, founder of now Trip Advisor-owned online booking platform Dimmi. Enabling patrons to order foor and drinks to their table via QR code and web-based menu, prior to the latest lockdowns it had become one of the major beneficiaries of Covid restrictions – and may get a second wave later this year or early next.

In a bid for growth, me&u recently hired its first marketing boss Clementine Churchill, former Head of Marketing for ready-made meals business My Muscle Chef – which also powered through Covid last time around, at times growing 10 per cent per week.

The business now has the dominant market share in Australia, signing up major hospitality groups such as Merivale (owner Justin Hemmes is an investor), ALH Group and Rockpool, while also making ground in the US and UK.

"We have certainly benefited throughout Covid... but we've got to accelerate now to maintain and grow our current position," Churchill told Mi3.

"We've entered the UK, which has also seen a boom following government mandates that all venues must have a table order service – which has led to some less-than-reputable providers coming out of the woodwork – while the US remains in an early adopter stage."

CX over media

Churchill is confident that a strategy led by CX, personalisation and data will deliver greater gains than media – for both the platform and its b2b customers.

"Hospitality is one of the last business sectors to undergo a technology transformation, meaning that the product itself will be key to widespread adoption, rather than a media strategy," Churchill said.

"When the business launched it kept money out of marketing to keep funds available for further development of the platform, something that puts us in a much stronger position given the recent push to personalisation."

Churchill said while the me&u functions "brilliantly" in its current state, further investment in improving customer experience will improve both adoption and average transaction price.

Data play

The business is building further functionality into the platform, including recommended products and add-ons at checkout, with the hope of creating a customer profile for each venue.

Starting small, me&u will eventually be able to remember customer's favourite orders based on location and also suggest relevant products based on ordering habits.

"When it comes to consumers, we need to create a beneficial and enhanced experience that will encourage them to share their data, a capability that will also be passed on to the venues who are signed on," Churchill said.

"For the venues, they have always operated on slim margins, so a way of streamlining orders, that links directly to a point of sale and encourages customer loyalty is a really appealing opportunity, especially now more than ever."

In the background, me&u is also looking at bolstering the capabilities of its mobile application but will continue to use the QR code activated web portal as its main entry point for now. Churchill said it's an easy interface to use and encourages the strongest customer take-up, as it requires physical interaction with the QR code to activate.

"Customers respond to ease first, so the me&u product needs to engage quickly and force a response, that's why the code works at this stage," Churchill said.

"The app will continue to operate for those familiar with the brand, however, we're seeing a majority of the engagements still come from first-time users through QR codes."

With media on the backburner, Churchill wouldn't be drawn in on what her plans are – if any – were for agency arrangements. For now, she has plenty on her plate building out a marketing team and CX muscle primed and pumped for whenever the bulk of Australia's venues can re-open their doors.