How Tahola helped German Doner Kebab save 312 hours per year with Qlik

The challenge

GDK's management team was drowning in spreadsheets. Their weekly sales reporting pack consisted of more than 35 Excel worksheets that required manual updates, taking approximately 6 hours every Monday to compile. With a newly hired CEO from a data-driven background, there was increasing pressure to improve the company's reporting capabilities.

The finance team, led by Nick, identified several critical issues:

• Excel-based reporting was slow, time-consuming and prone to errors
• Weekly data issues required manual troubleshooting
• No time remained for actual data analysis
• Charts and graphs needed manual updates
• Hidden data quality issues, particularly around billing dates

With more than 60 million transactions across all sites annually, each containing multiple rows of information, the manual approach had become unsustainable as the company continued to grow.

The solution

In 2024, GDK partnered with Tahola and Ometis to automate their board sales reporting pack using Qlik and Snowflake.

The solution we delivered:

• Created a dynamic Qlik dashboard to replace the 35-page Excel report
• Condensed all essential information into a 2-page high-level summary
• Connected all sales channels into a single automated system
• Set up overnight data refreshes, eliminating manual updates
• Built a system capable of tracking over 300 million rows of data annually
• Discovered and fixed previously unknown billing date issues
• Transformed individual transaction data into hourly summaries within Snowflake

The dashboard now displays key metrics such as average weekly sales (AWES) and bump time (service speed), allowing management to quickly identify which locations are meeting the 5-minute service standard and which need improvement.

The results

The new automated sales pack has delivered significant operational improvements for GDK:

• 6 hours per week (312 hours annually) saved on manual reporting tasks
• Management team now focuses on high-value analysis instead of data collection
• Eliminated data errors and inconsistencies
• All 140+ restaurants are now tracked with their KPIs in a single dashboard
• No more manual updates or data headaches

The success of this initial project has led GDK to expand their data initiatives. They're now building:

• A franchise pack in Qlik for their 48 franchisees
• Basket analysis capabilities to understand customer ordering patterns
• The ability to track product modifications (like "remove tomato")
• Dashboards that will allow franchisees to compare their performance against company averages
• Analysis by location types (high street, travel hub, etc.)

Future plans include incorporating additional data sources such as customer reviews, marketing metrics, and reputation scores to create a holistic business dashboard for both corporate and franchise locations.

"GDK shows how quick data insights give growing hospitality businesses a real edge. Their team now spots trends and acts right away instead of spending hours collecting data. In fast-paced food service, having the right information when you need it makes all the difference to daily operations and long-term planning."

Simon Blackbourne, Business Development Director at Ometis

Next steps

Struggling with Excel reporting and messy restaurant data?

Book a call with our team to see how we can cut your reporting time from hours to minutes and free your team from weekly spreadsheet hassle.