What features should a restaurant CRM have? The 6 that matter, and what pub groups need on top

A restaurant CRM needs six features. In order of priority:

Pub and restaurant groups need four more on top:

• Estate reporting across every venue

• Roles that limit each manager to their own sites

• One login for head office and every venue

• Audiences per business, so each brand markets to its own guests

For every feature below there's a test you can ask the vendor to run on their own screen while you watch.

1. One profile per guest, filled in automatically

One profile per guest is the feature everything else in a CRM depends on. Spend, marketing, automations and reporting all read from it, so a gap in the profile becomes a gap in all four.

Guests reach you through different doors. One books online, one walks in and logs on to the Wi-Fi, one comes to a ticketed wine dinner. A CRM that only reads bookings misses the walk-in completely, and a profile that someone updates from a spreadsheet is out of date by the next service. The profile has to fill itself from bookings, guest Wi-Fi, the till, reviews and loyalty.

Then check how it matches people. Most platforms match on email address and phone number. Stampede does too, so a guest who uses one email for the Wi-Fi and another for a booking shows as two profiles until a shared detail, such as the same phone number, links them. Every system has this limit. What matters is whether the vendor tells you about it.

The demo test: "Show me one guest who booked, logged on to the Wi-Fi and paid, all on one screen. Then show me a walk-in who never booked."

2. Spend on the guest

Spend on the guest is what lets a CRM separate your best regulars from everyone else. Without it, a guest who spends £80 a visit and a guest who orders one coffee look exactly the same.

A till records a basket against a table number. A restaurant CRM worth having puts that basket on the guest who paid for it. That only works if the CRM reads your till, so ask exactly which point-of-sale systems it integrates with, and whether data flows both ways.

Two-way is the part to check. With Stampede's two-way Square integration, a booking made in Stampede carries through to the table on the till, and what that table spends comes back onto the guest's profile: basket size, items and how often they visit. The till stays exactly as it was for the team using it. To be straight about our own limit: Square is the only point of sale Stampede integrates with. On another till, bookings, Wi-Fi, marketing and reviews still work, but spend won't reach the profile.

The demo test: "Show me what this guest spent on their last visit, and which dishes they ordered."

3. Email and SMS that report covers and revenue

Covers and revenue per send are how you find out whether your marketing works. Opens and clicks show who looked at an email. Bookings and spend show who came in, and what they were worth.

Your CRM should send email and SMS itself, to audiences built from the guest data it already holds. Exporting a list to a separate email tool breaks two things: the consent record now lives in two places that drift apart, and the email tool can't see whether anyone actually booked or how much they spent.

There's proof this measurement matters. At Sankey's, guests who booked from an email spent an average bill 2.3 times the venue average (the Sankey's story). You only find a number like that if the email and the point of sale sit in the same system.

The demo test: "Show me the last campaign a venue like mine sent, and the covers and revenue it brought in."

4. Automations that fire on guest behaviour

An automation is only as reliable as its trigger. A win-back email set to fire when a regular "hasn't visited in 60 days" goes to the wrong people if the CRM missed some of their visits.

A restaurant CRM should send messages to guests automatically when they do something, or stop doing something. A welcome after the first Wi-Fi log-on. A thank-you and a review request the morning after a visit. A birthday offer. A win-back email when a regular hasn't been in for 60 days. Each of those depends on the CRM seeing every visit, walk-ins included, which takes you back to feature 1.

The demo test: "Build me a win-back email for guests who haven't visited in 60 days. Show me how many guests it would reach today, and whether that count is 100% accurate."

5. Data you can take with you

Exportable guest data is the feature you only need once: on the day you switch provider. By then it's too late to find out the export is missing.

Some booking platforms and marketplaces keep the guest relationship for themselves. A CRM should leave it with you: every guest, with consent status, exportable whenever you like and without paying for access. If you're planning a move, our guide to switching systems without losing guest data covers what to export first.

The demo test: "If I leave, what do I get, in what format, and does consent come with it?"

6. Consent recorded per channel

Consent per channel decides who you're allowed to market to. A guest with no consent record is a guest you can't safely email or text.

In the UK, email and SMS marketing falls under UK GDPR and PECR, which generally need an opt-in before you send. Two details to check. First, consent should be stored separately for email and SMS, because guests often say yes to one and no to the other. Second, consent should sit on the single profile, so one unsubscribe stops every future send, from every venue and every tool.

In Stampede, staff can opt a guest out from the profile, and only the guest can opt back in. It's a small rule, and it's worth asking any vendor about.

The demo test: "Open a guest and show me when they opted in to email, where, and what happens to their profile when they unsubscribe."

The six tests at a glance

Run all six in one demo. A feature the vendor can only describe, and can't show, is probably on a roadmap rather than in the product.

What do pub and restaurant groups need from a CRM?

Groups need four extra features, because the hard part of running several sites is seeing them as one estate. Without them, head office rebuilds the estate view in a spreadsheet every month, and it's out of date before anyone reads it.

We hear the first two in nearly every group call. Of the 9 group calls we checked from June to October 2026, operators raised estate reporting or shared guests on 8. A digital marketer at a family pub group, on the guests who visit more than one of its pubs: "We know all that exists somewhere in the system, not easy to get." A marketing lead at a 23-site hotel management company put the other side: "Each account is separate for each hotel, because of course they don't want to share anyone's data."

ART Hospitality runs eight chef-led venues across Hereford, Worcester, Birmingham and Gloucester. Before Stampede, the group's marketing, bookings and guest Wi-Fi came from three different suppliers. Founding director Edwin Kirk on what that cost:

Across those eight venues, ART now runs at a 0.3% no-show rate (ART Hospitality's story; see how we measure). For more on what a group setup looks like, see Stampede for groups.

The demo test for groups: "Log in as an area manager for two of my venues. Show me what they can see, and what they can change."

Is a CRM worth it for a single restaurant?

Often yes, if you take bookings and want regulars to come back more often. The deciding factors are what it costs per venue and how many guests you can capture. We cover both, with a simple way to work out break-even, in what a hospitality CRM costs per venue.

Where a restaurant CRM won't help

A restaurant CRM has three limits worth knowing before you buy:

• New guests. A CRM helps you know and win back the people who already visit. Finding guests who've never heard of you takes a listing or a marketplace alongside it.

• Capture. A CRM builds profiles from the moments a guest leaves a detail: a booking, a Wi-Fi log-on, a loyalty sign-up, a paid bill. A walk-in-heavy pub with no Wi-Fi sign-in and no booking system should sort out capture first, then choose the software.

• Your team. The profile only helps on a busy Friday if the person on the door looks at it.

See all six tests run on a venue like yours: speak to sales or explore guest profiles.