Serving Satisfaction at Scale: How Birdeye Helps Black Bear Diner Manage Feedback Across 160+ Locations
Company Snapshot
Founded in 1995 in Mount Shasta, California, Black Bear Diner has expanded to 156 locations in 13 states. Originating from the vision of founders Bruce Dean and Bob & Laurie Manley, the first diner aimed to create a fun and affordable space for the community to enjoy home-style cooking. Today, this mission continues across the country, offering a menu of comfort food classics. Whether dining in our family-friendly, cabin-themed diners or enjoying takeout, Black Bear Diner is committed to providing a delightful and accessible culinary experience.
- September 2017
- 160+
Challenge
With a growing national presence and plans to nearly double their locations, Black Bear Diner faced an overwhelming increase in guest feedback. Ensuring consistent guest satisfaction across hundreds of locations required an efficient, scalable way to monitor, analyze, and act on customer insights. Location managers needed a clear method to identify trends, resolve issues quickly, and deliver exceptional service without manually sifting through mountains of data.
The platform’s role-based dashboards deliver tailored access for location managers, field operators, and leadership teams, empowering them to track performance and act quickly. Automated alerts enable immediate responses to negative reviews or direct feedback, while regular reporting cycles support monitoring and strategic decision-making. This comprehensive solution ensures Black Bear Diner can maintain its high standards of guest satisfaction, even amidst rapid growth.
“Birdeye’s AI tools allow us to scale effortlessly. Whether we’re at 72 diners or 172, the platform grows with us and continues to deliver exactly what we need.”
Black Bear Diner's Growing Den
As Black Bear Diner expands their footprint, managing guest sentiment across hundreds of locations becomes increasingly complex. Birdeye’s AI-powered tools enable the team to efficiently monitor and respond to feedback at scale.
With Reviews AI, Black Bear Diner addresses guest reviews in real time. Automated alerts flag negative reviews immediately, allowing location managers to resolve issues quickly and effectively. The Birdeye mobile app further simplifies this process, ensuring managers can stay responsive wherever they are.
Insights AI provides leadership with a deeper understanding of guest sentiment. Tools like word bubbles and sentiment breakdowns help managers pinpoint specific feedback trends—whether related to food, service, or operations. For instance, when concerns arose about the chicken fried steak in Texas, Insights AI revealed double the positive mentions compared to negative, overturning assumptions and preventing unnecessary changes.
Roaring Guest Satisfaction
With Reviews AI, Black Bear Diner consolidates feedback from over 150 third-party sites into one platform. Negative reviews trigger automated alerts and support tickets, which are immediately assigned to the appropriate location manager for resolution.
If a negative review appears on any third-party site, Birdeye automatically generates a support ticket and assigns it to the respective location's manager. The operations team at Black Bear Diner then monitors the ticket resolution time by owner and status categories – open, assigned, in progress, and closed.
Exploring Guest Feedback and Insights
Black Bear Diner uses Surveys AI to collect tailored feedback directly from guests. Custom survey questions focus on key performance areas such as food quality, service timeliness, and overall atmosphere. This allows leadership to identify opportunities for improvement at the location, district, and regional levels.
Complementing Surveys AI, Insights AI analyzes guest sentiment across reviews, surveys, and direct feedback forms. With AI-driven categorization, leadership gains actionable insights into what matters most to guests—eliminating guesswork .This AI-powered approach helps Black Bear Diner monitor key areas, reward high-performing locations, and address recurring issues promptly.
Key Features:
- Sunburst charts and snippets visualize guest sentiment themes and trending keywords.
- Filters break down sentiment data by location, time period, and keyword for actionable analysis.
- Role-based access ensures general managers, VPs, and corporate teams get the insights most relevant to their roles.
“Insights AI makes it so easy to get the data we need. It’s all there at a glance, but you can also dig deeper when needed. It’s been a huge time saver.”
Tracking the Competition and Keeping the Den in Check
To ensure continued excellence, Black Bear Diner leverages Competitors to benchmark their reputation against key competitors. This tool compares strengths and opportunities across locations and guest sentiment categories, offering valuable insights to refine operations and enhance their competitive edge.
In addition, Birdeye’s robust reporting capabilities provide leadership with detailed performance insights at the location, district, and regional levels. Regular reporting cycles ensure that key metrics are monitored consistently, enabling data-driven decisions to address challenges, recognize high-performing locations, and maintain guest satisfaction.
Growling greatness with Birdeye
With Insights AI, Reviews AI, Surveys AI, and Competitors, Black Bear Diner has transformed how they manage guest feedback. These tools provide actionable insights and streamlined operations, enabling the team to deliver exceptional experiences that resonate long after plates are cleared. Interested in learning more about how you can do the same?
Schedule a demo today, call 1-800-561-3357 ext 1, or send an email to sales@birdeye.com.
“Because every community is unique, Competitors helps us understand how we’re performing in those areas. It’s especially helpful for smaller towns where we’re the go-to dining option.”
Birdeye: The Obvious Choice
Winning over 400 awards for 10 quarters in a row, Birdeye is the most-awarded and highest-rated customer experience software for businesses of all sizes.
