California Fish Grill | Olo Case Study

California Fish Grill Boosts Sales by Pivoting to Personalized Marketing

California Fish Grill is a fast-casual restaurant brand focused on sustainable seafood offerings with locations across California and the Southwest. As the brand scaled, it needed to shift from a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy to a more personalized, data-driven approach that matched guest expectations and would accelerate revenue growth. Using Olo’s GDP and Marketing solutions, California Fish Grill can more easily identify and understand its guests, maximize marketing ROI with 1:1 communications, and drive transactions.


41%

increase in known guests over 6 months

21%

increase in marketable guests

$7M

in digital order revenue attributed to email marketing

California Fish Grill | Olo Case Study

Background

For years, California Fish Grill had a limited guest database with no way to track purchase behavior or segment audiences for marketing communications. As a result, the brand could only send batch-and-blast email campaigns to all guests, which lacked personalization and had uncertain ROI.

California Fish Grill recognized the key to delivering hospitality at scale and ultimately growing its business is truly knowing each guest and tailoring marketing communications to their preferences. However, it wasn’t interested in adopting a traditional, discount-centered loyalty program that could reduce its profit margins and devalue the brand.

Instead, California Fish Grill implemented Engage, Olo’s restaurant-specific guest data and marketing platform. Combined with Olo’s Order and Pay solution suites, Engage provides visibility into the entire guest journey. And, with help from Olo’s Professional Services team, the brand has reaped the full benefits of Olo’s Guest Data Flywheel: surfacing essential insights like guest lifetime value, personalizing communications, gathering feedback, making data-driven business decisions, and driving profitable traffic.

Results with Olo

01 

More known and marketable guests

California Fish Grill doubled its guest match rate—or how often it can match a credit card token to a particular guest—using Olo Engage and Olo Pay. In other words, now that data flows seamlessly between its online ordering system, payment stack, and guest data platform (GDP), the brand can attribute 2x more transactions to individual guests than before.

Olo’s GDP connects this data from across California Fish Grill’s tech stack to create unified guest profiles—which offer a holistic view of guest behavior, preferences, and lifetime value—and enables all departments to sort, analyze, and act on those insights. The brand can now accurately identify its guests—whether they order online or in-store—learn from their purchasing habits, determine their lifetime value, and leverage that intel to drive profitable traffic.

02 

Increase in transactions with personalized marketing

In just 6 months, California Fish Grill generated $7M in digital order revenue through strategic email campaigns and automations—emails automatically triggered by guest behavior or events like completing an online order—built in Olo’s Marketing solution.

With support from Olo’s Professional Services team, the brand increased engagement and overall marketing ROI by leveraging its newly unified guest profiles to create advanced segments and tailor messaging by ordering trends, preferred restaurant locations, and other data points.

03 

Ability to make data-driven business decisions

Approximately 70% of orders at California Fish Grill are captured digitally—through kiosks, online, and AI phone orders. Olo Engage uses data from these digital orders and across the brand’s tech stack to surface actionable insights so it can better understand, serve, and effectively market to guests. In addition to helping the marketing team drive repeat orders and win-back churn risks, Olo Engage has enabled the brand to make smarter, data-driven decisions across departments. 

For example, California Fish Grill built automated post-purchase surveys in Olo’s Marketing solution to collect guest feedback and marketing opt-ins, gauge NPS, and reward operators for creating positive dining experiences. This feedback loop has become integral to shaping operational improvements, motivating employees, and fostering a culture of hospitality. 

The brand also leverages Olo’s surveys to incentivize third-party guests to place future orders through the restaurant’s website or app—the key to owning the data, boosting retention, and driving profitable growth.



Guests today are overwhelmed with generic marketing, so for California Fish Grill to stand out, we focus on creating personalized, meaningful connections. Olo Engage has made it possible for us to connect with our guests on a deeper level by delivering tailored communications that truly resonate. Leveraging data to build richer guest profiles has helped us enhance their experience while driving growth—shortening the time between visits and increasing their lifetime value. It’s how we’re able to deliver hospitality at scale without losing the authenticity and integrity our brand is built on.

Mark Hardison, CMO

California Fish Grill


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