Serving Up Insights: How Data Helps Food Service Providers Grow and Retain Clients

Serving Up Insights: How Data Helps Food Service Providers Grow and Retain Clients 

Navigating Food Service Challenges with Confidence

Food service providers across environments face mounting pressure to deliver exceptional dining experiences while navigating operational complexity. Whether serving students, patients, visitors or employees, providers must strive to exceed the expectations of both their client as well as the guests they serve in a cost effective manner while complying with safety standards and other regulations – all with limited resources. Failing to do so can result in the loss of an account and negative perceptions in the market place.

Touchwork’s tailored solutions empower food service companies to tackle operational challenges head-on—driving efficiency, boosting satisfaction, and delivering measurable improvements across diverse environments. From a Northeast-based provider of premium dining, refreshment, and catering services to global food service and facilities providers across Airports, Business & Industry (B&I), Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors, Touchwork enables real-time feedback collection and audit insights to quickly identify issues and elevate the overall customer experience.

Higher Education: Meeting Student Expectations While Managing Dietary Needs

Challenges

• Student perceptions of what is healthy or valuable in dining programs change frequently, making it challenging to stay up to date.
• Lack of real time engagement to identify likes/dislikes and address issues immediately.
• Gathering feedback and benchmarking performance across diverse dining locations can be complex and challenging to translate into actionable insights.
• Dietary needs and allergy management are critical to student safety and retention.

Smart Solutions in Practice

Monitoring and Benchmarking Across Multiple Sites
Campus dining providers are gaining greater visibility into performance with SurveyIT by conducting recurring surveys across multiple locations to evaluate satisfaction with menu variety, service quality, and facility cleanliness. This structured approach supports benchmarking, helps identify at-risk accounts, and enables timely, data-driven improvements to enhance service delivery and customer satisfaction.

Enhancing Real-Time Student Engagement
To stay responsive to student needs and preferences, food service teams are using TxtTapScanandTell for real-time feedback that allows students to share their dining experiences instantly. This ongoing engagement makes it easy to identify likes, dislikes, and service gaps as they happen—allowing staff to take immediate corrective action and demonstrate attentiveness to the student voice.

Turning Feedback into Strategy
AI-powered analysis with Abda, their AI assistant, helps providers uncover valuable insights hidden within open-ended feedback. These tools identify recurring themes, highlight training opportunities, and reveal trends across campuses. By transforming raw feedback into actionable data, providers can proactively address issues and continuously improve service quality.

Supporting Safe and Inclusive Dining
Dining teams are also prioritizing safety and inclusion by offering OrderIT a mobile food ordering solution that allows students with food allergies to confidently request meals that meet their dietary needs. This added layer of control not only reduces risk but also builds trust with students and families, supporting retention, increasing meal plan participation and enhancing the overall dining experience.

Results

Food service providers saw increased student satisfaction, reduced unnecessary program changes, and fewer negative social posts by acting on real-time feedback. Clear KPI dashboards supported ongoing improvements and client renewals, while enhanced allergy support encouraged long-term meal plan participation among students with dietary needs.

Healthcare: Enhancing Patient Satisfaction and Recovery

Healthcare Food Service Providers that are not only responsible for delivering quality dining experiences—they also contribute to HCAHPS scores that influence hospital reimbursements. Touchwork’s solutions—TxtandTell, CheckIT, and SurveyIT—help providers improve patient satisfaction, streamline operations, and boost performance in key survey areas that impact value-based payments.

Challenges

• Food quality and temperature directly impacts patient satisfaction and recovery.
• Maintaining positive dining staff and patient interactions is essential for a great experience and requires ongoing training and focus.
• Dietary compliance and meal accuracy are essential to clinical outcomes.
• Delayed responses to dining concerns can negatively impact  HCAHPS scores and result in a loss of revenue.
• Retail dining revenue is negatively impacted by poor food quality, service, and cleanliness

Smart Solutions in Practice

Capturing Patient Feedback in Real Time
To better manage the patient dining experience, food service teams are enabling instant feedback on tray delivery, meal temperature, taste, and order accuracy with TxtTapScanandTell. QR codes placed in patient rooms and used during staff rounding allow patients to easily share input as issues arise. This real-time responsiveness minimizes disruptions, increases patient satisfaction, and helps food service teams uphold high service standards.

Streamlining Quality Audits and Driving Accountability
Audit processes like tray assessments, food safety checks, and cleanliness reviews are being automated with CheckIT to reduce manual workload and ensure consistency. With centralized dashboards and instant scoring, providers gain immediate visibility into performance. Photo documentation adds a layer of accountability and supports targeted staff coaching—helping teams identify trends, optimize staffing, and meet compliance goals more efficiently.

Expanding Feedback Loops to Refine Service
To keep a pulse on the broader dining experience, providers are gathering ongoing feedback through SurveyIT from patients, staff and guests across hospital dining areas. This continuous input empowers food service teams to track evolving needs, adapt menu offerings, and maintain high service standards. Over time, these insights support continuous improvement and stronger alignment with patient expectations.

Enhancing Facility Cleanliness Through Smart Restroom Monitoring
Many food service providers who also oversee facilities management are leveraging FixIT to monitor restrooms more effectively. By enabling guests to scan a QR code in the restroom to instantly report issues, these providers ensure faster response times and maintain higher cleanliness standards. Clean, well-maintained restrooms not only promote hygiene but also reflect the overall quality and professionalism of the healthcare facility, significantly enhancing the patient and visitor experience.

Results

These efforts have led to significant improvements, including increased patient feedback and faster resolution of dining concerns. As a result, patient satisfaction has improved noticeably. Foodservice operations have become more efficient, while cleanliness in restrooms and common areas has been consistently enhanced, reflecting a higher standard of care throughout the facility.

Business & Industry (B&I): Delivering Quality and Insight at Scale

Challenges

• Corporate dining must appeal to a diverse workforce with evolving expectations.
• Delivering consistently high stands without feedback in retail locations
• A lack of centralized data and benchmarking to maintain consistency across regional and global operations.
• Robust performance tracking to prove value to clients

Solutions in Action

Continuous Feedback for Improved Dining Experience
Food service providers in corporate cafes and dining spaces use TxtTapScanandTell for real-time feedback that allow guests to share their thoughts on food quality, service, and overall experience instantly. This ongoing feedback is compiled into customizable dashboards, enabling teams to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and clearly demonstrate improvements to corporate clients.

Streamlined Multi-Location Performance Benchmarking
To effectively manage dining operations across multiple locations, providers use SurveyIT to implement streamlined survey processes conducted annually or bi-annually. These surveys help benchmark performance, identify at-risk accounts, and guide targeted improvements to ensure consistent service quality.

Data-Driven Insights for Operational Excellence
Advanced AI-powered analysis with Abda, their AI assistant, helps food service providers interpret feedback data, uncover trends, pinpoint training needs, and support evidence-based decision-making. By transforming complex data into actionable insights, these tools empower providers to continuously refine their dining services and enhance overall operational efficiency.

Results

Food service providers in corporate dining benefit from increased customer engagement and loyalty by leveraging real-time visibility into dining performance across multiple locations. This transparency not only helps teams monitor and improve service consistently but also strengthens partnerships with corporate clients through clear, data-driven reporting that builds trust and demonstrates value.

Industry-Wide Results: The Touchwork Impact

Touchwork is proud to support leading food service providers across industries with tools that are tailored to their environment, scalable, and easy to use.

Whether it’s providing ongoing insights into the guest experience, protecting students with dietary needs, supporting patient recovery through timely, quality meals, or ensuring corporate clients receive world-class dining, Touchwork is empowering food service providers to consistently deliver exceptional value every day.