A smarter recipe for peak holiday performance
At a glance
vision
Slalom partnered with a leader in holiday family meals to analyze peak-season operations using human observation and AI. We then conducted targeted, in-store experiments to quickly test improvements across labor, workflows, and the customer experience.
IMPACT
By combining nuanced observation with real-world experimentation, we uncovered and tested eight-figure opportunities for cost savings and revenue uplift—representing more than 2% of net revenue.
Key Services
Industry
Restaurants & dining
Key Technologies / Platforms
- Axon Vision
Ready to serve up efficiency with a side of innovation?
A seasonal staple
The centerpiece that graces many holiday tables is Honey Baked Ham—an iconic, spiral-sliced tradition coated in a signature golden glaze. The Honey Baked Ham Co. (HoneyBaked), a combo restaurant/deli franchise headquartered just outside Atlanta, Georgia, operates over 400 locations across the United States. The company is known for making holidays simple and delicious with its hams, turkeys, sides, and desserts.
The business model for HoneyBaked is unique because most of the company’s revenue occurs in just 15 days of the calendar year: the five days before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. During these periods of extreme spike in demand, business operations shift dramatically with an influx of seasonal workers and adjustments to store layouts, inventory management practices, and more.
HoneyBaked turned to Slalom with the question: How can we be even more efficient and effective during these critical, pre-holiday periods?
The right balance of human and technological insight
With the goal of uncovering actionable insights, we combined in-person field research with cutting-edge AI computer-vision analysis. Slalom deployed teams to five HoneyBaked locations in California, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia, where researchers shadowed employees, conducted interviews, and observed store operations across kitchen prep, logistics, inventory restocking, and customer interactions—all without disrupting business during the busy pre-Christmas rush.
David Vanderpoel, a Slalom director, spearheaded the research and analysis: “Through a combination of technology and human observation, we identified dozens of factors to increase efficiency across the restaurant team.“
Some of our discoveries would not have been possible without human observers. For example, the team on site at one location noticed that fast-paced music in the glazing area seemed to correlate to higher efficiency. By recording music in all locations and comparing it to performance, we found that music around 145 beats per minute (bpm) noticeably boosted work performance, compared to the typical 100-130 bpm.
We enhanced our analysis with the capabilities of Axon Vision, a trailblazing Slalom partner that enables real-time training of computer vision models with human support. This technology used existing security video feeds to track key activities at HoneyBaked, eliminating the need for new hardware to capture key video-based insights and enabling national scalability. Axon Vision technology also monitored customer wait times, employee interactions, and kitchen tasks, providing insights into productivity and customer experience.
Turning research into results
Just a few weeks after our observation period, we delivered a comprehensive data readout to HoneyBaked leaders, including extensive suggestions for improvements. Together we worked to quantify the opportunity for cost savings and revenue uplift at more than eight figures, representing over 2% of HoneyBaked's net revenue.
We then prioritized a list of low-effort experiments to test our hypotheses during the following year’s Thanksgiving rush. These experiments tapped into opportunities both in front-of-house (FOH) and back-of-house (BOH) operations.
At the register, we observed that customers often needed a lot of time to make purchase decisions once they’d reached the counter. This resulted in longer lines and the tendency for people waiting there to "fall into their phones. " To expedite transaction time by educating customers in line, we tested several solutions, including:
- Posting larger, simplified menu boards and counter placemats featuring popular holiday meal options
- Displaying replica hams for customers to easily see the size and weight of each
- Providing a web app for customers to place their orders while in line
In the kitchen, we looked for ways to speed production while maintaining product quality. The holiday season requires intimidating daily production goals, but by gamifying the ham glazing process with real-time individual and team-based performance metrics, we found ways to increase both quality standard adherence and team morale. New team members were also onboarded at record pace and self-coached to improve their performance with each task completed.
Store leadership now has at-a-glance visibility to track kitchen progress toward daily production goals. Increased alignment to target times for individual tasks has decreased bottlenecks across the variety of kitchen roles. “We're improving the lives of the humans on both sides of the counter, and we're also helping the client manage their labor better,” says Vanderpoel. “This leads to more predictable business operations and reduces stress on workers during busy times, making everything run more smoothly.”
Customer Impact
With improvements to both FOH and BOH operations, customers were in and out the door quicker, often with fuller shopping bags.
A recipe for success
HoneyBaked is on a journey to expand to more locations and double its revenue in the next six years. The work we’re doing together will help them get there.
Vanderpoel emphasizes that improving the customer experience significantly boosts the company’s success: “It's not only about cutting down wait times; it's about enhancing every aspect of the transaction.” Employees also benefit from more streamlined processes and reliable orders, which is particularly important given the influx of seasonal labor and high-volume nature of the holiday peaks.
As the retail industry faces mounting labor pressure—while also striving to integrate physical and digital experiences—efficiency is a vital competitive advantage. Our partnership with HoneyBaked exemplifies how human insight and cutting-edge technology can help retailers set a new standard of customer service while serving up a generous slice of production efficiency.
