Davy's Case Study - Channel Studios

The Challenge

The team at Davy’s approached Channel Studios to help them overcome the difficulties they were having in publishing product content relating to their food and drinks, and efficiently turning it into wine lists, bar lists and menus.

Davy’s menus and prices lists consist of an extensive selection of wines, premium gins, craft beers and spirits, plus classic British dishes, tapas options, sharing boards and sandwiches, which differ by venue, so it was essential for the team to have a simple process they could manage in-house.

The were searching for a way to take product information from their current database and make it available in Adobe InDesign to speed up production and maintain consistent information across collateral for all their bars and restaurants.

Davy’s have a Perfion Product Information Management (PIM) system in which they maintain product details for their wines and other drinks, as well as for the meal choices in their restaurants. In addition to feeding their website and back office system, this information is used to create a variety of branded price lists, plus a range of different menus and lightbox inserts.

Producing this marketing material is an iterative process through multiple proofs as the best possible selection of food and drink is chosen and developed. It was vital to Davy’s that the final quality of these price lists and menus should not be compromised – either in content or visual appeal – by the complexity of the publication process. New versions of the price lists and menus can be required at short notice, so need to be produced quickly and cost-effectively with an easy process for amends that doesn’t tie up a busy marketing department.

The Solution

Channel Studios worked with Davy’s to put together a highly effective publishing process which collated product data from the marketing team and from the Perfion PIM, and used EasyCatalog templates developed by Channel Studios to turn this into attractive wine lists, bar lists, menus and lightbox inserts.

In addition to installing the relevant software on the marketing department’s laptops and training them in using it, Channel Studios also augmented the marketing team with our own artwork production staff who became an instant overflow resource, helping generate the collateral using EasyCatalog and InDesign during the busy periods.

Davy’s made use of Channel Studios’ online proofing tools to further speed up the publishing process whilst making progress tracking simple.

The Results

The new processes, alongside the overflow services provided by Channel Studios were so effective that Davy’s saw ROI within the first campaign. Davy’s found that menus and price lists could be generated very quickly and changes made even quicker. This meant the marketing department’s time was optimised, and also allowed the team to be more creative and try new ideas with the collateral, knowing that it would be speedy and cost-effective to see the results.

Davys’ pride themselves on a culture of continuous improvement, and their newly implemented publishing solution has supported this objective.