Client: Black-eyed Pea Restaurants (Hospitality & Casual Dining) 

Primary Tools: POS, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Zapier 

Fragmented Data & Missing "Celebration" Revenue

The Restaurant LLC delivers a classic guest experience, but guest data and digital communication systems were fragmented across platforms. This created several core business problems:

Fragmented Guest Data: Guest information lived in multiple systems (reservations, events, email platforms), resulting in duplicate contacts and incomplete guest profiles.

Missed Lifecycle Opportunities: High-value milestones, specifically guest birthdays, were not being leveraged for personalization or repeat visits.

Inconsistent Follow-Ups: Post-visit outreach and re-engagement efforts were manual and inconsistent across different brand locations.

The Architecture: A Closed-Loop POS-to-CRM Integration

I designed a closed-loop system to establish HubSpot as the Single Source of Truth for all guest data. By integrating Toast POS directly into the CRM, I turned raw visit behavior into actionable marketing intelligence.

Automated Data Capture: Using Zapier as the integration layer, new or updated reservations in Toast automatically created or updated contact records in HubSpot.

Real-Time Visit Logic: The system captured visit frequency, recency, and specific brand locations visited to build a comprehensive guest history.

Smart Field Mapping: I mapped the Toast Birthday field to a HubSpot date property, allowing the system to monitor guest milestones without manual intervention.

Execution: Automated Guest Journeys (The Birthday Loop) 

With a unified data flow established, I focused on retention by building multi-step automated journeys that responded to guest behavior in real-time.

The Anticipation Trigger: Exactly 7 days before a guest’s birthday, the system triggers the first "Special Offer" email.

Engagement-Based Branching: I used Mailchimp’s Customer Journeys to implement conditional logic:

If Email Opened: The guest received a "Gift" follow-up and a call-to-action to make a reservation. If No Engagement: A "Birthday Nudge" was sent after a 3-day delay to ensure the offer was seen.

Dynamic Content: Personalization tags were used to ensure every message included the guest's name and favorite restaurant location.

Measurable Impact 

Centralized Data: Established a single view of every guest across all brands, eliminating manual data entry and duplicate records.

Increased Retention: Recovered lapsed guests and increased repeat visits by 22% through automated re-engagement and birthday flows.

Operational Efficiency: Saved roughly 10 hours per week by automating the sync between Toast POS and Mailchimp execution.

Stronger Engagement: Maintained 40%+ open rates on birthday journeys, outperforming standard retail benchmarks.

Closed-Loop Attribution: Every campaign click-through feeds back into HubSpot to update guest segments and refine future messaging.

By shifting Black-eyed Pea Restaurants’ email program from fragmented, manual outreach to a structured guest lifecycle system, email and CRM became a reliable revenue engine instead of an administrative burden—supporting both brand loyalty and consistent foot traffic without adding operational complexity.

.

.

.

This case study highlights my approach to CRM and email marketing in a hospitality environment where data unification and guest retention are the primary drivers of growth. By integrating Toast POS with HubSpot and Mailchimp, I transformed raw visit data into automated guest journeys that celebrate the customer and drive repeat visits. I focus on building "set-and-forget" systems that handle the heavy lifting of personalization and timing, helping hospitality brands shift from reactive promotion to a more sustainable, high-impact retention strategy. Let’s connect on LinkedIn to discuss how we can optimize your MarTech stack and guest lifecycle operations to support your team's next stage of scale.