Technology
Mellow Mushroom selects Bikky as customer data platform
September 2, 2025
Mellow Mushroom has partnered with Bikky, a customer data platform built for multi-unit restaurants, to better understand their guests, personalize marketing and power future expansion, according to a press release.
The pizza brand has invested in digital efforts since before COVID but lacked a complete picture of guest behavior.
"Our franchisees do an excellent job of driving community engagement with tens of thousands of guests in their email lists," Ahsan Jiva, EVP, strategy and transformation at Mellow Mushroom, said in the press release. "But we didn't have core customer-level insights for any of those people."
Mellow Mushroom's search for a customer data platform led them to Bikky. "We felt like Bikky was the only platform addressing the needs of the restaurant industry specifically," Jiva added.
Since bringing on Bikky, the team at Mellow Mushroom has used the platform to better understand and diagnose differences in guest frequency across geographies. They started by looking at average frequency by location to identify relative underperformers, then compared that data with guest feedback and employee turnover rates to uncover correlations. This helped the team determine which locations would benefit from operational interventions to improve the guest experience and drive more frequent visits.
The team also used Bikky to address the industry-wide decline in traffic resulting from today's challenging environment. Using Bikky's demographics reporting, they reviewed year-over-year changes in traffic by income segment to determine which cohorts were most price sensitive. These guests now receive targeted value-based offers, ensuring promotions have tangible and targeted results.
In these instances and more, the Mellow Mushroom team used Bikky's recently-launched AI analyst, Data Assistant, to get actionable insights from their data in just seconds — making it easier than ever to incorporate data into their decision-making processes. Already, this has helped them increase efficiency and maximize impact from their marketing budget.
Looking ahead, Mellow Mushroom is building out a best-in-class marketing technology stack to execute its data-driven marketing strategy. The brand is pairing Bikky with marketing and loyalty platforms Attentive and Sparkfly to create personalized campaigns that speak directly to guest behavior and preferences. "Bikky's data is the foundation of our technology stack. As we continue to expand our marketing capabilities, guest data will drive every initiative we launch. And we're just getting started — we're really excited to leverage this data across our organization, not just in marketing," Jiva said.
The brand recently launched a new restaurant prototype and plans to grow its franchise footprint in the coming years. Bikky's insights on guest demographics, loyalty and lifetime value are informing their market planning and prioritization efforts.
"Mellow Mushroom's 50-year journey is a testament to how legendary brands evolve while staying true to their roots," Abhinav Kapur, CEO of Bikky, said in the press release. "What excites us most is how they're using guest insights to reimagine everything from their introductory offers to their expansion strategy. In just months with Bikky, they've transformed hunches into data-backed decisions. This is how iconic brands like Mellow Mushroom can leverage the same caliber of guest intelligence that traditionally only the largest chains could access, enabling them to grow strategically while keeping that authentic experience guests have loved for decades."
Mellow Mushroom has 160 locations across 16 states.
