The Huggy´s Bar: The success story with a Belgian-American sauce

The Huggy's bar had its start in 2012. Two young entrepreneurs, Thomas and Roberto, recent graduates, decide to realise their dream. They wanted to launch their own Huggy's burger in their "easy gourmet"-style burger restaurant. 

The goal was simple: to combine their shared passion for American culture with the values of high-quality cuisine. They did not expect such a success: in September 2020, the group "The Huggy's Bar" just opened its 11th establishment in Namur. The recipe for this successful burger restaurant? The combination of impeccable service quality, original and delicious Huggy's burger recipes, a relaxed welcome and a unique range of beers. 

Julien Van Espen, operations manager at Huggy's Bar, tells us more about the reasons for the success of the burgerrestaurant and the effectiveness of Resengo in managing reservations in the Huggy's Bar group.

Huggy's Bar is a group of burger restaurants inspired by the best American burger recipes with a typical Belgian touch. The concept is based on a real search for quality in all areas of the restaurant business: good products, home-made preparations, original and tasty recipes and an impeccable welcome. 

"We also have our own beer brand, with a total of eight different beers whose recipes we develop and which are brewed by Brasserie C, which is a Liège-based company. Each burger is then paired with a beer (Beer-pairing) for a perfect flavour combination," adds Julien Van Espen. As Julien says this, you can clearly see that he is proud of the concept of the Huggy's Bar.

Over the years, Huggy's Bar has grown in size and now has 11 locations including Huggy's Bar Awans, Huggy's Bar Charleroi. Since quality management is of paramount importance to Huggy's Bar, nothing is left to chance. This involves collecting and analysing available data. This is where the collaboration between Resengo and Huggy's Bar came about. Indeed, Resengo offers the possibility of collecting - and even processing - crucial data, be it statistics, customer data or customer feedback.

Julien Van Espen explains how his team at Huggy's Bar monitors the quality in each burger restaurant: "Through Resengo, we monitor a lot of data, giving us a precise overview and real monitoring of the condition of each burger restaurant. We analyse customer feedback, of course, but also the state of sales, reservations... This way, we can act appropriately in every possible situation."

As for customer feedback, Huggy's Bar makes it a priority to follow it up daily: "Our managers are instructed to respond to customer comments within 24 hours, especially negative comments, of course. Our aim, as Huggy's Bar, is to provide the best level of service and identify problems to prevent them from recurring."

The benefits of Resengo's service go beyond simple reservation management: it automatically optimises the occupancy of any burger restaurant.

– Julien Van Espen, Head of Operations at The Huggy’s Bar

Huggy's Bar Awans or Huggy's Bar Charleroi are just some of the burger restaurant's 11 locations. "Today, the vast majority of bookings are made online through Resengo. It is clear that we rely mainly on this system," says Julien Van Espen. What Resengo enables is a clear and unique system for both Huggy's Bar in Awans in Liège and Huggy's Bar Charleroi, providing great flexibility for their managers. The intelligent automation of the process is a real asset for the structure: "Not having to both answer the phone and enter reservations manually makes our job much easier," Julien Van Espen stresses, adding that "phone numbers remain available to respond to the demand of customers who prefer direct contact with staff, even if it is a large minority". 

While Resengo offers several opportunities to link reservations to our marketing efforts, we do not employ a marketing strategy with last-minute offers or free products. And when we analyse our figures, we see that this intelligent and automatic occupancy optimisation is quite adequate for our establishments for Huggy's Bar Awans and Huggy's Bar Charleroi, for example. When customers arrive at Huggy's Bar Awans without a prior reservation, they are registered by the Liège restaurant's staff in the general reservation system without any problems. And as far as no-shows are concerned, if there is no real solution to counter these practices, Resengo allows us to view customers who are (often) absent from their reservations using an indicator. "But we have no major problems in this respect. As a rule, it is easy to give tables to passing customers.

Not having to answer both the phone and manually enter reservations makes it much easier for us.

– Julien Van Espen, Head of Operations at The Huggy’s Bar

Resengo perfectly fits the look and feel of the brand by integrating itself into the design of the website: for Julien Van Espen, "this criterion was fundamental when choosing an online booking system". In terms of marketing, feeding the customer database is also a real plus: "this database is used for marketing purposes: contacting customers via our newsletter, communicating new publications on our blog...". All in all, Resengo not only gives flexibility in branch management by adapting to the structure, but also provides customer data for communication and quality monitoring. A real asset for the Huggy's Bar!