Bird & Blend

Bird & Blend started in the summer of 2012 at local food markets and an online store – hoping to ‘make tea exciting’ using its unique, conceptual blends. Now, with seven stores in the UK, and an international customer base, Bird & Blend offers ‘teas that look and smell amazing’, immersive tea blend classes and in-store sampling of its new ranges. All of its blends are made and packaged in Hove, England.

Customer service was a key driver in its business plan, so Mike and Krisi made the decision to keep the products out of supermarkets and open independent stores that could focus on an interactive customer experience.

With their website, Mike and Krisi were able to see their online traffic grow and easily monitor what worked, but they found that it was more difficult to get that information from their bricks and mortar stores.

With the MRI OnLocation online dashboard, Mike and Krisi are able to see how their marketing campaigns affect their capture rate and sales conversion on an hourly basis. They are also able to see when the store is quiet and make changes to their method during those times to encourage customers through the door.

One example of this is at quiet times, staff members will step outside of the store and offer free samples – educating and enticing people to their brand offering. Using MRI’s reporting, its shows that when free samples are offered, there is a peak in capture rate and conversion, than when no free samples are offered.

MRI is delighted to be working with Mike and Krisi, supporting such an innovative brand. With the increasing demand from shoppers for experience-based trips to bricks and mortar stores, Bird & Blend’s proposition dovetails exactly with current consumer trends. It is exciting for MRI to be able to provide the key metrics necessary for Bird & Blend to maximise its trading potential.

Diane Wehrle,
Marketing and Insights Director, MRI Software

By tracking footfall both past and into Bird & Blend stores, MRI Software is able to provide data that enables it to monitor their marketing efforts and improve customer services, and we are able to inform Bird & Blend of the customer numbers into store by hour of the day.

Our counters also identify the footfall passing the store and so via its capture rate (the % of customers entering vs passing the store) and so provide insights on the success of the store relative to its location. By comparing footfall with transaction numbers, we also provide each store’s conversion rate alongside the ATV.