At Tebi, a lot of my work starts with a simple question: how do our merchants actually run their business day to day? Not how we think they run it from a product point of view, but what really happens in the middle of a lunch rush, a busy Friday night, or a rainy Tuesday.

The more I listened to our merchants, the more one theme kept coming back: most decisions are made on intuition. Owners and managers have a strong feel for when things are going well, when something’s off, and when the team needs support. And that intuition is usually right.

But during merchant interviews, I started hearing the same line in different words: “I usually only know how my restaurant is performing at the end of the month.”

For me as a product manager, that was both shocking and motivating. Shocking, because these are people making big decisions every day — on staffing, pricing, menu, promotions — and only getting true feedback when the month closes. Motivating, because it gave us a very clear problem to work on: how do we give operators a clearer picture real time, without expecting them to become data analysts or spend hours in spreadsheets?

That question became the starting point for Insights.

Why we built Insights

Owners and managers are great at what they do. They make decisions fast. They solve problems on the fly. Their intuition tells them what's going right and wrong in their restaurant and how they should act.

But too often, merchants don’t have time to sit behind a screen checking every number in a spreadsheet. And as we spoke to more than 20 owners and managers across cafés, bars, restaurants, and multi-location businesses, one thing became clear: no one was asking for “more dashboards.” They were asking for clarity. They were making important decisions every day and only seeing the real results at the end of the month, when it was too late to change anything.

What stood out most was that merchants weren’t frustrated — they were busy. They rely on intuition because it’s fast and usually right, but they also wanted a way to validate that intuition: to spot patterns, understand what’s changing, and make decisions with more confidence during service. We wanted to build something simple, real-time, and trustworthy — a tool that fits the way merchants already work, matches their pace, works on tablet or phone, and doesn’t require them to become finance experts.

From fragmented data to one clear view

Before Insights, understanding what was happening in the business often meant jumping between different tools, downloading reports, or calling the restaurant during a rush to ask how things were going. Many merchants described this as “patching together a picture” rather than actually seeing it.

One example we heard was from a manager who said that if they felt something wasn’t selling well, they used to walk around asking different team members for their intuition. Everyone had a slightly different answer, and it took time to piece together what was really happening.
That was the gap we wanted to close.

With Insights, merchants can now see their daily sales, reservations, prep stations, top products and menu performance in one place — and in real time. Whether they’re on-site, heading home, or checking in from the couch, they have the same clear view. And because the data is structured the same way across desktop and app, there’s no learning curve: what you see in one place is what you see everywhere.

The goal was never to overwhelm merchants with data. It was to remove friction from the moments where they need clarity most.

Early reactions

What we hear most often is that Insights is easy. Easy to navigate, easy to check on mobile, and easy to get the answers you need without digging.

Another consistent theme: merchants are discovering things they didn’t know before — patterns in menu performance, unexpected dips, differences in prep times, or shifts that consistently outperform.

As one of our merchants, Benjamin Kats, owner of Schout-bij-nacht puts it:

“I am really curious by nature, this with the fact that I am a starting business owner. Insights is very handy to quickly see how the evening is going - when I am not there - without having to ask anyone on a busy night; I can just pull up my phone and check.

From the backoffice, Insights helps me get a feel for my staff costs compared to revenue. Because everything is connected, it saves me time — I can easily check how things are running, even from my couch, and discuss it on the same day or the next.”

For us, that’s the most exciting part: Insights doesn’t just show numbers, it shows what’s really happening in the business.

What’s next and final words

We’re only at the beginning of what Insights will become. This release focuses on clarity, visibility, and real-time access. The next step is building on these foundations — surfacing trends and patterns, highlighting revenue opportunities, and flagging potential issues earlier.

We’re also investing in broader support across business roles, so the right person gets the right insight at the right moment — not just managers. And over time, Insights will expand into a deeper view of profitability, so merchants can understand the health of their business without spreadsheets or manual reports.

If you're still relying on intuition or spreadsheets, Insights will feel like switching on a light. We built Insights to give hospitality teams the clarity they deserve. I hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed building it.

Find out more about Tebi Insights.