THE CONTEXT
CulinArt runs on-site dining across business, education, and leisure environments in the US. As part of Compass Group, the company serves clients with very different expectations, different guest profiles, and different definitions of a great dining experience.
A corporate café does not behave like a university dining hall. A country club does not operate like a healthcare dining venue. Each site has its own rhythm, menu, team, and guest relationship.
CulinArt makes the same promise across all of them: customised foodservice that feels right for the client and the people they serve.
That promise creates a hard operational question.
Across 51 active venues, how do you know what guests are actually experiencing — not once a quarter, not through hearsay, but every day?
THE CHALLENGE
Before Foodback, the signal was harder to trust.
Client conversations could lean on anecdote. Operators heard comments from guests. Notes were written down. Feedback existed, but it did not always arrive as a consistent, comparable signal teams could use across sites.
CulinArt was already succeeding. The missing piece was not effort. It was hard data.
Foodback gave operators a faster way to hear directly from guests, compare site performance, and walk into client conversations with facts instead of fragments.
“Foodback gave us something we’d been missing — real data. No more ‘I heard this’ or handwritten notes. Now our teams walk into client meetings with facts, not guesswork. It’s fast, simple, our operators actually use it, and their guests love it.”
Allison Zummo, VP of Operational Excellence, CulinArt Group
THE DATA
Foodservice operators often assume guests will not say much.
CulinArt’s data says otherwise.
Since launch, CulinArt has collected more than 5,000 feedbacks across 51 active venues. The headline number is not the volume. It is the depth: 74% of guests who leave a rating also write a comment.
That rate holds across the portfolio. Corporate and office dining sits at 73%. Higher Education reaches 80%. Country club and leisure dining sits at 74%.
The pattern matters because it is not a quirk of one venue type. Guests are writing across every major segment CulinArt operates.
Half of respondents also answer optional follow-up questions. At one healthcare dining venue in the portfolio, 88.5% of guests who left a rating also wrote a comment.
Industry teams often talk about survey fatigue. CulinArt shows a different truth. When feedback is easy, fast, and worth giving, guests tell you things that change how you operate.
Scores have moved in the right direction too, rising from a 4.79 average in the first half of 2025 to 5.31 in 2026 year-to-date. Over 18 months of teams listening, acting, and learning from what guests say, the direction of travel is clear.
The industry average for traditional feedback tools runs between 5% and 15%. This is not more feedback. It is qualitative depth at scale.
THE OUTCOMES
CulinArt uses Foodback to move faster.
Managers can see when something needs attention before it turns into a bigger client issue. Negative comments become opportunities for service recovery and connection, not just complaints to suppress.
Positive feedback matters too. Teams share guest mentions in huddles. Operators see what is working. Staff hear the impact of the work they do every day.
Foodback also strengthens the commercial conversation. CulinArt can show prospective clients a modern, data-led approach to guest experience. Feedback becomes proof that the team listens, learns, and manages quality with discipline.
“It’s become our risk monitor — we can see when a site’s thriving or when something needs attention. And compared to other tools, it’s incredibly cost-effective.”
Peter Witkowski, President, CulinArt Group
When feedback is continuous, visible, and easy to give, it stops being something operators collect. It becomes something they build on.
