Dave and Buster’s Successful Analytics Platform Modernization

Dave & Buster’s Entertainment, Inc. owns and operates over 200 venues in North America that offer premier entertainment and dining experiences to guests through two distinct brands: Dave & Buster’s and Main Event. Recently, Dave & Buster's partnered with Databricks on a journey to modernize its analytics platform to help them provide a centralized analytics capability to help them avoid data silos, consolidate all structured and unstructured data in a single platform and combine data from multiple disparate sources to provide comprehensive view of the business.

The Need for Modernization

Dave & Buster's decided to upgrade its legacy analytics systems based on SQL databases to a modern, scalable platform by moving to the cloud. Previously all of Dave & Buster’s data was stored on-premises and the data was transferred to SQL servers at a central data center for reporting. This architecture had several drawbacks.The reliance on manual workflows created inefficiencies and bottlenecks. As the number of stores and data sources grew, the architecture struggled to scale, creating siloed data, data ingestion was not real-time and teams experienced delays in generating reports.

The company aimed to move away from siloed data architecture and consolidate all their data including sales, inventory, customer feedback and operational metrics into a single platform. This consolidated architecture helped the store managers to monitor KPIs across stores to improve speed of service to the customers, enhance staffing schedules by matching labor levels with peak dining and gaming events and optimize inventory levels automatically in response to current demand.

Modernization for Scalability and Efficiency using Databricks

To overcome these challenges, Dave & Buster's partnered with Databricks to modernize their analytics platform. The first step was to build a scalable ingestion platform to get data from multiple data sources. Dave & Buster’s worked to implement a scalable ingestion framework based on Azure Data Factory. This ingestion architecture allowed Dave and Buster’s to ingest data from traditional data sources like SQL server and to ingest data from real time data sources like their POS, Gaming systems.

The framework follows a medallion design with Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers to organize raw, cleaned, and aggregated data respectively on a scalable ADLS gen2 storage to provide the necessary scalability.

Integration of Main Event's Analytics Capabilities

In 2022, following the acquisition of Main Event, Dave & Buster consolidated Main Event’s analytics systems onto the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. Ingesting Main Event’s data assets into Dave and Buster’s Databricks environment enabled consolidated analytics in quick timelines to cater to the needs of both customer segments.

The consolidated platform has positioned Dave & Buster's as an innovator in the entertainment and dining industry by enabling data-driven strategies that prioritize customer satisfaction.

Key Benefits of their Databricks Implementation:

1. Unified Data Intelligence Platform: Databricks helped integrate the data engineering, data science, and analytics into one platform, reducing complexity and operational costs.
2. Scalability and Performance: Databricks enabled high-performance processing and scalability for large datasets.
3. Real-Time Insights: The platform enabled the ability for real-time data ingestion and analysis, enabling faster decision-making.
4. Cost Efficiency: Consolidating workloads onto a single platform reduced the infrastructure costs.
5. Centralized governance: Unity catalog helped provide the necessary data access controls to democratize data across the organization.

Conclusion

Today, Databricks is used as the central data intelligence platform at Dave and Buster’s, driving use-cases like operational dashboards, inventory optimizations, finance reporting, gaming applications and marketing promotions. Dave & Buster's’ modernization journey demonstrates how embracing advanced technologies like Databricks can transform business operations. By addressing legacy system limitations and adopting a data intelligence platform, Dave & Buster's has unlocked new opportunities for innovation in the "eatertainment" industry. With real-time insights, enhanced collaboration, and advanced analytics capabilities, Dave & Buster's is well-positioned to continue delighting customers while staying ahead of industry trends.