Case Study - Catch Hospitality
Seven restaurants. One way to win back unhappy guests, and prove it worked.
Catch Hospitality Group runs eight restaurant concepts across Oakville. Since December 2025, they’ve used Avantly to make things right with guests after a disappointing visit, to see whether those guests actually come back, and to handle every community donation request in the same system. Here’s what the account shows so far.
25+ years in Oakville dining
7 locations, 8 concepts
Since December 2025
Who Catch is
Eight concepts, one community reputation to protect
Catch Hospitality Group has been part of the Oakville dining scene for more than 25 years, operating Boathouse, Ciao Bella, Cucci, Firehall, Plank Augusta, Plank Oakville, and Por Vida under one ownership group.
Across seven busy restaurants, some visits won’t go the way they should. And every week, each restaurant also fields requests from schools, teams, and local charities. Catch wanted one consistent way to handle both, and to see across every location how it was working.
Guest Recovery
When a visit goes wrong, make it right and see if it worked
When a guest’s visit doesn’t go the way it should have, Liz Plunkett, Catch’s Corporate Administrator, can send a digital recovery certificate on the spot or as a follow-up. There’s no form and no waiting on approval.
Catch has used it selectively: ten certificates since July, for everything from a slow service night to a takeout order that went wrong.
What matters is what happens next, and Avantly tracks it. Four of those ten guests have already come back. One, after a service issue, returned to Boathouse with four other people. Another came back to Plank Oakville with a friend and spent $94.36 on a $50 certificate. A third chose a different Catch restaurant altogether. That’s the question every make-good is supposed to answer, did the guest come back, and for the first time Catch can see the answer instead of guessing.
10
recovery certificates since July
4
guests already came back
12
people in their return-visit parties
17 to 72
days from certificate to return visit
Catching it before it becomes a review
Recovery certificates help with the guests Catch already knows had a rough visit. The newer piece is hearing from the guests who would otherwise say nothing and go straight to Google. Avantly’s guest feedback tool asks for a quick rating and comment right after the meal, so the team can step in while the guest is still reachable, not weeks later from a review that’s already public.
Catch is piloting it at Firehall, their busiest walk-in restaurant. After the bill is paid, the guest gets a card with a QR code, and it works for dine-in and takeout.
The most interesting number in this account
Guests spend more than the certificate
A certificate isn’t a giveaway. On the six guest visits where the bill came in above the certificate, guests spent $440 of their own money on top of $650 in certificates. And guests who received a recovery certificate came back at twice the rate of those who received a donation certificate.
Guests also get to choose where to use it. Certificates are issued under the Catch Hospitality Group program rather than a single restaurant, and they’ve already been redeemed at six of Catch’s seven restaurants.
Before Avantly
A comp fixed the night, but nobody knew what happened next
Before Avantly, making things right with a guest meant comping part of the bill or handing over a physical gift card. Once that card left the building, there was no way to know whether the guest ever came back.
Donation requests had the same problem. Catch already made those decisions centrally, but everything after the decision was manual: each approval meant a physical gift card, logged in a spreadsheet, with a follow-up and a fulfillment email written by hand. Liz handled all of it on top of her role across seven restaurants.
Avantly didn’t change how Catch decides. It replaced everything after the decision. Branded fulfillment emails now go out automatically, and every certificate is tracked from issue to redemption. Each one also carries an expiry date, so unlike a physical card, it doesn’t sit on the books as open-ended liability.
Also in the same system
Donation requests, handled without the spreadsheet
The same system runs Catch’s community giving. Schools, teams, and local charities request through one place, typically for a $50 to $100 certificate. Every request is reviewed by someone at Catch, and Avantly makes sure nothing sits waiting.
More than ten people across Catch’s restaurants now process certificates day to day, not just head office. Catch’s team has even pointed the same tool at their own restaurants, using certificates to cover Secret Shopper visits for internal quality checks.
We weren't looking for a system like this, but once it was in place, the operational efficiency became obvious. Fulfillment used to mean a physical process; pulling a gift card, writing a response and sending out - now it happens on its own, and that's real time back for our team. The digital certificates also give us things a card never could: an expiry date, a reminder if someone hasn't redeemed yet, and actual visibility into how our donation requests and guest recovery are performing, not just a guess at the ROI. I'm comfortable recommending it to other operators dealing with the same thing.
For other multi-location operators
Want to know what happens after a guest leaves unhappy?
These numbers come from a real seven-restaurant group that started where most operators do: comps and gift cards with no follow-up, and no way to see across locations.
If you’d like to catch unhappy guests before they post a review, win them back, and actually see whether it worked, we’d be glad to show you what that could look like for your group. Donation requests come included.