Loyalty programs have become critical tools helping restaurants compete. Yet in an environment where these programs have become so commonplace, operators must assess them with a critical eye and adapt them to make sure they are delivering in ways that resonate with guests. You can gather clues about what might help by checking out the most successful restaurant apps – recent research found that mega brands including Starbucks, McDonald’s, Dunkin’, Subway and Chick-fil-A are among the most downloaded restaurant apps right now. But since loyalty programs aren’t one-size-fits-all, you will get better traction by developing a program customized with rewards that suit your specific guest preferences. Consider – or test with your guests – how you want to deliver rewards and what kind of experience your guests are seeking. For example, your best guests might prefer to accumulate points, or climb progressively higher tiers that make them eligible for new rewards (this can help build engagement), or earn rewards based on the number of times they visit, or simply pay a subscription that unlocks rewards (this can give your program an air of exclusivity). Regardless, it’s important to apply some rules of the road to whatever rewards you offer. Orderable advises restaurant brands maintain consistency across in-house and online channels, make sure the rewards you are offering are items that your guests actually want (you can test this with guests and adapt your program to make it more dynamic), offer a variety of rewards to suit different tastes, and make your program understandable and the rewards attainable. Nothing tarnishes a guest’s opinion about a loyalty program like working toward a reward and then being denied because they didn’t read the fine print.
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By many measures, the recovery of the restaurant industry has been a great success story in recent years. The National Restaurant Association says sales are up (forecast to reach $1 trillion this year), operators continue to hire (adding more than 28,000 jobs in March), and nearly half of operators report that competition is stronger than it was last year. But this success has been uneven, as a recent article in The Atlantic explains, and more common in businesses that have managed to ride the dramatic ups and downs of the economic environment. For instance, The Wall Street Journal reports that from 2019 to 2023, sales at quick-service and other limited-service restaurants increased at twice the rate of those at sit-down restaurants. Independent restaurants have been disproportionally affected too, with about 4,500 more closing their doors last year than opening them. Restaurants that have succeeded are often those that have harnessed technology and maximized efficiencies that have allowed them morph into different models throughout the course of the day – fast-casual café in the morning, limited-service later in the day, and ghost kitchen to fill the in-between times, for example. Such changes will likely alter people’s definition of what a restaurant is and what it is capable of offering. Meanwhile, this landscape is creating openings for new services designed to address the needs of independent restaurants, providing them with digital tools that can help them scale their operations and gain efficiencies in ways more typical of larger chains.
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