Chuck Tanowitz

The convenience store chain’s National Pizza Day campaign grows orders by 10x

Making a splash with pizza is a tall order, even in the best of circumstances. But standing out on National Pizza Day? That’s a whole different level.

Family Express ran a hyper-personalized digital marketing campaign powered by Paytronix Loyalty to introduce guests to their pizza – and keep them coming back. The campaign helped the convenience store brand reach record numbers for daily pizza orders, achieved sustained lift, and earned deeper guest loyalty.

With 81-units, Family Express is well-known for providing great service to its guests, but also for its food offerings. The brand recently rolled out bean-to-cup coffee and high-end tea on top of its custom food offerings like bakery items made in-house.

But only 30 units offer Cravin’s to Order, which includes hot foods like pizza, boneless wings and breakfast items. And the pizza is far from off-the-shelf.

When National Pizza Day rolled around, they wanted to offer a deal that would not only introduce guests to their pizza, but would keep them coming back. The offer was simple: 2 XL pizzas for $12. But it’s the rest of the work that made this deal break through.

Using Paytronix Loyalty, the Family Express marketing team segmented its audiences to find those who they could hit with the right message at the right time. By looking just at those who visited one of the locations with Cravin’s to Order, or a nearby store, within the last 60 days, they avoided frustrating those who couldn’t partake in the deal.

To top it all off, they chose not to run any in-store signage. In other words, this was a test of how well the digital marketing program could drive on its own.

On National Pizza Day, they broadcast the offer as an app notification and orders began trickling in. But it was a 2pm email that triggered a flood of orders.

“It was the best kind of mayhem, and our people did an amazing job in the kitchens keeping up with the demand” said Thierry Lyles, Head of Digital Marketing for Family Express. 

A few hundred open orders flowed through within the first 90 minutes. When it was done, Family Express had nearly 10 times the number of typical daily orders – an all-time high. The benefit spilled over beyond pizza, with add-on purchases raising the average ticket price to $18.  Mobile ordering accounted for most of the traffic, with 70% of online orders coming in through that channel.

The story of Family Express’s National Pizza Day extends past its holiday debut. Today, the brand’s benefiting from a 10% sustained lift from the previous month’s digital sales. Pizza fans who may have visited at the word of a good deal, are sticking around for the value of the loyalty program.

As noted in the recently-released Gift Card Report: 2023 from Paytronix, restaurant gift card sales have been going increasingly digital since 2020. But the effect of this shift shows up brightly when we looked closely at Valentine’s Day card sales.

Paytronix data shows that digital gift card sales on Valentine’s Day hit their highest number on record, increasing nearly 7% over last year and more than doubling since 2019. Also of interest, the highest sales of digital gift cards shifted from the day before Valentine’s Day to Valentine’s Day itself, indicating that guests are taking advantage of the flexibility of digital gift cards and delaying their purchases until the last minute.

This has the potential to change how brands market cards to their guests.

Moreover, 2023 saw the highest revenue of any year from 2019-2023 for the period from February 1 through 14, indicating that restaurant gift card spending may finally surpass pre-pandemic revenue – a welcome relief for a restaurant industry battered by the pandemic, inflation, and staffing shortages.

And of course, to all the restaurants out there: Happy Valentine’s Day from your friends at Paytronix. We have gift cards for all of you.

Top Takeaways:

• – Total holiday gift card sales value is up in 2022 while the total number of cards sold is down.
• – Digital gift card sales continue their rise.
• – The large holiday winter storm cooled what is traditionally the biggest day of gift card sales.
• – More consumers are opting for higher value gift cards.
• – Fine dining gift card sales are up, QSRs sales are down.

According to Paytronix Gift Card Data, some retailers have much to be cheerful about. An early look at the data shows that the shift to digital gift cards is in full swing and that dining trends across the country continue to trend towards sit-down concepts. Despite the swing to digital, an arctic blast translated to lower gift card sales on a key shopping day, demonstrating that gift card sales are not insulated from factors such as weather.

Holiday gift card sales are largely up across the board. The total dollar value of cards sold is up 2.2% versus 2019 and up 1.4% since 2021. 2022 was the best year for gift card sales in recent memory, with more dollars spent on gift cards between Black Friday and Christmas Eve than any year since 2019.

However, while the total dollars spent on gift cards has increased, the number of gift cards sold is substantially lower than previous years. For the holiday period from November to December, numbers of gift cards sold dropped by 5.1% vs 2019 and by 10.7% from 2022. However, this trend has a notable exception: digital gift cards. Between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, the value of physical gift cards is down nearly a fifth (22%) vs 2019 and down 7.9% since 2021. Digital gift cards, on the other hand, have seen the value of sales increase by a whopping 77% since 2019 for the same time period, while the value of digital gift cards sold also increased 4.6% since 2021.

One trend of note during the Holiday Season was the impact of a severe winter storm that froze out a large portion of the country just before Christmas. As shown in the chart below, December 23 is typically the best day for gift card sales. While this still held true for 2022, gift card sales suffered significantly, with numbers of cards sold per day down 32.6% from 2019, down 23% since 2022, and down 10.9 percent since 2020 during the height of the pandemic. Value of cards sold was down by 19% since 2019 and down 14.3% from 2021. Physical gift card sales in particular suffered significantly due to the storm, with numbers of in-store cards sold down by 37% as compared to 2019. Shoppers who procrastinated had to find other stocking stuffers this year as the weather prevented last-minute shopping.

Inflation has also impacted the values of gift cards sold.  $5 and $10 cards were far more popular in 2019, representing 11.2% and 16.7% of gift cards sold that year, respectively. During 2022, the sales of those values of cards dropped approximately 3% each, with sales of each representing 8.8% and 14.1% of total gift cards sold, respectively. On the other hand, sales of higher value gift cards increased to match, with sales of $50 growing from 12.2% to 16.3% and $100 gift cards getting a boost from 6% to 7.8%.

Finally, gift card sales this holiday season reveal that, 2 years out from the worst of the pandemic, consumer tastes are changing from both pre- and post- pandemic. Between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, the value of gift cards sold for QSRs dropped 3.2% compared to 2019 and 6.9% compared to 2021. But the value of cards for fine-dining restaurants has increased 9% compared to 2019 and by 3.7% as compared to 2021, indicating a building demand to revisit concepts with a sit-down model. Moreover, dollars spent per day for fine-dining gift cards during the holiday season is up 80% as compared to 2020’s holiday season, indicating the trends of the pandemic are receding.

So what does this all mean for restaurants? Inflation has taken its toll on the American consumer, but as previous Paytronix resources have shown, loyalty offerings like gift cards are an effective shield against inflation. Moreover, the concepts that suffered the worst during the pandemic are enjoying a resurgence. Finally, the proliferation of digital gift cards shows that digital guest engagement is increasing in popularity and will likely continue to build in popularity.

And of course, cross your fingers for good weather on December 23^rd next year.

Happy New Year!

The changing of the years always gives us a chance to look ahead. As the Paytronix team enters 2023, we asked our experts what to look for. Here are some of the responses from those with their fingers on the pulse of loyalty, online ordering, and the overall world of guest engagement.

Jeff Hoover, Director of Convenience Store Strategy

I think convenience stores will focus even more on loyalty in 2023 as more guests will be looking for value in a commodity (gas) during periods of high inflation. I also think convenience stores will begin to see even more value in the ability of loyalty to segment audiences and engage with customers in a personalized manner, with the ultimate purpose of driving both traffic and sales.

Also, reduced demand for gas due to higher prices and the growth in electric vehicles will force more retailers to focus on food service and other in-store convenience items. As these offerings come on the market, loyalty will provide a great tool to connect with customers, drive awareness, and encourage them to try new items. Overall, it’ll boost the longer-term sales of non-gas items.

Kristin Lynch, Director of Restaurant Strategy

Restaurant brands will continue to focus on loyalty in 2023 and will make guest engagement a priority.  They will look to answer the question “how best can I communicate, recognize, reward, and overall engage with my most loyal guests to drive their behavior?”  They might do this via program design (i.e. Bankable Points), guest recognition layers (i.e. Tiers, Badges) or Segmentation driven by AI (i.e. Individualized campaigns).

Marc Schultz, Head of Data Privacy and Security

Consumer sensitivity to Privacy and Security will continue to grow in 2023, as will the number of laws and regulations affecting how companies manage financial and personal data. This is a time to review what data is collected, how it is used, how it is protected, and how long it is retained. California’s CCPA/CPRA has redefined “Personal Information” and “Sharing” which is making companies re-evaluate the need to update their Privacy Policies and the opt-out links being presented to consumers.

EJ Van De Vegte, Director of Software Development

Loyalty accounts and programs are becoming more and more important for restaurants and convenience stores, but also for guest users. Where people were less concerned with the security of their loyalty accounts before, it is getting more important to the brands and their guests. The consumer threat is losing their data but also losing loyalty points or even gift card balances. Loyalty points represent value because an individual can use them to get free products or discounts. And eGift cards are straight-up money. All and all, aspects of a loyalty system become more akin to a banking system and need to be well protected. That protection has an impact on the user experience, so it becomes a balance between UX and security.