Loyalty Apps for Restaurants: Building a Sticky Experience

Your customers live on their phones (the average American spends a whopping 4.5 hours on their phone daily). Why not put your restaurant in their hands with a top-tier loyalty app? 

Allowing your customers to make reservations, view menus, order, and pay for meals from the palm of their hands isn’t the future anymore—it's an everyday given. If you aren’t offering this to your own audience, you’re quickly falling behind. 

Not only that, restaurant loyalty apps give you additional benefits like:  

• More spending: Restaurant loyalty apps that gamify the rewards experience often get customers to spend more. This is because spending is based on specific actions to take or challenges to overcome, giving customers emotionally rewarding and memorable ways to unlock rewards. Nation’s Restaurant News reports that when given a gamified rewards option, restaurant customers spend 39% more than non-loyalty members.  
• Easy word-of-mouth marketing and advertising: Customers who actively use a restaurant’s rewards app are more likely to recommend that restaurant and its loyalty app to their friends and family.  
• Easier customer retention: It’s less costly to retain customers than it is to acquire new ones. A loyalty program and app makes more likely the customers you have will continue to do business with you.  

Effective loyalty apps give customers a better experience and increase your customers’ engagement, therefore becoming “sticky.” Let's look at how to build a sticky experience with these tips. 

Key Features of Effective Loyalty Apps 

For your loyalty app to be effective, it has to be usable. Ensure your loyalty app has a user-friendly design and is easy to navigate. Don’t make your text or images too small, either; customers don’t want to pinch or scroll to get the information they need.  

Integrate your app with other technology like social media or digital wallets. These integrations allow customers to easily pay for their purchases in the app and share offers and programs with their online social circles. 

Consider The Original ChopShop as an example. This salad and sandwich restaurant focused on convenience for its customers by building a way to pay ahead through its loyalty app. As a result, The Original ChopShop’s customers saved time, and the restaurant chain saw over 60,000 app downloads during a four-week holiday campaign.  

Personalization also plays a significant role in the use of loyalty apps. Consumers want offers and contests   based on their individual interests.  Use your data to segment your customers by behavior or interest, and don’t just do this once—make it a regular activity driven by your growing business. 

Consider this example: you’re an ice cream retailer with a segment of customers who haven’t purchased in 30 days. Use personalization like a limited-time discount based on the last item they bought to encourage this segment to come back and make a purchase.  

Don’t overlook these important loyalty app actions that can increase “stickiness” too: 

• Rewards for signing up: Offer the guest a reward for simply signing up. TGI Friday’s gives guests a free appetizer or free dessert for signing up for its loyalty program. This offer also makes it more convenient for TGI Friday’s guests to sign up while they’re in the restaurant. You could also offer a coupon they could use on their next visit for signing up. 
• Don’t forget about birthdays: Birthdays are a great way to offer your guest a personalized experience. When they sign up, ask your customer for their birthdate. When their birthdate rolls around, offer them a free product or a few free appetizers when they dine at your restaurant on their birthday. Not only do free appetizers get your loyalty member in the door, they incentivize them to bring other guests with them.  
• Consider friends: Loyalty members are more likely to do word-of-mouth marketing for your restaurant, why not offer them a discount they can provide their friends? Offering a $10 reward or free appetizer or dessert for friends of loyalty program members creates and unforgettable experience, lets you create a steady stream of new program members and customers and can create a community.  

Choosing the Right Loyalty App 

When evaluating your options for loyalty apps for your restaurant, look for features like: 

• User-friendliness 
• The ability to customize campaigns or content 
• The ability to seamlessly integrate with your existing systems and technologies 
• The ability to go beyond transactions and reward customers for other behaviors  
• The ability to deploy omnichannel campaigns easily and quickly  
• Real-time data and analysis 

Choosing the best loyalty app-building platform can be overwhelming, especially if you’re new to the search. Learning from some of the most widely used loyalty apps makes it easier to choose the platform you’ll build your own loyalty app in. Here are six examples: 

1. Starbucks 

Starbucks has one of the most downloaded loyalty apps, one reason being that customers can also use it to order and pay. Users receive points for free food or drinks when making enough purchases. 

2. Panera 

Panera’s loyalty app allows users to order, pay, and pick up their favorite food seamlessly. They make it simple to pay by integrating Google and Apple Pay, or users can add a credit card to make payments easy. 

Many consider Panera’s reward structure to be even more motivating than Starbucks’, and they even give you a free pastry when you sign up for the app. Not only does Panera offer customers rewards on items they frequently purchase, it also suggests similar items customers may like in addition to their usual order.  

Panera also offers MyPanera, which allows members to select their rewards from multiple options based on their preferences instead of being offered a single-preselected reward like most reward programs. As a result of its loyalty program, Panera found that more than half of Panera transactions in 2022 were from MyPanera members. Further, Panera found that MyPanera members visit more often and spend more than those who were not members of the loyalty program.  

3. Chick-fil-A 

Chick-fil-A's app stands out because the reward structure is based on total spend. That means users rack up points faster than other loyalty programs. This restaurant chain has loyalty tiers that offer better rewards, perks, and bonuses. Chick-fil-A's app also has the unique option to skip the line and order straight to your table.    

4. Dunkin Donuts 

Dunkin Donuts knows people don’t like waiting in lines. To capitalize on this, the restaurant uses its DD Perks app to order ahead and skip the line. Dunkin Donuts DD Perks also gives members a free gift card on their birthdays and their partnership with Idle-Empire also lets customers earn points by playing games and completing surveys. 

5. Chipotle 

The Chipotle Rewards program uses gamification to keep its customers engaged and happy. Customers earn badges for completing challenges. Like Dunkin Donuts, Chipotle also offers members a surprise on their birthdays. Chipotle also offers members to redeem rewards for merchandise in addition to free food.  

6. KFC 

KFC in the UK and Ireland wanted to gamify its rewards experience. To do this, they launched a new version of KFCs Rewards Arcade. The Rewards Arcade lets customers instantly win rewards by completing games. For every certain amount spent, customers would receive an invitation to play a 3D mini game to win 12 prizes. This increased KFC’s reward redemption by 40%. 

Benefits of Paytronix Apps 

Paytronix puts your restaurant in the palm of your guests’ hands. Expand your customer outreach and grow your loyalty program with timely promotions, responsive features, and an integrated all-in-one platform. 

Make your customers more engaged by sending targeted, personalized 1:1 messaging as well. Our app features include sending customized SMS, push and pull messaging, and geofencing.  

Give your customers a frictionless experience with Paytronix apps. Our tools seamlessly integrate with third-party food delivery apps and fast, easy ordering, payment, and pickup.

Integrating a Loyalty App 

Choosing an app that integrates with your existing systems and helps you meet your goals is critical. Once you’ve selected an app, plan your integration strategy. Decide how to connect your apps to your existing business systems, and note that this choice might require the use of APIs or reconfiguring your system.  

Before you begin the integration process, test the app to ensure it does what you need it to. Once you’ve integrated your app with your existing systems, monitor it to ensure that it’s still working as intended.  

Prioritize training your staff during the integration process. You won't meet your goals if your staff doesn’t know how to use the technology.  

Properly train your staff by: 

• Giving them plenty of lead time to understand the technology—at least a few weeks 
• Considering multiple learning styles—some people prefer written instruction; others prefer spoken guidance 

• Enlisting staff champions to help others understand the app’s benefits—this accelerates your success as a whole 
• Having support staff information easily accessible if needed—reduces downtime, which means more revenue for your business 

Promoting Your Loyalty App 

You’ve chosen your loyalty app provider, integrated it with your systems, and trained your staff. Now, it’s time to get your customers to use it. These four strategies will help get the word out and get your customers engaged: 

1. Use a landing page or site for your app: Take advantage of your existing site or create a landing page to let  site visitors know your loyalty app is available. Give your customers a look at what they’ll get when they download and use your app.  
2. Optimize your app in the App Store: Like SEO, app store optimization (ASO) requires using keywords to help your app rank. Including screenshots and videos of how your app works can help, too. 
3. Social media and/or influencer marketing: Most American consumers spend about two and a half hours on social media every day. Using your restaurant’s social channels can help get your app in front of them. Build awareness of your app and solicit feedback from users who wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to share their experiences.  
4. Email marketing: Tell your email subscribers about your app and allow them to download it. If you’ve created any lists of people who get pre-public announcements for your brand, be sure to prioritize them. 

3 Examples of Successful App Campaigns 

Once you’ve decided on your loyalty app technology and your offers and rewards, it’s time to launch your loyalty app and program. Here are some examples of successful app campaigns to inspire you.  

1. Starbucks 

Starbucks used gamification to encourage app downloads and user-generated content (UGC). The coffee brand promoted downloads by adding an inconspicuous CTA to download the app in their social bios. 

2. Zalando 

The fashion retailer added “Use App” buttons to its social media profiles. This method is effective because their audience is already checking out the brand’s social content.  

3. Warby Parker 

The glasses retailer boosted app downloads and usage by offering a value-add—a virtual try-on feature. This strategy was so successful because it alleviated a common customer pain point—not knowing what glasses look like when wearing them without otherwise visiting a storefront. 

The Future of Digital Loyalty Programs 

Data is already driving the future of digital loyalty programs. Real-time data-driven insights will influence customer engagement strategies. Brands will increase their use of AI to customize campaigns and rewards.  

Customers expect a seamless experience regardless of where they’re interacting with your brand. As a result, more loyalty programs will begin to provide omnichannel campaigns that give customers more consistent, rewarding experiences. 

The future of digital loyalty programs will go beyond rewards and points and focus on emotional loyalty, flexible redemption options, and interactive formats.  

Incentivizing Ongoing Adoption 

Incentivize ongoing app adoption by offering discounts on meals or free items for downloading and using the app. Keep users who downloaded your app engaged by providing new features and using in-app messages to communicate the latest offers and rewards. 

Ready to create a loyalty app for your restaurant that your customers will enjoy using? Contact us today to get started or check out our mobile app solutions.