

Primanti Bros. Wins Back Fans Post Pandemic, Thanks To Paytronix AI to IASM

Locals, celebrities, and especially local celebrities love Primanti Brothers, home of the Almost Famous Primanti Bros. sandwich. It’s grilled meat, Provolone cheese, French fries, a sweet-and-tangy slaw, and tomatoes — all piled high on thick-cut Italian bread. It's a Pittsburgh classic.
All things considered, Primanti Bros. weathered the first few months of the pandemic well. By early summer, the casual full-service restaurant’s most loyal fans had returned to pre-Covid visit frequency.
Even so, the brand was still seeing an unusually high number of lapsed guests — those who were not visiting at their typical pre-Covid regularity.
Using Paytronix AI to IASM, Primanti Bros. used visit data to identify which guests fell out of their regular sandwich-eating cadence. Those guests were then segmented and targeted in a campaign that offered them $5, $8, or $10 off their next purchase within seven days — no strings attached. A segmented control group received no offer as a means of comparing results.


As a result of the campaign, Primanti Bros. won its fans back. By the numbers, the campaign showed a:

“We knew that the pandemic was an opportunity to lean on our big value to drive fans — so we started offering bigger deals, better deals, and leaning more on loyalty than ever before. The results far exceeded what we were initially hoping for. We had strong reengagement. Not only did we win customers back — but those customers returned, continuing to visit subsequent times.”