Each year on March 14th, restaurants and convenience stores rally around one delicious food category: pie. An increasing number of savvy retailers rise to the occasion, with personalized marketing campaigns, clever promotions, and unique offers that drive engagement with both loyalty and non-loyalty guests.
If you love a good play on words (and a good pie), then “Pi Day” is the unofficial food holiday for you.
Pi, represented by the number 3.14 (and the Greek symbol π), stands for the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle. It is known as a “mathematical constant.”
It’s straightforward. Static. Unchanging.
Do you know what else is unchanging? My lifelong allergy to math. No offense to pi and its six billion known digits, but I’m not interested. When it comes to using pi as an excuse to eat pie, though…sign me up. And while I’ll never turn down a slice of cherry pie, there’s just something irresistible about a hot-from-the-oven pizza pie.
A recent Google study revealed that pizza is the most popular takeout food in 44 of the world’s countries. It gained its rightful place in the pie category in the late 1800s when Italian-Americans popularized the dish as “tomato pie.” Today, nearly six billion pizza pies are sold worldwide each year.
That’s the same number as the known digits of pi if you were paying attention earlier. Coincidence? I think not.
At Punchh, our growing number of clients that sell pizza have artfully embraced the popularity of “Pi Day.” In 2020, they collectively sold a staggering 548,000 pizzas on March 14th. This year, they soared past that number, selling nearly 605,000 pies.
Each year, Punchh brands like Blaze Pizza leverage Pi Day to drive loyalty participation and acquire new loyalty program members. Prior to the pandemic, their wildly popular $3.14 pizza offer was only available in-store. In 2020, they saw an opportunity to shift the promotion to their loyalty mobile app. They built even more anticipation for the campaign by pushing a reward into app users’ accounts that would not “unlock” until March 14th. In the two weeks prior to Pi Day, Blaze drove over 200,000 new loyalty app signups.
Convenience stores are also getting in on the Pi Day action. Casey’s, the 5th largest pizza chain in the United States, uses their mobile loyalty app to deliver personalized pizza and other food offers to customers while they are at the pump, incentivizing them to come inside the store after they fill up.
Online pizza orders also increased by nearly 10% this year, as did the number of brands offering curbside pickup and delivery options. Even as the world starts to emerge on the other side of the pandemic, it’s clear that consumers still want the choice and convenience of multiple ordering, pickup, and delivery channels. And when you combine those channels with an integrated loyalty platform that gathers data from each consumer touchpoint, you gain a complete view of your customers so you can lead them into a lasting loyalty journey with your brand.
Schedule a demo to learn more about how Punchh clients use personalized loyalty, offers, and engagement to drive higher sales and CLV.
Stay in the know. Subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletter to receive proven loyalty strategies, offer management techniques, and new trends in your industry. Sign up today!