Seeking differentiation in a crowded marketplace

Pie Five Pizza is a fast casual restaurant chain based outside of Dallas, TX, known for its ready-in-5-minutes customized pizzas and fun, quirky branding across its nearly 80 locations nationwide. Struggling to manage their underperforming “Circle of Crust” customer loyalty program on the Paytronix platform, Pie Five Pizza’s leadership team was eager to find a more flexible solution that would help them stand out in their competitive market space.

We needed program management and reporting tools that were quick and easy-to-use and didn’t surprise us with hidden fees.

“We needed program management and reporting tools that were quick and easy-to-use and didn’t surprise us with hidden fees,” explains Pie Five Pizza’s VP of Marketing, Christina Coy. With Paytronix, not only did her team grapple with a complicated user interface that lacked features they expected and needed to see, but they had to pay additional charges for customized reports, analytics, and client support. “There were a lot of inaccuracies in the reports we ran,” she continues, “and we were never alerted to any missed opportunities or best practices that might have helped us make a better success of our program.” Left more or less on their own to run reports and extrapolate on results, Coy’s team wasn’t confident in the reliability of their program data and didn’t know what was (or wasn’t) driving performance.

Delivering sophisticated, meaningful customer experience

When Coy discovered Punchh, she immediately saw the value in their cloud-based marketing platform and put their development team to work on a customized mobile loyalty app to serve as the digital home base for the “Circle of Crust” loyalty program. Its structure is simple: after the app is downloaded, guests earn one point for every dollar spent. Collecting 100 points earns a $10 reward, and no card is needed because it’s all tracked on the app.

And since each loyalty customer’s brand engagements and transactions are tracked, Coy has the customer behavior and preference data she needs to launch effective offers and marketing campaigns that drive sales. This is a huge improvement on the old program, which fostered a false sense of accomplishment: “We were increasing the size of our database only to discover that these people weren’t actually coming into the restaurant. Where was the revenue?” Coy asks.

Our loyalty program is a lot easier to manage with Punchh. It gives us credibility with our franchisees.

Coy, who describes the Punchh system as “amazing,” appreciates that she’s greeted by key performance metrics displayed in easy to read charts and graphs when she logs in to her dashboard. “Our loyalty program is a lot easier to manage with Punch,” says Coy. “It gives us credibility with our franchisees.”

What’s more, “We can share the management tools and best practices with franchisees,” explains Coy. “They are paying attention to the system and platform, getting in there themselves to reward guests with points. We didn’t have this capability before—and aside from giving franchisees more control, it’s freeing up so much of our time!”

Driving value for the long-term

From August 2017 to September 2018, Pie Five Pizza reported a 31% average offer redemption rate and a 30% increase in loyalty revenue. They’ve experienced a 70% increase in online ordering revenue and a nearly 6% average check lift. Additionally—and thanks to their app’s social and sharing features—the company has had a 173% increase in referred users with verified visits.

“Punchh has made a huge impact on our business…we are seeing areas where we can cut back on discounting and increase customer sales and frequency.”

Punchh has made a huge impact on our business… we are seeing areas where we can cut back on discounting and increase customer sales and frequency.