This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I thank you guys out there for joining us as I say each and every time you guys have lots of choices out on the internet to As to who to subscribe to and who to listen to so I appreciate you guys spending time with us Each and every week, today, it's going to be a really fun episode and Matt and I have been going back and forth.
We try to get this going, but, Matt, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience out there who might not know a little bit about you? And then we'll talk about what you get to do for a living
Yeah. Thanks so much, Jeremy. I know it's been definitely a few times. I'm happy to be here. I'm mad. I'm the co founder and CEO of Hey, we build this next generation loyalty software for a number of types of brands. And one of the areas that we've been really focused on and seeing amazing results is really in the restaurant and QSR space.
and, Matt, because you guys are a startup, why don't you go through the journey of how you got to hang? Because I think it's a cool story as to, the background as I, as we were prepping for the show. I was like, how the heck does a guy that was working in your career before get to the place that you are? So I think it's always a cool story to share with our audience.
And then we'll talk a little bit about why you think you guys are unique and can really solve some problems that others haven't already figured out here in this loyalty space for, for restaurants.
It's a long story, so I will keep it pretty short. out of college, I was working in finance at a bank and then a firm that made investments into a variety of private vehicles, through that did some investing into VC funds and met a lot of VCs and just was enamored by startups and the fact that, someone like myself who had a. Undergrad finance background and, had always had ideas myself, but never knew I could actually do anything like that.
And it was inspiring being out of San Francisco at the time, originally from Chicago, getting to see this happen in the real world. And honestly, just thought being a VC seems like the coolest job. And so I just learned so much about startups and entrepreneurship. To basically realize that I've had ideas my whole life and I can actually do something with myself. And the long short of it all is I quit that job with basically like half of a built product and idea and maybe 30 grand in the bank.
Probably, too early, but I'll worked out, and had, something in the live event ticketing space that was very, dear to my heart, as a personal passion, problem that I thought I could really sell for that took a lot of the dynamics of. the markets I would see as a trader at UBS and then a prop shop and made it much easier for consumers to buy tickets, see transparency to the market and really save money and time.
And so I quit that job to do that, which got to a place where we were selling like more tickets in our first market, the Bay Area at General Ocean Concert Venues, then the Ticketmasters and Step Ups of the World and Saving Fans tons of money doing it and raised some money, moved it down to Los Angeles, continued to build it out, got to a place, this is two years in where, We were really starting to see strong demand and getting tons and tons of users into venues.
And we're starting to build like a digital layer or social layer on top of these live events because we get thousands of people into a venue. And right as that version of the app was launching COVID hit. And basically took the business to, it went to zero overnight because you can't really create a live events business when there are no live events. And it was a tough moment for us. We were about 10 people at the time. Closed down our office. Reduce head count by 70%.
And next thing it's three or four of us in a room and just trying to figure it out. And we had some cash in the bank and started doing some other stuff in the virtual event world at a time where, artists and creators really needed help with, finding ways to make revenue and also connect with their users. And we had a lot of features or products from our live event product that would work for that.
The deeper we got with that, the more we were doing with artists around, virtual events and concerts and meeting greets and, drops. And a lot of those artists and creators also have brand deals. And so saw a lot more on the brand side and was working more closely with brands. And somewhere along that path, like a year later, saw this huge opportunity to really fix loyalty, which seemed like such an important thing at the time.
And, we'll go into it a lot more, but just in a world where acquisition costs have risen so much over the past few years. They're just need needed and still needs to be a way for brands to find more ways. Not so much to reduce acquisition costs, but actually instead find a way to get more value out of the customers that they do have. And so that's where Hang was born.
I love that story and I, I don't know that I've ever shared with you. So I've got two brothers, but one of them worked for ICM all through, which is a booking agency in LA. All through COVID
We've worked with them.
yeah, and, talking with Kevin, I actually just had lunch with him a couple of weeks ago, just talking to him about the COVID years and trying to get bookings go in and trying to figure out how to keep his artists fed ultimately at the end of the day, throughout that whole COVID period, I can't imagine what life would have been like for you guys, especially trying to sell tickets into venues that don't have any shows to sell tickets into.
So you got to figure out another way to contact those guests. And I guess with that, Matt, I'd love to just talk because the uniqueness, and even how the birth of this whole restaurant idea, you guys were engaged with the people that were engaged with the brand. So talk to me a little bit about why that was such a critical. Peace as you guys were going into food service and into restaurants, because I think all too often restaurants don't really know in an offline world who their consumer is.
And that's really where it ties into loyalty. So talk to me a little bit, how that, really that tie in ties into kind of the, the restaurant and food service, vertical as it related to, really venue management and guest management and, tying an artist to, to, to a consumer, that really is a, a parlay into how you guys are going to flip it to restaurants. Yeah,
that's a really unique insight that we honestly didn't have at the time. And now that you're connecting the dots, it makes total sense, but we got there a more roundabout way. And so for us, like We just had to do something.
We had some money in the bank, we had some technology, we had a team, it was either just, call it a day and shut it down or try to make something happen and at the time we had, technology for consumers and artists and, there is a place for artists to find ways to engage with our customers on the Internet and bring them some sort of joy and make money doing it. And candidly, I'm not the biggest fan of live streams myself or virtual meeting. Greets to these virtual experiences.
And I felt like they wouldn't be around forever, but had to do something. And it was cool, honestly, to get much closer with the artist. We've worked with ICM and a number of agencies and saw that firsthand. I think the hardest part with that type of business model it. Which is different than the restaurant world is there actually is no loyalty at all because you can expect we had big artists on the platform like Billie Eilish, who has, millions and millions of fans.
And the idea is you get her to come perform once she brings thousands of consumers and then they're going to be on the platform forever and they'll come for the next show in the next event. But it's just not how it works. They have loyalty to an artist, not to a platform. And that world, the artists of greater world is quite difficult because typically they are used to getting paid. It's very transactional. They get paid to do something and they move on.
And there just isn't as much loyalty there. And I think That's really different than amazing brands, especially restaurants where you're coming for the product itself and you're continuing to come back. And so what we saw was as we worked with more brands in conjunction with those artists, there was a big reason why those brands wanted to latch on to those artists because they needed to find ways to create more loyalty.
And again, like I'll move into restaurants in a second, but just generally a point I made already is that, over the last, 10 years, acquisition costs have basically tripled. they doubled over the last. few. and before you didn't really care about retention because you could just acquire a new user through a Facebook ad. And it was that simple and that easy. And what changes to iOS tracking and, the Facebook pixel, all these things, it's just become astronomically easy. More expensive to do that.
And so that's why brands shifted over to this model around really trying to find ways to offset that cost by just getting more value to the consumer. And historically oils has been a good way to do it. If you take that one step further, I think today's consumer has a very short attention span. And so it's hard to keep them.
And at the same time, it's become that much easier to create a brand, whether it be a Shopify store or restaurant than ever before, just because the technology is so much more available today to do which means that there's more competition than ever. And so it's just a difficult landscape for sure. I think, what birth from COVID was just such an increase in delivery for restaurants and historically, or even up to this date, even up to this point.
the vast majority of restaurants that use delivery apps, which is like a necessity, I think 30 percent plus on average will, of your orders as a QSR will come through delivery. You really don't know who that customer is. And so there's almost like a black hole. And so for us, like a big piece of pain is really finding ways to give full attribution to your program. back in the day, a four walls coffee shop or store, that was it.
It was very easy to attribute because everyone came to that one channel. Most loyalty programs are honestly still built that way, but today as a restaurant brand or QSR, whoever you might do, your in person business on a toaster square or some other system, you have merch and apparel and CPG on Shopify.
You have users posting on social media across all across for you and referring people different ways over text, and then you have this huge thing that is, some large percentage of business coming through third party delivery apps and honestly, most brands can only.
Attribute one of those and the number one most important thing to building a loyalty program and having at your base is being able to incentivize action and if you can attribute one user takes that action, then you're lost from day one. And so the number of brands have told us it's really amazing that you can increase the lifetime value of our customers is so great, but more than anything, we just want to understand what lifetime value is because currently we can't do that.
and I say it all the time on the show, historically in a four wall coffee shop, unless you were the manager and you saw Matt walking in and you knew who Matt was and I Had a ticker there, the offline transaction, which traditionally restaurants are an offline transaction because I'm walking up to a cashier. I'm walking up to a server. There's it's really challenging to tie that guest experience to the transaction, to see what even lifetime value is.
and what they did as COVID has accelerated the adoption of those things and people are more used to it. They, they're willing to log in, they're willing to give up that data. In order to get something. And so I'd love to go down that thread map because I am of the opinion.
I got into not an argument, but into a LinkedIn discussion the other day about why, there, there's an oversaturation of restaurants in certain vertical, certain areas, certain geos, and I'm of the opinion that the only way to win is to deliver to what your guest expectation is. Over and above to deliver unique experiences. And how do you do that?
You do that by knowing who your guest is and knowing whether that delivered delivering that guest experience created additional transaction, traffic, additional spend, additional, frequency. Can you talk a little bit about your philosophy on that map? Because I'm strongly of that opinion that says deliver.
Over and above what it is that you're doing, because if you're just in a sea of everyone else where it's 2 off for Taco Tuesday, you're probably not going to deliver on that same loyal guest to the way that most brands are looking to do today.
100%. I think it's the name of the game, right? And there is more competition than ever, which is why I think loyalty is so important today. And so just generally, Delivering great experiences, having a great product. It really is. It's awesome when it is unique, but if it's just high quality, that goes a long way. And then also just understanding who your user is and making sure that you're able to give them the thing that makes the most sense to them and make them feel seen.
One thing that we talk about in loyalty, I'm taking you back to loyalty a little bit, one thing that we talk about a ton is 30 years ago, loyalty was not about a discount, back in the day, it was that local coffee shop or restaurant business in your neighborhood that when you went there, it was the joy of that person behind the counter, knowing your face and your name and your order like that was so much more valuable than any sort of discount you can get.
And I think as the internet scaled commerce, it did so much for brands and restaurants where it gave them so much new reach and exposure. And scale, but at the cost of relationship. And now we're just a
of the cheers effect, right?
hundred percent. We use the cheers, we use the cheers analogy all the time. I've made some jokes about how we can get when we raise our next round, have have some commercial that or have some story for another time, but anyways, yeah, I think it's really interesting because that's so true. And I think for people, they do feel. That emotion. And in today's society, there's such a sense of this sense, lack of sense of belonging.
And I think people have made kind of blame technology for people not feeling as, people not feeling like they have the relationships that they once did. And I think like one thing that we think can help rehumanize.
loyalty and brand building is better loyalty because at the end of the day, if you're able to give that to a relationship or give that sort of feeling to a customer, like they know who you are, like you know who they are and what they like, that's just going to make them more likely to come back to you. it really did used to be personal and fun and exciting. People would have an allegiance to a certain restaurant because that's the one that knew them so well.
And I think now we are all just like pieces of data in this big sea. And as restaurants add more to their technology stack, they have all these disparate point solutions that can do this one thing really well, but they aren't context aware and they don't connect well. And that's your point around COVID, like on the order ahead side, sure, you now log in and you come to the restaurant and they have your information and that's great.
But on the delivery side, the Uber Eats is in the door dashes of the world. Their whole business model is aggregating demand for you. And they really actually aren't that interested in giving you that data. And so now you have a customer who comes to your location twice a month, and they might get delivery twice a month, too. But all you can see is a first name and a first class and, sec. All you can basically see is their first name.
And at that point, it's you can't actually connect those two pieces. And as a result, you can't really understand what it's in value, who your user is or what they are.
Yeah. and I'd love to talk a little bit more about the, this piece, Matt, because I think that when people think of loyalty, I think there's two coffee brands that, are one's not quite national and obviously Starbucks has just killed it. And years ago, those frequent coffee drinkers that stop by on their way to work every day. The baristas knew who they were.
I know, the guys at Dutch brothers are world renowned for having your coffee made before you get up to that window, but that's a high frequency. But there's very few other businesses that are that high frequency, a regular casual dining restaurant, a fast casual restaurant, even a fast food restaurant. You can't eat McDonald's six days a week. You really can't, even if, I guess you're, you could, but most people don't. And so because of that.
Giving the staff the capability digitally to know that Matt's coming in or that Matt's here, is a critical piece to allowing them to have hospitality, which it is the hospitality industry. And so talk to me about how technology can enhance that experience for the staff member when it's not a high frequency like a Dutch Bros or a Starbucks where they see the same person every morning.
Totally. I think a lot of those businesses. Are they become what they have purely because of order ahead? If you weren't ordering ahead through this app, you wouldn't even see the loyalty experience. And so when you think about brands that maybe don't have as much like an order ahead type model, what are they supposed to do? And so I think these are things that we were debating all the time.
And so as part of hang, we really have these kind of three core areas that we think are super differentiated in each one of them. Should, be bought by a brand and is, will be worthwhile, but when you put all three together, it creates this magical experience for the customer and thereby helps the business and to your point, or your question, I think one of them is really specific to that and I'll go through that right now. can happily talk about all three of the other two as well.
one piece is that, for these businesses at the end of the day, technology can do so much for you. Like I said before, As the internet scale that kind of created this situation where people don't have that personalized relationship. And the truth is, this has seen so much to the fact that loyalty programs across the board from the biggest Starbucks and Dutch brothers down to your local shop, if they have one, they're not personalized at all.
It's the same cookie cutter experience over and over again. I would say just generally you show me any loyalty software program and I'll basically be able to tell you why they're, why it's the same as everything else that you see. And one of these pieces, again, is just the fact that These programs are really one size fits all. I could go to one of these massive brands every single day and get a coffee. You can go every day and get a croissant.
But we always get the same reward and that just makes no sense. We're different people. And so with where we've gone to technology at Hain, we are connecting to all of these different sources of data and as a result, have a large model that we can run machine learning on and truly hyper personalize the experience to you as a consumer and give you something that we know that you're going to like, or you're going to want based on prior purchase history.
Based on what you're doing in the app or experience and moving forward based on what else you do, moving, the app. And so as a result, we can actually be really smart about getting people rewards that they want. And what's funny is Redemption rate, increasing redemption rate of rewards is the number one driver of value in any loyalty program. yet the average redemption rate across all loyalty programs outside of credit cards is only 15%. can't do it.
And so how do you find a way to increase redemption rate? Because it's the best way to get customers to come back, buy more from you, engage more with you, be more excited about your program. And what we found is that by increasing the personalization of a program and giving users words that they want, you can actually greatly increase redemption rate.
Beyond getting users to come back more often, This also, again, gives that customer a feeling of home and a sense of belonging because it feels like you know them. And the third piece is that it's wild the number of times a brand giving out a, the same reward to everybody. That reward in many cases might be more expensive than the thing that you, Jeremy, want. Because what you want is different than what I want.
And so when you actually can personalize a program, whether you have five users or five million, each of them can have their own experience. And it creates a benefit on the cost side, but also creates a benefit on the relationship side.
and I think everybody's expecting it. the thing that I try and remind people and, go log out of your Chrome browser and try and browse incognito. Your web experience is very different. Your web experience, if you were to go on your coworkers, Facebook page is very different than your Facebook feed is. Amazon same thing. Every once in a while, I'll sit down at my wife's computer and I jump on Amazon to buy something. I'm like. What the heck is going on?
Yes. The search bar is still at the top, but everything else in that experience is very different. But for whatever reason, we think that loyalty is a one size fits all. Why do you think we're in that place, Matt, with this? Because I think retail hasn't figured it out. Quite frankly, fuel hasn't figured it out. Grocery hasn't figured it out. It's this points based system. It's this dollar spent based system and it's a discount to get you back in, or it's a, it's an offer to get you back in.
why do you think that, that people haven't gotten to that same level that e commerce brands have gotten to with the way that they're engaging with their guests to make it important to them? What do they value? For me, I value being able to sit down with my four kids and my wife. A whole lot more than I do $10 off my check. Because you know what? The 30 minutes that I have to wait for a table is only gonna make for a crappy meal experience versus getting sat right away.
I'll pay $10 more to do that. So if I had a choice to get a seat versus to get my $10 discount, for me, the $10 isn't worth it. Whereas somebody else, the $10 might be worth it. And the 30 minutes in the lobby is not a big deal. So why do you think that restaurants and really retailers, offline retailers, haven't gotten to that place where they're totally customizing? The engagement with our guests, or
hasn't got there either. It's basically the entire world from what we've seen, and I couldn't agree more. And we work with brands across, the board between there's a huge focus on restaurant QSR, but we also work with a couple multinational enterprises as well as Ecom and retail too. And what we found is that it's all stuck in the past. You can show me any program. Across any sort of vertical and it's basically the same thing, which is what you said.
Super transactional spend money, earn points, eventually get a reward. And the fact of the matter is like so many of the restaurant tech does lag. So you still have these punch cards, whether they be digital or even still physical. And so I couldn't agree with you more. Even those tables like. That actually doesn't cost the brand anything. So why not do more of that? what we found is that, so at the day, like that experience is always the same.
And for a general, for the general consumer, after they've been a part of 20 loyalty experiences that weren't valuable, why are they going to join the 21st one? It makes no sense. 80 percent of users fall out of that kind of earn funnel before they even have a reward. Nobody understands what points are, you get this
they sign up to get the initial reward. and then they bounce and they're in your loyalty program, but they don't do anything with it. I'm sure you guys see that
Yeah, totally. And so so much of the use, if it takes you many months to level up enough to actually see a reward, then just it's worthless, right? Because if you have points that you never use them, then the points mean nothing and they're not going to drive you towards an action. And so honestly, the category that we've seen that's been really great at driving retention and excitement and progress is not in the brand world at all or the restaurant world. It's free to play mobile gaming.
In mobile games, you level up in seconds and minutes, not weeks and months, and you get dopamine hits through animations and rewards that are actually valuable and usable in the game that can make you better at the game, not just points, right? I'm a user of Starbucks as well as the program. I'm a user of United Airlines. It's just me and a brand and a game. It's all the customers. Playing together and competing against each other, it's a community. How do you bring that together?
And the last piece is the vast majority of loyalty programs today really do run up against margin. You only have so many discounts to give away. And as a result, you're in this situation where the value isn't great. Games are amazing at creating reward sets that have a high perceived value to the consumer. But a very low cost. Things like unlocking a new level that feels like you're special, and a part of this, it's costing nothing. digital apparel, community status.
the restaurant example is a good one where it's like giving a preferred table or moving someone up that actually costs them nothing.
or even
seat on the airplane.
Like people, I'm like, why don't people not give out free merch for their loyal customers? Cause now they're going to go out and advertise for you by wearing the shirt or the hat out on the street. that's one
That's a great point.
yes, it costs you something, but you know what, now you've got free advertising. Cause now I'm wearing the hat from the coffee shop. Down the road and people go, Oh, what is that? Oh, I went there that one time. That place is great. And you're going to be now top of mind. I don't understand why it's, 10 off or 5 off instead of these other things that are going to ultimately help your brand be better.
There's so many things that even beyond that, and that's a great point because there's an acquisition piece there that really costs nothing. people love getting the upgrade on a plane. you only get the upgrade on the plane when someone wasn't sitting in the seat. So it costs them nothing. The one that I think is interesting for, old school loyalty with restaurant brands that crushed it was McDonald's Monopoly.
When you have, for McDonald's Monopoly, I think it was their best quarter every year that they did it. The user, so many people would get Park Place. When you have Park Place, you're halfway to becoming a millionaire. All you need to get is BoardWalk, and you start going on Zillow and searching the house you're going to buy, and you have this amazing day or week of thinking that you're going to become a millionaire, and that cost them zero.
And so how do you create these experiences that like build that sense of joy and kind of deepen that relationship, but without being at the cost of the restaurant. And so we've been doing that in a number of ways. Like the other piece I think is really interesting is like the equation for loyalty is so simple. It's benefit minus cost equals action. The restaurant needs to be worth my time and effort to get there and the cost of the food. And if it is. I go there, right?
And so when we think about loyalty, we think about a coffee shop or sit down restaurant, whatever that's four blocks from you. And we think of having the same exact one, one block from you. And the costs are the exact same. Everything's the same. But because of the loyalty program, you walk the extra three blocks. And to do that, the experience needs to be valuable, easy to understand, and visceral. It can't be points anymore.
And so one thing that we've used from gaming that's worked really is this mechanic in gaming that's called a loot box, which is basically like the number one driver action in games where when you beat the level, when you come back to the app, it's in social apps, too. when you take this action, you get this little box and it's like a present and you open it and it explodes and it's one of five to a hundred different benefits.
It's like a slot machine and we found that sort of like visceral action where you're actually getting a real reward. Every time, every time I buy this coffee, every time I sit down this restaurant and pay, I'm going to get a reward. And the more I spend, the bigger it gets. It's something that just like really resonates with the consumer.
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Control the kitchen chaos with Uh, restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer while maximizing your staff's time. The solution can be provided at no upfront costs. If you want to learn more, please check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997. I love that. Matt. I know we talked pre show about talking about one of your guys success stories.
I'd love to, to have you tell the story of, your, the Boba connection and kind of, talk to me a little bit about how you guys entered into that engagement with them and really what the ultimate results are for that brand.
Yeah, definitely. So Boba guys, over 20 locations across L. A., New York and San Francisco, really amazing team, very tech forward group. Really, they're on square today. They wanted to enhance their loyalty program or actually build it out. They had something in the past, but we wanted to like, rebuild this kind of new form of loyalty. We were connected to them and, piloted it at one location for a month or two. And many months later, it's been really.
Across a number of locations and live at every one of their locations in the US this, now. And so with that, again, a lot of the things I'm talking about is exactly what we're doing for guys, which is creating an experience that is much more visceral, exciting, and, worthwhile for the brand and their consumer. And so with that program, it actually goes into what I was just saying.
They use this mystery gift or digital gift make, mystery box mechanic, where every single time you come to Boba guys. You get a branded box And if, if you spend more, it's bigger. And if you open it, it could be any number of things that range from, it could be a discount, it could be dollars off, it could be a call with their CEO. It's any number of experiences in between.
We have a puzzle piece mechanic where if you get one puzzle piece, you don't get anything, but once you get all four puzzle pieces, you get a better reward. Stuff like that. And so just making it fun and exciting. What we found is By not relying on the old school point system, this actually drives tons of excitement and understanding for that consumer, because they know every time they go there, they're going to get that box.
In fact, if you don't open the box and you come back, the box actually doubles in size. And this is something in gaming called seed planting, where now The user feels like they made an investment. And what happens is, from a consumer perspective, they have a box that's 2x. Next thing they know, they've come five times, and the box is 5x. So they're getting 5x of the reward, but they've taken 5x of the action to get there. So it's a win for both Boba guys and the consumer.
We found that this works quite well. the program itself has a lot of people. They, a vast majority of their users are now in it. and it's been performing quite well. The ROI on the program when accounting for, both costs of software and cost of rewards is like between 7 and 8x, which is incredibly profitable. And they definitely give more rewards than your traditional program. the general, I think, idea across loyalty is oh, it was always buy 9 get 1 free, so we can't give any more rewards.
But the truth is You can get more awards because getting 15, 85 percent of something is better than getting 100 percent of nothing. And so we've seen incredible ROI across this program. At the same time, the traditional loyalty, like metric or way to think about measuring a program is by taking users who are in a program. And comparing them against your users who are not in the program.
And this is pretty standard across like very, anyone from the Baines and McKinsey's of the world to these massive kind of loyalty products within large, QSR restaurant companies. We believe that's, that isn't the best way to think about loyalty. Cause you're essentially taking your best customers and putting them against your worst, but people who are in the program, many of them are tourists, they're one time users versus your good customers will join.
And so it's already this like unfair, self selection. type of situation if you're doing it that way. Again, the best programs doing it that way will show like a 25 percent increase in spend for those users in program. The way that we try to think about loyalty is actually taking users who are in a program and comparing them against themselves before they join the program. Totally apples to apples, same user.
When we do that, we're seeing between 50 and a little over 60 percent increase in user spend for users in a program, which is like incredible and the best stats we've seen out there where we're actually showing that we can change. user behavior in an incremental way. Loyalty needs to be incremental.
If you're, if you already come to the store a ton and you already, dine at this restaurant a ton, and we're just going to give you rewards and you're going to go the same number of times, it's meaningless. It's actually a cost center. So the way that we try to do this is make sure whether you come five times a month, And now you're coming seven, becoming one comes a month, and now you're coming to that. We're actually driving incremental returns. We have stories and case studies that are wild.
Like this one person who hadn't been there in two years comes for the first time, opens that first box, has this joyous moment. And over the next 15 days, they come back 13 times. And we see that time and time again,
Yeah, and I think that's, these, this is part of why I asked you the question Matt, because I think it's a lot of people think of it as a coupon program, a discount program, but at the end of the day, you're driving those customers that would come in any way to come in more and, or to spend more on the behavior that they would have spent.
Anyway, the flip side of that, that I'd love for you to talk about before we close out for our time is what do you guys do with the data and how is the data and the enriched data of when they're engaging with that truly able to make a difference for that brand so that they also know the flip side of that guy that came in, 13 times in 15 days and then ghost you for the next 30 days. Talk to me a little bit about what that looks like versus that person that's normally and he's there once a week.
He always comes in on Mondays on his way to the gym or whatever else. Talk to me a little bit about how the data can be used to drive additional frequency, additional behavior and additional brand behavior, not consumer behavior.
totally. And on average, across all of our programs, we're seeing like a 70 percent increase in incremental spend on a per user basis. So it's, and then basically seven to eight X across the board. Boba guys is no different from any of our other programs. And because of these kind of three core concepts, we're able to drive incredible value.
And one of them is what I talk about, which is like better engagement and more fun, exciting ways to earn and be rewarded, where we've even added a number of mini games that we're rolling out that you can play for being a part of that brand. one piece is just personalization and hyper personalization where we give users the rewards that they actually care about.
And the third piece is what you're talking about now, which is true attribution and an omni channel approach where we can catch that user wherever they are. And, I'll touch on that for a second, then come back to your point, which I think brings it all together, which is the, with that, it's as I said before, so many loyalty programs are just built around that one core function.
So you use a POS system, you use their kind of traditional program, which we're partners with a lot of the POS systems and they push us forward all the time. But, If it's just within that one POS system and your brand does sell merchandise or a CPQ product on Shopify, you're getting none of that. you might want to promote a new location, a new product, just get friends to find out about the stuff.
And so getting users and incentivizing them to post on social media is so valuable in today's world. But again, that traditional program can't do that. Or even just referral, like we've had some interesting referral moments for both the guys and other brands where. We can incentivize users to tell their friends, and you can't really track that in a traditional system.
And the last piece is, from what I can tell, we are the only platform in the world currently that can actually attribute orders on Uber Eats, DoorDash, all these third party delivery platforms. And in having that, basically two things happen. One is when your customer now shops on one of those platforms, they're thinking of you because they know when I choose this restaurant out of whatever thousands of restaurants, I will be rewarded and I will earn.
The flip side is the brand now has enriched data because now I can see that Jeremy comes to my restaurant three times a month in person. But he actually also orders delivery twice a month, and having that complete set of data, a brand can do so much more to know about you, basically to learn about you and be able to target you with the right offers and promos and experiences, at the right times.
And so by having kind of these three levels on one side, better engagement mean better engagement and more engaging features. That means more data on who you are. on the other side, we have a more robust set of understanding of you between social media, in person, online, third party, and in doing so, what that will allow us to do is really hyper personalize the experience for you, so that now we know when to send Jeremy what offer, through what channel, at what time of day.
And if you do lapse after those 15 days, how are we going to bring you back? we've had a number of customers where because we can look at the data in this interesting way, we'll see that you are very similar to other customers and they all like this other product that you've never tried. And we'll serve it up to you. we have a customer at a different fast growing burger brand who had gotten a burger and fries basically every time they'd gone.
Based on our system, we knew that they would like the new Brussels sprouts that we're at, that we have, that brand had launched. And so the next box that they got, they had the Brussels sprouts in it. And the next time they came back, they used that free item and they tried the Brussels sprouts. And the next five times they went, they ordered the Brussels sprouts.
And so there's really interesting ways not only to help personalize that experience, but also introduce new products to your customer.
I'm going to ask one last question before we wrap up and let people know how to get in touch with you. Talk to me a little bit about employee recovery or not employee guest recovery. So as I've talked with executives in restaurant brands, as people have gone both online, third party delivery, first party delivery, getting the right product to them at the right time is one of the biggest challenges and the number one complaint that restaurants are getting.
oftentimes is about, the salad dressing didn't come in my salad and now with third party and with first party and with dine in, knowing that I was there five times a month and then I went to nothing figuring out how to recover from that guest. I might not have ever complained to the manager. I may never have posted a Yelp review. I may never have posted on Google to say what a bad experience I had, because you know what? I was a loyalist before, and then I just got tired of it.
I talk to people all the time about Chipotle, fantastic food, great brand, but a lot of people struggle with the quality of what gets into the bag or into the burrito or whatever else. And so they stop going and they just a trip and they go to a different brand. Talk to me a little bit about how a product like Kang could really help in aiding in that guest recovery. If in fact they've gotten to a point where you've had a bad experience and now we need to re engage them.
Yeah, I think it's at the base of our program and setting up in a way where if that is to happen, we can bring you back. And so we do incentivize a lot of brands, like for one. We have, an Apple wallet pass feature that's totally free of charge for any brand that works for us. So if you've ever, like when you go to the airport, it just knows that you're there and you get a little notification, you click it and you have your ticket right there.
We have the same, a similar feature where we can incentivize you upon signups, you download that. And now, even if you're not going to go in the restaurant, anytime you walk past it. Come near it, that pulls up and it, and so that kind of reminds that consumer that they're in this program when they get there. But in doing that, even if you don't have an app, what it also has a brand view is in app notifications to your consumer. So it's one thing, like we have full texting in place.
You can do that. And we've really AB tested a ton of different texting experiences to create offer sets that are valuable to bring back a customer, but we found that native. Notifications or in app notifications are just far better. And so just by having that feature, even without having an app, we can easily. Notify a customer in a native way that will undoubtedly get their attention.
We also do progressive web apps, which are mobile apps that you can just download directly from a website and are super easy to use. And if you do that, you have an app notations as well, and that's free of charge. You can even build an app for a brand free of charge too. And so I think like just having native notifications and being able to catch a user where they are is a really helpful way because the first step in getting them back is just getting their attention.
in email, this is a thing we've got to where we have with a ton of brands, we're doing no outbound and we're just going to do outbound, emailing for BD and sales, and it all starts with the subject, you have to get their attention. I think the other piece is just the way that we built these programs. We try to create the rewards.
And the earn opportunities and the progression loop in a way where it is so easy to understand and so this run so valuable that we have jumping off points to bring you back because we can make rewards expire sooner or we have ones where, it's just the experience has felt more valuable to them once they're in it, so they don't want to lose out on it. And so I think that's another piece that just like building from day one in a way that is more, exciting and fun, but also seemingly.
More, easy to understand for the consumer is going to be much better at bringing them back versus this points balance of 17, 342 points that I have no idea what that's going to get me.
I love it. I love it. Matt, how, how do people get in touch with your team? How do people learn more about what it is that you guys are doing and, and engage? I'm a brand out there and I'm like, dude, that guy is brilliant. I hate what I'm doing now or I have nothing now. How do they engage with you and learn more about what, what you guys are doing and how it might benefit them?
Yeah, definitely. just to say a lot of people think I'm this like big points nerd and I'm just like, all these oils programs. I'm actually not in very many at all. I use very few of them. And the whole point of this company is for myself and other people like me who have seen no value in loyalty programs and our ability to give a program to the world and to brands that give to those types of people, the average person, to make it worthwhile to be in a loyalty program.
And I think like we've really been able to prove that with Boba guys and a number of other brands. You could find me. I guess the best place to find us would be at just hang. com. If you want to check out our website and drop us a note there and we'll be in touch. we are on Twitter at hang loyalty, and then I'm on a LinkedIn as well. And I've been posting a lot about loyalty, especially in this space. And so feel free to, to add me there too. Max Mullen.
Thank you so much for educating our audience. I love what you guys are doing. I'm in full bore in agreement with you that the one size fits all method that people have done for so many years is not valuable anymore. And the customization is critical to differentiating your brand. And quite frankly, if you're not doing it, somebody else that's the competitor next door is doing it.
So you better be on, you better be on, on point and make sure that you guys are delivering value to your guests for what they're looking for. So thank you for educating our audience to our audience, guys. I know that you guys have got lots of choices. So thank you guys for spending time. If you haven't already subscribed to the newsletter, please do so restaurant technology guys. com. We only send out once an E one email a month with all of the podcasts.
and if you guys have anybody that you guys would want to hear on the show, please let me know, Matt, thank you so much. And to our audience, make it a great day.
Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.