Family sports pub chain Beef ‘O’ Brady’s is building a unified customer experience for pickup, delivery and dining in. By managing these many moving parts within a single platform (or technically, two connected platforms for ordering and loyalty), the customer data also comes together.
Whether ordering on a third-party app like UberEats or Doordash, or on Beef ‘O’ Brady’s mobile hub, customers will find greater consistency, along with relevant offers for their next online purchase or visit. There are currently 143 Beef ‘O’ Brady’s (affectionately known as “Beef’s” by the in-crowd) in 21 states.
Building a seamless customer journey
“We were looking for a seamless customer journey across all of our platforms,” said Heather Boggs, CMO for FSC Franchise Co., the parent company of Beef ‘O’ Brady’s and its sister company, The Brass Tap. “This included loyalty and menu — and when I say menu, that means the menus you see on beefobradys.com, but also on the mobile app and across our third-party partners.”
Beef ‘O’ Brady’s had some previous experience with the Punchh engagement and loyalty platform by software company PAR Technology. This year, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s began a partnership with PAR that includes implementing the Punchh loyalty platform and PAR’s MENU platform for ordering.
Having the menu ordering data centralized, and connected with customer loyalty data, allows the franchise to test limited-time-only menu items and promotions targeted at specific customer segments. It also means that customers experience a consistent and seamless experience. The company’s marketing team can see where menu items are a hit in a specific market. They can also troubleshoot if there is a hitch in one of their digital channels or with a third-party delivery partner.
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Loyalty, personalized deals and insights
“Loyalty programs are a big part of the restaurant business, so this allows us to build one-on-one relationships with customers,” said Boggs. “It really gives us a piece we might have been missing with our previous program, which is that data that we can get. It allows us to get those data insights, and personalize offers and rewards with individualized customers.”
Insights that inform personalized guest experience include customer behaviors, purchasing patterns and if the customers have kids, which can lead to relevant offers.
These customer insights come from all touchpoints where the customer engages with a menu, including online and on the mobile app. PAR’s MENU platform, when combined with the Punchh loyalty program, unifies the data for loyalty customers so Beef ‘O’ Brady’s can send those relevant, personalized offers to the right customer.
The insights are accessible by the marketing team through a dashboard on the Punchh platform.
“It gives us everything we need to know about our members,” said Boggs. “It actually goes into check-level detail.”
Servers at a specific location will ask on-site customers for a phone number to launch the loyalty experience which comes with the program, called Beef’s Rewards. This way the in-store experience mirrors the online experience, where customers log into their loyalty profiles or are given the option to sign up if they haven’t already.
Having unified data around each loyalty program customer also allows the marketing team to build campaigns and promotions targeting specific customer segments.
“I want to talk to the people who are moms or families in a different way than I’m going to talk to my regular who comes in and gets chicken wings and beer,” said Boggs. “The data can tell me the last time they came, how often they came, what’s their favorite item to order and things like that. It can allow me, when I’m putting together marketing campaigns, to target individual sets as best as possible.”
For March Madness, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s hopes to increase customer frequency through the program. Customers are offered a prize for making purchases during three or more March Madness tournament games.
Unifying a fragmented ordering environment
Restaurants, like other businesses, have to reach customers where they are. For Beef ‘O’ Brady’s this means a presence on third-party ordering apps in addition to its owned channels. This roster of third parties gets more complicated in some rural markets, where major delivery apps might not offer service.
Before the partnership with PAR, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s used a separate ordering platform, ItsaCheckmate, which would receive all orders from third parties and push them to the restaurant chain’s point of sale. With PAR’s menu platform, now all orders are integrated with the menu in a unified platform. This is possible due to PAR’s integrations with the ordering apps, most recently with Doordash.
“By integrating with PAR’s MENU Link, orders placed on DoorDash are automatically processed and synced with the restaurant’s POS system, eliminating manual order entry and reducing errors,” said Savneet Singh, President and CEO of PAR Technology Corp. “Restaurants can centrally control menu offerings, pricing and availability across platforms like DoorDash, ensuring consistency in the customer experience.”
“We were already partnered with DoorDash, so it was great that [PAR Technology] is also partnered with them — we just enhanced that partnership that we had,” Boggs said. “It’s been really good and seamless from that side of the business.”
“We’re able to manage the regular white-label online order offering, as well as all the third parties, all in one place,” said Jason Saposnik, vice president of IT for FSC Franchise Co.
Because the MENU platform is centralized, it allows the marketing team to build consistent menus and branding across all touchpoints, including third-party apps. The team can control product images and descriptions as well as pricing across all digital channels.
“The big benefit is the time-savings and efficiency that comes with configuring products and pricing and location availability (of products) — we can do that across all channels, all at once,” said Saposnik. “It also gives us a consolidated view of all those ordering channels, so if there were a potential issue with any of them, we are alerted to it right away without having to go to those third-party sites and portals.”
“Restaurants are dealing with disparate technology stacks, disconnected customer experiences, low operating margins and difficulty providing an excellent guest experience,” said Singh. “PAR Technology’s system directly addresses these pain points by providing a unified commerce solution with an open API designed for the restaurant sector.”
PAR Technology’s solutions are aimed at enterprise-level restaurant chains and multi-unit operators, according to Singh. Recent adopters include Hooters of America and Insomnia Cookies.
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