Changing seasons can be a steep challenge for restaurant traffic, with business slowing to a crawl during off months. This issue was especially prevalent at Grotto Pizza, a casual pizza diner that has been serving the East Coast with pizza and family style customer experience for over 50 years.
The family-owned business is home to a large number of locations on the beaches of Delaware, further exacerbating the up-and-down business trend. While beachgoers are more than happy to pack the parlors during the warm summer months, business declines considerably during colder seasons.
Searching for a solution to their customer engagement woes, Grotto Pizza turned to their loyalty program, powered by Paytronix. The brand developed a holiday promotion that would reward loyalty members with an extra 20% value on any Grotto Pizza gift card. There was a catch however; the cards had to be redeemed between the dates of January 1st and March 31st, essentially covering the peak of the chain’s offseason.
“The capabilities that Paytronix offers have been great for our gift, loyalty and discount initiatives,” Vinnie DiNatale, Grotto Pizza’s Director of Marketing, told Loyalty360. “The holiday bonus card program has allowed us to easily activate and distribute discount cards with guided restrictions. Before Paytronix we would give out additional gift cards as a bonus offer. As you can imagine this was a nightmare for accounting and we couldn’t evaluate the success of the program. Now with Paytronix, the program is measurable and drives traffic during a specified slower period.”
The results were staggering, and earned Grotto Pizza “Best Gift Card Campaign” at the annual Paytronix Loyaltee Awards. The promotion led not only to more gift card purchases but also, because the bonus was percentage based, customers bought larger amount gift cards in order to receive additional bonus money.
The chain also saw an overall increase in sales thanks to the offer. With an impressive 20% increase on 2015 total spend, and had already been averaging more than 20% in annual growth since implementing Paytronix three years ago.
For businesses that are subject to significant swings in earnings due to off months, Grotto Pizza serves as an example of a company who was able to overcome the hurdle and encourage year-round customer engagement.