Tony Roma’s Restaurants Q&A: Serving Local Communities to Create Customer Loyalty

Tony Roma's serves communityTony Roma’s is a cornerstone of the family-friendly causal dining industry. For more than four decades, it has served up a host of delectable dishes and drinks inducing its signature steaks and ribs. What started as a single Florida establishment has since expanded to over 150 locations in major cities across six continents to build brand loyalty with customers everywhere.

As Tony Roma’s continues its aggressive growth, Loyalty360 was fortunate to speak with Jim Rogers, Romacorp, Inc. CMO, about the exciting new direction the brand is taking, and what it means for customer engagement.

What does customer loyalty mean to Tony Roma’s?

Rogers: Loyalty is a very high priority, but it may not look like what loyalty looks like in other places. Customer Loyalty has many components. Loyalty pervades most of what we do. So our efforts are focused on what I call local relationships marketing and trying to build loyalty with the market that way. It is not just an app or a card. Loyalty is holistic. It is really understanding who our customers are, providing offers, and tracking what’s going on, and then getting out in the local communities, and driving connections with the brand.

How are you making these connections and building those relationships?Tony Roma's creating loyalty

Rogers: We have recently brought on Fishbowl and its Promotions manager tool to build our database of information and learn about our customers. Now we can make offers inside or outside the electronic channel. And we can track redemption, what they bought, frequency, who is coming in, and which offers are getting a response. We can also look at the ROI on individual offers, or on any pieces of direct mail, because the unique system codes allow us to track everything.

Using these tracking tools has been very useful because, as we go to events to showcase our food and do sampling and hand out vouchers, now we can see if we are successful in driving people into the restaurant. It is exciting for us to begin looking at that because it is different than how some things were done in the past.

Do you see Tony Roma’s having a standard loyalty program at some point?

Rogers: The challenge is that we have 30 restaurants in the U.S. and the majority of those are franchises. Then I have 120 outside the U.S. so we would have to work through a way to manage that. Given the dynamic of 32 countries and multiple languages, it will be a challenge to execute. So, yes, we do want to test something like that at some point, but I don’t know what it looks like yet.

What kinds of trends are you seeing in loyalty marketing across the restaurant industry?

Rogers: I see a lot of people going down the electronic path to have apps, and not having much success in the casual dining area. I see more success with loyalty apps and programs in the high frequency categories. The coffee shops, for example. Strategically, that makes sense. If I am going someplace a few times a week, then it is relevant. But if I am only going a few times a year, I am not sure that it is all that relevant. In the casual fine dining area, a lot of people trying to do it, but very few are having a lot of success with formal programs. People might sign up for these apps on their phone, but then delete it a little bit later. A lot of brands seem to be doing it just because everyone else is doing it.

How do you see your marketing focus change or your brand evolve going forward?

Rogers: We will continue to evolve. We are always looking at ways to engage and connect with the consumer and to drive loyalty. It may not be the standard loyalty program, but we will create great customer experiences in other ways.

One of the things that we have been trying to do is refresh the image. Because when you talk to people, they always talk about the Ribs, so that’s what we are trying to highlight. We are also trying to make the brand a lot more fun for everyone. So we have also launched a second brand called TR Fire Grill, which is really targeted at a younger demographic. We have already had great success with that in our one test area.

And from a planning and long-range digital assets standpoint, we have also redone the website dramatically and developed a website for the new brand. We are fixing a lot of things right now.

So the new TR Fire Grill is a way to engage the millennials?

Rogers: I think so. But both brands have their charm. The two are so completely different. The ambiance, the feel, the menus are completely different so we see them as coexisting. But I think we have begun to change the way some people think about the brand. We are getting a lot more interest and excitement in engagement with the current guests and the younger demographic. There is an opportunity here for us to penetrate the chef-inspired model that many one-off restaurants are doing. Our expertise will let us take what we know about cooking and grilling and smoking meats and vegetables, bring it to this new concept, and really hit a home run.

About the Author: Mark Johnson

Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.

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