How This Restaurant Operator Uses Blockchain to Reimagine Loyalty
Blockchain is making further inroads into hospitality, if the news from marketing tech firm Mobivity and fast-casual restaurant company Chanticleer is any indication. The burger chain operator and franchisor plans to deploy MobivityMind as the platform powering its cryptocurrency guest loyalty and rewards program. MobivityMind is a blockchain technology that manages both commerce and customer communications across brands.
Chanticleer Holdings’ brands include BGR (Burgers Grilled Right), Little Big Burger, and American Burger Co. Customers will accrue cryptocurrency for each meal purchased, currency that they can use toward future meals or trade with other consumers. The idea? Turning traditional rewards programs on their head and into something that gives the consumer control.
“We wanted to expand our existing loyalty program with something that really changes the way our customers can leverage their rewards; Mobivity Merit is real cryptocurrency, leveraging the same infrastructure and principles of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, and more, and will enable our customers to make use of their rewards in entirely new ways,” said Chanticleer president and CEO Michael D. Pruitt. “Use your Merit mined by eating at Little Big Burger to get a buffalo chicken sandwich at American Burger Co., or trade them with your vegan friend so he can get a veggie burger at BGR.
“And that’s just the beginning,” he added. Mobivity’s Merit allows brands to create one-time use rewards which can be redeemed across brands and traded with virtually no fraud concern by leveraging the decentralized blockchain-based cryptocurrency paradigm.
“We’re excited to see how consumers respond to the idea of getting real, transferrable, secure value in exchange for their loyalty to our brands,” said Pruitt.
Most loyalty programs create small, brand-specific data silos and a fragmented experience for consumers. Blockchain, coupled with the MobivityMind platform, can securely store transaction records across brands and allow consumers to build Merit “currency” that can be used as they go about their lives. Each transaction informs the brand, rewards the consumer and enriches the consumer’s persistent digital identity.
Consumers can take that persistent identity, including their preferences and habits, and leverage it across brands to get better, more personalized service. With MobivityMind, each brand owns the data about their interactions with a consumer, but the consumer owns the data about all of their transactions across all brands, stored in the distributed ledger of blockchain technology.
The two companies said they’ll begin the deployment of this new program beginning in mid-2018, and expect it to be fully deployed across all Chanticleer brands before the end of the year.
“It’s really exciting to be at the forefront of this kind of revolution in data, marketing and commerce, and to be in partnership with a proven technology innovator like Mobivity. You can see how this technology is going to fundamentally change the relationship between brands and consumers for the better, and we’re thrilled to lead the way,” said Pruitt.
