As part of Radiant’s hospitality sales team, I am always hearing great stories about unique ways that our customers are using our technology and how they are succeeding with the tools that Radiant provides. Recently, there is one story involving Aloha’s marketing applications that really stood out to me, especially since the National Restaurant Association just reported that customer loyalty is a key business driver for many restaurant operators. Their study found that three-fourths of restaurant operators say that loyalty programs have helped grown business and 90 percent say that loyalty programs give them a competitive edge (click here to read the article). Our customer, McLoone Management, has an extremely compelling loyalty story that further proves the points of this study, and I thought other restaurant operators may benefit from what McLoone has learned.

McLoone Management is a table service restaurant group based in New Jersey, and they own and operate six restaurants with the goal of adding one new restaurant each year. In 2005, McLoone’s began using Aloha, and added the loyalty tool in 2007. With Aloha’s gift card and loyalty applications, McLoone developed its Premier Club program, which charges guests $25 to join, but the card comes preloaded with $20 to spend at its restaurants. By joining the Premier Club, members are offered several perks, such as preferred seating, half-priced bottles of wine, retail purchase discounts and $40 loaded back on their cards for every $500 spent, just to name a few.

In addition to its highly successful Premier Club program, McLoone uses Aloha for more than a dozen other local programs. For example, there are co-branded residency cards with patrons living in neighborhoods near restaurants, and other businesses use McLoone gift cards as incentives for people to try their services.

On top of all that the restaurant group already manages, they have also started selling their gift cards within local retail locations, such as Sam’s Club and Costco stores, which has proven to be extremely successful for the restaurant group. Overall, management says that their marketing efforts have become an extreme differentiator for their restaurants.

When I first saw some of the success McLoone has had with Aloha, I was extremely impressed. While I know the benefits of our solution and how it can help restaurant operators make more money, it is always amazing to her how specific customers are impacted. Just look at some of the impressive facts and ROI McLoone has achieved:

*They currently have 5,000 members in their Premier Club and average 1,000 new members each year.

*They increase revenue from their loyalty program by an average of 8.8% annually and are on target to reach more than $1 million in Premier Club revenue in 2010.

*They have donated 4% of revenues from the Premier Club back to customers in the form of rewards.

*In only 8 weeks, they sold $120,000 in gift card value at just 2 Costco stores.

More and more we are reading about the importance of loyalty and how it is a top priority amongst restaurant operators, especially in today’s challenging economic environment. It is for this reason that I wanted to back up the data we’ve been seeing with an actual success story from a Radiant customer who has continued to grow their business by putting a unique loyalty program in place.