Quick-service restaurants looking to drive sales often turn to broad discounts or value meals in order to do it. These strategies usually generate a lot of buzz and get people through the doors to try the latest offering. 

While corporate teams and ownership groups focus on driving more transactions, franchisees often focus on maintaining healthy margins. This is where traditional discounting strategies often create friction. The trade-offs can be tough, so when priorities seem misaligned, how can all sides come together to find a beneficial solution?

Where other strategies can’t find middle ground, Upside threads the needle to help everyone win. We’re built to help QSRs profitably boost same-store sales, giving everyone exactly what they’re looking for.

Arby’s brings the meats, Upside brings the masses

Upside’s digital marketplace influences nearby users to visit our partner retailers with personalized promotions. These dynamic offers find each customer’s unique value point and present the individual with exactly the right amount needed to motivate them to visit Arby’s.

To date, Upside is working with leading Arby’s franchisees to win more transactions from new and infrequent customers. It’s working:

These aren’t estimates — these are real figures, verified by real transaction data. Thanks to our incremental measurement methodology, Upside can pinpoint the customers it influenced, and retail partners only pay for performance. Because of these assurances, Arby’s operators on Upside are seeing a 70% ROI — for every dollar invested, that’s $1.70 back. Upside isn’t just bringing foot traffic, but profitable foot traffic.

Upside’s one-to-one offers are both meaningful enough for the customer and profitable enough for the restaurant. These offers drive an increase in repeat transactions, with some customers transacting 3X more often.

Upside makes sense for Arby’s for three reasons:

• Right offer, right time: Upside offers are location-based and time-based. We put Arby’s restaurants in front of users as they actively make meal-time decisions.
• Accurate methodology: In order to measure incrementality, we use a test and control analysis. When you run large national campaigns that get more customers through your doors, those efforts will also reach our control group customers — ensuring that Upside doesn’t take credit for the other investments you’re making.
• Zero operational lift, no upfront costs: Win more transactions from new and lapsed customers without changing anything about how you operate your restaurants. Upside is business as usual, with profit like never before.

Franchisee, corporate, ownership: There’s something for everyone on Upside

Ownership groups, corporate teams, and restaurant franchisees want to see increased foot traffic and repeat purchases from returning customers without cannibalizing profit. Though value meals or one-size-fits-all discounts are surefire ways to win more customers, these deals often come at the expense of the franchisee’s margin. For that reason, they want ways to keep that foot traffic coming while protecting their profit on every sale.

So how do you balance this with corporate and private equity team's focus on the larger picture to drive customer lifetime value and brand equity?

With Upside, there’s no give-and-take. Everybody gets what they want.

An efficient, zero-risk way to win more engaged customers — you bring the meats, we’ll bring a line.

Get in touch with our team of restaurant experts to learn more.