Amid intense competition, grocers face a dilemma. They need to invest to drive more foot traffic — but doing so can threaten their already-thin margins.

Upside started solving that problem for fuel retailers nearly 10 years ago. Our marketplace’s personalized promotions find just the right point where the consumer is motivated to transact with one of our partners, and retailers earn incremental profit they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. 

We’ve since evolved into a multivertical marketplace, adding a strong mix of grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, and hardware stores over the years.

Of course, personalization and incremental measurement can solve that same problem for any brick-and-mortar industry — it’s just important to make sure the inner workings of the model fit the way each industry currently operates. Since 2021, we’ve been working to make Upside’s grocery product as effective as possible by listening, learning, and building alongside the industry experts who know it best. Their real-time feedback has powered our evolution — it’s driven more visits, more profit, and more impact.

If you haven’t looked at Upside recently, now’s the time. The product has come a long way — and it’s delivering results worth paying attention to.

Iterating with purpose

The vision of Upside is to empower all commerce to be more efficient and profitable via data, personalization, and payments. We envisioned the platform that way, but with every vertical we enter, we need to fine-tune the platform for the unique business environment of that category.

For that reason, adapting our product for grocery retailers wasn’t a simple plug-and-play. Fuel customers mainly prioritize price and convenience. As you know, grocery shoppers care about those factors, too — but they’re also weighing item quality, variety, and loyalty to specific brands. These things deeply impact their decision-making, and our product needed to reflect that to effectively change customer behavior in grocery. 

On an ongoing basis, we work closely with grocers to make Upside more powerful. Here are a few of the most impactful changes and the results they’ve delivered:

1. New ways to pay, more ways to redeem

Challenge: Our traditional app experience required our users to upload a photo of their receipt after checking out. It took multiple days to verify the transaction took place and issue cash back, which wasn’t the best possible experience.

Solution: Since some users prefer the traditional path, that’s still an option for them. But we’re also giving consumers more options for completing transactions, highlighted by Upside Pay. This new flow allows our users to pay for their groceries through the Upside app, earning instant cash back. 

Impact: Upside Pay is now available at more than 25% of the grocery stores on Upside, and that number is growing. At these stores, Upside users can receive their cash back instantly. Upside Pay also unlocks a new feature that we’re developing right now, where a user can apply their cash-back balance towards a transaction. For the grocer, those cash-back earnings can flow right back to them.

2. Loyalty & Upside

Challenge: In a recent Upside survey, more than 80% of grocery shoppers said they participate in loyalty, far greater than any other industry. For that reason, it’s important for our platform to not only integrate with loyalty, but actually amplify the positive impact created by grocers’ programs.

Solution: We introduced tools to promote our partners’ stores and drive sign-ups to their programs. Additionally, we adjusted our measurement methodology to account for “double-discounting,” taking proactive steps to protect margins. 

Impact: We don’t replace your loyalty program — we help it grow. For regional grocer Giant Eagle, 62% of the new or non-loyalty shoppers that Upside delivered were motivated to join its myPerks loyalty program. And because of Upside, these shoppers were now visiting 4x more frequently compared to their previous levels.

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3. Consistent offers across stores

Challenge: For grocers with multiple locations, our promotional strategies needed to support the health of the entire store network — not just shift traffic from one store to another.

Solution: We updated the way we serve offers to prevent bouncing. Along those same lines, we updated our measurement methodology to consider user spend across all your sites within a market.

Impact: Today, each user sees the same personalized cash back offer at all your stores within a market, so they’re not incentivized to choose one over another. That leads to a better user experience and a clearer incremental impact.

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4. Emphasis on lifetime value

Challenge: A single visit doesn’t mean much to a grocer if the customer never comes back. Grocers need to understand which shoppers return — and how much value they drive over time. But early versions of Upside measured results at the transaction level, making it hard to see the full impact of a customer.

Solution: We refined our measurement model to track customer behavior across your full store network and over time. It now continuously measures the cumulative lifetime incremental value of each customer.

Impact: This gives grocers a clearer view of how Upside builds customer habits and drives retention. In fact, transactions completed with Upside improve retention by 3.5x among new cardholders.

5. Custom measurement criteria

Challenge: No two grocers are the same — and neither are their shoppers. But early versions of our measurement dashboard used industry averages to track performance. That meant retailers didn’t always get an accurate read on the impact of Upside.

Solution: We shifted from a price-driven model to a behavior-driven model based on each grocer’s relevant criteria, including the impact of their loyalty program.  

Impact:  Today, we work with each grocery partner to define the purchase cycle of their customers and control group criteria. The result is a more relevant measurement methodology that reflects the way people actually shop.

Together, these changes don’t just improve the product — they redefine what Upside can deliver for grocery. What started as a promising expansion is now a proven profit driver, built with and for this industry.

From bold idea to undeniable impact

There was a time when grocery on Upside was an experiment, and early adopters joined on potential. Today, they’re reaping the benefits. Top-performing grocers on Upside see strong results:

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We changed a number of things about our fuel product to find success in this new industry. But one key learning in fuel has carried through to grocery: when we limit options available, consumers are more likely to consolidate their spend.

That’s why we offer exclusivity provisions for relevant retailers joining Upside’s marketplace. Those grocers aren’t just joining — they’re effectively eliminating nearby competitors from the platform. This strategy gives our partners a meaningful competitive edge, as they become the sole option for consumers using Upside in that area.

And that visibility goes a long way. Once a grocer locks in exclusivity, they gain access to millions of value-seeking consumers through the Upside app and also our broader network of gig economy marketplaces, banking apps, and fintech platforms. 

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Upside offers reach 35 million consumers in America — up to three times as many consumers as our industry peers. When retailers tap into our marketplace, they aren’t just protecting market share. They’re converting it into measurable growth: more visits, more spend, and more loyal shoppers before the competition even has a chance to respond.

Where we’re headed

The progress so far is just the beginning.

As we look ahead, we’re continuing to build — not in a silo, but in lockstep with the grocers who know this industry best. Together, we’re shaping what the next generation of brick-and-mortar growth looks like.

Here’s a look at what’s coming next:

• Building bridges: More than 40 million Americans speak Spanish as their primary language. We’re preparing to launch Spanish-language support in the Upside app to better serve these individuals, bringing our retail partners more transactions in the process. 

• A dashboard with deeper insights: We’re reimagining Upside’s retailer dashboard to give our partners the data they need to prove incremental impact and track performance over time. Suited for analytical deep dives or at-a-glance overviews, the dashboard helps retailers make smart decisions about their businesses. 

Retailers who built with us helped shape Upside into what it is today — a product tailored to grocery, tested in the market, and delivering real results. Those joining now are tapping into something even stronger.

What was once new is now proven — driving measurable profit, increased visits, and higher retention, all without adding operational complexity.

If you evaluated Upside in the past, we’d love to show you how far we’ve come. Get in touch with our team of grocery experts for a closer look.