How Chick-fil-A Can Use Loyalty Points to Enhance Repeat Visits

Chick-fil-A, famous for their delicious chicken sandwiches, has been on a tear lately. Reports have noticed that Chick-fil-A is the absolute winner in terms of store sales. Business Insider reported that the average Chick-fil-A franchise makes nearly $8.7 million in sales, in some ways making it comparable to fashionable stores like Apple, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany’s.

Chick-fil-A has been open to technology innovation for years. Most recently, in 2022, Chick-fil-A even filed trademark applications for the Metaverse and digital collectibles. It is likely a first sign of things to come.

Chick-fil-A has built a truly loyal following. However, Chick-fil-A has a loyalty program that is fragmented and store-specific. In Canada, only a handful of stores offer point collection, and all the points are centrally stored and redeemed by the store. Since all the franchises are independent businesses and some Chick-fil-A customers are frequent travelers between countries, such as the US and Canada, it makes sense to use the next-generation technology that Chick-fil-A has been thinking about.

By embracing the blockchain and digital collectibles, Chick-fil-A can enable whole new experiences that can make loyalty and points a truly interactive experience.

Unify the store experience   By unifying the store experiences to provide collectibles, Chick-fil-A can add gamification scenarios, such as providing a unique collectible at each store, thus encouraging to go out and explore other locations, or enabling trade to collect all the locations. As the stores are often situated in iconic or interesting locations, these collectibles can highlight these neighborhoods and showcase landmarks.

Create a new economy   Loyalty points and gift cards often go unused, and trading them is either hard or just simply impossible, adding to the frustration of customers. According to a report by Albuquerque Journal, published by Yahoo News, 47% of all Americans have at least one unused gift card, voucher, or store credit, citing a new survey conducted by Bankrate. Among these, the average value is $187 per person, which adds up to $23 billion nationwide.

There’s a unique opportunity to enable customers to trade, swap, gift, or donate these loyalty points. For Chick-fil-A, which closing in on $20 billion in sales, this can represent an additional boost to earnings, by facilitating these transactions. Digital collectibles are powered by blockchain technology, so there’s state-of-the-art encryption and security tech built right in. Often, points earned represent about 1-2% of the purchase price, meaning about $200 million is flowing as points to customers' hands, assuming everyone participates in point collection. If customers trade these points frequently, then the total traded volume can be multiple of these points. Companies such as Apple have shares that are traded the multiple of the lofty valuations, so $200 million in annual points can have a volume of $400-800 million per year, from which Chick-fil-A can charge a fee to facilitate a transaction. With time, this opportunity only gets larger, as additional perks and incentives are introduced.

Of course, for Chick-fil-A to implement the whole roadmap it would require time and commitment. However, for a small business to get started and feel the benefits of digital collectibles in their environment, it is possible to get started with Sociables and add more tools and achievements over time.