Survey of BIS QSR VIPs

1. What has been the biggest marketing
challenge you have faced in the last year?
● Attribution of sales results to actual marketing efforts. We do
so much - could everything contributing to sales success, or is
it really just great ops? So many platforms, so much data, no
platforms have the same common denominator and each
data set is parsed so many different ways it is hard to
interpret.
● Gaining any sort of ROI out of influencer marketing. It just
isn’t there - so we’ve stopped trying to work with influencers
and refocused our efforts towards our own social
ads/boosted content instead.

2. What has been the biggest marketing
challenge you have faced in the last year?
● Setting clear objectives and measurement for cross-
department teams to follow and report on.
● Related to many digital media initiatives, and also third-party
delivery, a challenge top-of-mind has been trying to
determine what incremental sales are being driven through
these channels. Not always being able to have some sort of
control group with campaign testing makes it challenging to
prioritize opportunities, especially if budgets are limited.

3. What has been the biggest marketing
challenge you have faced in the last year?
● Budget to allocate to digital media buys. TV, streaming and
mobile ads can get costly without measurable results.
● Finding the right balance of our campaign for obtaining new
customers and customer retention.
● For us, it remains finding ways to stay top-of-mind with
consumers with very limited budgets.

4. What has been the biggest marketing
challenge you have faced in the last year?
● Technology and all systems working together so that we can
lead a potential customer from marketing efforts through all
tech channels to finally make a purchase in the digital space.
● Increased competition and continuing to find ways to stand
out and connect with your customers.

5. What has been the biggest marketing
challenge you have faced in the last year?
● Maintaining our relevancy as a brand and maintaining relevancy as a category --
"Sandwich Relevancy," if you will. We are seeing share being stolen by Chicken,
Mexican, C-store, Grocery/Big Box Retail and, to a lesser extent, QSR burger. if
you can get a quality sandwich on every corner or you can easily make one at
home, how do we make a restaurant trip for a sandwich relevant again? We are
taking a comprehensive look -- from menu, to product development, to media
placement, creative and Loyalty -- at how we make a trip (or click, or tap) to us as
compelling and relevant as it was before.

6. ● Talent improvement/salaries and traditional media spending
● Balancing out the budget across paid social and paid search. We’re
seeing more ROI out of our search media than social. Social is good
to promote LTO’s, but for overall brand awareness and driving in-
restaurant traffic – search is performing better.
● Increasing allocations to digital media by 5-10% have been the
biggest, most consistent change.
Where have you seen the biggest shifts in your
media/marketing spend in the last two years?

7. ● The biggest shifts have been towards our Facebook Advertising
Funnel. We recently saw that we had a return on our ad funnel,
basically starting off with brand awareness which starts with our
Blogs, ties in some FAQs about who we are, which then flows to our
website, to promo codes, to abandon carts, to lost customers.
● More media spend and public relations. Trying to shift as much as
possible into working media and less into production.
Where have you seen the biggest shifts in your
media/marketing spend in the last two years?

8. Where have you seen the biggest shifts in your
media/marketing spend in the last two years?
● While we haven't had major shifts, we are spending more on
digital channels -- mobile and digital display, paid social and
search. We have also seen diminishing returns on terrestrial
radio and may consider adjusting those weights in the near
future.

9. ● Going all in on digital media. Moving away from traditional
radio, broadcast, print, etc. Trackable ROI.
● In our company markets, we have discontinued all traditional
broadcast (TV/radio). We are spending more on digital, but
directed at specific messages & actions, and now spending on
Third-Party platforms to improve performance there (delivery
providers, ezCater).
Where have you seen the biggest shifts in your
media/marketing spend in the last two years?

10. Where have you seen the biggest shifts in your
media/marketing spend in the last two years?
● We’ve backed off on our digital media spending in the last
year. We focus our spend on strategic direct mail and driving
our loyalty and online platforms.

11. ● Unlocking access to delivery for our customers specifically for
those shopping our own branded ecommerce website
● The benefit is we’re exposing our brand to larger audiences
we may not have reached via the delivery marketplaces and
providing convenience of delivery.
● Incremental customers – especially for brands that already
did not deliver
What has been the biggest benefit from working
with the new generation of delivery providers?

12. ● Certainly brand exposure to new/different audiences, but
there are inefficiencies and issues on both ends (restaurant
and vendor) that require improvement to ensure there is
long-term payoff.
● The biggest benefit is the incremental sales attached to
occasions where we would not have reached the customer.
Another benefit is the awareness we have seen from working
with delivery partners.
What has been the biggest benefit from working
with the new generation of delivery providers?

13. ● It's an occasion we wouldn't be able to service with our
current platform & staffing levels.
● It’s proven to be an incremental visit for our brand in addition
to our in-restaurant and online experience.
● Some of our restaurants are now generating as much as
nearly 40% of their sales from delivery -- while they are
extreme examples -- in the right market, delivery appears to
be key to unit- and market-level growth.
What has been the biggest benefit from working
with the new generation of delivery providers?

14. ● The biggest benefit has actually been the hardships we have
dealt with as a consumer of said delivery providers. We were
able to partner up with Lunchbox and use all those struggles
as a consumer to launch our brand new app and online
ordering. We were able to see the setbacks and struggles of
3rd party ordering and fix them for our in-house platform.
Granting online loyalty, free delivery, and the inside scoop on
promotions and specials has been a huge win on winning
guests over to our platform.
What has been the biggest benefit from working
with the new generation of delivery providers?

15. What has been the biggest challenge in working
with the new delivery platforms?
● The percentage cut. We know we need to be in that space,
but the percentage cut the 3rd party delivery providers are
taking begins to eat away at the profit margins. We’ve had to
cut some of the providers due to cost, luckily we still have the
same volume.
● Delivery orders increase the kitchen work flow capacity.
We’ve actually had to randomly throttle the delivery requests
during peak times in order to make sure the in-restaurant
dining experience doesn’t suffer.

16. ● Working to deliver the customer experience as if they were a
customer walking into our restaurant (from the food quality
to the service to the intent to return). MOST of this is on the
brand to bridge this disconnect, but it requires innovation
from both parties.
● The biggest challenge has been the inconsistent quality of
guest experience. We lose that one to one guest experience.
Because of this we have unfortunately seen some
inconsistencies.
What has been the biggest challenge in working
with the new delivery platforms?

17. What has been the biggest challenge in working
with the new delivery platforms?
● The market places pivoted from customer service focused
customer support model (during which they held our hands
and helped us use their platforms) to a SAS based platform
model limiting customer support. That was a tough pivot for
all different stakeholders in our system.
● Technical integrations in store and trying to access the data
they capture from our customers. Spoiler alert they don’t
share our customer data with us!

18. What has been the biggest challenge in working
with the new delivery platforms?
● The platforms have revolving teams and do not have
established processes.
● Menu inconsistencies across all locations and different reps
from these platforms controlling side-bar conversations.
● Managing consistent menus across all providers and
negotiating the commission fees.
● Cost, contracts, inconsistency, can't control speed or
customer service.

19. What has been the biggest challenge in working
with the new delivery platforms?
● They need to raise their 3PD menu prices above the in-
restaurant prices. This can help -- to a certain extent -- with
profitability of 3PD orders, but it also negatively impacts
affordability perceptions for the brand and may, in turn, be a
barrier to greater delivery growth for the brand.

20. What has been the biggest challenge in working
with the new delivery platforms?
● They severely limit our access to more robust advertising
within their apps -- primarily because they want us to share
our consumer databases with them. The 3PD brands want us
to provide our consumer databases to them so that they can
market to our existing guests. But they have not offered any
kind of data to suggest that doing so would not cannibalize
more profitable dine-in, take-out and online ordering/pick-up
orders.
● Fees, of course, but also the lack of consumer data.

21. What marketing channel or approach has been most
successful in driving growth in the last year?
● Delivery Marketplace and online ordering have both seen
huge growth numbers but we do not believe there are many
net new customers. We have seen some exciting results from
price point delivery promotions for our proprietary
ecommerce website. We also saw strong growth from EZ
Cater in Q4.

22. What marketing channel or approach has been most
successful in driving growth in the last year?
● With Lunchbox we are able to hone in on a more targeted
audience, tailor more relevant content to our guests, and
most importantly cross promote on our web and app which
has been a major roadblock for us in the past.

23. What marketing channel or approach has been most
successful in driving growth in the last year?
● Continued growth in off-premise across multiple destinations
(online ordering/pick-up, take-out and 3PD) and a continued
decline in dine-in business. Off-premise now represents more
than 60% of our business.

24. What marketing channel or approach has been most
successful in driving growth in the last year?
● Delivery is the sales channel that's seen the strongest YOY
growth.
● Online/mobile ordering has also been up significantly for us
after we made improvements to our functionality &
experience last fall (fewer clicks to order, order history, better
upselling, online coupon offer redemption).

25. What marketing channel or approach has been most
successful in driving growth in the last year?
● Focusing on loyalty and the ability integrate databases across
various platforms to improve retargeting efforts of paid
advertising.
● Leveraging first party data to target customers across
channels like email, text, paid social
● Our loyalty rewards app has been our most successful
marketing channel. Staying top of mind to your most loyal
guests makes the world of difference.

26. What marketing channel or approach has been most
successful in driving growth in the last year?
● We find that our TV advertising has been most effective as a
shift medium and our audio, digital and social as an intercept
medium.
● Search Marketing
● Facebook. It's been driving great success for direct to
consumer marketing tactics and conversions have been
through the roof.

27. What marketing channel or approach has been most
successful in driving growth in the last year?
● Highlighting our best sellers was very successful for us last
year. Helped highlight our brand strengths across various
dayparts. It allowed our team members to focus and retrain
the basics instead of learning new products or LTOS.

28. ● Programmatic Display Advertising driving engagement
(beyond delivering an impression) and geofenced conversion
data being accurate
Which has been most disappointing?

29. ● Our influencer marketing campaign that we ran in the
summer of 2019. We were able to get some great content, but
we were never able to truly track our results. Looking back,
we probably should have focused more on the micro
influencers with 20,000 - 40,000 followers vs 100,000+.
● Influencer (I personally think there is a reckoning coming
where this type of marketing begins to fade)
Which has been most disappointing?

30. ● Social media - for the brand and for our individual locations.
We haven’t demonstrated a correlation with sales and
transaction growth.
● Our other loyalty programs like our text club and email
marketing don’t have as much impact as we would like.
● We still have a lot of opportunity in Catering. It's hard to get
sustained results without a lot of boots on the ground, but
partnerships like ezCater have helped.
Which has been most disappointing?

31. Which has been most disappointing?
● The most disappointing has probably been terrestrial radio
which is not offering us as strong an ROI as all other media. I
am very curious to hear if other brands are seeing a similar
under-performance in terrestrial radio.
● Radio. It's there, always on, but in our world where ROAS is
so trackable via digital channels, radio is always going to be
difficult to prove worth.