The Challenge

Five banners reside under the Passion Food, LLC umbrella; and while the restaurants differ in concept, these unique American style eateries share one mission statement, “Bringing Passion to the Palates” of their guests.

When they approached Givex in 2007, Passion Food outlined the shortlist of the issues they wanted to address: 

• They felt constrained by their existing gift card program, the application was not extensible and had limited reporting capabilities. 
• How were they to manage the 3000 active cards in circulation from the current provider? 
• Can they continue using the existing gift card inventory?
• Is the new provider integrated to the point of sale systems used at all of their locations?
• Are they able to implement a loyalty program and collect data?
• Are there reports that will help them simplify reconciliation among the locations?

Our Solution

• To ease the conversion from the old program to new; the existing card numbers of both active and inactive cards were imported into the Givex system. 
• The installation took place after business hours, so there was no disruption to service and guests were able to redeem their cards immediately without issue.
•  A dedicated project manager from Givex worked with the inside technical team at Passion Food to assist and mitigate the length of time and difficulty to accomplish the switchover.
• Givex helped to identify communications issues with the client’s POS, which would have resulted in outages if left unattended. 
• Givex guided Passion Food through the various steps required to upgrade their security protocol to ensure the safe and secure connection between the two systems.
• To engender long-term loyalty, Givex worked with stakeholders to implement a Loyalty Program at all of their locations. 
• The card production team at Givex worked as a middleman between the client and the printer to create a new branded loyalty card. New customized gift cards were produced, with distinct pantone colours, one for each restaurant. The gift cards can be activated for variable amounts or pre-determined amounts, and are redeemable at any location.

Upgrading and coordinating all the required TLS system requirements was a huge issue for some of our restaurants and the team at Givex was helpful in coordinating the details with our third-party team to ensure a seamless transition.

KATHRYN ARVIS, PASSION FOOD HOSPITALITY

The Results

• Having learned about Givex from their current POS provider, stakeholders were rest assured that the two systems were already integrated, so there was no need to switch to another POS.  
• As part of their service during the install, Givex made sure that the restaurants could still process gift card transactions during the switchover.
• Mapping the active and inactive existing card numbers to Givex numbers decreased the impact the transition had on their daily service.
• Implementing a points-based loyalty program awarded frequent diners with one point for each dining dollar they spent at the restaurants. Personalized rewards treated guests to special promotions during their birthday.
• Passion Food is now able to capture insightful customer data, that helps them guide their marketing strategies and allows them to interact with customers on a higher level. 
• Givex’s extensive gift card and loyalty reports significantly simplified the reconciliation process. The finance department can now schedule the reports they need the most and view only the parameters they want to see.