Welcome to First Bite, a Nation’s Restaurant News podcast, your daily source of news from NRN.
Today, we’re talking about gift cards. MrBeast burger announced earlier this month that it is adding a gift-card program to its quickly growing restaurant business, illustrating just how important it is for restaurants of all kinds to have a gift-card program in place now. That is especially true during the holidays, when the industry sells a majority of its gift cards for the year. According to Credit Suisse, the average casual restaurant generates more than half of its annual gift card sales in Q4, and nearly 40% of redemptions happen in Q1.
This isn’t necessarily a new trend. What is new, however, is that the promotional push has become a bit more aggressive in the past three years as restaurants diversify their revenue streams amid crises. Further, that promotional push has largely come via ecommerce channels as consumers have become more digitally dependent. Consider Paytronix data, for instance, which found that gift card sales on Cyber Monday jumped nearly 14% and 18% in overall dollar sales. Digital cards experienced a 31% increase over 2021.
Executive editor Alicia Kelso joins to talk about this pattern.
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