By Phil Talbot – go to guy | mobile ordering | saavi

Flickr photo by Moes Central Indiana

Moe’s Southwest Grill, a fast-casual Mexican restaurant chain, has launched a loyalty promo to celebrate the opening of its 500th restaurant in New York City.

In this promo, customers who buy a large drink are rewarded a free burrito but they first have to enter a promo code in their Moe’s Southwest Grill ordering mobile app to redeem the burrito.

Burrito moves

This move by Moe’s Southwest grill is seen by mobile app/website developers as a strategy to cultivate frequent customers.

This leads some companies to worry whether this will impact their business with not-so-frequent customers. In typical business jargon,CEO Marci Troutman of mobile web company SiteMinis, says:

“The big question is whether you lose reach and frequency by going through an App, but a brand has to think through whether an App/mobile web combination is a good approach.”

However, for some companies, the big question is not whether to choose an app over a mobile website. For them, the big question is whether they want to cover all bases or not.

Burger King for example, not wanting to miss out on any of its market segments, has rolled out one mobile commerce approach after another. It has a mobile ordering/payment app that uses GPS technology to automatically search for the nearest Burger King restaurant for pre-ordering, an electronic wallet/card app that in-store/drive-thru customers can use to scan QR codes that automatically pays for the transaction, and an online delivery order site so mobile users can have their food delivered to their doorstep (mobile optimised so it looks like an app when accessed through a smartphone’s built-in web browser and used to reward frequent customers with a free sandwich).

Moe’s Mobile app features

Moe’s mobile ordering app, similar to other mobile ordering apps such as Saavi, allows pre-ordering (and pre-paying). Moe’s app users also get to check pickup times and locate other Moe’s Southwest Grill stores without logging in (unlike Burger King’s online delivery site, which requires mobile users to sign-in first before showing them anything interesting).

Signed-in Moe’s mobile ordering app users can store their credit card information in the app and save previous orders as templates for future ordering. The app also allows its users to share their Moe’s activity with Facebook and Twitter users.

Moe’s covers mobile web too

Putting the spotlight on its frequent user app does not mean Moe’s Southwest has abandoned its other customers. For customers who do not use the app (non-frequent Moe’s Southwest patrons), Moe’s offers an excellent online ordering site that users can access either though their mobile devices or from a desktop or laptop. In fact, Moes has at least two mobile web ordering pages, one at their main site, and another utilising Splick It (which seems to need updating).

The Bottom-line

Moe’s offers a burrito as a loyalty reward while Burger King gives out free sandwiches. Still the objective is the same: create and maintain more loyal customers while, at the same time, cater to the needs of less-frequent consumers who may be ordering online at Moe’s for the first time. Both kinds of customers are often online. And so businesses go where their customers hangout the most.

Phil Talbot is founder of SAAVI – the mobile ordering specialists and the resident expert in mobile ordering systems. You can follow SAAVI on Facebook.

Source: Saavi Feeds