CARDFREE, Restaurant Sciences Data on Restaurant Spending Reveals Fast Food Restaurants Outperform Other Categories in Gift Card Sales and Redemption

Key Facts:

• Fast food restaurants are selling more gift cards/gift certificates than other restaurant categories.
• Fast food restaurants lead other restaurant types in pre-paid as a larger portion of total payment tender type.
• All restaurant categories show much room for growth in pre-paid volume pointing to an opportunity for mobile to impact ROI.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, CARDFREE released a study on Q4 2012 spending and gift card sales conducted by its portfolio-partner company Restaurant Sciences. Findings reveal that fast food restaurants are selling an average of three gift cards per store per day since Thanksgiving, which outpaces all other restaurant categories. Though fast food restaurants are also outperforming others in pre-paid transaction volume, all restaurant categories show pre-paid accounting for less than four percent of total payment volume.

“We see a huge opportunity for restaurants to use mobile to help drive preferred tender types and realize large returns very quickly”

CARDFREE’s ROI analysis of customer value indicates that mobile pre-paid users have over twice the yearly value of average customers. Having deployed two of the largest mobile commerce programs to date, the company has seen first hand that mobilizing stored value can have a great impact on large volume merchants.

“We see a huge opportunity for restaurants to use mobile to help drive preferred tender types and realize large returns very quickly,” said Jon Squire, CEO of CARDFREE. “From our previous mobile commerce deployments we know that virtualizing pre-paid programs can reap cost-savings as well as drive increased tickets and frequency. If merchants couple that with mobile loyalty and offers they can see even larger shifts in customer behavior. Our platform leverages the rich data analytics from Restaurant Sciences, which helps large restaurants deploy smarter offers and mobile solutions that increase revenue and decrease costs.”

The CARDFREE platform combines a full range of merchant solutions, including personalized offers and promotions, mobile payments, loyalty, order-ahead and social media engagement, all of which comes with robust reporting. With the ability to leverage existing integrations into most major POS systems and deep data analytics, CARDFREE gives merchants unparalleled visibility into their customer base.

CARDFREE is headquartered in San Francisco and is part of a portfolio of companies including Restaurant Sciences, a leading provider of restaurant industry information and analytics based on individual guest checks.

About CARDFREE

From the team that deployed the two largest mobile commerce initiatives in the U.S., CARDFREE offers merchants a one-stop solution to mobilize and enhance the customer experience for maximum ROI. Sharing a track record of bringing innovative solutions to market, our team has a unique 360-degree perspective coming from large merchants, mobile, financial services and payments.

CARDFREE offers complete, integrated solutions for merchants from mobile and online through POS. With the ability to leverage existing integrations into most major POS systems and deep data analytics, our end-to end capabilities give merchants unparalleled visibility into their customer base. We are a white-label partner working behind merchant brands, providing tools that drive incremental visits, larger ticket size, tender preference and more meaningful engagement with consumers.

CARDFREE is headquartered in San Francisco, with portfolio companies in Boston, Denver and Atlanta. For more information, visit www.cardfree.com or contact [e-mail].

About Restaurant Sciences

Restaurant Sciences is the premier provider of syndicated data and insights on food and beverage consumption in restaurants, bars, nightclubs and other foodservice establishments. The company delivers market share, market basket, competitive analysis, pricing, promotional, trend, segmentation and custom analytics to food and beverage manufacturers and distributors, as well as the broader industry they serve. Restaurant Sciences transforms guest check-level information into detailed data and insights across all segments of the foodservice landscape. Insights are delivered online through their business intelligence tool or through custom analytics. Visit www.restaurantsciences.com.