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#495: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories | Baked-In Loyalty: Toppers Pizza’s Recipe for Connection and Growth

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For more than 30 years, Toppers Pizza has gone beyond crafting inventive, high-quality pizzas to delivering an experience that keeps guests coming back time and time again. With 60 stores across 14 states, the Wisconsin-based chain has built a loyal following thanks to its fun, late-night-friendly menu, fresh ingredients, and a focus on community connection. The brand has become a fan favorite among college students, young professionals, and anyone looking for a unique pizza experience.  

In this edition of Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Stories, Loyalty360 spoke with Mac Malchow, Vice President of Marketing and Development at Toppers Pizza, about how the brand builds loyalty by rewarding customers, delivering standout experiences, and staying deeply connected to the communities it serves. 

SPEAKER_01:

Hi everyone, I'm AJ Schneider, Vice President of Content Strategy for Loyalty360. Welcome back to our Leaders and Customer Loyalty Theories brand stories. It's great to have you join us for these informative sessions each Thursday. In this episode, I talk to Matt Balchow, the Vice President of Marketing and Development at Toppers Pizza. Toppers is a Wisconsin-based pizza chain with 60 stores in 14 states with a heavy presence in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Toppers Loyalty Program, creatively named the Upper Crest Society, was just revamped in September of 2025, and Matt gave us some insight on the reasons behind those changes and the results that he's already seeing after a few short months. Let's get into the interview. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be here. All right, so let's jump into it from the beginning. For those who may not be familiar with Toppers Pizza, tell us a little bit about the company and how you guys got started.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, sounds great. Toppers originated in uh 1991. Uh, it was started by Scott Gittrich. He uh he worked for a different large chain through the 80s during a huge run-up that they had at the time uh for a really prominent franchisee and fell in love with the pizza business. Um and after gaining a bunch of experience uh being a manager and a supervisor and area director, uh opening stores and overseeing a bunch of restaurants, he found out that he loved pizza. So he wanted to pursue it as a more than just uh career, but he wanted to pursue ownership in pizza as well. Um, but at in the early 90s, some changes were happening um with like the products for the company that he was working at. And at the same time, there was some popularity being formed around a concept called California Pizza Kitchen. And they were doing super interesting pizzas like putting chicken on pizza, which was really interesting at the time. Uh, so he thought that there was uh a market for pizzas that were more fun, a little bit more higher quality, but could still be delivered to your home or be picked up from the restaurant on your way home from work. And um, so he came up with the menu and the idea of Toppers Pizza. Um since then, it it's grew has grown primarily throughout the upper Midwest. We've got a lot of stores in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and then we've got some satellite markets, places like uh Omaha, Lincoln, Nebraska, uh Indianapolis, Kansas City, um, Cincinnati, even Charlotte, North Carolina. Um and right now we're just shy of 70 locations. Uh been around now for just over 30 years, and our most popular menu items are our house pizzas, so signature recipes like mac and cheese, buffalo chicken, um, our radian pepperoni, pickle pizza, and uh and then our signature item is topper sticks, which are like garlic buttery, cheesy bread sticks, uh super popular, especially in campus markets late night. Um, they're so popular, people sometimes just order them, just order them by themselves. So they'll just get a triple order of Topper sticks, which is 24 sticks with three dipping sauces and a large box, and they'll share that with their friends or family. Um so it's kind of more than just a side item for us, it's a big signature item that customers love. So that's a that's a snapshot of Topper's history and what we're known for.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. And and just to clarify, um, so it is a franchise model. So so each of the locations is uh independently owned by a franchisee. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Scott still owned, he's still the owner of the company, and he does own uh 15 of the restaurants himself, but the majority of the stores are owned by individual franchisees. The average franchisee has like three to five locations, usually pretty tightly located right around where they're at. Um, but yep, it's franchise model.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. Okay. And and let's talk about you for a couple minutes here. Um uh how did you get involved and and you know what led you to the to the position that you're currently in?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I started in the restaurant. So I started as a delivery driver for Toppers when I was going to school, uh, getting my undergrad in marketing at uh the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, uh, which is kind of on the west side of the state. Uh there's a franchisee that owned that that location right by the campus, uh, as well as one in the neighboring town to lacrosse. And so I worked at the campus store. I delivered pizza on the weekends mostly, sometimes during the week, uh dinner shifts while I was getting my uh college education and just kind of fell in love with uh the brand, the atmosphere. Delivering pizza is a great job for any college kid. I recommend it to anybody that's going to school looking to make extra money. Um, I'd work like sometimes 5 p.m. till 5 in the morning, but make tips and deliver pizza around town to kids that are out late. Um, and I did that for about two and a half years. When I got close to graduating, this was around uh 2010. So um at that point in time, you just you weren't guaranteed a job coming out of college. It was it was a pretty tough environment. And so I knew I needed something on the resume besides just the degree. And uh so I had started applying to get internships, marketing internships. And um I can't I asked my general manager at the time if there was an internship that Toppers offered for marketing, thinking that it would probably be by the headquarters, which is in Whitewater, Wisconsin, a little few hours from lacrosse. But he said, hey, I'll talk with the owners, um, Phil and Denise, and see if they're interested in having an intern do some local marketing here. And they he did, and they were, and so I became a marketing intern. I did a lot of guerrilla marketing for them, setting up promotions, doing special events, um, coming up with ideas and helping them execute programs they already had in place for local store marketing, which is a big part of the toppers culture in general. And uh I ended up going to a convention well during that time and meeting more people outside of my, just my couple of stores that I hadn't known. And that got me more exposure to the brand. And I ended up meeting the director of marketing. Um, and I just threw my name in a hat of, hey, if you ever need somebody to do this for other stores or around the company or open up new stores, I'd be, I'm graduating in December, I'd be up for it. I had to hang around and keep delivering pizza for about seven months after I graduated, but I had an inkling that they might throw something out there, and they did. He reached out to me and I started here at the office, that was July 2011. Um, and I've been working here ever since. I worked my way up the marketing ladder primarily, but I also have done franchise development uh here at Toppers, and uh in that about seven years ago, I actually had an opportunity to purchase a Toppers with my brother. So I'm a franchisee in addition to the head of marketing. He's he's a full-time operator. He he kind of came up through the operations ranks, and he's down in Kansas right now, overseeing a few stores that we own down there. Um but uh yeah, so I've got kind of a broad range of experience and knowledge in a few different aspects of the business right now. But today I oversee the marketing department and the development department for toppers. Um and yeah, been loving it ever since.

SPEAKER_01:

That's fantastic. And and I have to say, pretty pretty progressive thought for um for the the folks who own the store that gave you the internship. I mean, that's you know, yeah. I don't think that happens a lot at, you know, at a at a pizza shop, you know, in a college town. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, they they're great. They're there's a franchisee to this day, one of our top franchisees. They're one of the first franchisees, and they're still a top franchisee today. Um, really successful stores in there in and where they live over in lacrosse, and they've been pioneers in our marketing programs for a long time. So they value that connection to their community and um they kind of live and breathe it every day.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and and so let me ask you this as somebody who started as a delivery driver and has seen all different aspects of the of the business from the inside out, uh, what are the things, you know, now that you're in the role that you're in, what are the things that keep you up at night right now in terms of you know the growth of the company, you know, the competitive environment, you know, those types of things? What what are the things that that you stew about in the evening?

SPEAKER_00:

Um keep me up at night. You know, that's a tough question. I mean there's not a ton that keeps me uh too too. Yeah, when you grow up in the restaurant business, you're just kind of used to the challenges that come with it. And it's uh it's a constantly changing environment. Um whether sales are up or down, it's there's always challenges. So uh I prefer when sales are up, makes uh you know, sun usually shines brighter and everything smells better. But um, but that that brings its own challenges, you know, keeping up with demand. So it's never a perfect environment. So you kind of get used to living in the uh constantly evolving, changing world of restaurants. And today, technology, it's spectacular to help emerging brands get more awareness, and um, it's easier today to play in that world uh with off-the-shelf products, even if you're a smaller brand than it has been in the past. At the same time, it you know it is evolving quickly, and that means the environment changes even faster because people have more information at their fingertips all the time. Early on when I joined the office, we would we'd look at uh it was mostly weekly sales analysis at the time. You get the reports from for the week. You might dig into a store or two throughout the week to check on progress, but for the most part, it was weekly analysis. And now it's daily. And I'm sure at some point it'll be, you know, there you can dig into some hours, or you might look at how uh dinner's going today. At some point, though, before my career's done, it'll be down to the hour, it'll be down to half an hour. I mean, we'll be right down to the how how are the orders coming in on some type of huge clock on the wall, you know. Um, so all that means there's more access to stuff. It just means people make decisions faster, so the environment's changing all the time. You just learn to live in that uh in that world of uh new challenges every day. And uh so I don't I've I put a lot of stock in make sure I get my sleep so that I can wake up ready to go for tomorrow's. Uh, you know, I've learned to say to myself over time, uh, there's nothing I can do about it when I'm laying here at 12 o'clock at night. I have to wait until you know seven or eight in the morning anyway. So I might as well go to sleep and deal with it when I wake up, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01:

I think I think that's sound advice. I think that's sound advice for sure. Well, listen, here we are at Loyalty 360, and and and obviously we're all about the the loyalty programs and and you know that's our our primary focus. So let me ask you about your uh very coolly named uh Upper Crust Society uh loyalty program. Um my understanding is that you guys just put it through uh refresh. Am I right about that? Uh or at least in the recent September. Yeah. So so tell us a little bit about that. What motivated the refresh? Uh, and maybe give us a few, you know, go back a little bit and explain the program overall, but but then what motivated that um and how does it fit into the overall uh loyalty and growth strategy for Toppers?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, sounds good. I'll back up a little bit uh when we rolled it out in the first place. That was in uh 2021. We had a new VP of marketing come in right in 2020, uh right at the kind of the tail end of the year, actually around this time, October in 2020. And he was playing a lot of catch up, you know, planning for the following year. And I was on the team at the time, uh, so I was working pretty closely with him on that work. And one of the things he identified is um, you know, toppers, we don't have an app, we didn't at the time we didn't have an app or a loyalty program. We did things to like reward customers. I mean, it's the pizza business, so there's deals all the time, and we had ways that people could save money all the time, but we didn't have a program in place to constantly consistently reward people for purchasing purchasing with us on a regular basis. So he put that down at the top of his list. We need to get we need to get some loyalty program in place, we need to get an app in place. And uh we had other great technology already established. We have our own proprietary POS system called PisMet that's in every single restaurant. Um, we've got a great tech team in place, uh, we've got an awesome website that's already been a set. We started a website in 2008, so we're kind of ahead of the curve from some of the other regional players when it came to website development. But we were just missing this app and loyalty program arm. And so instead of trying to build those two things, which can be a little complicated, we partnered with another company that integrated with the tech that we have so that it worked with our in-store computers, our website, um, but they had a wrapped app that could work with the website off the shelf and then had a loyalty program that could then, you know, ish keep track of the things people collected up by purchasing, also issue out emails, text messages, that sort of thing. And uh the first version of it, he wrote that idea down in October 2020, and the program and the app rolled out the following summer. So we really hit the ground running quickly to get it to get it built. And the first version was fairly straightforward. If you for every dollar you spent, you got a point, and you can save up a hundred points, and then you would get a ten dollar reward, and you could use that reward to get anything you wanted off the menu. Um, and with any loyalty program, you know, the first year it seems like you spent a lot of time brainstorming how to build up the membership, just get people signed up and do a lot of programs to get the signups rolling. Uh, and we we had some success with that. We had some ways on the checkout pages to get people signed up easily. Uh, we're we benefit from most orders come in over the website or through the app. So we can put that messaging in front and make it super easy for people to sign up right when they're checking out. So we have a steady flow of signups for our size, being in the upper 60s for a number of locations. We've got half a million active members in the loyalty program that uh that have joined since 2021. Um, but it takes a little while learning, studying behavior because you know people order pizza usually once a month or once every six weeks or so. Um, and so what we learned was it was taking qu a little bit of time for people to save up enough points to actually gain their$10 reward. And we had other welcome campaigns and win-back campaigns that worked in the background, but the main um reward program, it would take the an average customer maybe two or three visits before they could earn that first ten dollar reward. And when we sat down uh last year, about maybe 15 months ago, and we were doing some analysis on the current program, we've we decided we wanted to make a change and really try to reward people sooner, give them a reason that they could use points quicker instead of having to save up a hundred of them to get their first ten dollar reward. And that's what really prompted the we should we should uh kind of restructure this. So make a change. So we did a lot of studying of a ton of different programs, like all the big players in the not just in pizza, but looking at McDonald's and Starbucks and Panera and just anybody that offered a loyalty program. We did a ton of studying across benchmarking across the country for some of the biggest brands and Inspire brands is big on their loyalty programs. So we studied them too, and we just picked up on how other people were doing it, and um and we studied our own internal behavior. We noticed that when we gave people the opportunity to redeem free items, it seemed like they would jump on that really quickly versus if it was just uh maybe a discount off the shelf. So uh that led us to the restructure that we put in place in September, where instead of having to save up points and get$10 off, you could save up points, but you could redeem points as low as 20 points, you could use to get a free dipping sauce cup or garlic knots at 50 points. You can start redeeming points almost for a lot of people, it's after their first purchase. They could get something free on the very next purchase if they wanted to. And we actually see that even since rolling it out in September. We've only got a couple months worth of data, but we see a lot of those 20-point, 50-point items are redeemed right now. Um, people are adding it to their orders, so it's been a win since rolling it out in September. Um, but that was the whole thought process from beginning to where we got to today.

SPEAKER_01:

And you you mentioned obviously that you you really were were looking through the data uh in terms of redemption and and and you when you were just talking about it then it was the impetus really for the change was you guys looking at the data saying, hey, it's taking people, you know, X amount of time to do that. Did you guys collect customer feedback directly or or were you hearing that from you know from customers? And and did that also, you know, kind of factor into your decision to to make the change?

SPEAKER_00:

We we got we usually get customer feedback on things we should add to the menu, uh more than anything. You know, the loyalty program, people saw value, but I'd say that the most of the feedback we got from them was mostly like, thanks for allowing me to send. Save up some points to get anything, you know, because previous to this version, we didn't have any program. So our most loyal customers, um, they kind of were able to take advantage of some deals that we did every once in a while. But this I mean, I think they were pretty happy with the fact that they didn't have a huge expectation at the time for what we were offering them, if you will. Um, but we had a sense just through like, like I said, studying what they were redeeming when we would send certain groups offers or free products, or even if it was tied to minimum purchases, it seemed like they reacted really strongly to those. And so even though they seemed fine, if you will, with the the previous structure, we felt like the new structure would give them more reasons to come back. So it's kind of one of those things to us was like, I don't know if they know what they don't know. Um, is they might like this program better uh if we restructured it. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, when you measure ultimately when you decide, you know, three months from now, six months from now, a year from now, whether that change is successful or whether the program, you know, overall is successful. What are the measurements that you're using ultimately? Is it um the you know total uh uh check amount? Um, what what are the factors you used?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, any change you do, you're always gonna measure how it impacts profitability for franchisees. Um, most of our restaurants are franchisee-owned. And when they sign up, particularly with marketing programs, they're putting a lot of trust in the franchise door on that they're gonna make smart decisions on their behalf with things like a loyalty program or even most of the price and promotion strategy. Our best franchisees, and I'll say this for probably any brand in the country that's a franchise company, uh, especially restaurants, they're gonna be more restaurant tours operators connected with their local community for sure, but running, you know, their biggest goal is to make great pizza and deliver it fast. And they don't uh they don't necessarily want to be great digital media experts or loyalty program experts. So the first thing yeah, we always take into account is all right, how is this affecting profitability? Is it good, bad, it's the same? Is it so we'll be measuring the impact? It's a there is a discount element to this, so we always measure the impact of um how does it affect food costs, how does it uh affect their discounts in the restaurant. So far in the first couple months, it's had a positive impact on that. Excuse me, but um the other factors that we'll measure is participation. So we have a fairly high participation in the loyalty program. Um, because we get a lot of signups, people it's easy for them to log in. It's if they download the app, which like close to 15 to 20 percent of our sales come through the app itself, they're always logged in, so they're constantly anytime they purchase that activity is logged in, they're earning points. So it's close to one out of every three orders is associated with the loyalty program, and that's a number we're seeing grow right now. So um, and then the the other factor is uh their frequency. So we measure their 90-day frequency. Um, we had an impact on that, even with the previous program. So we had measured apples to apples, what happens when people join the loyalty program, what was going on before they joined in terms of order behavior, and what happened afterwards. And we saw an increase in order behavior after joining in the 90 days following versus their 90 days previous. Some customers didn't have a 90-day previous behavior, those ones we didn't count in the measurement. But people that did have an established 90 days of ordering prior, what happened after, and their orders went up. But we thought we could do even better. So that's one of our main metrics is are we seeing an even faster increase in orders from toppers because people have a more of a reason to come back sooner because they can use points quicker now than they were previously. So participation, order frequency, impact on food cost all are factors for us in analyzing the success of the change.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. Okay. Let me switch gears on you just a little bit. You you mentioned um delivery a couple times, and and I'm curious how that plays into the whole picture as well. So do the franchisees deliver directly, like with their own employees? You know, you were a delivery driver, you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation. Um, is that still in place? Uh, and or uh are the franchisees also using uh third-party services like uh uh DoorDash and Grubhub and those kinds of things?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we still have self-performed delivery. Um we do have, we've been on the third-party sites, DoorDash, Uber, Grubhub. We've been on them for a long time, even prior to COVID. We were the pandemic, we were on those sites. Uh, we see it as a great way as a smaller brand, we can get more exposure. People can find us on those platforms when they're just sort of browsing them. So it's kind of like a marketing uh brand awareness play on those platforms for us. By far, the majority of our sales sales still come through our own our own platforms, toppers.com or our app. Um, but we still deliver our own food. Um, we have backup partnerships with those parties as a backup option. If, say, a delivery driver came, you know, showed up late or had to miss a shift. We can utilize them and call them for a delivery that came through our platform if we need to, but we encourage franchisees and stores to still uh try to keep that at uh zero if we can, just perform the deliveries ourselves because it's just easier to control the experience when you're delivering your own food.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Yeah, I imagine. Because yeah, you you you hear stories all the time about you know some of the third parties you know not showing up themselves or whatever the case might be. So yeah, control the brand that way. Um let me also switch over to um you've alluded to it a couple of times, I think, um, but the differentiator between toppers and some of your competitors. Obviously, there's a lot of choices in the market. Um you mentioned the uniqueness of the pizzas themselves. In other words, it's not you guys demand sure you can, right? If you just want pepperoni, that's fine. But you're you're really offering too many things. Is that the primary differentiator? And and maybe expound on that a little bit. What else makes Toppers uh different and attractive to potential new customers? And from a loyalty perspective, keeping the old ones?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Toppers, it's it is it's known for fun pizzas. Uh, we've got some kind of quirky options for people too. We still have very popular ones, like I mentioned that Rage and Pepperoni. We carry three different types of pepperoni. We offer all three of them on that pizza. It's super popular. We have uh some nuances with specific toppings. We use hand pinched sausage, fire-roasted tomato, or fire-roasted jalapenos. Um, we've got tater tots on the menu. I mean, we've got a wider selection of toppings that people can choose from. Um, and we see that there's a balance. Some folks are more traditionalists, so they just want like what we call a toppers classic pepperoni sausage, uh, green peppers, onions, uh, mushrooms, or we've got some adventurous pizza lovers that want the pickle pizza, the mac and cheese topper for their kids, um, buffalo chickens, very popular at late night for college kids. So we offer a pretty wide selection. We also have a plant-powered menu that has some uh veggie options, vegan options. We have a gluten-free crust that's uh collali um based. So it's more uh it's a little more tasty than the regular gluten-free option for those folks. Um, and we noticed that when we added that plant-powered menu, it just brought on a whole new audience that was that could finally order something from a you know pizza uh delivery concept. So uh, and they're very vocal about their uh their opinion on which you know recipes you have, and uh, and honestly, mostly very supportive on social media and in the surveys. They're just they're just happy they have an option they can get delivered to their house. Um, so we have that whole arm of our menu, but we have some fun, we kind of carry that idea over into the other products too. So instead of uh just the topper sticks themselves, we have nacho sticks, pepperoni bacon sticks. Um, we've got birthday sticks. I mean, we've got a whole slew of recipes for our topper sticks too. Um, and when it comes to side items beyond those two main categories, um, we try to have fun things that people could get, like for dessert. Instead of off, we actually offer frozen custard pints. So you can get frozen custard. Uh, we're Wisconsin-based, so dairy is a big part of our background and heritage, and we use 100% real Wisconsin cheese on everything. And uh frozen custard is popular here in our neck of the woods, so that's why we offer the pints. Um, we've got killer brownies on the menu. I mean, it's it's all just kind of fun, unique, a little more high quality that you can get. Uh, be really proud to order for your family and friends on you know Friday night or at late night in a college town.

SPEAKER_01:

Did did I read some more? Is there a uh a cheese curd topping as well? Or did I make that up?

SPEAKER_00:

We had cheese curds, yeah. We had cheese curds as a side item and as a topping too. Um, it might have been just a little bit too out there for customers. They didn't seem to order it as much as we thought they might. But that's part of it. When you when you have a unique menu and that's part of your um culture, you just bring things on and off the menu kind of throughout the years. And anytime you remove something, somebody's not going to be happy. So you have to be ready for that when you take something off the menu. And of course, when we remove that Wisconsin curd and bacon pizza, we had some people reach out that weren't too pleased about it. But it gives you an opportunity down the road to bring back an old favorite, and uh you might be able to bring back a product that maybe it didn't sell the best throughout the whole year, but it might in a certain time of year, or it might in a short flight, and you can sell it to the people that loved it and then uh switch efforts to something different. So we've got a great bacon cheeseburger pizza that's gonna be coming out later this fall, um, next week, actually. It's almost November already. So we're gonna be selling that. And many innovation is gonna be a part of our culture for probably as long as I'm here at Toppers and well beyond when when I'm when I'm gone and Toppers is carrying on. Um and new pizzas, fun flavors are gonna come and go over time uh regularly.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, certainly the the feedback you get, for example, when you take a menu item away, that's sort of the purest form of of customer feedback. Um, yeah, that's that's great. Well, and and I guess that that kind of also segues into another question I had for you. I I think that over the last uh 10 years or so, um I think what we're seeing is that uh the discipline of of customer experience and the discipline of of loyalty have sort of blended together um sort of inextricably at this point, right? And so um I'm curious from from Topper's perspective, how do those two things blend together and what what kind of um sort of specific strategy do you guys give to the customer experience side of that? We've talked about the loyalty program specifically, but overall, um how what what is that experience you want people to have and how do you ensure that that happens, particularly over a over a large franchise group?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the so one thing we do is we have a we have a customer survey program that we send out to to any customer that orders. Uh most like I said, most of our customers order online. Um even if they don't, a lot of times we have their email so we can send them this survey. And we use, we're we hawk over the results of those surveys. And we've learned that if you focus on friendliness and uh greeting people, thanking people, that will have a major impact on the rest of the order experience. And it's not something groundbreaking in the rest of the world, it's just really hard to do because it's a ton of young team members that you're bringing into the industry that um sometimes their first job, you have to train and teach and mold them into great uh customer service focused mindset people. Of course, there's chains out there like Chick-fil-A that are like the gold standard in terms of hospitality, but they're the highest volume restaurant chain in the country for a reason. And it's because it comes back to some of the simple things like saying hello to a customer immediately as they walk through the door or at their front door if you're like us and we might bring it to your house, um, or saying thank you when you leave. And so the our biggest experience, we do some fun things, giveaways, like we might have dog treats that we'll give dogs at their door if we make a delivery there. Um, a lot of stores will bring paper plates and napkins to front to on deliveries in case people want them, especially at hotels or dorm rooms, that sort of thing. But most of it is just reminding everybody across the company that uh saying hello, welcome to Toppers, or thanking them for their order goes a long, long way with a customer. Um, and of course, you got to get the food right. You know, you want it to be hot and make sure that it's correct. Um, but they're they're a lot more forgiving if you thanked them too. So if you end up accidentally making a mistake with their order, uh, you might you have an easier time thanking or keeping that customer, get another chance from that customer if you said hello to them and you thanked them on your way out. So hospitality still reigns supreme in the restaurant industry. I think it got strained during the pandemic time period across the country for a good reason. Everybody, it was a pretty stressful time for a lot of people. So, uh, but I think it's making a pretty big comeback. And you're gonna see chains, restaurant companies like Toppers, uh, like the Chick-fil-A's of the world, are gonna, they're the ones that if you have that culture, you they'll rise to the top. And um people that are forgetting about that element of restaurant hospitality, they're gonna struggle.

SPEAKER_01:

You you guys in in some ways have created it's it's a good problem to have, but but so much, if I if I remember the stat, something like am I right, 70 to 80 percent of your transactions are online. Yeah. Um, so you you've kind of created a uh again, a good problem to have, but how do how do you extend that hospitality when you may not be seeing the customer in person? It's one thing to do it in the store, but it's another thing. How do you continue that experience uh electronically?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's why it's important to deliver your own food, you know, wherever possible, because then you get that touch point. Um technology is great. People like to use online ordering because they can spend more time with the menu, they can see the products, read the descriptions, make really good decisions, and um in our case, they might be able to find a great deal on the website too, so they can take their time. So they appreciate that aspect of it. But of course, when they come to the store or we're going to their front door, they still want to be treated like a valued customer, even if that interaction is only 45 seconds long. Again, saying hello, how is your evening? Um, tell get making showing them their food, making sure it's coming out of the hot big, hot, steaming, um acknowledging, you know, saying hello to maybe their kid that's standing next to them, and then thanking them on your way out, and we'll see you next time or see you next week. That that alone can make a great impression and be uh honestly a lot more than what the average delivery company will do. So I'll say this a lot there's some bad habits in pe in in delivery right now. Things like leaving food on people's front doorsteps without even telling them. Um, you know, like if if something's is wrong or you were missing an item, telling them, well, call the store and don't, they're not gonna take the the you know, not taking the initiative to help solve that problem. There's been some, as much as food delivery has sort of exploded and more brands are delivering food today than ever before, there's been some bad habits that have happened through that growth. And uh it's important to us to remind all of our team members that uh calling a customer and if if they don't answer the front door, calling them and saying, hey, I'm right here at the front door at this address if you want to meet me out here, that goes a long way than just leaving it on their doorstep and walking away.

SPEAKER_01:

Do do a lot of people, this is a little bit of a side note, but do a lot of people come still, you know, still have those COVID habits where they just want you to leave it and and don't really want to have an interaction?

SPEAKER_00:

We have that as an option. You can click uh no contact delivery to this day. That has lowered and lowered and lowered every single, every single year since coming as further that we get from the pandemic, that's coming down, down, down. Um so it still exists, it's still out there, but it seems like more people uh want they'd rather you bring it right to them than leave it there on their doorstep. But it does, it is there, and for those customers that prefer that, we still will honor that, we'll put it on the front doorstep. Um, but we train drivers, make sure you still call them, tell them that it's there, don't just leave it because they they're not just hawking over their front door waiting for you to show up. So make sure you let them know that you did that. Got it, got it, makes sense.

SPEAKER_01:

Um let's talk about your audience for for a couple minutes. You so um you guys trend, particularly because you know the the connection with college campus uh areas, um uh you tend to skew uh uh lower in age, the the the gender, if you will. So uh particularly somebody with your background in in digital marketing, uh how you knowing that that's your audience, you know, uh is there a little bit of a chicken or egg thing? Is was that sort of baked in because uh you're near

SPEAKER_00:

college campuses, or at least that's what we started, uh, versus going after that group specifically and and what electronically are you guys you know focusing on to to continue that trying to make sure you're you're talking to the Gen Z folks yeah that's a great question we uh it's part of the uh the culture of the company from the very beginning and it goes back to Scott he he ran campus stores and so it was part of his sort of built into his nature to uh to embrace college campus restaurants and they're they're some of the toughest restaurants that are run in the whole country because of the huge swings between breaks and school in session and then if you're at big campus universities you might have these massive peaks during college football games if you're in Indiana and Bloomington Indiana that's those game days are huge and people a lot of people come to town just for that one day um especially right now especially right now more than ever right which is awesome um so college campus right any restaurant that's in a college campus town they know that it's chaotic and it's all hours of the day it can you got busy lunches busy dinners busy uh midnight or for us it's even three o'clock in the morning so it's a part of our nature and and we're it is part of our roots and the first few stores because of Scott's background and then because the team the first few franchisees we had worked for him at that location so then they grew up in that environment too and kind of threw that chaos of what comes with a campus location and then they naturally wanted their first store to also be in a college campus. So our first stores went to Lacrosse Wisconsin by the university or Eau Claire Wisconsin by the university Madison Wisconsin by the university there um so it's more of uh came from our our the nature of our founder and then the first few franchisees and expanded from there. Pizza is a great college food so um you know the majority it's a number one food for college kids and uh and I love I'm biased towards it. I like I see it as a great way to um build loyalty with older demographics too because when they leave college and go move to a city or get a job outside that college town when we go open up a topper's pizza there it's very nostalgic for them and you can almost have seeded a new market that might not be college but the the people that live there may have gone to school in an area that had a Topper's pizza and fell in love with Toppers during college and who doesn't want to relive some of those college memories so we kind of benefit from that as well.

SPEAKER_01:

And and I have to assume that that based on that demographic um that it was important that the loyalty program be uh available online as well. So it wasn't just uh you know the in-person orders or you know the the more traditional way but but but that everything could be online.

SPEAKER_00:

And was that a challenge to try and figure out um not a challenge because we've been doing that for a long time. It's uh anything we do from a marketing standpoint, technology standpoint, consumer facing standpoint, when it comes to the ordering process, we always view it through a lens of how does this work on a phone? Like literally like a smartphone. So um everything that we make whether it's even an ad that we put out into the world on a media platform we always look at like how's this going to look on a you know four-inch screen um same thing with our website same thing with loyalty program everything goes through that lens of how does a customer interact with this on a phone.

SPEAKER_01:

So we've got people on the marketing team that have iPhones people have Android devices we when they when it's time to do any update we're pinging the different players and checking it out on you know their newest iPhone I myself have a couple generations before so I get the I look at it through the lines of an older iPhone same thing on Android um we're just used to that whole process we've been doing it that way for close to a decade now um let me go back to uh the the the the loyalty program from a broader perspective um how about partnerships um right now in the loyalty industry that's a huge deal like people are you know companies brands are looking for ways to expand their reach through reciprocal relationships with with other kinds of of you know sometimes related sometimes completely unrelated um but but it you know it expands that scope have you guys uh looked into that are there or do you have some current partnerships that you're working with when you say partnerships you're referring to like more on the food side or are you talking about sure well you can answer in general but but but certainly I was interested on the food side yeah for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah the food side yeah we've we've had partnerships in the past featured certain products it seems like most of the partnerships we've done that we've enjoyed or customers have enjoyed have been with other regional regional brands so um you know instead of um featuring a big name uh that might be like a Pepsi brand we we'll tend to or a Coca-Cola brand we'll uh we will tend to do partnerships with more regional players um or smaller companies so like when we very first our frozen custard line is uh it's backed by Cedar Crest which is a great you know uh regional brand uh the cheese that we offer the Wisconsin cheese it's made about two hours down the street uh by a small cheese manufacturer there uh so it whenever we do partnerships it tends to be with smaller brands uh or regional brands um honestly most of the time it comes down to is it awesome or not so if it like if it tastes great and cuss and we do a consumer panel and they love it we'll we're gonna partner with them we're gonna offer it so um sometimes that might be a big company and they just have the best product on the market and sometimes that might be a small company and it and they've got a niche and it's a good fit for us and we can get it into our supply chain we're gonna go that route too so um if the partnerships make sense we'll certainly entertain it look at it and we're not afraid to put other brand names or logos on our on our website or on our brand if we're if we are you know think it's a good fit and supports what we're trying to do too. How how about from an actual you know program standpoint where you know uh another company um you could earn points at another company and then spend them with you or vice versa something like that have you guys ever gone we haven't done that um I'm sure at some point here in the future we'll be entertaining it or looking into it I've seen that at other brands I mean it certainly helps if you're inspire and you have six seven different uh you know you have Arby's Dunkin' Donuts Buffalo Wild Wings all under the same umbrella it can make complete sense why wouldn't you take points earned at Buffalo Wild Wings at Dunkin' Donuts or advice and I'll be honest I don't even know if that's how their programs work but to me it makes a complete sense. So if you private equity has certainly consolidated bought brands there's that's very common today where there's a little number of different brands under one parent company and that seems to make complete sense to me that you could cross utilize points um but for us yeah I guess we're just uh a little smaller brand right now we haven't we haven't formed any of those partnerships today gotcha okay so um well I'll I'll I'll get to wrapping up here because I I know uh we schedule for uh a little bit less than an hour with you um let me ask this question about uh let's see we'll do this what are the two or or three or one whatever you want to do um uh things that you're most proud of um as it relates to uh the loyalty program andor the customer experience that you guys provide that's uh heavy question most proud of I mean uh I'm proud from a loyalty program standpoint I'm just proud of the fact that people can get rewarded after placing a single order with toppers today so I that was a main goal of ours right out of the gate when we restructured it and and that holds true and we're seeing people do that today. So I like getting customers back in the door as quickly as possible. So I'm proud that we have a way to do that for people. From a brand standpoint I'm proud of our Wisconsin roots I think Wisconsin is uh undersold as as uh it's not a huge tourist attraction unless you're from Chicago or something like that. So um I'm proud of our Wisconsin roots. I think it's it's a fun state and we kind of wear that in our in our branding and the products we offer and the ingredients that we source. And so I'm proud I grew up in Wisconsin I went to school here and now I work for a company that's based here and when we go out to other states we we rep the fact that we use 100% Wisconsin cheese because we think it's important and it's the greatest cheese that you can get on a pizza and I'm proud that we live that across all of our stores uh where we're at.

SPEAKER_01:

Mac thank you very much for for speaking with us today uh it's been a pleasure speaking with you and getting to uh to know Toppers a little bit more and getting the update on your loyalty program. And thanks to everyone else who tuned in and make sure to check back every Thursday for our leaders in customer loyalty series. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yeah thank you thank you for having me