Transforming Guest Experience and Increasing Revenue: Luna Grill's Success Story
Introduction
Luna Grill, a popular Mediterranean fast-casual dining chain, is known for its fresh and vibrant flavors. With 50 locations across California and Texas, Luna Grill has a mission to bring family and friends together over delicious meals. As an agile industry leader with ambitious growth plans, Luna Grill believed exciting opportunities existed to further enhance their growth and guest engagement efforts.
Defining the Opportunities
Luna Grill's ambitious expansion plan and aggressive technology goals set the stage for an extensive digital transformation. By harnessing cutting-edge technology, Luna Grill aimed to create a seamless, personalized guest experience that drives rapid market expansion, amplifies brand presence, and cultivates profound customer loyalty.
Additionally, Luna Grill sought to boost guest engagement and sales by revolutionizing their first-party experience, streamlining interactions, and unlocking deeper insights into loyalty and engagement metrics. These opportunities underscored the need for a comprehensive solution to elevate guest interactions and operational performance.
Ultimately, these initiatives aimed to set a new standard in the fast-casual dining industry. Luna Grill's commitment to enhancing their digital presence highlighted their dedication to exceptional service and establishing themselves as a trailblazer that other brands aspire to emulate in an ever increasing digital world.
Collaboration and Strategy Development
unPLUG partnered with Luna Grill to thoroughly understand their opportunities to offer a best-in-class digital experience for their guests. Through collaborative workshops with marketing leaders, IT, culinary experts, and operators, unPLUG identified key areas for improvement, such as increasing guest loyalty, expanding SMS marketing efforts, and boosting engagement with Limited Time Offers (LTOs). They also recognized the huge potential to refine their first-party experiences by reducing friction and improving visibility into their application performance.
With these insights, unPLUG built a comprehensive set of requirements tailored to Luna Grill's specific needs. The collaborative efforts between the teams led to the development of a strategic plan, focusing on leveraging the unPLUG platform to provide a complete solution. This partnership ensured a clear path forward, enhancing guest interactions and operational efficiency for Luna Grill.
Building a Tailored First-Party Ordering Experience
unPLUG harnessed the power of their cloud-native platform to create a first-party experience specifically tailored to the needs of Luna Grill, creating a cutting-edge experience designed to pull guests into the first-party experience. The flexibility of the unPLUG platform, coupled with its advanced integrations, allowed it to adapt to various scenarios, ensuring it could meet Luna Grill's unique requirements.
This custom solution provided a smoother ordering experience increasing Average Order Value (AOV), facilitated easier payments (such as through Apple Pay), simplified loyalty account creation, enhanced access to gift cards, and built-in customer support — all seamlessly integrated into Luna Grill's existing technology stack.
over projected year-over-year increase in mobile app revenue
over projected year-over-year increase in check-ins (100% increase in-store)
Enhancing Marketing and Data Insights
The new mobile application empowered Luna Grill to optimize omnichannel marketing efforts through the use of Deep Links, guiding users directly through the ordering process from any digital channel, yielding increased loyalty, higher Limited Time Offers (LTOs) incidence, and boosted conversions. The unPLUG platform provided high-value data insights, enabling Luna Grill to measure and gain a deeper understanding of guest interactions. This improved data-driven approach empowered Luna Grill to continuously explore new marketing strategies and enhance the overall guest experience.
over projected year-over-year increase in loyalty sign-ups
increase in loyalty participation to 22.9% overall
“We have ambitious goals at Luna Grill to offer a digital experience that is just as high quality as the food we serve. In an age where technology is ever changing, it was important to us to find a partner willing to continuously adapt as our needs evolve with the industry. unPLUG's partnership is one-of-a-kind. Through consistent collaboration, we are supported with the tools we need to optimize and adjust our digital strategies based on real time data, guest engagement, and the emerging needs of the business.”
— Maddie Nixon, Luna Grill Digital Marketing Manager
What’s Next
Building on the success of their partnership with unPLUG, Luna Grill couldn't be better placed to scale their operations, with an active pipeline of new restaurants opening in 2024, and even more on the horizon for California and beyond over the next few years. By leveraging the high-value data insights provided by the unPLUG platform, Luna Grill aims to refine and optimize their Limited Time Offers (LTO) strategies, ensuring they resonate with their customer base and bring new concepts directly to their guests.
In addition, Luna Grill is introducing advanced menu recommendations with upselling powered by unPLUG’s AI. This new feature analyzes guest preferences and purchasing patterns to offer personalized meal suggestions, enhancing the dining experience and increasing Average Order Values (AOV). Stay tuned for exciting updates from the Luna Grill and unPLUG partnership.
