Pure Green

Fast Casual80+ Locations

How Pure Green partnered with unPLUG to build a franchise-ready first-party ordering and loyalty stack, then turned owned digital into a growth engine across 80+ locations.

+3,600%

1P Digital Sales Increase

+3,188%

1P Digital Orders Increase

About The Partnership

Pure Green is a premium smoothie and superfood franchise known for quality, wellness, and a fast-growing footprint. As the brand scaled past 80 locations, first-party digital had to work like a system: consistent menus, a real app connected to Square loyalty, and a path to pull repeat orders off marketplaces without asking franchisees to keep buying them.

The brand had already tried to own the channel. Square’s first-party ordering was URL-only and hard to keep consistent across the estate. DoorDash Storefront grew volume and trimmed some fees, but it still was not Pure Green’s app, and loyalty was not connected to the order. When unPLUG came in, the brief was specific: launch a first-party web and app experience on Square that franchisees would actually use, attach loyalty to the ticket, and give the brand a way to convert the next order onto owned channels.

Integrations: Square POS & Loyalty

"The app is a game changer for us. We wanted to make sure we found the right partner that can move at our pace and align with our vision."
Ross Franklin
Founder & CEO

The Challenge

Before unPLUG, Pure Green’s owned digital was not a channel it could franchise. The first attempt sat on Square’s first-party ordering. Menus were difficult to update consistently across locations, so the system could not scale. And because it was a URL, not an app, guests rarely saved it.

"It was not an app, so it was always a URL, which made it even harder because nobody really would save that URL to their home screen. So the usage was incredibly low," said Michael Cecchini, VP of Operations.

DoorDash Storefront was the next chapter. It was positioned as low-cost, it did grow orders, and it helped the business reduce some marketplace fees. It still left the same strategic hole: no true Pure Green app, and loyalty that was not tied to the ordering experience.

"We did not have the opportunity to have a true app that was connected to our loyalty."

Meanwhile the economics of third-party were getting harder to defend. Marketplace rates kept rising, and the average franchisee was spending $5,000–$10,000 on co-funded promotions with Uber, DoorDash, and Grubhub, paying to win an order inside an app where Pure Green was competing with thousands of other restaurants, including other smoothie concepts. Those platforms are not going away, and Pure Green does not expect them to. The problem was repeat: acquisition on someone else’s app, with no reliable way to bring the second order onto Pure Green’s own experience.

The brand needed a partner that could build a first-party stack around Square, move at franchise pace, and keep working the product after launch, not an out-of-the-box ordering skin from Olo, Lunchbox, or a similar packaged platform.

How We Solved It

The strategic approach and key implementations that drove success

Demand Capture Optimization

unPLUG rebuilt Pure Green’s owned ordering into a unified web and mobile system on Square, so every location could run the same high-converting storefront without fighting menu drift. The first launch established the app as the branded home for loyalty and reorder. Web ordering followed, giving guests a branded path from search, QR, and campaigns without forcing a download first. Together they created one demand-capture layer across the franchise: consistent UX, embedded guest identification, and a data trail from first tap into Square.

"If you're looking for a first-party app that's going to be catered to your needs and grow with your company — if you're looking for a company that's willing to do that and have the flexibility to grow with you — that is unPLUG," said Michael.

Unified web + app ordering infrastructure on Square
Franchise-ready menu and location consistency across 80+ stores
Embedded guest data capture across all digital touchpoints
Seamless integrations with Square POS, ordering, and loyalty

Transaction Optimization

With a real owned path in place, the work shifted from “have an app” to “make the next order easier on Pure Green than on a marketplace.” unPLUG tightened the journey from campaign to checkout with deeplinks, cross-channel routing, and a faster guest experience so paid, email, SMS, and in-store prompts could land on a cart instead of a homepage. That is what made it possible to take third-party marketing spend down: franchisees no longer had to buy the reorder with BOGOs and co-funded offers on Uber, DoorDash, and Grubhub.

The mix proves the point. App orders grew from 587 to 8,790 in the measurement window, while web, a channel that did not exist at baseline, now contributes 10,511 orders and a $19.2 average ticket, 22% above app AOV. Discount rate fell from 10.25% to 5.70% of subtotal. Volume scaled without leaning harder on promotions.

Two-click deeplink journeys from campaign to checkout
Cross-channel routing for consistent web and app experiences
Owned-path conversion so franchisees could cut marketplace promo spend
Optimized campaign-to-cart pathways across paid and owned channels

Guest Recognition & Loyalty

The loyalty gap was the reason Storefront was never going to be the long-term answer. unPLUG connected ordering to Square loyalty so a first-party order could recognize the guest, attach the visit, and make the next one worth placing in the app. Identified guests on owned digital went from 290 to 6,626. Repeat guests (those first seen in an earlier month) now drive 72.1% of first-party net sales, up from 14.2%. That is the shift from a launch channel to a habit channel.

Michael’s operating goal was never to take Uber, DoorDash, and Grubhub to zero. It was to convert as much as possible onto first-party and put third-party marketing spend in reverse. With app and loyalty in market, franchisees could stop paying to re-acquire guests they already served.