Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Cava’s Loyalty Program: Driving Growth Amid a Surge in Popularity
Cava, a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant chain with over 340 locations has carved out a unique space in the competitive fast-casual dining industry. Known for its fresh ingredients and vibrant Mediterranean flavors, the chain has not only captured the attention of health-conscious diners but also the loyalty of investors. In line with its remarkable growth, Cava has refreshed its Cava Rewards loyalty program, offering insights into how innovative loyalty strategies can support brand growth and customer engagement.
Read the full article on Loyalty360 here: https://loyalty360.org/content-gallery/in-depth-exclusives/cava-s-loyalty-program-driving-growth-amid-a-surge-in-popularity
Fast casual restaurants are among the most competitive sectors today. Disruption is constant, with legacy brands, some of which had been popular for 50 to 75 years, closing their doors. Meanwhile, new upstarts are emerging, focused on fresh, high-quality fare, flashy restaurant concepts and customer experiences tailored to audiences who value personalized service and high-end food offerings. These brands cater to a more discerning customer who seeks healthier options that satisfy both the palate and the desire for unique, service-driven experiences. These customers place a premium on time savings, health-conscious choices and an overall elevated dining experience. Among the few brands that are currently regarded with admiration and reverence is Kava. Even if you haven't had the chance to try their food, chances are you've come across articles about them in leading business publications. Today, we're very excited to welcome back Andrew Revin. He's the Chief Experience Officer at Kava. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, andy.
Speaker 2:How are you? I'm great, Mark. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. For those of us who may not be familiar, can you give us a short introduction to Kava and tell us about your role with the company and also a little bit about your experience in customer loyalty?
Speaker 2:For sure. So Kava is a category-defining Mediterranean fast casual restaurant brand with a very unique culinary perspective where food unites taste and health without compromise. We have bold flavors and fresh ingredients. We have over 340 restaurants in 25 states and DC, and I joined Kava as chief experience officer in May 2023. My role is overseeing marketing, catering and customer experience, of which loyalty is a critical component of that end-to-end guest experience journey. I've done loyalty programs with a couple of different brands that I've been a part of in the past and just thrilled to have the opportunity to do it again here at Kava.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, I know. Recently, kava announced a new and improved loyalty program, kava Rewards. Can you tell us something about the program, how it works and the benefits of the program?
Speaker 2:new program is essentially you get 10 points for every dollar spent. It's, like I said, easier for the guests to earn and redeem points and it's a really fresh catalog of food rewards, and so it gives guests the opportunity to try our new garlic ranch pita chips, which are an LTO that is part of the rewards menu, as well as our classic pita chips. We have a lot of different other things that are part of the rewards program, including some new promotions, reward challenges, and we have a plan to introduce some new rewards in the future.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. As we prep for this meeting, you and I had a little conversation about kind of the design program. You did it internally with your team. You mentioned listening to the customers, trying to understand what they are looking for in the program and simplifying and adding value to the program. And how did you manage that process, because that's something many brands say are struggling with. How did you effectively manage that?
Speaker 2:We listened to our guests. We set up a number of listening sessions with our most valuable guests guests we wanted to get into the higher tiers of visitation and then also just feedback from our team members. You know, the team members at the restaurant level are always talking to our guests day in and day out and I just think their feedback has been instrumental in really trying to elevate the program and figure out ways that we can continue to engage the guests in new and fruitful ways for the program. That's awesome, Great to hear.
Speaker 1:As part of the Refresh program, Kaba launched a new app for customers. What role does the digital experience play in your program today and how do you see that evolving going into the future?
Speaker 2:Look. We designed a fully enhanced and seamless app and web guest experience to really reflect kind of the beautiful walk, the line format that our guests have the opportunity to be a part of in person, and it really exudes our concept essence. Across that onboarding experience, the reward dashboard, the reward redemption and checkout, you'll notice some really vibrant food imagery. It really has an engaging bull builder visual and it really is just compelling in general. It really helps create an emotional connection with the brand and it's a really fun experience. If you haven't yet checked out our app, you can go to kavacom or download it from the app store. It's called Kava Rewards and it's amazing. It's a great experience.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and personalization is a topic that's very topical, top of mind germane right now in the customer loyalty industry, making sure that the programs are relevant, they're personalized and they're one-to-one, and you seem to have done a really good job of refreshing the program to move in that direction. So how does K, how does CABA, incorporate the personalization into the rewards program, and what role does data play in tailoring these offers and experiences to your guests?
Speaker 2:Yeah, personalized emails, push notifications, in-app messages. We are really focused on that to consistently share our Mediterranean warmth and hospitality across all platforms and occasions. And, like I talked about earlier, the rewards catalog is really another element of that personalization desire from our guests. We have the ability to really lean into the brand and focus on customization and choice. And you mentioned customer data. We really try to learn from our guests' behavior to offer those personalized promotions and it also allows us to significantly grow our first party data. So in the future, when we look to see what types of new menu items should we introduce, what's really resonating with our customer base. It gives us an ability to lean in and really do a much better job of understanding what the guests want and what we need to do for the future of the business.
Speaker 1:You talked about some of the LTOs you have from a product perspective. Is there an item right now that's very hot, a food item, a menu item? That's kind of burning it up.
Speaker 2:Garlic ranch pita chips are awesome. We introduced them a couple of weeks ago and it's the first opportunity for our guests to get a new take on our classic pita chips, which are a very viral internet and in-restaurant sensation, and they are delicious. It's a very good combination of flavors and, yeah, I just love them. I just need to take a little break. I've had them a little bit too often.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at launching a new loyalty program, a lot that goes into that. You mentioned listening to the customer, getting organizational alignment, training around the program, but at the end of the day, measuring the success of the loyalty program is very important. What KPIs do you focus on to ensure that the program is meeting both its business and its business goals and also the customer expectations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a couple different things we look at. First, we look at just the overall engagement of the guests, so trying to understand how many app sessions are they opening? What does their email open rate look like? Are they engaging with push message notifications when we run and we send out campaigns? Are guests coming as a result of some of the campaign messaging that we have? We also try to build an emotional connection with the guests, making sure that it's not just about the transaction but understanding that even when they're not thinking about Kava, we want them to think of the fact that we provide great food, great experience, etc. And just give them the opportunity to think about the brand and what the experience means to them overall. I think, as you look at just loyalty programs in general, you try to look at average check number of signups, you look at 90-day customer active rate. So there's a number of different factors that go into the overall, how you determine whether or not a program is successful, and we look at a variety of factors here at Kava.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and emotional loyalty is another one of those very impactful yet somewhat ethereal metrics in customer loyalty. Many brands use proxies, whether it's CSAT or customer experience score, but there is a growing focus, within our community at least, to truly define some parameters around emotional loyalty, and it's good to hear that that's top of mind for CAVA For sure. So you talked about creating emotional connection with your members. How does CAVA foster this kind of connection through its rewards program and the overall guest experience you provide?
Speaker 2:A lot of it is about data. We gather the data to help fuel the personalized messages and moments for deeper emotional connection. We do some elements of surprise and delight. We have a love button in our restaurants that really help guests get kava on us. When either someone's having a bad day Our newer guests we sometimes will treat them to kava or, you know, just giving them the opportunity to just welcome them with open arms with our Mediterranean hospitality. Generosity and Mediterranean hospitality shown by our team members really help drive that overall guest experience and we believe that that's our differentiator with the type of connection we're trying to create amongst our digital loyalty users as well as our team members and restaurant.
Speaker 1:Okay, the surprise and delight is that, enabled by the individuals in the restaurant, should I say, do they have the opportunity to say see someone's having a bad day, or just give someone kind of a free experience or free food item to kind of drive that emotional loyalty?
Speaker 2:It's a little bit of both. The team members are empowered to use the love button, and then we also might surprise them via our digital channel. So it's a great, great opportunity to really make somebody's day and give them the opportunity to enjoy our incredible product.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Great to hear about the love button. I have to check that out. When you look at the fast casual industry a lot of evolution program enhancements, you know. What trends do you think are going to be important as loyalty programs continue to evolve, you know, with new features and new benefits, maybe exclusive challenges of gamification, what do you think is important going forward in the fast casual industry?
Speaker 2:I think you nailed some of them. I think challenges gamification continue to be trendy. I think making the experience very much in line with what you want your brand to evoke, making sure that it stays in the lane and tries not to be something you're not I think you see just the conjunction of how brands are marketing digital experiences with loyalty and giving loyalty members the opportunity to get things first or get bonus points as a result of their membership. I also think you're going to continue to see growth of personalization and surprise and delight features. So, whether that be through AI I think AI is a fun buzzword that a lot of brands throw around but really leaning into AI to make sure that it's utilizing data and other elements of insight to really drive some of the decision making behind what offers customers are receiving or the way they like to be communicated or at what time is best to communicate with them. So I see a lot of different trends and it's just going to get more and more exciting, I think, as time rolls on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, ai is a very pertinent topic as well. Brands are struggling to find that as well. You know, is it just another regression analysis process you have, or is it truly AI? But one of the things that we've seen is that, from a brand perspective, there seems to be a little extra scrutiny on AI, right? So if the bot sends out the wrong message or the wrong communication cadence, it seems to have a little more scrutiny, almost like the driverless cars, right, so the driverless cars have to have. You know, you kill one person in five years. That's horrible, but if there's 13,000 accidents a day in the US, so I'm not sure if that's something you're seeing. But within the community, we see is making sure that AI is on point all the time. So they have teams that are actually monitoring all the segmentation and the content they're putting out, which hopefully at some point that kind of goes away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, I think AI is not one of those things where you can just push the button and everything starts working. I think you use the example of just training it over time. I think training the model to work for your business is going to be key and critical. It's not one of those things where it will take a bunch of complex data sets and user data to kind of make a recommendation and what you have to make sure happens is it's not something and I can give an example if there's a product that has sold extremely well for your business and it was an LTO, and then AI makes the recommendation, based off of the data, that that product should be something that you advertise, well, it's no longer available. So again, it's really making sure that you kind of nurture the model to a certain degree and make sure that it makes sense, given future state of your business and where you want to take it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And the last question I have someone self-serving what can Loyalty360 do to help support CABA in your customer loyalty strategies and efforts?
Speaker 2:I think again just grateful for the opportunity to be featured on this podcast and talk about our new program, and it's really a great source of information when different brands or different businesses want to know what keeps other brand marketers or digital marketers up at night, and also just new interesting things that brands are trying to try to spur the growth of their program things that brands are trying to try to spur the growth of their program.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well, thank you very much for that. Now we have our wonderful quick fire round of questions I don't know. Let's see what we got. It should be fun. We like to keep them to one word or short phrase answer. So the first question we have is what word or short phrase do you use to inspire others? Bring the weather. There we go. Bring the weather, as in when it rains.
Speaker 2:As in you bring the weather, I bring the weather. I think bringing the weather or bringing the beat is very important. You set the tone for your organization, for others you work with. I just love that phrase because people very much associate with weather. Sunshine is great. I think it's a very important thing to think about as you think about kind of how you want to inspire others, or when you think about larger groups at hand. It's a really good mechanism to just kind of have a barometer to measure.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, okay. And then what is your least favorite word? Busy, okay. What excites you at work?
Speaker 2:Growth opportunity and creating a category-defining brand.
Speaker 1:Okay, what do you find tiresome at home or at work?
Speaker 2:I would say that sometimes Zoom meetings get a little bit tiresome, so I kind of try to find fun ways to mix it up. I love in-person connections so I try to find the balance of being in a hybrid work environment with doing both Zoom meetings and then also that in-person connection.
Speaker 1:Makes perfect sense. What is your favorite menu item at Kaba?
Speaker 2:Probably the harissa avocado bowl, but I like to create my own. I can go into it greens and grains bowl, brown rice, spinach, eggplant. I do a scoop of hummus and then crazy feta. I do harissa chicken with roasted veggies tomato, cucumber, tomato onion, spicy broccoli, feta, pita, crisps, avocado and then Greek vinaigrette dressing. It's amazing. Go try it.
Speaker 1:There you go. That's actually sounds pretty good. That's up to try, that for sure, and very specific as well. Thank you, is there a book that you have read or like to read that you recommend to colleagues?
Speaker 2:I like Designing your Life. It's a great book. Really taps into your own behavior personally and professionally and kind of builds a different roadmap for you depending on what stage you're at in your career or life journey. So I really like it as a means of continuing to strive for better and more and just a self-reflective book exercise.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what professions, other than the one you currently find yourself in, would you maybe like to try?
Speaker 2:well, if the los angeles dodgers are listening, I would love to be their announcer. So next joe davis, uh, next vin scully. Love, love, love the dodgers. And I I think when I was a kid growing up it was the one profession I was like I would love to be the next announcer for the Dodgers, yeah.
Speaker 1:What do you enjoy doing that you often don't get time to do?
Speaker 2:I love to mentor, I try to create, you know, four to five hours a month to mentor some of my mentees across the world and I just love teaching others, I love inspiring them and I wish there was more time to mentor in life.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that's great when you look at the person you are today, who inspired you to be that person.
Speaker 2:Definitely my dad. My dad is a doctor, but also had a very strong business mindset and so public speaking, treating people the right way. He definitely inspired a lot of my being in the person I am today.
Speaker 1:Okay, and last question you have is how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Speaker 2:I want to be remembered as the person who brings others together and celebrates the positive in life.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, that's great. Well, andrew, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. It was great reconnecting with you It'd been a while and great hearing about your amazing work at Kaba. So thank you very much for taking the time. Awesome, thanks so much, mark, for having me, absolutely, and thank you everyone else for taking the time to listen today. Make sure you join us back for another edition of our Leaders in Customer Multiseries soon and until then, have a wonderful day.