Which QSR chain has the most loyal fanbase?

Foursquare unveils second annual QSR Loyalty Index

By: Mike Schoppmann and Ariel Segal

For the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) biz, it’s all about “Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty” (to quote Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna). Competition is fierce and loyalty is king. With more than 350,000 QSRs in the U.S., marketers and QSR chains need to be smarter, faster, and more innovative if they want to encourage repeat business. Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty!

At Foursquare, our deep understanding of where people go in the real world gives us the unique ability to analyze foot traffic patterns and dining trends from the U.S. consumers who make up our growing, always-on foot traffic panel. Our annual Loyalty Index provides the most accurate assessment of customer loyalty based on a complex set of behaviors and preferences, and distills them into a single metric that can be compared across chains.

To measure customer loyalty, Foursquare uses four key metrics to identify which chains foster the most dedicated fanbase:

• Visit Frequency: The average number of visits per diner within a year.
• Market Penetration: The percentage of all QSR diners who visited the chain within a year. (Penetration was only measured for regions in which the chain exists, so a chain in the northeast, for example, was not impacted for its regionality.)
• Share of Wallet: The percentage of the consumer’s total QSR visits that a particular chain captures within a year.
• Fanaticism Threshold: The number of visits within a year required for a customer to be within the top 1% of customers who visit a particular chain, on a scale of 1 to 50.

So without further ado, here is this year’s top 20 QSR chains with the most devoted diners:

Hungry for more? Download our 2018 QSR Loyalty Index report to see the complete list of the top 50 national QSR chains, case studies on the biggest winners and movers, and strategies for what marketers can do to increase consumer loyalty.

To get in touch, visit us at enterprise.foursquare.com or email ads@foursquare.com.

Methodology:

For this analysis, Foursquare’s data scientists analyzed a panel of users who have been active on the Foursquare City Guide and Foursquare Swarm apps, as well as partner apps, for a minimum of one year and have visited at least one of the analyzed chains between July 1st, 2017 and June 30th 2018.Foursquare examined the top 50 QSR chains by revenue, as determined by QSR Magazine. All data is anonymized, aggregated and/or pseudonymized, and normalized to match the U.S. Census (removing age, gender, or geographical bias).