How The Appetite Momos built customer relationships that ensured repeat visits from 45% first-time customers!

Case Study

Introduction

The Appetite Momos is the brainchild of two friends and then college students Rahul Pawar and Avinash Vishwakarma. Their mutual dream to do big along with their readiness to put in hard work led them to launch their first outlet in Thane with a humble amount of Rs. 80,000. Since then they’ve gone to launch two more outlets in Airoli and Kanjurmarg respectively. As of date, The Appetite Momos serves over 1500 plates which translates to approximately 12000 momos daily; they aim to grow their business across the country by employing a franchise model.

The Challenge

A new and unfamiliar product meant new customers were scarce and retention was poor!

It wasn’t all smooth sailing for The Appetite Momos, post their launch they were faced with an unprecedented challenge just as they started out. Their momos were misconstrued by customers for the more commonly known local delicacy “modaks”. This misconception gave root to an apprehension towards their brand and attracting customers and generating a repeat visit was proving to be a challenge, let alone establishing long-term relationships with them. The owners soon realized they required a solution to engage existing customers to retain them and ensure repeat visits.

Solution

With a view to establish long-term relationships with customers, The Appetite Momos introduced a loyalty program using Hashtag Loyalty.

The owners were aware of their situation and acted quickly to tackle the problem at hand so as to ensure their business sustained. They played the location of their outlet to advantage and tapped into the high volume of in-transit customers by distributing free samples of their momos to them; this attracted new customers as well cleared the ambiguity around the product as customers slowly became aware and accustomed to the same. As time elapsed, they believed they were past their troubles but were met with surprise only to realize that the customers they had been attracting with free samples, were not revisiting them to make a purchase.

They needed a solution to generate repeat visits from the customers they were acquiring and Hashtag Loyalty helped them achieve exactly that.

With a view to establish long-term relationships with customers, The Appetite Momos introduced a loyalty program using Hashtag Loyalty. Customers now earned points on every purchase which in turn could be used to redeem rewards at The Appetite Momos.

This was an instant hit amongst customers, the program kept them actively engaged with the brand and motivated them to work towards the available rewards. What’s better? Thanks to the PoS — PetPooja integration, the experience was truly seamless for customers and staff alike!

Thanks to the scalability of the program, it was replicated at the newer outlets of The Appetite Momo’s at Kanjurmarg and Airoli as well. The universal nature of the program proved to be extremely beneficial to promote the recently launched outlets.

As for the owners, efficiency was at an all-time high as taking informed decisions, sending campaigns, keeping track of and comparing the performance of all outlets were all possible via a single Merchant Dashboard and timely Reports.

Impact

Loyalty Program helps The Appetite Momos realize benefits across key business areas.
The following statistics have been calculated across all three outlets of The Appetite Momos over the previous year.

New customers are attracted; customers prefer frequenting brands that have a loyalty program to offer.
Over 1L customers were onboarded on to the loyalty program in the previous year; 36% increase from the year before that.

Customers made more purchases; thanks to the engaging loyalty program.
In excess of 2.5L transactions have been recorded to date; 40% higher than the year before.

Customer retention is improved; incentivized by the loyalty program — customers are eager to repeat a visit.
It was recorded that 45% of first-time customers of The Appetite Momos returned to repeat a purchase.

Returning customers are increased; the loyalty program kept customers loyal to the brand for a longer time.
There was a 74% increase in returning customers than the previous year.