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Carl’s Jr. launches mobile game to get customers to join its loyalty programCarl’s Jr. launches mobile game to get customers to join its loyalty program

The ‘Need Burger, Get Burger’ game awards players with free menu items

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

October 2, 2024

2 Min Read
carls jr game
An illustration of the Need Burger, Get Burger game

Carl’s Jr. has launched a mobile game to encourage customers to download its mobile app and join the quick-service burger chain’s loyalty program.

The Need Burger, Get Burger game is available through October, offering daily prizes to players who maneuver a digital car into burgers while avoiding stop signs and traffic cones.

The chain of around 1,060 locations, part of CKE Restaurants based in Franklin, Tenn., said over the course of the month it will give away 2,500 large orders of fries, 2,500 large drinks, and 5,000 orders each, with additional purchases, of single Famous Star burgers, single Diablo Burgers, single Bacon Western Burgers, and single Guacamole Burgers.

Other prices include percentage discounts on purchases.

To claim the prizes, customers must download the Carl’s Jr. app and create a My Rewards account if they don’t have one already. They must redeem their prizes by the end of the year.

Gaming has been part of numerous restaurant apps for a while now. Starbucks periodically offers games on its app, and last year Chick-fil-A introduced Code Moo, a game customers could play to win weekly prizes, and reprised it this year.

Earlier this year, Chipotle introduced Burrito Vault, a game that gave players a chance to win free burritos for a year, but it had been gamifying its digital marketing for more than a decade, including dabbling in the metaverse.

Related:Tech Tracker: Foodservice tech is now gamifying everything

There are good reasons for encouraging customers to download apps and join loyalty programs. For off-premises occasions, ordering by a restaurant’s app is less expensive for the restaurant than if customers order via a third-party marketplace. Additionally, restaurants can record order history and other data about guests who use their apps and tailor promotional offers to those individual guests’ tastes.

Loyalty program members also spend up to 18% more than other customers, according to Salesforce.

Carl’s Jr. has been working to beef up its loyalty program base for most of the year.

On February 12, the day after the Super Bowl, it offered free Western Bacon Cheeseburgers to any My Rewards program members. As a result, more than 200,000 people joined the chain’s loyalty program on that day, boosting its membership by around 20%.

 

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
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Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
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